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5:48 PM, Thursday May 28th 2020

Oof, you sure didn't do yourself any favours with your choice of reference. Both of these have a great deal of their underlying structure obscured by fur, making them quite challenging.

I decided to throw together a quick demo of the rat for you. As you can see, the choices you made in terms of where to actually add additional forms were fairly in line with mine, but I think you relied a lot more on memory (spending long periods of time without looking at your reference rather than purposely looking at your reference almost constantly, only looking away long enough to put down one form at a time). As a result, the marks you made tended to be much more simplified than what they should have actually been.

I know I said I just wanted two more drawings last time, but I'd like to give you another chance here. So here's what I want you to do:

  • Follow along with my rat demo

  • Do one more drawing - preferably of something whose reference image isn't heavily obscured by fur. Pick something where a lot of the musculature is more easily visible.

Next Steps:

2 more drawings as explained above.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:29 PM, Saturday May 30th 2020

Thank you for the demo! And I really appreciate your patience. I wasn't expecting this level of follow-up at all, it's fantastic. When I'm a filthy rich artist famous for drawing rats I'll name a school after you.

Here's a rat and a roe deer: https://imgur.com/a/jt01JVd

Ref: https://www.warrenphotographic.co.uk/00012-roe-deer

I can see how I messed up the perspective on the deer butt, but I just don't see how to fix it. I'm honestly feeling the "oh maybe some people just can't draw"-stage, I'll go reread your thing on talent and then draw some more. I think maybe the observation part is my big problem right now, as you mentioned. I look at the front leg, look at my page, look at front leg, and draw a tiny stump 1/3 of the size it should be, and don't realize until I go to draw the muscle in front of the leg.

9:19 PM, Saturday May 30th 2020

Alrighty, this is a big improvement. Just don't forget about the feet - you're adding flat, incomplete shapes there, instead of constructing whole 3D forms. We draw through all of the forms we add because they allow us to understand how they exist in 3D space and how they relate to their neighbours, which is a critical part of construction.

As for orienting the torso sausage (to fix the deer butt), one thing that can help is drawing a "center line" along the torso to help you better grasp how that form is being oriented in space. As shown here, we want to clearly understand for ourselves that the butt is facing the viewer and the front area (where the neck connects) is facing away.

Anyway, as this is a considerable improvement and a big move in the right direction, 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.
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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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