Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

11:04 PM, Monday February 3rd 2020

Drawabox Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/yafi9ET.jpg

Post with 47 views. Drawabox Lesson 2

Before this website had this new functionality I had posted this lesson (#2) in reddit (from what I can tell - I could be wrong). I waited to no avail with regards to critique (lesson #2). I assumed what I did was fine since there were no replies. So I finished lesson 3 already as well and will submit that too. I did however get critique on lesson 1 in reddit already so I decided not to repost that here (if you were wondering why I skipped to posting lesson 2 first).

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6:04 PM, Tuesday February 4th 2020

Hi there! First of all, sorry to hear you haven't gotten critique on this lesson before, I don't check reddit, but me and more people are quite active on discord, so if you join, we could check your homework there, (and you can post it as you finish each page to get faster feedback you can apply to your next pages). But well, onto your submission!

Starting with your arrows, they flow nicely, but you are repeating some lines. Remember that just like in previous lesson 1 exercises, you should ghost and draw your lines with a single confident stroke, no more.

Your shading is a bit messy as well, remember to plan it too, don't rush it.

And lastly, with your addition of lineweight, it should be done with a single superimposed confident line, ghosted. Don't repeat it more than once, and be sure your mark is confident (I've seen yours are a bit wobbly).

Your sausages have some problems, although you are mainly managing to keep them as simple sausages, the sausage shape itself has a bit of wobble at times, remember that here as well, confidence > accuracy.

And the same goes specially to your contours, they are wobbly, again, don't worry about accuracy, focus on confidence first, if the contours get outside of the sausage, it doesn't matter. You are aware of the shifting of the ellipses on the sausages themselves, so good job on that!

Onto your textures, you are focusing a bit too much on the contours, remember that in this exercise you only have to draw cast shadows, nothing else. So you don't need to draw all the contours of the forms you can see.

And I see you might have been scribbling a bit, remember that in this exercise you should be looking and copying something specific of the texture you are seeing before every tiny little mark you make on your drawing.

You can check the new updated material on lesson 2 textures, it will probably help a lot. And if you do choose to do the texture challenge, start with the texture mentioned on the new article, crumpled paper.

Same goes for your dissecitions, here as well focus on shadows. You are wrapping them around the contours nicely, and you are using use of the silouette as well to show the textures, so it's only that issue you have.

Onto your form intersections, you've mostly done a good job with keeping the forms on a consistent foreshortening, although here you have as well wobbling and repeating line issues in all your forms.

Again, always ghost each mark, and try to make it as confident as you can. If the accuracy is off, don't repeat it, keep going as if the line was correct.

Lastly in your organic intersections, they look mostly believable as 3d forms interacting with each other.

Nevertheless, you aren't drawing the spine of the forms before drawing them, and you got 1 or 2 forms that aren't quite stable. Before adding new forms, try to imagine how they fall on other forms, and how their final position would be.

The relationships between all sausages isn't that clear as well, don't forget to add lineweight and shadows to clarify the relationships between every sausage. As you can see here for example, adding lineweight to clarify that one form is behind the other (as always with a single confided ghosted line). And here an example of a place where you didn't place the shadows.

Lastly, remember that the placement of the little ellipse at the sausages is meant to be the tip of the ending or starting ball of the sausage, used to mark where the sausage is looking at. I think some of yours are a bit off. (So take it in mind on your next organic forms exercises as well)

Next Steps:

Overall I think you've done a good job, but I want to make sure before marking it as complete that you understand the confidence of lines thing before going on, so I want to do the following:

-1 page of forms with contour ellipses and 1 page of forms with contour curves

-1 page of form intersections.

Be sure you draw every mark confidently and ghosting, and that you don't repeat any line of them.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:14 AM, Wednesday February 5th 2020

Hi Elodin,

I am a little confused with this part:

"Nevertheless, you aren't drawing the spine of the forms before drawing them" (on organic intersections)

I checked out https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/organicintersections again and I didn't find instruction on putting a spine through each sausage form or in the example homework (unless you are referring to the side contours as spines)?. However when I watched the video again (on organic intersection) he did add some spines to some of the sausages but not all of them. So I'm not sure if spines are needed and if they are how to choose which forms have them and which don't.

Everything else I pretty much agree with and I'll work on your suggested exercises then come back.

12:02 PM, Wednesday February 5th 2020

Oh, you are right in that he doesn't do it to everyone of them!

They are helpful because they are a guide that helps you to allign the contours/ellipses to the actual axis of the sausage, but if it isn't required then you don't have to do it if you don't want of course, sorry about that!

4:25 PM, Thursday February 6th 2020

It's cool lol.

4:42 PM, Thursday February 6th 2020

Here is the work: https://imgur.com/a/Y3SU9SC.

I think I did better on the smoothness of the contour forms. Messed up one of the small directional contour ellipse though.

The form intersections though are still really wobbly but I did the lines once this time as you said (instead of repeating again and again until accurate) and literally every line I did missed the mark (for the form intersections). I keep over and under shooting lines from their intended locations. Also it seems like no matter what speed I try to draw it's still wobbly often.

I feel if I overshoot by a lot then I can increase the smoothness of the lines here. I think trying to keep it to match the destination point might be messing me up.

7:52 PM, Thursday February 6th 2020

Good job on doing the revisions! you've definitely stopped repeating lines, which is an improvement, but you are still drawing wobbly lines, so I wanna make 2 things clear.

The first is that, like I said, in the drawabox lessons, you should always aim for confident lines, no matter how inaccurate they are, as you can see here

There, you got 2 lines and 2 ellipses. The left ones are better than the right ones, why? Because they are confident . No matter how accurate a line is, if it has wobble, a confident line is always going to be better than it. No matter how off it is and no matter how far it overshoots or undershoots.

Another point I wanna make is rushing. I think your lines were on the form intersections better than most of the ones here on confidence and overshooting, so I feel you might be rushing a bit. Don't be afraid of ghosting as much as necessary. Ghost until you feel you have a confident motion. Even ghosting 10 times isn't an exaggeration, ghost as much as you need to, and do your best on each mark.

That being said, I saw you got some revisions to do on your lesson 1 submission, so I recommend you to do them before attempting the last pages I'm gonna ask of you. Your confidence has definitely improved on your contour organic forms, though they are still wobbly on your organic ellipses and in the forms intersections. Like I said, aim for the ellipses to be as confident as you can make them, accuracy is secondary, so don't worry about it for now.

Next Steps:

So, the last thing I'm asking is:

-1 page of organic forms with ellipses

-1 page of form intersections

Do both without rushing, doing your best on your mark, and as confident as you can make them. Good luck, and keep it up!

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
6:57 PM, Monday February 24th 2020

Here is the work: https://imgur.com/a/EcUZljo.

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