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4:48 AM, Monday May 4th 2020

Thank you for noticing my bad habits about the lines... I need to work on getting rid of them soon...

Here are the pages you requested! https://imgur.com/a/MjAWZLz

ever since i started Lesson 5 i was very keen on not adding any details in my animal drawings since you did tell me on Lesson 4 critiq to not aim for pretty drawing... i actually thought this was the case so far but i guess i've been doing it unconsciously .. if my last pages do look appealing then definitely know it was not my intention...

Thanks again and stay safe!

8:06 PM, Monday May 4th 2020

So these are definitely a big improvement, and have made it considerably easier to point out your primary issues. Instead of writing out my critique here, I ended up doing most of it directly on your work with little examples and visual explanations to help you understand them better. You'll find it here.

Main points:

  1. When constructing your animals' muzzles, you seem to create a larger form, then create another form whose relationship with the larger container are fairly loosely defined. Wherever possible, try and work additively - that is, adding forms on top of one another instead of cutting back into them. When you do have to add subtractively, it focuses on having strongly defined relationships between all the resulting forms. You can see a more specific breakdown of how I tackle head construction here. There is also a moose head construction above it.

  2. You are overdoing your contour lines. It's not uncommon for students to just pile them on because they they're a technique they know how to use. You have to be thinking about what you're attempting to accomplish with each mark you put down however, and what that mark is going to contribute to the drawing. Applying techniques blindly will often causes us to add lines that serve no real purpose of their own.

  3. Constructional drawing is all about moving from a simple structure and using that as a scaffolding for more complex structures that are built off of it. If you jump too complex too soon, without adequate structure to support it, then your construction will fall flat.

  4. You still have a tendency to think more in terms of drawing lines on a page. Every single element you add to your drawing needs to be understood as an independent three dimensional form. Lines do not exist on their own, and so if those silhouettes are broken, the forms they're meant to define will not appear solid, and the construction upon which they're built will fall apart. You've definitely gotten better at drawing more purposefully, but you're still being quite timid in a number of areas, and need to work on that a fair bit.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'm going to ask you to do 4 more drawings applying the points I've raised here. I want you to do no more than one of these in a given day - this is to ensure that you don't attempt to get everything done at once. This also means I will expect you to submit no sooner than 4 days from now.

For these drawings, I've got two main restrictions:

  • You will not be allowed to use any contour lines that sit on the surface of a single form. Contour lines that define the relationship between two separate forms are allowed (like the joint contour lines in the sauage technique).

  • You will not be allowed to get into any texture or detail. Take constructed forms as far as they can go.

Next Steps:

The 4 additional animal drawings, as instructed above.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
3:16 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020
edited at 7:04 PM, May 10th 2020

here is the pages you requested https://imgur.com/a/DLEOBHH

you may have been expecting them 2 days earlier but i just had to take a break from drawing animals as i got tired of them and wanted to focus more on stuff that i enjoy like urban sketching...

I haven't neglected my daily warm ups so i hope it's fine

edited at 7:04 PM, May 10th 2020
6:54 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020

I sometimes get students apologizing for delays like that, and it makes me laugh. I can assure you, I don't sit waiting with baited breath, so take whatever time you need to do the work to the best of your ability. I'm pleased to hear you're investing plenty of time on drawing things you enjoy, as per the whole 50/50 rule from Lesson 0.

So! Your linework is definitely much more confident, and your general construction is looking a good deal better. I am going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I have some recommendations to keep an eye on, which I've written out here.

Also, your head constructions do seem to be skipping some steps - the one I did my notes on was the only one where you really pushed through with all the constructional steps, and it seemed to suffer from your attention being shifted away from observation and more to working from memory. To this end, it seems that you definitely do want to work on being able to employ that construction while still observing your reference carefully.

There are some additional demonstrations on how to approach head construction in the informal demonstration page which you should check out if you haven't already.

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

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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