Regardless of my mistakes, i want to ask how do we put "center lines" ? was hoping uncomfy would explain how in any of the videos but he never does, do we put center lines based on where is our insect looking?.
Hello Ledvi21, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.
Starting with your Organic forms with contour lines, you're doing a very good job of keeping your sausage forms simple. There were just a couple with one end slightly larger than the other like this, so keep working on having both ends evenly sized.
You're doing well with the contour curves too, I can see you're working on varying their degree. Sometimes where your curves are shallow they stop quite abruptly at the edge of the form, examples here. Please keep working on hooking the contour curves around the form (Uncomfortable calls it "overshooting" in the exercise instructions) as this will help prevent accidentally flattening the form, and it helps with line confidence. I noticed a couple of spots where your lines showed signs of hesitation. You're doing great though! Those are just some pointers to work on in future warm ups.
Moving on to your insect constructions your work is coming along well. You're building your constructions step by step, starting with simple forms and adding complexity to them where you need to. You're demonstrating a developing understanding of how your forms exist in 3d space. You're doing a good job but I do have a couple of pointers to help you to continue get the most out of these constructional exercises in the future.
The first of these relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:
1 Actions in 2D space, where we're just putting lines down on a page, without necessarily considering the specific nature of the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that already exist in the scene.
2 Actions in 3D space, where we're actually thinking about how each form we draw exists in 3D space, and how it relates to the existing 3D structures already present. We draw them in a manner that actually respects the 3D nature of what's already there, and even reinforces it.
Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.
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.
Fortunately you don't actually cut back inside your forms much but I've highlighted in blue on your spider a couple of little places where you altered your silhouette by extending it instead.
I marked in red what was probably a small accidental cut into your silhouette due to the looseness of the ellipse for the abdomen. In future if there's a gap between passes on your ellipse I'd like you to treat the outermost line as the foundation for your construction.
I can tell you're thinking of the spikes as 3d forms. In the future it will help if you complete them fully. Defining the contour line where they attach to the underlying structure will help you hone your spacial reasoning skills and will be necesssary for the more complex and demanding constructions in the next lesson.
So, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3d forms to the existing structure. forms with their own complete silhouettes - 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.
This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.
You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.
When it comes to the legs of your insects, I can see you're making very good use of the sausage method. Just remember to add the add the contour line at the joints, to show how the two sausage forms intersect. You've done this on most of your constructions but it looks like you missed them in this spider These little contour lines convey a lot of information about how your sausages are orientated in space and how they fit together so please try to remember them in future.
The key to keep in mind here is that the sausage method is not about capturing the legs precisely as they are - it is about laying in a base structure or armature that captures both the solidity and the gestural flow of a limb in equal measure, where the majority of other techniques lean too far to one side, either looking solid and stiff or gestural but flat. Once in place, we can then build on top of this base structure with more additional forms shown in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this strategy is important for tackling animal constructions too.
You had a question about placing a center line on your forms. Sometimes this line is easy to identify on certain parts- the central split on wing casings is useful here. Other times the visual cues are subtler but you can still use the symmetry of the insect to help you. You are correct in your understanding that the centre line will be based on what direction the insect is facing relative to the viewer. Adding this centre line is a useful tool to help with understanding how your forms exist in 3d space, and one that you're already using well. I hope that clears it up for you, if not please let me know and I'll find a better way to explain it for you.
So! All in all, great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Lesson 5
Hi! Honestly i must say that this is pretty solid feedback, i just have 3 minor questions.
What can we do when dealing with this kind of "cubic/rectangular" forms? Im certain that i did them wrong because they look flat, i had a lot of trouble dealing with them because they look like little boxes so its harder to "wrap them" around the form or to give them a sense in 3D space.
Also in this crab I wanted to show the spikes on its arm but i feel like i overdid it and drew too many of them.
In this kind of situation when there's too much "repetitive" detail, is it best to keep it sparse, or just not draw them at all? (from a "Construction Exercise standpoint")
Also, what do we do when the insect's legs are not visible? do we still draw "through them" or can we just simply draw the part that is visible?
Hi! Thanks!
1- If you take another look at the ant leg demo I shared with you, I think the bottom section demonstrates what you're going for with the bumps. As a general rule of thumb you'd want whatever you're adding to your construction to follow the form of the underlying structure. There's a rather exaggerated example here in this diagram.
2- For the spikes on your crab limbs you'd want to use complete forms (like I showed on your spider) where they break the silhouette. You could also choose to imply some of the ones that don't break the silhouette by just drawing the shadows that they cast, using the techniques taught in the textures section of lesson 2. How much texture and detail you want to add is up to you, as long as you're taking the time to observe what is present in your reference and carefully design each mark you make. If you do find yourself repeating the same marks over and over, that is probably a cue to slow down and make sure that everything you add to your drawing has meaning and purpose. Adding texture and detail is completely optional in this lesson, so if you choose to focus entirely on construction that is a-ok.
As a more general point, when you add a lot of detail and contrast to part of your drawing it yells "Look at me!" creating a focal point. So be aware that it is a tool to use to direct your viewer's attention.
3- It helps to develop your spacial reasoning when you draw through things. This includes drawing parts of legs that are hidden in the reference, and "problem solving" how they connect to the far side of the insect. Where a leg is entirely hidden I wouldn't expect a student to make it up add it to their construction, just to draw the hidden parts of a leg that is partially visible. You're doing a good job of drawing through things in your work so I didn't specifically bring it up.
so the center line is basically a long axis which goes through all the 2d planes.
here i tried to explain it.
with the sphere i tried to explain the minor axis of each ellipse they are called coronal blue
transverse green
sagittal pink
you can search up as the anatomical plane diagrams.
imagine like if you were chopping the sphere front to back you would follow the blue axis so every ellipse's minor axis will be the same with the blue axis
lastly as you can see blue axis is passing through from the intersection of the pink and green ellipses and its the same for the other 2 ellipses es well.
I hope it helps let me know if you have any questions!Well after spending like 6 hours on my drawabox challenge i was sitting there thinking like why did i do that? Then you said you like it so yeah i wanted to help you out with the questions thank you for encouraging.
Where the rest of my recommendations tend to be for specific products, this one is a little more general. It's about printer paper.
As discussed in Lesson 0, printer paper (A4 or 8.5"x11") is what we recommend. It's well suited to the kind of tools we're using, and the nature of the work we're doing (in terms of size). But a lot of students still feel driven to sketchbooks, either by a desire to feel more like an artist, or to be able to compile their work as they go through the course.
Neither is a good enough reason to use something that is going to more expensive, more complex in terms of finding the right kind for the tools we're using, more stress-inducing (in terms of not wanting to "ruin" a sketchbook - we make a lot of mistakes throughout the work in this course), and more likely to keep you from developing the habits we try to instill in our students (like rotating the page to find a comfortable angle of approach).
Whether you grab the ream of printer paper linked here, a different brand, or pick one up from a store near you - do yourself a favour and don't make things even more difficult for you. And if you want to compile your work, you can always keep it in a folder, and even have it bound into a book when you're done.
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