Scyther

Great thank you, I'll keep the points you mentioned in mind going forward.

Thank you! I appreciate the thorough feedback. Lots of things for me to work on.

Great, thank you for the critique. And yes, regarding the spider's abdomen, I cut back into it because my ellipse was not tight. I'll remember to prioritize form solidity over proportions, matching the reference, etc.

Hello! I finished my revisions:

https://imgur.com/a/wGXaPbP

Thank you for critiquing.

Thanks for letting me know, and I apologize for taking up extra time. Going forward I will not submit any partial revisions.

Thank you for reinforcing the importance of building correct silhouettes instead of adding arbitrary contour lines. I will keep that in mind. For the revisions, should I start over with four new insects or finish the remaining three?

Hello,

I have resumed my drawabox exercises - can you take a look at my first revision? Is this acceptable / on the right track? I would like to know before I work on the remaining three. Thank you!

Here's the ref: https://imgur.com/jJ1oTgB

Here's my attempt at it: https://imgur.com/xXIZcKf

Hello,

Thank you for the detailed and thorough critique! I will go over each point and apply them to my revisions. I have a couple of questions / concerns:

1. How do I add lineweight to curving (organic flowing) and/or long lines? I understand adding lineweight to reinforce the silhouette of a rigid object like a box, but when it comes to long flowing lines or curves I am at a loss. I have been practicing in my warmups but progress has been extremely slow - not sure if I am missing something. For example, if the curved line has many turns and twists do I just do one 'section' at a time? When I do that I can easily see where I stopped and started and the lineweight essentially ruins the continuity and flow of the original mark.

2. How to I properly observe a reference? Like you stated in your critique, I am overwhelmed by the information I am seeing. In turn, I become frustrated and start guessing.

3. One of the reasons why I tend to tack on flat shapes to my forms is I have a extremely difficult time understanding intersection lines. I greatly struggled with it in lesson 2 and to this day I still do not see those lines properly. In my warmups I have been mashing boxes together and while I do see (for the most part anyway) how they are intersecting with one another, I cannot identify those specific contour lines. Do you have any advice or resources to help me in this particular area?

4. For my revisions I plan on not doing any textures. Is this okay?

5. I am mentally not in a good place to keep working on these technical exercises. I am feeling burnt out and very frustrated. I plan on taking a break and coming back to this in a few weeks. Is this okay? I am still drawing for fun every day. I am worried about my technical ability deteoriating though. Do you have any advice on persevering these skills while on break?

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for the clarification.

Hello,

Thank you for critiquing my work. Yes, I actually misunderstood the branch construction regarding overlapping lines. Thank you so much for pointing it out, else I would have carried on as before.

So about carefully observing a reference. I remember in lesson 2 (and 3) you said when observing a reference, we're not trying to copy it 1:1, but rather draw a representation. But the representation still needs to be closely matching the reference, but how close? I bring this up because I don't quite understand the difference between trying to copy a reference exactly versus drawing a representation. If the representation is made by careful observation and adding strokes matching the reference, isn't that just copying it exactly? Can you elaborate on this a bit more? Thank you.

Thank you! I will keep these things in mind and keep practicing!