3:47 PM, Wednesday December 21st 2022
Hello Aturia, no problem! Thank you for replying with your revisions.
Starting with your organic forms
I want to stress what Uncomfortable mentions in this video from Lesson 0. When assigned a certain number of pages of work, you should only be doing what's asked. It's not uncommon that when I have students feeling the need to complete more pages, that they tend to focus less on executing each individual instance of the exercise to the best of their current ability - taking the time to execute each mark, draw each shape, and construct each form as well as they reasonably can (regardless of how much time that takes them), and more on simply getting the exercise done in quantity - but not necessarily to the best of their ability.
Drawing more itself isn't a bad thing on its face, but it's about how it impacts the manner in which we engage with the work. You will always have more opportunities to practice these exercises in your warmups - the quantity we assign is not with the expectation of seeing growth and improvement over the set, but just to judge whether your understanding of what you're meant to be doing with the exercise is correct, or whether it requires clarification. Can't really judge that too well if you're spreading the time, energy, and effort you could have dedicated to a single page of a given exercise over multiple pages.
Looking at the shape of your forms, these are improving, but they're a bit inconsistent. I've marked some concerns on your work here as well as pointing out a few that are great. It looks like you're fully aware of the properties to aim for with these simple sausage forms, just make sure you spend ample time planning and ghosting each one. If you're having trouble controlling your stroke you may want to experiment with the speed you execute the mark. Sometimes slowing your arm slightly while still maintaining enough speed for a confident stroke can help with control.
The second point of note is the placement of ellipses on some of the ends of your forms. When you draw an ellipse on the end remember that we can see the entirety of this ellipse because it's facing towards us - this also happens to serve as a very effective visual cue. You would want the contour curve next to it to curve as shown in this diagram. I've marked on your work here with a green tick where your ellipse (or the absence of an ellipse) was correct, and added the ellipse or crossed it out in red where they were done incorrectly.
The third point is the contour curves. These are looking more confidently drawn, well done! But the manner in which you vary the degree of your curves (or don't) is still quite hit and miss. I've marked on your work here which ones were good and which ones could be better.
Moving on to your insect constructions the first thing to point out is that I asked for 3 pages of insect constructions. this is half a page, with something else cropped out. I'm not sure if you're hiding a construction that you're not happy with, or if you're still putting random other exercises or warmups on your pages, which is something ThatOneMushroomGuy spoke about in lesson 3 critique. Either way, you need to think about why you made that decision.
I'm happy to see that you're maintaining a more even line thickness through the stages of your constructions, instead of deliberately drawing your first steps more faintly, good work.
Remember that you need to start your constructions with simple solid forms as introduced in the lesson overview. I'm struggling to identify what form you started with for the head of this stick insect. I'd usually expect students to start with ellipses, sausage forms, or maybe the occasional box. As a general rule of thumb, if you can't think of the name of the form you're trying to draw, it is probably too complex for a foundational form and you'll need to think of something simpler. If you try to make things too complicated in one go your drawing will fall flat. Constructional drawing is about building things slowly, step, by step. You need to start simply and add things bit by bit.
On the same construction I can identify that you're using a branch (or bendy cylinder) as your starting point for the body. That is acceptable, but if you're drawing a branch you need to follow the instructions from that exercise. Constructing the form around a central flow line, which serves as a minor axis for your ellipses, and building the sides in overlapping segments instead of all in one go. Trying to do that long curve all in one go caused your line to get wobbly, and wobbly lines do not make for solid forms.
You're still jumping between passes of your ellipses and leaving stray lines outside your silhouette on this construction which I've highlighted in red. This is an issue we discussed in my previous critique and diagrammed for you here. I am happy that you're sticking to 2 passes on your ellipses now, so that is better.
I can see that you're making a conscious effort to apply the sausage method of leg construction. These are getting better, but you'll want to keep focused on sticking to the characteristics of simple sausage forms, keeping both ends rounded, with no bulging in the middle. You seem a little confused about how to apply the contour curve where the sausages join. This curve marks an intersection (like from the form intersections exercise) so it can only exist where both forms overlap. I've marked some corrections on your work here as well as pointing out one that was spot on. It is worth noting that all your legs are completely bare. Once you have your basic sausage structure in place you may want to build on it by adding more forms. If you look closely at your reference, there will often be bumps or spikes that you can include. Push yourself to observe your reference and extract as much structural information from it as you can before moving on to your next construction. This ant leg demo is a good example.
Conclusion I can see that you're working hard, and have shown some improvements, but there are enough serious points of concern that I will be asking for revisions. This is not a punishment. It's just that right now I think moving on to the next lesson is going to be quite overwhelming for you, and you need some more mileage to understand and apply the points I've raised here. If anything that has been said to you here, or previously, is unclear, you are welcome to ask questions.
Please complete the following:
1 page of organic forms with contour curves
3 pages of insect constructions
Next Steps:
1 page of organic forms with contour curves
3 pages of insect constructions