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8:43 PM, Monday November 30th 2020

Starting with your organic intersections, there's one thing that stands out to me, but I'm actually not sure if I'm seeing what I think I am. Basically, I'm trying to determine the order in which your forms were drawn.

When working on this exercise, we're basically building up a stack of forms, working from bottom up. We can only ever work bottom-up because we have to draw the silhouette of each form so it settles believably on top of the pile that already exists. If we were to try and sneak a form underneath one that has already been drawn, there is no way for that original form's silhouette to reflect the fact that it's resting on top of this new one. Looking at your work, I'm seeing a few instances like this where a form feels as though it's ignoring something it should reasonably be touching and interacting with.

Here I've colour coded some of your sausage forms. While the blue one should realistically be interacting with the red one (either pressing up against it or drooping down onto it), and the green one should be resting on top of the orange one somehow. But both of these pairs appear to exist entirely oblivious of their neighbour.

Moving onto the demonstrations you followed along with, your observation here is somewhat lacking - there are plenty of things you're missing. For example, looking at the masses built up along the running rat's back, there are two distinct forms, one piled on top of the other, resulting in two distinct bumps with a pinch in between where one sits on the other. In your drawing however, if we follow the top edge of those masses' silhouette, we get a single continuous stroke.

Looking at the donkey, the shape of the eye socket is entirely different (you've drawn a diamond), and the mass along the neck is also entirely different. These are just a few particularly notable cases, but these smaller issues in carefully observing your reference do pile up to yield drastically different results.

Observing these demonstrations is definitely much easier because the information from the reference images is stripped away, leaving only the key forms and shapes you need to focus on. And so, understandably, when you get into your actual animal studies, the observational issues more severely undermine your results.

Observation all comes down to an investment of time - short term, investing more time in a given study, and long term (doing so over the course of many studies, ie: practice).

Now, looking at your application of the principles covered in my critique, it's a bit hit and miss. Looking at the backside of this bunny you're definitely building up those masses by wrapping them around one another (though I would recommend that you try and make those sharp corners a little more rounded). You still however have plenty of areas where you make some pretty big mistakes - like the front neck mass of this lamb being way too complex, with no real clarity as to how it exists as its own, complete additional mass.

Also, when you add additional masses to the legs, you pretty consistently just add shapes with arbitrary curves all around, rather than considering how those forms wrap around the existing structure as shown in this ant leg demo and in this dog leg demo (both of which were shared in my lesson 4 critique).

Now, you work has wholly improved over the last submission, but there is a lot of room for growth and your observational skills, especially when drawing from reference photos are really getting in the way. You draw too much from memory, and it doesn't feel that you look frequently enough at your references.

I don't want to get further into this, because it really is a matter of practice and you investing time in the right areas - including processing the information in the feedback you receive (and I strongly urge you to repeatedly reread the original critique to fully ingest all that was explained there, because I'm not going to be repeating it here).

I'll assign another set of revisions below, so work through them and take your time.

Next Steps:

I'd like you to work through 5 more animal constructions. I considered assigning 10, but I think that might simply push you to focus more on quantity rather than quality - so I want you to understand that you should be pushing yourself to the limit in every aspect of each drawing, from observation to applying the various principles covered in the lesson and the critiques to the absolute best of your ability.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:33 PM, Saturday December 5th 2020

I posted my reference animals with my imgur post. I am not expecting a full critique. I completely understand you are aiming for the core concepts.

Here is the imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/iSpZSnR

Organic intersection: I attempted to reinforce what sausages were on top with a thicker outline. I broke the illusion with some forms being shown and others being hidden. Would you like for me to redo a page of organic intersections? It would only be to my benefit.

Animals: I took so much time on the goats legs and body, but choked when I got to the head. I wish life had a "ctrl + z". I did so many freaking width and position comparisons for the legs and body. Did I screw up the leg joint connections? I was unsure how to best handle this. I did not use sausages because I thought it was more gestural (kind of like an ox or a camel legs). If it is any consolation, I redrew the goats head on the side. I should have done this on the side like I usually do, but I was overconfident. But I am proud of the goats legs and body!

3:49 PM, Monday December 7th 2020

About the organic intersections, since you're supposed to be continually practicing exercises from completed lessons regularly as part of your warmup routine, you'd be doing them for your own benefit regardless. The question is just whether I feel it's necessary for you to submit certain things to me for further feedback. I didn't feel that would be necessary this time around.

Anyway, looking at your constructions here I think there is definitely visible improvement in a lot of areas, along with plenty more room to grow. I pointed out a number of strengths/weaknesses on your lamb. Your head construction was definitely lacking, as you kind of just subdivided the forms that already existed, rather than building up the different 3D forms that make up the cheek area, the brow ridge, etc. and your eye socket was not shaped remotely correctly, nor large enough.

There were a lot of really nice areas in your additional masses, with clear effort being invested into how they wrap around the existing structure. There are however a number of issues, the most notable of which comes down to where you opt to place your "outward" curves and where you place your "inward" curves (as explained in these notes from my previous critique.

Remember that the outward curve - like what we'll find in a ball - is the default state and is what we will see when nothing else is pushing against an additional mass. So along the outer sides of these masses, there should only be outward curves, focusing on total simplicity. Conversely, when the forms press against another form, like a sausage structure, we get more inward curves in response to that contact.

There are a bunch of different kinds of issues, but I pointed them out on the page, so try and go through each individual one I've listed.

I do indeed think you're making considerable progress, but we're still within the transition where your understanding is developing, so I'm going to want you to take some time to process this information, and then do a few more pages which I've assigned below. Don't forget that we learn and develop in the time between our drawings as well - so leave room for that, in between each attempt you make. And don't be afraid to allow a single drawing to span over several sittings. Considering how much effort you're putting into figuring out the legs/additional masses for instance, it's not surprising that you'd be pretty sapped when it comes time to construct the head. Separating things out into different sittings may help you deliver full effort to every part.

Next Steps:

5 more animal constructions.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:56 PM, Saturday December 12th 2020

Imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/Fw9jfSr

Thank you Uncomfortable for the detailed notes on the lamb. It was really helpful. I believe I was able to apply what I did wrong in these 5 animal constructions. I think here I did my Jaguar drawing the most justice due to the skull being easiest to see.

Do you have any construction tips on drawing people?

Lars

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