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8:35 AM, Monday December 14th 2020
Hi there, I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making good progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson. Below I'll be listing some things that will hopefully help you in your future attempts at these exercises.
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Your arrows are off to an alright start but I have 2 quick notes for you here. The first is you don't always overlap your lines as much as you should and it results in some sections of your arrows looking flat as shown here. I'd also like you to experiment more with foreshortening in the future, by utilizing it in the arrow itself as well as the space between your arrow's curves you'll really sell the illusion of your arrows moving through 3D space, for more info on this idea check here.
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In the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. Remember that our goal right now is to create forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid pinching, bloating, or stretching along it's length, more info on this idea here. I'd also like you to experiment with shifting the degree of your contours more. 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.
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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. 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.
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If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, right now 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. Your forms are looking solid and you clearly put effort into filling your pages, good job.
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For the organic intersections however I'd argue that you should fill your page less. Your form piles aren't wrapping around one another or making as much sense as they could so keeping it simple will help build up your understanding. Your shadows also aren't behaving consistently so I'd suggest pushing your light source to the top left or right corner instead of directly above your forms. This is a good exercise to build up your understanding of 3D space with these organic forms, as well as get some experience with basic lighting and shadow so make sure you practice it in your warm ups.
Overall this was a solid submission, you have some things to work on but I believe you'll improve with mileage. With that said I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Practice previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
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