I struggled a lot with this one, in particular implied textures and texture analysis, and the form intersections. I was really tempted to go back and re-do everything, but given the advice to keep moving forward I didn't. I'm gathering art and examples of implied textures where I can.
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.
In the arrows exercise the biggest thing that stands out is that your line quality could use a bit of work. You have some wobbling occurring which shows you may not be drawing as confidently as you could be and some of your hatching looks a bit rushed rather than you taking the time to plan each stroke. There are a few spots where your arrows flow isn't consistent, they widen/narrow a bit suddenly but with more mileage this will improve. One thing you can experiment more with in the future is foreshortening, 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 object moving through 3D space as seen here.
You're close to keeping your organic forms with contours simple but do get a bit too complex at times. Remember our goal in this exercise is to create forms where both ends are the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. Some of your contours appear a bit stiff which shows you're most likely worrying about accuracy over confidence, remember that as long as we're drawing confidently our accuracy will improve with mileage so we it's our first priority. I'd also like you to work on shifting the degree of your contours more in the future as well. 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. Your forms here are appearing quite solid and like they're in a single cohesive space which is great, you're demonstrating that you're getting more comfortable working in 3D space.
In the organic intersections you continue to show an understanding of 3D space, there are a few forms that end up floating a bit but for the most part they're wrapping around one another believably. This exercise will benefit from simplifying your forms and following the advice in the previous organic form exercise, right now your forms are getting a bit too complex and it causes them to flatten out. When it comes to your shadows you played it a bit too safe and they're mostly hugging the form creating them rather than being cast, try pushing them further in the future. They don't appear to behaving as if they had a consistent light source either, I usually recommend pushing your light to the top left or right corner of the page as it's easier to work with than directly above, once you push your shadows and get more comfortable be sure to experiment with more complex and intense lighting as well. This is a great exercise for building your understanding of how these organic forms interact in 3D space as well as work on lighting and shadows so be sure to experiment with it in future warm ups.
Overall you do have some things to work on but this was a solid submission, you demonstrate an understanding of what's being asked of you and just need some more mileage to become more comfortable with the concepts. I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups, give some extra attention to texture, remember to draw confidently and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Thank you for the critique! Definitely agree with all of your points, and learned some things. For textures in particular - do you have any resources to getting better at this - for example, some artists to look at? I find I keep falling back to negative space, as much as I try for light and shadows I feel like something just isn't clicking.
Alphonso Dunn has some really impressive ink work as well as some books on it, it's not exactly the same method we're going for here but he does a great job capturing texture.
You'll find yourself improving at texture as you build up your spatial awareness and understanding of form through the later lessons as well, so don't stress too much.
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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