This has been very frustrating for me as I an aware that I am making many mistakes. I also have the problem of trying to correct my lines by going over them multiple times, which makes my drawings look very dirty. At this point I think I need some good analysis and feedback about how to push through this. I’m having problems seeing the solid shapes and their correct intersections.
To be completely honest, I think you're being a little hard on yourself. Yes, I agree - you do have a tendency to go back over some of your lines, and maybe correct things that you shouldn't, but their impact isn't that significant, and what's more important is that you're demonstrating a pretty strong understanding of how your objects are broken down into simpler forms, and how those simple forms can be recombined on the page to construct something that still feels three dimensional and believable. You pay attention to a lot of the more subtle aspects of your reference images, not just focusing in on the more generalized masses, and build up your forms with a constant respect for the fact that each and every one of them are three dimensional. You also show considerable growth over the lesson towards each of these ends.
Starting with your organic forms with contour curves, these are looking in order. You're doing a pretty good job with the contour lines (keep working on getting them to fit snugly within the silhouette of the form, but they're smooth, confidently drawn, and wrap around the forms nicely). You're also focusing as much as you can on nailing simple sauasage forms, and are also demonstrating a good sense of how the degree of your contour lines shifts over the length of the forms. One thing about the contour ellipses on the ends - they're generally well done, just try to draw through them two full times and no more than that.
Moving onto your constructions, I mentioned already that I think overall you're demonstrating a strong grasp of 3D space and construction as a whole, and I'm very pleased with your results. There are a few things I want to point out however.
The first one that jumps out at me is your drawing of mr snippy snaps - that is, the scorpion. In my demo video, I draw a boxy form for his main body, and then I decide this form is not exactly right and I cut along the side of the form to shear off a piece along the bottom. I do this by actually drawing contour lines on the surface of the form, creating an artificial separation that splits it into two distinct, but perfectly aligned forms. The critical thing here is that my cut occurs in 3D space, respecting the 3D nature of the forms. I can then designate one of these as being negative space - a void that we'll no longer treat as being solid and present.
Now, you applied a similar technique along the top of your scorpion's torso. Initially I'd thought you'd done this incorrectly, but upon closer inspection I realized it was correct. You respected how the form existed in 3D space, and you did not simply cut across it as it existed as a shape on the page - you actually drew edges of this separation along the surface of the existing box form, and created new planes. So rather than chiding you for a mistake, I'm going to pivot and say good work on doing this rather complicated process well.
For this...., well, what I assume to be a bed bug, I have just one minor complaint. I'm actually very pleased with how you handled the slightly more complicated forms present in its thorax, but for the abdomen I probably would have started with a form that extended out to its full size rather than a smaller one inside, to be enveloped in a larger one later. It is similar to what I did in my louse demo, but the smaller abdomen present in the louse was actually present in the result as well, peeking out from under the skirt. If you've got a form in your construction that is likely to just get swallowed by by something else without having an impact on its structure, then you can likely skip over it entirely without any loss.
I definitely agree that you got pretty sketchy in your past - taking more time before each and every stroke to work through applying the steps of the ghosting method (specifically planning/preparation) will help keep you from drawing more reflexively. Also, remember that the segments of the sausage method should be actual simple sausage forms - not stretched ellipses. Additionally, this technique may not always seem like it matches the legs of your insect, and that's completely fine. The method is more focused on constructing an underlying structure or armature that captures both the solidity of the forms and the gestural flow of the limb itself, and so it is still an effective technique to be employed in all situations. Once the armature has been established, you can always go back over it to add bulk where necessary, as shown here. This technique will be used even through our animals in the next lesson, so it's important to get used to it. I am happy to say that you appear to use it quite a bit, and quite correctly, throughout most of your drawings. Still felt it was important to emphasize this.
Lastly, I was very pleased with the following pages:
I think you did an especially excellent job at nailing down your forms and building things up steadily to create a solid, believable result. All in all, you're doing well and I feel confident in marking this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 5.
Thank you for the feedback! I needed that. I will continue to draw plants and insects as part of my warm-ups and just for fun. I discovered that it's very relaxing for me to colour my drawings too. Plants are the easiest, but some bugs do look great with contrasting colours.
Do you plan to ever do some lessons about colours, colour theory and colouring technics?
I will move on to lesson 5 and I'll try to stop going over my ellipses more than 2 times.
I haven't yet started the texture challenge, it's quite intimidating.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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