Aside from the material within the lesson, I'm happy with my progress around my line confidence (a recurring problem if you check my previous posts). I gave myself more time for the second half of this lesson and not only did I enjoy myself more, but my lines are more intentional and less scratchy.
Hey man, this is looking really good! I think your constructions are super solid - they really do feel like 3D objects and not 2D shapes. The only drawback I was able to notice is your line weight - you mostly thicken out the whole silohuette of the animals (I actually like this effect btw), but this takes away from the visual hierarchy of lines. I would use line weight more sparingly and in places which I want to bring forth. For example, a leg that is closer to the viewer will be outlined with thicker line weight than the leg that is farther away.
My last thought is that you may have thickened out so many lines because you wanted to correct them/make them look better. I am guilty of this too, but we have to hold back here. We are not here to make preety drawings - we are here to learn and make mistakes. In essence, this is a bad habit. We waste precious time adding additional line weight (which serves no purpose) while trying to hide our mistakes. By exposing ourselves to the mistakes we are making, we are giving ourselves the opportunity to grow.
Hopefully this was helpful, keep on drawing bro! :)
Hey, I haven't been on the site in a few days, so sorry for the late response. Thanks so much for the critique - you've just vocalized a lot of feelings that I had while working on this but wasn't sure how to make sense of. Towards the end, I definitely started to feel impatient about having to spend an abnormal amount of time going over my lines, and it didn't occur to me that maybe I shouldn't be doing that - because, as you've reinforced for me again, I was too preoccupied with making pretty pictures. That's also definitely shown in how I prioritized using line weight for a visual effect rather than conveying information. Thanks again!
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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