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Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

12:05 PM, Saturday June 13th 2020

Drawabox Lesson 2 Homework - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/TjMGYLa.jpg

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The first six pages had to be done with a sketchbook, as I didn't have regular printer paper on me at the time. However, now that I have bought some in which I can use, I'll continue to use them for now on.

Go all out on the criticism, as I'm really trying to improve as much as I can. I also found that I didn't do so well with the dissections exercise in particular, so if you can give as much criticism as possible on that as well, I'd very much appreciate it.

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1:10 PM, Thursday July 2nd 2020

Arrows

Arrows flow pretty nicely in general, linework seems like you might be rushing some strokes, so don't forget that you should be ghosting every line. They also don't grow much as they get towards the viewer, so try to be more wary of that on next attempts.

Organic forms

You're mostly doing a good job, but there are still some issues in your sausage shapes. Remember they should be 2 identical balls connected by a tube of consistent width, so they can't bulge or pinch or have different sizes on each end. Another issue is that the degrees of the ellipses aren't shifting much. Even if the sausage is straight, the different contour ellipses will have a different relationship with the viewer so their degrees will change. Here's an example that shows it.

Textures

On textures you're doing a good job thinking in shadow shapes instead of lines, transitions look pretty smooth, and in the dissections your textures are wrapping around nicely around the forms. Only thing I can say is that some of you shadow shapes get a bit rough at times, you can refine them after drawing them to solve this.

Form intersections

Good job overall. Just as a note remember that you should be striving to draw equilateral forms in general. You should also try to make the forms with as similar foreshortening as possible, and you're mostly doing it, but it's better to stick to shallow foreshortening forms in general as it makes it easier.

You also seem to be repeating some lines, just like in previous lessons, don't repeat any line even if it's wrong, as it'll make the drawing messier. Stick with the same pen when you're drawing as well, don't switch to other.

Organic intersections

Here you've done mostly a good job, but you got some forms that look unstable. When you're adding a new organic form imagine how it would fall on top of the others as if it were a water ballon, and draw it after. There shouldn't be any forms that looked as if they were going to fall. Some of the sausages also don't adhere to the simple forms I described on the organic forms section, so be careful with that as well.

Next Steps:

Before marking this as complete, I want to see 1 more page of organic intersections, I recommend watching the video demo of the exercise before attempting it, good luck and keep it up!

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:10 AM, Friday July 3rd 2020

Thank you for the critique. I have a few questions I would like to ask.

What exactly do you mean when you say that my shadow shapes are "rough" for textures? Does that mean they tend to have pointed edges, or something else? I would like some clarification if possible.

Also, I think I understood that I was meant to strive for equilateral forms when I was doing the forms intersection exercise. Though, I did draw a few boxes with either the length, width, or height slightly stretched in one direction. Was I meant to not do this and instead draw perfect boxes? Same thing with cylinders - should I make their lengths equal to their diameters?

I did repeat some lines in this exercise, but I did it to add line weight to the silhouette (and some to the interior lines facing the viewer). I'm not sure if I was supposed to do that. Do you think so? And I used the same pen for this exercise, except when I drew the intersecting lines in red to make it more visible. Should I have not done that?

With the organic intersections, can you give me some specific examples of where I went wrong with this? I just want to make sure that I have understood what you said.

1:43 PM, Friday July 3rd 2020

1.With the rough stuff I mean the pointy bits I marked here with arrows, it's okay if you copied exactly the reference and got them, problem is when you add them when observing, if they were on the reference then they were correct.

I added as well on the image I linked a thingy to show how to approach shadows, instead of going directly with lines even if a shadow is very thin, it's better to approach them by first outlining the shadow shape and then filling it in. This forces you to think in shapes instead of lines so it can help a lot.

2.An equilateral form is a form that has the same length on each side, so a long box wouldn't be equilateral.

3.Adding lineweight to the silhouette is good, but you shouldn't add lineweight to the inner lines of a box, check this.

4.Yeah, I was refering to the intersecting lines in red, use them same pen for those as well.

5.Here are some examples and a few more things, sorry about the line quality; I only have a mouse right now and I'm very bad with it lol.

5:04 AM, Saturday July 4th 2020

Alright then. Here is my revised version:

https://imgur.com/a/UMsApub

So with number 1, I'm a bit confused on why you are saying that adding those pointy bits are wrong when observing, even if they are on the reference. I thought we were supposed to do that.

As for my revised version, I also have some more questions if you wouldn't mind answering. Are we allowed to use a different pen (both black) when adding line weight and cast shadow? Also, when adding line weight for overlapping forms, should we draw from the shoulder and smoothly? Or does that not matter so much for this exercise?

Lastly, is it okay to even add line weight and cast shadow after we draw each form, or should that be after we've drawn all forms first?

I appreciate your time.

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