tmmillea

Thanks for the reply. My 3rd attempt actually looked a lot less like the reference than my 2nd, but potentially more 3D and solid.

I wanted to hone in on this idea of "giving yourself ample time to observe and study your reference." I frequently find myself confused because I made some mistake earlier in the construction, so now I have to chose between adhering to the incorrect construction, or following the reference and undermining the construction. I find myself maybe not observing the reference enough. I feel if I am bound by my initial construction, how important is the reference? What does "observing enough" feel like, and does it change depending on where you are in the drawing process?

Thanks always for your time, patience, and help.

So I saw your post for lesson 3 and decided to come back and critique your lesson 2.

Your arrows show that you understand the idea that the arrows need to be larger when closer to the viewer and smaller when further away. However, it appears you are stretching the arrows at various points, especially near the ends and when you put them in a loop. Try to think of the arrow as having one consistent width, and being inflexible along that axis. When this width gets stretched or squished at various points, it messes with the foreshortening illusion.

Your organic forms in the contour ellipses and the contour curves are very stretched. They almost seem to be flat flowing forms similar to the arrows. Go back to that exercise's video and keep in mind these are supposed to be as basic as possible, two spheres joined by a tube. Don't be attempting to apply foreshortening in this exercise, as it is making it much more difficult for your contours to have the intended affect of giving solidity. I am going to ask for revisions here, as I feel you misunderstood the exercise a bit. It is not about foreshortening, it's about making these simple forms feel solid.

Your texture studies show that you understand the idea of implicit textures and not explicitly outlining forms. However, in your dissections you have a lot of explicitly outlined forms and explicit textures. Keep the emphasis on cast shadows, not in explicitly outlining textural forms. Also keep your textures related to reference. I noticed you had one form labelled "triangles" I am not sure if that is actually a real-world texture.

Your form intersections have way too many forms, muddying the relationship between them. This is a very common problem, one I ran into myself. Focus on spending more time per form, using larger forms to fill up the page. This will also make it easier to clarify the relationships.

Your organic intersections look a lot better. The forms are still somewhat stretched, but appear more solid than the ones in your contour ellipses and contour curves exercise. Your cast shadows are well done and don't adhere too closely to the form.

I am going to ask for revisions on the contour curves and ellipses exercises, dissections, and form intersections. I know this is a lot especially so late. I really hope you get more timely critiques in the future.

Your arrows show a good understanding of how forms flow through space and how to clarify form overlaps with shading. Be careful to avoid "loops" where your arrows end up close to where they started, as this can make them seem flatter. Also sometimes you are little conservative with your size increase as the arrow approaches the view. Just something to keep in mind.

On your organic forms, you do a job of keeping your forms simple. However, you are struggling a bit with keeping the variance in your ellipse degree consistent in the contour ellipses. While it is good that you are varying your ellipse degrees, these don't seem to be done in regards to how the form is actually moving through 3D space. Sometimes the degree of your ellipses seem arbitrary. Your contour curves do a better job of adding solidity to your forms.

Your textures are quite well done and it's clear that you took your time in these exercises. You obviously followed the rule of spending most of your time on observation and not relying on memory. My critique here is that in the dissection portion, sometimes when you are creating gradients of shadows, the lighter part of your texture can appear inconsistent with the darker part. All in all, well done though.

For your form intersections, you are drawing way too many forms on the page. Focus on drawing larger forms, take your time on each one, and how they relate to each other in 3D space. The sheer number of forms makes it difficult to assess your actual understanding of how each form relates to each other.

For your organic intersections, your number of forms is much more reasonable. However some of the forms are overly stretched or too complex. Keep them simple, like you did in the organic contours exercise. Also you are using a somewhat excessive number of contour lines. Only use lines that actually clarify the form. Too many contour lines result in visual noise and actually flatten the form.

I just started lesson 3. I can almost guarantee I will need revisions. The curriculum difficulty spikes a lot in lesson 3.

Lesson 3 asks you to apply the material of the previous lessons all simultaneously. It is possible to at least acknowledge all that material at this point, but it is quite difficult. You will need to slow down and I am willing to bet most Patreon-track students have revisions of at least some magnitude here.

You have it in your mind that because you were asked to re-do the lesson, there is something wrong with you, either as a student learning or as an artist. There is not. What it means is you missed some core concepts in the lessons. Look over the critique and watch each lesson video again. They wouldn't ask for you to redo something if they thought you had fully absorbed the lesson. When you do this, keep in mind the 50% rule. If you are struggling mentally, change it to the 2/3 or 75% rule. Do your best to make sure you look forward to drawing every day, or at the very least that you aren't dreading it.

Thank you so much for the response on the holiday. It was not expected. Have a good one!

https://imgur.com/a/ZMkEkV5

I know I screwed up on the sausage form facing towards the viewer. That probably made the exercise more complicated than it needed to be. In general I focused on drawing fewer forms and spending more time on each on these pages.

Thanks I wasn't aware I was supposed to be ghosting the hatching lines. I was drawing confidently from the shoulder, but no ghosting led to them being untidy.

I honestly forgot about line weight. Early in the challenge I was so overwhelmed I decided to put line weight off until I get more comfortable. But by the time I started feeling good and consistent about the boxes (just before 200), I had forgotten about this.

Thanks for the critique!

Do you still have the work you did for Lesson 1? I would submit that for critique so you can get the feedback you are missing.

Submit the assignment for feedback. Let someone else decide if you need to re-do the assignment. If the errors are serious enough, the reviewer will ask for a revision. Don't try to make this decision yourself.

https://imgur.com/a/pF85Zi7

Here is the missing funnels.

I've started the 250 box challenge, only about 10 boxes in. I still need to experiment a bit with line marking, what angle and posture is more comfortable for me, etc. I had a question about markmaking speed. Initially I took the idea of going fast to heart. In doing the first 10 boxes I've found some benefit in slowing down my mark, even though seems to be against the advice of moving quickly to get rid of wobble. Is there a "Goldilocks zone" for speed? Does it make sense to slow down not to increase accuracy but to increase confidence?