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2:25 AM, Monday January 15th 2024
Hi! :)
Looking good!! Congrats on finishing lesson 2 :D
Here are some critiques of each exercise:
Arrows:
This is looking nice! One improvement could be to add line weight to your arrows as they come forward in space to enhance the illusion of depth. I also notice a bit of wobbling on some of the lines in this exercise. That's something to look out for too!
Organic forms with contour lines:
something you did well here is that your ellipses on your ellipse page look quite confident! :)
Something you can improve is to make sure all your ellipses are more aligned to the minor axis.
The age of curves have lines that are a little less confident, so that is something to watch out for. Some of the curves are also shorter than the width of the form. I had a lot of trouble with that as well so I know it is definitely pretty hard!!
Texture (I am going to do both of the texture exercises at the same time!):
Something you did well with your texture exercises was observing the form and recreating it convincingly. Even though the labels for youre exercise are written in a language I don't speak, I can still tell what a lot of your textures are, so great job!
One thing I think you can improve is to use shadow more and rely less on outlines. In the homework instructions it is emphasized to use cast shadow to describe form rather than drawing outlines of the shapes. I notice on some of your forms especially in the texture analysis page you use a lot of outlines. Definitely don't be afraid to have some parts of the object almost completely in shadow, with a few spots of light that help describe the form!
Form intersections:
Overall the forms look like they are occupying the same space- god job!
An area to improve would be ensuring your lines don't curve as much. Some of the straight lines curve a bit, so watch out for that! I encountered the same problem as well.
Another suggestion would be to fill your page up more!
Organic intersections:
When you are practicing this exercise as a warmup going forward, be careful that your sausage forms aren't too close to parallel with each other! having the sausages laying perpendicular is described as creating a more convincing image in the homework description.
I hope this helps! :)
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 3! :) I would suggest practicing more texture and organic intersections especially as warmups.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.