9:42 PM, Tuesday June 16th 2020
Starting with your arrows, you're doing a decent job of getting them to flow fairly smoothly through space. One thing to keep in mind though is that the rate at which the ribbon gets narrower as it moves back in space should also be the rate at which the distances between the zigzagging sections tightens up, since perspective applies to both of these at the same rate.
Moving onto the organic forms with contour lines, it's clear that you're aware of the importance of sticking to simple sausage forms as mentioned in the instructions, though this is something that you'll definitely need to keep working on. You're getting there, but some of them do come out a little sloppy, especially where you've broken them into different segments. With drawing sausage forms, what tends to work best is slowing your execution down a little bit when applying the ghosting method, while still maintaining a confident pace. This is, obviously, difficult. As you practice the ghosting method, the pace at which you need to be drawing to avoid having your brain interfere and cause a bunch of wobbles decreases steadily, so you can regain some of that control, but it does take a good deal of mileage. Also, make sure you're drawing from your shoulder, as this will allow you greater consistency in your trajectories.
The contour ellipses/curves themselves are essentially the same - make sure you're applying the ghosting method, drawing from your shoulder, and draw through your contour ellipses. You've neglected to do this last point in a lot of these ellipses, as it seems you've forgotten its importance.
Lastly, it appears that you're not necessarily thinking about the degree at which your contour lines should be drawn. 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.
For your texture analyses, you've clearly focused on the importance of working with shadow shapes, and you've used them to varying degrees of effectiveness in capturing a gradient of density from left to right. You're also demonstrating well developing observational skills, and an eye for detail. There is certainly room for growth and improvement, but you're largely headed in the right direction here. The only one I want to draw attention to is that last row, where you've fallen a little back into relying on outlining your textural forms first (mainly in the center). Be sure to read these notes on this issue.
I think you continue showing a good deal of improvement on this front throughout your dissections. You've tackled a great many different textures, and for most of them you pay careful attention to your reference images. There are some - like your brick pillar - where you end up falling back on memory and end up with an oversimplified result - and in some cases, such as your leather texture, you end up relying on scribbling (which is mentioned in the instructions as something to avoid), but all in all you're doing a great job. These texture exercises are themselves introductions to a concept I don't expect you to have prior experience with. It's just a starting point, and you're doing well.
Moving onto your form intersections, my biggest issue here is that you're clearly not really applying the ghosting method, and in neglecting to do so, you've fallen back on some bad habits. For example, you've got a tendency to go back over lines to correct mistakes. Doing so only draws more attention to your blunder. If you mess up, it's always best to just leave it be. You also have a tendency to trace back over your lines when trying to add line weight - you should be executing those marks with confidence, even if it means taking a bit of a hit on accuracy. When we trace over marks, we tend to focus too much on how we're following lines on the page, rather than how the lines we're drawing are intended to move through 3D space.
The ghosting method is important because it essentially allows us to separate the process of mark making into several different steps, ultimately to give us the freedom of executing our marks without hesitation or fear of making mistakes. Because the planning and preparation is all taken care of beforehand, when we execute the mark, our only focus is on doing so with a confident, persistent pace. I get into this in greater detail in this response to another student, where I talk about the specific mindset in which you should employ this technique.
Looking at the form constructions themselves, they're alright. Your boxes and cones are decently constructed, although there are a few boxes that you haven't drawn through, and as a whole you do have a good deal of work on thinking about how the lines you're drawing ought to be converging consistently towards shared vanishing points. As you noted yourself, some of your cylinders are a bit too stretched. Some of your spheres are decently drawn, but others come out a little uneven. Overall though, your linework as a whole takes a big hit, and the haphazard hatching lines definitely hinders the overall presentation of the exercise. As a rule, if you're going to add something, don't half-ass it. Make sure your hatching lines stretch all the way across a plane from edge to edge, and don't add hatching on a rounded surface. Hatching lines end up functioning as contour lines - so if you place straight lines across the surface of what is intended to read as a sphere, you're going to flatten it out. Best to just leave the hatching for very specific, flat surfaces, and nothing more.
Lastly, your organic intersections are alright, although you definitely end up straying quite a bit from simple sausage forms in the second page. You are however establishing how these forms interact with one another in 3D space, and you do capture an illusion of gravity in how they slump and sag over one another. The first page is definitely far more successful than the first, and more in line with what was asked.
All in all, there are a couple issues that need to be ironed out before I mark this lesson as complete, so I'm going to ask for a few additional pages below.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
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1 page of organic forms with contour ellipses
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1 page of organic forms with contour curves
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2 pages of form intersections