Jumping right in with your arrows, I can see that you're making a concerted effort to attack these with confidence, and despite a bit of hesitation here and there, you are generally doing a good job of conveying how they move through space in a fluid manner. You're also clearly taking into consideration how foreshortening impacts both the positive and negative space of the structures, demonstrating the depth of the scene in which they exist.
Looking at your sausages with contour lines, I can see that you are striving towards the characteristics of simple sausages, and are generally making good headway with that. There are some discrepancies here and there, but that's normal - as long as you continue keeping those characteristics in your mind as the goal you're working towards, the deviations will diminish with continued practice.
Your contour lines themselves are drawn confidently, leading to evenly shaped ellipses and smooth curves that appropriately describe the way the sausages' surfaces deform through space. I can also see that you're consciously applying a shifting degree, pushing your contour lines wider as we slide further away from the viewer along the length of each form. Just one thing to keep in mind - when drawing the smaller ellipses on the tips of your sausages, remember that you should be drawing through each one two full times - you often do try to draw through them, but you fall short, which suggests that you may be relying more on your subconscious rather than making a conscious choice there.
Continuing onto the texture section, one thing to keep in mind is that the concepts we introduce relating to texture rely on skills our students generally don't have right now - because they're the skills this entire course is designed to develop. That is, spatial reasoning. Understanding how the textural forms sit on a given surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them (which is necessary to design the shadow they would cast) is a matter of understanding 3D spatial relationships. The reason we introduce it here is to provide context and direction for what we'll explore later - similarly to the rotated boxes/organic perspective boxes in Lesson 1 introducing a problem we engage with more thoroughly in the box challenge. Ultimately my concern right now is just how closely you're adhering to the underlying steps and procedure we prescribe (especially those in these reminders).
I'm pleased to see that you've made cosniderable use of this two step methodology of first outlining/designing your shadow shapes, then filling them in, primarily in your texture analyses. As with most students you do still employ other methodologies alongside it (like the less controlled one-off strokes), and in your dissections shift more to drawing the things you observe directly without necessarily thinking about the shadows those forms you're observing would cast. That is however pretty normal to see and expected of students at this stage.
When tackling textural problems throughout the rest of the course however, do be sure to both stick to this two step methodology to the exclusion of all others, and to ensure that the marks you're putting down are intended to specifically be the shadows being cast. This requires the additional time necessary to "understand" what you're observing in terms of how those forms relate to one another in 3D space (as explained in the reminders linked above).
Additionally, while it's true that there are certainly going to be shadows that are cast that are so small they can't reasonably be executed using our two step methodology, in such cases it's better to actually leave them out, for the following reasons:
A designed shape, despite not being something we can create quite as small as a one-off stroke, tapers in a more nuanced, delicate fashion, whereas a one-off stroke is more likely to end in a manner that feels more sudden. Thus, the shapes lean better into our goal of creating a gradient that transitions from black to white (and ultimately we have to pick a point for the shadows to drop off altogether anyway, so pushing a little farther with singular strokes isn't strictly necessary).
Drawing in one-off strokes allows us to lean more into drawing directly from observation (as opposed to observing, understanding the forms that we see as they exist in 3D space, then creating shadows based on that understanding), which can be very tempting as it can allow us to create more visually pleasing things without all of the extra baggage of thinking in 3D. But of course, 3D spatial reasoning is the purpose of this course.
Anyway, as a whole you're progressing well here, and are demonstrating well developing observational skills.
Moving onto the form intersections, this exercise serves two main purposes:
Similarly to the textures, it introduces the problem of the intersection lines themselves, which students are not expected to understand how to apply successfully, but rather just make an attempt at - this will continue to be developed from lessons 3-7, and this exercise will return in the homework in lessons 6 and 7 for additional analysis, and advice where it is deemed to be necessary). The way in which you're drawing your intersection lines here does show that you're thinking about how these forms relate to one another in 3D space, so that is progressing as expected.
The other, far more important use of this exercise (at least in the context of this stage in the course) is that it is essentially a combination of everything we've introduced thus far. The principles of linework, the use of the ghosting method, the concepts surrounding ellipses along with their axes/degrees, perspective, foreshortening, convergence, the Y method, and so forth - all of it is present in this exercise. Where we've already confirmed your general grasp of these concepts in isolation in previous exercises, it is in presenting it all together that can really challenge a student's patience and discipline, and so it allows us to catch any issues that might interfere with their ability to continue forward as meaningfully as we intend.
While overall you're generally handling this well, I did notice a couple things for you to keep in mind:
When constructing your boxes, you should be applying the Y method in its entirety, each time, including the negotiation of your corners. I can see some cases where you do this, but others where you may do so less thoroughly - although I could be mistaken in that, as the visual signs of this can be easily obscured.
When you make a mistake as we see here, don't attempt to correct it. Let your mistakes stand for themselves. When we correct mistakes, we can trick our brains into thinking that the cause of that mistake was addressed. Sure, lots of the mistakes we make are simple slip-ups, but in the cases where they're the result of not taking enough time to plan/prepare beforehand or think things through, having the mistake stand for itself serves as a reminder to take more time in the future.
When drawing your cylinders, don't default to having the side edges run parallel one the page to one another. This would only occur in the specific circumstance where the intent is to have the cylinder run perpendicularly to the viewer's angle of sight, as those are the circumstances that would result in the side edges' VP being pushed to infinity (as discussed in Lesson 1). If this is not your intent - and in this exercise, where we're rotating our forms arbitrarily in space, it wouldn't be - be sure to include some minimal amount of visible convergence.
Lastly, your organic intersections are off to a good start. The way in which you're drawing them shows that you're considering how they drape and droop over one another under the influence of gravity. You're also making good headway in the use of your cast shadows, although continue to think about how the shadows follow the surfaces upon which they are cast.
All in all, your work is coming along well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto Lesson 3.
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
On the flipside, they tend to be on the cheaper side of things, so if you're just getting started (beginners tend to have poor pressure control), you're probably going to destroy a few pens - going cheaper in that case is not a bad idea.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.
Remember that when you agree with something another user has written, you are putting your own reputation behind it.
Consider the following:
Agreeing blindly just to be nice is a good way to get your permissions associated with this function revoked, so make sure that you genuinely feel that the response is beneficial to the student.
We use cookies in conjunction with Google Analytics to anonymously track how our website is used.
This data is not shared with any other parties or sold to anyone. They are also disabled until consent is provided by clicking the button below, and this consent can be revoked at any time by clicking the "Revoke Analytics Cookie Consent" link in our website footer.
You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
