Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

12:32 AM, Monday December 13th 2021

Drawabox Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/8ID5hFZ.jpg

Post with 16 views. Drawabox Lesson 2

I had a lot of trouble with texture during this exercise. It felt as though however much I studied the image, when I drew the texture, it just ended up feeling cartoony and did not have the level of detail that I'd like.

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1:16 AM, Thursday December 16th 2021

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

  • Starting off with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. This is a good exercise to experiment with line weight but when applying it we want to make sure we do subtly to key areas like overlaps to give clarity to our forms. Here are some things to look out for when applying line weight, and here are some reminders on how to apply it subtly. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. Your line work here shows a lack of confidence as well, remember that our first priority is that we want all of our linework/ellipses/contours to be drawn confidently and mileage will improve our accuracy. Speaking of contours you're doing a good job trying to shift the degree of your contours so far, be sure to keep experimenting. 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.

  • In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. You also show that you're drawing from memory rather than giving yourself enough time to focus on your reference. Most of our time when doing exercises like this will be spent observing our reference and looking away for a quick second to add something to our page. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

  • It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. That being said your line confidence could use some work here as well, you have lots of noticable wobbling occurring. Your forms here appear a bit hastily done, it looks like you needed more time planning them before drawing them. Remember that whether our goal is to draw 1 form or 100, we want to be giving each line the same amount of time planning/ghosting before drawing it.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you show that you need a bit more time becoming comfortable with thinking of how these forms interact in 3D space and how they'd wrap around one another. Addressing issues brought up in the previous organic form section will help you here as well. When drawing your shadows you don't push them far enough to cast, instead they mostly hug the form creating them, try pushing them further. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise

  • 1 page of the form intersections exercise

  • 1 page of the organic intersections exercise

Take your time, focus on drawing smooth confident lines. This was an issue that I brought up in your box challenge critique as well.

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

Please re-read and complete:

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise

  • 1 page of the form intersections exercise

  • 1 page of the organic intersections exercise

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:44 PM, Monday April 11th 2022

Hey, really sorry for the late redos - it's just been a crazy few months. Anyway, here they are, and thank you in advance.

https://imgur.com/a/3LbHlkf

2:58 AM, Tuesday April 12th 2022

No worries, life happens.

These are definitely an improvement overall. I think at this point it's mostly a case of needing more mileage so I'll be marking your submission complete.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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