Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

7:26 PM, Thursday April 29th 2021

Dropbox - Lesson 2 - Simplify your life

Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qmhp1q1c981vb6q/AADGAIjU_suSLt9sEOjVK0i2a?dl=0

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I struggled with the form intersections. The dissections and texture analyses were super time consuming but I think I learned a lot from these excercises.

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7:26 PM, Saturday May 1st 2021

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 with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. 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. This is a good exercise to experiment with line weight in but when applying it we want to make sure we do subtly to key areas like overlaps to give clarity to our forms. Here are some things to look out for when applying line weight, and here are some reminders on how to apply it subtly. 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 your forms are getting a bit too complex. 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. Some of your line work here shows a lack of confidence, remember that our first priority is that we want all of our linework/ellipses/contours to be drawn confidently and mileage will improve our accuracy. 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. 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.

  • If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, you're on the right track but right now 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. Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

  • 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, addressing the issues in the previous organic form section will help you here as well. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. 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.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise

  • 1 page of the arrows exercise

Remember to draw confidently.

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

Please re-read and complete:

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise

  • 1 page of the arrows exercise

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
6:34 AM, Sunday May 2nd 2021

Hi Tofu.

Thanks for the feedback.

I also noticed that the arrows did not really look that good. In the submission you critiqued I tried to add line weight in specific areas and I think this actually made it worse and more wobbly-looking.

Do you have any advice on how to prevent that?

I did two extra pages of each exercise. For the arrows, I refrained from adding extra line weight.

I'm still struggling with decreasing line weight for the part of the arrow that is further away.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j8u6kkygyn5blt6/AAA1NOZr5GAsTZqSQckT4t3ia?dl=0

12:07 AM, Monday May 3rd 2021

While these are an improvement you still want to work on your line confidence, you're getting quite a bit of wobbling occurring still.

For line weight it will make it look a bit messier if applied poorly, but the only way to improve is by making sure you keep your line work confident and building up mileage. Practicing the super imposed lines exercise from lesson 1 in your warm ups will help here as well.

When drawing organic forms with contours make sure you only draw the tiny ellipse the end if that end is facing us and remember to draw through every ellipse including these tiny ones.

I'll be moving you on to the next lesson with the hope that you continue to work on your line confidence.

Good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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