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8:18 PM, Monday June 23rd 2025

Starting with the arrows,

  • You're doing a good job of maintaining side edges that are smooth and confident, which helps to avoid the kind of erratic widening/narrowing which comes from hesitation and wobbling, and can undermine the impression that what we're looking at is really flowing through 3D space.

  • When it comes to the application of foreshortening to the positive space (the structure of the arrows itself), while you are certainly applying it, in most of these it's fairly minimal. You'll get a lot more out of the exercise if you exaggerate the foreshortening, making the closer end much larger than the farther end as you did with this one.

  • In terms of the application of foreshortening to the negative space (the gaps between the zigzagging sections), I similarly feel there's plenty of room to push this further as well, making those farther gaps significantly smaller than those closer to the viewer, to the point of even allowing the zigzagging sections to overlap one another more. This will create a much stronger sense of depth, although those overlaps can feel uncomfortable for students initially, and even give the impression that they're incorrect. They are however very much a useful tool for making the arrows feel as though they're coming at the viewer, rather than simply gliding across their field of view.

Continuing onto your organic forms with contour lines,

  • On the page with contour ellipses, you're doing a pretty good job overall at sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages, although on the page with contour curves I think you might not be thinking about that as much, and as a result there's some slippage with some of these having ends of different sizes, ends that aren't quite spherical in nature, or midsections that widen a little. Just be sure to be conscious of the characteristics you're aiming for, as we should be conscious of every choice we make and how it relates back to the instructions. I should note though that overall you're still progressing well in this regard - it's just that the first page is largely very well done, and it makes the minor issues on the second stand out a little more than they otherwise might.

  • You're drawing the contour ellipses and contour curves with a great deal of confidence, which helps keep them evenly shaped and gives a strong impression that they're wrapping along the surface of the sausage's rounded forms.

  • When it comes to the degree of your contour lines, sometimes you draw these to maintain a consistent degree throughout (which is incorrect, as discussed here), and sometimes you have them getting narrower the further back along the length of the sausage, which is also incorrect (the inverse would be more correct, with the degree getting wider the further back we go). I strongly recommend reviewing the Lesson 1 ellipses section, which goes over this concept in much more depth, between the video and the written material.

Moving onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).

As a whole you're doing a phenomenal job here, especially when it comes both to observing your references carefully and patiently, as well as in adhering to the methodology outlined in the reminders. There are still some places where you're prone to working with one-off strokes rather than intentionally designed shadow shapes (which can cause us to lean more into copying what we're seeing in our reference images directly, rather than ensuring that the marks we put down are based on an understanding of the forms that are present and how they relate to their surroundings), but that is not abnormal nor unexpected. This is something you can work to improve on, but as a whole the things you're getting right do put you far ahead of most in this regard.

Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:

  • Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). As it stands it's clear that you're thinking about these as we hope to see, so great work there.

  • The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.

As to this latter point, you're also doing a great job - you're demonstrating a great deal of care and patience in applying the tools and methodologies we've introduced thus far. Just one thing to keep in mind: you're prone to drawing your cylinders with side edges that remain parallel on the page, which isn't actually correct. Since our forms are arbitrarily rotated in this exercise, it's unlikely that the cylinders are all being aligned in such a way that those side edges run perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight, which is required for their VP to be at infinity. Without that, it's necessary to draw your side edges with at least a little bit of visible convergence.

And lastly, your organic intersections are coming along well - they're demonstrating an understanding of how these forms interact with one another under the influence of gravity that is developing well, and that you understand how to apply the exercise to continue improving on this front going forwards.

All in all, solid work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto Lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
2:29 PM, Tuesday June 24th 2025

I appreciate the critique! I see some things better now, I didnt even think about the fact that the cylinder lines should also converge and they shouldnt be parallel but it makes sense now that I think about it. I will try to work on my mistakes when these exercises come up in my warmup pool. Thank you for the critique and advice!

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Sketching: The Basics

Sketching: The Basics

A lot of folks have heard about Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" - it's basically a classic at this point, and deservedly so. It's also a book that a lot of people struggle with, for the simple reason that they expect it to be a manual or a lesson plan explaining, well... how to draw. It's a reasonable assumption, but I've found that book to be more of a reference book - like an encyclopedia for perspective problems, more useful to people who already have a good basis in perspective.

Sketching: The Basics is a far better choice for beginners. It's more digestible, and while it introduces a lot of similar concepts, it does so in a manner more suited to those earlier in their studies.

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