Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

7:52 AM, Saturday November 20th 2021

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I finished the lesson 2 homeworks. I really appreciate it if someone can give me some feedbacks.

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6:59 PM, Saturday November 20th 2021

Hi Simplebanana, good work making it this far. I'll address each task one by one.

Organic Arrows

Overall I'd say this exercise went fairly well. I'm seeing a little bit of wobble, and where you've added line weight you tend to diverge from the original line and overshoot the actual overlap. Both these issues could be overcome with some a few more ghosting passes to get the feel for the right trajectory. Your compression good in places but not very consistent. You show a good understanding of how they orient in 3D space in places, so I think careful ghosting is the answer again. I also notice that you put the hatching in the wrong place on a few of them; remember that they are meant to show that the hatched area is behind the unhatched area. Again, the key is diligently applying the fundamental skills you have shown elsewhere in this exercise.

Organic Forms

Your lines here are relatively confident, and you have mostly kept your sausages to a simple, consistent shape. (If you ever find yourself having trouble with this, you can ghost them like other lines.) I can see that you've made an effort to keep your ellipses aligned with your minor axes and and change the degrees of your ellipses and contour lines, though it hasn't always gone perfectly. Again I think the key to this is carefulyl planning out each mark. Remember the change in ellipse angle should be gradual and cosistent, and the minor axis should neatly cut the ellipse in half.

Texture Analysis

First point: the transition in the rightmost boxes should be seamless; the presence of the black and white bars at either side shouldn't be obvious, but the natural extention of changing texture. I also recommend getting a brushpen to fill in black areas, as even a tiny white spot in a shaded area can draw attention where you don't mean it to. Many of your marks also don't feel deliberate. Some of them seem to be scribbles and it has the effect of making all three textures seem quite similar. Here I'd recommend drawing out shadow shapes in full, and not being shy about having large areas of black.

Dissections

The textures on your dissections are properly wrapping around the organic forms. That's great! Your transitions from light to dark are still a little abrupt but you're making good use of opportunities to break the silhouettes, and these textures show a lot more deliberateness and variation than your studies, so this is really good.

Form Intersections

You've made a clear effort here to understand and show how the forms overlap in 3D space. It's not perfect, but the effort is there and that's what's important. If you're ever unsure how shapes should intersect, take a look at this handy resource made by a member of the community: https://imgur.com/a/6Inx5Bz. I also recommend kimiting yourself to roughly equilateral shapes without much forshortening for the purposes of this exercise. What matters most is the sense that these objects are sharing the same space, and you've got that down. (Keep applying those fundamentals, though; your line quality slips a little in places.)

Organic Intersections

Your organic forms are piled up in a very stable and naturalistic way (although the very top one on the second exercise is defying gravity a little), and you've kept your sausages nice and consistent. You're drawing through your forms properly too. My only complaint is that your shadows are sticking a little close to the forms that are casting them. Really they should stick to the form they are cast onto. Don't be afraid to get dramatic with it, as in this example here: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/516f8d4f.jpg.

In summary, you've done fairly well with this lesson. You demonstrate a good understanding of 3D space, and with a little improvement to line quality your exercises would be close to perfect. Your textures could also use some work in terms of forming a natural transition between dramatic light and dark shades, but you've already shown improvement oevr the course of these exercises, so I'm confident you'll find your footing in that regard with practice.

Next Steps:

I'd recommend that you keep practicing your fundamentals, and do some more texture exercises when you have time, but neither of these is below the standard we'd expect at this stage.

Feel free to move onto Lesson 3. Good work, Simplebanana!

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.
12:20 PM, Monday November 22nd 2021
edited at 12:21 PM, Nov 22nd 2021

Hi mechacatfish,

Thank you so much for the detailed feedbacks ! i really appreciate it !

for the texture analysis, can i draw the "shape" of the cast shadow first than fill it with brushpen later ? Especially with texture that have big cast shadow

edited at 12:21 PM, Nov 22nd 2021
12:38 PM, Monday November 22nd 2021

Yes, I think that would be a very effective method.

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