Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals
1:37 AM, Sunday March 6th 2022
I struggle with additional masses and limbs, but as I do the exercise I think I'm improving a bit.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Staring with the organic intersections, you're doing a solid job with laying out the sausages in such a way that they wrap around one another with a believable sense of gravity. However, when it comes to the shadows from which the forms cast upon, i can see some improvements to be made. Your shadows don't quite follow the surfaces upon which they cast correctly, and tend to be minimized, resulting in inconsistencies. Be sure to always keep a consistent light source and cast the shadow regardless of whether they are cast onto another sausage or the ground itself.
Moving onto the animal constructions, there's a tendency to start with faint lines, then doing a follow up pass with darker marks. This might not seem like a big problem at first glance, but it actually changes how we perceive the elements of our drawing. This leads us to believe these earlier masses to be less like they're solid and 3 dimensional, and more like they're just marks on a page. There are a few cases, for example, on this cantaloupe where you ended up adding individual marks or partial shapes instead of adding each individual mass as it's own self enclosed structure. In that same example, you also drew your initial head mass then proceeded to cut into it thus treating those earlier marks as if though they weren't actually there. There is no clearly defining elements that help the viewer to understand how it is meant to relate to the other 3d elements at play. Thus, it reminds us that we're drawing something flat and two dimensional and reinforces that idea to you as you construct it.
Another point is when drawing out the wings, there's no need to be anatomically accurate here. On the pelican you drew, I noticed you drew out the bone structure and while wings certainly do have bones, It's not something we immediately notice. Remember that what we're trying to do is translate what we see using the constructional principles provided to us. Wings actually do have thickness and volume to them, so be sure to approach them more like this.
When it comes to the additional masses, this is an area where you seem to have a basic understanding of it. Generally speaking, these masses silhouettes change in response to the forms it interacts with. Although there are still a few cases where you're having trouble with this as shown in this bear you drew.
When it comes down to it, the way the silhouette is actually designed matters a lot. It helps to think about how this mass would exist on its own in the void of empty space. Think about a ball of clay existing on its own.
Then as it presses against an existing structure the silhouette of this form gets more complex, inward curves forming where it makes contact. The silhouette is never random of course, always responding to the form that's present as shown in this diagram.
On the ostrich you drew, I noticed you placed a few too many contour curves. Keep in mind that piling a ton of them isn't actually beneficial-they suffer from diminishing returns, so you're not really getting much out of them. Since this problem only comes us once, I won't push this point any further, but in the future be sure to keep yourself from doing that.
Looking into your leg construction, you seem to be employing different strategies for the legs. While not uncommon for students to be conscious about the characteristics of the sausage method, but instead they decide not to adhere to them because the legs they're looking at don't actually look like a chain of sausages. In your case though, It seemed like you were aware but simply strayed a lot. The sausage method as a base structure allows us to capture the solidity with the gestural nature of legs. Once in place, we can lay in additional masses.
Notice that in this dog's leg demo and this ant leg, includes the forms that sit along within the silhouette because they're the connective tissue that hold together the forms that do impact the silhouette. So try to follow them as closely as you can.
Continuing onto the topic of head construction, Lesson 5 as a ton of different strategies in the informal demos section. Given how the course is developing new more effective ways to construct heads so not all approaches are created equal. As it stands, this tiger head demo and this demo from the informal demos is what's generally most useful. This approach relies on a few key elements:
the the specific pentagonal shape found in the eye sockets, which allows for a nice wedge in which to place the muzzle into as well as the flat area found in the forehead
this focuses heavily on everything fitting together - no arbitrary gaps or floating elements. This allows all the different pieces to feel grounded against one another like a three dimensional puzzle
we also have to be mindful as to how all the marks carve along the surface of this cranial ball, working on the individual strokes instead of using an ellipse for the eye socket.
I will say that there a few elements of this approach in your work but still need to see it applied a bit more directly. So try you best to follow this approach as closely as you can. It might seem like sometimes its not the best fit for certain heads but with a bit of workaround it can be done. Just look at this example of how the most banana headed rhinoceros is done using this approach. Here's another example of a rabbit's head. We're still starting with the same components but get into some unique case driven actions towards the end, especially the extra bulk in the back of the head. Notice how in both of these demos, we start with a smaller cranial mass and slowly work our way toward it in a series of smaller steps rather than a few bigger steps that try to capture everything at once.
In conclusion, while I do feel like there's a good deal to keep in mind here, I also feel like these are things you can work on your own. So I'll be marking this as complete so you can continue onto the next lesson.
Next Steps:
250 cylinder challenge
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