Check Out NMA    About our Partnership    Collapse this Ad
The Autumn Promptathon is Coming
2024 • 09 • 24  -  2024 • 09 • 30
The Autumn Promptathon is Coming
2024 • 09 • 24  -  2024 • 09 • 30
Click here for more info

Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

2:18 AM, Thursday August 1st 2024

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/a5F7lac

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

Hi there, this is my submission for Lesson # 2. Before submitting, I realized that I missed a page of arrows as well as a page of organic forms with contour curves, so those are dated much later than when I first completed these assignments. I do have one page of dissections, though I would argue that I completed two pages' worth with my one page. I am, however, willing to make any revisions or complete new work that might be necessary, so please don't hesitate to offer any critiques or guidance. Thank you very much in advance!

Report
2 users agree
7:59 PM, Friday August 16th 2024

Hello Chieftang, congratulations on finishing lesson 2! I'll be critiquing your submission today.

Organic Arrows

I like these! It's kinda hard to tell what's going on in the second page, but it's good that you're pushing yourself to draw through and understand visually noisy pages like this. Your arrows flow confidently and seem to pop out of the page nicely. The only thing I would change is to try varying the spacing between the folds of your ribbons a bit more, and dont be afraid to let the folds of a single arrow overlap with itself - that can really help to sell the illusion of 3-dimensionality.

Organic Forms with Contour Lines

Nice job keeping your ellipses and curves within the bounds of your sausages. My only note here is that the contour ellipses don't seem to have varying degrees, as described here in the lesson. The same goes for your contour curves, but to a lesser extent - it looks like you started to apply this to some of those sausages, which is good. Just keep this point in mind as you move forward.

Texture Analysis

These look good! Your gradient from dark to light looks good, but could be a bit more dense on the dark side - we're not supposed to see the vertical line of pure black. Your middle texture was well executed in this regard, but the top and bottom could have been filled out a bit more.

Dissections

Great job sticking to purely cast shadows here! The textures look rich and definitely convey a feeling of texture to the surfaces. The instructions did specify to do two pages, but this page is very dense as you mentioned; perhaps I'm being too lenient, but I would accept this as being enough.

I'll suggest an optional additional page of dissections for completeness, but these are well done enough that I don't feel the need to assign an additional page here.

Form Intersections

These pages look good - forms feel solid and the intersections seem appropriate. These pages definitely demonstrate an understanding of how various surfaces intersect with one another.

Organic Intersections

I didn't see these included in the submission? It's possible you did them but they weren't included in the upload somehow.

Overall this was a solid submission that definitely demonstrates an understanding of the material, and an adequate degree of competency executing on the ideas. Go ahead and submit the missing 2 pages of organic intersections, and you'll be ready for lesson 3! Great work!

Next Steps:

  • 2 pages of Organic Intersections

  • (optional) 1 additional page of dissections (for completeness; your single page was dense and well executed, so you can skip this step if you'd prefer - I would still consider the submission complete).

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:34 AM, Sunday August 18th 2024

Hi there! Thanks for the critique! I've spent a lot of time reflecting and reviewing much of this lesson the past few weeks, and somehow I still forgot to add those last two pages. Incidentally, I only completed one when I was finishing these assignments, but I have another page that I've since completed, here https://imgur.com/uBg9iXd and here https://imgur.com/Z2KYeYy. Incidentally, I have been doing dissections as well, so I have done a few more https://imgur.com/4Nc1bHE.

I totally agree with everything you've evaluated here. My arrows were rough in my first attempt(that's that second page, incidentally). I'm starting to now get a handle on pushing myself with these. My old organic forms were lacking in ellipse variety, though I may still be too subtle with my degree changes. I'll work on it!

At any rate, sorry about forgetting those pages, and thanks again for looking at my stuffs!

1:06 AM, Sunday August 18th 2024

Looking good! Great work. Now comes the meat of the course! Have fun with the next few lessons, I think you'll enjoy them.

Next Steps:

Time to move on to lesson 3!

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.