Check Out NMA    Learn More About our Partnership
Close and Enjoy Drawabox Ad-free

Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

2:01 AM, Saturday June 12th 2021

Draw a Box Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/RtRnW4m.jpg

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

I have to say, I've never paid so much attention to all the little details of the different animals/objects around me. I still find it difficult to focus mainly on shadows when some textures have little to no shadows at all. Also, I have to confess, I took a break during the holidays and came back to the lessons like 3 months ago. Right now I'm tackling construction and forgot to turn these in, then I realized I didn't finish the second page of dissections so I did it.

One thing I noticed after coming back to dissections is that now I find myself planning ahead before starting to draw the texture, I try to imagine how I'm going make the shapes adhere to the surface and apply a bit of construction to make it more realistic (like the honeycomb I drew).

Report
2 users agree
11:22 AM, Thursday June 17th 2021

These look very good!

It looks like you're doing this digitally and some of these look really clean. So I just want to remind you it's probably best not to use undo or eraser to best mimic the ink format this course was made for. If I'm wrong and you're just that good then great! :D

I feel like your textures on the sausages some time to follow the form enough. Like when things turn away from us I feel like we're still seeing too much those forms and textures sometimes. For example I don't think we would be able to see the top of the farther away tentacle suckers. Their sides would probably have completely turned to us by that point.

With the intersections the round on round forms looks a bit off to me sometimes. Like when you put a cylinder into a form into a ball it doesn't just follow the form of the cylinder. Its more like the form of the ball consumes the cylinder. much like it does with a box. He has an example of that scenario on the homework page even though the cylinder only skimms the ball

But having said all that you lines are very clean, your rendering of texture and shadow is great as well. keep it up!

Hope this was of help :)

Next Steps:

Just try and keep in mind how forms are affected by turning away from us. Maybe do some easy dissection exercises as warm up. You can do this for intersections as well.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
8:03 PM, Thursday June 17th 2021

Thanks a lot for the feedback,

I do use a digital medium. I will sometimes get the lines I want on the first try, and sometimes I wont and just undo them. I dont really erase lines except when im using them for textures, or shadows/thick lines to get the thickness that I'm looking for..

However, I do feel like using an eraser in any way is wrong since that would be more like a destructive approach to drawing. I need to fix that.

I have to say, when I "finish" a construction, I tend to lower the transparency of the lines so I can work on pushing some more important lines forward. I saw some videos in the lessons in which this was done, I don't know if this is the correct method, but I really enjoy working through it and getting the end result

Also, you are right, I will definitely work on improving how I wrap my textures around. I will practice more with the texture challenge.

As for the intersections, thanks for pointing that out, I also felt like something was off. I will look at the examples again and practice it more.

Thank you, any constructive criticism is always helpful.

7:44 AM, Friday June 18th 2021

Glad to be of help. I just wanted to add that I dug up some of these resources that people made in the discord that show how forms intersect that definitely help me.

https://imgur.com/a/6Inx5Bz

https://gyazo.com/b9b21ce61d85811f8fc48b329df79c7c

If you have the time and/or energy I'd love some critique on my lesson 2 or 3. If not that's totally okay. You don't owe me.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Ellipse Master Template

Ellipse Master Template

This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.

I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.

No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.