I'm working on re-doing my Organic Forms with Countour Lines exercise and was wondering if I had been doing it the wrong way. When i previously did the exercise, I draw my curves by drawing an ellipse, but only the part needed for the curve. Is this the right way to draw the curves or am I doing it wrong?
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/061ed3b6.jpg
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/d878b8b2.jpg
One thing I would suggest is that you spend some time looking at the images here and picturing in your head how these sausages have a volume, follow in your mind the whole contour trying to feel how they are not flat, they express volume, the marks are not random, you don't just copy them without thinking why the contour is like it is shown here. Later you can just try them out a little to see if you could grasp and reproduce a form with volume. I hope it helps :D
Hi Dayneb12, the correct way to draw these curves is to ghost an entire ellipse and only touch the page for the lines you want to see; it can be tricky to do, but drawing the complete ellipse helps the contour lines wrap around the surface better.
A couple thoughts from looking at your submission. Your work looks rushed and also lacking confidence, as mentioned in your feedback. If you're rushing, slow down and really focus on each mark you make, whether that is a line or an ellipse. Don't worry about completing the whole page; just focus on that one mark and then do the next. Focusing on each line and striving to execute it with confidence will take you longer at first (a page might take you 2 or 3 times as long), but it will also give you better results. With many months of practice your speed and accuracy will improve; but at first you have to go slow to build the right muscle memory (i.e. don't rush; you can and should still execute your marks with swift confidence); you don't want to build a habit of being sloppy.
My apologies if I'm misunderstanding or misjudging your approach, but I thought this advice might help you. Drawabox is as much a life course on patience and character-building as it is on drawing construction.
This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.
When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.
Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.
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