Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction
3:07 AM, Thursday November 3rd 2022
finally...
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6:24 PM, Saturday November 5th 2022
I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.
You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.
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Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, 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 demonstrated here.
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Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise a couple of your forms are getting a bit too complex or too simple to the point they're nearly ellipses. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours you're doing a good job trying to shift the degree of your contours so far, be sure to keep experimenting. 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.
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In the texture section you're demonstrating good observational skills by being able to separate and clearly focus on the cast shadows formed along your reference. Your gradients from dark to light could transition a bit smoother, currently they tend to jump quite suddenly. Before moving on to the next section I'd like to quickly point you to this image which shows that when working with thin line like textures we benefit from outlining and filling the shadow's shape rather than just drawing a line. We get much more dynamic and interesting results this way. Remember that each texture is it's own challenge so be sure to experiment with different types when practicing this exercise in the future.
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It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. 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 appear a bit hastily done, it looks like you needed more time planning them before drawing them. Remember that whether our goal is to draw 1 form or 100, we want to be giving each line the same amount of time planning/ghosting before drawing it.
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While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.
Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Keep practicing previous exercise as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
5:09 PM, Sunday November 6th 2022
Thank you so much!
By the way, I forgot to ask if I'm supposed to be drawing the textures with my wrist or my shoulder (since the textures require particularly precise, small strokes)
5:57 PM, Sunday November 6th 2022
It's true that texture involves a lot of the kinds of marks that would benefit more from stiff precision over smooth flow - but remember that it comes down to the individual marks you're making.
Allow their needs to dictate how you draw them, rather than categorizing based on the overall category - so you don't want to assume that just because you're drawing texture, you're drawing from your wrist.
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