View Full Submission View Parent Comment
1:03 AM, Tuesday February 2nd 2021

Your first page caused me to audibly "oooh!" - so that's definitely points in your favour. As a whole your work here is vastly improved, and definitely moving in the right direction. Just a few things to keep an eye on:

  • When building up forms on top of the sausage structure, don't just 'envelope' the sausage segment with a bigger form, as this results in a weaker relationship between them where the smaller one floats more loosely inside the bigger one. Instead, approach it as shown here. Note how the masses are being built up piece by piece, focusing on how one form really wraps around the existing structure, creating a believable relationship between them.

  • I noticed some places where you did try to build up those masses with individual parts, and that's definitely moving in the right direction, although the way you curve the silhouette to define the relationship between those forms is a bit clumsy. For example, here those lines appear more stiff and rigid, rather than running fluidly along the surface of the underlying sausage form. Looking ahead to your bee/wasp, your linework starts to look somewhat sketchier and more erratic, suggesting to me that you're slipping up in terms of using the ghosting method to plan and prepare before executing your marks confidently, drawing from the shoulder, etc. Sometimes students get caught up in their constructions and forget the steps with which they're meant to approach the individual lines. Make sure that you are putting all the time into every part of your drawings.

  • You sometimes have a tendency to overuse your contour lines. For example, on the bee's wings. With any mark you draw, make sure you think about what it is meant to contribute to the construction first and foremost, determining whether or not it is really necessary. Then, figure out what you can do to execute that mark to the best of your ability. Don't jump in and just add a bunch of contour lines on auto-pilot.

Anyway, all in all you're moving in the right direction, but you do need to be more mindful of the approaches you're using. Be sure to go over the demonstrations/diagrams I provided in my last critique, looking at not only the concept being presented, but also the way in which the individual lines are added, and try to apply those principles as you move forwards through the lessons.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 5.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:48 PM, Tuesday February 2nd 2021

Many thanks!

It was a real challange. I felt lost many times. Definitely gonna check out the demos of this lesson again

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Ellipse Master Template

Ellipse Master Template

This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.

I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.

No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.