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8:11 PM, Monday November 29th 2021

There is certainly progress here in a number of areas, and I can clearly see an effort being made to address the things I called out in my original critique. There are two areas of concern, however:

  • Head Construction

  • Additional Masses

Both of these are certainly better than before, but not quite there yet.

Starting with the head construction, in my original critique I explained what is essentially written out here on the top of the tiger head demo - that a more recent addition to the informal demos page (this head construction demo) is much more useful. Based on your work, what I can see is that you may have misunderstood - your head constructions here show signs that you were following the tiger head demo (which is still of use, and still did result in improvements), but not that you were applying the more recent, more effective one.

It's possible that you may have read through that section of my critique a little too quickly, and may have just followed the link to the tiger head demo and carried on from there. When you do approach head construction, try to apply the steps from the informal demo as closely as you can, down to even matching the shape of the eye sockets.

As to the additional masses, you've fallen into a common pitfall here. In my original critique, we discussed the importance of thinking through the specific design of each additional mass's silhouette. This can be quite challenging and daunting, and it looks like in your struggles, you opted more towards trying to use a lot of contour lines to compensate for the areas where your silhouette designs didn't come out correctly.

The thing is, those contour lines will only serve to make a form feel three dimensional on its own, in isolation. They are therefore not a solution to our problem - which is, that we wish to define the way in which these new masses actually wrap around the existing structure.

When talking about defining relationships between different forms in 3D space, there are two ways we can do this, depending on the nature of the relationship:

  • If the forms in question actually intersect and interpenetrate, then we can use the kind of contour lines we introduced in Lesson 2's form intersections exercise to define the specific intersection that occurs.

  • If the forms do not interpenetrate, but rather wrap around one another - that's what we're dealing with here - then the only option is to purposefully design the silhouette of those existing masses to describe how they wrap around one another. In my previous critique, I talked to you about the strategic placement of "compelxity" (that is, both corners and inward curves along that silhouette) - ensuring that such areas of complexity are always added in response to specific existing forms pressing against our mass, and using simpler outward curves everywhere there is no such external contact being made.

In my original critique, I provided some additional diagrams to that effect, so you should definitely go back and reread the advice I offered you there.

I've also called out these issues (along with missing intersectional lines on your sausage structures) here.

The other thing to be aware of when it comes to your use of contour lines is that you're piling on a ton of them. Contour lines are just a tool, and no tool should be used without considering its purpose and intent. When we use a bunch of contour lines, we have a tendency of drawing them much more sloppily and haphazardly, rather than taking the time to actually consider how to best apply each one. Furthermore, this overuse of contour lines also doesn't really help - they suffer from diminishing returns, where each one is far less impactful than the one before it.

I'm going to assign some additional revisions below.

Next Steps:

Please submit an additional 4 pages of animal constructions. Be sure to review my original feedback more closely before working on them, as you do appear to have missed or misinterpreted some of it.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:49 PM, Thursday December 9th 2021

Hi Uncomfortable,

Sorry for misunderstanding your first critique. I feel like I got confused somewhere - perhaps it was really a lot for my brain to process. It might be also some communication issue - English is my second language. I went through everything again and I hope that I managed to do the homework correctly this time.

It took me very long to finish these. I think I drew all of these animals a couple of times before getting it (hopefully) kind of right (still made some mistakes though). I have a feeling that I see the construction more clearly now, so the revision helped for sure. Still, to be honest, I feel a bit scared to submit! Perhaps, if there are still many points to improve, I should maybe re-do the whole lesson... Please let me know. I really would like to improve, and I'm looking forward to your feedback :).

Here's the link: https://imgur.com/a/JG2Axuu

7:01 PM, Thursday December 9th 2021

It may have taken a long time, but your work on these new revisions is fantastic, and you're doing a great job of demonstrating that you now understand the feedback I provided, and have been able to apply it effectively.

There's no need to redo anything - remember that what I'm looking for above all else is understanding, and you're showing that and more.

The only point I want to call out is a fairly minor one - when drawing your animals' eye sockets, you're clearly trying to stick close to what the informal head construction demo shows, but you do deviate a little. Make sure you match the shape shown here as closely as you can - drawing a pentagon with the point turned downwards. With both eye sockets together, this provides a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit, making everything feel nice and grounded. Pentagons have 5 sides to them - your eye sockets here are hexagons, so they end up with 6.

Anyway, great work - I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:08 AM, Friday December 10th 2021

Amazing! Thank you so much for the nice words and the additional feedback.

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Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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