Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

12:10 AM, Saturday May 9th 2020

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I did 6 pages of countour curves and still didn't feel comfortable with them. I also have a proper table to draw on now so I hope my lines will be more stable now.

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9:18 PM, Saturday May 9th 2020

I saw the addendum you posted, and wanted to mention that patience with yourself, and acknowledging your situation really is important. It's true that this is your second run through the exercises, but you're dealing with a lot more in terms of limitations than many of the others here. Your battle is up a steeper hill, and you've got wolves nipping at your heels. Every victory of yours should be noted and celebrated, because you'll have worked that much harder to get there.

Of course, I won't overlook mistakes, because pointing them out is how you'll grow from them, but I really cannot stress enough how important it is to pay attention to where and how you've improved over your previous attempt.

To that point, I think you're demonstrating a better understanding of the material overall. There are still some things you missed, and some things you may have forgotten, but all in all this is a step in the right direction. So, let's get to it.

Starting with your arrows, these are flowing fluidly through space, and I think you've done an excellent job of capturing confident linework and a strong grasp of how they're plunging through three dimensions, rather than just across the page. Not only does the confidence lend a sense of motion to the arrows, but you're also demonstrating an understanding of how perspective applies not only to the positive space (the width of your ribbon, which gets narrower as it moves away from us), but also the negative space (the distances between the zigzagging sections). This helps sell the illusion of depth very effectively.

For your organic forms with contour lines, you're doing a good job of maintaining simple sausage forms, for the most part. There are small deviations here and there, but this is more or less what I expect to see from students at this stage. The linework is at times a little rigid, which suggests a little bit of hesitation during the execution, so keep an eye on that. It's quite tricky to force our eyes not to steer our stroke, especially when we decrease our drawing speed (which is often necessary when drawing the sausage forms). Our brain will always want to make little corrections along the path, so we continually have to push ourselves to silence our thoughts and trust in our arm, as we draw from our shoulder. I know you're stuck in bed, and this is definitely going to make full use of the shoulder harder. It's still achievable, but it's always the learning of the motion that is most difficult, and these additional restrictions make it that much harder. All the more reason to be patient with yourself.

For your contour ellipses specifically, you did neglect to draw the central minor axis line. This issue was just one of forgetfulness - the instructions are densely packed with things to recall, so it is very important that we review them immediately before performing the exercise.

You're having varying success with the accuracy of your contour lines - this is simply something you'll need to continue practicing, and that will improve over time. In essence, we're feeding our brain lots of data with every time we attempt to make a mark (when doing so with the proper preparation, forethought, planning, etc). The first time we try to draw an ellipse between two edges, we may end up drawing it too small, such that it floats in between. The second time, we may overcompensate and draw it too large, such that it falls beyond both edges. The third, maybe we bias too much to one side or the other. Each time we're giving our brain more and more information about the relationship between the kind of motion we perform, how our muscles actually move, and what the result ultimately is. It's entirely the same as when we learn to walk - everything is very conscious and deliberate, and we're devoting all of our cognitive resources to every step. The second we loosen the reins, we fall flat on our face. Over time, however, our brain gathers more and more data, and gradually is able to push the processing of that information, of the relationships between intent, action, and result, from our conscious brain, to our muscle memory (the cerebellum), where the complexities are handled automatically.

Long story short - practice does help, and it's a long road, but it does steadily get better. Even looking down your page of contour ellipses, you're showing much greater accuracy towards the bottom of the page than the top.

There is one last thing to point out in regards to these contour lines exercises - right now you're drawing your contour lines such that they're all consistent in their degree (or width). As shown here, the degree of a contour line tells the viewer about how that cross-sectional slice is oriented relative to the viewer. As we slide along the form, it's going to get wider or narrower - if they all stay the same, it'll appear a little unnervingly stiff. While the viewer may not understand what exactly it is, there will be a part of them that'll notice something's off.

Moving onto your texture analyses, I think this section shows some of the biggest shifts in the right direction. You've definitely taken the change to thinking in terms of shadow shapes to heart, and it's clear that you're striving to think less about how we can outline each individual textural form, and more about how we express them with these larger filled shapes. That isn't to say there isn't plenty of room for improvement - there certainly is - but you're taking a big step in the right direction. I think your degree of success tends to depend a lot on the nature of the texture at hand. For example, you do quite well when dealing with textures that are a single homogeneous surface that has sections that rise above others. For example, the crumpled paper. I imagine you'd have a fair bit of success with peeling paint, rust, and so on.

Situations where you have more distinct textural forms however - like scales, bricks, threads, and so on - do still cause you to fall back to attempting to enclose those individual forms however. If we look at the carpet texture in your analyses, I can see how your right side suddenly changes dramatically, where you realize that along the left side of the gradient you'd been locking yourself into the same level of density. Along that right side portion, you end up focusing more on the shadows trapped in the cracks between those carpet threads - that approach is correct. As you then push more towards the left, denser, darker side of the gradient, all you need to do is let those shadows expand. Let them grow bigger, let them push into one another and merge into big combined shapes.

This applies much to your dissections as well, where you do have a tendency to fall back to drawing individual, explicit textural forms (bits of bark, tufts of fur, kernels of corn, etc.) rather than capturing the shadows between them. I am still pleased however - you're showing bits of improvement and it tells me that the concept of thinking about implicit shadows rather than explicit outlines is starting to take root. This isn't a matter of me being considerate of your particular situations, either - the texture section of this exercise is wholly an introduction to these kinds of challenges, and everyone struggles with them. The point is more to get students to think about the difference between explicit detail and implied detail, so as they move forwards they can continue to develop how they go about conveying that information in their drawings.

Looking at your form intersections, I think you are demonstrating greater patience in your mark making here. There are still gaps in some of your lines (though I think you're showing improvement on this throughout the set), but I can clearly see the use of the ghosting method, specifically in the points you're placing as you plan out each stroke. One thing that may help when it comes to avoiding undershooting/overshooting lines is to try and get used to lifting your pen the moment you reach the end of your line. Lifting your pen is a far more reliable motion than actually slowing to a stop, so it allows us to maintain the confidence of the stroke throughout its entire length, rather than risking the kind of wobbling that can occur when we slow down.

I'm glad to see that you're attempting to think through your actual intersection lines. As I mentioned before, all I ask is that students give those intersections a shot. You do have a tendency in most of these cases to draw the intersections right along the existing edges of your forms (as though the forms are just touching one another rather than actually interpenetrating), though I can see some places where you push past that. The key there is to remember that if your forms are interpenetrating, you're going to end up drawing new edges along the faces of your forms (rather than redrawing along the existing edges). Think of it as though you're taking a marker and drawing along the face of a 3D box.

One last thing worth mentioning in this exercise is that when you draw those intersection lines, you tend to do so with a somewhat chicken-scratchy approach, resulting in many small strokes. Remember that the ghosting method applies to every single mark we put down - everything needs to be the result of clear planning and preparation, with a confident, hesitation-free execution. If you're not entirely sure about the mark you want to draw, then figure out your intent beforehand. Place points where you want your strokes to start and end, and then just focus on drawing the line between those points - not whether or not that is where the line needs to go.

Whew! So, lastly I won't stress too much on your organic intersections, because these are honestly pretty well done. You're capturing the illusion of how these forms stack up amongst one another, giving a strong sense that they're interacting in 3D space, not just as flat shapes on a page. You're conveying how they slump and sag with a believable sense of gravity.

As a whole across this lesson, you do have plenty of room for growth and improvement, but you have definitely shown progress both in your understanding of what you should be aiming for, and in your ability to get there. There's a long way to go with most of these exercises, but again - you're climbing a steeper hill than most, so don't be afraid to acknowledge that what you're trying to do is by its very nature, difficult.

I am going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I think you'll be able to continue developing your skills with these exercises as part of your regular warmups, and will also be able to move forward with something new to tackle, in the form of the next lesson.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
3:43 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020

I'm glad you saw the addemdum. I just wanted to say that I didn't mention my difficulties to gain any favor for my submissions. If I didn't want this to be hard I wouldn't have signed up for the patreon thing. As a matter of fact I'm the kind of guy who wants MORE criticism than others. It will give me more incentive to get it right in spite of my situation, not take the easy way around because of it.

5:21 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020

I think we can balance both. It's always worth giving credit to the effort put forward, while being frank and direct about highlighting areas for improvement. I'm glad you mentioned your situation before, as it has helped me get a more accurate grasp of how to better help you work towards your goals.

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