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1:23 AM, Thursday October 14th 2021

Just a heads up - I'm going to be referring to pages in relation to the set as a whole ("first" "next" etc) - since your submission appears to be in reverse order (which is fine, don't worry), my terminology will reflect that. So first would really be the last image in the album, and next would be stepping back from there.

Starting with your organic intersections, these are looking very well done. You've done a great job of drawing each individual sausage form, in establishing how they relate to one another in space under the pressure of gravity, and have also done a great job of drawing their cast shadows with confidence and consistency (especially on the first page, the second looks to be a little more timid).

Continuing onto your animal constructions, I'd say that your results here vary between being quite well done, and others being at least in part, oversimplified. I think the best way to go over this is drawing by drawing - or at least for me to go through them one by one and call out those where there's anything of note.

  • Starting with your kestrel, I feel this was for the most part quite well done. The use of additional masses is pretty good (although the contour lines you insist upon adding to them are often not needed, as they appear entirely solid based on the design of their silhouette, leaving the contour line nothing to actually help with). To answer that note at the top, you introduced a complete, enclosed, new form along the top of the head there, so that is exactly how you would correctly approach adding to the construction, and does not count as modifying the silhouette directly. Sure, your change does cause the silhouette of the animal to change, but you didn't do it by acting on the 2D drawing - you, by your own words, introduced a form. It is worth calling out the fact that you didn't use the sausage method on its legs though - so that's something to keep in mind.

  • The bird that follows is definitely not quite as well done. I think the main issue comes down to how much time was invested (or not invested) into the observation of your reference, causing you to work more from memory which does have a tendency to result in oversimplification. That said, I also noticed that the design of the mass along the back of the neck didn't quite wrap around the existing structure, and that the bit hanging down from the front of the neck was just a flat shape rather than its own separate 3D form, as shown here.

  • I did mention this in my first point, but it's worth its own point entirely - you seem to be adding those contour lines to your masses just by default, as part of the process, rather than due to any actual perceived need for it. Make sure that as with everything you draw, you actually consider whether any particular tool you use is really necessary, what it's contributing, and what its purpose is meant to be. The ghosting method's first step - the planning phase - is all about this, so make sure you put it to good use and only draw things that are contributing to the construction.

  • Jumping straight into your second wolf, I felt the body construction itself was pretty good, though the head ended up feeling quite cartoonish. That's generally a sign of working from memory, rather than direct observation. That said, structurally the head was pretty well constructed - you just need to be more mindful of the specific nuance in your references.

  • In general, ease up on the fur - remember that what we're really doing here isn't reproduction of a reference image - of course we observe it closely so we know what we need to convey to the viewer, but the reference image itself featuring tons of fur all over the place doesn't actually mean that you need to be piling it on. In fact, you can probably get across the idea that the animal is furry more effectively and with less distraction by reducing it to just adding well designed tufts in key, specific areas. Which areas you should add it to is something that will come with practice and experimentation, but the first step is just to reel it back and work with a "less is more" mentality.

  • Your first bear's head construction came out feeling pretty good. While there are indeed gaps between the eye sockets and muzzle, which I would always strive to eliminate in order to make the pieces fit together more like a 3D puzzle (in the manner explained here, the way in which each individual form was grounded against the cranial mass - especially the muzzle - really helped to convey a strong sense of three dimensionality. I think the way the nose was drawn helped with that too, with everything reinforcing the illusion that it's all 3D and solid.

  • A side point about that same bear - when drawing the mass for its belly, you appear to have only drawn it in part. Every form you introduce to your constructions must be drawn in full, so we can both understand how it sits in space, and how it relates to the forms around it. Cutting things off is another way of working in 2D space, rather than in 3D.

  • The next animal - I think it's another bear - is very oversimplified and doesn't really seem to have gone anywhere. I'm guessing this one was a bit of a dud, and you ultimately abandoned it. As such, I won't spend any further time on it. Mistakes happen, no sense dwelling on them.

  • The second goat has some similar problems that I've already mentioned (unnecessary contour lines, belly mass was only drawn as a partial shape, etc) but there's one mistake I wanted to call out - you seem to have drawn a singular complex mass along its back, trying to have it accomplish far too much all at once. Instead, they should be broken up into several separate masses, as shown here. Each one should be focused on accomplishing one job, and its silhouette should be designed with that sort of simplicity in mind, only introducing complexity to help define how it relates to the existing structure. One thing that helps with the shape here is to think about how the mass would behave when existing first in the void of empty space, on its own. It all comes down to the silhouette of the mass - here, with nothing else to touch it, our mass would exist like a soft ball of meat or clay, made up only of outward curves. A simple circle for a silhouette. Then, as it presses against an existing structure, the silhouette starts to get more complex. It forms inward curves wherever it makes contact, responding directly to the forms that are present. The silhouette is never random, of course - always changing in response to clear, defined structure. You can see this demonstrated in this diagram.

  • As a side note, the legs on that goat are really well constructed and give an excellent sense of solidity. You've done a good job here of adhering to the sausage method, which is an area where the following deer appears to fall short with - specifically not adhering to the characteristics of simple sausages, and not appropriately using additional masses to add bulk where it's needed. Instead with a lot of these you seem to try and jump into those more bulked up shapes ahead of time.

  • I don't usually comment on students' hybrids - it's really just an exercise to help them push into the idea of applying constructional techniques to how they interpret and use reference images, and even students who are developing nicely may not yield particularly great results with this just yet. For yours, I did just want to call out that this definitely shows signs that you weren't paying enough attention to your references, and instead seemed to spend the majority of your time on drawing. Being that this is an issue I've called out for some of your other drawings, it was worth calling it out here. It's actually something that construction itself can contribute to - after all, if we realize that we can start mashing forms together and having them create a believable, solid structure, it's easy to forget that we actually need to look at our references frequently in order to ensure that the forms we're adding are actually what the reference demands.

As a whole, I do feel your work here is progressing nicely, but I'd like to see a little more consistency in your results. I'm going to assign some limited revisions below, but I ask that for these, you do no more than one drawing per day (if you want to actually slow down even more and split drawings across multiple sittings/days, that's even better). Basically I want to make sure that each individual drawing is given as much time as it needs to allow for both careful, patient markmaking and ample observation. Sometimes students get the impression that they must complete a drawing before they get up from a session, which could be contributing to why some drawings show a lot of care and patience, whereas others come off more rushed. You may simply have had more time one day, and less the next.

Next Steps:

Please submit 3 additional pages of animal constructions. For these, I would definitely set aside any texture (so no fur), so you can focus completely on the construction.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:20 PM, Thursday October 21st 2021

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15QonUx3fAB84GPhLl4ddbeu1sq1XaN0f/view?usp=sharing refs + images

Tried forcing myself to take more time on these and I think it payed off :). Though, for my kangaroo I wasn't really sure how to make the calves, or whatever the long part of their back legs, look more 3d. In hindsight I suppose I could have added a form on the front or back of it so it looks like its got that indent it has, but not sure if that would've worked. Anyway Thanks!

4:09 PM, Friday October 22nd 2021

While this is definitely getting better, it looks like you linked me to one of the 3 pages, so I'm only able to see the rhino. Go ahead and fix the link and I'll review all three together.

7:02 PM, Friday October 22nd 2021
edited at 9:19 PM, Oct 22nd 2021

Oh sorry my bad, this one should work https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1p6Lu-DlSNInGLjpCTfeeZTWh7ugM8RaE?usp=sharing

Edit: Looking at them now I realize that I still didn't really treat the heads as 3d puzzles :/

edited at 9:19 PM, Oct 22nd 2021
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