5:40 PM, Wednesday February 16th 2022
Hi HFO1! I'll be reviewing your submission:
Organic forms with Contour Curves:
There's a couple of issues here. First, the homework asked for contour curves, not ellipses, so there's that. Second, while your sausages have the right form and you get the general purpose of the ellipses, your line is still a bit wobbly, your ellipses don't always fit the sausage, and there are contradictions between the turning of your ellipses and the poles you establish on your sausages. Remember that the ellipses/curves are there to tell us how the sausage turns in 3D space, so it's important that you are consistent with them.
Insect Drawings - Construction:
In general, you're relying less on constructing the insects than trying to replicate the forms that are there by observation. For example, in the ant drawing, you can't see how the different parts of the body intersect; in the case of the head, you didn't use a cranium sphere, instead you used two circles on which you attached the eyes, jaws and antenna. While your jaws are well constructed and have that 3D sense we're looking for, the two base circles end up diminishing the whole construction, as they look flat.
In the case of the background legs, you can't see where they join the body, and you should. Also they're hatched; it's not ideal that you do that (I know they appear like that in older lessons, but the idea is to work with the model of the more recent ones).
Speaking of legs, your sausages started not being sausages at all, but at the last drawings they start to look that way and actually intersect within each other, good job on drawing that intersection as well. Keep on doing that, as the intersections reinforce the 3D illusion, do it for all the visible legs, even for the ones on the background.
A thing I see constantly is that your base forms lack: 1. curves that reinforce the 3D feel and 2. the intersections between them. This makes the drawing look cleaner, but suppress the 3D illusion, and you end up relying on the detail alone to salvage it.
Your main problem is that you are not adding forms to the construction, instead, you're making lines based on observation. That way, your drawings end up looking nice (a lot better than mine), but they lack the very thing we're working on this course.
For example, take this one. You simply added the shell with a couple of lines, and let the detail do the rest. But if you look closely, the bottom section lacks parts and forms that are present in the original picture , and so in your drawing that section just looks flat, and makes the whole shell construction fall apart, if you ignore the detail. It wouldn't be such a problem if you made it like the louse example, where you can see how the shell intersects with the rest of the construction (and then you build forms and shapes around the shell), but instead it just looks like lines added by observation.
This happens with your legs as well. If you see the wasp demo, you can see how the ball forms on the legs end up always intersected by other forms, or at least with a contour curve that defines how it intersects with the legs, and so it gains that 3D feel. In your case, almost all of the sphere forms that you added to the legs don't feel like it, because of this lack of form intersection. Here you did it pretty good on the legs, but there are other problems as well.
The flat line that goes over the abdomen really demolishes the 3D illusion, that's why we use the contour curves to define the roundness of these forms. When you add any mass over your constructions, you should think like this as well, about how the forms wrap around the body, legs, etc. Look at the lobster demo and work with that when you add masses to your legs, because another issue is that you're adding spheres to legs when a simple mass would be enough.
Insect Drawings - Texture:
Your textures are pretty great, overall. I would encourage you to be more subtle though; in your second to last drawing, while the texture looks awesome, the amount of pure black that appears in it doesn't really match the cast shadows present in the photo. In Discord/Reddit you can look for people that can help you with the cast shadow problem you're asking about. I'm not that good with texture, so I can't really help you with that. Lastly, try not to rely on them to make your drawings 3D. As Uncomfortable said, we're not here to make pretty drawings, but exercises on construction.
Revisions:
I'll ask that you make:
1 page of Organic Forms with Contour Curves. Don't forget to be confident and fluid with your lines.
2 insect drawings, without any detail. Apply all the revisions, construct your drawing form by form, and don't worry about it looking messy. It will, but that's the point. When it comes the time to distinguish one form from another, use lineweight.
That would be it, I'll be around if you have any questions. Good luck!
Next Steps:
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1 page of Organic Forms with Contour Curves.
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2 insect drawings, without any detail.