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9:11 PM, Saturday August 7th 2021

So you definitely are making progress, but there are still a lot of issues that need to be addressed.

Firstly, take a look what I've drawn on top of your camel. I noticed that you tend to incorporate a lot of sharp corners into your additional masses, but without having them actually exist in response to the structure they're attaching to. If there are no solid, three dimenisonal forms that are pressing up against your form so as to cause that corner, you need to instead achieve a smoother transition. So for example, this diagram shows how instead of the "sausage in a bun" appearance of the top left, you can create a more gradual S curve that doesn't feature any specific corner.

Similarly, make sure that as shown on the top hump for the camel, you only place inward curves where there's actually something pressing up against the structure. Along the top, there's nothing else making contact - so it has to be an inward curve, in order to maintain its structural integrity.

I also pointed out how you were a little sloppy on the head construction - you didn't really build out the muzzle as a solid box with a clear intersection with the cranial ball.

Moving down to your tiger drawing, I noticed that you weren't drawing all your new, additional masses as their own complete, enclosed forms. This form for instance seems to cut off along the right side, where it hits the shoulder. It ends up just being a flat shape. You do try to make it more 3D by adding contour lines, but as a whole this doesn't actually solve the problem we're trying to achieve here.

In general, you're definitely piling on way too many contour lines here, and it's actually something students often try to do when they aren't confident about how the silhouettes of their additional masses come out. They'll try to "fix" the mistakes by adding contour lines - but in doing so, they're avoiding facing the issues head-on, in favour of trying to make the individual drawing look better. Mistakes and bad drawings are not a bad thing - they show us what we need to work on. So, when it comes to these additional masses, I strongly recommend leaving the contour lines out altogether.

As a whole, I think you may want to go back and review my original feedback and the diagrams I provided previously a little more closely. Looking at your work here, as well as the fact that you came back with revisions in 5 days (note that I encouraged you not to work on more than one drawing in a given day, but you've got 7 drawings here). The overall impression I'm getting here is that you could definitely be putting more time in, in general - to go through the critique (rereading it a few times over the course of a few days to let it really sink in), observing your references consistently and constantly, and in thinking through every single mark you put down on the page.

I'm going to ask that you do the 5 pages of revisions again - but that you not submit anything for 10 days.

Next Steps:

Please redo the 5 pages of revisions, as explained at the end of my feedback.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:34 PM, Thursday August 19th 2021

Hello, thank you for the feedback. Here are the revisions: https://imgur.com/a/Ohcu34h

I practiced wrapping masses in isolation, but it was mostly from a side view, so once I tried full drawing of the animals, I had some trouble with wrapping around forms that are in perspective.

I especially had trouble with the first tiger drawing, where the front part is slightly turned towards the viewer.

Similarly, I had trouble with the hind leg of the otter, which is foreshortened and partly covered by the bulk of the butt part of the body.

11:22 PM, Thursday August 19th 2021

These are definitely improved, and I can see your confidence with the material improve as you move through the drawings.

One thing I wanted to point out though is how you added the feathers to the bird's wing at the end. It's best to first view the basic wing construction as a solid mass, and then to add feathers on top of it, as shown here.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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