Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

6:05 AM, Sunday January 1st 2023

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These were probably some of the most difficult drawing excercises I have ever done.

Reason for submitting during a Promptathon:

I am not participating in the promptathon, I did not know about it I was looking at the pages for the final homework assignments of lesson 2. I had these tab open and didnt go to other parts of the site. I also had Covid for two weeks so i didnt do anything for those two weeks. I will keep an eye out from now on at the turn of the season.

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10:55 PM, Monday January 2nd 2023

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

  • Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise some of your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress, with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours you're doing a good job trying to shift the degree of your contours so far, be sure to keep experimenting. 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.

  • In the texture exercises (mostly in your dissections) you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

  • It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. 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.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work. Just make sure you link up all your forms into one group, you have a few stray groups as mentioned here.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Next Steps:

Keep practicing previous exercise as warm ups.

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:22 AM, Wednesday January 4th 2023

Thank you for the feedback.

Where can I share feedback about Lesson 2? I have some thoughts I want to share about the texture section.

4:10 PM, Wednesday January 4th 2023

We have a bit if a different approach to how we develop and improve the course. Rather than taking direct feedback from individuals, where they're individual data points without clear statistical weighting to them - so where a single individual's experience may seem to carry more weight than perhaps it should - we've always focused on what students at large struggle based on what we see when providing feedback. We keep an eye on the trends, as issues that come up often have one shared factor: the lesson material.

Now, we are entirely aware of the issues with the texture section, and it is something we are going to address with the overhaul that we're working to apply to the course material as a whole. The issue with that is that it takes time, and we're working against a continuous flow of incoming homework submissions. The result is slow progress.

We've attempted to mitigate the issue with the addition of certain reminder sections like this one as text is easier to adjust and update, but the issue won't be fully resolved until we can roll out new videos. Fortunately the texture section is really just about planting a seed that will continue to develop throughout the rest of the course, so it doesn't hold us back from the overall goal of the course. In other cases where small things can be explained better in later lessons, we ensure that those on the official critique track are given that information as part of their critiques, effectively working as a sneak-peak of what will eventually be clearer in the free lesson material.

So- rest assured that we're aware of the issues and have plans on how to improve upon them, but are simply not in a position to roll that out with any kind of speed due to our extremely limited resources.

2:47 AM, Tuesday January 31st 2023

Sorry I missed this response somehow--I do understand and appreciate the explanation!

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Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

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