Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids
12:15 AM, Saturday January 30th 2021
Thanks for the critique!
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1:36 AM, Thursday March 25th 2021
Congrats on working through this lesson, as this one can be pretty long and intense. Also you are welcome for the critique!
Organic Forms:
The outline of the forms temselves are draw well with smooth and confident lines. The ellipses at the tip of the forms are mostly drawn well with a few wobbly ones. Also I believe the directions say that you should draw a centerline for your forms, which really helped me with my ellipse at the form's end. The shapes of your contours seem nice and round. I see a few wobbly contours and some that seem to be drawn through twice. Make sure you ghost your lines before drawing them to be confident in where they will go. If you mess up anyway that's absolutely okay, that's what practicing is all about so there are no worries. As long as you keep trying you will get better!
Insect drawings:
The insects look good. You show solid construction skills, with guidelines that are set and comitted to. The construction pracice is the most important part of the lesson so good job there. The contours that wrap around the surface of the bugs are round and smooth, so nice job. One subjective critique that you also noticed is that some of your linework seem to go a bit overboard on some of the insect drawings. What I mean by that specifically is the linework seems to be too thick, making many of your details get lost in the drawing. I think your first ant and catepillar drawing are great examples of better linework, where less is more. It lets your details like the shadows "speak" loud and clear.
Good work. Keep drawing and keep honing your craft. Most importantly, enjoy it and have some fun along the way!
Next Steps:
Take a step back to look at your drawing, being aware of what place need more linework and what can be left alone.
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Sakura Pigma Microns
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.