zaverose

High Roller

Joined 2 years ago

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zaverose's Sketchbook

  • Sharing the Knowledge
  • High Roller
  • Technician
  • Geometric Guerilla
  • Tamer of Beasts
  • The Fearless
  • Giver of Life
  • Dimensional Dominator
  • The Relentless
  • Basics Brawler
    6:47 PM, Saturday April 13th 2024

    Resubmission (2 additional constructions & missing form intersections) - https://imgur.com/a/6F9s6Qz

    Thank you for the feedback. I'll admit this lesson has been by far the most challenging - working outside-in definitely has it's challenges when compared to the more "build up" method of lessons 3 - 5. I reviewed the course material and the demos, and upon another look I think I understand some of the subdividing stuff better. I think I'm just impatient - in that determining a button's center via subdivision, then mirroring both axes, and applying those as planes in three dimensions just seems exhaustingly tedious for something as simple as a button.

    But I see the value in it. What I struggle with most honestly is just managing the absolute jumble of lines that infest the page - it's very hard to keep track when one plane's subdivision lines overlap 7 other ones. I know in digital this would be less of an issue, as you could just split them up onto separate layers and hide/make transparent when applicable. I asked in the server and was told that splitting subdivision lines into different colors can help, and it did a bit, but it still was very difficult, especially when drawing through forms. Do you have any advice for this?

    Otherwise, thank you for the critique. I'll admit I think I was letting my impatience get the best of me, and was frustrated. The comic you made helped but into perspective of trusting the learning, and giving it time to absorb, however slow that may be.

    8:32 PM, Thursday February 1st 2024

    Thank you so much for the critique! Good to know I have the right idea for the most part. Slowing down whenever I felt overwhelmed to ward against making any "mindless mark", and putting a daily "cap" as to how many cylinders I could draw while interleaving it with other 50% practice helped prevent burnout and really focus on drawing them. 20 cylinders a day was a hard limit, and I'd usually only bust out a page in one sitting before switching to a different concept / personal art. I'd usually feel myself getting sloppy at around 10, for the inscribed-in-boxes ones, so I usually only did 10 of those a day.

    I loved this challenge, as there are so many places for improvement. I found myself originally drawing boxes without a starting goal - i.e inscribing the cylinder on whatever box I got onto the page, but then I started really focusing on trying to construct the box that fit the cylinder I wanted from the start. This was a huge added challenge, and I'd usually start with ghosting the minor axis, and two cylinder faces, then picturing the inscribing box face. Obviously this never worked out perfect, but it was surreal seeing myself actually improve on getting closer and closer to the cylinder I pictured in my head onto paper.

    Great challenge that'll serve as a great addition to fundamentals warmup for myself. Excited to tackle Lesson 6!

    8:09 PM, Saturday December 16th 2023

    Gotcha! Apologies for the wordiness. I've gone back and bolded the questions (which have already been answered!) and any future questions I'll have I'll be sure to bold them as well!

    Thank you again for all your hard work! It makes all the world of difference getting pointed feedback in regards to improvement.

    7:21 PM, Wednesday December 13th 2023

    Lesson 5

    Organic Intersections

    Gotcha! I think I struggled a bit with drawing through the forms specifically in regards to the sausages “deforming” as they would slump and sag over one another. I get a little confused as to whether I should be conscious of deforming the sausages while drawing as opposed to after (where you mark where the forms intersect). I drew this image to sort of illustrate the differences in approach. I think you mean to think and draw them sagging and slumping, I just struggle a bit with drawing through the form when being conscious of that.

    Thank you for the cast shadow feedback. In all honesty I think I may have just forgotten to impress them onto the ground plane, so that helps. Thank you for pointing out the inconsistencies in lighting sources. I was a little confused because in most of the demos, Uncomfy talks about NOT drawing shadows per-say, but rather using darkness to either convey texture OR line weight (to brings forms forward / push forms back). It’s clear now that the shadows are intentional in THIS exercise, but I think that was a little confusing for me. Thank you for clarifying, and I’ll be more conscious of that when I use this exercise in the future!

    Animal Constructions

    Ah, yes I apologize for the pencil marks, notes, and sketches. Those actually aren’t mine; I went to a furry convention and met a bunch of fellow artists, and they were giving me tips and demos in my sketchbook wherever there was space. Terrible sorry for that! I just didn’t want to erase their feedback and stuff, rest assured I understand to do the homework in 0.5 black fineliner!

    Ah, I apologize for the extra work, I did not mean to siphon even more time away from the undoubtedly thankless and busy job that being a TA for this course is. I was just genuinely very excited to apply the drawabox learnings to animals, the subject matter that got me into art in the first place. I’ll be sure to stick to the lesson and only submit what is needed next time!

    Sillouette Alteration

    Thank you for pointing this out. I do admit, sometimes I’ll really screw up a construction and not see a path forward using what form I just laid down, and guiltily correct it. It’s good to know that I should be more confident, and remembering that these exercises and homeworks are exactly that. Exercises. Not meant to impress anyone, and cheating them is only going to cheat my own learning. I’ll be much more dilligent about only changing the silhouette through solid, drawn through forms, so thank you.

    Ah, good to know I should use another form instead of “jumping” between, especially where forms connect in structures like legs, arms, etc. It’s hard for me to judge when something is “meaningful” enough to warrant adding a new form, so this critique gives me a good signal that if I’m debating using a form, then I probably should.

    I see what you mean with the “inner line of the ellipse” and not drawing through that in regards to the giraffe neck. I struggle a lot with drawing through specifically when I get a lot of forms overlapping in one place, and it gets hard to keep track of which form is in front/intersecting what. Do you have any advice for dealing with this?

    Animal Limb, Foot, Head Const.

    THANK YOU for the advice on drawing limbs better in regards to shoulders specifically. I would always study the references and see where the limb was “entering” the body, but always struggled with how on earth the shoulder got so much bulk from that. I now can understand that there’s additional mass on the shoulder that can point TOWARDS me, and that the top mass of the shoulder sags and rests on top of THAT.

    Thank you for linking the notes on foot construction. I always thought using the sausage method was a bit awkward and “flabby” for those very grounded forms, so reading this boxy-forms approach helps significantly. I can’t wait to test this out in some paw and hoof constructions!

    For the head notes, it helps to have a standard “pentagonal” shape to think of. In regards to the tiger head demo, one thing that confused me a bit was how complex some of the forms seem. For example, the “cheek” and “ear” forms on the tiger seem to have a lot more defined, sculpted edges than either a simple sausage or a simple box. Should I be employing more complex forms from the start? I just thought that I was supposed to stick to simpler forms whenever possible, especially for the purpose of this exercise. If so, I’d love to learn more about specifically drawing the cheekbones of animals, because I feel like that is the most difficult part for me.

    Thank you so much for the critique and the hard work you TAs put into giving paragraphs of actually meaningful and actionable feedback, I truly can not put into words how helpful and insightful it is in helping me improve. I am excited to tackle the 250 cylinder challenge next!

    • Zaverose,
    7:07 PM, Monday December 11th 2023

    Hi! I am so sorry I didn't catch that, I mistakenly chose to use Mac's native HEIC -> PNG converter (as Imgur doesn't support HEIC) and it looks like it auto selects "Smallest" resolution as the default. The link below should be updated to be the same resolution as the photo was taken in, but in JPEG format!

    Thank you so much your hard work, and so sorry again for the mishap! This lesson was very rewarding and time consuming (I love animals! But who doesn't??), so I'm looking forward to reading some good critique!

    https://imgur.com/a/g4DnMea

    12:11 AM, Sunday August 13th 2023

    Hi! Thank you so much for the helpful critique!

    The diagram you linked for the organic form contours is really helpful, I was really confused while doing it about how much to vary the degree, since I always interpreted the small circle at the end of the bean to be directly facing you (and so contours close to that pole would be more circular vs. eliptical) but your explanation helps clear out what I should be thinking about in 3D space.

    Thank you as well for pointing out my elipse inconsistency that stemmed from loose lines. It's very helpful to know to choose the outside lines, as I was trying to choose the most coherent elipse that I saw.

    The examples you talked about for building onto forms (especially in the legs) with separate, distinct forms that have defined contours (instead of a larger form that treats the original construction as a guideline, which I now realize I was doing) looks a lot better and forces myself to understand the layers and overlapping of forms that make up something. I'm guessing this will be EXTREMELY important when trying to define muscles when I begin lesson 5, so thank you so much for pointing that out in a clear, concise manner.

    All in all, a very helpful review that helped quell some of my uneasiness with feeling something is a bit off, but not knowing exactly what it was. I'll take this all to heart when tackling Lesson 5, thank you!

    10:27 PM, Friday July 28th 2023

    Thank you so much for the critique! You pointed out a lot of things that I thought seemed off, but I just wasn't quite sure what and how to address it, so thank you!

    As far as avoiding the large areas in black, that's useful to know. I think I was defaulting to that because of mixing up color with texture on an image, so I'll try my best to consciously avoid that from now on.

    11:42 PM, Saturday January 28th 2023

    Gotcha, thank you for the feedback and pointing out my mistakes. I'll keep that in mind going forward, and really try to avoid lines converging in pairs.

    Thanks again!

    4:41 PM, Wednesday December 21st 2022

    Ok, got it. Thank you, Rob!

    12:17 AM, Wednesday December 21st 2022

    Gotcha! Thank you so much for this feedback! I knew SOMETHING seemed a bit off about my elipses in the funnels exercise, so it's good to know that I'm tilting and misaligning them a bit, so thank you for pointing that out!

    Yeah, I struggled a bit with the wobbly lines on the perspective challenges. I think it's because I struggle in making the verticals and horizontals in 1-point perspective perfectly straight up-and-down, and straight side-to-side. Do you have any advice for getting better at this aspect (other than practice, of course)? Going forward I'll try and focus more on just doing it confidently before accurately.

    Regardless, I'm excited to tackle the 250 box challenge. Should I fully complete that challenge before moving on to lesson 2? Or should I do them concurrently?

    Thank you again for the feedback, I really appreciate it and it's given me a great list of things to work on

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