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.
Your arrows are off to a good start, they're flowing smoothly and confidently. There are a few spots here and there that aren't always consistent in terms of width but with more mileage this will improve. The only thing I really have to suggest for you here is to try and experiment with foreshortening more, as you can see here we can utilize it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between the arrow's curves to create stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space.
You're doing a good job of keeping your organic forms with contours simple, people tend to get a bit too complex when they reach this exercise. The thing that stands out to me in this exercise is that your linework loses a bit of confidence, you have some wobbling occurring in your ellipses/forms and your curves get a bit stiff. Remember that confidence is our first priority and that accuracy will improve with more mileage. Keep experimenting with shifting the degree of your contours as well, you're off to a good start. 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. 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.
If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, you're on the right track but 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 mostly solid and like they belong in a single cohesive 3D space, you still struggle with the back corner of your boxes at times but you're definitely becoming more consistent.
This is a solid attempt at the organic intersections exercise. Your forms do get a bit complex which flattens them out in places, and they could wrap around one another a bit more, currently they lean heavily towards the viewer. I'm glad you're pushing your shadows far enough that they cast rather than just hugging the form creating them. Overall you're on the right track here, just need a bit more experience with the concept to become more comfortable with it, keep experimenting in your warm ups with form piles and lighting positions.
This was a really solid submission, you have some things to work on but I have no doubt you'll improve with more mileage from your warm ups. 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:
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
