Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

3:22 PM, Friday May 15th 2020

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I added the hashed version of the cubes intersection as well, thought it was clearer. The other form intersections have hashing mostly where I initially understood the intersection incorrectly and needed to correct it and make the correct version clearer.

I still have quite a bit of trouble with line quality; on form intersections, at least, if I choose not to correct lines, some cubes would look wildly incorrect.

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6:51 PM, Friday May 15th 2020

Starting with your arrows, these largely flow quite well through space. There are two things I want to point out though:

  • In a number of areas your linework gets a little sketchy, especially on the second page. Remember that every single mark we draw should be employing the ghosting method. There are plenty of places you do this well, but you definitely have spots where you drop the ball on this.

  • Don't forget that perspective applies both to the positive space (the width of the ribbon getting narrower as it moves away from the viewer) and to the negative space (the distances between the zigzagging sections). The space in general should compress as we look farther back in space.

Your organic forms with contour lines are very well done. You're sticking to simple sausages, drawing your ellipses and curves confidently to maintain even shapes, fitting them snugly between the edges of the forms, and showing an understanding of how their degree changes based on that cross-section's orientation in space.

You're also showing a really well developing understanding of the principles covered in the texture section. Your texture analyses demonstrate a clear focus on shadow shapes rather than lines, and that you're thinking about how the forms present on your object's surface cast shadows on their surroundings. You're also demonstrating a solid control of the density of your textures as you move from left to right. This continues to be the case throughout your dissections as well.

Moving onto your form intersections, you continue to knock all the main concepts behind the exercises out of the park. You're drawing the forms such that they feel consistent and cohesive within the same space. You're also doing a great job with the intersections themselves, which aren't intended to be something students are expected to be particularly proficient with just yet. It's more of an introduction to the idea of spatial relationships between forms, something we'll continue to explore throughout the remaining lessons. You're starting off with this at a considerable advantage.

Now, I do want to mention that your linework is, once again, sketchy at times. I think here it's more obvious that it is specifically when you're adding line weight. Your initial executions are fine - they're smooth and consistent and you're drawing through your ellipses properly. But when you go back to add line weight, you'll frequently add little chicken scratchy marks, rather than simply repeating the same mark making process of a planned, confident stroke. This comes from a fear of not being able to overlap the line properly - you need to accept the fact that we make mistakes, and errors will occur. But the only way to improve on adding line weight properly is to allow for the chance to mess up.

Last of all, your organic intersections are again, very well done. You've piled these forms together in such a way that they clearly demonstrate how we're looking at forms interacting in 3D space. You've also captured a good sense of gravity in how they're all forced to slump and sag over one another in a believable fashion.

All in all, your work here is great. Just keep on top of that line weight issue - you're clearly capable of drawing your linework with confident, smooth strokes, you just need to be willing to let yourself make a few mistakes in order to continue growing on that front. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so keep up the great work.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:45 PM, Friday May 15th 2020

Thank you very much! Yeah, line quality is something I'm still very bad at and I'll keep practising it! I suppose the superimposed lines exercise from lesson 1 might be the best one to warm up for a while.

Also... thank you very much for these exercises! The form intersections messed up my brain sooooo much, and I definitely felt an improvement from the first page to the last page. (First page took me 8+h of mostly just thinking, but then it became faster and faster to decide which part of which forms is behind which part of the other form and whatnot)

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