Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

8:29 AM, Saturday May 23rd 2020

aero Drawabox Lesson 2 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/IVzWYN5.jpg

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Here's my submission for Lesson 2 homework exercises.

I feel I struggled most with:

  1. texture analysis (mainly struggled with how long the process is - lots of time spent observing and then making a mark. I think I got impatient at times).

  2. form intersections (I think I did ok with the forms themselves but where they intersect was really tricky to think about. I had a hard time visualising how one form of a certain shape would intersect with a form of a different shape).

Let me know if you have any feedback or anything to re-do.

Thanks and I appreciate your time.

2 users agree
4:25 AM, Wednesday July 29th 2020

Hi Aero. Sorry about the wait, but hopefully this critique should be worth it.

So for the Arrows exercise, you need to work more on your perspective. The gaps between your arrow edges tend to not have much foreshortening to them, and neither do your widths of your arrows. You should exaggerate it more in order to show depth, even if it means making the closest end much bigger than the farthest end. Remember to think of your page as a "window" to a 3D world, and not just a flat two-dimensional piece of paper. Also, it's helpful to add line weight to the silhouette of your arrows to show more solidity, as well as to edges that overlap one another, including for adjacent arrows. When adding hatching lines, don't put two sets of them on both sides of each overlapping edge.

For Organic Forms, you need to push how the ellipse degrees change a lot more. For each form, your ellipses do not have much of a shift in degree. Think of these forms as something that exists in 3D space, and imagine bending those forms a lot more. Again, it's helpful to add line weight to the silhouette of each form.

For Texture Analysis, it's helpful to not think of your cast shadows as lines, but instead to think of them as shapes. It can be better to draw the outline of those shapes first before you fill it in. You mind want to re-watch the lesson on texture to better understand it. With your crumpled paper drawing, I would probably include some of the smaller bits of cast shadow. If you observe really closely, you can see little bits of tiny lines, so that if you were to include them in your drawing, they would be around the size of a single point. Also, try to be a bit more mindful of the gradient. Make the transition from dense to sparse more gradual, so that the black bar isn't obvious at all. In addition, remember that there will generally be deeper shadows in places where the forms intersect, so if think about where, say, three forms intersect, there will be more shadow in those places than in others. So when you're drawing textures that are really dense, those shadows should be the only things you include.

For your dissections, it's similar to Texture Analysis, but now you are considering forms as well. With your forms, you should try to include a gradient from dense to sparse - dense on the edges, and sparse around the center.

For your Form Intersections, I think getting your intersections correct is something that should come with more practice. Though, it might be helpful to think more about how each plane intersects with one another, so sort of imagining a line where they intersect and following along with it, until it either reaches another plane or it stops completely - if that makes sense (please tell me if it doesn't). Add some line weight to the silhouette of each form too, although I think this part is optional (I still suggest doing it anyway). Also include some hatching lines to better clarify your forms, but do so once you've drawn all your forms, and only draw the ones that will be visible if you were to actually see these forms for real.

For your Organic Intersections, think of each form as actual water balloons, rather than just flat surfaces floating in 3D space. I see some of your forms that look like that they're going to fall off. Avoid this, and try to imagine what would actually happen to these forms in real life if you've placed them there. If they would fall off, then draw them at their resulting position. Don't make your forms too elongated. Just stick to simple "sausage" forms for the time being - make sure that the ends of each form are sphere-like, rather than being tapered. When you're drawing cast shadows, be mindful of where you are placing them. Make sure it describes the surface it is being cast onto. Some of your cast shadows look like they are floating above the ground, rather than actually being on the ground, for instance. If you have to, push it more - make it a lot more obvious. Similar to the organic forms exercise, you should be mindful of the degrees of your contour curves. Try to push them more. And speaking of contour curves, include more of them for each form, as well as line weight to their silhouettes.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

One page of Arrows

One page of Organic Forms (contour ellipses)

One page of Organic Intersections

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:52 AM, Tuesday August 18th 2020

Thanks for your review! It was very thorough. I appreciate you taking the time :)

I've completed the following:

One page of Arrows

One page of Organic Forms (contour ellipses)

One page of Organic Intersections

I think I understand the contour lines a lot more now - I wasn't really using these effectively or changing the degree of the ellipses much. I'm still struggling with organic intersections - I know my cast shadows aren't exactly right. I was trying to wrap them around the form contours but I can see I didn't do this quite right in some places.

Re-submitted exercises: https://imgur.com/a/djYkMBN

Previous lesson 2 submission: https://imgur.com/a/IVzWYN5

Let me know if there's anything else I should do.

11:33 AM, Wednesday September 23rd 2020

Hi Aero,

I apologize for the long wait. I've just been a bit busy with a few things lately. Hope you don't mind.

For the arrows, there's noticeable difference in the foreshortening of the width: as the arrows are coming towards you, the widths increase, and vice versa. Try to include foreshortening in the gaps between them two. Sometimes I notice that the gaps between the arrows closer to the viewer are two narrow relative to further away, whereas it should be the other way round.

For the contour ellipses, it's a bit better. Maybe push it a bit more though if you can.

Lastly, the Organic Intersections this time seem better than in the previous one. The forms wrap around each other more. Though, I recommend practicing this more often. You should get to the point where you look at it and doesn't feel as if it's frozen in time, if that makes sense.

Next Steps:

Good job. Move on to 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.
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