Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction
4:55 AM, Thursday March 26th 2020
Thank you!
Starting with your arrows, these are definitely flowing very nicely. One thing that is a bit of an issue however is that they're not laid out in a consistent manner, instead being rather erratic in how they move through space. For example, if we look at the one that starts on the top left and zigzags a little, then has a large gap before some tighter zigzags, and finishes up with another arrowhead - as far as establishing how it actually moves through space, and understanding the space in which it exists, there's nothing to latch onto. Instead, when doing this exercise, focus on drawing arrows that move in a consistent manner through space, towards or away from the viewer, and ensure that the gaps between those zigzagging sections compress in a way that properly reflects perspective (with those distances getting smaller and smaller, resulting in the ribbon overlapping itself).
Moving onto your organic forms with contour lines, one thing you appear to have skipped entirely was sticking to simple sausages as instructed here. This is quite critical, as maintaining a simple form helps emphasize the impression that the form itself is solid and three dimensional, not just lines on a page. Any further complexity from the form swelling or pinching through its length, or the ends being of different sizes, undermine that solidity and are entirely outside of the scope of this exercise. When encountering sausage forms in the future - both with the organic intersections and in the sausage method we'll eventually use to construct creatures' legs, sticking to simple sausage forms will be incredibly important.
I also noticed that your contour lines maintained a pretty consistent degree/width throughout, instead of shifting naturally along the length of the form as shown here. Each cross-section's degree tells the viewer how it is oriented relative to the viewer, and that will change as we look at different points along the sausage form's length.
Other than these two important points, your contour lines are looking good (as far as contour curves wrapping around the forms, and your alignment generally being pretty decent, though not always perfect).
Moving onto your textures, there are aspects of them that are very well done, as well as instructions you missed. That seems to be a bit of a theme with your work - what you do actually read, you seem to do well, but you could probably stand to follow the instructions more carefully, and reread them where necessary. To start, you're definitely thinking a lot about shadow shapes rather than drawing the outlines of the textural forms. This is excellent, and is what I want to see. A lot of students tend to still focus too much on drawing line, and you are in many ways moving away from that.
Where you're missing the instructions however is in your heavy use of hatching lines. I explain in this section why we stay away from hatching lines, and in this section why we avoid the kind of scribbling some of your hatching turned into. These textural patterns - interchanging arrangements of black and white shapes - are themselves attempting to accomplish exactly what people do with more generic hatching. That is, to transition from light to dark and give the impression of middle tones where there in fact are none. The difference is that hatching conveys nothing about the actual texture of the surface. It becomes kind of redundant to use hatching here - instead we either adhere to the crisp, clean shadow shapes we've laid out, or we transition them from dark to light by observing the smaller textures that are present in the object. And there always are smaller textures where they are needed. The smoother a surface gets, the sharper the shadow/reflection shapes get on its surface.
Largely what I've said here applies also to your dissections, where you continue to rely on a great deal of hatching as well as some scribbling. You're still not doing too badly, but you need to be more willing to lean into committing to the shadow shapes you're drawing, rather than pussyfooting around them. Every shadow shape you draw on the page is a decision you're making - so think through it, and then commit yourself.
For your form intersections, you are doing a decent job of drawing forms such that they feel consistent and cohesive within the same space and in the same scene. I am however noticing that you're not always being entirely consistent in your use of the ghosting method when drawing your lines, and it looks like you forego that technique in a lot of cases, resulting in lines that are drawn a little more slowly and hesitantly, and that come out with a bit of wobbling. Remember that all your linework should be drawn with the confidence to keep it smooth, and in order to do that whilst maintaining control, the ghosting technique is necessary. Additionally:
Draw through all of your ellipses, as discussed back in lesson 1. This applies to every ellipse you draw throughout these lessons
I noticed you drawing your cylinders around a central minor axis at times - do this for all of them, it helps a great deal to keep the cylinder's ends aligned to one another.
Now, your actual intersections are pretty minimal (I can see a couple places where you made an attempt, but for the most part you seem to just be reinforcing the line weight of your forms to establish which form sits in front of the other, but not actually establishing the clear, specific relationship between those forms as they intersect.
Intersections are themselves not the focus of this exercise - they are merely something we're introducing here, and I don't expect you to be able to do them correctly. In introducing them now, we move forward into developing those spatial reasoning skills throughout all of the subsequent lessons. It is one of the core concepts of Drawabox as a whole, so we will get more opportunities to continue working on it.
That said, remember above all else that the intersection line is a line that sits along the surface of both intersecting forms at the same time. If you were to take two forms and have them pass through one another, then draw with a marker right along the surfaces of both were they meet, this intersection line is what you'd get. The idea of the line sitting on the surfaces of both at the same time, and not ever existing on just one surface anywhere along its length, is important. It may not be entirely clear or easy to comprehend right now, but trying to roll it over in your mind now will help as you move forwards. You may also want to reread the notes here.
Lastly, your organic intersections are a good start. You're doing a good job of establishing how those sausage forms pile up in a way that is believabel and natural, and you're capturing the shadows they cast upon one another quite well. On the first page you've got one that flys off without anything supporting it, but I get the impression you knew this would be incorrect, but couldn't back out of it once it was drawn. The same principle about sticking to simple sausages is as important here as it is everywhere else - and aside from one or two places, you adhered to it well.
All in all, I think you do have things to work on, but should be ready to move onto the next lesson. As such, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 3.
Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.
The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.
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