Hello, this is my official submission for DaB's lesson 3. I also wanted to ask a question related to shading: are the rules for shading the same as lesson 2's rules for the texture and dissection assignment? Because sometime i fall back to stippling (as plant drawing n.5 shows) as i feel unable to shade using lesson 2's rules since i had problems choosing how to represent subtle textures.
Thank you in advance.
To answer your question, what's stated here in Lesson 2 on the topic of shading does indeed apply to the entire course. That is, that we are not to incorporate shading into our drawings here. What we're doing in the texture phase of drawings (should we choose to add it) serves a specific purpose - it's not actually just to put arbitrary decoration on our drawings, but rather to use the specific shadow shapes we lay down to imply the presence of specific textural forms.
Ultimately, that you feel unable to shade, is by design. What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice.
Circling back to this concept of texture being made up of shadow shapes cast by specific forms onto the surfaces around them essentially does mean that what we consider texture here is very time consuming, and goes beyond simply looking at your reference and attempting to draw what you see. As with the greater overall construction, it all comes back to understanding how things sit in 3D space, and how they relate to one another within it.
Anyway, jumping right in with your arrows, you're handling these fairly well, in that you're drawing most of them with a good bit of confidence, which helps to capture the fluidity with which they move through the world. I would however avoid the kind of staggered chicken scratching you employed in this one. That sense of confidence from your other arrows does carry over fairly well into your leaves, helping to capture not only how they sit statically in the world, but also how they move through the space they occupy.
That said, there are a few issues of concern:
First and foremost, there's a lot of empty space on this page. Either opt to draw your leaves larger (which can help give our brains more space to think through spatial problems, while also making it easier to engage our whole arm when drawing), or make use of that space by drawing more leaves.
Secondly, you end up running into the issue explained here of zigzagging your edge detail a fair bit. This results in a much weaker relationship between the different phases of construction. Construction is all about building upon what was there previously, right off that existing structure. What we don't want to necessarily do is outright redraw the leaf by stamping a new one right on top of it. There needs to be tight, specific relationships between each phase of construction.
Continuing onto your branches, your work here is fairly well done, though there are two recommendations that I have to offer:
Firstly, be sure to extend each segment fully halfway to the next ellipse as explained here. This helps us to achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from one segment to the next.
Secondly, right now your approach is resulting in little tails. While that's not a huge problem, it does help a fair bit if we actually use that last chunk of the previous segment as a sort of "runway", overlapping it directly for our next stroke before shooting off to the next target, rather than drawing where the previous stroke ought to have been. This helps us take account for our mistakes, and address them directly, whereas if we simply ignore them, those mistakes will linger for longer. Of course, this will also make things more difficult in the short term, but it will result in more rapid development of those skills.
Finally, moving onto your plant constructions, overall you've done a pretty decent job, though there are some things I'd still like to call out:
For the white eridens, you jumped a little too quickly to drawing all of the little complex edges as shown here. Instead, you should starting with a much simpler form - like a sausage - and then adding those little bits to its silhouette in a later step.
For the pine tree, drawing each branch as a separate "leaf structure", and then drawing each individual needle inside of it (as shown here for the more complex leaf structures) would allow you to break down the construction further, in line with the principle of starting as simple as possible and gradually getting more complex.
The tendency to zizgag your edge detail does tend to persist throughout your leaves and petals here.
Similarly, as mentioned with your leaves, try not to leave too much empty space. Most of your plants were fine, but there are some pages like this one and this one (as well as some others) where there was a ton of blank space left over. There are two things that we must give each of our drawings throughout this course in order to get the most out of them. Those two things are space and time. In artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, you're limiting your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it.
All in all I do think you're headed in the right direction, but remember above all else that the drawings we're doing for this course are exercises. Our focus is not on creating a nice drawing, but rather to go through a specific approach that takes each drawing and turns it into a 3D puzzle for our brains to solve. In solving each of these puzzles, we gradually flesh out our brain's internal model of 3D space.
Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'm going to assign a few additional pages for you to apply what I've called out here.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
1 page of the leaves exercise
2 pages of plant constructions
Hello, here are my exercises: https://imgur.com/a/pwsT3bw
Apologies for the delay.
There are no deadlines, and thus no delays - it's fine for students to take as much time as they need, but it is very important that the time is invested in executing the work to the best of your current ability, in going back through the material from the lesson and from the feedback you've been given, and applying it as closely and attentively as you can.
Looking through your work here, I have a number of concerns:
Your linework is in some ways still a rather rushed, leaving little gaps between the edge detail you add and the silhouette to which it's being added. This is not a huge issue and one I expect will improve with practice, as long as you invest as much time as you need to execute each mark to the best of your current ability, rather than basing how much time you spend on each mark on how much time you actually have that moment. It's quite important that as we build up detail, that we do so by creating seamless extensions of, or cuts into, the existing silhouette.
You're skipping constructional steps as explained here in the lesson notes when tackling more complex leaf structures.
When building up edge detail, you sometimes try to add way more complexity than can strictly be added, adding many separate spikes before returning to the existing silhouette. This should be handled in successive stages of construction, only ever adding as simple a mark as you can. To that, you can of course add another, and another - construction is a cumulative process that achieves greater complexity one small step at a time, as shown here on another student's work.
I'm also a little puzzled at all the random little points that seem to surround your linework. Not sure what purpose they're meant to serve.
I've marked out the points above here on directly on your work.
In my original feedback I really stressed the importance of taking full advantage of the space available to you on the page, but for this foxglove which is loaded with all kinds of little elements, you definitely could have drawn it at least 50% bigger without capturing any less of the plant. Of course, you also have the option of focusing in on a specific area of a plant instead of necessarily capturing the whole thing - this can be useful when you have a lot of the same elements repeated, and thus would benefit more from studying a specific cluster at a much larger scale, rather than the whole thing. Remember that our reference images are just a source of information - there's no rule stating that we have to reproduce the entirety of the reference image we choose.
In the last drawing, I noticed that some of your edge detail zigzagged back and forth across the silhouette's edge, which is another point I did call out in my previous feedback.
None of these issues are huge concerns - I certainly want to see you demonstrate that you understand how you're skipping steps and such - but as a whole you are not far from having this one marked as complete. What I am most concerned about however is how you're executing your linework, as it does not demonstrate that you're investing nearly as much time as these drawings individually demand.
Some students get the impression that for some reason they're expected to finish a given drawing in one sitting, that the moment they get up their drawing cannot be touched again. But there's no basis for this - you are welcome to, encouraged to, and required to give each drawing as much time as it requires. When that means spreading a single drawing across different sittings and days, then that's simply what's required of you.
Given that there are quite a few points you missed from the lesson notes and my previous feedback, I'm going to ask that you complete the same revisions again.
Next Steps:
Please submit 1 page of leaves, and 2 pages of plant constructions. Remember that every structural mark should be executed using the ghosting method, and engage your whole arm from the shoulder.
Hi, here's my 2nd remake: https://imgur.com/a/hVg5IYY
I'm writing some notes and doubts i had down here, i hope i'm not writing too much as i've been warned about writing long self-critiques on a previous homework submission.
Notes and doubts:
The points that you saw in my previous remake were used to "plan" my lines. I would place them and imagine the line going through them and if the line didn't fit my plans, i would just place more points. In this remake i avoided them as much as possible
In the leaves exercise there is one leaf (i indicated it) where i add edge detail by adding and subtracting and using the same line\mark; that is intentional since i felt that it was the only way to match the reference
There are 2 butterfly bush because: 1) i felt i didn't draw the first big enough 2) wasn't sure how to approach it (i also wonder if it would have been more appropriate to approach it like a texture, with a part "shaded" where i draw all the little flowers and the rest in the light, left blank with just a broken silhouette)
In the butterfly bush close up there are some flowers where i've drawn the flow lines for the petals. Ultimately i discarded this approach as i thought it added too many lines.
As for the american bittersweet i had problems with the leaves in particular. How am i supposed to treat the leaf's stem when it is in the foreground? i ended treating it like a branch but i'm unsure about my choice here
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.
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