11:00 PM, Friday April 10th 2020
Honestly, the demos for the dissection exercise are on the long list of things that need updating in order to make things clearer, and to apply the shift in focus that has occurred as I've learned more about conveying this information. The texture analysis exercise was introduced a little over a year ago, and over that year, I shifted more and more towards understanding the emphasis on cast shadows over outlines. That still needs to be expressed for the dissections as well (though in the grand scheme of things, being that both of these exercises are intended to introduce students just to the act of thinking about how to capture texture, and that I don't expect students to do anything necessarily in a correct fashion, it's not a huge priority right now).
Aside from where we break the silhouette, try and focus more on cast shadows - meaning, if you want to suggest that a blade of grass is present, placing your marks on the surfaces around the blade of grass itself. Meaning, the shadow it casts goes on the grass around it.
This is not easy, and your results aren't expected to turn out well, and you're not expected to have previous experience with it. As mentioned above, it's about getting students to start thinking about it. Nothing more than that. You're not being tested on it, just shown the differences between various kinds of problems - between capturing major forms and establishing their relationships in space, to capturing smaller forms that may be more numerous in nature, and may adhere to the surfaces of other forms.
It may be frustrating to be given these tasks you're not expected to succeed at, but that is the nature of this course. You're made to think about things far before you actually become adept at handling them.