Hi there I'll be handling your lesson 2 critique.
You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson, below I'll be listing some things that will hopefully help you in your future attempts at these exercises.
Your arrows are mostly flowing pretty smoothly which is good to see. I would like you to experiment more with foreshortening in the future, by utilizing it in not only the arrow itself but the space between the arrow's curves you'll sell a much stronger illusion of an arrow moving through 3D space as discussed here.
In the organic forms with contours exercise there are a few things to work on. Your forms are a bit too complex, our goal is to create simple forms where both ends are the same size while avoiding any pinching, bloating, or stretching along the form as seen here. You want to work on having your contour lines hook back into the form instead of just ending at the edge as instructed here. I'd also like you to work on shifting the degree of your contours. 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, there are also clear spots where you're working from memory rather than using your reference. 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. As a final note, spiderwebs aren't really a texture which is why you can't apply this idea to it very well.
If you feel like you don't fully grasp form intersections just yet don't worry, right now 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 mostly looking solid and like they belong in a cohesive space, good work.
In the organic intersections exercise I have a few quick suggestions. The first is I recommend you draw through all of your forms, like when we did with our boxes drawing through our forms helps us build an understanding of how these forms rest in 3D space. Your contour lines aren't pushed far enough so they make your forms appear flat, remember we want to be drawing them like drawing an ellipse almost where they hook back into the form. As a final note I'd like you to try and push your light source into the top left or right corner and really try to push your shadows. Rioght now they mostly hug the form creating them rather than being cast on to the form/ground below.
Overall if you can keep these suggestions in mind you'll improve with more mileage. You do have some things to work on but I believe you can improve by doing these exercises as warm ups, so I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises as you warm ups and good luck in the next lesson.
Next Steps:
Do previous exercises as warm ups.
Move on to lesson 3.
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
