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. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. 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, remember you should be drawing through all of your ellipses, even the small contour ellipses on the ends of your forms. I'd also like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. 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 exercises (more so in your dissections) you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.
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. That being said, you are missing a few instructions worth addressing. You're making multiple groups of forms at times rather than one large group as discussed here. You're also highlighting existing edges rather than creating new ones via your intersections, this diagram will hopefully make the goal of the challenge clearer.
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'd like you to draw through all of your forms when attempting this exercise again in the future, it will help reinforce your understanding of the 3D space you're creating. Your shadows are hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to another surface believably. 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.
I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.
Overall it feels like you may be working through some of these a bit too quickly as you're missing a few key instructions.
With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:
1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise (half with ellipses, half with curves)
2 pages of the form intersections exercise
Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.
I look forward to seeing your work.
Next Steps:
1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise (half with ellipses, half with curves)
2 pages of the form intersections exercise
Hi Tofu,
Thank you for the thorough critique, I just want to clarify a few things.
Arrows: '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.' How do I forshorten the negative space?
Organic forms with contours: 'I'd also like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more.' I find drawing consistent 'sausage like' forms very tricky, and get confused about the degree of contour ellipses because the forms aren't tapered or foreshortened.
Textures: 'you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself.' I found this exercise incredibly difficult and painstaking. It's very hard to work out the cast shadows, so any more advice would be helpful.
Form Intersections: 'You're making multiple groups of forms at times rather than one large group as discussed here. You're also highlighting existing edges rather than creating new ones via your intersections,' I thought my forms were all in one big group. Also, I agree the intersections are very difficult and I'm not totally clear on how they are supposed to work based on the video and accompanying notes.
Organic Intersections: Again, a tricky task and I'm not quite sure how to correctly show a cast shadow on such forms.
In all, I feel I'm making some progress, and any more feedback and information would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Dom
Here's the link for the Lesson 2 revisions as requested:
No problem.
To quickly address your questions:
How do I forshorten the negative space?
Much like how your arrows grow in size as they get closer to the viewer, so can the space between the curves (this is the negative space) as demonstrated in the link I provided in your critique.
I find drawing consistent 'sausage like' forms very tricky, and get confused about the degree of contour ellipses because the forms aren't tapered or foreshortened.
Ultimately we don't expect you to be perfect at any exercise during your first attempts, you'll improve as you build mileage. Something to keep in mind however is that you determine the shape of your forms, if you create stronger contour curves along the form's length it will imply that that the form is rounding, also demonstrated in the link I provided in your critique.
I found this exercise incredibly difficult and painstaking. It's very hard to work out the cast shadows, so any more advice would be helpful
Textures and form intersections are the exercises in this lesson that we expect most people to struggle with, they rely on your understanding of 3D space so you'll hopefully see improvement in ability and understanding as you progress through the course as most people do. The goal of the challenge is to think of how forms created by the texture exist in 3D space and how light would behave with them. You decide where your light is and which shadows you create to imply the existence of those forms, if you're working with scales you don't draw the scales themselves you draw the shadows created by those scales to imply that the scales are there. Being able to decide what information you can imply helps prevent the viewer from being overwhelmed from too much visual information and can allow you to draw people's eyes by changes in the density of detail.
I thought my forms were all in one big group. Also, I agree the intersections are very difficult and I'm not totally clear on how they are supposed to work based on the video and accompanying notes.
On your first page of form intersections you have a box in the top left by itself, a box in the bottom right by itself, and 2 separate groups of 3 boxes. All of these should be intersecting in one large group, instead they're multiple groups (or by themselves). As for your understanding you'll hopefully find them easier as you progress in the course where you begin to deal with forms that are a bit more concrete and understandable, like how legs join to a body rather than an assortment of random forms floating in space.
Organic Intersections: Again, a tricky task and I'm not quite sure how to correctly show a cast shadow on such forms.
Pick where you want your light to be, it's easier in one of the top corners than right above, then think about how the light is blocked by your forms and create shadows based on that. It may sound like an obvious answer but it really is just a matter of thinking about the space you're creating and how your forms behave in it. I will quickly add though that just because the answer may be obivous, it doesn't mean it's easy. Again we expect you to improve as you build up mileage. Looking at your attempts again, on the first page some of your forms are just collapsing into one another rather than wrapping around behind existing forms once they're obstructed by another form. You should be drawing through all of your forms and thinking of how each of these forms interacts with one another, if you drape a sausage over another it doesn't disappear, that mass needs to go somewhere. With that in mind you can think of how the shadows interact and wrap around the forms below as well. In the top left of the first page you have shadow that goes all the way up the left side of the form and then is just left floating in the air which shows you need to spend more time thinking about how these things exist.
As for your revisions themselves:
Your organic forms are looking much better but there are 2 issues I need to point out. The first is you're not drawing through your ellipses which is something I called out in your critique. The second is you should try to push your curves so they hook back into the form more as discussed here.
You're still highlighting existing edges at times rather than creating new ones via your intersections in the form intersections attempts. That said, I can see that you're thinking about it more and trying to place new lines at times. Again we don't expect you to nail this the first try but we do want to see you try and you did here, good job.
I'll be marking your submission complete and move you on to lesson 3.
Keep practicing previous exercises as warmups and best of luck.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 3.
Hi Tofu,
Thank you for explaining those points so clearly, I'm going to keep going over the exercises and think about what you've said as I'm doing them. It's reassuring to know I'm not alone in finding these tasks difficult but I think with some guidance and practice I will get there in the end.
Thanks again
Dom
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