7:14 PM, Saturday April 9th 2022
Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 5 homework.
Organic Intersections
-Starting with the organic Intersections these are turning out well, and they wrap around each other in a believable way. There are only a couple of issues to point out, first, you're not pushing the cast shadows far enough, remember that these shadows act as contour curves to describe how these forms sit in space, so push them further. Lastly, it seems that you were drawing through them in your first page, but you didn't do this on the second page, this is just an exercise in spatial reasoning so it is important to always draw through your forms.
Animals
-The first thing I want to call out is that you tend to draw your initial construction lines very faintly and you add a lot of line weight to those that you want to commit to, this may not seem like a big deal at first but it reinforces the mindset that we are just working with a set of lines rather than actual forms that exist in 3D space.
What we should when we want to change something is to add new 3D forms to the preceding structure and establishing how these forms relate to one another We can do so by defining the intersection between them, like on lesson 2 form intersections or by wrapping the silhouette around the existing forms as shown here.
I know you know of this method already, but you tend to jump a lot between adding forms and changing the silhouette of your animals. A good example is this animal where you cut into the silhouette of your forms, (the part where you used hatching).
-You also want to be confident in your own belief that the forms you are working with are 3D and have their own volume, so use contour lines on your initial masses (cranium, ribcage and pelvis), keep in mind that contour lines are a good way to describe how a forms exists in 3D space, but they can also work against us by flattening our drawing, so use them very sparingly.
-Another important thing to call out is that you are using flat shapes for the legs, given that the lesson material is quite outdated you may have missed this point. Remember that you have to use the sausage method taught in lesson 4, when using this method it is important to keep in mind that we are not capturing the shape of the legs precisely as they are, instead we are setting up a basic structure that captures both the flow and solidity if these limbs, once that structure is in place we can start to add additional forms to better capture the actual shape of the legs, This process is exemplified in this dog's leg demos and this ant leg demo.
-Now I want to address head construction, I can see that you are aware of the different planes present in the cranium, and you are using pentagonal shapes for your eye sockets which is correct. But you tend to draw them very small, it is important to give them as much room as possible so that we can have a wedge to fit the muzzle into and a flat edge for the eyebrows and the forehead. The eyeballs should also be big, so as to wrap the eyelids around them much more easily, as shown (here)[https://imgur.com/TWFxXPZ).
Once that is done we should add the facial features following the existing planes, this process is exemplified in this rhino head demo and this camel head demo
-The last point I want to address is proportions, I don't want to put too much emphasis into it because it is not as important as the points I have already raised. This is a common issue that can be improved by spending more time observing carefully our reference image, the ribcage should occupy roughly ½ of the torso and the ribcage should be ¼ of the torso.
Okay, you still have plenty of things to keep working on so I want you to do some additional work to tie up those loose ends.
Next Steps:
Please do the following
-4 more pages of animals of your own choice (no texture)