Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

5:17 PM, Friday June 12th 2020

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I definitely had a hard time with some of the assignments, namely texture analysis and dissections. I also had some trouble with form intersections, but as I went on, I was sort of able to understand how to visualize 3d space. I might have also added too much cast shadow in the organic intersections.

If there are any critical mistakes I might have made, please let me know and I can do additional work.

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8:37 PM, Friday June 12th 2020

Starting with your arrows, these are flowing quite well through space. You're also demonstrating a good grasp of how perspective applies to both the positive space (the width of the ribbon which gets narrower as it moves away from the viewer) as well as to the negative space (the distances between the zigzagging sections that tighten up as we look farther back).

For your organic forms with contour lines, you're doing a good job of sticking to the characteristics of simple sausage forms as discussed in the instructions. Your contour ellipses are a little stiff, so make sure you're applying the ghosting method to be able to execute them with the kind of confidence that keeps them smooth and evenly shaped - but other than that, you're doing a great job of keeping them snug between the edges of the form. You're also demonstrating a good grasp of how their degree changes naturally over the length of the form. Same goes for the contour curves, which is great to see.

In your texture analyses, you've done a good job of grasping the main principles of the lesson. You're focusing clearly on shadow shapes, have achieved excellent transitions from dense to sparse texture, and are exhibiting considerable attention to detail and strong observational skills. You largely continue holding to this throughout your dissections, and do a great job of exploring many different kinds of textures, paying attention to the nature of each.

Moving onto your form intersections, you're doing a great job of drawing these forms such that they feel consistent and cohesive within the same space. As mentioned in the exercise, this is the core of the exercise. The intersections themselves are an additional component that serve only as an introduction to the concept of spatial relationships between these forms. This is something I don't expect students to have any prior experience with, and are by their very nature extremely challenging. Once introduced here, we continue to explore these principles throughout the rest of the course as a whole, as spatial relationships are at the core of Drawabox and what I hope to teach students through these lessons.

That said, I do agree that your understanding of these spatial relationships definitely improves over the set.

Lastly, your work on the organic intersections does a great job of establishing how these sausage forms interact with one another in 3D space - not just as flat shapes piled on top of one another on a flat page. You're also capturing a pretty good impression of gravity in how they slump and sag over one another. I have just one minor point to raise - when adding cast shadows, it seems you're a little hesitant about where to add them, and as such you add them in certain areas, but leave others that would logically also receive shadows (based on the light source the existing shadows imply exists). Make sure you're more thorough in applying the cast shadows to all of the forms, considering how they're interacting with that light source, and where they're blocking the light from reaching. For example, on your last page there, the three sausages resting across the one sausage all cast shadows beneath them, but the one below them doesn't seem to cast anything upon the ground.

So! All in all, your work here is fantastic. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so keep up the great work.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:50 PM, Friday June 12th 2020

Thank you very much for your critique. i will try and loosen up my ellipses during my warm-up sessions.

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