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10:04 PM, Thursday March 12th 2020

So overall you're doing much better now. Your linework doesn't feel clumsy in the way it did before, and your lines are more purposeful. There is still plenty of room for growth, but you're moving in the right direction and even over these five drawings you've shown a good deal of improvement.

Here are some major points that you need to work on:

  • You get better at this over the set, but remember the difference between just extending the silhouette of a form as it exists on the page vs. adding more 3D masses on top of an existing structure. Additionally, when you deal with smaller additional masses, you sometimes don't think as much about how it's going to wrap around the underlying structure, and just end up pasting it on top (like the base of the flamingo's neck). You always need to understand how these forms are actually connecting to one another.

  • Something you're forgetting very consistently is to reinforce the joint between the sausages with a contour line when using the sausage method. This is demonstrated in the center of this page, and it is critically important, as defining the spatial relationships between forms helps sell the illusion that everything is 3D.

  • You also have a tendency to draw your cranial balls a bit too big, or the remaining forms (like the muzzle) too small relative to the cranium. Try and start with smaller craniums, or get used to making the muzzle larger.

  • When drawing eyeballs, those also probably need to be bigger than you think you'll need, because a fair amount of it is hidden under the eyelid. Use a larger ball and then make more of a point of wrapping the eyelid around the eyeball (something that is definitely harder to do when the head ends up being small already, but that's hard to avoid).

  • The thing about adding additional masses is that they each tend to represent a muscle group, and the great thing about them is how they interact with one another as they start to pile up. As we figure out how a mass is going to wrap around an existing structure, we end up with all of these little "pinches" where the silhouette of the overall construction kind of hits a sharp turn. If you look along the back of the bear, you'll see a pinch right where the torso sausage transitions into the top edge of its rump-mass (right along where I wrote the words "of each other" in my red notes). That kind of a pinch gives the impression of how what we're looking at is 3D, even if we were just looking at its silhouette, and it was filled in with a flat colour. The problem arises when we try to fuse all our masses into one or two big ones, rather than drawing smaller masses that interlock like a 3D puzzle. Not only do we end up with one big, complex form (and being complex it ends up feeling flatter), we also lose all of the pinches along the silhouette,a nd the construction as a whole stops feeling as three dimensional. Always try and think as though you're building a puzzle of interlocking parts along the body when using these additional masses.

I think you're pretty close, but before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like just one more animal. As yours have mostly been from the side, I want you to draw this mountain lion. Take your time, and don't be afraid to do some exploratory drawings first, as this one is quite difficult (it's one a bunch of us had tried on the drawabox discord server some years ago, and aptly named "drama puma").

In fact, instead of just doing it once, I'd like to see you try your hand at this cougar 3 times - and you're only allowed to make one attempt per day, so you have time to process what you learn from each attempt.

Next Steps:

Draw the cougar I linked at the end of the critique 3 times, no more than one drawing per day. You may also do other exploratory drawing to get a better understanding of how it sits in space, its proportions, etc. Your focus should still above all be on the construction of the animal, so if you add any texture/detail it should not detract from its underlying construction.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:33 AM, Friday March 20th 2020
1:42 AM, Friday March 20th 2020

There are a number of problems that are present across all three drawings - some of which I've mentioned in the past. I've pointed them out in these notes.

  1. Drawing something that is believably three dimensional requires you to treat it as though you believe it is 3D. This is easier said than done, of course. When drawing on a page we have the freedom to put down any marks we choose - but there are many choices we can make that will remind the viewer that they're just looking at something two dimensional. Notice how you initially drew a cranial ball, then later went back over it to change the nature of that shape on the page. This alteration was something you did entirely in two dimensions - you didn't respect the three dimensional nature of the form you had created in 3D space, and so in making this change, you sent the signal to the viewer that the drawing was not 3D. This is the sort of thing you also did in your initial set when extending the torso of the flamingo which I pointed out here. Once you place a form in space, you need to accept that it is solid and cannot simply be altered or ignored so easily. If you want to change it, you have to do so by reinforcing the fact that it is 3D - this can be done by cutting it into pieces using contour lines as shown here, then choosing to treat one piece as positive space, and the other as negative space. If this kind of cut approach won't work for your situation, you simply need to accept that you're stuck with the form you'd drawn already.

  2. Similarly, you need to be drawing through each and every form, drawing it in its entirety, to remind yourself of how they all exist in 3D space, how they sit in that space, and how they relate to one another within that space. If you let your forms end where they are overlapped by another, then you're just giving yourself another reminder that what you're drawing isn't real and 3D, and you're making it that much harder for you to believe in the lie you're creating. The more you believe in the lie, the more difficult it will be for you to introduce details and make choices that contradict this illusion - buying into it wholeheartedly is ultimately something we're working towards.

  3. Your sausage forms are not proper sausages - you're smushing the ends and flattening them out quite a bit. Remember that the ends need to be spherical, giving ample room to overlap. Your contour curves are also not wrapping around the rounded forms well enough, instead coming out somewhat shallower. Don't forget about how the contour lines exercises in lesson 2 encourage you to even overshoot your curves as they hook back around if necessary to really push the sense that they're wrapping around this form.

  4. There was a good deal of extra room left on the page for each and every one of these drawings. It's one thing to leave a little extra margin in order to ensure you don't bump up against it, but the space you're leaving on the table is actively making this drawing more difficult. With less space to work with, your brain is struggling not only to deal with spatial problems, but it is also resulting in linework that is somewhat more clumsy (because the lines end up thicker relative to the whole drawing). It also makes us more susceptible to drawing more with our elbow than our shoulder.

A couple additional points I have is that you need to spend more time observing your reference - right now the way you capture elements is coming out more simplified than it really should, which suggests that you're drawing more from memory. You may well be studying your reference a great deal, but you're also spending too much time looking away from it - remember that we want to be looking back constantly, only taking a moment or two to draw a specific mark or shape before refreshing our memories. For example, if you look at the simplicity of the eyes and the paws, and then compare them to the wealth of information present in your reference image, you'll see that a lot is being lost in translation.

It's also worth mentioning that much of your linework is somewhat slower and more careful. Your lines are still smooth to be sure, but if you look at the initial marks you'd put down when laying out the initial masses, they're considerably thinner and more fluid. They ooze confidence, whereas the rest of your lines suggest that you're pressing far too hard, and being generally too belaboured with every mark. Confident lines make our forms feel solid and our drawings feel more alive. Drawing more slowly and carefully keeps the lines more uniform and imbues them with a sense of rigidity and stiffness. You're clearly demonstrating the capacity to draw these much better, but it's the choices you're making that are putting blockades in your way. These may not be conscious choices, but the solution is to make conscious choices to do the opposite. To draw more confidently, to observe your reference more closely and more frequently, and to adhere to the principles and techniques outlined in these lessons (in regards to treating every form as solid and 3D, and of drawing them in their entirety.

I don't usually reassign the same reference image, but I think you should give this cougar another shot. You can submit one drawing, but take the time to reflect on this critique, on the lesson material, and even look back over earlier lessons - lesson 2 in particular. Of course, remember that you should be still doing those older exercises as part of a regular warmup to keep the principles of drawing confidently and fluidly, and of constructing proper sausage forms fresh in your mind.

Next Steps:

Try drawing the cougar once more.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:45 PM, Sunday March 22nd 2020
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