To Stripe a tiger or not.

9:55 PM, Thursday November 5th 2020

I have moved onto animals from insects and have been watching the demos. Feedback from insects was not to use black to colour anything. Cast shadows only.

So watching the tiger demo black is used for stripes and this obviously helps describe form. Uncomfortable has replied in a comment below the video that using black was a mistake. I think that is consistent with what is being taught.

My question is do we accept that the lack of stripes will just means it is not as easily identifiable as a tiger ( or any other animal we choose ) or is there some other way of aiding recognition of animal or form? I assume that the only distinction between white/orange/black fur is colour.

1 users agree
6:20 AM, Friday November 6th 2020

This is one of the reasons I'm really eager, as soon as I have the time cleared out, to start going in and redoing all of the video demos. All of those intro videos are very old, and over the last several years of giving critiques and revising lesson material, I've been changing the standards to which I hold students.

The way I'm currently teaching the material is to focus on all filled black shapes as being reserved for cast shadows only. That does indeed rule out the stripes on a tiger. That said, a tiger is not just its stripes (they have a fairly distinct overall frame and appearance), and beyond that, the recognizability of your drawing is not really a big deal. I'm not concerned with how closely you match your reference, but rather in how believable your constructions are. Observing your reference carefully is obviously the best way to build up your construction in a way that is believable, but plenty of students have bungled their proportions at times, but have still pulled off the construction well enough to have it considered a victory. The result looks strange, but still believable.

6:34 PM, Friday November 6th 2020

Thanks. In a similar vein, should legs all be initially drawn as sausage forms and built up? Most of the demos tend to have a fair degree of shape or form in their initial construction.

I have watched all the demo videos and am about to get started. And I want to get it right.

12:58 AM, Saturday November 7th 2020

So the sausage method is something I introduced within the last year or two, so it's not as present in the demo videos as it should be. I did however mention it in the critique of your lesson 4 work, so refer to what I mentioned there, that you start with sausage chains and then build up additional forms around them.

1:31 AM, Saturday November 7th 2020

Thankyou!. Will get started tomorrow.

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