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10:13 PM, Sunday August 30th 2020
Starting with your form intersections, the first thing that jumps out at me is the quality of your linework - there are some places in which I can see a few subtle signs that you're using the ghosting method, although I don't see them across the board. More importantly though, it appears that the execution of your marks is quite hesitant, resulting in lines that waver and wobble pretty frequently, rather than remaining consistent and smooth. This usually stands out as being a sign that a student hasn't necessarily been keeping up with their earlier exercises as part of a regular warmup routine.
The ghosting method exists as a whole in order to give you the freedom to execute your marks without hesitating, and without being afraid of making a mistake, as explained in this deeper explanation I gave to another student.
Moving on, I did notice some issues in figuring out how to think about intersections with curving surfaces - here are a handful of corrections for one of your pages. It's definitely a difficult thing to figure out, but the key is about focusing on how those surfaces actually curve in 3D space. Spheres can be tricky because they curve in every direction, but the particular dimension in which you should be focusing can be determined by the other form they're intersecting with (especially if we're looking at a flat surface). In addition, being mindful of where the flat surfaces are is also important (like when thinking about a cone's base), as well as how the edges between faces will automatically result in a total change in the path of your intersection.
Moving onto your object constructions, it's very clear that there are some things that you're certainly struggling with, though I can definitely see important steps being made in the right direction.
The first issue I'd like to raise is that you appear not to be taking advantage of some of the lifted restrictions for this lesson that are listed here at the beginning. As mentioned there, you are free to use tools that would likely make your life a lot easier - from ballpoint pens and rulers (which you probably have access to), as well as ellipse guides (which aren't necessarily available for everyone, though in the next challenges/lessons it is highly encouraged that you get your hands on at least a master ellipse template like the one listed here).
This lesson is very difficult on a technical level, and is a big step from what we've been doing thus far, and so making the choice of continuing to freehand your lines here is only going to serve as a distraction from the concepts we're exploring. Some students erroneously believe that by taking the harder route here, they're going to benefit overall - and while that is an admirable stance, I'm not lifting those restrictions to be kind. It is entirely in the interest of ensuring that students are able to focus their efforts on the matters we're dealing with now. Improving your freehanded lines and ellipses is what the first two lessons were designed for, and it's why we encourage students to continue doing those exercises as part of their warmups. These lessons are for something else entirely.
The use of a ruler would be especially useful, simply because it would allow you to estimate the convergences of your lines prior to actually drawing them. I've certainly noticed a tendency to struggle with your overall enclosing boxes. While regardless of what you're drawing with, it's important that when drawing any line you're thinking about how it needs to be oriented in order to converge more consistently with the other lines it's meant to run parallel with, having a ruler can help considerably with this, since it gives you a sort of physical manifestation of the line without having committed to it.
We can see, for example, in this barrel demo drawing that there are lines that run parallel to one another across both the larger box and the smaller one, but that their trajectories appear to diverge, rather than converging in a consistent manner.
Another issue that stands out to me is that your pen appears to be very heavy. Now, there are any number of causes for this, between the sketchbook itself being smaller (thus making the marks much heavier relative to the book as a whole), the pen itself being thicker, or your pressure simply being too high as you draw. Either way, it results in linework that doesn't quite have the kind of nuance these complex drawings would benefit from. This is an area where a ballpoint pen would certainly help, precisely for the reason that we don't allow them for the earlier lessons - they're more forgiving.
Now, there are areas where you've perhaps gone too simple with your construction (like the mug, which definitely skipped a lot in regards to the handle especially - you can see an alternate approach in this demo which adheres to the principles covered in this section about curves from the lesson. That said, there are also some cases where you've delved much deeper into the steps one can take to lay out one's construction with greater specificity, as shown with your nintendo switch. Admittedly the proportions there are definitely squashed, but because the construction is much more specific and on point, it still feels entirely solid and real. This is the kind of specificity (and more) I want to see from your constructions. I'm seeing something similar in your last page as well, and this all shows that you have improved.
That said, I don't want to mark this lesson as complete just yet. Instead, I want to see you grabbing a ballpoint pen and a ruler, and I want to see what you can do when applying that kind of patience and fastidiousness to its furthest extent. I'm going to assign a few additional pages below - invest as much time as you reasonably can into each construction. Ideally, only do one in a given day, so you can commit an entire session to one drawing without thinking about jumping to the next.
Next Steps:
I'd like you to do 3 additional pages of everyday object constructions, using a ballpoint pen and a ruler. Push each one as far as you reasonably can. If you want an example of a student taking this extremely far and letting go of all semblance of impatience, you can look at Grain00's work: https://imgur.com/a/bAnpSBk . This isn't what I'm asking you to do, but I do want you to see just how much time has gone into it, and how every little decision has been made through subdivision and care. And what's most notable about it is the fact that prior to this submission, I had to make them redo the entire 250 cylinder challenge because they rushed.
Sometimes significant improvement just requires one to understand that they are capable of putting much more time into their work, because we can be prone to artificially limiting ourselves to a certain amount of time. To put this in context, you don't even have to do one drawing in a given sitting - you can do it across as many sittings and as many days as you need. Just don't force yourself to work at any particular speed, and you'll be able to see the full extent of your own potential.
1:34 PM, Thursday September 24th 2020
8:54 PM, Thursday September 24th 2020
So you're still heading in the right direction, but there are a few things that stood out to me.
While you used ballpoint pen for your construction as instructed, it looks to me like you switched to a thicker pen to do a clean-up pass, which was specifically noted as something you shouldn't do here in the lesson. Also, you still seem to be freehanding some of your straight lines. You should be using a ruler for those so you aren't distracted, and are able to focus more on how you approach construction as a whole.
In general, you approached your drawings fairly similarly to how you did towards the end of your previous submission. That is to say, again - moving in the right direction, but still a lot of skipped steps that could help add greater specificity to your constructions. Take a look at these notes - I've put together some simple demonstrations, although these are definitely done more quickly to focus on specific techniques/approaches. For example, ways to break down the tea kettle into cross-sections to provide more structure to the overall form, instead of taking such a big leap from overall box to a much more complex rounded form.
Also, for the handle, I recommend that you take a look at this demonstration.
I'm going to ask that you do just one more everyday object construction, but you invest as much time as you possibly can to nail down every last little element in the most specific terms you can. Use a ballpoint and ruler for the whole drawing, and don't skip over anything.
You are absolutely welcome to work over this one drawing over the course of several days, if that's easier for you - there is nothing requiring you to finish it in one sitting.
Next Steps:
Submit the one additional construction drawing as mentioned at the end of my critique.
6:09 PM, Sunday October 4th 2020
The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw
Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"
It's not magic. We're made to think that when someone just whips off interesting things to draw, that they're gifted in a way that we are not. The problem isn't that we don't have ideas - it's that the ideas we have are so vague, they feel like nothing at all. In this course, we're going to look at how we can explore, pursue, and develop those fuzzy notions into something more concrete.