Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

11:59 AM, Tuesday August 24th 2021

Drawabox Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/NyiEe7B.jpg

Post with 21 views. Drawabox Lesson 2

Hello there,

Please find the link to lesson 2. there might be duplicates among the pictures, sorry. I look forward to your feedback, thanks.

regards,

Robin

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9:12 AM, Friday August 27th 2021

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.

  • Starting off with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. You're going way overboard with your hatching lines here, try to keep it more subtle. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. This is a good exercise to experiment with line weight but when applying it we want to make sure we do subtly to key areas like overlaps to give clarity to our forms. Here are some things to look out for when applying line weight, and here are some reminders on how to apply it subtly. 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.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex or simple to the point they're nearly ovals. 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. Some of your line work here shows a lack of confidence as well, resulting in squared edges and contours. 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.

  • 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 are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work however your line quality continues to be poor here. Your lines tend to be chicken scratchy, redrawn which creates a mess and lack confidence.

  • 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. Addressing issues brought up in the previous organic forms section will help you here. I'd also like you to draw through all of your forms in the future, it will help you understand the 3D space you're attempting to construct much like when we drew through our boxes.When drawing your shadows you don't push them far enough to cast, instead they mostly hug the form creating them, try pushing them further. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, 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.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

  • 1 page of the arrows exercise

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise (half with contour curves, the other half with ellipses)

  • 1 page of the organic intersections exercise

Really focus on getting your lines looking confident and tidy, I know you're capable of doing so because the boxes in your box challenge submission were confidently drawn.

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

Please re-read and complete:

  • 1 page of the arrows exercise

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise (half with contour curves, the other half with ellipses)

  • 1 page of the organic intersections exercise

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:36 PM, Friday September 3rd 2021

Hi?

Please find my revisions for lesson 2.

https://imgur.com/a/zEYcVqb

So I tried to work on my line weigth and confidence too. Also witht the arrows I think i see what you mean about foreshorthening. I tried to experiement with it a little bit more.

Look forward to your feedback,

Best,

Robin

4:46 AM, Saturday September 4th 2021

These are definitely a step in the right direction.

There's still room for you to experiment with foreshortening in the negative space of your arrows, try making the space between your arrow's curves smaller as they get further away.

Your organic forms are looking a lot more varied and experimental, with more mileage they'll become more consistent.

Your organic intersections are looking good, try not to use your brush pen for contour lines however as it can be distracting rather than it highlighting important intersections.

I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to lesson 3.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck!

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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