Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

1:53 AM, Tuesday May 9th 2023

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I think I accidentally submitted my last one for community critique, but I have credits for official so my mistake there. Not sure how to delete the other one.

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6:38 PM, Wednesday May 10th 2023

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

I've also removed your community post to tidy up your sketchbook.

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

Before getting started I feel the need to mention that your lines feel quite thick at times, if you could double check that you're using the correct 0.5mm fineliner it would be appreciated.

  • 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 or too simple to the point they're nearly ellipses. 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. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours 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 exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

  • 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, good work.

  • While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you show that you need a bit more time becoming comfortable with thinking of how these forms interact in 3D space and how they'd wrap around one another. I recommend trying to stack your forms perpendicularly rather than trying to keep them headed in the same direction to help make wrapping them around one another a smoother task. 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. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. 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:

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise (half with ellipses, half with contour curves)

  • 1 page of the organic intersections exercise

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:

  • 1 page of the organic forms with contours exercise (half with ellipses, half with contour curves)

  • 1 page of the organic intersections exercise

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:45 PM, Tuesday May 16th 2023

Howdy!

Appreciate that and here is a link to the completed two pages. I thiiiink I got them looking better. I missed the note on only keeping the ends of the 3d bodies about the same so thats why everything looks way off.

https://imgur.com/a/NbnLkDM

My pens are 0.5mm pens from here - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09XQRVKTM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Thanks for the assistance. I have difficulty with getting circular marks down even with ghosting the lines, its not nearly as simple as straight ones so they don't always come out curved on both ends like I want them to.

8:50 PM, Thursday May 18th 2023

Your pens look alright, may just be trick of your pictures or how they measure being slightly different. Alternatively if you're redrawing that will also explain the thickness of some lines and I'd encourage you to stop doing so.

While there's still room for improvement these are definitely a step in the right direction, great work.

Most of your improvement will come from continuing to build up more mileage but one thing I do notice is that you're drawing small contour ellipses on both ends of your forms, instead you just want to do so on the end(s) facing the viewer.

That aside these are looking well done so I'll be marking your submission complete.

Best of luck in lesson 3.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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