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8:07 PM, Thursday August 6th 2020

Before we get started, I did notice that your lines tend to be rather thick, which does have a tendency of making things a lot clumsier. This begs the question - what kind of pen (brand/size) are you using? Ideally students should use a 0.5 fineliner, but we allow anywhere between 0.4-0.6. Anything outside of that range tends to become more of an issue.

Starting with your arrows, most of these are looking pretty good. They flow quite nicely through space, with a strong sense of motion and movement. The one in the top left does an especially good job of showing how foreshortening applies to not only the positive space of the arrow itself, but also to the negative space, the gaps between the zigzagging sections. This is not something demonstrated quite as well in other arrows however, where you more often than not tend to keep the spacing roughly consistent, rather than having it compress as it moves farther back in space.

Moving onto your organic forms with contour lines, you've done a good job of largely sticking with sausages that conform to the characteristics outlined in the instructions. You're also doing a good job of drawing the contour lines with confidence, maintaining their alignment and keeping them wrapped around the rounded surface of the form properly. There's just one main issue that stands out. The way in which you're drawing the degree of your contour lines generally suggests that you're picking those degrees at random.

The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

Continuing onto the texture analyses, you've largely done a good job with these. I can see that there's two pages, though only the first one appears to be complete (and definitely demonstrates a greater understanding of the material) so I'll limit my critique to that. As a whole you appear to be understanding that your textures are made up of clearly designed shadow shapes, and that we can control the density of our textures through the use of these shadow shapes. You've done a good job of creating a smooth transition from pure black to pure white using this tool, and in the first and third rows the shadow shapes you're drawing clearly imply the specific textural forms present along the surface of the object you're studying. For the second however - the orange skin - you appear to be more focused on the shapes themselves as a pattern, not necessarily considering how each one is the result if a particular bump or divet. Definitely something to keep in mind - every shadow shape is the result of some physical aspect of the surface. Always keep that in mind and ask yourself questions about those textural forms while drawing the shadows they cast.

Now, moving onto your dissections, while you're still showing a lot of patience and care in drawing these, I think you've put a lot less time into actually studying your references when drawing these than you had with the texture analyses. Specifically you've fallen into the trap of relying more on what you remember of the textures - perhaps studying them for a while first, then spending long periods of time just drawing, as explained here. Some of your textures are still quite nice and carry a good deal of subtlety and variation, like your scales texture, but many are highly oversimplified.

On top of that, you also become more susceptible to outlining your textural forms, rather than focusing on shadow shapes only, as explained in these notes.

Now, that's all pretty normal - both these texture exercises are largely meant to just expose students to thinking about how to tackle something new, something they don't have prior experience with. Furthermore, you've already shown yourself to be capable of thinking about textural forms and cast shadows - you just need to apply the same processes to your dissections.

Moving onto your form intersections, you're doing a pretty good job of drawing the forms such that they feel cohesive and consistent within the same space. Most of your pages aren't entirely filled - a couple are, but there's a lot of free space on the other two. At the end of the day, it's a better use of space to add more forms and keep pushing the exercise than to take up that valuable space with notes and observations. You can always do those separately if they are important to you.

It's good to see that you're making a concerted effort with the intersections themselves - like the texture, this is something we're exposing students to for the first time, a challenge that is expected to be beyond them at this point, just so they can start thinking about how these forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how those relationships can be defined. One suggestion I do have however is not to try and fill in certain parts of your intersections as you've done on this page with hatching. It serves to make things more visually confusing, rather than the opposite.

Lastly, your organic intersections are mostly coming along pretty well. The first two pages are looking good, in that they establish how those forms interact with one another in three dimensions, where one form can be in front in one area and behind in another. You're also conveying a good sense of how gravity is causing them to slump over one another.

Your third page is decently done as well, although that grouping of sausages towards the bottom (which sit underneath the big one) would probably cause the larger one to be propped up more. It seems to me you probably drew these after putting down the larger one, which basically painted you into a corner. You've no way of changing how the larger one would respond to the masses beneath it. For this reason it's best always to pile things on top of one another, rather than below.

Lastly, keep working on how you think about the shadows wrap around the forms beneath them. You're definitely grasping this to a point, but keep exaggerating it, always think about how they're falling on a curved surface that is turning away, bringing that shadow with it.

So! All in all you are showing good progress in all the important areas. My biggest concern really is with your pen. Either you're drawing with a really heavy hand, or you're working with a pen tip that's way too thick. As you move forward into the constructional drawing lessons, a thicker pen can be a lot harder to work with, due to how it makes us a bit clumsy. So again - it'd help to know what kind of pen you're working with, and if it is indeed a thicker one, getting your hands on something within the approved range would be best.

Anyway, 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.
3:40 PM, Monday August 10th 2020

Thank you for how much work you put into my critique. That gives me alot of things I can work on.

I have been using the recomended pen tip size. I definitely feel heavey handed some times (which I feel like is a result of the method I use to execute marks, but I am not completely sure about that).

I don't go over anything twice unless you tell me to, but whenever you say to add line weight, I definitely find it very hard to override my primal competitive brain (and end up cheating myself and trying to improve things). I've been trying to quit this habit. Sometimes with boxes I feel like I am learning a little more though when I add the outer line weight and fix it up a little, it feels like I am realizing where it should be.

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Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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