Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids
10:45 PM, Saturday March 19th 2022
Please provide any critique.
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5:46 PM, Sunday March 27th 2022
Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 4 homework
Organic Forms with contours
-Starting with the organic forms with contour curves, your sausages are turning out nicely but there is still some room for improvement, remember to avoid any pinching or swelling throughout the length of the sausage, and that both ends should be roughly of the same size. When it comes to the contour curves themselves, you need more time to get comfortable with them. Give each one of them as much attention and focus as it requires, and use the ghosting method to think about each mark’s purpose, also try to imagine as if you were carving your pen along the surface of the sausage, this way you will start to get the little bits of nuance that help describe how these forms sit in space. The contour ellipses are looking great, and I have no criticism to offer here.
Insects
-I can see that you are trying to break everything into simpler forms, but remember that you are not only bound to them. They only act as a scaffolding on which you will add additional forms, the important thing to keep in mind is that each additional form should be fully enclosed and have its own volume, you should be thinking about how these forms interact in 3D space. You can see more concrete examples of this approach on the shrimp demo and lobster demo, so definitely check them out.
- Another thing that can help you is to think about how each additional form would exist by itself in 3D space, and then as it comes into contact with the preceding structure is starts to deform and change its silhouette in response to the forms it comes into contact with, you can see this approach exemplified here.
-Now I want to move on to the leg construction, I can see that you are sticking to chains of simple sausages, some of them look very scratchy so you may want to keep working on your mark making. The important thing here, is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are, instead it is about laying down a structure that captures both the solidity and fluidity of the legs, once that structure is in place we start to build on top of it to capture the other bits of complexity that we can see on our reference image, you can see this approach on this diagram of an ant’s leg and here on the context of a dog’s leg.
-I can see that you were trying to capture the segmentation of the abdomen of some of your insects, like the butterfly for example, But you miss the opportunity to break the silhouette if you need a reminder read this section of lesson 2 again.
-another important thing is that you should not try to cut into the silhouette of your forms. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form. One example of this issue would be your mosquito and this insect.
-Lastly, I do get the impression that some of your mark making is lacking a lot of confidence and planning. Remember to take your time to ghost and think about the goal of each mark, when you are ready, draw your marks with confidence and fully commit to them.
Anyways, hopefully you found that helpful, you still have some things to keep working on, so I’ll leave you additional homework. Good luck!!!
Next Steps:
Please do the following
-One page of organic forms with contour curves
-Draw a along the shrimp demo
-2 more insect constructions
8:53 PM, Monday March 28th 2022
5:45 PM, Tuesday March 29th 2022
Okay, let’s see how you have improved
-On the organic forms I can definitely see that you are putting much more effort into the contour lines and overall there is a good improvement, you still need to keep working on the shape of your sausages but you can do it during your warm ups
Honestly I wasn’t expecting you to finish this set of revisions so fast, and I can still see some areas where you can improve..
-You did quite well on the shrimp demo and your mark making is much more deliberate and purposeful, although this did not carry over to your other constructions. One thing that I’m noticing is that you tend to jump a lot between working in with tri dimensional forms and working with flat shapes, this can be corrected by giving each drawing as much time and focus as possible. I also notice that you tend to focus more on the larger picture, instead you should focus on building each drawing one piece at a time and focusing on each individual mark and form so that you can draw them to the best of your ability.
- For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.
Instead, whenever we want to build upon our construction or change something, we can do so by introducing new 3D forms to the structure, and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.
-Lastly, I can see that you have some trouble with the proportions, some of your drawings end up being quite large, I am not too concerned about this and I’d like you to focus more on the points I raised above, but it’d be very helpful if you can address this issue, my only advice is that this can be corrected by simply taking more time to plan your constructions.
You still have some things to keep working on so I’ll leave you some additional homework but to ensure that this time you can get the most out of it, I’ll give you some recommendations
Next Steps:
Please do the following
-2 more insect constructions, give each one of them as much time as you can, try to focus on doing only one per day, try to look for multiple pieces of reference and observe them carefully. Good luck!!
11:55 PM, Sunday April 3rd 2022
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