Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

7:33 PM, Saturday May 16th 2020

lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/wPmaf8h.jpg

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hi! hope your well, thanks for critiquing my home work. I found the disections difficult and the crumpled paper. Hopefully ill get better at the textures with practice the 25 texture challage hopefully help with that. still trying to wrap my brain around the shapes intersecting im still playing with that but doesnt say its a requriment Ill add them to the album when I finish trying today maybe the link will still show them. thanks so much for yoyr time!

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8:06 PM, Saturday May 16th 2020

Starting with your arrows, you're doing a good job of having the linework flow fluidly across the page. One thing that I did notice however is that in some places, you seem hesitant to let your ribbon twist in space, as explained here. You improve upon this a fair bit as you move through, but it's important to remember that since we have no real reason to think these ribbons are made of some kind of flexible material, then whenever you hit a turn, they're most likely to respond to that turn by twisting.

A couple other things to keep in mind - as you apply perspective to the positive space (the width of the ribbon which gets narrower as it moves away from the viewer), you should also be applying it consistently to the negative space (the distances between the zigzagging sections), as perspective impacts everything equally.

Lastly, you're a bit sloppy when adding hatching lines along the twists - make sure they stretch from edge to edge all the way across the ribbon.

Moving onto your organic forms with contour lines, you're clearly making an attempt to stick to simple sausages as instructed within the lesson. While there are some small deviations from this (mainly cases where your ends end up more stretched out than spherical), you're doing a pretty good job as far as that is concerned. You're also drawing your ellipses smoothly and confidently, maintaining even shapes for each of them while also managing to keep most of them pinched between the edges of the form. This goes a long way to help convey the illusion that the contour line runs along the surface of the form, so good job there.

Your contour curves are at times a little stiffer, so remember that the ghosting method is all about executing marks with confidence, and without any hesitation, and relying on the planning/preparation phases for accuracy and control. Also, another thing to keep in mind is that the degree of your contour lines will change as you slide along the length of a sausage form. The degree describes the orientation of that cross-section in space as it relates to the direction the viewer is looking, and that will change depending on where along the sausage you're sampling. You can see this demonstrated here, but to put it simply, your contour lines will get wider or narrower as you slide along the form, depending on whether you're sliding away from the viewer or towards them.

Moving onto your texture analyses, this is a good start, though with plenty of room for improvement. You're starting to delve into observing your references more carefully, and I think you're doing a much better of that with the direct study portion of the exercise. When getting into the actual density diagrams, I feel that you may not be looking at your reference enough, and therefore ending up drawing things to be more simplified than they should be.

Overall, you're definitely moving in the right direction of focusing more on large filled shapes rather than lines, although there are some ways in which we can continue to improve upon this. First and foremost, remember that we are drawing cast shadows - that means that the shapes we draw directly relate to the forms casting them, and the surface upon which they're being cast. In a number of cases, especially the first texture analysis row, you ended up filling the negative space in between your pebbles with black. To draw the shadow a form is casting is not to fill the negative space between it and its neighbours - it's to understand how that shadow falls on specific surfaces, and how the shape itself tells us things about that surface's relationship with the form. For example, if the form is a very tall protrusion, then it would cast a longer shadow. If the surface turns away from the form, then the shadow itself will get stretched.

Overall, you're moving in the right direction - one thing I'm especially pleased to see is that you're trying not to work with outlines at all - you're trying very hard to work entirely in cast shadow, and while this is very difficult, it is the right move to make.

Moving into your dissections, there are some areas where you're taking a step back towards outlines - for example, in most of these you end up trying to outline each individual textural form before thinking about the shadows they'll cast. Be sure to read through these notes.

Moving onto your form intersections, when it comes to boxes, spheres, cones, and so on you're doing a good job of drawing them such that they feel cohesive and consistent within the same space. Your cylinders are definitely left somewhat wanting - you ignored the instruction about avoiding forms that are overly stretched in any one dimension (like longer cylinders), and also weren't consistent in starting your cylinders around a central minor axis line. As a whole, I think you need to work on aligning your ellipses to a minor axis line, something that we focused on with Lesson 1's funnel exercise.

As far as the purpose of the exercise goes however, you did a decent enough job with the first point (drawing them such that they feel like they belong together in 3D space). What you skipped out on entirely however was in making any attempt at all on the intersection lines between your forms. While this is not the main focus of the exercise, and it is something I expect most students to have a great deal of trouble with, it is intended to serve as an introduction to the idea of how your forms relate to one another in 3D space. This as a concept is at the core of Drawabox as a whole, and is something we continue to explore throughout the rest of the lessons.

By choosing to skip that aspect of the exercise here, you've missed out on a seed being planted in your head that would be developed over the next several lessons.

Lastly, your organc intersections are coming along well. You've established how these forms pile up together, interacting as 3D forms, and have also established a sense of gravity in how they're forced to slump and sag over one another. My only concern is that when drawing the cast shadows, your linework is pretty rough. Looks like you were making those marks more from your wrist, which resulted in more jagged, separated strokes, rather than doing so from your shoulder.

All in all, you're not doing badly, but there is a lot of room for growth. Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do two more pages of form intersections. Include plenty of cylinders in these, and be sure to make an attempt at actually drawing how those forms intersect with one another.

Next Steps:

Two more pages of form intersections, including plenty of cylinders, and with actual attempts at the intersections between your forms.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:49 PM, Monday May 18th 2020

These are hard!

https://imgur.com/a/UDzRy9F

4:12 PM, Monday May 18th 2020

They are indeed hard! You made the attempt, so I am going to mark this lesson as complete. There are a couple things to point out however:

  • Please don't mix pen weights. A touch of additional line weight on intersection lines, or specifically in areas to clarify how things overlap is good, but it should always be added by putting the mark down with the same pen, then going back over it again to make it slightly heavier. Line weight is all about really subtle changes that the subconscious picks up on, like you're whispering to the viewer. Anything overly obvious will look glaringly off, and can also serve to flatten out a drawing.

  • While the first page had many more legitimate intersections, there are just a couple places on your second page - pyramid intersecting with a box, and a cone intersecting with that same box (both towards the middle of the set) where you actually drew intersection lines. In all the other cases, you only drew along the existing outlines of the forms in question. An intersection is about drawing a new line along the surface of the forms. Here's what I mean. This will sink in more and more as we continue to move forwards, and you have to think about how to combine 3D forms to create more complex objects.

  • You missed some of the instructions, such as the importance of constructing your cylinders around minor axis lines. Be sure to read and reread the instructions more carefully, especially immediately before working through an exercise.

So, as I said - I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Go ahead and move onto lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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