wifu4lifu

Overall, I'm pleased to see you've taken many of the points into consideration and am already seeing improvements in your work! Starting with your organic intersections, lines are fairly confident, ellipses are properly alligned with a small exception shown here, and forms slump and sag over one another with a believable sense of gravity. I would've liked to see more sausages, but a few good sausages is better than a large number of sloppy ones I suppose. Overall, solid job!

Moving onto your animal constructions, these are also well done. I am definitely pleased that you're using additional masses a great deal, layering them together and building upon them bit by bit, all without having the need to slap in too many superfluous contour lines. While the masses themselves are on the right track, there are still ways you can push these further as shown here.

When it comes to your leg construction, you're starting to think of these as a chain of sausages and starting to think about how to fit the additional masses into the picture - that's a step in the right direction. The only thing to mention is how the masses you're using are limited to those that impact the silhouette without much consideration to those that fall within it as shown here. Look for opportunities to push these masses into other forms to make the construction feel more grounded and give us clear places to use inward curves and sharp edges. Again, the dog's leg demo is perhaps the best example of how you should generally be approaching these.

Continuing onto head construction, solid work overall. Much like the leg construction, you're thinking about the additional masses, and the masses you're laying in fit perfectly around the carved out eye sockets. This includes the cheek muscles, forehead, and the smaller masses around the muzzle. The only issue I have is with the head of this duck. When it comes to it, students have the tendency to draw the cranial mass too large or students are unable to lay in the additional masses because the head they're looking at is obfuscated by the fur. Other than that, your head construction is coming along nicely!

As a whole, you've improved a great deal. As a result, much of your constructions are coming along nicely. I do think if you keep the points outlined above would help push your constructions even further. On that note, you're doing a good job overall so I'll be marking this as complete. Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge.

Usually, it comes down to following the way the intructor approaches the demos as well as studying the references you're pulling from. If you haven't looked at the informal demos, it might be a good idea to look into them now and hopefully they give you a better idea. It's not about capturing the reference precisely, it's about making the effort to lay in the forms you see - especially the leg construction and head construction in your case.

When constructing the legs, students often start with a chain of sausages and will add a few additional masses. In most cases though, these are very much limited to bumps that impact the silhouette, without much consideration for the masses that fall within the silhouette. These inner masses are just as important since they help the legs feel more grounded. The same can be said about the way they approach the head. They carve out the eye sockets, add the muzzle and that's it. These are good starting points don't get me wrong, but I think it's beneficial to think about these additional masses that's often seen in the informal demos section since they help hold everything together like a puzzle rather than fragmented pieces that are about to fall apart.

Also, I'd like to see the reference images you're using next time. That would help a good deal.

Honestly, I don't know what to say. Thank you! Do you normally critique people's personal art? I'm asking just out of curiosity.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to look at my work! I will be honest, I was feeling a little exhausted toward the end of this lesson despite working on my 50% and maybe I should've taken some time off. Despite that though, I still feel that I've learned something so thank you for that! I do have one question though, you said I could DM you for critique. What does that mean exactly? Also, are you okay with that? I don't want to overwhelm you. There are a lot of people still waiting to be critiqued out there and lately it's been feeling like that number keeps on growing.

Starting with organic intersections, there are some places moving in the right direction although it also leaves something to be desired in other ways. Generally speaking, you're doing a good job with drawing out the basic sausage forms with fairly confident lines. With that said, I am noticing a number of ways where you're straying from the path:

• First off, you're starting with a large sausage form, then stacking smaller ones on top. This could lead to some awkward problems that aren't particularly beneficial later on. Drawing smaller has its downsides, it can limit our brain's ability to solve spatial problems and with engaging our whole arm while drawing. Both of these make the drawing process clumsier and impede what we get out of it. Try to keep them all roughly the same size to one another from now on.

• There's this sausage pile here which feel like they're about to collapse from their own weight. Keep in mind when doing the exercise, these should be drawn in their final resting place, stacking each form on top of one another and taking gravity into consideration.

• Each ellipse should be aligned to your spine line as its minor axis - or in the case that it wasn't centered properly, where that spine line ought to have been. You want it to cut each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down its narrower dimension.

• You're breaking the silhouette of your shadow shapes and the shapes themselves aren't filled all the way in, leaving a few patches of white here and there as shown here.

Moving onto your animal constructions, I'm not seeing any instances where you're cutting into your forms and that's a step in the right direction. However, I am seeing cases where you're adding partial shapes or one off lines here. Thus, it reminds us that we're drawing something flat and two dimensional and reinforces that idea to you as you construct it.

Continuing onto additional masses, I think the biggest problem is that it appears that you're being very risk averse in the way you're approaching these. You're making attempts to avoid them as much as possible and opting for single masses that take on too much and run the risk of them becoming too complex.

With that said, there are definitely places where you're approaching these a little more timidly and still struggling with the intentional design of these silhouettes. You can see that in the random corners and hot dogs in a bun behind the shoulders and under the torso area here - instead, look for opportunities to push these masses into other forms to make the construction feel more grounded and give us clear places to use inward curves and sharp edges.

When it comes down to it, the way the silhouette is actually designed matters alot. It helps to think about how this mass would exist on its own in the void of empty space. Think about a ball of clay existing on its own.

Then as it presses against an existing structure the silhouette of this form gets more complex, inward curves forming where it makes contact. The silhouette is never random of course, always responding to the form that's present as shown in this diagram.

The other point I want to make has to do with the usage of contour lines. Try not to make it a habit of placing them wherever you please. We need to think what the mark is meant to accomplish with each and every mark we make and if there are any other other marks already accomplishing the same task. Piling a ton of them isn't actually beneficial-they suffer from diminishing returns, so you're not really getting much out of them. You shouldn't force the additional masses into the third dimenion that way, instead you should be doing that with the inward curves mentioned above.

When it comes to leg construction, you seem to be employing different strategies for the legs. While not uncommon for students to be conscious about the characteristics of the sausage method, but instead they decide not to adhere to them because the legs they're looking at don't actually look like a chain of sausages. The sausage method as a base structure allows us to capture the solidity with the gestural nature of legs. Once in place, we can lay in additional masses as shown in this ant's leg and this dog's leg.

When drawing feet - whether paws or hooves it helps to be mindful of where we place our corners in those silhouettes. There are many cases such as the way you approached this, where the feet are drawn flatly or blob-like with very little specificity of where the planes are. Corners can be used to imply the presence of different faces and generally to make these structures feel more three dimensional, like the front and side of a hoof. I do think following the approach shown here from another student's work would help you understand what I mean.

Onto the topic of head construction, Lesson 5 has a ton of different strategies in the informal demos section. Given how the course is developing new more effective ways to construct heads so not all approaches are created equal. As it stands, this tiger demo and this demo from the informal demos is what's generally most useful. This approach relies on a few key elements:

• the the specific pentagonal shape found in the eye sockets, which allows for a nice wedge in which to place the muzzle into as well as the flat area found in the forehead

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

• we also have to be mindful as to how all the marks carve along the surface of this cranial ball, working on the individual strokes instead of using an ellipse for the eye socket

There are a few elements of this approach in your work but still need to see it applied more directly. For example on this bird you drew, you've laid out the basic cranial masses and muzzle forms but haven't done much more than that. The trick comes down to making a series of smaller moves rather than a few big ones that try to tackle everything at once as shown in this pigeon head. So make sure to take a closer look into the informal demos section and try your best to follow this approach as closely as you can. It might seem like sometimes its not the best fit for certain heads but with a bit of workaround, it can be done.

Another point of advice that may help a great deal is to draw the eyelids as their own separate additional masses, wrapping around the eyeball structure as shown here. There are a few places where the eyes get a little messy which is partially unavoidable when things get really cramped, but you also have a tendency to draw those eyeballs smaller than you should. Remember that the visible portion of the eye we see between the lids is only a section of the larger eyeball structure so be generous with how you draw it.

As a whole, there are many things to keep in mind and many of those things could've been avoided if you had given the drawings the time they require. If it takes multiple sittings for you to do these animal contructions to the best of your ability, then that's what you should be doing. So I'll be assigning 1 page of organic instersections and 4 pages of animal construcions. So try and spend at least 1 day for each drawing keeping in mind everything mentioned above and feel free to ask questions if you have any.

Starting with your organic forms, these are looking great in general! I can see that you're adhering to the characteristics of a simple sausage as explained here in the instructions although there is still some examples where the ends are a bit pointy. Remember that sausages are two balls of equal size connected by a tube of consistent width. I'm also pleased to see that the contour curves become wider as it runs along the length of the sausage although I would push these even harder to really convince the viewer and ourselves that these forms are actually 3 dimensional. This video explains how the ellipse changes in width depending on whether it's facing toward or away from the viewer.

Moving onto your insect constructions, overall I think you've done a pretty good job on them. I'm pleased to see that you're building these solid three dimensional forms in phases, opting to approach these contructions additively rather than cutting into these forms thus flattening the shape as shown in this diagram. There are a few things I want you to direct your attention to.

The way you've approached the plate-like structures such as on this cricket read as flat and 2 dimensional for reasons outlined in red. I recommend the first two informal demos, the shrimp and the lobster, as they show how you should think about wrapping these plate-like forms around the insect abdomen area.

Continuing onto your leg construction, you're making a clear effort to stick to the sausage method as much as possible. That's a step in the right direction. However, I noticed you laying in your basic sausage forms for the legs but not doing much more after that. The sausage method as a base structure allows us to capture the solidity with the gestural nature of legs. Once in place, we can lay in additional masses as shown in this ant leg demo, and even in this dog's leg demo. This is someing you seem to understand, but I believe these demos would help push your constructions even further.

Lastly, when it comes to the smaller forms like the spikes on your hercules beetle, make sure they're wrapping around the underlying forms as shown in this lobster claw demo

And that about covers everyting I have to say. As a whole, you've done a solid job. While I do feel like there's a few minor things to keep in mind, I'm fairly confident that you can work on these in your own time. Feel free to move onto the next lesson!

Not from uncomfy himself, but I did mark over another student's work here where I explain how it helps marking out these curves individually and that these forms in particular will have intersection lines that have sharp sudden 90 degree transitions, at least when it comes to boxes and cylinders (pyramids are a different story).

Starting with the form intersection exercise, these are generally well done. The forms are drawn as if though they were to exist in the same space - there are no streched forms or dramatic foreshortening present.

I've taken some notes on the intersections themselves and these are a few that stood out as being incorrect.

• On the upper left corner, on the sphere-cylinder intersection, the intersection going along the front face of the cylinder is correct seeing as the sphere itself has an intersection that runs along the curvature of its surface which is the way it's supposed to be. However, that curvature should then be followed by a more sharp and sudden 90 degree angle transition as we move along the side of the cylinder. From there, we take the same approach in this case. Since this curve runs along the side of the cylinder, a simple c surve is sufficient.

• On the center, on the cylinder-box intersection, since this interaction happens along the side of the cylinder, we expect to see some slight curvatures as we move from one face of the box to the other while keeping in mind that it's a sudden 90 degree transition as well along the box's edge.

• This last point has more to do with what might be holding you back since there are a few instances where theres a bit of confusion going on when placing the intersections themselves. In this case, I'd suggest hatching the front sides of your forms. This would help establish the configuration more specifically.

Besides that, I wanted to show you this form intersection diagram as it helps explain the intersections that exist between different pairs of surfaces, rather than in a specific memorizable way between pairs of forms. It also explains how those intersections change as we replace a hard edge with a rounded one.

While these are points worth keeping in mind, it's nothing that would require revisions since you'll be doing more of these later on in lesson 7 but I do think it best to work on them in your warmups.

Moving onto your object constructions, these were generally well done and shows a thorough use of subdivisions. You're taking your time in identifying each step at a time rather than figuring them out by eye. There are a couple (albeit minor) things I want to call out that have to do with your orthographics in particular.

• In this gas can construction there were a couple of parts where your subdivisions were well done but left out additional subdivisions for more specific areas marked in red. Although not present throughout, I thought it was worth mentioning as this is something you will be doing more of moving onto lesson 7 when working on mirrors, license plates, bumpers and such. Of course it is a matter of what you choose to include in your orthographics but generally it's best not to add parts onto your construction if it's not already in the orthographic plan, which brings us to the next point.

• In this tape recorder you've added borders on your construction, yet left them out entirely on your orthographic plans.

• There are a couple of places such as the webcam or the mug where you approached the curves of the structure's body with the same kind of general estimation/eyeballing that we want to avoid. This section from the notes explains that we do not want to jump straight to a curve without first laying down some kind of structure that will directly support it - like a chain of straight edges or flat planes.

• Onto the last point, there's examples of form shading throughout your constructions. When it comes to filling areas of black, it's best to reserve those for textured surfaces or cast shadows only.

Again, as a whole you've done a great job with your constructions. These points are fairly minor but I think taking them into consideration will help push your constructions even further. Feel free to move onto the 25 wheel challenge.

Starting with your form intersections, you've largely knocked these out of the park. You've demontrated an understading of how these forms sit in the three dimensions of space while defining how these forms interact with one another. Aside from this one little hiccup shown here you've done a tremendous job. When it comes to curved surfaces, it always helps to think of them the way it's demonstrated in this form intersection diagram. Hopefully, this helps expand on what you already know.

Moving onto your object constructions, this part is generally well done. I think your orthographic plan subdivisions show a good level of precision and the intent to follow through tranferring over what's on the orthographic plan onto your contructions. There's an instance of your box skewing over in this particular case but I'll overlook that to bring attention to your orthographic plans themselves as I do think that there's a bit of room for improvement there.

I've marked here instances where there are landmarks that weren't properly defined. There's also a case like this on this couch construction in which an orthographic study was not included. In our constructions here, we build up precision primarily through the use of the subdivisions. These allow us to meaningfully study the proportions of our intended object in two dimensions with an orthographic study, then apply those same proportions to the object in three dimensions. Thinking about it this way will allow us to push our understanding of contructional concepts and working in three dimensions even further. In contrast, if we were to leave everything to guesswork, our contructions would turn out sloppy which is why we do orthographic studies so we do all the figuring out and landmark making there and then transfer over that information onto our constructions.

The last couple things to mention have to do with how we place our curves. When placing curves freehand, we define them as straight edges before rounding them out as explained on these notes on markmaking for curved lines. Lastly, There's a couple of examples of form shading on the sail dagger and tape. When it comes to filling areas of black, it's best to reserve those for textured surfaces or cast shadows only.

Overall, while there are areas left for improvement, I hold it to you to work on these things in your own time moving forward. Hopefully you found this helpful and good luck!

These are definitely better. The biggest issue was that your error checking for the minor axis wasn't all there last time and that it was affecting how your cylinders came out in the end.

But I'm happy that you've addressed it and you even improved the foreshortening on your cylinders so good job with that.

Just make sure that your ellipses are touching all four sides of the plane while also making sure that the minor axis aligns with the vanishing point when doing cylinders in boxes as shown here.

That about covers everything I have to say. As a whole, you're moving in the right direction, so feel free to move onto lesson 6.