Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

8:28 AM, Tuesday November 22nd 2022

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at long last im done with lesson 2!

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2:21 AM, Thursday November 24th 2022

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

  • Starting off with the arrows section you want to be making sure you're drawing confidently to keep your arrows as smooth as possible, accuracy will come with mileage. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Remember that as our arrows move closer to the viewer we want them to widen consistently. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

  • Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. We want to create our forms with both ends being the same size and to avoid any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form's length as discussed here. Some of your line work here also shows a lack of confidence, you're redrawing your contour curves as well which is a bad habit to form. Take your time, ghost your mark then draw it confidently, if you make a mistake work with it rather than make a mess by redrawing over it. As for contours I'd like you to draw more of them and to try and shift the degree of them more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

  • In the texture section you're demonstrating good observational skills by being able to separate and clearly focus on the cast shadows formed along your reference. You're doing a good job of transitioning your gradients from dark to light as well rather than having sudden changes. Before moving on to the next section I'd like to quickly point you to this image which shows that when working with thin line like textures we benefit from outlining and filling the shadow's shape rather than just drawing a line. We get much more dynamic and interesting results this way. Remember that each texture is it's own challenge so be sure to experiment with different types when practicing this exercise in the future.

  • It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons. Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, that being said your linework definitely could have been tidier here.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. Your shadows are hugging the form creating them rather than being cast on to another surface believably. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds upon each other and I'd like to make sure you understand a few of these concepts a bit more before potentially creating more problems down the road.

With that being said I'd like you to please re-read and complete:

  • 2 pages of the organic forms with contours exercise (1 with ellipses, 1 with curves)

  • 1 page of the form intersections exercise

Remember to take your time and that every line you make should be planned and ghosted before being drawn confidently. Don't redraw or chicken scratch. I know you're capable of better than this.

Once you've completed the pages mentioned above reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll go over them and address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready for the next lesson I'll move you on.

I look forward to seeing your work.

Next Steps:

  • 2 pages of the organic forms with contours exercise (1 with ellipses, 1 with curves)

  • 1 page of the form intersections exercise

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:58 PM, Monday December 19th 2022

https://imgur.com/a/gQUJe3m

I apoligize it took so long for me to do them, i'm going through a rough few months right now. I don't plan on stopping drawabox anytime soon though!

9:09 PM, Monday December 19th 2022

While there's still room to simplify your organic forms some more these are largely an improvement overall. I'll be marking your submission complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Hope things get better for you as soon as they can and best of luck in lesson 3.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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