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3:54 PM, Wednesday July 28th 2021

Overall, this is looking a lot better. Where before, I saw you approaching the exercises in the wrong direction, here I believe that you are definitely on the right track. That isn't to say that there aren't any issues with the new version, but I will list the issues that I see later.

First though, I want to remind you not to repeat exercises until they are "good enough". This goes against the grinding rules as stated in lesson 0. Before I saw a generally incorrect approach to things, so I suggested a redo, partially because the exercises weren't achieving their goals and partially because I was concerned you would do all of the exercises in a similar fashion (which would require redoing the entire lesson). However, here I believe the issues will be fixed mostly with practice, and it's against grinding rules to redo exercises to improve things that are improved with practice. So I recommend you keep these exercises to submit for (I assume) official critique, and move on to the other exercises in this lesson.

All of that said, let me briefly talk about the issues I see in these exercises.

Arrows

Your second page of arrows is definitely stronger than your first. I will talk about the issues in the second page only.

  • Your line work is stiff in a few places in the arrows. Drawing curves is definitely hard, just try to not focus on where the curve is going while drawing it, and leave accuracy to the previous stages of the ghosting method.

  • I see a few places where the arrow is pinching or bulging. This will improve with practice, but again, invest more in the preparation stage of the ghosting method, make sure you can "see" a correct second line before trying to draw it.

  • Try to also compress the negative space in the arrows when the arrow is going back into the distance.

Organic Forms

  • I definitely get a sense that you are trying to capture the correct shape of simple sausage forms, and a few do have that characteristic. Of the ones that don't, the major issues that stand out to me are pointed ends (both in that a regular ball wouldn't fit in the ends, and some that actually have corners in the ends), a few that are pinching in the middle where they bend, and a few that have two ends that are not the same size.

  • Your contour curves are not overshooting, curving slightly around the other side of the form. I've linked the part of the common mistakes talking about this here.

  • You are not varying the degrees of your contour ellipses or contour curves. This is also listed as a common mistake, here.

  • Remember that the contour ellipse at the end is still a contour ellipse, this means that it should be close to the degree of the ellipse/curve next to it.

So, a major improvement. I want to restate that you should move on to the next exercises in the lesson, and submit these exercises for critique after you are done the whole lesson. If revisions are necessary, do them at that point. But do not redo these exercises based on my critique above, that gets too much into grinding.

9:11 AM, Tuesday August 3rd 2021

Thanks for the remarks. I noted them done for when I'll draw the ones I'll submit officially. I've tried to do the last 2 organic intersection and organics forms.

https://imgur.com/gallery/0NK3kEL

Could you please make some comment? I still have trouble to marks where forms intersects...

2:22 AM, Thursday August 5th 2021

Don't have too much time right now but I'll try to leave some helpful critique here:

Regarding the form intersections, it's perfectly normal to not understand them at this stage, the intersections are not really the point of the exercise (at least right now, they're more important when you do them as part of lesson 6). Just try to think about them, and not worry too much about getting them correct. The goal of this exercise is rather to get the forms to exist believably together, for the most part I think you do this pretty well, though watch your line work, it does get a bit wobbly at places.

For organic intersections, it does seem like you're having some trouble wrapping the forms around each other. Use the contour lines as guidelines to tell you where the bottom edge of the form on top should go, it should follow pretty closely to the contour line (until the bottom half anyways). Your cast shadows right now are too close to the form itself, it's almost as if they're extra thick line weight. Try to push them out more, make them a bit further away from the form itself. Putting the light source at the top left or top right can help with this.

Hope this helps!

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Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

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