11:50 PM, Thursday July 1st 2021
Your new insect constructions are definitely moving in the right direction. One thing to keep an eye on however is how you actually shape any of the forms you add to your existing construction. With a lot of these, you're adding them as random blobs, so they end up feeling more like flat shapes that have been stock onto a flat drawing.
As you can see here, if you actually consider which side of your added form is pressing up against the existing structure, and how its silhouette (which can be drawn in multiple, separate strokes), actually shows the way in which that mass is wrapping around the structure it's attaching to.
I talk about that in this diagram I shared with you last time. It all comes down to thinking about where your mass is pressing up against something, and where it isn't. When it isn't, we keep it nice and simple, sticking only to outward curves. When it presses up against something, the silhouette gets more complex, forming inward curves and corners that respond to whatever structure it's pressing up against.
I can see you trying to do that here, but you appear to be placing those sharp corners somewhat randomly, rather than having them actually fall in specific spots, as shown here.
Looking at your organic forms with contour curves, you're still running into some trouble here, specifically with the degree of your contour lines. I can see that in the middle of each of your organic forms, you let one of the contour lines get very narrow, but then all of the others remain the same. Take a look at this - there I show three different configurations. Along the top, both ends are facing the viewer, so the contour lines have to reverse as the sausage bends back over itself. That's similar to what you're trying to do, but the difference is that once the middle contour line gets narrow, the next ones actually reverse their direction. This is similar to the bottom left one where both ends are facing away.
The third, in the bottom right, is where only one side faces the viewer - the contour lines never reverse themselves, and they never get thin through the middle. They keep getting wider as we move away from the viewer.
In your drawing, you're definitely just drawing one end facing the viewer, and so your contour lines need to be getting wider as we slide away from that end.
I'm going to need you to try this page of organic forms with contour lines again - I recommend that you don't keep them so straight. Draw a simple, gently curving sausage form, and then make sure that you're using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder to execute each contour curve.
For this page, try to include cases of all three configurations - some with both sides facing the viewer, some with just one side facing the viewer, and some with no sides facing the viewer.
Next Steps:
Please submit 2 more pages of organic forms with contour curves.