Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals

8:06 AM, Tuesday January 21st 2025

Lesson 5 - Google Drive

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1afDVPQKOh50R-Fdcpucezs2vdeqDzlZ5?usp=sharing

This was a little hit-or-miss for me. I have included a botched attempt at a hybrid (the second-last image), where I feel like I didn't believe in any of the construction, as I feel leaving it out would not be right—especially since we are supposed to use our constructions for what they are.

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7:13 PM, Thursday January 30th 2025

Hi there, congrats on getting through lesson 5! I'll be reviewing your work again. This can be a very difficult lesson, especially compared to the insects, and I can definitely see your process of gradual improvement through the work you have here. That said, there's going to be some notes, but we'll get through it.

Organic Intersections. These look pretty great! I'll admit that I'm a bit envious here, it took me a really long time to land this exercise. The only thing I'd caution against here is the right side form on the top of the pile on page 1. It looks a little unstable at this angle, and we want to make sure our forms are sagging over the form beneath it.

Animals.

I'll open by saying that I think you picked a great variety of subjects. There's plenty of different subjects here, and you took chances with dynamic poses (particularly that flying raptor and the horse stand out to me) and I think it's great to take chances like that. You also have some lines that are not typical in construction, but work to great effect. Your chicken, for example, has that gesture line through the neck, and then your added neck forms sync up with that line, and it substantially reinforces the fact that the chicken in that page is turning its head around.

I also want to add here that you seem to have a pretty decent grasp on head construction. You have good muzzle intersections, and the forms you use in the base construction are sound. This can be a tricky area for a lot of students, and it’s certainly one of the areas that can make or break your constructions, so it’s good that you have the right idea. As a reminder, I’ll link comfy’s section on head construction from the informal demos here.

Looking through these drawings, I can see that you started with some rather rough-looking work. Not that’s it all bad or anything, but some of the constructions are missing core principles that end up creating gaps in that 3d illusion we’re trying to create. At the same time. I’m seeing significant improvement throughout the drawings. The difference from your bird drawings to your hybrid is substantial, and something to take note of. There were some frequent mistakes that I saw that were ultimately addressed by the time you reached your hybrid though. I do want to mention those here so you can get an idea of what I was seeing:

You originally started out with these simple leg forms that were kind of hybridized between 2d/3d methods with a ball for the shoulder and a foot form of sorts, and used connecting lines between them. This works well enough, but for the sake of DAB we use a chain of sausages as an armature from which to add forms to. A key benefit to this is that we have a very solid foundation upon which to add forms, which we see to rather good effect on your dog here.

When time comes for foot construction, you seem to start with a solid foot form, and then cut into it to form the toes. Amid the other added forms, this information gets confusing and ultimately flattens the area. This is generally a small area, but in our commitment to the illusion of three dimensions, we must be as consistent as possible, and cutting into our forms is reserved for form intersections. Comfy has a diagram here that demonstrates how to construct a foot using added forms that may be of some help. That said, I think you have a good grasp on building a base foot form, you simply have to treat the toes as added forms.

On the subject of adding forms, it looks like you started to get the hang of it towards the latter half of your lessons. You can really see the difference between your reclining dog and your standing dog. As you may have picked up on, organic forms don't really change much by themselves, but only as they’re mashed into other forms, at which point those organic forms adhere to the other forms that we see on the body. There’s a useful diagram here that demonstrates this idea by dropping a mass on top of a box.

Incidentally, I had traced over your reclining dog using improved forms before I started seeing the eventual improvement that you demonstrated by the time you got to the hybrid. The intention was to show you the difference between some of the rounder forms on this particular page and the more tightly fitting forms we see in the later pages, but I believe you can produce a similar product now if you had to. I figure I’ll share it here though, in case you can take away any extra value from it here.

There is one thing that appeared frequently throughout your work that is a little troubling, and that was the errant gaps in the linework. It appears on nearly every drawing up to the last horse. As far as I can see, there’s a number of possible reasons:

pen is dying

Attempting to make ultra-light lines that lift the pen off the page

scanner is missing ultra light lines (I reviewed someone a while ago that had this very issue)

These kinds of errors in markmaking are the kind that can decimate our work in terms of trying to create a 3-dimensional object or creature on our respective pages. It may help to remember that one of our goals in DAB is to become more purposeful and confident in our mark-making. Errors will happen in that process, but we overcome those errors by establishing intent and following through on those intentions to the best of our ability. That all said, I’m happy to see that you demonstrated improved marksmanship for the last few drawings and I saw no significant gaps in your lines.

On a final note regarding your animals here, your alligator and betta fish are truly great. Those fins especially look flow-y, and the tail on the gator bends naturally and reads very solidly. I also really like your final hybrid, as you make great decisions with your added forms that make for a very solid-feeling creature. The texture along the silhouette needs some work, as it looks jagged and ragged, and ultimately less deliberate than the rest of the details. The first hybrid looks incomplete and it’s hard to identify just what pieces are what.

All in all, I believe the work here is a testament to your capacity to learn and improve. There are truly remarkable strides made here that show just what you’re capable of. I would like to see two more animal constructions that utilize the complete sausage chain for leg construction and demonstrate good use of added forms for the toes. Revisiting the animals you’ve already completed is fine if that’s what you wish to do, as I would like to see you apply these methods to the red panda. It may be preferable to choose new creatures though, I’ll leave that decision up to you

Next Steps:

2 pages of animal constructions.

Just post them here as a reply, and I'll re-evaluate from there.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:05 AM, Saturday February 1st 2025

https://imgur.com/a/IedMgDv

The line issues are definitely are definitely caused by slightly dry pens and my phone's camera. I have used a dedicated scanner app this time.

9:48 PM, Saturday February 1st 2025

Okay, I've reviewed your new additions, and with the extra context I think I can go ahead and mark your submission as complete. I had a hunch, but I am thorough to a fault. I didn't see a more complete sausage leg in the red panda, but that was unintentionally vague in my original request. That said, your fox here had full construction, and that's great to see. Ultimately I believe it's better, if not required in DAB's constructions, to use these forms in every time they may apply, as allows the viewer to see the structure of the leg itself, even if the surface forms of muscle, skin, and hair make it look unnaturally straight or stiff.

And with that, I have one final diagram for you, using your red panda construction here. Just some final tips and notes that I hope will help you down the line. I think you have a good eye for the basic forms on your animals here, at least better than mine was when I began this lesson, there's just a few extra steps of application that I think will propel your work to the next level. Regardless, I believe you've done nicely here, and I will mark your lesson as complete.

Informally speaking, I'm curious about the use of a scanning app. Are you using your phone/tablet camera and then the app processes the image to this final product? You don't have to answer this if you don't want to, I'm really just wondering about the benefits versus using the default camera with more light on the page itself.

Next Steps:

Move on to the 250 Cylinder challenge. Add Construction as Applied to Animals to your daily warmups, not to do every day, but something to work on every now and again just so you stay sharp.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete. In order for the student to receive their completion badge, this critique will need 2 agreements from other members of the community.
5:37 AM, Tuesday February 4th 2025

Thanks for taking a look again, I really appreciate it. I will keep the feedback in mind for future constructions.

As for the scanner, my phone's original camera app had a document scanner that would not work reliably. Thus, I usually had to settle for using just the camera, which does not always capture the lines clearly. For those two images, I used the scanner app from Adobe (Adobe Scan), which is pretty easy to use minus having to sign in/create an account.

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