Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals

1:12 AM, Sunday January 31st 2021

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Hello,

Here is my submission for lesson 5,

That was difficult but I had a lot of fun, thanks for the critics.

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6:35 AM, Tuesday February 2nd 2021

Starting with your organic intersections, there's just two things I wanted to call out here:

  • Make sure you're drawing each sausage in its entirety - you've got some spots where you cut a form off behind another, turning that form into a flat, open shape.

  • It seems you're drawing your sausage forms with a lighter line (not too faint or anything, just a normal line, so that's fine), then going back over everything with line weight. Line weight should not be applied so liberally - it should be focused on key, localized areas to clarify specific overlaps. Don't trace back over your linework to try and cover everything, as this will cause your lines to get stiff and hesitant as you focus on how those lines sit on the page, rather than how you're capturing an edge that moves through 3D space. Line weight should be added using the same mark making techniques as everything else - using the ghosting method, drawing from your shoulder, executing confidently. I definitely see that overuse of line weight in your animal drawings as well, so definitely keep this in mind.

Moving onto your animal constructions, there are a number of areas where I can clearly see you attempting to apply the concepts covered in the lessons, but also quite a few things that have been mentioned previously that you appear to have forgotten.

To start, it's clear to me that you're trying to apply certain aspects of head construction as they were covered in the lesson. You're cutting in eye sockets, and thinking about the muzzle as a box form that intersects with the cranial sphere. That's all a good start. There's definitely room for improvement there, of course. As shown here, remember that what we're cutting in there are eye sockets. Not the visible portion of the eye, but the actual hole in the skull. The muzzle, cheek and brow ridge all fit up against it, so working with that pentagonal shape with the point downwards can help. From there, pop a nice, big eyeball in there, and then you can work on wrapping your eyelid around it. Right now it looks like you're just trying to draw the visible eye, and the pupil/iris inside of it, which is not the case.

Take a look at this explanation and demonstration of how to construct heads. As this course is always evolving, I haven't yet been able to incorporate it into the lesson itself, but I've been using this more informal head construction demo to better explain how to approach this kind of thing. Read through the text along with it.

Moving onto your other drawings, I want to get one thing out of the way - your leopard drawings aren't done well (aside from that head). They quite blatantly ignore a lot of the concepts covered in previous lessons, and things we've discussed in previous critiques - you're vastly overusing contour lines without considering what you're trying to achieve with them, you're not drawing through forms, you're not employing the sausage method, and you're not observing your reference that closely resulting in a lot of drawing-from-memory. I'm not going to address them beyond that, because I don't think it'd be a good use of time.

What I will discuss are your horses and deer, as I feel that while they have their issues, they demonstrate a much better attempt at applying the principles of this lesson and of this course.

First, let's look at your second horse. You've done a good job of wrapping the additional mass along the underbelly quite nicely. You're showing how the silhouette of that mass responds to pressing against the existing structure of the torso. For those masses I drew along the shoulder and backside, it helps to have those masses try and wrap around any part of the structure that is physically present - so like those big shoulder and hip masses. Having your additional masses interact with one another can help create a lot more nuance in the construction, and build the impression of musculature. Be sure to build these up with several different masses, rather than trying to extend one mass along a longer length (like you did for the neck/shoulder area). Also, I noticed that you dropped a bunch of contour lines on your shoulder - this didn't really contribute anything to your drawing, so make sure that you're always considering what the marks you add are meant to add.

One big issue I noticed was that when constructing the legs, you seemed to start with a sausage structure, but you then enveloped it in something entirely different. The key problem is that there's no resulting relationship between the sausage structure and the part you built up around it. The sauages are just floating inside, and may as well not be there. Instead, you need to build up individual pieces that attach to the sausage structure. Every single piece needs to establish its own relationship with that structure, so they all fit together solidly.

Moving onto your first deer, here are some additional notes there. You appear to have sidestepped the sausage method here entirely, so make sure you're using that technique consistently for all your animals' legs. For your additional masses, focus on how those forms actually wrap around the existing structure, and how you can give the impression that they're "gripping" that torso. Lastly, for the antlers, don't pile on the contour lines - you can achieve just as effective of a result by only defining the contour lines that establish the intersection between forms.

Honestly, the horses and deer do show overall improvement. I had something of a physical reaction to the leopards, and it kinda threw me for a loop - initially I had it in my mind that I was going to send you for a full redo, but that isn't necessary here. I do want to see some revisions however, and I want you to show me that you can incorporate the feedback here and continue to implement what has been discussed previously. So before you start the revisions, I'd like you to reread all the feedback you received for both lesson 4 submissions.

Next Steps:

Please submit 3 more pages of animal constructions.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:31 PM, Monday February 8th 2021

https://imgur.com/a/WsBzlHu

Hi,

Thanks for the critics, to be honest I tought those Leopards where off and tought for some time to redraw them before posting, sadly i let my laziness take over and sand them anyway.

I have been doing the 3 pages as requested after spending some times reviewing your previous critics, I hope those are improving.

9:59 PM, Monday February 8th 2021

This is definitely much better. Just a few things:

  • Always remain cognizant of which forms overlap others in 3D space, and which forms actually fit behind others. As shown here, the form along your boar's chest area should be treated as going behind the leg, rather than making everything exist at the same level of depth.

  • As also shown there, make sure you're first building a structure off the cranial ball when dealing with the muzzle. You can always then attach more mass to it as needed, but start with something with a clearly defined relationship with the cranial ball.

  • The mass on your fox's back doesn't quite define how it really "clings" to the torso - always try to exaggerate it when possible, as shown here.

  • Take more care in drawing your eye sockets, in general. Don't make them so small, give them more space overall. Also, when separating the head into those planes, think of it more as though you're building new forms on top of that structure. At the moment the way you separate them with lines comes off a bit flat.

  • In your hare drawing, you didn't draw through your ear forms. Don't cut one form off when it's hidden behind another - draw right through them.

  • You appear to purposely be drawing later phases of constructions darker than the initial starting forms. Don't - they're all just as solid, just as much part of the construction. Line weight happens at the end, to help clarify how forms overlap one another.

Anyway, keep those points in mind. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

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