Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

9:21 PM, Sunday October 17th 2021

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Finally done with lesson 2, felt an improvement through each homework

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4:19 PM, Monday October 18th 2021
edited at 3:20 PM, Oct 19th 2021

Hi Chuchuy. Congratulations on making it this far. There's a lot to say here to let's get right into it.

Starting with your Organic Arrows, there's a lot of scratchiness and wobbling on at least one side for each. This could be solved by taking the time to ghost each line out properly. I know it can be intimidating to follow a complex curve drawing a single confident line, but I promise you'll get better results by ghosting carefully and drawing confidently. I also noticed the width of the arrows fluctuating a lot, when normally we would expect a smooth transition, thickening as the arrow draws closer to the "camera". This effect doesn't always need to be very pronounced, but it does need to be consistent, or else you won't be able to create the illusion that the arrow is an object occupying 3D space. It would also be good to see more arrows per page in future attempts. One positive note is that you made proper use of overlapping to support that illusion, so keep that up.

Your Organic Forms show a lot of improvement in terms of confidence. By and large you have drawn your sausages and their minor axes with confidence, though there is a little bit of scratchiness here and there, and some of the sausages are a little less smooth and simple than we would like. Your ellipses could be a little more accurate, but even more importantly, they need to be angled so that the central line cuts them neatly in half. Also, vary up the degrees of the ellipses; the should be wider the further they get from the centre of the viewing angle or else you get an effect like this: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/6822fd02.jpg. You did a little better with your contour lines, but remember "overshoot" and show them hooking around to properly convey the roundness of the form, like so: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/77f2ca1c.jpg.

You did quite a bit better in your work on texture. Your Texture Analyses showed a lot of attention to detail and you were clearly showing form using shadow just as instructed. More intense dark areas on the left-hand side of the third box might have helped to show the gradient from light to dark better, but this was still very good overall.

Your Dissections were more of a mixed bag. Sometimes you showed the curvature of the surface well with texturing, as with the beetle shell, and sometimes you missed that opportunity as with the fish scales. Likewise, sometimes you conveyed 3D forms really well by breaking the silhouette of the sausage, like with the ropes, and other times you left things flat, like with the chicken wing. There were also places where your understanding of 3D space was less than perfect, like where the stones are facing the viewer, so the tree texture should extend all the way over the ellipse on the other side (because we can't see that cap) but stops at the near edge instead. Overall, though, this was a good attempt.

Regarding your Form Intersections, I note first of all that you didn't start with a page of just boxes as instructed. Second, there's a lot of scratchy lines that I think have come from attempts at thickening lines to show which way forms are facing. Even these lines should be ghosted and drawn smoothly with confidence, and in any case orientation is better shown with hatching for the purposes of this exercise. But there is one really important thing that you've missed about this exercise is to show the intersections between the forms. I can see that there are a lot of shapes clustered together in space, but I can't see how they relate to each other in 3D space, like I can in this image from the exercise instructions: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/8d4a68c8.jpg. Figuring out how these shapes overlap is hard, and you will absolutely make mistakes, but what matters is that you think about how the shaapes overlap and sit in front of and behind one another. (This is a good use for those thick lines.)

Your Organic Intersections suffer from some of the same problems as your earlier Organic Forms: somewhat complicated shapes and contour lines that don't always communicate the roundness. of the form (though these ones are better). Also, don't be afraid to really show that roundness with cast shadows; that's the main reason to use them in this exercise.

Next Steps:

Before I can mark this lesson as complete I'd like to see:

  • 1 page of Organic Arrows

  • 1 page of Organic Forms featuring a mixture of ellipses and contour lines

  • 2 pages of Form Intersections, one using just boxes, and one using a mixture of shapes, but both showing attention to how the forms relate in 3D space

Bear in mind everything I saids above, and be disciplined about ghosting your lines, and I think you'll see some real improvement.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 3:20 PM, Oct 19th 2021
7:50 PM, Sunday October 24th 2021

Hi, here's the redone work

http://imgur.com/a/6DDhUXE

10:38 AM, Monday October 25th 2021

Hi again, Chuchuy.

I'm seeing some real improvement here. Your Organic Arrows have more of a sense of depth and distance and your Organic Forms are looking a lot smoother.

You've done very well keeping your cross-section ellipses aligned with the minor axis and, while there could have been a little more pronounced hooking on some of your contour lines, this is still an improvement overall.

Your Form Intersections are looking much better as well. While they aren't perfect, I can tell you've put thought into how the shapes relate and overlap, which is the most important thing at this stage. I recommend doing some more of these as part of your general practice and warmups, and trying out some more extreme overlaps, to help you get a better grip on this kind of construction.

The only major issue I'm seeing isn't a matter of how well you've understood these exercises in particular so much as it is one of fundamental markmaking skills, as I'm still seeing a little more wobble in some of your lines than I'd like to at this stage, especially on your arrows. I recommend using some of the exercises from Lesson 1 as warmups, and taking your time ghosting out every line.

Next Steps:

Move onto Lesson 3. Some of the material there should be useful for complex curves like the ones on your arrows.

Keep practicing the basics of markmaking and construction, as these are core skills that will help you with the next lesson.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
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