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Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

2:35 AM, Tuesday April 19th 2022

Drawabox lesson 2 HW - Album on Imgur

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

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Holy moly; finished with lesson 2 and wow... What hard points it was (Which I know was mentioned in directions, but still).

First I want to talk about my lines in general. I don't belive now it's my arm, confidence, etc. I belive the problem is the surface I'm drawing on being bumpy and uneven. Before starting lesson 3 I'm getting a clipboard to act as a much smoother surface to see if that will help. Also I found at points changing pens from the one that was running out of ink to a fresh one really helped.

Although the arrows were a challange I really had fun and enjoyed myself.

The real strugle for me was textures and shadows. I felt really lost (And yes I know it was stated most aren't going to get it). Interescting forms I felt was second hardest.

The final hw, I can say looking at it with 95 percent certainty seems to be right.

Overall I'm just glad I got through all the hw's. I could have quit at any point, yet I kept going, trying my best. I'm sure lesson 3 and all others are even tougher, but at least I can finally start drawning things that aren't just shapes and lines. True, maybe what I do might come out as crap. Then again I know we're not making pretty drawings and maybe i just might surprise myself. I hope none of this violates any of the rules when posting my thoughts. If so, I apologize in advanced, and that it was never my intent.

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7:54 PM, Wednesday May 11th 2022

Hello I'll be handling the critique for your lesson 2 homework

Organic Arrows

-Starting with the organic arrows I can see that you are doing some pretty good attempts at the perspective of the ribbon, as it gets wider as it moves closer to us.

Your linework is of some concern. There are some parts that get wobbly or scratchy, as always make sure you got a good handle on the lesson 1 exercises. Use the ghosting method to think about each mark's purpose and how you are going to achieve it best. Once you have gone through the planning phase you should draw your marks with confidence, also draw each edge of the arrows in one stroke rather than multiple ones, this will get rid of the chicken scratching . Another thing to keep in mind is that the negative space between the zigzagging section of the ribbons should decrease as it moves further away, this principle is shown here, keep all of this in mind when doing this exercise in the future.

Organic Forms

-The shape of your sausages is turning out well and you have avoided any unexpected swelling or pinching throughout their length, there is always room for improvement so keep practicing.

When it comes to the contour ellipses these are drawn with an awareness of how they change degree as they move through space, you have also done a pretty good job fitting them snugly within the shape of the sausage and they are drawn with confidence.

This confidence does not carry over too well into the contour lines, remember to draw them in a single confident stroke rather than a lot of single marks, you can definitely do this, a good example is the sausage on the top left corner of this page , where you drew some contours with a good deal of confidence and in a single stroke. Another issue is that the contours barely change degree, the important thing to keep in mind is that contour lines are a useful tool to describe how a form sits in 3D space, but they can easily work against us by flattening our drawing, the best strategy is to use the ghosting method to think about each mark's job, this way you will avoid drawing marks that don't really add a lot useful information.

Textures

-On the texture analysis I can see that you are definitely building your ability to distinguish between the cast shadows and the form shading, and I also like to see a bold use of ink to achieve a smooth transition from dense to sparse. One thing you should avoid is drawing simple lines to capture the texture, you should always outline the shadow shape first and then fill it

-On the dissections you have focused a little bit more on the outlines rather than the cast shadows, I want to quickly redirect you to this image that shows that when we are working with thin like line textures it is better to draw the shadow shape first and then fill it rather than simply drawing lines, this will help you to achieve more dynamic textures.

It is quite common for everyone to feel like they don't fully understand the texture exercises, but this is a skill that is meant to be developed with time, so just keep pushing forwards.

Form Intersections

-Overall you did a pretty good job drawing your forms, and when it comes to the intersections don't worry if you feel like you don't fully understand them yet as we will be going over them in future lessons.

The only bit if critique I have to offer is that you should be more tidy with your hatching, remember that each line is no less important for being part of a larger group, so give each one of them as much time and attention as you can, the same goes for lineweight, add only one superimposed line in a confident stroke, this diagram may help too.

Organic Intersections

-Finishing with the organic intersections, you are moving in the right direction and the sausages begin to wrap around each other believably. There are some issues I want to address, first, try to avoid the technique where you draw a big sausage and then add a bunch of smaller ones on top of it, try to have each one of them roughly the same size. I also want you to draw through your forms, this is just an exercise in spatial reasoning and drawing through your forms will help you to better understand the concepts we are exploring here, lastly try to push the cast shadows further, right now it seems that they are hugging the form casting them, remember that they act as contour lines, so push them further to use them more effectively.

Okayyy, I have given you plenty of things to keep working on, before moving on I'll leave you some additional homework, keep all of the things mentioned above in mind

Next Steps:

Please do the following

-1 page of organic arrows, focus more on a confident execution

-1 page of organic forms with contour curves

-1 page of organic intersections

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:22 AM, Friday May 13th 2022

Thank you for waiting. I want to first thank you for taking your time to review my lesson 2 hw.

As for the assignments itself, the textures and disectuion I'm surprised you found it to be better than I intially thought it was going to be. I will take your advice on improving in that later on as I grow and get better.

For hatching I didn't realize that wasn't going as smoothly. It might be more the angle of where i do the line. Maybe rotating the paper could help? It might also be due to rushing a little on that part cause it's the last part of that hw assignment.

The main things with the organic arrows and organic forms. 100 percent agree the line work is bad and I think I know what happened. It wasn't so much a lack of confidence and not having a handle on lesson 1; I believe the problem was my surface caused more of the problem. It was rough, just enough to make my line work wobbly and scratchy. I got a clipboard and I belive that has curbed most of the problem. Sure confidence is better too, but looking at these the difference is like night and day. Despite the small mistakes I noticed crop up, I'm overall pleased this is better. I belive the small few mistakes might not have happened if I wasn't a bit tired. Maybe. I also belive a bit of lesson 3 but mostly trying again with a better understanding has helped.

As for the organic sections; first the large sasauge I belevie the problem was following what Uncomfortable did and to me it seem like a large one with smaller ones. Another wasn't reading all the directions the first time. This time I definitly drew through the forms even if not as many with this example. I also didn't read about the cast shadows note in your critique as sometimes I do glaze over a lot of dirrections and often will miss something. So if the cast shadows this time aren't what was asked, that's why.

Final thoughts: While I'm overall pleased with the help and that I only had to do some of the more easier to understand hw's, there might still be one that might not be what you asked for. This isn't because I don't care. One reason could be the train of thought of mine and trying to board a new one to solve the problem. The second wasn't fully reading for organic forms. This lies on me and just another thing to work on to improve to get better. But I am much more pleased with these second attempts as they are much better and show improvment in many ways. Thanks again for taking the time to review this and here is the link to my work:

https://imgur.com/a/qnM21AX

5:38 PM, Friday May 13th 2022

Okayyy, there is a lot of improvement here, although there are a few points to keep in mind

-The confidence on your arrows is much better and you are doing some good attempts at the perspective of the arrow, the only thing you need to keep working on is the negative space between the zigzagging sections of the ribbon, remember that it has to decrease as it moves further away, this principle is shown here this will help your arrows feel even more tri dimensional.

-Moving on to the organic forms, I can see that you are sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages, although there are a few cases where they have unequally sized ends, keep working on that. The contours are more confident, but they barely change degree, as always use the ghosting method to think about the purpose of each individual mark, and also keep in mind that the more contours you draw the more likely you are to make a mistake, so be very careful and purpose when adding contour curves and ellipses.

-Lastly you are making some good progress in the organic intersections, try to be more aware of how these forms slump and sag under the force of gravity as if they were water balloons. And don't forget to push your shadows further so as to give a better sense of how these wrap around the form they are falling on.

Also I expect you to take more time to read the instructions in the coming lessons, don't forget to check the informal demos page to see more accurate information, this is due to some of the demos being a little old and having some contradictions.

Okay that's about it for now, keep working on these issues in future warm ups. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete

Next Steps:

Lesson 3

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
6:16 AM, Saturday May 21st 2022

First thank you again for helping review and I would have replied sooner but the battery in my computer went ka-put. Tried sending it into the shop had to wait a whole week before just getting a new system as it would have taken way too long to wait for the repair. I'm glad though this still came in while I was waiting and happy to see I have passed.

I'm glad you can see the confidence and improvement even if there are ways I can improve and didn't realize. So for arrows I will try to keep that in mind for the negative space. As for my sasuages, yeah sometimes that happens when one end looks wonky. I should slow down and plan a little better to avoid that. The countours I had no idea weren't changing as much and that more means more likely to make a mistake. I guess now while warming up and looking at things I need to find the right balance of not too few and especially not too many. I think the changing degree part with thinking and ghosting and more practice willl get better. Same thing is putting in elipseses instead. Finally thinking of organic forms like water balloons is a good way to do so. Most of those do look like them when lyin down on a surface. Shadow work I will try to remember and practice more.

As for the final part; I will definitly be reading the directions carefully and more for sure as well as asking quesitons if I need help. As for the informal demos, I will look at those too first before doing anything else and refeering back to them especially as I go about each plant. My plan is to look at one demo, then do a plant similar as shown in that before moving to the next one. That always was my plan but now I have a more solid attack plan to work through this course.

Overall I'm very pleased that I did pass this and I see that I have earned the badge and offcially can move onto lesson 3. It took almost six months/half a year to do so, but I'm not complaining. It's taken that much hard work and effort to get here and I feel ready to finally draw some intersting things. Especially after being out for a week due to no computer. Thanks once again for revieiwing my hw.

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