Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making good progress towards understanding a lot of the concepts introduced in this lesson. I'll be listing some things below that will hopefully help you when attempt these exercises again in the future.
Your arrows are off to a great start, they're flowing nice and smoothly. My only real suggestion here is to be sure to experiment with foreshortening in spaces between curves of the arrow a bit more. You do make use of foreshortening in this space as well as the arrow itself, but doing some more S shaped arrows with lots of foreshortening like the bottom right arrow of the second page will help build up more familiarity. If you'd like more info on how foreshortening helps us sell the illusion of an object moving through 3D space check here.
In the organic forms with contours exercise if you work you're super close to keeping your forms nice and simple. Just remember our goal is to keep both ends the same size and to avoid pinching, bloating or stretching along the form as described here. I'd also like you to try and shift the degree of your contours a bit more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.
In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows in your dissections. (In the analyses you're focusing more on shadows) This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here, I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.
If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, right now this exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page, we'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Your forms are looking solid and like they are in a consistent 3D space which is what we're primarily looking for here, good work.
Your organic intersections are looking pretty solid, there's a few spots where they could wrap around one another in a more believable way but this is a great start. One thing I notice here and in your previous organic forms is that you draw the ellipse facing the viewer incredibly small, it should definitely be larger as it follows the contours of your form. Other than that keep experimenting with simple forms and try positioning your light source in different locations. This exercise is great for building up your sense of 3D space as well as getting some light/shadow practice before moving to more complicated pieces.
Overall this was a really solid submission, with some more mileage you'll have no problem improving at these concepts so I'll be marking your submission complete.
Keep doing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Do previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Thank you for the critique! It is very helpful. I'm not too sure what you mean by: "One thing I notice here and in your previous organic forms is that you draw the ellipse facing the viewer incredibly small, it should definitely be larger as it follows the contours of your form."
Other than that, no questions from me. Thank you for spending the time to give me feedback!
On our organic forms we draw an ellipse on one end to show the viewer it's facing them. You're drawing yours very small to the point it's almost just a dot. It should be larger and also shift degrees along with the rest of your contours, in some places you just have them floating and not in line with the rest of your contour lines/ellipses.
For an example look at the forms here and compare the size of the ellipse on the end compared to yours.
Ah, I see. That makes sense! Thanks
Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.
The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
