Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction
11:10 AM, Monday May 11th 2020
Finally completed lesson 2. Form intersections were a a real headache. But somehow completed them. Other than that the lesson was actually fun to do.
Starting with your arrows, you're doing a good job of capturing a sense of fluidity and flow to how they move through space. One thing you're missing however is that there is a limited application of perspective to most of these. There are some where you apply perspective to the positive space (the width of the ribbon getting narrower as it moves away from us), but you generally neglect to apply that same perspective consistently to the negative space (making the distances between the zigzagging sections compress as we look farther away). Both of these will help you convey a greater sense of depth in your scene.
Also, when drawing your arrows, don't stop your lines when they get overlapped by another. I mentioned with the example that you should draw each one as though the others don't exist, rather than cutting them off.
Moving onto your organic forms with contour lines, it seems you missed the instructions on sticking to the characteristics of a 'simple sausage'. I really cannot stress enough the importance of following the instructions to the letter.
Aside from that, you're doing a good job of keeping your contour lines snug between the edges of the sausage forms, and are demonstrating an understanding of how the degree of your contour lines shifts along the length of the form. In your contour curves, I am noticing that you aren't overshooting your curves in most cases, and this is resulting in you not quite wrapping your curves around the forms in a believable fashion in many of these. You're very close, but you need to be overshooting your curves a little more to show how they hook back around and continue along the other side, as shown here.
Your texture analyses are definitely moving in the right direction. I can see that you are still struggling to outline things first, then apply your shadows, but you're clearly making efforts to move towards thinking more and more in terms of shadow shapes. Ultimately you will have to take the leap and set aside outlines altogether and attempt to put down every mark as though it is an actual shadow shape instead.
One thing to keep in mind is that as you move towards the sparser end of your texture, the shadows that will last the longest are those that are caught where multiple forms come together. The ones you've chosen to remain are more "out in the open", and would be the first to be eliminated. This is explained further at the bottom of the diagram in this section.
I think you continue to demonstrate a great deal of progress throughout your dissections, and the attention to detail and sheer patience you've demonstrated here is quite remarkable. There are also a number of cases here where you're relying less and less on outlines.
Your work on your form intersections is really well done. Your lines are drawn confidently, and you've got a great start on wrapping your head around how those forms relate to one another with the intersection lines themselves. These intersection lines are an introduction to the concept of spatial relationships, which is at the very core of Drawabox. Students at this point are merely meant to attempt them, providing themselves a baseline before we continue to explore them throughout the rest of this course.
One thing I did want to mention however is that in the instructions, I pointed out that you should avoid any forms that are stretched in any one dimension (like longer cylinders) and stick to forms that were more equilateral (roughly the same size in all three dimensions). You seem to have missed this point.
Lastly, your organic intersections are looking pretty good. You're doing a great job of conveying how the forms exist together in three dimensions, and how gravity causes them to slump and sag in a believable fashion.
All in all, you're doing quite well, though I do want to give you the opportunity to revisit those organic forms with contour curves to draw the proper "simple" sausage forms. These will be of greater importance in later lessons, as we use them as base components in more complex constructions - a role where that simplicity becomes much more important.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
Thanks for the detailed review. Please find the link with revisions.
http://imgur.com/gallery/R2hm1Xa
Will work on the feedback given.
Most of these are definitely much better, in terms of sticking to simple sausage shapes, though you've got a few that deviate a little. Also:
Don't forget to draw the central minor axis line, around which the contour curves would be aligned.
You aren't shifting your degrees as shown here. You were doing this more correctly before.
Be sure to continue working on these points, but I will go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 3.
Oh. I forgot that minor axis. Will keep in mind.
A lot of folks have heard about Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" - it's basically a classic at this point, and deservedly so. It's also a book that a lot of people struggle with, for the simple reason that they expect it to be a manual or a lesson plan explaining, well... how to draw. It's a reasonable assumption, but I've found that book to be more of a reference book - like an encyclopedia for perspective problems, more useful to people who already have a good basis in perspective.
Sketching: The Basics is a far better choice for beginners. It's more digestible, and while it introduces a lot of similar concepts, it does so in a manner more suited to those earlier in their studies.
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