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Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

10:05 PM, Thursday July 23rd 2020

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I had to take a break from drawabox. It looks like my last submission was from three months ago, though the break itself probably lasted around a month-and-a-half. Most of the work I did in this lesson was from before that break; only the very last page of the very last exercise was done in July. But it's certainly possible that my extended break caused my drawing intuition to atrophy, and I won't be too upset if this means that I have to do some of these lessons again.

The first two exercises were quite relaxing. They were straightforward and abstract, and the simplicity of them kept me from obsessing over them too much. I will admit, though, that I struggled with the perspective with the organic forms. The ellipses didn't seem to help me at all: it felt like I was just filling a blob with ovals, and I really struggled to see a 3D shape with them. The contour lines did help, but only after the fact. That is, when I drew the sausage outlines, I didn't have an idea for how they sat in 3D space: I just saw a blob. It wasn't until I started drawing the contour lines that my brain actually came up with the 3D picture. I don't know if this is a problem or not, since Uncomfortable said that he can't form images in his mind, and this sounds like the sort of thing that photographic memory would be for. But I have found that the biggest hurdle I have to jump over in my own drawings is figuring out where things are placed, and what they look like when they're placed a certain way, and that feels related with the problem I had here.

The texture analysis exercise I think took me a week to do. For each study, mapping the texture to the copy square on the left took like, an hour, and extending that texture in a gradient on the right square took like, an hour as well. And I really don't like any of the results: none of them looked like the texture they were trying to replicate to me, and I was frustrated with the progress the whole time. One thing that I do like about how I did this exercise, though, is the actual gradient. It really looks to me like it's going from light to dark with each texture ... even if the texture itself I feel is awkward. (Also, oops, I did one of my own textures before doing the crumpled paper texture because I didn't read the instructions carefully enough. My bad: I will try to be more thorough in the future.)

The dissections exercise I think took me two weeks to do, if not more. That one was rough. Getting a list of interesting textures I wanted to assess was a task in and of itself, and finding pictures I liked for each texture from the internet was a challenge as well. Some of the results I'm really pleased with. I think the sea foam texture turned out well. The wood planks was another one that I thought was pretty great right off the bat. The banana was pretty nice too, I think. Others were a mess, though. The tree bark looks more like a pile of woodchips, the whipped cream was super flat, which kind of contradicts the main theme of this lesson, and anything with long strands (see: shredded parmesan or goat hair) ended up looking like the surface of an eldritch abomination. And each texture took me like, 20-40 minutes to work out, so this exercise was really tedious.

The form intersections hurt my brain. I thought I would do alright at it, since I'm a mathematician and I have a pretty solid understanding of geometry. But nnnope! I had absolutely no idea what was going on. (I'm also inconsistent with my foreshortening; definitely need to work on that.) I feel like my choices with where the intersections went were about 80% correct in the end, but my goodness, that took some very serious brain power.

The organic intersections exercise was a bit of fun, but it also hurt my brain. This exercise really took my insecurities with the organic forms exercise and put a magnifying glass to them. I had to be aware of how my sausages were sitting in 3D space, because they were interacting with the sausages that I'd already drawn. Figuring out the right position for the initial outlines was the hardest part. I think I did alright in the end, but I do see some stiffness in the shapes I drew, and it was mostly due to a lack of confidence in where the sausages were supposed to go. Also: you might notice that the second page of this exercise has some rougher lines. This might be because after taking such a long break, I ended up losing my ability to draw confident lines. But it might also be because I was focusing on different parts of the exercise on the second page, like coming up with appropriate object placement. I also went over the visible lines two or three times to emphasize that they're in front. I tried to keep those lines smooth and confident by drawing faster and from the shoulder, but the imperfect overlap was bound to happen. Still, I think I like the way the second page turned out more.

Anyway, that's my own analysis complete. I'm looking forward to hearing the official critique, and the actionable next step, and hopefully I won't need to take another break this long in the future.

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7:26 PM, Friday July 24th 2020

I have to start this critique by simply saying that while some students do write analyses of their work, when giving critiques we ignore it outright (aside from doing our best to skim and identify any questions that may be asked). This is both for the sake of timeliness, as we have many critiques to get to, as well as to avoid having a student's own assessment contaminate the feedback we deliver. After all, if a student calls out an issue, it's inevitable that we'll hesitate in calling it out ourselves, since the student is already aware. But perhaps their awareness is more limited than what we might wish to explain. From a psychological standpoint, giving feedback without concern for the student's own views allows that feedback to be more fully formed.

Starting with your arrows, you're doing a great job of having these flow smoothly and fluidly through space. One thing that did catch my eye however was that you don't appear to be applying foreshortening in a consistent manner to the gaps between the zigzagging sections (that is, the negative space). Foreshortening applies to all elements existing in 3D space, causing the size of objects themselves to shrink as we look farther away, as well as the distances between them as shown here. In addition to this, you could stand to exaggerate the foreshortening overall, making the end of the arrow closer to the viewer much larger.

Your work on the organic forms with contour lines is largely well done. You've done a good job of sticking to forms that adhere fairly closely to the characteristics of simple sausages, and you've done a good job of drawing your contour lines with confidence, ensuring that they wrap around the rounded surfaces of the sausages rather than appearing as though they float loosely in space. One thing to keep in mind however is that it appears you're maintaining a consistent degree for each contour line over the full length of the forms. 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.

Continuing onto your texture analyses, you're making several big steps in the right direction here, first and foremost with your tendency to focus on clear shadow shapes rather than outlining your textural forms fully. I do still see the use of some lines, and you do end up relying more on outlining textural forms (somewhat) in your third row, but overall you're showing a clear focus on thinking about how your forms cast shadows on their surroundings, and how you can control those shadow shapes and their densities/weight to capture the overall transition from dark to light. In order to help you avoid using lines at all, I recommend that you get in the habit of drawing every mark for textures as shown here - that is, in a two step process that first outlines your intended shadow shape, then fills it in. This will help you avoid the trap of just drawing one-off lines.

Continuing onto your dissections, you've experimented with a lot of different surface textures, applying a variety of approaches, which is great to see. I am however seeing a greater tendency to outline your textural forms here. Be sure to give these notes a read, as they explain the issue in depth.

Continuing onto your form intersections, there are a couple issues in your linework but overall you've done a decent job of drawing these forms such that they feel cohesive and consistent within the same space. The issues pertain specifically to how you approach adding line weight. As mentioned in the video, line weight should not be applied to the entirety of your lines - only to specific areas where overlaps need to be clarified. We add line weight to a specific section, and then blend it back into the weight of the original line through the natural tapering that comes from executing that mark with confidence.

You've got a good start with the intersection lines - that's not to say there isn't room for improvement, but I by no means expect students to tackle this stuff without considerable difficulty. At its core, it is about introducing students to thinking about how the forms they draw relate to one another in 3D space, and how those relationships can be defined. This is something we'll continue to explore at length throughout the rest of this course.

Lastly, your organic intersections are coming along well. You're establishing how these forms interact with one another in 3D space, rather than as a series of flat shapes stacked on a flat page. Just watch out for how in that first page, you didn't cast any shadows upon the ground. You improved upon this in the second page.

All in all you're making good progress. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:02 PM, Friday July 24th 2020

Thanks for the critique. I guess it never occurred to me with the organic forms that it was okay to indicate that both sides were facing the viewer by having the contours change change concavity.

As for your comment on outlining with textures, I guess I'm a little bit confused. I tried to focus on applying shadows rather than drawing in the texture, but there were many textures where it seemed to me like the outlines were the shadows, like when there's a crease in the skin to accommodate for a bump or wart or what-have-you, or when a lock of hair sits above a more shaded background of hair. I really struggled with this aspect of the texture analysis, because it did feel like I was outlining, but I didn't know what else to do. If/when I choose to revisit these exercises in warm-ups in the future, what should I do differently to communicate the presence of cast shadows instead?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to lesson 3. And I understand the reason for avoiding reading personal analyses. I feel like writing them helps me learn personally, but I do want fresh eyes to see my exercises too.

9:23 PM, Friday July 24th 2020

There are plenty of cases where the shadows get deep and broad enough that they do behave like outlines, but the key difference is that they are not lines. They are still shapes. That is where the two-step process for mark making comes in, because it allows us to purposefully draw marks that are shapes, not just a single mark with varying weight.

This will inevitably take a good deal of practice and time to get the hang of, and these exercises here are just to serve as an introduction to the concept. But purposely avoiding simply drawing lines, and instead drawing actual shapes that bear a relationship to the form they are meant to imply, will gradually become more familiar to you.

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