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12:18 AM, Tuesday December 22nd 2020

Before I touch on your questions, let's look at your revisions.

The antelope definitely shows that you're not really understanding the idea of attacking forms to one another. You've got a lot of areas, especially around the legs, where you've just pasted shapes on top of one another, but never actually defined the three dimensional relationships between those forms as I've pointed out here. As you can see in my demonstration, every element I add is fully enclosed, and its silhouette wraps around the structure that precedes it.

Moving onto this rhinoceros, you've got a lot of additional masses whose silhouettes have an amount of randomness to how their silhouettes are drawn. Complexity to a form's silhouette is always a factor that can flatten out that shape - but if that complexity actually lines up with some other form present in your construction, and gives the impression that it is wrapping around it, or responding to it, it can actually make the construction appear even more believably three dimensional.

The most notable sign that you're not really thinking about how the complexity in your silhouettes relates to external factors is the big masses on the rhino's back - specifically those masses' top edges, where you've got little tips and waves with absolutely nothing there to press up against them. There is no reasonable cause for those forms to have that complexity, and so they read more like flat shapes rather than 3D forms. On those upper sides, they should be entirely simple, relying only on outward curves.

This is what I explained in my initial critique, in the section relating to this diagram. You definitely need more practice in regards to this.

As to head constructions, looking at that rhino's head there are definitely things you're not paying attention to in the demonstrations available to you. For example, if we compare your rhino's head to the demonstration/explanation I linked to you previously, it's clear that no attempt was made to apply what was shown there. Your eye socket and muzzle are floating independently of one another. Additionally, you should also be dropping a ball into the eye socket, around which to wrap eye lids. Do not just draw an iconic eye.

I have another demonstration of a rhino head I did for another student, which you can see here.

As a whole, I think there is a lot missing in terms of you actually applying what was mentioned in my critique. The lesson and my critiques are all quite dense, so it can often require going back over them several times on different occasions, and if you jump straight into drawing in a session hoping you've remembered everything you should be working on, you may be mistaken.

I will however say that your fox drawing is much better than the one you did in the original submission, so this shows you are moving in the right direction - even if you have a lot of room for improvement.

The last thing I wanted to mention is that for now, I strongly recommend you not worry about detail - specifically fur. It's only distracting at this point. I can see that you're drawing it quite quickly and haphazardly, rather than designing individual tufts and taking your time with each bit. When drawing fur, it's critical that you be patient and intentional with every mark. It's very tempting to fall into auto-pilot behaviour, repeating patterns and such, but that always comes out with a mess.

But of course, as I mentioned - leave fur out for your next set of revisions.

To answer your questions:

  • It's not about finding "where a form might attach". There's no specific place to put one form in relation to another. Any form can attach to any other form at any position, we just need to understand how they both exist in 3D space and how one would have to conform to the other. For example if we look at this mass you added to the fox's back, it has no inward curves (which as we've already discussed, occur in response to making contact with another form). In order to understand how that form would curve inwards, you'd have to think about how it would be pressing up against the torso, and how that torso sits in space. On top of that, you'd also have to think about how that whole mass is wrapping around both the side of the torso we can see, and the other side as well.

  • The contour line at the joint defines a cross-sectional slice shared by both forms. In order to understand how it should be angled, we have to think about how that slice exists in space, how it would be oriented, and how the viewer is looking at it. It seems you pretty much stopped trying to add those joints - even if you don't feel confident you understand how it works, you should still be attempting to do so. That's how we learn.

  • Yes, it's better to start smaller rather than bigger, as we can always build towards bigger.

I'm going to assign the same revisions as before - 4 pages.

Next Steps:

Please submit another 4 pages of revisions, with the same restrictions as before, along with not including any detail/fur/texture and focusing entirely on construction alone.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:36 PM, Tuesday December 22nd 2020

Ah, Christmas comes early!

Thanks for the thorough feedback. I will re-read and write some notes so I can try and get it to stick better. I will take my time with the next 4 pages as well, so you won't hear from me for a few weeks at least.

Seasons greetings/happy holidays/merry solstice.

T

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