Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

5:00 PM, Thursday May 4th 2023

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This lesson took a great while. I did not grind as much as I did in Lesson 1 (each exercise takes so long to set up, so why bother wasting time grinding).

I feel like my subconscious might have forgotten some concepts already (or at least, I might initially feel rusty when coming back to these exercises for warm ups). But I could always go reread material so it's fine.

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8:02 PM, Wednesday May 17th 2023

Hi, I’ll be grading your homework today:

Organic Arrows:

Immediately, I can see that your sense of perspective is good. The arrows get smaller with distance and grow in size the closer to the viewer they get like they’re supposed to. A problem I see though is that some of your arrows aren’t crossing over themselves the way they should be, so they come out looking 2D at some points and stops you from adding line weight where we’re supposed to. They should overlap like this: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg so you can add line weight like this: https://imgur.com/a/43EfOw9

I also notice that a few of your lines meant to be the sides of the arrows bow outwards. I had the same problem myself until someone gave me a great tip: When you draw your initial line that starts the arrow, draw lines extending down to the sides and THEN draw the second line with those as guides.

At some points, the line weight is missing as well. Other times, I missed it at first because it was on the bottom line rather than the top.

Organic Forms:

Contour Lines: Quite a few of your ellipses end up outside your sausage forms. To your credit, they’re drawn through as they’re supposed to be though. Your ellipses are changing degree as they’re supposed to be, but your sausage forms don’t exactly look like they’re flowing through 3D space because your center lines are a bit too straight. I recommend looking again closely at how Uncomfortable did it himself.

Contour Curves: Your contour curves look great though. They arc and hook around the sausage form like they’re supposed to.

Texture Analysis:

These look great! Your transitions in both directions, from dark to light, are very smooth. The pebbles look like they’re straight out of a published comic.

Dissections: Also really great looking. Most everything looks exactly like what you say it is and I really like the different scales you drew as well.

Form Intersections: I don’t see any stretched forms or clean up passes and there aren’t any small groups of shapes either, so that’s good. Uncomfortable expects us to struggle with this, so don’t worry too much about how right you get this. Personally, I butchered pyramids too lol. Your heavier line weight to denote where the intersections are were a bit hard to see at first, but were much more visible by the third page. Just make sure you’re using the right equipment Uncomfortable told us to use. And that you’re ghosting your lines with one final stroke that actually boldens the line you’re working on.

Organic Intersections: Your sausage forms look nice. They don’t change size throughout their lengths and they don’t lie parallel to one another either, so they look believable. And your shadows project well onto the underlying forms, really adding to the believability of these sausages as real, 3D objects that can interact with the world/each other and can be interacted with.

And we’re done here just about. I recommend trying another page of Organic Arrows and one of Organic Forms with the changes in mind I mentioned. Then you’ll be ready for Lesson 3.

Next Steps:

One page of Organic Arrows and one page of Organic Forms with the changes I mentioned in mind

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
4:15 PM, Thursday June 1st 2023

Oh, I didn't think I'd have to revise what was said here. Honestly, I thought I did poorly on things like the Texture Analysis

But anyways, here are the revisions: https://imgur.com/a/CT33qNE

Thank you for the critique!

7:52 PM, Friday June 2nd 2023

No problem. That's what I'm talking about! Those arrows are perfect now and your forms with ellipses and contours both look good. I give you a pass.

Next Steps:

Continue to Lesson 3. Good luck and God bless

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
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