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6:36 PM, Monday December 6th 2021
edited at 6:38 PM, Dec 6th 2021

Hello Tryingtodrawabox, I hope you are well.

Including demos isn't necessary, but it does help me judge how much work you have put into the lesson.

Judging by the number of demos you have done you put a lot of work into it and it clearly pays off as you become quite fluent with animals.

That said, let's start the critique.

Starting with your organic intersections

You did a great job handling them in a 3d space. You make your shadows follow the curvature of the form it is cast on. Your sasusages feel solid and thoroughly designed, but there are few that show you struggled with them(middle left of a 2nd page).

In future avoid "mother ship" arrangements of your sausages, instead of making one big sausage and then adding smaller ones, try to keep them the same size. This will allow for more useful exploration of their interactions in space.

Our sausages aren't stiff, they are supposed to be squishy. But here you made a stiff sausage, when it sag.

Moving to animals

You have quite a great job with those. At the beginning you were a bit stiff but after completing a couple of them you get so much better at them.

That said, one thing that sometimes comes out badly is your linework. There are few cases(animals) which have a comparable worse linework and I believe it is caused by you rushing. Be patient with ghosting and take as much time as needed for each line. Then when it feels right, confidently execute the line.

Sometimes you make a bad line and try to fix it in the form of repeating the line. Don't do that in the future, even if you made a bad line, leave it and treat it as if it was the correct one. We don't want to correct our lines as it starts bad habits and teaches us that we don't have to commit to our lines. Leave your bad line there to be seen. Next time you try to make a line, don't repeat the same mistake you did the previous time.

I notice you wrote you have problems with heads, one way to fix that problem is to do them more. But there are a couple of things I will say that might help you with them.

  • Draw your cranium(initial ball for the head) smaller. We sometimes underestimate how much fat and fur there is.

  • Making it smaller also lets us focus more on those additional masses as the brow ridge, the cheekbones, muzzle, eye sockets, etc.

  • Try to fit masses written above like a puzzle. You already do it pretty well, but there are few heads where you forgot about it. Making them fit really help solidifies your drawing

  • This demo is the most up to date when it comes to how we should tackle heads. I know you already did it but it could be worth revisiting.

In your octopus I noticed you have a bit of a problem with defining the degree of our contour line. Our contour's degree is defined by how far it is from the viewer, I am sure you will get more comfortable after the 250 cylinder challenge and lesson 6.

In your pig I noticed you made a bunch of medium sized masses on the back. I would advise to merge a few of them into bigger one, as with more masses on the page the more busy the drawing becomes. It is also more pleasing to the eye to have varied masses but that is not the point of those exercises. But that's just my personal taste so don't take it too far.

Conclusion

You haven't made any major mistakes, just a few minor ones. There is also a big sign of growth from you, so I will mark this lesson as complete now.

PS. Doing studies like you do, drawing just a leg or a head is a great way to get better at certain subjects so keep that way of learning in the future. If we can draw a head easier and better from those studies, our whole animal will also become better looking.

Also it looks like I picked the wrong option, please reply to this so I can mark this as complete, sorry for inconvenience.

If you have any questions feel free to ask me,

Have fun during your journey.

Next Steps:

Continue to 250 cylinder challenge

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 6:38 PM, Dec 6th 2021
5:56 AM, Thursday December 9th 2021

Thankyou so much for your critique. I appreciate it very much. You really have keen eyes, thanks for making aware of my mistakes here. I'd try to avoid them or improve them.

Thankyou very much.

3:58 PM, Thursday December 9th 2021

Replying to mark this as a complete, sorry once again for my mistake.

Take care,

Next Steps:

Continue to 250 cylinder challenge

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.
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