textures really clogged up my brain, i think i struggled more on this lesson than the 250 box challenge. The sheer density i was trying to comprehend and express really tolled on my mind haha. Im glad its done now so i can move on drawing real objects.
Starting with your arrows, you've done a pretty good job of drawing these with a fair bit of confidence, and capturing how they flow fluidly through space. One thing I want you to continue to pay attention to however is how foreshortening applies to these things as they move through the world - as we look farther back, not only are we going to see the ribbons get smaller/narrower, but we'll also see the spacing between the zigzagging sections compress.
Moving onto the organic forms with contour lines, you're largely doing a pretty good job with this. There are some minor issues, and they're usually fairly slight - for example, the odd place where you're not quite adhering to the characteristics of simple sausages laid out in the instructions and allowing things to pinch a little through the midsection, or contour ellipses that are drawn just a little bit hesitantly and come out a bit stiff. All in all however you're doing a good job of wrapping contour lines around these rounded forms, of keeping the forms simple so as to maintain the illusion of solidity, and you're also doing a good job of demonstrating your understanding of how the degree of the contour lines shifts naturally over the course of the form. Nicely done.
While you did struggle quite a bit with the textures, you did a good job overall. Not to say there isn't room for improvement, but all in all this exercise was meant to be an exposure to a challenging topic with which students are not expected to have prior experience. All in all you've demonstrated solid observational skills, and have shown a developing grasp of how to focus on clearly designed shadow shapes to imply the textural forms that are present and also to control the density of marks as you shift from dense to sparse.
One somewhat common mistake however is that when you drew the ropes gradient, you ended up falling into the pattern of drawing these rather generic lines around each rope form. While this is mostly fine, the issue is that you used lines, instead of shadow shapes, and so those particular shadows didn't actually get deeper and wider in order to make the texture more dense - they just got more numerous. Think of it as though all the shadow shapes are always present - it's just that they get bigger or smaller, and sometimes they're so small that they're not visible. They're still there, just invisible, and as you slide towards the darker end of the spectrum, they widen into view.
We can't really achieve this kind of dynamism with lines, so you have to make a point of drawing those textural marks using the steps shown here. Outlining each shadow shape with a closed circuit forces you to treat them as shapes, rather than lines, which then leaves that sort of dynamism and change open to you.
Looking at your dissections, you continue to do a good job, although there are some places where the textures are made up of more obviously separated forms that you end up outlining them, as explained here. Be sure to keep an eye on that.
Moving onto your form intersections, you're doing a great job of drawing them such that they feel cohesive and consistent within the same space. You've also got an excellent start with the intersection lines - something we don't expect you to have prior experience with, but where you're demonstrating a well developing grasp of the relationships between your forms, and how to go about defining those relationships on the page. This is something we'll continue to explore a great deal through the rest of the course.
Lastly, your organic intersections are also coming along pretty well, in that you're establishing how these forms interact with one another in 3D space, and are establishing an illusion of gravity in how they slump and sag over one another. Do however take more care in sticking to simple sausage forms (a couple get a bit more deformed), and draw through your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen. That applies to every ellipse throughout this entire course.
All in all your work is coming along well, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to 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.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
