Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

4:51 PM, Thursday February 24th 2022

Drawabox lesson 2 (Tomako) - Album on Imgur

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Hello, finally have finished the lesson, it took me a while to began working on textures (I kind of dreaded them) but when i started it was hard and new, but also very interesting. The dissection exercise took ages to complete (but it was the most interesting and esthetically appealing to me)

I have an issue with the organic forms exercise (Ive lose them basically, so those pages are from my daily warm-ups and there is no division between contour ellipses and curves, as i did 2 of ones and 2 of another each day) And the lines you may find on ellipses and curves, are just the major axis of them (which i drew AFTER i had finished with the forms, to make the analysis of them and see how they aligned to the minor axis (basically i was watching for the degree part of it, cause i have found that i struggle with it a lot)) hope those pages will count, and sorry :(

In the dissection exercise there are a lot of notes on the page, they are for analysis and done after i had finished with the textures, so i can get more knowledge and identify patterns easier

Intersections exercise was very hard to do, especially the latter part (intersections themselves, I did struggle a lot, and probably messed up with all of them) but after finishing the lesson 2, i reread the instructions for the fifth time and something has clicked in my mind and i got the idea (Will practice in the warm-up parts)

That is all, thank you kindly.

I would appreciate any feedback, especially with textures and intersections, thanks one more time :)

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7:06 PM, Sunday February 27th 2022

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. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. 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. Great use of foreshortening so far, 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 arrow moving through 3D space as you can see demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise most your forms are looking great but a few 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. 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 (mostly your dissecitons) you're focusing largely on outlines, form shadows 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. I will quickly note these criticisms don't apply to every texture you've drawn here, as mentioned your analysis are on the right track as is your corn dissection. These criticisms apply more to attempts such as your tentacle texture which is focused more on the outlines of the suckers and form shadow or your leaf texture where you focus on negative space.

  • It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to 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. 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 show that you need a bit more time becoming comfortable with thinking of how these forms interact in 3D space and how they'd wrap around one another. I recommend trying to stack your forms perpendicularly rather than trying to keep them headed in the same direction to help make wrapping them around one another a smoother task. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When trying this exercise again I'd like you to draw through all of your forms, it helps reinforce our understanding of 3D space much like when we drew through our boxes. When drawing your shadows you don't always push them far enough to cast, instead they mostly hug the form creating them, try pushing them further. 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.

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 moving you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Keep practicing previous exercise as warm ups.

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:16 PM, Monday February 28th 2022

Thank you very much, it is very helpful

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A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

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