2:23 PM, Tuesday March 23rd 2021
Hi Damian1Ilin, I've checked your submission,
Starting out by your organic sausages, It looks like you've been experimenting with them, which is good, though you are getting far from the characteristics of the average sausage, remember to keep them as two balls of the same size, that connect with each other through a tube of consistent width. Other than this, is good to see that you are varying the degrees of your contour curves, though remember to give yourself time to ghost them- What we are trying to do here is to create a line that runs across the surface of the sausage, describing it the best we can, so if our curves end up sloppy or just floating inside the sausage, they lose their purpose.
On to your Insect constructions, overall they look solid and 3d, though there are some things that I want to point out.
First of all, as we try to draw 3d forms and constructions on a 2d surface, it is pretty easy to make mistakes that compromise the solidity of our forms. That's why we have to be control the kind of lines that we do through some rules.
A very important rule to maintain the solidity of our 3d forms is to never attempt to alter o redraw the silhouette of our forms, this can be done both by cutting back onto it or extending it. I can see that you are falling into this mistakes in quite a lot of your insects, most times you are drawing forms that just wrap all around your original forms, leaving them floating in the middle. The reason why this isn't good is simple, when you try to change a 3d form, through its 2d shape (silhouette), you are not changing also the form, you are just breaking the connection between them, compromising the solidity of your whole construction.
Here is what happens when you cut back into the silhouette of your forms. It flattens the construction, leading to a mixture of 3d forms and 2d shapes- The thing is that, those 2d lines work directly against your constructions and remember the viewer that they are just seeing a 2d drawing.
Instead, what we need to do is to define our forms confidently and then add complexity whit new 3d enclosed forms, then explaining the relation they have with other forms either by adding contour curves like the form intersections or by wrapping around the silhouettes of other (here's an example- But in all cases it's really important to define how the different forms relate to each other.
Here you can see some examples, like in this ant head, or this beetle horn.
Another issue related to this is that I'm seeing that you start out your constructions with a very faint line and then adding more line weight on future phases of the construction, almost like you want to get rid of your initial forms. You should be drawing your initial forms with confidence and thinking about their solidity and then respect them through the whole construction, if you don't, you'll fall in the same mistake I've already pointed you out. Also, remember that line weight is a tool that explains, in a localized way, how different forms relate to each other, so if you just add it to a whole construction, it just loses it's purpose.
A thing that I would advice to do is to draw way bigger, in future lessons try fitting one construction in one page- This will make using your whole shoulder easier, plus it will also be easier for your brain to engage on spatial problems if the drawings are bigger!
I have to compliment on striving to use the sausage method and also exploring on how to build up more bulk on them, though I wanna show you another way in which you will be able to do it! We can take the same principle that we talked about adding more complexity by introducing new forms, and wrapping them around the sausages, like here. By these method we can keep the flow of the sausages, but also give them more bulk and solidity, check this ant leg demo as well as this dog leg (since this method will be used on the next lesson!)
Before I mark this lesson as completed, I wanna ask for just 1 page of revision- I want you to focus on drawing just one big construction of a insect of your choice (you can do one that you've already done) while also applying all the concepts that we've discussed on this critique.
Next Steps:
Concepts to take into account:
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Draw big, just one construction on the page.
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Respect the solidity of your initial forms, without cutting back into them or trying to extend them.
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Try applying the new sausage method.
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Use the same amount of line weight for the whole construction, using line weight only in localized areas to show overlap.