Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction
1:05 AM, Sunday January 3rd 2021
Form intersections were suffering ;-;
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
0 users agree
10:46 AM, Wednesday January 6th 2021
Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making good progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, below I'll be listing some things that will hopefully help you in your future attempts at these exercises.
-
Your arrows are off to good start, they flow pretty smoothly. There is a bit of room for you to experiment with foreshortening more, by utilizing it in the arrow itself as well as space between the arrow's curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space, more info on this idea here. One thing that does stand out in this exercise is your line work gets quite messy in places, lots of marks around your page and your hatching could be a tidier as well. Some of these marks may be due to you trying to apply line weight but remember to give yourself time to ghost and plan your marks before executing them confidently, try not to rush if you are.
-
In the organic forms with contours exercise your forms get a bit too complex. Our goal in this exercise is to create forms where both ends are the same size and to try and avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the length of the form as discussed here. When it comes to your contours your lines get a bit stiff showing that you're not drawing them as confidently as you could be, I'd also like you to try to shift the degree of your contours 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. One final note in this exercise is you draw ellipses on both ends of the form when you only need to be drawing them on the end that is facing the viewer as instructed here.
-
In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. 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 here are looking pretty solid for the most part and I'm glad your line work has cleaned up as well.
-
Sadly your line work reverts to being messier than it could be in the organic intersections exercise, which gives me the impression you may have been racing to the finish line a bit. Your forms are starting to wrap around one another nicely which is a good sign that your sense of 3D space is developing. Your shadows aren't behaving consistently and are often hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to forms/the ground below. I often recommend people to push their light source to the top left or right corner rather than directly above, it's a bit clearer how your shadows in this position so keep experimenting. This is a good exercise to build up your sense of 3D space with organic forms as well as get a feel for the basics of light and shadow, so be sure to put it in your rotation of practice exercises.
Overall this was an alright submission, you have some things to work on but I believe you can address the issues with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups, give some extra attention to the texture exercises and remember to keep your line work clean.
Good luck in lesson 3.
Next Steps:
Do previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
PureRef
This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.
When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.
Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.