Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals

7:04 PM, Monday August 28th 2023

Drawabox lesson 5 assignment - Album on Imgur

Imgur: https://imgur.com/gallery/EahWlyY

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It's been a while, I used pencil at some point I ran out of pen, apologies for that and the hybrid submission was done digitally. Would love to have this critiqued. my phone is freaking me out keeps pasting the wrong link

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4:46 PM, Wednesday August 30th 2023

Hello,

Congrats on completing Lesson 5. I have a couple of comments for you:

In your organic intersections, some of your contour ellipses look a little flat. Remember to have them follow the contour lines of the form that you've created, rather than plainly facing the viewer. Other than that, I don't have problems with what I see.

I've read some of the comments on your pages so I'm assuming you're aware about why pen is preferred to do Drawabox lessons. Personally, I take it as less about making a beautiful picture and more about training yourself to draw better. In the case of your lines, I can see that you've gone over your pencil marks many times (especially with circles), with the problem extending to your done-in-pen bird constructions that you did as well. Drawabox's whole shtick is that your marks are permanent on the page, not being able to be undone. Drawing over them a lot takes away a lot of the pressure in the individual marks that you make. It's something to be weary about, as you want to develop confident mark-making habits. Pen helps a lot with that, as the marks you make are going to be a lot bolder and darker, so it's practically impossible to make sketch lines with them without completely muddying up the page.

Another thing to add- I feel as if you should worry a little less about little visual flourishes (like the marks of color found on your shark pages), at least with Drawabox lessons. I don't find them to be problematic, but doing so may save a little bit of time on your end.

In terms of your construction, you're doing really well. The creatures that you've drawn generally feel very solid and 3-D. I've noticed a lot more confidence when you've used pencil (and when you've outlined that pencil with pen). My same comments about mark-making apply here, but I do see that you're very aware about how everything properly sits in space and interacts with one-another.

A lot of your contour lines in your shark drawings do not hook around the edges of the forms. This isn't that big of a deal, but I feel like it'd add a lot more visual clarity to what you've drawn if you were to do so. If you don't want to rely on too many contour lines in your finished product, let your additional forms suggest your form's contours by wrapping the additional ones around the base form. If done well (and with the right forms), you can suggest a contour line without deliberately drawing one. Something that I find problematic is in your hybrid animal, as there is a visual lack of underlying construction. If you've hidden them under another layer, please let me know.

Another thing that I've noticed is that, sometimes, you've gone ahead and drawn a form with its edges visible separate from an actual construction, where that form's edges aren't visible (see your 2nd rhino page, where you drew a head's construction separately from the body). For people like me, it would've been a lot easier to understand how you've constructed the rhino if the head construction wasn't done separately from everything else. Again, I can see that you understand how the forms sit together in space, but it would've been nice to keep that visual clarity through the underlying construction.

As long as you keep thinking about how forms intersect and interact with each other, I think that you'll be A-OK to continue, but drawing out your underlying constructions would really re-enforce the ideas that you're communicating.

Next Steps:

  • provide follow-up on the construction regarding your hybrid

  • move onto next lesson/challenge

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete. In order for the student to receive their completion badge, this critique will need 2 agreements from other members of the community.
4:08 PM, Thursday August 31st 2023

Am really grateful for the critics pikscarots, I'll work on it all, for the hybrid construction I actually hid it but I saved the whole image and I don't think I can get the layers anymore, but I'll redo the hybrids and drop it in the comment when I get home, thanks sir/ma. If you're free please can you drop some critics on my lesson 4 submission, I haven't got it critiqued for a while.

11:26 PM, Thursday August 31st 2023

https://imgur.com/CDjzxsM

Did some slight changes on it, haven't get the proportions right tho like the minimum part of the lizard I want to amalgamate on the rhino, and the fur on the falcat head(falcon+cat) is getting a little bit tricky for me to pull off haven't get a hang on it. And also happy new month .

12:30 AM, Friday September 1st 2023

Hi, from what I've seen, you're really good at applying construction to what you see. Apart from some small easy-to-miss details (like the rhino-lizard's tail looking a little flat), everything here feels very solid and real.

I can understand why you didn't refine some of the drawings or didn't add too many additional masses, as this was very last-minute. Something you can do to save time is, instead of drawing multiple iterations of the same thing, you could just draw one and have your efforts focused on it and it only. I understand drawing multiple iterations in the homework- it's good to do if it helps you better understand what you're doing. However, in something like this, I'd recommend that you save yourself a little bit of the effort and draw only one complete iteration of your creatures (you could also just draw one creature instead of two). Good on you for going the extra mile, though!

Good luck on the rest of Drawabox!!

6:27 PM, Friday September 1st 2023

I improved thanks to your critics.

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