Hey there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making good progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, I'll be listing some things I notice below that you can work on to hopfully achieve better results when attempting these exercises again in the future.
Your arrows are off to a good start, I only have 2 quick suggestions here. The first being that your arrows could flow a bit more smoothly, you do have some wobble occurring as well as bulging and pinching in the arrow itself which is a sign you may not be drawing these as confidently as you could. Remember that there's no harm in starting simple and getting comfortable before experimenting more, some simple S arrows with 2 or 3 curves is plenty. The second suggestion I have is to try and experiment with foreshortening more, by having the arrow as well as the space between curves of the arrow increase we can really sell the illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space, for more on this idea you can read here.
A few of your organic forms with contours get a bit too complex, remember that our goal here is to draw a simple sausage like form with both ends being roughly the same size, and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form, for more info on the idea check here. When it comes to your contours your ellipses are looking a bit stiff and wobbly which shows you may be concentrating on keeping them in the form rather than focusing on drawing them confidently. Remember that accuracy will come with time so try to keep them smooth as your top priority. Other than that you could also work on pushing the degree of your contours further. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.
You're on the right track with your pebbles texture in the texture analysis exercise, however in most cases you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows. Cast shadows allow us to imply information which are really beneficial when we want to create gradients/focal points in more complicated pieces. For more information on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here, you may also find this image helpful, it shows how when drawing thin line like textures that outlining and filling makes the texture appear much more dynamic. If possible I do recommend getting a brush pen for exercises like this and when dealing with shadows, you'll save money on fineliners and they're quite helpful/fun to use.
If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, right now this exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page, we'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Outside of some line confidence issues I do notice that you skipped the first step in your cylinders where you draw the minor axis as shown here.
As for your organic intersections I just have 2 quick suggestions. I'd like you to try and draw through all of your forms, if you're struggling with confidence this will help because you're not worrying about where the form should start and end, it'll also help build your understanding of 3D space like drawing through our boxes did. I'd also like you to try and push your shadows further (again a brush pen makes this a bit easier) as right now your shadows are mostly hugging the form creating them rather than being cast.
Overall while you have some things to work on I believe you mostly just need more mileage and to keep working on your line confidence. I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson.
Keep doing previous exercises as warm ups, give some extra attention to texture and good luck in lesson 3!
Next Steps:
Do previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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