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3:07 AM, Tuesday January 19th 2021
Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making good progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, below I'll be listing some things that will hopefully help you in your future attempts at these exercises.
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Your arrows are off to a good start, but there are few things you can work on to improve. You don't always overlap your edges which results in your arrows appearing flat in some spots as shown here. The flow of your arrows could be a bit smoother as well, there are some spots where your lines wobble showing a lack of confidence as well as some spots where the width of your arrows don't remain consistent. It's definitely something that will improve with mileage but just keep in mind that they need to widen/narrow consistently or it appears like the arrow is stretching which will ruin the viewers sense of a believable 3D object. I'd like you to experiment with foreshortening more in the future as well, by utilizing it in the arrow itself as well as the negative space between your arrow's curves you'll find that you can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.
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Your organic forms with contours improve quite a bit by the second page, good job. Some of the forms on the first page get a bit too short and round, just remember your goal is to create forms where both ends are the same size and to avoid stretching, pinching, or bloating along the length of the form as discussed here. You do a good job trying to shift the degree of your contour ellipses but you could push your lines a bit further. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.
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In the texture exercises I can tell you're trying to pay attention to shadows but still focus outlines and negative space at times. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here, I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.
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If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, you're on the right track but right now this exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Your forms are looking solid and like they belong in a single cohesive space, you also did a great job filling up the pages and building up some mileage.
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Your organic intersections are looking pretty well done. There are some spots that it looks like you got a bit too complex which flatten your forms out so I'd suggest not being afraid to start a bit simpler. Your shadows are being pushed to cast instead of hugging the form creating them which is great to see, they're behaving mostly consistent as well. This is a great exercise to build up your understanding of organic forms as well as light and shadow in a 3D space before moving on to more complex pieces, so definitely experiment around with it in your warm ups.
Overall this was a solid submission, you have a few things you can work on but I have no doubt you can address them with more mileage so I'll be moving you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Practice previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Color and Light by James Gurney
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.