Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

12:01 AM, Tuesday July 20th 2021

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grateful to anyone who checks my homework :)

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9:18 PM, Sunday July 25th 2021

Hi Santy! Congratulations on completing lesson 2. I'm Gady and I'll be reviewing your work, so let's get to it.

Arrows:

Your linework looks smooth and confident for the most part. I think the main issue here is that you are being very shy with the size of your arrows. You're striving too much for them not to overlap, and this is counterproductive to the goal of the excercise. Look at the example page in the lesson and you'll see that all over the page you are supposed to overlap your arrows without much care. You're also making very thin arrows, and all in all avoiding overlapping lines, which makes it very hard to get the feel for depth in the flatness of the paper. Remember that the arrows need to get bigger and bigger as they go towards the viewer, and compress as they go further away. Both in size, and the spacing between each fold. Check these diagrams:

https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg

https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/0f7c806c.jpg

Another thing I noticed is that you have some troubles hatching the inner folds, and adding lineweight to those folds. https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/4/step4 this image shows how to apply lineweight properly. This is what subtle lineweight should look like: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb

Organic forms:

You did a good job at drawing your sausages as tubes connecting two spheres. However, ellipses are only drawn through once, instead of 2 or 3 times. This results in wobbly ellipses and therefore a flattened feel. Be also aware of the way the circles vary in angle as the sausage bends:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426350263884972032/IMG_5773.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426351743190695937/IMG_5775.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426351973990662144/IMG_5774.JPG

(photos by user 'Slate', and often linked by Optimus)

As for contours, I think you overdid it: you have to be careful to describe each form with just the necessary contour lines to understand it tridimensionally, not more and not less. Also in some of the sausages you have not curved the contours at the end, resulting in a flat look. I would also reccomend doing the sausages bigger, as this allows you to work from the shoulder easier, and thus avoid wobbly lines.

Texture Analysis:

I must point out that the main important thing here is actually drawing cast shadow shapes and not lines. Also you are supposed to draw only cast shadow shapes, and not any kind of form shading. Here's a diagram that explains the difference between those two: https://imgur.com/L21Mqxh

That being said, I think you're scratching lines too much. I think you kind of got the spirit of the excercise when inking the big black shapes on crumpled paper, but quickly lost your patience and started scratching randomly. When thinking about how to approach this, it's better to see cast shadows as closed shapes insted of as lines: https://i.imgur.com/M9JJfr4.png

Be aware that we are after implicit shapes, not explicit (https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/7d1f3467.jpg) to make a transition. I would suggest, when approaching texture analysis, to be always looking at the reference, then making some marks, then looking again, not relying so much on your memory as it can trick you.

Dissections:

Pretty much the same things I pointed out for texture. To add up to that, I think you did good breaking the silhouettes, but were kind of shy: really go for this, as it gives A LOT of information to the viewer. https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4dd5336a.jpg

Some of your textures do wrap around the sausages, but in cases were they don't (human skin, goo, elephant skin) it leads to a flat shape. https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/e58b7887.jpg

Form intersections:

Good job making the forms resemble they share the same scene, considering consistent foreshortening. However, I do want to point out you are still not drawing through your spheres and ellipses for cylinders and cones 2 or 3 times, and you tend to have some scratchy / wobbly lines in some of your boxes.

Organic intersections:

All in all, they look decent. Here the same observations I made for your contour sausages apply. Other than that, there's some randomly applied lineweight, be aware that you should only add lineweight where visible lines overlap with invisible ones. As for the shadows, I think the little marks you added to the tips are making the scene a little bit flatter, as this is not the way the sausages would cast shadows on the floor, but rather much more expansive.

Final thoughts

I think you have struggled with some of the main issues in this lesson, but overall you have come to complete it in a good way. You'll improve these things as you get more mileage, so I'll mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Go on with Lesson 3.

Also incorporate arrows and sausages to your daily warm-ups, and I would also suggest starting the 25 texture challenge, parallel to the lessons of the course (I do 1-3 textures every two-weeks).

Good luck!

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.
5:52 PM, Monday July 26th 2021

ok gady, thanks for the critique, it was very helpful, i will keep doing the excercises and practicing my flaws, wish you luck ;)

12:00 PM, Tuesday July 27th 2021

You're very welcome, glad I coud be of help!

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