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Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

10:38 PM, Saturday November 14th 2020

Drawabox - Lesson 2  - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/JdAfA2u.jpg

Post with 12 views. Drawabox - Lesson 2 

Hello There! 

My homework for lesson two in a link below. I have to say it was challenging but fun at the same time. Working on textures was really great. Intersections from the other side were really troublesome and I think I didn't catch them quite well yet.

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11:03 PM, Tuesday November 17th 2020

Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.

While you are making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson I do notice a few things to work on, I'll be listing them below to hopefully help you in your future attempts.

  • In the arrows exercise the first thing that stands out to me is that your lines are way too thick. You're clearly drawing over them and it leads to them looking sketchy and messy rather than confident and smooth. When applying lineweight remember you want to apply it to specific places like overlaps to make them clearer not the entire form. In the future I'd also recommend experimenting more with foreshortening, by utilizing it in the negative space between curves of the arrow as well as the arrow itself we can really sell the illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as shown here.

  • Your organic forms with contours do get a bit too complex, our goal is to try and end up with both ends roughly the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form as discussed here. When it comes to the contours themselves there's a few mistakes worth noting. You aren't drawing through your ellipses, as mentioned in lesson 1 you should draw through every ellipse you create for extra mileage, as for your contour lines you really need to push to have the ends of the line hook back into the form. As a final note remember that you want the degree of your contours to shift as they travel along the form. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

  • When it comes to texture you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than the cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This combined with how you are drawing this sketchily makes it difficult for you to create proper gradients. By focusing on cast shadows we're able to imply information, this is incredibly useful when we want to utilize gradients in order to create focal points while working on more complicated pieces, for more information on this idea you can check here. When focusing on cast shadows you want to outline the shape of the shadow and fill it in, this applies when drawing thin line like textures as well as seen here, by drawing more than a simple line we end up with a texture that appears much more dynamic.

  • If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, right now this exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page, we'll be going over them more in the upcoming lesson material.

  • As for your organic intersections your forms are a bit too complex as mentioned earlier, but I'd also suggest that when you try this again to try and always draw your forms crossing one another rather than stacking on top of one another in the same direction. It tends to be easier to wrap them if you drawing them headed in opposite directions, by keeping the forms and the pile itself simple you'll build up your understanding of 3D space faster as well as give yourself a tool to practice light and shadow with. Right now your shadows are mostly just hugging the form creating them rather than being cast in a particular direction, try and pick a consistent light source (a light towards the left or right is easier than directly above) and really try to push your shadows.

While you do have things to work on you are headed in the right direction. I won't be moving you on just yet because I want to make sure your organic forms are looking solid first.

Please re-read and redo the organic forms with contours exercise, once you have completed it reply to this critique with a link to your new attempts and I'll go over them, point out anything you need to work on and move you to the next lesson once you're ready.

Remember to take your time, I look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

Please resubmit:

  • 1 page of organic forms with contour ellipses

  • 1 page of organic forms with contour lines.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:15 PM, Wednesday November 18th 2020

Hello! 

Thank you very much for your last feedback and all of your pointers on what I could do to improve. Here is my second attempt at organic forms. I think they look a little better than last time. And I messed up one of the organic forms with contour lines but I know we should not grind those, so I am posting what I've got.  I can't wait for your feedback!

https://imgur.com/a/0Jr3Cth

1:45 AM, Thursday November 19th 2020

Your forms are still a bit too complicated but this is a step in the right direction.

Make sure when you practice your forms to keep the idea of a simple sausage in mind, you can read a reminder of what qualifies as a simple sausage here.

Other than keep working on them and try and keep your lines/forms simple and smooth.

I'll be marking your submission as complete, good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Keep doing previous exercises as warm ups.

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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Neither is a good enough reason to use something that is going to more expensive, more complex in terms of finding the right kind for the tools we're using, more stress-inducing (in terms of not wanting to "ruin" a sketchbook - we make a lot of mistakes throughout the work in this course), and more likely to keep you from developing the habits we try to instill in our students (like rotating the page to find a comfortable angle of approach).

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