Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction
2:11 PM, Tuesday July 12th 2022
My first time lesson 2 of Draw a Box for critiquing
Hello Kevin. Congratulations on finishing lesson 2! I'm Strauss and would be pleased to critique your work, I hope that they can help you one way or another on your art journey. I’ll divided this into 5 major sections, now let us get into it:
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Organic Arrows
First, with arrows section, your lines are being executed smoothly and confidently. You also made some good attempt at drawing the arrows bigger/smaller towards/away from the viewer (this is very important since we want to convey perspective), plus, the act of adding line weight in overlapping areas also help strengthen the illusion of 3D space we’re trying to make. Though, try to make the lineweight thinner and less tight next time (as we all know, less is more), and don’t forget to employ the ghosting method plus rotating the canvas to achieve the smoothest linework.
Please take a look at this image (https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg) remember that not only did the size of the arrows have to change, but the negative space between each fold has to also change adhere to it, too. this is an element that people tends to overlook. Please keep that in mind.
Organic Forms with Contours
Now moving to the organic forms with contours ellipses exercise, you’re doing great with confident lines. You’re also sticking to simple sausage forms which is nice, since we don’t want to end up with forms that are too complex, as being said in the official instruction material. For contour ellipses, I can see that you're intentionally shifting the degree of your ellipses with an awareness as to how they rotate and moving through space, the ellipses are also fit in snugly/tightly within the sausage. Good job.
The contour curves are also beginning to wrap around believably on the surface of the forms, but they barely changing degrees, unlike your previous exercise, keep in mind when you decided to use this exercise for future warm-ups. One way to help with this is to try using the ghosting method with more consideration and calculation beforehand, also, try to imagine how a sausage would look like in your head and the way the contour lines wraps around the form itself will help you immensely before you put a mark on the page.
I also want to note that the concept of “contour” itself. is a double-edged sword. Granted, it’s a very useful tool to describe how a form sits in 3D space, but it can easily work against us by flattening our drawing and makes it hard to read, so use them wisely and sparingly, and make sure to keep experimenting later on.
Textures
Textures Analysis: Good! I can see a smooth and seamless transition of dense/sparse in your work. You also being able to identify and distinguish the differences between cast shadow and form shadow, and apply them in your analysis, which consists mostly of cast shadow and clean, implicit mark-making.
Dissections: Solid attempt at minding, respect the curvature of the sausage forms, and wrapping the textures around them logically. You also take every chances you got to break the silhouette of the forms, which makes them easier to read. Silhouette-breaking is a super useful tool to help convey the texture better and makes it look more believable/realistic.
Some of your texture looks good and you’re able to achieve a nice range of gradient, for example, the Snake Scale, Rock and Wood Bark texture. I am also glad to see that you’ve maintained the technique you’ve learned from Texture Analysis and employ it here to some of your texture.
But, a few of them, like the Leaf or Scales (pg.1) texture, you're focusing largely on outlines, surface color-change, explicit mark-making (instead of implicit mark-making) and negative space rather than the cast shadow. Remember to employ the same method in Texture Analysis to convey texture. The lessons carry on and overlap with each other. You can do this ^^
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Form Intersections
Organic Intersections
Overall, you did great! Please feel free to move on to Lesson 3, using any exercise from Lesson 1, 250 Box Challenge and Lesson 2 as 15-30 mins warm-up before diving into the assignment is highly recommended. Good luck Kevin ^^
Next Steps:
Lesson 3
First of all thank you so much for this detailed explanation thank you, i thought i would never get critique but guess i forgot that people are also busy but u taking the time to write all this, am thankful.
No problem! wish u all the best.
A lot of folks have heard about Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" - it's basically a classic at this point, and deservedly so. It's also a book that a lot of people struggle with, for the simple reason that they expect it to be a manual or a lesson plan explaining, well... how to draw. It's a reasonable assumption, but I've found that book to be more of a reference book - like an encyclopedia for perspective problems, more useful to people who already have a good basis in perspective.
Sketching: The Basics is a far better choice for beginners. It's more digestible, and while it introduces a lot of similar concepts, it does so in a manner more suited to those earlier in their studies.
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