2:08 AM, Tuesday November 10th 2020
It's always a bit of a surprise when I get a submission of chests! So, let's get started.
Needless to say, your constructions are for the most part very well laid out. There were a couple of places where the lid of the chest didn't quite line up to the big ellipse you were using to determine where it would sit when opened, but that was a very minor discrepancy that had minimal impact on the end result.
Now, looking at the actual designs themselves, I think there was a lot of cool stuff you did here, but also some room for definite improvement. Overall, you have an excellent variety of different sources for visual language, details, and little bits and pieces that you employed wonderfully to achieve all kinds of interesting designs. I especially liked the variety in the kinds of locks you used throughout your designs, and how you played with overall proportion and silhouette.
There are definitely a lot of places where you make the mistake of using lines to capture textural details. The reason this is an issue (it obviously doesn't sound like one, since we use lines for basically everything), is that lines themselves have their limitations. As you can see here, working with lines tends to feel pretty uniform. Even when you work to vary the line weight, it's difficult to end up with the kind of dramatic, dynamic thin-to-thick that makes those details feel alive. That is why we work with shadow shapes instead, purposely drawing them with this sort of two-step approach. Working with shadow shapes forces us to understand the marks we're drawing as they relate to the actual textural forms that are present. A scratch in some wood goes from being a line on the page to an actual gash in a surface, where we have to think of the positive space, the raised sections of wood themselves, and how they cast shadows into the scratch.
You definitely do a better job of this in some cases - like 83 and 85 are good examples of focusing on actual shadow shapes (whereas 51 had a lot more arbitrary lines going on to suggest texture without actually getting into thinking about each mark). That said, I do think that working with shadow shapes means knowing that they're all the result of a consistent light source - so keeping the direction in which those shadows are cast consistent is pretty important. On 83, these definitely didn't come off as being particularly consistent, and it seemed more arbitrary to what you needed for each individual detail.
Now the last, but most notable point I want to mention comes down to the fact that in your drawings there tends to be either construction lines or big bold shadow shapes, which while excellent, leaves us with no middle-ground to bridge between them. What's missing here is a healthy use of line weight. This makes the fainter lines get a bit lost, and fails to make them feel as solid as they could.
I grabbed a couple of yours from later in the set and applied additional line weight on top. While I did reinforce the silhouette a bit more aggressively, I tried to stick to the rule of leaving line weight just to local sections of lines, rather than running along the entirety of an existing stroke. There were also areas where I added a bit of thickness to certain forms, and created separations that were not present already. I've got both your version and mine shown side by side, so you can study the differences a little more closely.
Anyway, your work here is definitely moving in an excellent direction, and while I hope these comments will help you improve your overall communication of designs, I think the design work itself is coming along quite well. Keep up the great work, and consider this challenge complete!