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3:28 PM, Monday August 3rd 2020

So looking at your drawings here, there's improvement and growth in some areas, and a bit of a backslide in others. What stands out to me most is that where in your last round of revisions, there was a much greater focus on putting your marks down confidently (like with this raccoon), whereas this time around you've gone back to being hesitant and almost sketchy with your lines. Notice how the lines in this one appear quite faint, and you end up with a lot of gaps. Throughout most of your drawings you also end up with a lot of repeated linework where you've automatically reinforced lines repeatedly by reflex - not applying the ghosting method, not planning and preparing before each and every mark, and executing with a single stroke.

Out of the lot, this deer is definitely the strongest, though you definitely should be more careful in capturing the entire drawing, not letting it get cut off along the bottom (unless the legs actually did get cut off in the drawing itself).

In the deer, you're also making somewhat better use of the sausage method - in the other drawings you're more inconsistent in its use, drifting to forms that are not 'simple sausages' (as explained back in lesson 2 and in this diagram). This method is really specific - it's not just about chaining any arbitrary forms together, sticking to simple sausages helps maintain a solid structure that at the same time establishes a sense of flow and gesture. Once in place, you can them add bulk wherever necessary by adding additional forms as shown here.

Another issue that stood out to me that was what I pointed out in the top right of these notes I gave you last time, about hard corners on your additional forms. We can see these present in this drawing - they give the impression that the mass is somehow buttressing against some other form, but there is no reasonable mass there for it to be wrapping against.

Conversely, if we look at the deer again, we can see a similar "sharp corner" for the mass along its back, but it is much more obviously because of how that mass is right up against the thigh muscles and the neck. It's still not perfect, but at least here there's a good reason for that mass to behave in such a way.

Now, last of all, you appear to have completely ignored one of the restrictions I gave you for these revisions. When assigning them, I stated:

Do not employ any contour lines that rest on the surface of a single form (like the komodo dragon's tail). You are absolutely allowed and encouraged to include contour lines that define the connection between different forms, however.

You have continued to use countless contour lines that sit along the surface of a single form throughout these drawings. As I mentioned, the ones that define the connections between different forms are perfectly fine, but you've got plenty of additional contour lines that you've drawn on your additional masses, on the deer's antlers, on the ears of the last drawing, and so on. This tells me that you did not read my critique all that closely, or that if you did, you didn't ensure that you were aware of what was being asked of you on the next day, or the day after that.

At the end of the day, the main issue that you're encountering is that you're having trouble following the instructions that are given to you. This is as normal as anything else, but understanding what your primary hurdle is, is a critical part of learning to get beyond it.

I'm going to assign additional pages once again, and I will continue to do so if you don't adhere to what I ask.

Next Steps:

4 more animal drawings, and again:

  • Don't use any contour lines that don't define the connection between different forms.

  • Don't sketch. We are not experimenting on the page, we are planning and preparing every individual stroke. In the previous submission where you primarily drew along with demos, your linework was much more confident, and there weren't so many repeated strokes and gaps. Note the fact that when drawing a lot of the contour lines that you weren't supposed to include, you tended to draw them without much thought or planning as to how they'd wrap around the underlying forms. You're leaning more on drawing rather than thinking through the spatial problems you're trying to solve.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:41 AM, Saturday September 19th 2020

Ok took some time off (Due to personal matters) found some time to continue Lesson 5. Worked with Elodin this week as I was getting pretty frustrated. Needed to try something different.

Latest revisions can be found here.

https://imgur.com/a/FTrjDf0

Also got a new scanner. This goes up to 1200 dpi. Lines look alot clearer. Enjoy! Thanks for the C+C.

5:39 PM, Monday September 21st 2020

Alrighty! This is definitely a big move back in the right direction, and I'm especially pleased with the structure of the running baby rhino. All in all I'm pleased with your progress, and have only one minor issue to point out. With the cat's necks, it should be coming down from the entirety of the cranial ball, rather than defining a separate connection to it. This should demonstrate what I mean.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete! It was a bit rough at points, but you've earned your way through. Keep up the good work.

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.
2:43 AM, Tuesday September 22nd 2020

Woo hoo!!!!! Thanks man. I really have Elodin to thank lol. Even my wife saw improvements in my sketches. Her quote, "They don't look so sketchy." lol.

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