Hi there, I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, below I'll be listing some things that will hopefully help you when you attempt these exercises again in the future.
The first thing that stands out to me in your arrows exercise is that your line quality could be better. You have some wobbling occurring which shows a lack of confidence and you try to apply line weight quite heavily instead of applying it subtly to sections of your arrows where edges overlap as instructed here. I'd also like you to try and keep experimenting with foreshortening the space between the curves of your arrows, as seen here if we utilize foreshortening here as well as in the arrow itself we can creater a stronger illusion of our arrows moving through 3D space.
In the organic forms with contours exercise you're trying to create forms that are too complex. Our goal here is to create forms where both ends are the same size and we avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the forms as discussed here. I suggest experimenting more with shifting the degree of your contours as well. 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. As a final note once again your line quality continues to be a bit of a problem, we definitely shouldn't be redrawing lines and be drawing confidently.
You're on the right track with the texture exercises you just need to work on your gradient transitions so they're a bit smoother. There are some spots (reptile scales) where 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 with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here, I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.
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 lessons. Your forms here are looking pretty solid, but I do get the impression your pen starting to dry out as your line quality worsens from here onwards sadly.
When it comes to your organic intersections you're off to an alright start but you'll find simplifying your forms more will benefit you in terms of building your sense of 3D space. I'd also recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner as your shadows aren't always consistent and these angles are a bit easier. This exercise is great for developing your sense of 3D space as well as experimenting with how light and shadow behave so definitely make sure you practice it in your warm ups. Your lines here get very sketchy, some of it may be partly due to your pen running out of ink but there's definitely a degree of intentional redrawing here as well. I did notice that you did lesson 1 quite a while back, it is possible that you're a bit rusty on some of the concepts introduced in lesson 1 so it's definitely worth giving it a look over and making sure you're practicing previous exercises as warm ups. Every lesson builds on each other so if the foundations of your skills are weak the rest will collapse on top of it.
Overall you do have things to work on, but I believe it's mostly a case of some rust and maybe potentially some impatience towards the end. I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to the next lesson with the hope you'll address these issues in your warm ups.
Keep practicing previous exercises in warm ups and good luck in lesson 3.
Next Steps:
Do previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
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