8:09 PM, Wednesday April 6th 2022
Before I get into the critique, I'll answer your question first. Yes, A is an acceptable approach as the design of the added form's silhouette very strongly implies the presence of its own internal planes. That is to say, the main drawing for A conveys the distinction between that form's planes as clearly as the variant of it with those edges drawn in. What matters is that you're specifically aware of those edges, enough to design the silhouette appropriately. If you weren't, then you'd have drawn it in such a way that the silhouette was blobbier and less clear, creating a weaker illusion of 3D form.
I would however specifically reserve this for cases where a form is already fairly boxy in its nature. Animal muzzles, and the components of animals' feet (like when constructing the basic foot structure and adding the toes)
So! Jumping into your organic forms with contour lines, note that the homework did assign two pages of contour curves (you did one of ellipses, one of curves). That said, your work here is coming along well, just be sure to vary how you orient your sausages in the future. All of these have both tips facing away from the viewer, but there are other configurations as shown here.
So when I critique the insects for this lesson, there are a number of key things I look for, which we definitely discussed in my critique of your last go at this lesson back in July. These fall into the following categories:
-
Is the student jumping back and forth between working in 3D space (laying down simple forms one at a time, defining how they intersect or wrap around the existing structure) and 2D space (modifying the silhouettes of forms they've already put down, or otherwise trying to refine/build up visual information with one-off lines without establishing how they're meant to relate to the existing structure in three dimensions).
-
Is the student making consistent use of the sausage method, applying all of its elements as explained in the sausage method diagram, and are they limiting themselves only to the basic sausage structures or are they pushing to explore their constructions farther, building up more structural detail in some fashion or another.
Given that you had received feedback on this lesson, my expectation would be that you'd have reviewed that feedback prior to doing your work on this lesson, so you could carry over those points and apply them. While you may have done so, looking at your work here, I definitely think that there were things that I had shared with you previously that still haven't been implemented nearly as fully as they could have been.
When it comes to jumping between 3D/2D, you do on occasion - for example, here on your cricket, as well as on your second ant's abdomen. It's worth mentioning that the starting shape of your abdominal mass was itself more complex, and should have started as a simple ball form/ellipse.
It's also worth mentioning that while you did explore the ant's head construction here, it doesn't entirely look like you were leveraging any of the information from the ant head demonstration I provided in your last lesson 4 critique. Of course, different ants have different structures, so you may have decided it didn't fit, but the manner of thinking demonstrated in that demo is fairly widely applicable.
I should mention that the heavy use of contour lines on the mandibles are excessive, and don't necessarily contribute anything concrete. It's important that in the planning phase of the ghosting method for each mark you plan on putting down, you assess exactly what the goal of that mark is meant to be, how it can be drawn so as to achieve that goal as effectively as possible, and whether another mark is already doing that job. When it comes to these kinds of contour lines (as opposed to those introduced in the form intersections exercise, which define the relationship between different interpenetrating forms in 3D space), it's easy to get trapped in the mindset of "contour lines = more 3D", and so we end up going on autopilot. Instead, it is generally going to be the way in which that form's relationship with the existing structure (be it through the intersections defined or the way in which its silhouette establishes how to wraps around the other structures) that will do the heavy lifting for making our forms feel 3D. From there, there will be the odd case where maybe one contour line will help emphasize the solidity that has already been established, but they should definitely be used with care and consideration.
Continuing onto the leg constructions, while you're using elements of the sausage method, there are notable deviations:
-
You aren't defining the joint between the sausage segments with a contour line, as demonstrated in the middle of the sausage method diagram.
-
You've got a bunch of places where you've added extra contour lines through the midsection of sausages (another point the sausage method diagram says to avoid)
Also, I can see that you're largely sticking to the basic sausage structure. As mentioned in my previous critique of your Lesson 4 work, once the basic sausages in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms as shown here, here, in this ant leg, and even here in the context of a dog's leg (because this technique is still to be used throughout the next lesson as well). Just make sure you start out with the sausages, precisely as the steps are laid out in that diagram.
All in all I think that our best course of action would be for you to do a few pages of revisions, before you continue on. While these issues can all be addressed in Lesson 5, and I do regularly mark work like this as complete, I think this time around we should make sure, since these were points that had been raised in the past. You'll find those revisions assigned below.
Next Steps:
Please submit an additional 3 pages of insect constructions - though beforehand, I'd recommend going through my original critique of your Lesson 4 work once more.