8:20 PM, Friday April 15th 2022
Jumping right in with your organic intersections, your work here is done quite well. You're doing a good job of piling them up in a manner that conveys a strong, believable sense of gravity being applied to each form, causing them to slump and sag over one another. You've also demonstrated a well developing grasp of how the shadows are cast upon other surfaces, how they wrap around those surfaces, etc. instead of clinging to the individual forms casting them. All in all, good work - just be sure to draw through all of the ellipses you freehand (like those on the tips of the sausages) two full times before lifting your pen.
Continuing onto your animal constructions, there's a lot you're doing well here, as well as a number of places where I can offer some advice to help you make better use of the techniques and processes we've explored here.
I think when it comes down to core construction, and generally thinking about how the object you're drawing exists in three dimensions rather than two, you've got a lot of signs that these areas are developing well for you. What stood out in this regard was this baby squirrel which definitely conveys a strong sense of depth.
I can also see that you have certainly pushed yourself to work more in 3D space, defining more complete, self-enclosed forms, rather than working with one-off marks on the flat page. There are a few cases where you still cut into the silhouettes of your forms - for example, that same squirrel's feet, where you defined the larger structure then constructed within it, rather than treating it like a solid structure and building on top of it - but all in all you've definitely shown concerted efforts being made there.
The first point I want to address is the use of additional masses. I can clearly see that you're putting consideration into how you're designing the silhouettes of these forms, but this can definitely be improved upon. One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette.
Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram, and in action here on one of your giraffes. Note how every inward curve is positioned specifically, with intent, and that whenever we hit a sharp corner, we construct the overall mass's silhouette one stroke at a time, but still thinking about how the whole is meant to relate to the forms it's attaching to in 3D space.
This also applies to the legs, where our use of additional masses doesn't need to be limited to just establishing the bumps that show up along the silhouette. Establishing the forms in between allows us to arrange our masses in a way that is more specifically grounded, like pieces of a puzzle that fit together. In order to achieve that, we need to think about the masses that exist internally, within the silhouette of the resulting object, alongside those that actually impact the silhouette in some fashion.
The second thing I wanted to take a moment to discuss is head construction. Lesson 5 has a lot of different strategies for constructing heads, between the various demos. Given how the course has developed, and how I'm finding new, more effective ways for students to tackle certain problems. So not all the approaches shown are equal, but they do have their uses. As it stands, as explained at the top of the tiger demo page (here), the current approach that is the most generally useful, as well as the most meaningful in terms of these drawings all being exercises in spatial reasoning, is what you'll find here on the informal demos page.
There are a few key points to this approach:
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The specific shape of the eyesockets - the specific pentagonal shape allows for a nice wedge in which the muzzle can fit in between the sockets, as well as a flat edge across which we can lay the forehead area.
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This approach focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows us to ensure all of the different pieces feel grounded against one another, like a three dimensional puzzle.
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We have to be mindful of how the marks we make are cuts along the curving surface of the cranial ball - working in individual strokes like this (rather than, say, drawing the eyesocket with an ellipse) helps a lot in reinforcing this idea of engaging with a 3D structure.
Try your best to employ this method when doing constructional drawing exercises using animals in the future, as closely as you can. Sometimes it seems like it's not a good fit for certain heads, but with a bit of finagling it can still apply pretty well. To demonstrate this for another student, I found the most banana-headed rhinoceros I could, and threw together this demo.
The last major thing I wanted to talk about is how you're handling detailing when you get into things like fur. Back in my critique of your Lesson 3 work, we talked about the idea of decoration (where we just try and find reasons to put down more marks in order to make our drawing more complex and visually pleasing), and the idea of texture (which focuses on actually conveying to the viewer only the information they need to know to fill in the rest themselves, and to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the given object's surface). In some of your drawings here - mainly the squirrels and foxes - you appear to kind of lose track of the distinction between decoration and texture. As a result, end up putting down way more marks than you strictly need to, but also spending far less time in thinking through the design of each individual stroke.
To illustrate this point, I tried to go over the drawing to basically remove as much of your fur as I could, then put in a few minimal tufts along the silhouette. Each tuft is more purposefully designed, and constructed more as cohesive shapes, rather than individual strokes. Note how little is actually necessary to convey the idea of "furry". From there, the viewer's brain takes over the rest.
When it comes to texture, a good rule of thumb is that less is more - don't try to capture every bit of detail that is present in your reference, but rather use it as a source of information, and consider how you can best convey that information to the viewer.
Now, those are the major issues I wanted to address, but there are a few quick points I wanted to add:
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Generally you're doing a good job of using the sausage method, but there are areas where you get a little careless with whether or not you're actually sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages. For example, looking at the same fox, when the segments get shorter, they tend to get more egg or ellipse shaped.
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When constructing your animals' feet, thinking about "boxy" forms helps a lot. We can do this by introducing sharp corners to the silhouette of these forms in order to imply the presence of internal edges/distinct 3D faces, but without actually drawing those edges. Here's an example on another student's work, which shows us starting with a simple boxy form, then attaching smaller boxy forms to build up the toes.
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Similarly to the issue with how you built up your squirrel's feet (laying down a larger form then cutting into it), we can say the same about how you've approached the wings on this hybrid. Instead, try and think of the initial structure you lay down for the wings as being solid forms, and then layer the feathers on top of it, as shown here. This allows us to further avoid cutting into the silhouettes of our forms. Also, remember that we're not concerned with animal anatomy beyond what we can actually see in our references - so when building those wings, don't built them up as a skeleton first - build masses for what you see, starting from big and simple, and gradually whittling down into smaller and more complex.
As a whole I do think you're moving in the right direction, but I am going to assign some minimal revisions below so you can demonstrate your understanding of the points I've raised here.
Next Steps:
Please submit 3 additional pages of animal constructions.