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9:00 PM, Thursday February 29th 2024
Hello NeedAccountability, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.
Arrows
Starting with your arrows you're drawing your marks with a great deal of confidence which helps solidify the feeling of fluidity that they have as they move through all three dimensions of the world. You're keeping foreshorting in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to them.
Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, it's good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.
In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.
Leaves
The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.
Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.
It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.
These structures are all looser than they could be, because you did not put down a boundary, you didn't establish the form that all of the later structures should abide to, despite complex structures being made up of several different parts, they still exist as a single entity, by not skipping construction steps you can ensure that your constructions are much more solid and with more specific relationships between the different stages of construction.
Moving on to your application of texture it's looking pretty good as you're following the instructions for texture in these structures.
Branches
Moving on to your branches you're not sticking to the instructions for this exercise as closely as you should. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting mark, you're starting your new segments where your previous mark ended, which completely removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.
So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.
For your ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.
Plant Construction Section
And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions. You are starting to understand the construction methods and techniques introduced in this lesson, but there are a couple or issues present in your pages which are holding you back from your full potential. Here are the points you should keep in mind and address in your homework whenever you tackle these exercises again.
Your attempts at the hibiscus and mushroom demo are looking good.
Always keep in mind that the construction methods and techniques introduced in this course must always be applied to your work, as they're tools which will help you construct much tighter and solid looking structures, there are times where you deviate from the construction methods by constructing leaf structures without the leaf construction method, such as in here and here, with these approaches, while it may make it seem easier to capture the likeness of these structures this approach not only goes against the instructions but it stiffens your leaf structures. The leaf construction method is versatile, and you should do your best to apply it to different types of leaf structures.
Another example where you have deviated from the instructions of the exercise can be seen here, where you did not follow the branch construction method thoroughly, and you also didn't construct the forked branches according to the instructions which has flattened your overall structure.
Remember that these instructions are not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.
When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. It's good to see that you're going further and constructing the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots.
This construction looks particularly flat due to a couple of reasons:
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These black marks found in your page seem to imply distant structures with the way they were approached, but they are unnecessary as they do not help you develop your sense of spatial reasoning and only add clutter to the page, they also hurt the illusion of tridimensionality in the structures close to them.
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Pure black in a construction when not used wisely can flatten out your structures, the black you added at the bottom of these structures doesn't communicate cast shadows or texture.
Your addition of texture needs work, there's too many areas of black and too many white spaces in your work which go against the principles of texture in this course. So let's revisit how texture in Drawabox is approached, by looking back on this page we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is communicated through the use of cast shadows.
It is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface. Only after analyzing all of this information present in our reference will we be able to translate it to our construction. This means that the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, which is why we need to consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic.
This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Make sure to go over these reminders in order to solidify your understanding of texture further.
Final Thoughts
In general you're starting to move in the right direction but you're still struggling on a couple of points and applying these methods consistently to your work, as such I believe you would benefit from tackling these exercises again before moving on to more complex tridimensional challenges.
Please reply with:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
2 plant construction pages.
Next Steps:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
2 plant construction pages.
4:41 AM, Tuesday March 5th 2024
Hello and thank you for your detailed feedback.
Please find the additional drawings here
8:32 PM, Tuesday March 5th 2024
Hello NeedAccountability, thank you for getting back to me with your work.
First things first your leaf constructions are looking much more solid, but they still don't fold or bend. Don't forget to focus on drawing leaf structures that bend during your warm ups, as you have a tendency to "straighten" them out as if they were laying on top of a table and you were looking at them head on, this is also true for your plant constructions.
Your branches are also looking much better as you're following the instructions for the exercise much more closely, although I did notice that in here there's an extra line that shouldn't be there, keep in mind that we're drawing in ink for a reason, commit to your marks and try to work with your mistakes, rather than trying to keep going as if they weren't there.
I don't have many notes about your plant constructions, you're generally making use of the construction methods much more closely now and that allows you to create some really solid looking structures. Don't forget to keep in mind however that if you start a stage of construction you must take it to it's full extent, you haven't added texture fully to your structures, there are large areas of white in your work and leaf structures with no texture at all, this creates a weird contrast as it makes your work look unfinished. If you decide to add texture, commit fully to it, you'll learn more that way.
When constructing a structure inside a plant pot don't forget to establish a ground plane such as in here, this extra "red" line indicates where a ground plane should be added, which will indicate where the soil starts, otherwise your structures will look like they're floating.
In general I believe you have shown great improvement and understood the purpose of these exercises. I'm going to be marking this submission as complete, good luck in Lesson 4.
Next Steps:
Don't forget to add these exercises to your list of warm ups.
Move on to Lesson 4.
2:01 AM, Wednesday March 6th 2024
Thank you so much again for the feedback.
If it's not too late, may I ask for some pointers on texture? I think I'm starting to grasp the concept (i.e. cast shadows), but something that continually throws me off are:
1) How do I determine where the light source is coming from? The reason for this question is if I look at a plant reference where say sunlight or light is hitting it full on, how do I begin approaching drawing cast shadows when there are literally no shadows?
2) This is sort of tied to the first question, but I have an easier time conceptualizing cast shadows when the surfaces are super spiky and have protrusions (reason being that they cast very obvious shadows). But when surfaces are a bit smoother (like the surface of a leaf) where there are very slight grooves and bumps, how do you determine where the shadow is cast?
Thank you!
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