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9:39 PM, Monday November 28th 2022
I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.
You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.
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Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. 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.
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Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise your forms are getting a bit too complex. 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.
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In the texture exercises (more so in your dissections) 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.
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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.
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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. When attempting this again in the future try to think of your stack of forms like a stack of sausages on a plate in front of you, your second page feels a bit like you just drew forms without thinking of how they'd interact with one another.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. It appears like your shadows aren't following a consistent light source, 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:
- 2 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:
- 2 page of the organic intersections exercise
5:19 PM, Tuesday November 29th 2022
Hey!
Thank you for the really thoughtful and actionable feedback. This type of guidance is the reason I signed up for draw a box.
I had a few questions to make sure I understood everything clearly.
, 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.
By negative space you mean the distance between the lines here and not the shapes made by the white area between the lines, right?? So to push foreshortening on the arrows (during warm-ups), I'd go with directions that emphasize the space between the lines growing as they approach the viewer?
your forms are getting a bit too complex.
Do you mean that the ends tend to be pinched? That's something I felt like I'm struggling with, getting nice rounded ends as if spheres were there. The way I go about constructing them is as follows:
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create a top line
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create a bottom line using target points I place relative to the top line
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try and ghost whatever I think the sphere placed at the end would look like
I worry that step (3) is pinching the ends of my organic forms. I'll reread and rewatch the material but that was one question I had as soon as I started drawing those shapes.
I'd like to try placing two roughly equally sized spheres and connecting those but I'm not sure if that ruins the exercise in that the entire sphere is visible inside the organic form.
Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more
Fantastic. I thought the contours were too uniform but wanted another's opinion. I'll try pushing the degree more.
In the texture exercises (more so in your dissections) you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself
This is interesting! I put in lines thinking that they were shadows from the images. For example scratch and little crevices. Am I focusing too much on small details for cast shadows versus some large volumes? To be clear I found this exercise incredibly challenging and look forward to putting more practice into this area.
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.
One question I had after watching the video and the reading the page was understanding just how much these shapes are allowed to deform and warp. The demo video doesn't show major warping whereas the the example image at the bottom has an almost flattened sausage. Is the flattened sausage not too complex? Or am I focusing on the wrong thing here?
I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with
Thanks for the idea. I'll work with that.
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.
Appreciate it. I'll reread the various exercises and videos and then resubmit "2 page of the organic intersections exercise".
Thank you again for the thoughtful feedback and help!
Cheers!
10:28 PM, Tuesday November 29th 2022
To quickly address your questions:
By negative space you mean the distance between the lines here and not the shapes made by the white area between the lines, right?? So to push foreshortening on the arrows (during warm-ups), I'd go with directions that emphasize the space between the lines growing as they approach the viewer?
If you take a look at the example here you can apply foreshortening in both the "positive" and negative spaces. The positive space being the space between your 2 lines/edges as pointed to where the arrow gets closest to us, this would naturally widen as it moves closer towards the viewer. The negative space is not a part of the arrow itself but the space in between the arrow's curves as shown in area label "Space compresses further away". Much like how the arrow itself widens as it gets closer you can make the space between the curving of the arrows widen as well to help sell the illusion of foreshortening.
Do you mean that the ends tend to be pinched? That's something I felt like I'm struggling with, getting nice rounded ends as if spheres were there.
A few of your forms suffer from pinched ends or have some pinching in the middle when you make your forms longer, this is more noticeable in the forms you created for your texture attempts later on in your submission.
This is interesting! I put in lines thinking that they were shadows from the images. For example scratch and little crevices. Am I focusing too much on small details for cast shadows versus some large volumes? To be clear I found this exercise incredibly challenging and look forward to putting more practice into this area.
Texture is difficult and we honestly don't expect people to do it well just yet, it's something that kind of becomes more natural as you progress through the course. Remind me when you hand in your revisions to give you my texture explanation and it'll hopefully clarify a few things. It's quite lengthy and I'd rather not distract you from your revisions which are more important currently (and will be more relevant for upcoming lesson material) than texture.
One question I had after watching the video and the reading the page was understanding just how much these shapes are allowed to deform and warp. The demo video doesn't show major warping whereas the the example image at the bottom has an almost flattened sausage. Is the flattened sausage not too complex? Or am I focusing on the wrong thing here?
This is a case of some of the older material just not having been updated yet. It's not necessarily wrong that the form warps but I'd would recommend keeping your forms as simple as you can and try to wrap them around the forms below. Think about sausages stacked on a plate, they'll wrap but they'll maintain their shape unlike a water balloon which may completely deform depending on the pressures applied to it and how much water is in the balloon vs air etc.
Hopefully that helps for now, a quick reminder for yourself (and my future self) to remind me to give you my texture explanation when you hand in your revisions.
7:29 AM, Monday January 16th 2023
Thanks for that feedback. I've drawn quite a few sausages in the meantime and tried to incorporate your feedback.
Here is the images for resubmission: https://imgur.com/a/zSM2qwQ
I've also created a new sketchbook for the resubmission: https://drawabox.com/community/submission/2KA9UE76
I'm not sure the correct way to do a resubmission. I cannot find guidance or instructions on resubmissions in the discord or website.
Let me know if you'd like me to do something different.
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Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.
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