11:56 AM, Monday April 29th 2024
Hello KingCactus, thank you for replying with your revisions.
All righty, you’re sticking much more closely to sausage forms for your leg constructions, and I’m happy to see you establishing how they fit together by applying a contour curve at the joints. I think you've made a good start with building onto your sausage armatures with additional forms but this can be pushed farther. A lot of these focus primarily on forms that actually impact the silhouette of the overall leg, but there's value in exploring the forms that exist "internally" within that silhouette - like the missing puzzle piece that helps to further ground and define the ones that create the bumps along the silhouette's edge. Here is an example of what I mean, on another student's work. Uncomfortable has blocked out masses along the leg there, and included the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. This way of thinking - about the inside of your structures, and fleshing out information that isn't just noticeable from one angle, but really exploring the construction in its entirety, will help you yet further push the value of these constructional exercises as puzzles.
You’re making progress with the design of your additional masses. On the first couple of constructions It looks like you were struggling to come out of the tendency to draw rounded blobs, but I do see you thinking through how to establish relationships between your additional masses and the existing structures as you went through the set. I think there are 2 main points I’d like you to keep in mind when designing additional masses in future.
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We want all complexity in the silhouette of an additional mass to be a direct result of interacting with the structures that are already present in the construction. In blue I’ve circled a few places where you appear to be introducing arbitrary corners to the additional masses on this goat. I’ve made a few adjustments to these masses here. On the front leg and under the tummy, the corners were just a bit offset, and I’ve moved them to the edge of the underlying form. I also took the opportunity to tuck the purple mass under the chest between the front legs, using an inward curve where it passes underneath the shoulder. Towards the rump, I’ve made your elliptical thigh mass larger (in blue) to give the additional masses something to press against.
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Once you have drawn an additional mass, it becomes part of the “existing structure” and any more masses you draw on top of it should wrap around it in 3D space. I noticed with the masses along the back of your leopard that the masses wrap around the torso sausage nicely, but ignore one another. Take another look at the stag draw over form the initial critique. The red masses were drawn first, then when the purple masses were added, they wrap around the existing red ones, rather than passing through them.
I can see that you’re working towards using the head construction method shown in the informal head demo I shared with you. Your gazelle is probably the closest out of the set, notice how you’ve drawn those pentagonal eye sockets with a point facing down, and how that makes a nice wedge shape to fit the base of the muzzle snugly against. On most of your other pages you’d got the pentagonal eye socket upside down, making it more difficult to fit the pieces of the head construction together like a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
When adding cast shadows, keep in mind that for a cast shadow to exist, there must be both a form to cast a shadow and another surface to receive it. If you’re drawing a shadow on the form where the surface faces away from the light, that’s a form shadow. You can find an explanation on the difference between form shadows and cast shadows in this video. Remember to keep a single, consistent light source in mind when designing any shadows you wish to add. I noticed on the feet of the leopard you’d added shadows to both sides, giving the impression that the light source is moving around.
All right, I think that should cover it. I’ve outlined a few things for you to keep in mind when practising these constructional exercises in future, but you’re making good progress and I’m happy to mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the 250 Cylinder Challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.
Next Steps:
250 Cylinder Challenge