Overall this lesson was pretty challenging. I was very green to drawing textures but the focus on cast shadows definitely helped. Shape intersections were extremely difficult and even the organic shape intersections were non-trivial. Overall though I'm pretty proud of my work. Any and all critique is welcome! Thanks!
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.
Your arrows are off to a good start, they're flowing nice and smooth. Your line weight can be a bit heavy and not as tidy as it could be but I'm glad you're trying to apply it, check here for an example of what we're ultimately aiming for with line weight, keep in mind we don't expect you to nail it right away just try your best. One thing I'd like you to work on in this exercise in the future is your foreshortening, you can push it further than you currently are and make more use of it in your negative space between the arrow's curves. By utilizing it in this negative space as well as the arrow itself we can create a stronger illusion that our arrows are moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.
You're really close to keeping your forms simple in the organic forms with contours exercise, just remember our goal is to keep both ends of the form the same size, and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. Your contours are looking pretty confident in most places, there is the occasional wobble but with more mileage and keeping drawing confident in mind you'll become more consistent. I'd like you to work on shifting the degree of your contours a bit more in the future. 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 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.
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. Overall you kept your forms solid and made them appear like they belong in a single cohesive space, great work!
Your organic intersections are off to a good start, working on the things mentioned in the earlier organic form section will definitely help you achieve better results in the future. There are some spots where your forms appear a bit flat or like they're floating but again, with mileage and addressing previous issues you'll see better results so I'm not too concerned. You do demonstrate that your ability to think in a 3D space is growing because you show that you can wrap forms around one another. This is a great exercise for further developing your understanding of organic forms in a single 3D space as well as your basic understanding of light and shadow so keep experimenting with it and lighting positions in the future.
Overall this was a pretty solid submission, you have some things to work on but I see nothing alarming that makes me think you can't address the mistakes with more mileage in your warm ups. With that said I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to lesson 3, good luck!
Next Steps:
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Thank you for the extremely thorough critique.
Is there a way for me to re-submit work so I can gauge if I'm understanding what you mentioned I should work on?
No problem at all.
Based on the fact that each lesson builds upon each other if you have issues we believe you need to work on we can point them out in the next lesson, but so far you appear to be doing well.
If you'd really like more input on your work you could always join the discord server which is pretty active but critique isn't guaranteed, or after some time you could submit a previously completed lesson again. This would cost you credits as it normally would, and we don't suggest doing it until some time has passed to discourage people grinding for perfection but know that it is an option you could pursue if you wanted too.
Sounds good thank you.
Would you recommend that I start chipping away at the 25 texture challange at this point as well as the 250 cylinder challenge? I know the 250 cylinder challenge is slated for after lesson 5 but I feel I would benefit even now from learning how to draw them properly and getting some practice in now.
Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.
Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.
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