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5:44 PM, Monday December 28th 2020

At its core, this is definitely much better. There are a number of issues I will point out, but you are now moving more firmly in the right direction, and what comes next is largely a matter of practice. Ultimately that is what we're looking for here, for signs that the student understands the underlying concepts so that they will be able to continue to make strides in the right direction on their own. Even with correct understanding, after all, mileage is still required to keep seeing significant growth.

So, here are the main issues I noticed:

  • You're drawing your ribcages very small. Remember that they constitute 1/2 the length of the torso.

  • Your sausage forms pretty much always have this pinching through the midsection, taking on the shape of a sort of bean rather than a sausage. It's very slight, always because it gets pushed in more dramatically on one side, whereas the other remains nice and smooth. This is simply a matter of targeted practice in drawing those simple sausage forms. The ends are nice and circular, so you just need to get that midsection in order.

  • Your eye sockets pretty consistently appear to be drawn with more curving, organic lines, rather than individual straight cuts as shown here. Your eye sockets appear to be drawn more as a single continuous stroke - with the last drawing's eye socket appearing to just be an ellipse. This simply suggests that more thought needs to come before every action you take.

You're definitely improving a great deal when it comes to adding additional masses, and while they don't all fit together quite as nicely as they could (lots of empty spaces and gaps) they are much better than they were before.

So, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, leaving you to continue practicing these on your own as you move forwards through the course. I do want to mention one thing however - in the coming months, I have plans to significantly update the material in the lesson itself, with new video demonstrations and an overhaul of the concepts presented there. Most of these updates are things I've shared with you here in my critiques, because it is in critiquing students that I develop new ways of explaining things. It takes time for those changes to bubble up into the lesson and the videos, however. When they ultimately get there, my intent is for them to be more cohesive and structured. So, when I do release that new material, I strongly recommend you read/watch it. Along with your own practice between now and then, and having these concepts arranged in a more cohesive manner, it should help you continue to develop your use of construction in this context.

Next Steps:

Go ahead and move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:21 AM, Tuesday December 29th 2020

Alright sounds good I'll continue to go back regularly and check for new/review old material. I just wanted to mention that I'm not trying to take shortcuts when it comes to the material, the eye sockets were drawn with indiviudal lines but I think with my tendency to curve them, they appeared less geometrical and more as an ellipse.

I'll regularly be practicing these animal constructions in my warm-ups in the future however as I do want to continue to refine these to an acceptable level. Thank you.

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Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

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