Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

9:52 AM, Thursday July 16th 2020

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This is my completed lesson 2. Any feedback appreciated :)

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3:16 AM, Friday August 14th 2020

Hello Nulelu!

Arrows - I think your heading in the right direction! Some look very good, but some it looks like you lost control of the line you were drawing. Don't be afraid to ghost the lines of the your arrows and to draw them in segments. Sometimes your arrows are way too thin too do anything with. Lastly, don't feel like you need to draw all the arrows with dramatic perspective. I think that over time, with practice, your arrows will look smoother and they will be easier to draw in perspective.

Contour ellipses - Remember to only go around the ellipse 2-3 times. Doing a table of ellipses beforehand can help you train your muscles to draw tighter ellipses, which will make the exercise easier. However, your ellipses look very smooth, which is great! They also have their minor axes very well aligned to the center line.

Contour curves - I think you can expand the degrees of the curves you draw to give your forms a greater range of motion. A lot of your curves look wobbly and lack confidence, so I'd suggest doing a table of ellipses beforehand to train your muscles. Also, ghosting ellipses before drawing a curve will help you draw confident marks.

Textures - Remember we are only drawing the cast shadows. For example, in your leaf study, you probably wouldn't draw the gradient. I think Uncomfortable talks about this in the lesson video. Basically, it's not a good idea to try to shade, or worry about value/color, because it detracts from the main focus of the lesson. Instead look carefully at the reference to identify cast shadows (even very small ones) and block them in. Similarly, try to avoid gradients because they may come out as random scribbles, like in the mayonnaise dissection. In Uncomfortable's example you can see he uses very few lines to convey this texture. Every mark should be intentional. On another note, I think you did a good job with this (finding cast shadows) in your crumpled paper study. I also think you did a great job with making your texture 3-dimensional, particularly with your rose.

Form intersections - For the cubes you might want to draw them overlapping more so you have more room to draw the intersection. I think these look really good! I'd say in general don't be afraid to try intersections you haven't done before, or that you're unsure of how to do.

Organic intersections - I think your forms have a good sense of solidity and that they are 3D objects that are interacting. I think your contours are really realistic. When you draw cast shadows, really make sure they wrap around the object they fall on. Even if they look a little long, it's a good learning experience. I think right now you draw them too close to their forms, which makes them difficult to learn from.

Congrats on finishing the lesson! I hope my suggestions help you out, and good luck in the future!

Next Steps:

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.
4:00 PM, Saturday August 29th 2020

Thank you very much! I agree with your comment and i admit - i just begin to work out the textures :) Using the shadows is something what i really try to understand and use.

Wish the best for you too!

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