Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

10:57 AM, Monday June 29th 2020

Draw a box: Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/9E1iFW5.jpg

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The texture exercises took a very long time - but I'm happy with some of the results. The form intersection exercise I went into expecting it to be easy(ish) but really had trouble getting it right in my head (a couple of times I started up Blender to see how far off I was!). I enjoyed organic intersections but I think my work ended up a bit messy (I was getting confused with all the lines)!

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9:44 PM, Thursday July 2nd 2020

Starting with the arrows -

+You have understood the concept of depth quite well and are able to explore deep 'into the page' with your arrows.

+Your initial curves seem to be quite adventurous, well-defined and smooth.

-The lineweight you add at the end is very choppy and loose. Add lineweight using the same technique as you use to draw the initial lines - ghost it out, and draw the section in a smooth motion.

-Hatching on the bends is similarly loose, while it should be done confidently and as accurately as possible, with each line being a single stroke from one side to the other.

Remember that solidity and flow are both something that needs to be carried through the whole drawing in order to make it feel believable. Straying from the principles at any point runs the risk of breaking the entire illusion.

Onto the organic forms -

+The initial curve and organic form drawn around it are well done as they are smooth and not overly distorted.

-In both the contour ellipse page and the contour curve page you do not shift the degree of the ellipses throughout the form. This is important to do as it gives them greater dynamism and reinforces solidity by including a visible effect of perspective. Refer to this diagram.

-When you draw the contour curves on the second page, many of them are boxy (which flattens them and makes the form seem more like a thick leaf seen from only one direction) and a great deal of them also do not line up with the organic form. While the boxyness may be addressed by ghosting for longer and imagining these as a section of an ellipse (it sometimes helps me to ghost an entire ellipse before starting to ghost the contour curve), the inaccuracy is harder to deal with and is something you should naturally improve at by continuing to do the Drawabox exercises.

When it comes to your texture analysis page, it is done well and follows the instructions. The only thing I would note is that you could attempt to put in more detail into the first study on the left, and then selectively remove it when doing the light to dark study on the right.

The texture dissections are similarly well done, but in a few cases you seem to resort to using outlines instead of putting down the cast shadows. Spend more time considering how a texture can be represented in ink, and don't forget that it doesn't all have to contain a uniform level of detail - you can convey most of it through the silhouette, and fade towards white at the center of the organic form, similarly to what is done in the texture analysis exercise. And remember - the goal of these textures is not to capture the original with 100% clarity, but to indicate what it could feel like to the touch.

With the form textures, you start the constructions quite well but seem to run into issues with matching their foreshortening. Re-read this section and perhaps do some more form intersections in your next warmup. Also worthy of note is that many of the actual form intersections are incorrect as they cannot define an intersection of those particular forms. These are often even inverted from how they should be when taking into account all the planes of the form. Here's a correction I've done to help demonstrate what I mean: https://i.imgur.com/Pucmqry.png

Keep in mind however that the actual intersections are not the main goal of this exercise, and you will have a chance to improve at them in later lessons.

For the organic intersections, you seem to have got on quite well. It would however help to make the forms saggier so that they flow over each other more rather than being awkwardly stacked one over the other.

Next Steps:

Go on to lesson 3; have fun with the plants!

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
2:24 PM, Friday July 3rd 2020

Thanks for the detailed feedback and all the pointers, I'll be sure to take them aboard as I work on lesson 3! The intersections were really hard, and I can see where I've gone wrong so hopefully with some more practice I'll improve, your correction is very useful thank you! :)

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