9:43 PM, Tuesday May 10th 2022
Hi again Thecakeisalie! I'll be reviewing your homework. Let's see:
Organic Intersections:
You got some sausages right, others still have different shapes than required. Compare them to the original chart on organic forms and you'll notice the difference.
When it comes to the meat of the exercise, while you did arrange the forms on a believable manner; a lot of them look like they're floating, instead of resting into one another. That becomes more of a problem thanks to the shadows that you drew.
If you see this, you'll notice that the upper form has this big cast shadow underneath it, which makes it look like it is floating. Compare it to the forms below the first example, and you'll notice that the shadows are much more subtle, and gets bigger just underneath the section that's actually hanging. Your cast shadows tend to stick to the figure instead of following the curves of the form they're being cast into. All these things pile onto one another and debilitate the sense of solidity that we need.
Sometimes I get the impression that you may have used the shadows as a mean to distinguish each form. If you need that, apply some subtle lineweight to the sections that overlap; remember that sometimes you'll have to make little adjustments to the forms you made on these intersections.
Animal Drawings:
Your constructions improved a lot as you went; some mistakes that were present on the first drawings, such as adding masses with corners, not adding intersections on the legs sausages, or trying to capture the whole form with a deformed sausage, went away quickly. Although on some of the last drawings those added masses with corners appeared again; avoid using them in situations where there's no more complexity required. I like the way you handle the paws.
There are a couple of issues still. We want our heads to look more like the first deer fawn or the squirrels, where you broke the planes of the muzzle a lot more, than the second deer fawn, the fallow deer or the iguana, where it looks like you added extra forms without establishing a solid form below and break it into planes.
Another (minor) thing is your tails; most of the time they look flat, or like they're relying on the texture to bring them to 3D space. Things like the iguana or squirrel's tail have their own mass in addition to the flow, so a couple of contour curves would've gone a long way there.
Your textures are going great; try to be more subtle in the transitions from dark to light though. And if you're going to do them, remember that the legs, neck, etc. also have texture. Finally, on some animals you hatched the legs of the back of the drawing. Don't do that, we want to construct every part of the animal.
The critique may sound negative, but you're doing actually quite well. You just have to correct some mistakes and you'll be all set. So, I'll ask for:
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One page of Organic Intersections. Take into account all the corrections, try as hard as you can to build them like simple sausages, and be mindful about how they're falling into space. Something that helps me is thinking of them as bags falling from the sky, so you draw them after they touch ground.
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One extra animal drawing without any detail. Make sure the forms added to the head break into planes, before adding the last minor masses. Don't forget about the volume on your tail (if there's any) and be careful with the added masses as well, remember that unless they're besides something, they should be smooth and adapt to the contour of the form they're put into. Add the reference photo as well please.
That's it. Good luck, I'll be around for any questions.
Next Steps:
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One page of Organic Intersections.
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One extra animal drawing without any detail. Add the reference photo as well.