7:31 AM, Tuesday February 2nd 2021
Starting with your organic forms with contour lines, there are a few important points I want to stress here:
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Many of the sausages you've drawn here adhere fairly closely to the characteristics of simple sausages, though not all. You've got a number that pinch through the midsection, some that are more ellipses than sausages, some with ends of different sizes, and some that stretch out towards the end rather than remaining circular. This suggests to me that you weren't as intentionally following that instruction as you could have been, so make sure you do so in the future.
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You'll notice that in the instructions, I only go around the sausage form once. You may be confusing it with ellipses, where we specifically draw around the form two full times before lifting our pen. This is because it specifically helps us to make elliptical shapes more confidently - and generally when we draw repeatedly around a shape like that, it's going to make it easier to fall into the groove of making it an ellipse. So when we're aiming to draw sausages, draw only once around the shape.
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In many cases, the ellipses you've drawn at the tips don't match the degree of the contour lines that precede them, making them stand out. They are after all contour lines like everything else - the only difference is that because they sit at the tip, we can see all the way around them. They should have a similar degree to the contour line closest to them, as shown here.
Moving onto your insect constructions, there are certainly areas where you're making good progress, and some areas that we can address to help you improve.
The first thing that jumped out at me, especially in this early ant drawing is that you seem to be going back over your lines quite a bit to add line weight. Line weight is only meant to be added in specific, localized areas to clarify particular overlaps between forms. You should not be applying it so liberally to everything, as this can get you in the trap of tracing back over lines. Tracing as a methodology tends to focus on following the line as it exists on the page, and forgetting about how it's meant to represent an edge moving through 3D space. Instead, line weight should be added by drawing marks in the same way you'd have drawn the original stroke - confidently, using the ghosting method.
For the most part, I noticed that you were largely doing a good job of building your insects additively - that is, building new forms on top of the structures you'd already constructed, establishing how they relate to one another, etc. except for in this ladybug, especially where you've cut back into its head's silhouette. For the reasons explained here, this kind of approach will flatten your drawing out, and should be avoided.
Now, this same issue can come into play when we try to attach new shapes to existing silhouettes - for example how you add the little spikes on the horns of this stag beetle. There you've added partial shapes consisting of just a couple lines. Instead, every addition to a construction should exist as its own solid, complete, enclosed, three dimensional form. You can see this in action in this hercules beetle horn, as well as in this ant head demonstration.
As a side note, I noticed that on the stag beetle's horns, you used a lot of contour lines to make those forms feel rounded. Be careful when it comes to overusing contour lines - first try and focus them where they connect to other forms in your construction, as such intersectional lines tend to be very effective compared to contour lines that sit along the surface of a single object. From there, keep assessing whether you actually need another contour line - they suffer from diminishing returns, so often piling them on won't actually have a useful impact.
A minor point looking at this spider - your linework is getting visibly more hesitant and scratchier. As before, remember not to draw around your sausage forms multiple times, as it'll make them come out more elliptical, and also execute all your marks with confidence, following the ghosting method. You definitely drew that abdomen more hesitantly, resulting in an uneven form that reads more as a flat shape due to the complexity of its silhouette. It's the wobbling and unevenness that contributes to the complexity.
The last thing I want to mention is that while you're definitely making an effort to stick to the sausage method (you sometimes forget to reinforce the joints with a contour line, and you do sometimes end up with more ellipsoid forms due to going around the shape multiple times, but your intent is correct), keep in mind that it doesn't really stop there. The sausage structure we construct establishes a base structure, but we can always build on top of it, as shown here and here.
You can see this put into action with this ant leg demo and this dog leg demo - as indeed we do continue to apply this technique throughout lesson 5.
Now, before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like to see a few more drawings applying what I've outlined here.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
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1 page of organic forms with contour lines
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3 pages of insect constructions