5:00 PM, Monday December 6th 2021
Hi I'll be handling the critique for this lesson.
-Starting with the organic forms with contour curves, remember to stick strictly to the characteristics of simple sausages, try to avoid any elongated or overstretched ones, youre moving in the right direcion here keeping in mind the degree shifts so good job.
-You're doing great when following the demos, in the housefly one you're leaving alot of empty space and in the whip scorpion you struggled to fit it on the page, this suggests that maybe you're a little eager to jump in at the construction process but always take time to consider things like the spacing.
-There are some drawings where I'm spotting some sketchy lines, I assume that this is because your pen touches the page when you're ghosting, but if not you may want to correct this, also as a side note feel free to upload photos, the scanner blows up alot of contrast and in this case your early steps are difficult to see, but form what I can gather it seems that you are indeed building from simple to complex
- Now I'm going to adress the way you handle additional masses, taking a look at your hercules beetle and canopy ant, two things jump at me. First of all youre cutting the silhouette when adding the additional masses in the head, I marked here the places where youre cutting into the silhouette.You want to stick to the forms you have drawn, you can construct by adding but never by cutting parts. Second poin is the way your handling those masses as 2D objects, you really want to emphasize the ay in which these potrusion exist, like the beetle horn and the ant fangs.
Take some time to study this beetle horn demo and ant head demo which show my point more clearly.
-One thing to keep in mind for this lesson and the next is that the most effective way to imply the way in which an object exist in 3D space and its relationship with other objects at the same time, is the use of the silhouette, you can see it demonstrated here.
-Now moving in to the legs constructions, you're doing great when it comes to grasping the gestural flow of these, but your use of the sausage method varies form case to case, remember to stick to simple sausages, this will serve as an initial frame in which you will ad all the additional detail and complexity, dont try to capture the shape of the legs exactly as they are, this is a problem which can be easily seen when you built your crab's legs. I'm also seeimg that you are altering the silhouette of the legs, and you are not really emphasizing the way in which the additional masses wrap around the sausages, take a look at this demo, you should try to adhere to all the principles shown there.
-Now regarding texture, remember above all else that the drawings we do in this course are exercises in spatial reasoning. It's all about understanding how the forms we construct on the page represent 3D forms, and how those forms relate to one another in space. The reference image itself is not something we're trying to replicate at all costs - it's a source of information to help us build up something believable. Furthermore, the end result (in terms of how "nice" it looks) isn't really important to us here. I can definitely see that you tried to keep your drawings clean, so don't try do hide any marks from your initial construction as it is important that we are able to see them.
Next Steps:
Fortunately, I think all of these issues can be resolved by simply changing how you approach the drawings for this course, so I'll mark this lesson as complete.