Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids
4:01 AM, Saturday February 26th 2022
I liked doing these insects, bugs, etc. Please critique this.
Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 4 homework.
Organic Forms with Contours
-You are doing a good job sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages and avoiding any pinching or swelling throughout their length. The contours are drawn with a good deal of confidence which is great, I can see that you are aware of the degree shifts but they need more work, on some of them the degree seems consistent. Remember that contour lines are a useful tool to make our forms more tridimensional, but they can also work against us. The best strategy is to use them very sparingly, and use the ghosting method to think about each mark's purpose and how you are going to achieve it best..
Insect Constructions
–I can see that you are working your way up from dead simple to complex, and you are respecting the solidity of each stage. The first thing I want to call out is that you seem to be limiting yourself to the initial masses (head, thorax, abdomen) and whenever you build on top of them you do it very timidly. Remember that those initial masses are there as building blocks on top of which you will build any further complexity. On some cases you lose the opportunity to break the silhouette, like on this bee’s and this insect’s abdomen . This is something that we went over in lesson 2 dissections, check this section if you need a reminder.
-Now I want to move onto the leg constructions, you are doing a great job sticking to chains of simple sausages, but once you put that initial structure you only left it like that on most cases, when you do add the additional masses you do it very sparingly, which should not be, try to be more bold, this may be hard but it should not impede you from trying your best.
Take a look at this demo which shows my point more clearly, you can also see this principle in action in this dog leg demo. One thing that can help is to try to think about how each additional form would exist in 3D space by itself. Then as it presses against the existing structure its silhouette starts to get more complex, you can see this process exemplified here
-You can see more concrete examples of these principles on the informal demos page, I want you to look at the shrimp demo and the lobster demo, if you can draw along them it’d be very helpful.
-Another issue is that in some cases your line weights seem to be pretty thick, keep in mind that if you end up making them too thick you will take the solidity of your forms away and turn your drawing into mere graphic shapes. I think this is something I raised in the critique for your lesson 3, but I want to remind you that lineweight should only be added on the specific part where forms overlap, this is another technique that you should use very sparingly, it's more effective when we minimize its use, concentrating it instead on doing a specific task. You can see it better on this image which shows how to apply lineweight in the context of a plant.
Okay, I think you can work on these issues as you move on, the main thing you want to take from this is that you should be very careful when adding any additional mark or mass, some of those marks can make our form feel more solid but they can also work against us very easily. Anyway I’ll go ahead and mark this as complete
Next Steps:
Lesson 5
Thanks for noticing the form shadows, I honestly forget that they weren't cast shadows when doing that drawing & some other which had shining pattern(big highlights) on their body.
I do still need to work on the lineweight. While I understood how it is supposed to be, applying it is a lot tougher than I thought. I'll put more effort on it.
Thanks again for the feedback, I'll work on lineweight & also having more additional mases on legs(along with other stuff like silhouette).
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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