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Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

4:03 PM, Saturday November 14th 2020

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Hello,

Looking forward to your feedback.

Thank you!

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9:05 AM, Monday November 16th 2020

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

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, I'll be listing some things I notice that you can work on to improve your future attempts.

  • Your arrows are off to a good start, there's a few spots they could be a bit smoother but with more mileage this won't be an issue. When trying this again I'd suggest experimenting more with foreshortening, you play it pretty safe a lot of the time. By utilizing foreshortening with not only the arrow itself but in the space between curves of the arrow we can really sell the illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space. For more information on this concept you can read here.

  • In the organic forms with contours exercise your forms could be simplified a bit more. Remember that our goal is to keep both ends of the form to be roughly the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form as described here. I'd also suggest pushing your contour lines further and remember that you want to shift the degree of your contours along the length of 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 cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients and focal points, when we attempt to explicitly draw all of the information we see it tends to overwhelm the viewer which is why utilizing implied information via cast shadows is incredibly beneficial. For more information on these ideas you can check here, you may also find this image helpful, it shows how when we work with thin line like textures it's useful to outline the shadow's shape to create a more dynamic appearing texture.

  • If you feel like you don't fully graps the form intersections exercise 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 material. Your forms are looking nice and solid here though, good work.

  • When it comes to your organic intersections you do want to work on simplifying your forms here as mentioned earlier. By simplifying them you'll have an easier time building your understanding of 3D space as well as working with light and shadow. Right now your shadows are mostly hugging the form creating them rather than being cast in a specific direction, I'd suggest trying to set a light source on the left or right (directly above is more difficult) and attempt to push your shadows further.

While you do have some things to work on this wasn't a bad submission, you have shown that you're grasping the majority of the core concepts introduced here. I think that if you give some more attention to the texture exercises and work on building up mileage in general that you'll have no problem improving your results, so with that said I'll be marking your submission as complete.

Keep doing previous exercises as warm ups to build up your mileage and build a stronger understanding of the concepts you've learned so far.

Good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Do previous exercises as warm ups.

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
10:28 AM, Monday November 16th 2020
edited at 10:42 AM, Nov 16th 2020

Thank you very much!

I do have a question though, regarding textures. What do you do when there aren't any cast shadows (or at least I can't seem to be able to see any)? For example a sliced kiwi.

edited at 10:42 AM, Nov 16th 2020
3:37 PM, Monday November 16th 2020

Unfortunately the answer is to look closer (also to use a high resolution reference image) - a sliced kiwi actually does have cast shadows - the seeds sit inside these little furrows in the kiwi's flesh, so even though it's very subtle, there will be slight shadows cast into those sections from the higher part of the surface to the lower. The thing about figuring out the shadows is to actually consider the forms that are present. Thinking about what that surface would feel like if you ran your finger over it can help a great deal in identifying where the raised/lowered forms would actually be, so you can better identify them in the reference image. Alongside those grooves, there's also the flesh itself which isn't entirely smooth, and instead is made up of a subtle pulp (resulting in an uneven surface made up of many little forms).

It's definitely a challenging thing to consider, and people are generally not used to thinking about surfaces in this way. Just always remember - unless a surface is perfectly smooth, there will be a variety of forms present upon it.

5:14 PM, Monday November 16th 2020

Thank you very much! I'll do my best to try and see the cast shadows based on the surface of the texture.

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Sketching: The Basics

Sketching: The Basics

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Sketching: The Basics is a far better choice for beginners. It's more digestible, and while it introduces a lot of similar concepts, it does so in a manner more suited to those earlier in their studies.

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