Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

2:35 PM, Thursday November 11th 2021

drawaboxlesson2 - Google Drive

drawaboxlesson2 - Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AbH-IB6odhSqDxJmYGyyNEShKokhgBS4?usp=sharing

HI, I complete the exercise of lesson 2 ,what do you think?

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10:31 PM, Friday November 12th 2021

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

  • Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours you're doing a good job trying to shift the degree of your contours so far, be sure to keep experimenting. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

  • In the texture section you're demonstrating good observational skills by being able to separate and clearly focus on the cast shadows formed along your reference. You're doing a good job of transitioning your gradients from dark to light as well rather than having sudden changes. Before moving on to the next section I'd like to quickly point you to this image which shows that when working with thin line like textures we benefit from outlining and filling the shadow's shape rather than just drawing a line. We get much more dynamic and interesting results this way. Remember that each texture is it's own challenge so be sure to experiment with different types when practicing this exercise in the future.

  • It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. I recommend drawing through all of your forms in the future as it helps us develop our understanding of the 3D space we're trying to construct just like when we drew through our boxes.When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Keep practicing previous exercise as warm ups.

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
3:31 AM, Sunday November 14th 2021
edited at 3:31 AM, Nov 14th 2021

Hi, thanks for your fast answer, I was at number 11 in line and I thought it would take a long time.

i have some questions:

  1. When you said that “with more mileage”, do you mean that I need to think the trajectory of my line before putting it in the paper.

  2. should use less thickness on the line when the arrow is pointing forward?

  3. Do I make the position of my organic shapes randomly like the box exercise?

edited at 3:31 AM, Nov 14th 2021
11:13 PM, Sunday November 14th 2021

No problem.

  1. More mileage just means as you draw more. To make it a bit clearer the phrase comes from driving, as you drive and add more miles to your car you're building up mileage. By drawing more you're building up mileage for the skill and will find things more comfortable as they become second nature.

  2. You want to add line weight in specific areas to make the form clearer, when drawing boxes we made the silhouette thicker, and when drawing arrows we add thickness to overlapping sections.

  3. You can practice randomly placing organic forms but when practicing the organic itnersections exercise you want to stack them upwards so they wrap around one another.

Hope that clears things up a bit more, if not just let me know.

4:09 PM, Monday November 15th 2021

Thanks for the answer, Any questions I will ask you

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