5:41 PM, Saturday April 23rd 2022
Hello I'll be handling the critique for your lesson 2 homework
Organic Arrows
-Starting with the organic arrows, these are drawn with a good deal of confidence which really helps you to capture the way they flow through space. There are some important things to point out. You are already making some good attempts at the foreshortening of the ribbon, but keep in mind that the arrow gets wider as it moves closer to us and it gets narrower as it moves further away without any swelling or bulging throughout its length, in order to achieve a smoother transition. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the negative space between the zigzagging sections of the ribbon should decrease as it moves further away, this principle is shown here. Lastly, I can see a few lines that should not really be there, maybe you were trying to apply lineweight, but it is better when we limit its use and only apply it to the specific parts where the overlap occurs, avoid applying lineweight to marks that are specially long. You can see this principle in this diagram which shows it in the context of some overlapping leaves.
Organic Forms with Contours
-The shape of your sausages is turning out nicely, and you have avoided any unexpected pinching or swelling throughout its length, there's always room for improvement so keep practicing. When it comes to the contour ellipses I can see that you have drawn them with an awareness of how they change degree as they move through space, my main concern is that some of them end up pretty misaligned, like the sausage at the top right and the biggest one at the center, keep practicing your funnels to avoid this kind of issue.
On the sausages with contour curves, the degree change is not there and your curves don't fit in snugly within the sausage, the best thing to do is to give each mark as much time and attention as it requires, use the ghosting method to think about each mark's purpose and how you are going to achieve it best, also try to imagine as if you were carving your pen along the surface of the sausage, this way you will start to get the little bits of nuance that help describe how this form sits in 3D space. This is an ability that tends to come with more mileage but there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to your contour curves.
Textures
-Moving on to the textures, you should keep working on making a smoother transition from dense to sparse, the black rectangle should métete more seamlessly to the gradient, on the dissections you are focusing largely on negative space and outlines rather than the cast shadows, I also see that you tried a lot of thin-like-line textures so I wanted to quickly redirect you to this image which shows that when working with this kind of textures it's better to first outline the shadow shape and filling it rather than simply drawing lines, that way we will achieve much more dynamic textures. Lastly, there is one page if dissections missing, so if you didn't do it go ahead and finish it
Form Intersections
-The only bit of critique I want to offer here is that you should try to fill your pages with more forms, and also keep in mind that one page should contain only boxes. Don't worry if you feel like you don't fully grasp the intersections yet, as we will be revisiting them in future lessons.
Organic Intersections
-Finishing with the organic intersections, try to avoid the technique where you draw a big sausage and then add a bunch of smaller ones on top of it. Try to have them all equally sized. They are beginning to wrap around each other believably, keep trying to think about how they sag and bend where their weight is not supported, imagine as if they were balloons filled with water and don't leave them floating in the air, when it comes to the cast shadows you are not pushing them far enough, remember that they act like contour lines, so give them enough room to wrap around the sausages as shown here
Okay, you have some things to keep working on, so I'll leave you some additional homework, good luck!!
Next Steps:
Please do the following
-2 pages of organic forms with contour curves