Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

1:38 AM, Monday December 21st 2020

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Hi~

This lesson was hard but tbh I enjoyed doing the textures, some of them came up pretty nice and some of them didn't... Wooops!

Still I feel like most of my texture are quite cartoon-ish so I might have done something wrong :(

I struggle a lot with the intersections and the organic sausages. Please take a look at my homework and I'd be glad if you guys could give me some advices.

3 users agree
10:16 AM, Tuesday December 22nd 2020

Hello again! Feedback for Lesson 2.

Organic Arrows - Well done on the line quality, it is smooth and confident. I'm not sure if you did line weight on all the bends, but the ones that are distinctly heavier are smooth and good too. There are a few hatching mistakes here and there that confuse the perspective a bit (eg. bottom-right arrow on Page 2 looks like it's spiralling around; also left-middle arrow on Page 2 on the bottom-most bend), but you got most of them correct!

You've done a great job on making the 2 edges of the ribbons flow consistently with each other, but I think the ribbons can decrease in size as it gets farther from the viewer. This "mistakes" picture from Uncomfy's lesson shows how the ribbon width should be compressing as it moves away from the viewer. It's tricky to draw that while maintaining consistent bending, but I see you've made an effort to do that on most of the arrows. The best examples you've done are - middle downward-pointing arrow on Page 1; middle right-pointing arrow on Page 2; bottom-left arrow on Page 2. You can practice in warmups for L3: draw ribbons that are changing in size more extremely with each bend. It's tricky to do at first but it will come with practice!

Organic forms with contour - Looks great. You've kept the sausage forms simple as the exercise says, and ellipses are confidently drawn and following the minor axis line. The ellipse degrees stay the same however, they should be changing in size across the sausage (also see this pic). The contour lines are a little bit wobbly, but they get more confident in Organic Intersections, so no issue here.

Texture analysis - All the drawing is purposeful (no scribbling), the transition from dark to light is smooth, and you demonstrated that you understood the purpose of the exercise - which is to identify and draw cast shadows of textures. The middle texture has a little bit of outlining in the dark left side of the section, but it looks like you switched to correct focus on the cast shadows in the middle and white right side. (If you wanted to add more emphasis in the dark section, I think you can surround each flakey bit completely in a black shadow.) I think you did a great job here!

Dissections - Some of the textures had a bit more outlines instead of shadows (eg. oil bubbles, woven basket), and a few textures can wrap around the sausage a bit more (eg. wooden board). But this is nitpicky stuff, overall I think you did well on cast shadows, silhouettes, and wrapping the texture around the 3-D form.

Form intersections - The main focus of the exercise is not so much the intersections, as giving a realistic impression that all the solids are sitting together in 3-D space without distortion (extreme foreshortening) or contradictory perspective. I think you've accomplished that here.

Organic intersections - Cast shadows are draping nicely over the forms underneath, there is a sense of volume and weight to the sausages. Well done!

Congrats on finishing L2, I've given a bit of nitpicky feedback here and there, but overall you show a grasp of 3-D forms and volume, and demonstrate in your homework that you understand the purpose of the exercises. Really good work - have fun applying what you learned so far to L3!

Next Steps:

Have fun in Lesson 3. If you want to use L2 for warmups, I think Organic Arrows and Organic Forms with contour are the most beneficial ones.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 3 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
10:51 AM, Tuesday December 22nd 2020
edited at 10:53 AM, Dec 22nd 2020

Oo, forgot to address your questions...

Texture - I'm still learning this myself. I think the cartoony look comes from focusing more on outline instead of cast shadows. If you think about how you did the Texture Analysis (which was really good btw, better than mine :P) and how you really simplified the appearance of the picture down to the shadows while ignoring colours/details, that's the strategy for getting away from the outline mindset into the cast shadows mindset. You can practice that in the 25 Texture Challenge.

Form intersections - As I wrote above, intersections aren't the main focus here, I don't think getting them correct is super important for DaB, so it's OK if they're wrong. But if you want to study in detail how forms precisely intersect with each other, it's a whole separate topic of geometry. @optimusgeq in Discord posted some links to resources, he's the guy to ask. (I tried to search for his links but couldn't find them.)

Sausages - I think you did pretty well for Organic Forms with Contour and the Organic Intersections. It just comes down to practice to draw those curvy lines and the round ends of the sausages accurately. You'll be drawing plenty of sausages in L4 and L5...

Hope this helps.

edited at 10:53 AM, Dec 22nd 2020
8:02 PM, Thursday December 24th 2020

Thanks you for your feedback, Vega :)

I'm going to move to the next lesson happily and practice more my arrows and contour lines. This lesson was quite tricky in some part but I guess I should get used to this feeling :'D

I'm going to look for the resources that you have mentioned and keep in mind your advice.

Again thanks you so much for taking the time to look at my homework.

Btw next lesson looks so interesting~

0 users agree
9:01 AM, Tuesday December 22nd 2020

I'm still not super experienced but thought I would try to give advice, sorry in advance if this isn't helpful.

For the organic arrows I think you need to have more thought on how you want it to look before hand depth wise as it seems you drew a curvy line and went with it.

Everything else looks really good though! Keep up the good work.

Next Steps:

Feel free to continue with the next lesson.

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8:05 PM, Thursday December 24th 2020

Yeah, I think most of my arrows look quite weird, like they are moving in spiral, I'm going to keep practicing them.

Thanks you for the advice!

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