I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.
You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.
Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.
Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise some of your forms are getting a bit too complex or too simple to the point they're nearly ellipses. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift 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.
In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself (more so in your dissections). 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. It does seem like you're largely on the right track but you're explicitly trying to capture a lot of detail rather than simplifying shadows and implying information via those shadows.
Moving into the Form Intersections section your forms are looking solid and like they belong in a single cohesive space, good work. In regards to the intersections themselves it seems like you're on the right track, but if you (like most people) feel like you may not fully grasp how to apply them just yet don't stress too much. 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.
While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. I'd like you to draw through all of your forms when attempting this exercise again in the future, it will help reinforce your understanding of the 3D space you're creating. At times your shadows are hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to another surface believably. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.
Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move 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.
I'm thinking of dedicating half my learning time towards getting milage in the previous exercises as I move throughout lesson 3. (this will not affect my 50% rule)
Is this a bad idea on my part and should I just carry on as normal (working my way throught he lessons)
While I wouldn't say it's a bad idea, I would say that it stems from something that I generally don't advise - and that is making arbitrary changes to the way we recommend going through the course. This course is full of firm recommendations on how it should be used, from the incorporation of warmups to our regular routine to ensure we continue getting that mileage, to including ample time for "play" to avoid hyperfixating on short term gains over the long term ones that actually matter, down to a vast amount of mileage in general designed to help push the concepts the course teaches from the conscious, intentional choices you make at every step (for the work you do in this course), into your subconscious instincts that can be leveraged outside of the course.
I get it. Students are trained by traditional academics to think that they're always supposed to do more, to better fit things to their situations. But if you're doing it because you feel you're not doing enough, if you're doing it because of the anxiety that expectation of having to do more than what is assigned causes in you, then you're potentially sabotaging your own progress and growth by opting not to go with what is recommended by those designing the course.
Keep this in mind - Drawabox is a course that, yes, develops your spatial reasoning skills. But more than that, it is a course that teaches you how to develop your own spatial reasoning skills, by teaching you different kinds of exercises to work towards that, and exposing you to different problems. Reaching the end of the course does is not where your growth stops - it's simply where you have enough understanding of what you were doing while going through the course to decide on how to apply what you've learned yourself.
Students have a hard enough time just sticking to the instructions as they are - if you can do that much, then you have nothing to worry about.
Okay thank you :)
This is a remarkable little pen. I'm especially fond of this one for sketching and playing around with, and it's what I used for the notorious "Mr. Monkey Business" video from Lesson 0. It's incredibly difficult to draw with (especially at first) due to how much your stroke varies based on how much pressure you apply, and how you use it - but at the same time despite this frustration, it's also incredibly fun.
Moreover, due to the challenge of its use, it teaches you a lot about the nuances of one's stroke. These are the kinds of skills that one can carry over to standard felt tip pens, as well as to digital media. Really great for doodling and just enjoying yourself.
I would not recommend this for Drawabox - we use brush pens for filling in shadow shapes, and you do not need a pen this fancy for that. If you do purchase it, save it for drawing outside of the course.
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