aeshnabx

Starting with your organic intersections, you've laid these out quite well in such a way that they slump and sag over one another in a believable fashion, and you've shown good consideration to the placement of your cast shadows, such that they wrap around the surfaces beneath them. I am a little unsure as to why your cast shadows suddenly fade out the way they do, but I assume it's an issue with your scanner. If you run into any issues where your scanner doesn't capture your images accurately, it really is best to use a phone camera (ideally with daylight coming in through the windows).

Continuing onto your animal constructions, this critique's going to fall into two main categories. Firstly, there are a number of points from my previous feedback that you have not fully addressed here, so I'll call that out again, and then I've got some advice on how you're approaching a few things.

As to what wasn't addressed from my previous feedback, I've called them out here. In effect, you are still taking a fair bit of leeway in allowing yourself to work on your constructions in 2D space - that is, altering the silhouettes of your forms both by cutting into them in places and extending off them in others. You are certainly also trying to make use of additional masses in many cases, but there are little places where you're allowing yourself to take shortcuts that you should. In addition to this, you also appear to in some of these constructions continue to either use the sausage method more loosely than you should, or you forget to employ it entirely. To both of these issues, I strongly recommend that you go back over the feedback you received from Lesson 4, as this is a good sign that you perhaps did not give yourself enough of an opportunity to apply and absorb the feedback I'd provided there, and that perhaps your approach for assimilating that information needs adjustment. That is to say, perhaps you need to go back over past feedback more frequently perhaps you need to take notes so you can have summaries of the major issues open beside you as you work through the next lesson, or whatever other strategy works for you.

Towards the top I also commented on your tendency to use filled areas of solid black around the eyes in some of your constructions. Try to reserve your filled areas of solid black for cast shadows only - meaning, new shapes that you have designed with consideration to the relationship between the form casting it and the surface receiving it, as opposed to filling things in arbitrarily. This of course was not something I'd addressed with you previously, but since I was calling out concerns on that page, I slipped it in as well.

Now, the first piece of advice I wanted to offer is to do with how you're approaching using the additional masses to build upon your constructions. While you took shortcuts in a number of places, altering those silhouettes to refine their shapes, you still did build up the bulk of your structures with new, completely self-enclosed forms, which is good to see. The way in which you're doing this however can be improved.

One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.

Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

Looking at your use of additional masses, you are definitely giving some consideration to the design of their silhouettes, although I noticed a tendency towards using a lot of "soft" corners - that is, corners where the change of trajectory occurs over a span, gradually, rather than all at once at a singular sharp point. Here's what I mean.

In order to capture the impression that the mass actually wraps around the existing structure, we benefit greatly from using a sharper corner - both to lead into an inward curve, but also to give the impression that the mass hooks back around along the other side of the existing structure to wrap around it on that side, similarly to how we have to hook our contour lines around.

Replacing those soft corners with sharp ones as shown here creates a much stronger impression of how those masses actually exist in 3D space. Also note how I've used a lot more additional masses - being sure to use them where you may have taken some of those shortcuts, bridging across from one mass to another with a partial 2D shape. I also broke that longer mass along the animal's back into several forms, because as per the rule that inward curves can only occur due to contact/pressure from another form, having an inward curve along the top edge where nothing is pressing in on it wouldn't be permitted. We can still achieve this however by breaking the mass up into separate pieces and piling them atop one another.

Looking at your use of additional masses along your animals' legs, I did notice that you tend to focus these on capturing specific bumps that break the silhouette of the leg structure. While this is a good starting point, it helps immensely to block out the "inbetween" forms as well, as these dictate the manner in which all of the masses will fit together. The more pieces we have fitting together, the more grounded and solid the overall structure will appear, as shown here on another student's work.

And as a side note, here are some notes that should help you with approaching your animals' feet.

The last thing I wanted to call out is to do with head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how I'm finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here on the informal demos page.

There are a few key points to this approach:

• The specific shape of the eyesockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.

• This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.

• We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eyesocket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.

Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but with a bit of finagling it can still apply pretty well. To demonstrate this for another student, I found the most banana-headed rhinoceros I could, and threw together this demo.

So! Unfortunately while I did skip revisions from the last lesson in favour of allowing you to demonstrate your understanding of those points in your work here, we are going to need some revisions at this point to ensure that you do understand the concepts I've shared with you. You'll find them assigned below.

Hi AHMEDHASSAN021! I'll review your work.

Lines

Not bad, but I see some wobbliness, so try to draw more confidently. Also, in Superimposed Lines, I wouldn't recommend drawing everything from the same line, as it can be more confusing than a single point. I also see some small lines you probably did while ghosting next to the lines you drew. This is not much of a problem but keep it in mind and don't put your pen on the paper until you want to draw the line.

Additionally, I would suggest you try to draw different planes. Yours look too similar to one another and too squared. Try placing the four points like the example page.

Ellipses

Not much to say about them, they are great. Just some common mistakes that will dissapear with practice. Especially keeping ellipses within the bound and

Boxes

I like them but I see some problems. Firstly, the line weight, it should be done with more confidence and not so hard in the internal lines of the box. In Rotated Boxes the gap between boxes should be narrower. And in Rough Perspective many of the lines have mistakes you didn't have previously. That shows that more time can be put in ghosting the lines.

Hello MelonMan I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 1 homework

Lines

-Starting with the superimposed lines , you have started at a clearly defined point and kept all of the wavering on one side, which is correct. They are also drawn with a good deal of confidence, and lastly, we have the expected fraying at the ends but this tends to disappear with more practice and mileage.

-Moving to the ghosted lines, it is great to see that your lines follow a consistent trajectory even if they are going to miss the ending dot which is exactly what we are looking for. I notice very few instances where your lines arch slightly, this means that you probably need more time to get comfortable with drawing from your shoulder. One thing that can help you is to draw your lines a little bit faster to avoid any chance of hesitation.

-The ghosted planes are no different from the ghosted planes, here you have a few wobbly lines but overall you are doing a great job committing to those lines.

Ellipses

-Your tables of ellipses are looking tidy rather than rushed and you have kept in mind the degree, angle, spacing and alignment of the ellipses in mind, Most of your ellipses are looking symmetrical with well rounded ends, just keep in mind that you should draw through your ellipses 2-3 times, keep up the good work.

-On the ellipses in planes it is great to see that you are not overly concerned with having the ellipses touch the four sides of the plane and you have prioritized drawing symmetrical ellipses, they are also drawn with confidence.

-The ellipses on the funnels are also turning out nicely , but there are a few issues. Firstly, you have some ellipses tilting off the minor axis, and you also have some ellipses that are not fitting snugly. Keep working on those.

Boxes

-On the rough perspective your linework is looking clean, and it has really helped your boxes look more solid and believable, just one thing, do not repeat your lines, if you make a mistake leave it like that and do not try to correct it by drawing on top of it as it only makes it stand out more. You have some trouble aligning the vertical lines, remember that they should be fully perpendicular. Lastly, your estimations to the vanishing point will get better with practice.

-On the rotated boxes remember to give each line as much focus and attention as it requires, each line is no less important for being part of a larger group, use the ghosting method to think about each mark’s purpose and how you are going to achieve it best. This is an exercise that requires you to spend a good amount of time planning your marks. Aside from this you are doing a great job thinking about the rotation and keeping the gaps between boxes narrow

-Finishing with the organic perspective the linework is looking confident and you are already making some good attempts at the perspective of the boxes. To conclude,remember you can add lineweight to the parts of outer lines that overlap with other boxes to clarify which ones are on top and which behind, so give it a try next attempt you have at the exercise.

Okay, nice work I’ll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 3 homework-

-Starting with the arrows these are drawn with a good deal of confidence which really helped you to capture the fluidity with which they move through space, the perspective seems consistent and the only thing I want to point your attention to is the application of lineweight, you can try to use it only on the very specific and exact part where the overlap occurs this will help you as you only have to add lineweight on shorter line.

-This fluidity carries over very well to your leaves, and I like the way you added the little bumps and cuts to the edges, I don’t see you tried any complex leaf structure so try them out for your next warm sessions.

-On the branches I see that you have kept the degree shifts of the ellipses in mind, but sometimes they are barely noticeable so try to be more cognizant and aware of this when you do this exercise. Watching the lesson 1 ellipses video can help you.

• Secondly, try to have each segment extending fully halfway to the next ellipse, I see plenty of cases where you fall short, and also try to have each segment overlapping a good bit this will help you to achieve smoother transitions

• Lastly when adding the additional mass to fork your ellipses try to have both of them touching the circumference of the other ellipse, take a look here which exemplifies my point more clearly

With all of these technical issues taken care of let’s move on to the plant constructions.

-On your first pant drawing, I can see some instances where you leave gaps on your construction, take a look here do you best to have each petal ending right at the tip of each flow line, remember that the constructional method is all about setting a preceding structure for our subject and establish very tight and specific relationships between the simpler stages of the construction and the more complex ones.

-On this drawing, you had your petals going beyond the boundaries which you had set, each of your flow lines and petals has to end at the very edge of the ellipse you drew, that was the purpose of putting it there on the first place.

-On this potato plant, I think you are overdoing the lineweight, so try to keep it subtle at all costs, if you make it too thick you will turn your drawings into mere graphic forms and take their solidity away. YOu may have confused them with cast shadows but cast shadows follow different rules, they are projected from one surface onto another and thus, they can't cling to the silhouette of any form and must fall onto another form even if it is further away

What you want to take from this is that it is best to focus the use of lineweight to describe how forms overlap, this potato plant is a good example because you have a large group of leaves creating a lot of visual noise, but if you overdo it you risk making this visual noise louder. So only use it on the very specific parts where the overlap occurs as shown here .

-And lastly, I can see some parts where your linework does not look as confident, so draw one thing at a time, and focus on every single mark. Use the ghosting method to ensure that you're considering what each mark's purpose is, and how you're going to achieve it best.What matters is that you execute the work to the best of your current ability.

That is it for now, and overall I think you have done a good job, so I’ll be marking this lesson as complete and move you to the next lesson. Good luck!

Hello I'll be wrapping up the critiques for your submissions, since I’m very tired of critiquing lesson 1 homework. I can see that Raquelley has generously given you a critique but I think it lacks a some guidance.

-So starting with the organic arrows section, you are drawing them with a good deal of confidence, this helps you to capture their fluidity and how they move through space.

I think you are nailing the foreshortening and the perspective, just keep in mind that the negative space between the zigzagging sections of the ribbon has to decrease as it moves further away as shown here.

-This fluidity carries over pretty well on to your leaves, you are doing a good job adding the little bumps and cuts into the existing structure, but I’d suggest that you try more complex leave structures like the maple leaves shown here

-There are a number of things I want to call out on the branches exercise.

• Make sure each segment extends fully halfway to the next ellipse. Most of yours do, but there are some that fall a bit short.

• Try to use that last 'tail' of the previous segment as a runway, overlapping it directly before shooting off towards the next target. As demonstrated here, this along with the previous point's extension to that midpoint helps to achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from segment to segment.

• Make sure you are cognizant of the degree shifts of each ellipse, I think you have kept them in mind but take more time to consider and ghost your marks so you can get better results.

So now let’s move on to the plant constructions

-Your results vary from case to case, but it is important that you do not skip any constructional steps, you want to clearly set up a preceding structure for each element of your drawing, this should be your focus, remember that we are not learning to draw any subject in specific but to use the constructional methods and principles of mark making to good effect.

-Taking a look at your rose and sunflower, make sure you draw the entirety of each petal/leaf, each one has to be clearly defined and is no less important for being part of a larger group of leaves.

-You did an excellent job with the demos following each step and executing them to the best of your ability, but I do not think that this carried over to your own plant constructions.

So you are moving in the right direction, and your mistakes are just a matter of approach, so I want to make a few suggestions to you

• Draw one thing at a time, and focus on every single mark. Use the ghosting method to ensure that you're considering what each mark's purpose is, and how you're going to achieve it best. If you have a plant with many leaves, each individual leaf's flow line is no less important for being part of a larger group.

• Draw each form in its entirety. There will be circumstances where, say, a flower has so many petals that they overlap one another. Instead of allowing the petals to cut each other off, draw each and every one in its entirety. These are all just exercises in spatial reasoning, and drawing each form in its entirety will help you better understand how those forms relate to one another in 3D space.

Hello I’ll be taking a look at your submission for your lesson 3 homework.

-Starting with your organic arrows, you have drawn them with a great deal of confidence, which helped to capture the flusity with which they move through space. You have also kept in mind the foreshortening and the negative space between the zigzagging sections of the ribbon, when adding lineweight and hatching you also did a great job.

-This fluidity carries over to your leaves as well. I like to see that you have drawn leaves with complex structures and integrated them with confident lines. I’ll suggest that you try to add more complex edge details like bumps and cuts for your future practice.

-Your branches are good too, you should strive to have each segment overlapping, with the tail of the previous one, and avoid having visible tails, so that you can achieve smoother transitions. You have kept in mind the degree of your ellipses relative to the positions of the viewer so good job.

Now let’s move on to the plant constructions themselves.

-Taking a look at your mushrooms, make sure you draw each line with the same deal of confidence, avoid any line that has a weaker lineweight or fades away, you want to maintain it consistent so everything keep it solidity.

-Make sure that all of your contour lines hook around the structure they are sitting on, avoid ant straight lines, in this drawing, I can notice a line that is more or less straight and does not convey any sense of depth,

-In general I don’t really have much criticism to offer you as I mentioned before, you have largely done very well here. You've built up each structure steadily, step by step, carrying forward the solidity from those simpler stages of construction as you added more complexity. I'm not really seeing you skipping any constructional steps, and so everything maintains tight, specific relationships with the preceding and supporting structure. I'm also very happy with how you've so clearly made a point of giving each and every mark as much time as you need to execute it to the best of your current ability. As a result, your marks are precise and accurate, while maintaining good fluidity.

Now when it comes to texture, there's no harm in leaving it out for now as you have done for the most part. Still, the thing to keep in mind is that texture is not actually all that different from everything else we're doing here. Just like construction, it's about defining the relationships between different forms in 3D space. The only difference is that these forms are so small and numerous (usually) that if we used the same constructional techniques to capture them (explicit mark making, outlining them in their entirety, drawing them directly, etc.) our drawings would just end up incredibly noisy. But I’m pleased to see that you have focused on cast shadows only and have prioritized the construction.

Hello NoTilt_! First of all, congrats on finishing lesson one. I'll look through your exercises.

Lines

Great job with lines, you prioritized confidence over accuracy. A few of your lines on the ghosted lines exercise got a bit wobbly, but they surely improved for the ghosted planes exercise.

Elipses

On the ellipses tables, you kept the ellipses within the bounds, and even if some overlapped initially, in the 2nd page I see you fixed it, good job. Now, about the ellipses in planes exercise, some of your ellipses aren't fitting snugly within the plane, but they go really close. So you're almost there, just push it a little bit more so your ellipse touch all 4 sides of the plane. About the funnels exercise, I think the main issue there is that the ellipses on them aren't aligned to the minor axis, but it's a fact of practice, son don't forget to include them in your warm-up exercises.

Boxes

Plotted perspective exercise was done really good.On the rough perspective exercise, the sad face box was incorrect due not using 1 point perspective, but using two . All the other boxes on the exercise are correct and I can tell there was improvement about your estimating skills.

About the rotated boxes I don't personally think you have messed up the top part because of not understanding the "tapered" part of it. I think you did a pretty neat exercise since it's your first time and you got the important part of it: to infer information about space and the arrangement of objects from neighbouring objects.It's hard, but even Uncomfortable says in the example "I'm not going to say that this is what your work should look like when you're done - because in all likelihood, it won't. "

And aaaahh... organic boxes. That was one really hard for me too.The main point is that you did it. Is as it says in the purpose of the exercise "throw you into the deep end of the pool without having yet taught you to swim". Just remember: keep prioritizing confidence over accuracy as in the other exercises and don't re-do lines.

And with that being said, I think you're ready to face the 250 boxes challenge. You got it!

There is room for improvement, but I think you're off to a solid start so far. Here's what stood out to me:

I notice some wobble in your lines, especially in the earlier pages. This is something that you'll improve as you develop line confidence. Keep on ghosting your lines, and you'll be good on this front. I also notice you overshoot or undershoot your target occasionally. Again, this should improve with practice.

In any case, you should also experiment with the speed at which you make your lines. You may stray from the target point or draw before or past it, depending on if you make your stroke too slowly or too quickly.

I don't have much to say about the ellipses. You draw through them twice and appear to be aiming for them to be bound within their respective regions, which is good. You also appear to draw them with at least some confidence, which is also good. The main issue, the accuracy of your ellipses, should improve as you practice them.

Your boxes are fairly solid so far. By this point, your line confidence has shown some respectable improvement. The flaws in perspective aren't too much of an issue right now; you will be able to improve this as you continue to draw more boxes.

Starting with your organic arrows, these are coming along decently - you're definitely putting a fair bit of confidence into the linework which helps to establish the way in which they flow through space. I would however recommend trying to draw these in a single stroke for each edge for now - there are obviously disadvantages to doing so in terms of accuracy and such, but it'll still be more useful in terms of this exercise. As long as you focus on executing those marks from the shoulder, with the same confidence you're exhibiting here, it should come out well.

Additionally, remember that we want the gaps between the zigzagging sections to compress as we look farther back, as shown here. You're doing this now to an extent, but exaggerating it will definitely help you push that sense of depth in the scene.

Continuing onto your leaves, the first thing that jumps out at me was that there was definitely more room on the page, so you could have certainly fit at least another 3 leaves in there - that would mean getting 50% more out of the assigned work, definitely worth considering in the future. In terms of the exercise itself, you're definitely doing a good job of pushing that same confidence from the arrows exercise to capture not only how they sit statically in the world, but also how they move through the space they occupy.

In terms of the steps, you're working through them correctly, albeit not as carefully as you could be, and as a result there are a lot of little bits of sloppiness that could have been avoided. I've pointed out some instances of sloppiness here - basically, avoid leaving gaps, and don't jump ahead to greater levels of complexity without first laying down the structure needed to support it. You can see another example of this last point, alongside the one I drew on your page, here on another student's homework.

Continuing onto your branches, there are a few signs here that suggest you haven't fully understood the instructions for this one. It appears that you've got your segments starting just a little bit before the previous one ends - rather than going back to the previous ellipse and starting there as the instructions prescribe. As shown there, each segment goes from one ellipse, past the second, and stops halfway to the third. So your next one would start at the second ellipse and repeat the pattern from there, allowing for a healthy overlap between segments. That overlaps is important, because that's where we get the more smooth, seamless transition from one segment to the next.

Continuing onto your plant constructions, I'd say that the results here are similar to your leaves - you're following the correct instructions (and I don't really see any instances here of you skipping constructional steps) but your execution is still kind of sloppy, with a lot of gaps being left between lines. It really comes down to ensuring that you're giving each and every mark as much time as it requires of you to be executed to the best of your current ability. Using the ghosting method is paramount, in terms of breaking your markmaking into steps of planning, preparation, and execution.

When you don't give enough time to the planning phase, you're more likely to end up with gaps and inaccuracies, even (and especially) with smaller marks. It's actually those smaller marks where the issues tend to arise, and they also happen to be the ones that we're the most likely to give less attention.

This can also occur if we feel artificially pressured by the expectation or need to complete a drawing in a certain time frame. It's quite common for students to feel that they're supposed to complete a given drawing before they finish that particular session and get up, but there's no such restriction. There's no reason you can't spend multiple sittings, and multiple days on a single drawing, if that's what you need to complete it to the best of your current ability.

So! To that point, I am going to assign some revisions, and you'll find them listed below. Overall I'm not worried in terms of your skills - you're demonstrating a decent understanding of how to approach these constructions, you just need to be more patient with yourself and allow yourself all the time you need to actually complete the drawings to the best of your current ability. These revisions should help give you an opportunity to do that.

Great submission Haise, I can definitely seethe effort you put into your homework.

All your pages look very clean and sharp especially on the Ghosted lines exercise, this is one that I struggle with a good bit.

I honestly can't find a whole lot to critique on unless I start nitpicking things which I feel is a little unnecessary at this point in the program.

The one exercise that caught my attention was the "Organic Boxes" there are a few lines that look to have some scratchy marks, I'm not sure if these were "ghosting" marks accidentally made before your committed stroke, or unintentional marks that were corrected. Honestly I sometimes accidentally make little marks when I am ghosting on accident, which I feel is okay this early in the course. Just be aware of them going forward.

Again great job on Lesson 1!