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7:55 AM, Thursday April 27th 2023
edited at 7:57 AM, Apr 27th 2023

A pleasure to meet you, AzureBlazes. My name is Doctormein, And I'll be the one providing you with critique for Lesson 2 for today.

Organic arrows.

As far as your arrow are concerned, your arrows are smoothly drawn, and some of them are following the principle of 3d nicely. (The further the arrow is from us, the thinner they become.) But there are some stuff that you could still improve on.

I will be putting stuff that you could improve on in the format of a list for ease of consumption, feel free to ask me further question If I did not make myself clear in some places.

  • Although your arrows are smoothly drawn, I believe you could add a little more overlaps in order to help sell the illusion of three dimensionality. We can see that in some of your arrows there are only 2-3 or sometime 1 overlap part. This, in turn, made the arrows you drawn look flat and unconvincing. Here Is a great example made by Uncomfortable. We can clearly feel the three dimensionality of these arrows due to overlap that it created.

  • And If we were to use the same picture Here again, It seems to me like you didn't apply the line weight to the overlapping part. Although this is an optional choice (Since there's no mention of it in the common mistakes section.) I still believe you should do them regardless. It is a good way to practice both ghosting and superimposed line, after all.

  • Finally, I'll be talking about Applying perspective to the arrow. (As This picture shows here. In most of your arrows, The width of your arrow remain mostly static. Let's use This picture again for demonstration. The arrow closer to the viewer (The head) Is bigger than the one that is further away from the viewer (The tail.) We will be able to replicate this on a 2d surface by adjusting its size, or in this case The arrows width.

Organic forms

If I were to be honest here, This exercise needs quite a few helping hand. But don't worry, We'll make sure that we take it one step at a time.

  • The biggest point I want to make is about the Ellipses Degree. I will be spending a lot of time on this section since I believe it will be the most beneficial to you.

Let's imagine a scenario, You're looking at a coin spinning toward you. At first, The coin is just a line because we're simply looking at it from the side. But as the coin slowly turn to face toward us, It slowly becomes an ellipses with wider and wider degree. Until finally, It became a circle and the process begins anew. Here is a video, In case you're not sure what I am talking about The same rule applies here. Your sausages (Organic forms) degree get wider or thinner depending on how far away it is from the eye line I've compiled This as an example to help student in figuring out how to understand it. I would like you to give it a look.

  • In some of your organic forms, I can see a little few clear sign of hesitation after committing to a mark. I can see your line confidence waver a little bit when drawing your organic forms. You could try Ghosting the shape of the sausage out before committing to a mark first in order to help with your confidence. But ultimately, this comes down to practice, so there's not much to be said here.

  • Another big hurdle you seem to be facing is that you're struggling a bit with the ellipses alignment. I believe this is a byproduct of a Misplaced center line. Although it's fine to not be exactly perfect, I believe some of the center in your submission is a little too far off the mark. Here's an example of what should happen when you're aligning + showing changes in ellipses degree nicely I also have my own demonstration without the organic form outside. I think you could see how my ellipses aren't actually perfectly align with the line itself but it is "Close enough."

  • And lastly, All of the concept that I've mentioned above also apply to Organic form (Contours) Too. I can see quite a few mistakes that got carried over from the ellipses one. (Degree shift, Not Aligning, Organic forms that are a little elongated or pinched, et cetera.) So make sure to apply what I've said above to contours too.

Because this section is a little long on its own, I'll be providing a short summary for this section.

  • Ellipses degree are supposed to get thinner or wider depending on your eye line. If we were to look at the side of a circle to start, the further away it is from us, the more it will turn into a circle. While the closer it is to us, the more it will turn into a line. Youtube Video Demonstration

  • Make sure to practice drawing out organic forms. You can try ghosting the form before committing in order to help out with your confidence.

  • Ellipses alignment might be a byproduct of a misplaced middle line, so make sure to try your best for the middle line to be as middle as possible (You can think of it as a flow line from gesture or even just the spine of the organic form) Don't forget to try and properly align them to the middle line too.

  • All I've said Above is valid for contours too.

Texture Analysis.

I can see your attempt in trying to draw shadow shapes instead of outlining the form, that's a very good sign that you're following instruction to the best of your abilities. But of course, there are always things to improve on, And I'll be providing them here too.

Dissection

You didn't provide me this exercise, so I'll be skipping this part for now.

Form Intersection

There seem to be a little trouble in this exercise. I'll be going into detail for all of them.

  • For your first page, most of your boxes seem to be diverging. Or, in other word, distorted. Although we're not as strict with these boxes as we are with 250 boxes challenge, you should still try to get them to converge as much as possible.

P.S : This concept still applies to form of similar nature to boxes. (Pyramid, Cylinder)

Next Steps:

I will be handing out revisions as follows

  • 1 Page of Organic arrows.

  • 2 Pages of Organic form Both contour and Ellipses.

  • 3 Pages of Form Intersection I would like 1 page that's entirely filled with boxes and the rest can be any form combined together. (I provided many page for this exercise in order to give you enough time for practice.)

  • 2 Pages of Dissection. If you've already done it, Please send your dissection along with the rest of your revision to me. If you haven't, Please do the exercise.

  • 1 Page of Organic form Intersection. I highly recommend you do this after you've done your "Organic form both contour and Ellipses" It will certainly help out with the quality of this exercise.

If I did not make myself clear in some places, feel free to contact me so.

Godspeed.

  • Doctormein.
When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 7:57 AM, Apr 27th 2023
8:10 AM, Thursday April 27th 2023
edited at 8:10 AM, Apr 27th 2023

Since my critique for Form intersection and Organic intersection seem to have gone... somewhere. I'll be providing it here instead.

Form Intersection cont.

  • You forgot to add Intersection to the exercise itself. Although the intersection is not the main purpose of the exercise, (The main purpose is to make sure that the form you drew on a page resembles the same space.) you should still be doing the Intersection regardless. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to get as much out of this course as you could.

  • Finally, in some of your form you drew, There are a few stretched out form that seem to be present in the exercise. Especially your boxes. Although I am sure that It is fine to push it to some degree, I believe you might want to tone it down a little more since form that has the similar length in all 3 dimension are mostly easier to add intersection to.

Organic form Intersection

  • First of all here you seem to be using the Mistake here as a crutch Although you did draw the sausage parallel to the main sausages. I believe you could push it further by putting another sausages on top of the one you previously drew. I believe you should watch This video And try to follow along with it for your first page (But NOT exactly copying) and then try your own the second page; It cleared a lot of misunderstanding for this lesson**

  • Secondly, This mistake seem to be the one that happens due to your mistake at "Organic form ellipses and contour" But You seem to be drawing complicated form instead of simple form.

In This Imgur album picture #3 you can see the outlined part that I did for you and how flat and unconvincing it looks. Try to keep thing simple as the Lesson has provided Because it will help out with the three dimensionality of the form and will, in turn, make it more convincing.

  • Lastly, The shadow. Although I am not very good at shadow (And this lesson isn't that strict on shadow anyway.) Right now you seem to be Sticking the shadow to the form itself. Here is an image that might help you understand the shadow better for this lesson. Image Make sure to read the description of what I've sent. Uncomfortable explains it far better than I will in this regard.
edited at 8:10 AM, Apr 27th 2023
12:36 PM, Sunday June 11th 2023
edited at 5:26 AM, Jun 30th 2023

Here are the revisions: https://imgur.com/a/XJMya89

edited at 5:26 AM, Jun 30th 2023
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