I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

Before getting started I need to note that you're going to see that your line quality gets pointed out quite a few times in this critique. This is because it appears like you may not have followed instructions/methods provided to you as closely as you could have and your line quality is where it's most noticeable. Just informing you now that you will be asked for revisions for this lesson and if habits like this continue to show up in later exercises expect heavier revisions/possible redoes. All of our lines should be planned using the ghosting method, then drawn confidently in a single stroke, avoid chicken scratching and redrawing which is prevalent throughout this submission.

With that out of the way let's get started.

• Starting off with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. This is a good exercise to experiment with line weight but when applying it we want to make sure we do subtly to key areas like overlaps to give clarity to our forms. Here are some things to look out for when applying line weight, and here are some reminders on how to apply it subtly. At times you don't overlap your edges when you should, this results in your arrows flattening out as you can see here. Great use of foreshortening so far, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as you can see demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex or too simple to the point they're nearly ellipses at times. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. While your forms are largely covered by your textures (the instructions asked for pictures before adding textures if you were going to use the same ones) There are still signs of your not being planned out, left floating in the middle of forms or in the case of ellipses not drawn through. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. 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.

• In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines, form shadows and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. 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.

• In the form intersections exercise your lines continue to be haphazardly drawn as does your hatching, you also missed an important instruction about how your forms should be connected in one large group rather than multiple smaller ones.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. You contour lines are left floating and often don't hook back into the form as mentioned here. Your shadows are hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to another surface believably. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet as mentioned, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

• 2 pages of the organic forms with contours exercise

• 1 pages of the form intersections exercise

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.