Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

9:19 PM, Tuesday January 24th 2023

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Lessons 2 had some very cool moments and some that were super frustrating.

I realy liked the texture tasks even though I had some troubles and, in the beginning, feared to even start.

-> Regarding the texture intersections, I know that I forgot to add the light effect (I discussed that on the discord server already and was told to move on even though only 2 sausages show a detail gradient)

What I really hated was the organic intersections. It was the first time I felt a task was much too tough. I got a headache due to this task several times and without external tools I would not have been able to draw the spheric intersections and some of the more complex cube intersections. In my opinion this task is a bit over the top regarding the difficulty level. You need experience with 3D objects to draw the intersections. I think it would be more beneficial to have at least one lesson were you train how to start with some simple intersections, with some more examples.

Beside that, I still se that my lines are not very confident. Most of the time that’s the case when I try to focus to much on the purpose of the task and forget to draw with the shoulder.

2 users agree
9:44 PM, Friday March 10th 2023

Good evening Knight! I see that you have been waiting for a really long time, almost two months, for critique! I want to help you with this. I really appreciate you giving me some notes on what you think about your own mistakes, as it gives me an indication whether you're ready to move on regardless of how the result looks.

Let's start with Organic Arrows. Here, I can definitely see you are struggling a bit with drawing with the shoulder throughout all the curves. This will come with time, believe me. Right now, it affects this exercise quite a bit, and I see where you have scribbled over arrows that didn't work out at all. There are some arrows that do work out though, and in those I see that you understand the assignment. I see it because your arrows taper the further away they get from the viewer, and the distance between two curves crossing over are smaller further away, too. Keep practicing your shoulderwork, and rather than abandoning a curve because you are not satisfied, make sure to stay in the curve all the way regardless of how you feel about it. It will develop your skills more than adding tails and corrective appendages to broken/unfinished/bad arrows.

The light effect in the Texture Analysis and Dissections is important to teach you how to use shapes to explain for your viewer how forms turn in 3D. Since you are aware of this mistake, I'd like to see you redo the crumpled paper gradient, from the darkest to the lightest like the instructions for column 3 says, and just one sausage of textures (choose any that you already did) on the same page.

As for the other aspects of Dissections, they are well done. You try to follow the turns of the sausages and also break the silhouette. Good job!

Now for the Form Intersections. This exercise is hard and I hated it, no kidding. One problem I think affects many is forgetting that the main purpose of the exercise is not correct intersections, but keeping the overlapping shapes mostly the same size and not overstretch them. You manage to do this even though I see you struggled, but I'm missing one page of boxes only, which is what you should've started with before including spheres, pyramids and cylinders. I'd like to ask for a revision of this. Don't spend too much time on the intersections on this one, as I can see that you already did your best on the other sheets for this exercise.

Your Organic Intersections are not nearly as bad as I thought after reading your notes! I think that they look mostly OK, you could definitely exaggerate the cast shadows on the last sheet, but I see that you already did a good job with this on the second sheet. Here, you show in a good way how the cast shadow follows the form of the sausage below. Your sausages are also stacked in a proper way, avoiding parallell sausages on the same "level". The second sheet is clearly your best for this exercise, so keep it as your own reference as you revisit this exercise in future warm-ups.

Next Steps:

  • Texture Analysis with lightning effect. Do this for crumpled paper (third column with grading from darkest to lightest) on one half of the paper, and apply this effect to any sausage you already did on the second half of the paper.

  • One page of Form Intersections with boxes only.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:46 PM, Monday May 8th 2023

Hey, thank you very much! Due to the longer wait time I already started with the next level, but a bit slower, since I still hoped for some feedback.

I just want to be sure on one point:

"Do this for crumpled paper (third column with grading from darkest to lightest)", was my third column not okay? Since during the texture analysis I tried to go from dark to less dark. My result looked kinda similar to those of other people, thus I wonder why I should also redo the 3 column.

The rest is so far clear for me.

Just one correction.... I just confused the "form intersections" with "organic intersections" in my notes. The organic intersections were fine and I had a lot of fun with them. I had problem with the form intersection thus my comment should also make more sense.

FYI: I will take the “Organic Arrows” as a regular exercise/warm up.

6:07 PM, Thursday June 1st 2023

Just made the requested updates.

https://imgur.com/a/btwPBIy

12:45 PM, Tuesday June 20th 2023

Hi Knight!

I noticed now that I expressed myself a bit unclear. Your texture analysis was good in the third column; what I meant is that the cast shadow effect could have been applied more strongly in the Dissections. I should have chosen the Dissections option in the Next Steps rather than the confusing Texture Analysis.

I will mark this lesson as complete since somehow, you deduced what I wanted to see and made it! Your complementary sausage is well done, showing the difference in cast shadows as the form turns. Have a great day!

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.
8:34 PM, Tuesday June 20th 2023

Thank you very much :D

But it was fine to make the texture analysis also again, It was a quick task and still helpfull.

The form intersections on the other side, just grilled my brain again xD

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