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7:29 PM, Thursday September 14th 2023
Hello An_duh_sun, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.
Starting with your organic forms it looks you're working towards the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here. On the left of this page quite a few of these forms have one end larger than the other, and some of the wider ends are getting flattened or lopsided. Remember we're basically aiming for two equally sized balls connected by a tube of consistent width.
I can see a little bit of variation in the degree of your contour curves, though in most cases it is subtle and can be pushed much further. Keep in mind that the degree of your contour lines should be shifting wider as we slide along the sausage form, moving farther away from the viewer. This is also influenced by the way in which the sausages themselves turn in space, but farther = wider is a good rule of thumb to follow. If you're unsure as to why that is, review the Lesson 1 ellipses video. You can also see a good example of how to vary your contour curves in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.
I can see that you've redrawn some of your lines, most notably the contour curves. Adding more ink to a mistake won't fix it, it will just make the work messier and confusing. Furthermore, the ghosting method emphasises the importance of making one mark only. Correcting mistakes isn't actually helpful, given that the end result of the exercise is far less relevant and significant than the actual process used to achieve it. Rather, having a habit of correcting your mistakes can lean into the idea of not investing as much time into each individual stroke, and so it's something that should be avoided in favour of putting as much time as is needed to executing each mark to the best of your current ability. I did check your lesson 2 pages of this exercise, and see that Tofu already called this out as a mistake. Make sure that you review previous feedback as often as you need to in order to remember to apply the advice you have been given.
Moving on to your insect constructions your work shows a lot of potential, and I get a good sense of volume in some of your constructions, but right now your markmaking is letting you down in a big way.
The principles of markmaking that were introduced back in lesson 1 should be followed throughout this course. Lines should be continuous an unbroken. There's a bit of a tendency for you to scratch a line together from little marks, or leave gaps between lines that should connect together with tight specific relationships. Here I've marked a couple of specific examples, in case you're unsure what I'm referring to. This heavily suggests that you may not be using the ghosting method in full for every line. Making sure you go through the 3 phases of the ghosting method for each and every line you draw will make sure that these lines are the result of a conscious decision, and serve a clear purpose. At no point in these exercises are we "sketching" or making marks without thinking. By taking the time to be very deliberate about everything we do here, this helps to train our instincts, so when we want to sketch more freely outside of this course we will then be able to rely on the skills we have developed to get better results, or at least, be in a position to choose what marks we would like to make, rather than hoping it will go well.
Here is an example of what appears to be making marks without thinking. If I were to point to any one of these marks and ask you "Why did you draw this?" would you have an answer? The answer can be wrong, in that your understanding of what you were meant to be drawing was wrong, but you must have an answer. We can work with a technique based on an incorrect understanding and correct that understanding, but we can't really improve a technique based on nothing.
On a related note, on some of these constructions you've gone back over almost all of your lines, sometimes 2, 3 or even more times. In ending up with multiple lines representing the edges of the same form, the viewer is given a number of different possible interpretations. Regardless of which interpretation they choose to follow, there will always be another present there to contradict it, which ultimately undermines their suspension of disbelief and reminds them that they're looking at a flat, two dimensional drawing.
There are only 2 cases where it is appropriate to go back over a line in these constructional exercises:
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Ellipses, which we ask students to draw around 2 full times before lifting the pen off the page, as this helps to execute them smoothly.
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Applying additional line weight, which should be reserved for clarifying overlaps as explained here, and restricted to localised areas where those overlaps occur.
I did notice that these markmaking issues have been brought to your attention several times in your previous rounds of feedback for lesson 2 and lesson 3. If anything said to you in a critique is unclear or confusing you are welcome to ask questions. If you understand the advice you have been given then you need to take the necessary steps to apply it to your work as you move forward.
This next issue is much less prevalent, but still worth talking about. Something else that I think will help you is to draw your constructions a bit bigger. It's not an issue on every page but for example here and here there was definitely room to make your drawings larger. In drawing smaller and 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. This can lead to stiffer or more clumsy line work.
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.
The next point I need to talk about relates to differentiating between the actions we can take when interacting with a construction, which fall into two groups:
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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.
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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.
For example, I've marked on your dragonfly and Hercules beetle in red where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. One thing I did notice is that some of the instances of cutting into forms (though not all) came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.
On the Hercules beetle I marked in blue where you'd extended off existing forms using partial, flat shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. I also circled in purple a few areas where it wasn't clear where the silhouette was meant to be, due to the redrawing/ markmaking issues discussed earlier.
Instead, 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.
The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you tried out lots of different strategies for constructing legs. It's not uncommon for students to be aware of the sausage method as introduced here, but to decide that the legs they're looking at don't actually seem to look like a chain of sausages, so they use some other strategy.
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 as shown in these examples here, here, and in this ant leg demo and also here on this dog leg demo as this method should be used throughout lesson 5 too.
Finally I'll touch on texture briefly. It doesn't look like you've applied the advice ThatOneMushroomGuy gave you on this topic in your lesson 3 critique, here you're copying colour patterns instead of working with shadows cast by small surface forms. In fact, on the eyes of this bee you've used scribbling which is very much frowned upon throughout this course. Please reread your lesson 3 feedback and these reminders before your next attempts to add texture to your constructions.
Conclusion
This feedback is, by necessity, quite dense, and I'd like you to take as much time as you need to read it thoroughly, as well as reviewing the relevant sections of lesson material and your previous critiques. You may also want to take some notes in your own words to remind yourself of what to work on. Once you've done that I'd like you to complete some extra pages to address the points I've raised here.
Please complete:
1 page of organic forms with contour lines
4 pages of insect constructions
Be sure to take your time, and use the ghosting method for every line. Resist the temptation to redraw lines.
Next Steps:
1 page of organic forms with contour lines
4 pages of insect constructions
3:42 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023
Thank you for the detailed critique. Here is a link to my revisions
8:14 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023
Hello An_duh_sun, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions.
Starting with your organic forms these are sticking more closely to the characteristics of simple sausage forms, you've done a good job of shifting the degree of your contour curves, and you've only redrawn one contour curve on the whole page. Massive improvements, great work.
Moving on to your insect constructions, on the whole there's some improvement accross the board, particularly with your markmaking, which is more purposeful and coherent, and this helps your constructions to feel more solid. I'll break this feedback into 4 topics to help make it digestible.
Markmaking
This is definitely moving in the right direction, it looks like you're putting more thought into the marks you're making, and your work is much clearer. There are a few places where you're redrawing lines, or your marks get a bit loose and sketchy, but this is a big improvement. I want you to stay very concious of each mark you make being a decision as you move forward with this course, and make every effort not to fall into old habits.
You're adding extra line weight to reinforce large sections of the silhouette of some of your constructions, such as this one which can cause your intially smooth and confident linework to get wobblier when you go back over it. Try to keep a more consistent line thickness through the various stages of construction, and keep in mind that additional line weight should be reserved for clarifying overlaps.
Taking actions in 3D
You're still hopping around between different passes of your ellipses when defining your forms' silhouettes, which leaves stray lines outside the construction to undermine the 3D illusion. I've marked some examples of this on your ladybird in red, along with some spots where you'd cut back inside forms you had already drawn for the leg. I've marked some more examples on this wasp of cutting in red and extending in blue.
Whenever we take "actions in 2D" it reminds us that we're drawing something flat and two dimensional, and in so doing, reinforces that fact to you as you construct it. Creating believable, solid, three dimensional constructions despite drawing on a flat page requires us to first and foremost convince ourselves of this illusion, this lie we're telling, as discussed here back in Lesson 2. The more our approach reinforces the illusion, the more we make new marks that reinforce it even further. The more our marks break the illusion, the more marks we make that then further break the illusion, for us and for everyone else.
While in this course we're doing everything very explicitly, it's to create such a solid belief and understanding of how the things we draw exist in 3D space, that when we draw them more loosely with sketching and other less explicit approaches, we can still produce marks that fall in line with the idea that this thing we're drawing exists in 3D.
Take a look at this diagram which shows the various kinds of actions we can take on a construction, using the context of a sphere. When working on organc constructions in this course you should strive to only take actions by adding in 3D. You will find several examples of this being applied in the various diagrams and demos I shared with you previously.
Leg construction
This is a bit mixed. There are some constructions where it looks like you're trying to stick to simple sausage forms for your leg armatures, and others such as this wasp where it doesn't look like it was a priority for you. You appear to be missing the contour curves for the intersections at the joints in most cases, and freely altering the silhouettes of your sausage forms with single lines, rather than trying to add complete forms as shown in the various examples I shared with you previously.
Texture and detail
Now the last thing I want to discuss is in regards to your approach to the detail phase, once the construction is handled. On this ladybird you've coloured in the spots and the eyes, as well as using hatching to describe form shading on the abdomen. In effect, you're getting caught up in decorating your drawings (making them more visually interesting and pleasing by whatever means at your disposal - usually pulling information from direct observation and drawing it as you see it), which is not what the texture section of Lesson 2 really describes. Decoration itself is not a clear goal - there's no specific point at which we've added "enough".
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.
Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every such textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbours. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.
As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. In particular, these notes are a good section to review, at minimum. In future please refrain from filling large portions of your constructions with solid black like this not only does this ignore the instructions for texture (solid black should be used for cast shadows only) it also obscures your underlying construction, making it more difficult to provide you with accurate feedback.
Conclusion
There is quite a bit from my intial critique which hasn't been applied as thoroughly as I had hoped, which suggests that you may not have gone through that critique thoroughly enough to recall the information with enough specificity to apply the points to your work here. That's something you're going to have to stay on top of - the feedback given is meant to be applied going forward, so that they do not need to be called out multiple times. However, I am really happy to see the progress you've made with your markmaking, and your underlying understanding of 3D space is strong enough for you to move forward.
So, I am going to go ahead and mark this as complete, with the expectation that you will make every effort to actively tackle the points discussed here as you handle your animals.
Next Steps:
Lesson 5
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