Homework Number 2! The intersecting forms were tricky, particularly when I tried to make spheres intersect. Also, I had forgotten how to draw a pyramid. Apologies for the messiness--I tried to bold things to make it clearer, and i numbered the pages this time (scanner still does things in an odd order)
Looking good as always! I really liked your dissections, though the one with the little wriggly things coming out is creepy as all hell. your form intersections are pretty good too, though be careful with your ellipses/circles. They seem to be your weakest point.
Too true, ellipses are so dam hard! Going to try and do more intersections with cylinders as warm-ups as I move forward. Thanks by the way as I was so happy doing the dissections just with my line quality improvement and I have you to thank :)
Before moving onto Plants I did some more compound objects a bit different that before. Hopefully, although these are a little different since its just play, they show a bit more progress. http://imgur.com/a/6Z3PQ
Your organic forms with contour lines and your dissections are both looking really good. I'm getting a strong sense of the volume of each form, and I like that you experimented with different kinds of cuts for the dissections. If I had to recommend one thing, it's purely aesthetic - for your dissections, try and keep in mind that things tend to have thickness - so when you cut a long tube-like form, and even if it's hollow, you should see a bit of thickness along its outside 'layer'. A good example of you doing this well is in the middle of page 5, with the fruit-like dissection. An example of it being done poorly is at the bottom right corner of that page.
Still, great work on those.
Now, for your form intersections, I think you can do much better than this. You seem to understand the interaction of forms in 3D space, but your execution can be vastly improved.
I have a few recommendations:
Always do your best to avoid sketchy lines. If you make a slight mistake, often times drawing over it to correct it will only draw more attention to the blunder. Take the error in stride and keep going.
Read the notes listed in the 250 box challenge post. They cover things to do with line weights and common perspective mistakes.
For this exercise, try to avoid drawing elongated forms (long tubes, long boxes, things with a lot of stretching in one direction). These throw in a whole new layer of trouble with perspective that we're not really interested in dealing with right now. Just imagine that you have a bunch of forms that are roughly the same size, like blocks that'll fit in your hands, and picture yourself bashing them together.
Don't shade. One thing I've noticed is that you spend a significant amount of time on lighting, and it's not necessary. More than that, it might be distracting you from the main educational value of the exercise. You are fully capable of conveying the 3D form of these objects - spheres, boxes, cones, pyramids and cylinders - without shading them at all. Lighting merely emphasizes the 3D form that is already there, so it should still work perfectly without it. This concept echoes down through the next few lessons, so it's good to get a solid grasp of it now.
So- your organic forms and your dissections are great. I'd like you to do two more pages of form intersections, keeping what I've mentioned above in mind.
Looking much better. Feel free to move onto the next lesson!
I did notice one mistake that you made a few times. It's related to your name - you've got a bunch of weird pizza slice shaped cones where you'd actually probably be able to see its base.
Basically, consider how a form is oriented in relation to other objects and the viewer. If a cone is in front of a box, but its tip intersects with the box, the cone is automatically pointing away from the viewer. So, we should be able to see its base. The other option is that we cannot see its base, and therefore it is oriented towards us, so it must in fact be behind the box with which it is intersecting. In which case we wouldn't be able to see that intersection.
Aside from that, keep up with the ellipse exercises from lesson 1. Your circles and ellipses are still a little weak, but they'll get better with practice.
Lesson 2 time. Contours and dissections were fun, not sure if they're good or not, but I enjoyed it, intersections I found horrific. Some intersections seem to work, but idk.
Your organic forms and dissections look pretty good. There are still quite a few cases where your contour lines aren't quite curving enough when they reach the edge of the form. Since some of those don't curve around the 3d form, they start flattening it out. So be mindful of that. Still, you did a pretty good job and I can see a sense of volume and 3D-ness from a lot of them.
You're right though, the form intersections are pretty bad. There's a handful of issues that I can see, so hopefully we can correct those.
Your construction lines are too faint, too timid, they're sketchy and incomplete. What this tells me is that you're focused on the final product - creating something that can be read as a clean drawing, with the construction lines not being entirely visible. Don't do this. When you're drawing your construction lay-ins, do so as though they are the final product. Then go back and build on top of it. The reason is that a lot of people have a tendency of looking ahead to the final image while working on a previous step - and this causes them to fumble the step they're working on. They're so focused on the future. Yesterday, I drew an example for someone on Lesson 3 that emphasized the same principles. Of course this is mostly for these exercises, and doesn't work as well for actual illustrations. But once you're at the stage where you're doing proper illustrations, you should understand the concepts well enough to decide how to go about your construction lines on your own.
Your ellipses are giving you trouble. Check out the Using ellipses to show circles in perspective notes from the bonus notes section in the sidebar. Also make sure you're doing some of the ellipse exercises from lesson 1 as warmups before doing this exercise. Just like in the ellipse exercise, follow through that elliptical drawing motion a few times before lifting your pen. ESPECIALLY for the spheres, because that's where the issues are most apparent.
Something that I've been recommending to people having difficulty with the form intersections lately is not to stretch your forms too much in any given direction. Make all your forms roughly the same overall size, as though you're playing with those big blocks they give to toddlers. When you start stretching them too much in one dimension (for example, your cylinders), you have to start worrying about excessive perspective distortion - where the far plane becomes much smaller than the near plane - and we really don't want to have to worry about that right now. If you look at my form intersection example (sorry for the poor image quality), you can see that my cylinders are pretty fat.
I'd like to see you do two more pages of form intersections, keeping what I've mentioned above in mind.
They are better, and more importantly, they're on the right track. The lines are a bit sketchy (you drew quite a few lines where only one was needed), so in the next lessons try to avoid that. It's kind of understandable for the ellipses though, but always strive to put thought and planning behind every mark you make.
There are still some issues with general perspective, but they're not that important to me right now. I like the sense of comfort I'm seeing from drawing these larger forms though, so good work.
Your organic forms and dissections are good. The organic forms give a good sense of volume, though always be careful about how your contour lines curve when they reach the edge of the form, they've got to wrap around the 3D form, sometimes there's a tendency to flatten them out since you're drawing on a flat surface. Most of the ones you drew are solid though, so good work.
For the form intersections, you're not doing too badly. Always remember to keep your straight lines straight - for example, you've got the cylinder that connects two spheres curving a bit.
As for tips, I usually approach this kind of exercise with forms that are all similar in shape, and I try to avoid forms that are stretched too much in one dimension, like really long narrow tubes or boxes. That stretching tends to bring in more perspective distortion than is necessary, and it just complicates things. Picture it as though you're playing with big children's blocks, and you're just connecting them together.
I like that you're drawing through a lot of your forms - definitely keep that up, it'll make the construction easier to understand.
If you are having a lot of trouble though, the 250 box challenge might help, since it's all about spinning boxes around in space and drawing them at all different orientation.
I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections before I let you move onto the next lesson.
Good enough to move forward. One thing that I'd like you to remember though is that you should always consider where your horizon is (which represents the height at which your viewer's eyes rest). This is because the further a plane (which is either parallel to the ground or roughly parallel to the ground) is from the horizon, the more of its surface we will see.
With a bunch of your cylinders, you've drawn the caps of the cylinder as the same width/degree. Take a look at this explanation.
Anyways, just keep that in mind in the future. Go ahead and move onto lesson 3.
Your organic forms and dissections are pretty decent. I really like the dissection with the kiwi texture. Very nice linework there, very convincing. Your first two pages of form intersections aren't very good, but the next two are rather satisfying to look at, especially the last one. It shows a clear improvement and a greater understanding of the concepts in regards to both the intersections and the application of line weights. I'd still recommend that you avoid using forms that have been stretched too much in one dimension (like long tubes) and instead stick to fat forms that are almost cube-like in their dimensions (like a fat short cylinder).
:D it worked! I'm glad to hear it, I kind of came up with that challenge as a, "well, if it doesn't work, it's not like I was the one who sat there drawing two hundred and fifty boxes. No skin off my back."
but really, it's been super helpful (even if you weren't sure it would work ಠ_ಠ). I'm only halfway through the 250 but I've produced some really sexy cubes on the last page and I'm starting to get a feel for where the vanishing points should go without placing a finger there or drawing them out.
Thank you for these exercises. I'm not very creative so I had a hard time with dissections. If you think I should do it again let me know.
When the lines are not that long, should I still use my shoulder? I feel like when I need to make precise marks that are a short distance that it's ok to use my wrist.
Using your wrist can make precise linework simpler, you just need to be careful as to where you draw the line (pardon my pun, a little drawing humour there). If a line needs to flow continuously - be it a straight line, a wave, an arc, an ellipse, and so on - you'll likely want to use your shoulder. If it's just a quick, precise mark, your wrist should be okay.
I did notice that the first ellipses you were playing with as the contour lines for your organic forms were very scratchy, like you drew a bunch of short lines with your wrist to slowly complete a full ellipse. Here, it'd be much better to draw the full ellipse all the way around in a single stroke.
Aside from the scratchiness of the ellipses, your organic forms with contour lines were done quite well. Good work on the textures as well, very few people tackled that optional section (or even noticed it was there). The dissections were nicely done.
I am concerned about your form intersections though. More than anything, it's how you draw them. I've mentioned this before - your lines are wobbly and uncertain. They're also very uniform - by which I mean, they are all of the same weights.
Often times you end up drawing very small, and I don't think that's working in your favour. You'll have an easier time of it if you keep your forms fairly large on the page, and also try to avoid forms that are stretched in one dimension. For example, avoid long tubes or long boxes. Instead, imagine that you're playing with a children's set of blocks, and that you're piecing them together. They should all be roughly the same size, like a cube, a fat cylinder, etc. These should be much easier to draw.
If you're having trouble, you may want to try copying the example I included in my notes, or you may want to try looking through some of the work other people submitted. Even copying the arrangement of the forms will work for this exercise, as long as you're able to imagine those forms in 3D space.
Before I let you move forward, I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections.
Thank you for the critique. I don't know why my lines are still wobbly even after I warm up, I guess I just need more mileage. after I draw the picture then I go over the whole picture adding weight to the lines where I think it needs it. If you don't think this is a good process let me know or if you think I should do it again let me know.
Aside from the wobbliness you mentioned, these look much better! I can definitely see that you have improved your understanding of how these forms work in 3D space.
For the wobbliness, one thing that might help is to use what some people call 'ghosting' for your straight lines. You mark a point where you want the line to start, and another point where you want it to end. Then you go through the motion of drawing the line between them, but don't actually put your pen to the page. You ghost through that motion once, twice, however many times you need until you feel comfortable enough - then you lower the pen slightly to the page and follow through the same motion, making the mark.
You should definitely get in the habit of drawing from your shoulder for most things. There is a bit of grey area, but it all comes down to the mechanics of your pivot (wrist, shoulder) being the radius of your drawing mechanism (your arm). With a small radius, longer lines won't flow as well.
It's perfectly find to go over your lines to give them some extra weight, that's the way I generally approach it.
Your organic forms with contour lines are pretty solid. I like your line quality too, they flow quite nicely. Your dissections look pretty good too, though your surface textures were rather rushed. I like the orange/fruit quite a bit, and the dissection on the banana. Your snake skin's sloppy though - if you feel the need to rush through something, it's probably a good time to take a break. Leaving texture out might make something look a little bland, but rushing texture will make it look bad.
I did notice though that it looks like you may want to practice your circles/ellipses more. The globe came out badly shape-wise, but I'm really happy with the way you pushed through it and applied your texture and line weights without dwelling on the mistakes. Often people will try to correct something like that, and it usually just draws attention to the problem. The way you did it, it's noticeable, but it isn't shouting at me to look at it.
Now your form intersections... those things are bloody difficult, and they didn't go too well. I'm happy to see how many attempts you made on them - you're tenacious and persistent, qualities that will serve you well.
One major thing that I'd like to suggest is that you try not to work with objects that are "stretched". What I mean by this is long tubes, long boxes, things that feel like they've been stretched very much in one dimension. Instead, try to work with forms that are equal in size in all three dimensions - like a cube, or a sphere. When applying this to a cylinder, you'd end up with a somewhat fat looking cylinder.
In my mind, it reminds me of being a child and playing with oversized blocks, mashing them together to try and make something more complex. With forms like this, we don't end up worrying about the perspective we get when we make things too long. Instead we just draw a form on the page, on its own, then draw another beside it, and play with how they come together.
If you want to take a bit of a break from the form intersections, you may want to look at the 250 boxes challenge. I added the challenge specifically because people were having some trouble getting into the mindset of the form intersections, and it seems to have helped people out. The notes included in the challenge post are also quite relevant.
Once you feel ready to tackle it again, I'd like to see another two pages of form intersections. Good luck!
Biiig improvement in the general confidence of your constructions. Your lines and shapes are much more solid, so kudos for that.
There are still some issues that I'd like to fix before we move forwards, though. One is your spheres. Drawing circles is really difficult, so the likelihood of you nailing it the first time is really low. So, I recommend that you draw through the circle a couple times before lifting your pen. The first time you go around the circle, it'll be approximate (ie: incorrect), but those mistakes will inform the second time around. Your muscles will automatically correct some of the mistakes you made, resulting in a much better circle. Yes, it's messier, but we're interested in drawings that are correct, moreso than ones that are clean.
Secondly, the perspective on your boxes is a little bit off each time. The far plane of the box comes out a little bigger than the near plane, which directly contradicts the rules of perspective. It's not an uncommon mistake to make, but I strongly recommend doing the 250 box challenge to try and fix that. There are also a bunch of notes included in the challenge that might help.
I actually just looked back at my old response, and noticed that I recommended the 250 box challenge there as well. Deeefinitely give that a shot.
Once you've done the 250 box challenge, submit to me one more page of intersections. I'm not sure if you've seen this, but in the last month I created a step by step on how I approach the form intersections. It might also be of some help.
You made a considerable amount of progress with those boxes. For the intersections, I definitely see a lot of blank space, but I'll mark it as complete anyways :P
I've never really been fond of microns, but if they work for you, then that's all that matters.
Hey there! This set of exercises took me a little longer because I had to figure out how some of the shapes intersect and how to draw the different connections between all of them (still not satisfied, but I had a lot of "A-ha!" moments). I ended up doing at least 40 pages, but i just threw the warm-up sketches away (mostly out of frustration... :P)
But here it is - my homework. I also included two pages of boxes, because in the last lesson you told me to be more confident with my lines (and now I'm starting the 250 boxes challange). As always - sorry for the photo quality, I need to get a hold on a scanner.
Holy crap, those boxes are really good. It looks like it must have taken forever, considering the precision. I'd have almost thought you were using a ruler, if I hadn't taken a closer look. Very nice!
Also, don't worry about finding a scanner - the photos are perfect. Strangely enough, often the easiest to critique have been photos - often people who use scanners use the wrong settings and it ends up coming out almost looking digital. For me, these photos are ideal.
Okay, onto the lesson critique.
Your organic forms with contour lines are looking pretty good. Nice volumes, and for the most part your contour lines are curving around the edge of the form nicely. In a few instances they flatten out a bit around the edges though (mostly on page 4). The previous page is much, much better. So more of page 3, less of page 4. The rest of the organic forms are looking pretty good.
.. I'm still flipping through them. I honestly thought I'd reached the end, but.. they just keep going. My goodness you're thorough. Okay, I'm at the dissections now. It appears you might be somewhat disturbed. Good!
I like the variety of experiments. The forms and volumes are all good, and I'm glad to see thickness around the edges of the cuts. In the future though, you should look at photo reference whenever you try and put texture to a surface. Reason being, right now you're relying very heavily on your imagination, and the part of your imagination that stores visual information regarding the smaller details, isn't as developed as it eventually will be. We develop this part of our brain by pulling information from reference material. The more you do that, the less you'll have to rely on it - but most of the time we'll still look at a whole lot of reference, even if we don't necessarily need to.
Great work with the form intersections! I usually recommend that people stay away from the longer, stretched forms (long tubes, long boxes, etc) because they start bringing perspective into the mix. Still, despite that added complication, you pulled it off quite well.
Hahaha, yeah, I'd actually just gotten back from work and I finished critiquing one that had been submitted a few hours prior. By the time I was done, yours and another showed up in my inbox. The fuckers are multiplying!
Hello, here is my second set of exercises. Sorry about the duplicate images in my album. I am having issues with imgur, for some reason. I find the spheres fairly tricky to keep from looking to flat.
Okay, I'm kind of baffled. Your first two pages - the organic forms with contour lines - were really very good, especially the second page. You're getting the volumes, your line weights are interesting, your lines flow very nicely, etc. Then you move into the dissections - which are 90% the same exercise as the first, and it all falls apart. What you nailed in the first one is completely missing in the first part.
What happened? I'm thinking that you may have gotten overwhelmed with the idea of the exercise, perhaps the fact that you're drawing (somewhat) concrete objects rather than seemingly abstract forms. This sort of thing is what shuts the brain down, and is often the reason a lot of people find it difficult to draw.
It's also the main problem that these lessons try to target - stopping people from feeling overwhelmed.
I also did a quick demo of how you could turn one of your forms from exercise 1 into a dissection. Try doing another two pages of dissections, starting them off as the organic forms with contour lines, and then taking them further into dissections. Dealing with these things step by step - and not worrying beyond the step you're on - might help.
Your form intersections will need work as well, but don't worry about those right now. I'll tackle that critique once we've taken care of the dissections and increased your comfort level in that area.
Thank you for the feedback. You are correct that I get overwhelmed when drawing the physical objects. I'm so much looser when drawing the abstract objects. It feels like there's so much more room for error.
That is definitely looking WAY better. The forms look voluminous and full, like they swell into 3D space. Just a couple things to add to that - minor touches. First off, in page one you have an open hole in one of your dissections. When you do that, it's usually best to add a little bit of thickness around the edge of the hole. The way you've got it, it's looking paper thin - which you COULD be going after, but chances are you just meant for it to be a regular hole. A little bit of thickness usually looks far better anyway, since it helps the brain process how this form could exist. Were it paper thin, it probably couldn't support its own weight. The other thing is just that when you're putting in textures for the different dissected pieces, looking at reference imagery and just pulling out that sort of texture detail and embedding it into your image is a great way to push the believability and realism in your drawing. This applies all across the board, and this particular exercise is a great way to practice it.
Still, great improvement.
Next there's the form intersections. Again, I think you're getting overwhelmed. Usually at this stage I'd recommend skipping over to the 250 box challenge. The reason this has helped people is because it demystifies these forms. Really, all you're doing is drawing one individual form at a time - and then you draw another beside it. Worrying about how you're going to build them all and put them all together is troublesome, and pointless. Just attack it one at a time.
So, the challenge is probably a great place to start, since it's all about attacking one reasonably simple form from all sorts of different angles, each isolated and on its own. The challenge post also includes some extra notes that should help.
When you do end up going back to the form intersections though, avoid forms that stretch in one dimension. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. When you start stretching a lot, you throw in more emphasis on the perspective, and that's really not what we're interested in right now. Large, equilateral forms (like a cube in the context of a box - all the dimensions are equal in size), are our best bet. Like playing with big children's blocks. You start with drawing, say, a cube in the middle of your page. Then maybe you decide you're going to draw another cube beside it, but it just so happens they're overlapping (intersecting) a bit. That presents a problem, which you solve by investigating how they intersect with one another. Then you draw another form, and so on.
When answering another person's questions about form intersections, I wrote up another set of bonus notes that would definitely be of use to you. More of a step by step for approaching form intersections.
I've done the homework up until the form intersection part, I'm finding lots of difficulty with. I did some practice of small bits here and there. I'm wondering if you could tell me if I'm missing something or if I'm the right track, etc.
Also, do you have any advice on intersection two round objects? I think I understand intersecting hard objects (cube, prism) into round objects (sphere, cylinder). I don't really understand intersecting cylinders and spheres.
They're not looking particularly great, though you're on the right track. The problem isn't so much with your understanding of space and intersections, it's more how you're approaching them.
Don't draw them so small. In general, don't draw things tiny, it comes out really timid looking. Be confident! Drawing seems to be a lot like dating, now that I think about it...
Don't think about how your form's going to intersect with what's already on the page before you draw it. Draw the form (in full, draw THROUGH the form, don't worry about what gets blocked out and what doesn't) and then decide how it intersects with the other forms.
For now, avoid really long shapes (long tubes, long boxes, etc). They bring perspective too much into the mix, and it just complicates things.
One set per page. Draw a form, draw another form and connect them, then another and intersect those, and another, and another, until the page is full. No individual little segregated communities of forms in different school districts and racial barriers. Free, inclusive societies only! ... for 3D forms!
Also, as for your question - I didn't really know, to be honest. So, I did a bit of research (mostly googling) and came up with these cylinder/sphere intersections.
I decided to just post what I have so far. I took into consideration the advice you gave me, but as you can see I still don't understand the intersection part very well. I guess you'll be seeing more form intersections from me very soon =P
You're showing some improvement over the course of the organic forms with contour lines. They start off rather flat (the contour lines don't really wrap around the forms). As you progress, I can see that you correct that, so the later ones (page 4) look much better. Drawing the full ellipses definitely helped.
Your dissections are kind of weak, though - you revert back to flattening them out as you did at the beginning of the previous exercise. They should simply extend from the organic forms. Draw an organic form, and then once that's finished, you can turn it into a dissection. That said, your second page of dissections also looks better. It seems that at first you reverted to drawing them flatter, but as you got used to it, you corrected some of your mistakes.
The form intersections are... they're not awful. They're not great either, but while the execution leaves something to be desired, the underlying understanding you're demonstrating is decent.
The biggest problem is your spheres, they're making the rest of it look bad. You're trying to draw the circle in a single motion, and just like the rest of us, you're not skilled enough to do so. Instead you have to resort to drawing around the circular motion a couple times. Practicing your ellipse exercise from lesson 1 as a warmup will also help. See how I tackle the circles in the top right corner? It both helps me practice more effectively, and also results in a more generally correct circle. It's messier, and won't be suitable for a proper illustration, but these are all just exercises.
Do one more page of form intersections, keeping all that in mind, and going over the links I provided in my last response. Draw your forms a little bigger, and make them more equilateral. Avoid long, stretched forms (like lengthy tubes or long boxes) and stick to forms that are equal in all three dimensions.
Also, is there a particular reason you're avoiding doing these exercises in ink?
Only the first two pages of the organic forms are in pencil. The rest of them are in ballpoint. I didn't have a pen on me until i got home when I first started the exercise
I wasn't sure if you missed my last post, or if you just hadn't gotten to it yet. I've been waiting for 23 days, so I wasn't sure what was happening. I'll just repost this again I guess.
Sorry about that. I tend to get inundated with homework, usually at least 5 a night, so every now and then things do fall through the cracks. Looks like you were one of the unlucky few! It's perfectly fine if you don't hear back from me for two or three days, to send me a PM.
These are much better than before. The spheres could use a bit of work, but the rest looks great. Nice work drawing through all the forms.
Well I was finally able to finish this lesson after doing it off and on for three weeks I ended up doing more than required until i felt comfortable with each. I also wasnt quite getting the dissections until i started doing them from real objects. The intersection were a real pain i had do them in pencil first and seperate before I did them in ink.
Your organic forms with contour lines are really well done. I like the flow of the forms, and they all feel like they carry great volume. Your dissections are quite interesting too. With the fish, the only thing that bugs me is the fact that the skin is paper thin. I did this explanation for someone earlier this evening, it applies very much here. Always add just a touch of thickness, it'll really help sell the drawing. Still, I really like your different subjects. All the different textures are really neat.
I'm not terribly pleased to hear that for the form intersections, you did them in pencil first. Try to avoid that in the future, because while it may help you succeed at the assignment, it defeats the purpose of working in ink at all. You've got to build the confidence that will allow you to work in pen as comfortably as you would in pencil.
That said, page 4, and even moreso page 3 came out very well. One thing that definitely needs improvement though is your use of hatching when you're shading. Depending on how you use it, it can very easily flatten out a drawing, even if everything else works towards successfully demonstrating volume and form. The reason for this is that every single line is interpreted as a tiny contour line. If it's flat, the surface will appear flat. Here's some notes explaining what I mean.
I would like you to do one more page of form intersections - strictly in ink, no preliminary pencil work. Try to follow these steps that I drew out this evening. Don't plan too far ahead, just draw a form on the page. Then draw another form. Once it's drawn in its entirety, THEN start making decisions of how it will intersect with the other one. Then repeat this process over and over.
I think I may have worded that wrong I meant I did the first two pages in pencil and the rest are all ink regardless I did another page and the hatching tip worked really well, thanks.
Please take a look! I noticed that my contours started becoming more flat when I started on the dissections :(
The from intersections were really difficult! I had to think for really long before I started drawing, and I definitely made a few mistakes along the way. It was certainly a learning experience though.
Your dissections (mostly) look fine to me. I really like them, actually, they're very creative and explore all different sorts of objects. Similarly, your organic forms came out very full and voluminous, which is definitely what we're after.
Your form intersections are remarkably well done. You made some choices that I wouldn't have (for example, using a lot of stretched shapes like long tubes and long boxes that make things more complicated by emphasizing perspective too much) but you still handled them pretty well. The last page is a bit weaker, but the first two are quite strong.
I drew these notes yesterday, a step-by-step on how to approach the form intersections. Though you did them well, I figure they might help just a bit, if you were curious as to how I approach them.
Thank you for the swift critique! The perspective felt comfortable to do since I had to draw 250 boxes in perspective :) the fruits of labor are showing!
I will move on to lesson 3 now. Thank you for your time.
http://imgur.com/a/ILBBs my second homework! Sorry I took a real long break before I gotten around to doing this, college sucks. I think page 3&4 were terrible... mainly because I was trying out some new pen/markers :(
Also pretty proud of my form intersections, albeit for a few mistakes :D
Your organic forms with contour lines are looking quite good. The first page of dissections is alright as well, though the second falls flat. I've noticed this a lot with other people, that they'll do really well with the organic forms, but the dissections don't work out as well - despite essentially being the same thing. When approaching things like that, remember that the dissection is basically taking the organic form one step further - so first, you draw the organic form, put in your contour lines, and then worry about how to dissect it. It's very easy to get overwhelmed by the concerns of detail that are involved in later steps, but you have to work towards ignoring them, and focusing only on the step you're on. This becomes more important as you move onto the next lessons.
Your form intersections start off kind of meh, but by the end they're pretty good. I like seeing that kind of progression, it shows that the practice is paying off. One thing you should keep an eye on though is your ellipses. Sometimes they're alright, but especially when you're working with a sphere, an ellipse that's off can have a big impact. Definitely keep up with doing those first two exercises from lesson 1 as warm-ups.
Anywho, you're more or less ready to move onto lesson 3.
thank you for your comments! I know my dissections ain't good but I think I get the gist of it. I'll slowwwwly move on to lesson 3, thanks once again :)
As others have been saying, the form intersection was really tough. I actually found a quick online program tinkercad.com to test what some shape intersections looked like (hope that's not cheating!). I didn't build out my structures there or anything, I just used it to see how specific shapes interacted.
Thanks again for putting all of this together, although it takes me a while to finish these exercises, it is really some good fun.
Fantastic work on the organic forms and the dissections. You carried the volume through very well on both exercises, and I like all of the different kinds of textures you experimented with. You were definitely willing (and eager) to get into the tedium of it all - that will definitely serve you well in the future.
The form intersections were definitely the weakest section - and as you said, they are friggin' hard. There's a few things in your approach that I would definitely like to see changed.
One thing we want to try and emphasize throughout all these lessons is confidence. People have a tendency to start off timidly, carefully, afraid to ruin the final drawing by being too sure at the get-go. This causes an artist to undermine their own strengths and it comes through into the final drawing.
I can see in your form intersections the fainter lines where you tried to draw through the forms. Drawing through the forms is great, but the way you approached it is not. At every step in a drawing, you should be focusing 100% on that step, as if it were the final step. Meaning, you if you're blocking in a sphere, you draw a solid circle (similar to how you'd do it for the ellipse exercises, going around the circle a couple times if need be - this should also help you achieve some better circles, since your spheres are definitely a weak point). You try and be neat, but what's most important is getting a solid circle on the page.
Afterwards, you can pick which lines you'd like to emphasize with extra line weight - the ones you don't emphasize will automatically recede. You'll notice that the example I included in the lesson (from my own sketchbook - that is the homework I submitted to my instructor when I was doing this exercise) shows each line as quite visible. Nothing attempting to hide.
Secondly, while you were kind of drawing through the forms in that method, there are some forms that you didn't draw through entirely - for example, the pyramid at the bottom of page 8, the box at the top left of page 9, etc. Right now you're at a stage where you're not 100% sure of how these forms work in 3D space at different orientations, so draw through them as completely as you can. Admittedly, you did do this for a lot of the forms, so kudos for that.
Lastly, you are making this exercise harder on yourself than it needs to be. There's a lot of stretched forms that you're using - long tubes, long boxes, things that have been stretched significantly in one dimension. That puts an emphasis on perspective in the scene, and we don't really want to be bothering with that any more than we need to. So- instead, try sticking to forms that are more equilateral. Equal in all three dimensions. So for a box, something more cube-like. For a cylinder, a tube that is kind of squat, only as tall as it is wide. This way you can picture it as though you are playing with large blocks, and merely mashing them together.
As for that tinkercad thing - nice find! It's definitely perfectly okay to use 3D modeling software to find out how two forms might intersect in a given situation. There's at least a couple different kinds of intersections that I don't understand myself (usually involving curves) so I generally have to look that stuff up as well.
Anywho, I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections from you, keeping in mind the things I've mentioned above. I'm not sure if you saw this in the notes (I added it a week ago), but take a look at this step by step for form intersections. It might help with the whole idea of focusing on the step you're on, and keeping yourself from looking too far ahead.
Allrighty! I've listened to your tips and completed two more form intersections. I tried to draw the entire shapes before I went back and enphasized the intersections and overlaps. Hopefully this is more towards what you had in mind!
Thanks for the comments on the organic forms and dissections also. It is pretty amazing how interesting a simple shape can become once you add some simple contour lines to it!
Big improvement. There's still room to get better, but I think you've definitely demonstrated the level of skill required for this lesson, so I'll mark it as complete.
One thing to note about the second page - the box in the centre of the construction is, well.. wrong. Perspective-wise, anyways. Your near-plane is smaller than the far-plane. Perspective dictates that the far plane, if it is the same size in 3D space as the near plane (which we know it to be, being a box and all), it will always appear smaller when drawn in 2D. Now we can sometimes get away with drawing it as the same size (because the eye is not an exact measuring tool), but we can never get away with it being larger. The eye will immediately pick up on something being off, even if it isn't sure what it is.
Just something to keep in mind! Anyways, if you feel at all uncomfortable with drawing forms at different rotations, there's always the 250 box challenge. Otherwise, feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Thanks! I noticed immediately when I had finished that center box that something was off, so I think I may go through the box exercise after all just to get a little more practice. Looking forward to lesson 3!!
The first page is better than the second, but I do think you're getting the idea. As you wrote along some of them, the contours aren't always quite curving enough to wrap around the form, but you are successfully conveying a sense of volume. Keep at it!
Great work! Your organic forms convey a good sense of volume, and the contour lines wrap nicely around them. Your dissections have done a good job of creeping the fuck out of me. Good volumes, nice experimentation with different textures, also great work with the pressure control. The ellipses you drew for your contour lines are faint and sometimes a little bit broken, but they follow through the shapes very well. Usually when they're so faint, they end up being tentative and timid - yours are confident, so that shows through into the final drawings. I really like the one you labelled 'wtf'... It was well earned.
Your form intersections are pretty good. I would like to see more drawing through of the forms, but they seem to be mostly correct. Usually I try to discourage using forms that are stretched in one dimension (long tubes, etc), because they complicate things and bring perspective more into the equation than what is ideal. Still, you handled it quite nicely.
I only noticed one obvious mistake: the cylinder in page 8 is backwards. The further end is larger than the closer one. The visible cap, as well, its ellipse is very.. pointy.
Overall though, very well done! Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Oh - I also noticed the vast difference between your previous lesson and this one. You were far more careful, and the thought you put behind every mark is very clear.
Oh I did draw though the forms in the intersections but the original drawing was really messy. I just did an overlay to polish things up so people could understand what was going on in the mess up ink on the page. Anyway, onward to plants!
In the future, refrain from doing that. The lessons and exercises here aren't about making pretty drawings - there are a lot of benefits to not letting yourself do an overlay afterwards.
It helps me understand how you approached the drawings, allowing me to do give more helpful critiques
It helps you learn how to draw with a greater sense of purpose and direction. You end up having to think about every mark you make. You become more careful, and you also learn to bring the viewer's attention to certain lines over others, causing the original construction lines to recede.
Ah, this is definitely much more interesting to look at. If you'd simply gone over them to thicken the important lines (as you did on your overlay), they would have been just about perfect.
Haha, eventually you'll come to understand what I mean. The whole dynamic sketching curriculum that this lesson leads into is all about visual communication. It's a really important skill that is very useful in just about all facets of representational art. When your goal is to communicate a concept for something that exists in 3D space, you may find yourself needing to throw in elements that aren't actually there to further emphasize your points. Contour lines are a great example of this.
But then again, I personally just really like looking at the raw stuff when it's done well!
Holy crap intersections are hard. I found myself drawing intersections that made absolutely no sense. I think I started to get the hang of it though...
Overall, you did good. Your organic forms with contour lines, as well as your dissections, are very well done. They show great volume, they feel very three-dimensional. Your dissections are really interesting, too.
As far as understanding space goes, your form intersections are well done. The intersection part of it has mistakes but despite the name of the exercise, that's not the focus. Rather, it's more about learning how objects can exist in the same 3D space, and how they can relate to each other in terms of orientation, position and scale.
For that, you showed strong understanding. However...
I am very against how you approached it, with the dashed lines. It shows a preoccupation with the quality of the final drawing. When you look too far ahead, you do not pay the appropriate amount of attention to the step you're currently on. As such, your forms don't come out as well as they could. A great example of this is your spheres.
Draw your forms out completely. Solid lines, using the techniques for ellipses and lines that we covered in the last lesson. As soon as you start using dashed lines, your brain starts doing the drawing, because the flow becomes broken up. What we want is for your brain to tell your muscles what you want, and your muscles to concern themselves with how the shapes are drawn.
At the end of the day, these are all exercises. They are expected to be messy. Gradually you will learn how to bring the viewer's attention to specific lines, and make your construction lines recede and even disappear. Here's an example by my instructor, Peter Han. All of the construction lines are there, and they're solid, but you can barely even make them out.
Anyways! Despite my rant, you did pretty well. Just keep that construction drawing thing in mind, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
[deleted]
2014-12-21 23:16
I definitely think that's my lack of confidence showing. I definitely think I'll practice this exercise a few more times before going on. No dashed lines!! :)
This lesson was much more difficult than the last one I have to say, but I like it because it forced me to go out of the comfort zone.
I did a lot of sheets of organic forms but still didn't like it at all, and dissections too.
The intersections exercise is very exhausting for me, but it improved a lot my perspective skills. I will try to make more of this exercise to warm up and practice every day. Thanks again Uncomfortable for your work :)
For the organic forms with contour lines, the vast majority of them are good. There are a few where the contour lines don't wrap around the form properly (to varying degrees). Bottom left of page 2, for example, is probably the worst of the lot. On the top left of that same page, I really like how you've drawn through the full ellipses. A lot of people skip that step, but it's very important. If you ever find yourself struggling with the contour lines, go back to doing that for a bit, and it should set you straight. Still, in general they're quite good!
Your dissections are alright. The forms are drawn well, and I like the attention to layers in the dissections themselves - for example, the thickness of the coconut shell, or the layer of the fish skin. Your textures leave a bit to be desired. This is definitely a great time to look at photo reference, and use it to inform the kind of details you work into your textures. Try to avoid random scribbles, like on the coconut, and try and show intent and forethought behind every mark you make. All that said, I really like the surface texture on the object above and to the left of the fish. It's simple, subtle, but attractive. Reminds me of a cucumber.
On the following page, the other fish-like-thing largely went wrong because you over did it with the texture, and applied it as though the object was flat. You've got to remember that as the form turns, the scale texture will also turn and will grow somewhat denser around the sides. Furthermore, putting in all that detail must have been very tiresome for you - and unfortunately, it made the whole drawing far too busy and noisy. A drawing needs to direct the viewer's eye around, using focal points (areas of high detail or contrast) and rest areas (areas of empty space with very little detail or information). You can use these concepts to save yourself some time (it gives you an excuse not to render the crap out of everything). I go more into this sort of thing in the future lessons.
Your form intersections have been done well, but I see that you drew them in pencil originally and then went over it with ink. Unfortunately, that runs a little contrary to some of the things I'm trying to teach. Our focus here is not on the quality or attractiveness of the resulting drawing, but rather the steps that bring us to completion. Every step requires the artist's full attention - some people will have a habit of looking ahead, and tweaking their approach so the end result is cleaner. I'm trying to break that habit, for now. It'll come in handy later on, but only once you know what you're doing. For now it's getting in the way.
I'd like you to do one more page of form intersections, from start to finish, in ink. I want to see you draw through each form - including the lines that are hidden. Basically, approach it by drawing a form in the centre of your page in its entirety. Then draw another form nearby, in its entirety. Then decide whether they intersect, and how that occurs. This decision places them in relation to each other.
This step by step I included in the bonus content section of this lesson goes over that process. Also, you may want to avoid drawing long forms that are stretched in one direction - like long tubes and such. You've actually handled them quite well (most people have difficulty with it since it makes perspective a far larger concern than it really needs to be for this exercise). Equilateral forms (more or less equal in all three dimensions) are way easier to deal with.
I think you're going in the right direction. There are some mistakes here and there, but I think overall you're getting the idea. I'll mark this lesson as complete.
Had a lot of trouble with intersections and some trouble understanding the forms, but i think i understand better now and again thanks for the lessons!
Well done! The last two sets of form intersections were quite well done. I really liked your dissections as well - they show some improvement over the organic forms, which are a little hit-and-miss. Some are very well done, while others flatten out something dreadful.
When it comes to those contour lines, always remember to wrap nicely around the form, especially when you reach the edge. For example, the bottom right of page 1 was very well done, while the one just above it is awful. More were done well than not, however, and you show a marked improvement as you progress.
I really liked the dissection at the middle-top of page 3, with all of the little layers and folds. Very interesting, and very well executed! Some of your other subject matters were pretty clever too - the mouse, the sketchbook. That poor frog - great attention to its innards!
I think you're definitely ready to move onto lesson 3, so go ahead with that whenever you feel comfortable.
[deleted]
2014-12-27 03:52
Haha yeah the first two pages of forms left something to be desired. The contour lines didn't really click with me for a while until the second page.
Thanks for the comments and tips i'll keep them in mind! :D
Overall, you did a good job. Early on, your organic forms with contour lines are a little bit hit-or-miss. None of them are really incorrect, but some of them feel a little weird (3, 5). Others are far better, such as 1, 8 and all those on page 3.
Speaking of page 3 - the way you applied the line weights is... EHH. The principles are correct, I'm just not a fan of the way the line weights come up out of nowhere, jumping from thin to super thick. #8 was an excellent example of how to apply line weights, try to stick to that. When the weights get too dramatically thick, it starts to look rather stylized.
Your dissections are done well. Lots of interesting cuts, lots of nice surface textures. Your animals look really cool, and I love the dissection on the shark.
Your form intersections are well done. The line weights get really distracting, so on the surface they don't look great, but after a bit of focusing, I can tell that structurally they are quite good. Your lines are straight, your perspective looks solid, etc. Good job.
Keep that line weight stuff in mind, but feel free to move onto the next lesson when you feel ready.
Here's my submission! It took a while to complete in between holidays, specially if we account for my semi-comatose state from eating so much, but I did it.
I really liked doing the dissections, and the form intersections were a pain at first, but, as with the last lesson, I feel like the last try was definetly better than the first (in this case I think it shows even more).
Overall, you're grasping some of the concepts, but certain things are slipping past you. Actually, it's really just one thing. You need to draw through your forms, because for now, you're not able to fully visualize what the entire forms look like - including the sides you cannot see.
First off, in the organic forms with contour lines, there are a lot of instances where your contour lines are not wrapping around the form completely. Every now and then, they're more or less straight. This is because your'e skipping the second step in my lesson - drawing the contour lines as ellipses. Eventually you'll be able to skip straight to step 3, but for now you need to be drawing full ellipses for your contour lines, so you can carry through the proper curves.
This applies heavily to your form intersections as well - which all in all, weren't too bad. The bigger issue is that you were doing a lot of guess-work, rather than discovering and understanding. Forget about drawing clean and tidy things - we have no interest in those. We are focusing on gaining an understanding of forms and how they interact in 3D space.
From the lesson notes (which you should always read carefully), there's this step by step form intersection demo that I added a month ago. Follow that process, but you may want to draw through the forms even more - for example, all 8 lines that compose a box. Treat them all as wireframes.
Another thing that might help with your form intersections is to try to avoid forms that are stretched in one dimension. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. Stick to objects that are more 'equilateral', more or less the same size in every dimension. This allows us to focus on the forms themselves without bringing added perspective complications.
Last of all, your dissections were nice, though I'd strongly recommend looking at photo reference when applying surface textures. It's a good habit to get into, as it helps build your visual library, and also gets you used to the idea that the information you currently carry in your mind is a simplified version of what things actually look like.
Anywho- I'd like to see you do one more page of organic forms with contour lines, one more page of dissections and two more pages of form intersections, keeping in mind the things I mentioned above.
I hope it's what you're looking for. For the first set, I actually did draw through the forms for the intersections, but I used an hb pencil and then erased it. This time I did it first with the pen only and didn't get very far, then I did it with coloured pencils and had a more productive time.
I'm having a problem with the Staedtler I bought tho. I don't know if it's faulty or if I'm using it wrong, but everytime I try to make lines fast, the ink doesn't come out right, so I keep having to draw as slowly as I can, and my lines end up being all squiggly and wrong. I bought two 0.5 pens and I have this problem with both, so I'm guessing I'm not really using it right. I also tried a Faber Castell and had the same result. I tried holding it upright, tilted, all the ways, and I can't move it very fast across the paper or pass it over the same line over and over or it stops working (this was a big problem with the first line exercise).
The organic forms with contour lines are much better. Your dissections are alright, though using some photo reference to help inform your surface textures would have been nice. Try to do that more in the future.
I'm not really sure why your pens aren't flowing well. Based on the results I see, they seem to be okay. I do remember my instructor telling us to keep the staedtlers upright when drawing with them (though I found that to be a little hit-and-miss). Sometimes keeping them at an angle was actually a little helpful for keeping my initial draw-throughs and lay-ins from being too noticable. Still, you mentioned that you tried drawing with them upright, so I'm not sure.
Another thing that might help with your form intersections is to try to avoid forms that are stretched in one dimension. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. Stick to objects that are more 'equilateral', more or less the same size in every dimension. This allows us to focus on the forms themselves without bringing added perspective complications.
You ignored this part of my last critique, and your drawings suffered for it. Still, your drawings are somewhat improved, and I have a greater sense of your understanding of form in 3D space.
It's a little weird though how thick your lines are coming out in the form intersections. They seem fine everywhere else, but here they're super thick. Did you switch to a thicker pen?
While your forms are better, since you're having trouble with drawing through your forms in ink, I'm not going to let you move forward just yet. That is a core element in all of the Dynamic Sketching lessons (3-6) so you need to get a handle on that.
Draw your forms large, and make sure to follow the principles in the step-by-step I included in my previous critique (which was from the lesson notes). Focus on each form individually, and then simply add another and then decide how they intersect. Ellipses should always be drawn in a smooth motion, not a bunch of smaller overlapping lines. Same with long, straight lines.
Practice your form intersections until you feel you are more comfortable with drawing them completely in ink. Then show me the ones you feel that show you've grasped the concepts.
I did use a much thicker pilot pen for the form intersection because the staedtler wouldn't work over pencil for some reason. I should probably buy some new ones.
I did try to avoid the stretched dimension in the dissections, but the first few ones went that way almost on their own. I had some trouble trying to make 3D objects without making them long and going off into the distance, but I tried to force myself to come up with some that wouldn't go that way, such as the snake adn the bottle.
In that case, look into doing the 250 box challenge. Before you start it, look at the notes I've included there, and some of the stuff other people have submitted.
Took a while, but I think I finally did it...maybe...^ohgodpleaseberight
Here are three of the countless tries I did. Obviously, there are some perspective mistakes and the lines are all wiggly and the elipses suck, but I think the intersections themselves are much better than before. And I finally figured the staedtler out, it's been much more fun drawing without having to figure the pen out.
I'm currently at box 100 of the 250 box challenge, it's coming slowly, but it's coming. Maybe I should post what I have so far so I have feedback for the rest? Would you take a look at it?
Anyways, I appreciate all the time you're taking doing this for all of us in this subreddit. You rock!
Looks like they're more or less correct. This mistake did jump out at me, but overall they're much better than before, so I'll be marking the lesson as completed.
For the boxes, post them when they're complete. It's a little easier for me to give feedback once for the whole set, rather than doing so multiple times. It does mean that you might end up making the same mistake for 250 boxes instead of just those first 100, but these days I have far many critiques to do per day to look at things that are half done.
I finally got some new pens and feel way less frustrated now that I'm not smudging ink all over the place. Here's my homework for this lesson: http://imgur.com/a/OKCFt
Things I noticed: On the organic forms, I have trouble predicting where my contour lines should stop and end up with a little flick at the end of them. I really enjoyed the dissections (as most other people here it seems). The shape intersections gave me the most trouble. The first full page set I did, I broke down and used a pencil after some false starts (not pictured) to figure out how stuff worked. The next two I did just in pen without reference and found my lines to be really shaky. For the last one, I played with some 3D models in Blender to get a better idea of what was going on and try to make my lines more confident.
I should mention I'm left handed, so on each page, my first forms are on the right and I finish off on the left.
I'm looking forward to your feedback, thanks so much!
Not bad. Your organic forms with contour lines are well done. Your dissections are alright as well, though I'd strongly recommend that this is a situation where you should try to rely on reference images to pull in some nice surface detail. This early on, we cannot really rely too heavily on our imaginations, largely because what we carry with us in our minds is often a gross oversimplification of detail. By pulling that kind of information from reference images - what a fish's scales look like, what kind of textures you might see on internal organs, etc. - you can create much more interesting imagery.
For your form intersections, they were ultimately done well, but I'm concerned about your process. Looking at reference, using 3D and all is perfectly fine, though what I'm most concerned about is the fact that you seem to be concerned with the final drawing. I see this in the fact that you used pencil, then went over it with pen (as you explained in your post).
Don't worry about what the final drawing looks like. Concern yourself with understanding the forms themselves. Draw through them entirely, including the lines and faces that would be occluded by other forms, and the form itself.
I had included this step by step in the lesson notes. Every form should be included completely, and confidently - and in ink, so I can fully understand your approach.
I'm still going to mark this as complete, because it does seem like you understand the concept - but keep this all in mind for the next lessons. The construction is the most important thing I want to see in these lessons, not the final drawing.
Ah I didn't realize we were supposed to be realistic with the dissections in any way. I must have misunderstood.
I'll practice the intersections a bit more. I felt like I was getting more hesitant and shaky drawing through them because the number of lines going on completely disoriented me, but maybe that won't be as big an issue now that I understand how they interact a bit better.
Your second pages of things are generally better, as far as the organic forms and the dissections go. This shows that you're learning from the exercises, and understanding them better as you go along.
My only concern are your form intersections. You're treating these things too delicately, like you're too concerned with the final drawing, and not the understanding of the forms themselves. Draw through your forms. The result wasn't bad, but this is more of an issue of mindset that will ultimately cause problems for you in later lessons.
I'm not sure if you saw my step-by-step in the lesson notes, but here it is again. You may want to take it further than that, and draw the lines of each form that are blocked out by its other planes (for example, drawing all eight lines that make up a box). This is about understanding how forms interact in 3D space.
I would like to see one more page of form intersections. Try to follow my step-by-step process.
It's much, much better. Ultimately despite being part of the exercise's name, I don't actually care that much about the intersections. It's more about whether or not you can draw a bunch of forms and have them exist together within the same 3D space. And you can, so congrats - this lesson is complete.
Fantastic work on everything! That squid tentacle gives be the heebiejeebies. Your organic forms carry a nice sense of volume, your dissections have great detail and your form intersections are solid. Lesson complete!
I had a ton of fun with the first part of the homework. The dissections were a little tough, especially when I tried to draw from life. I really enjoyed creating from whenever happened on the paper. Just making shapes and seeing how they come together. But yeah, I could really use some pointers on the dissections.
I'll be doing the form intersections tomorrow, along with more dissections. I murdered my back over the weekend and have pretty terrible posture when drawing. I wanted to make sure I got some pointers before I started on dissections again, though.
Edit: Lemme know if I should retake the pictures. I just realized how poor the lighting is.
Hm... I can see that you're struggling a fair bit with these, though not for any lack of effort on your part. I commend the amount of practice you've thrown at this.
For now, I'd like to see another page of the organic forms with contour lines - but don't try to add to your line weights or anything like that, and don't try to make any of your preliminary lines overly faint. Draw each shape, each line as though it is intended to be visible in the final result.
What I mean is, when people sketch they have a tendency to be somewhat timid with their lay-ins, so their ellipses sometimes go a bit out of whack, or their lines become broken or too faint. The energy isn't there, because in their minds it's still just the sketch - they're trying to avoid those first mistakes that usually occur.
Don't fall prey to that. Draw the ellipses like they're the star of the show. Also, please draw through them a couple times before lifting your pen, as you would when doing the ellipses exercise. Right now we want to focus most of all on capturing the correct curve.
Once we are able to figure out your organic forms, your dissections should start falling a little more into place. Usually when I do these dissections, I - as you said - just make shapes and forms and see what happens. Then, once my major forms are there (which is basically the exact same as an organic form with contour lines), I pick a chunk between two contour lines and decide, this is going to be my cut-out.
Then I just start thinking about what it looks like, what could fill that void. And that is when I start looking for reference images, to help inform some of my textural choices. Until that point, I'm just letting myself create freely, and explore.
[deleted]
2015-01-06 18:19
I thought some of those organic forms looked really cool when "cleaned up".
I will do this thing! I've really been enjoying this. :D
I'll critique your work once you feel that what you're submitting is the best you can do - and once you've completed tje form intersections. It's easier for me to critique the whole lesson in one sitting.
Nice work! Your organic forms with contour lines are looking good, the contour lines are wrapping nicely. Your first set of dissections were good, though a little boring. Once you've got your major forms set up, you might want to think about looking at some reference images to get some nice surface detail in there. Your second set was more interesting, but you could have definitely pushed the textures.
It's perfectly normal to struggle with the form intersections - they're very difficult. You definitely did improve as you went through them, especially when you started drawing through your forms. The only thing that really stands out to me right now is that your spheres are not round - this is because you're forgetting to draw through your circles a couple times before lifting your pen. Your first time around is rarely ever going to be spot on - but if you keep drawing around it once again without lifting the pen, your arm will try to correct it. We need some nice round spheres for this exercise, so be sure to keep drawing through.
When you get the chance (maybe after you've done some more ellipse exercises - drawing through those ellipses - and once you've had the chance to tackle the 250 box challenge), I'd like to see just one more page of form intersections, similar to how you did it in page 8.
Great work on the organic forms and the dissections. Your surface texturing is fantastic, and your forms give a great sense of volume.
For your form intersection, you're not doing too badly, but I'd like you to change your approach. Right now you're very focused on creating pretty final drawings. It was clear in your dissections (which admittedly look great), but that is definitely not the point in these lessons.
We're focusing entirely on structure and construction. The first step to move towards this is to put away your pencil. Don't draw in pencil, erase your mistakes, etc. before drawing over it all with pen. That has some impact on your technique, but more importantly it keeps you in that frame of mind where everything needs to be clean and tidy.
Take a look at this step-by-step form intersection guide, which was included in the lesson notes. I draw through all of my forms. I don't erase, I don't clean anything up. Instead, I think a lot about every mark I'm going to make - but if I make a mistake, no big deal.
I really like the little ellipse exercises you included, and quite frankly, it's a great way to warm up to doing the intersections. Most importantly, you draw through your ellipses a couple times before lifting your pen. Do the same when you're doing the intersections themselves - that way you can get a much better shape to your forms.
Putting away the pencil is tough, but I know you have it in you - and I think adapting to that method of drawing and thinking is what will really take your current work and kick it up to the next level.
So - I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections, all in ink, drawn through every form as you saw in my example. If you'd like another example, check out this and this. They're not perfect by any means, there's plenty of mistakes with the lines and such. But in terms of construction, I can tell that the artist could visualize those forms in their head, and that they understood how they worked in 3D space.
These are much better. I'm still a little dubious about how faint the construction lines/draw throughs are, you should be drawing them with more confidence. That said, it came out well, so I'll mark this lesson as complete.
Lets finish dealing with lesson 1 first. Once I've marked that lesson as complete, you can look back on your lesson 2 stuff and decide if there's anything you'd like to change. Then you may resubmit it (so it pops up in my inbox again). It's always best to wait for my critique on lessons before moving forward, otherwise you won't be able to incorporate the things you've learned, and I'll end up repeating things.
i actually had more fun with this lesson than i had expected. the form intersections really hurt my head at first but they definitely got easier after a while, though not even close to perfect. looking forward to your feedback!
Great work. Clean linework, great volumes, nice textures and solid forms. Also neat faces! This is exemplary work.
There's only one thing that could make it better. It's about perspective.
It's not that your perspective is incorrect exactly - at least, not in the traditional sense. The thing is, your forms are all receding into perspective too quickly. The far planes, in box terms, are too much smaller than your near planes. This would be perfectly fine if each form existed in isolation, but when placed in a scene with all these other forms, it presents a problem. The problem is that the eye is uncertain of what scale this whole scene is drawn at. Is it something you could hold in your hand? Is it something enormous?
Usually when objects recede quickly into the distance, it tends to imply a much larger, less relatable scale.
So in summary, try to ease up on that perspective distortion. But still, you did very well! Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
woohoo! great to hear. i understand from your explanation where the perspective would become an issue in a scene with multiple forms, i'll have to ease the habit of exaggerated perspective i picked up during the 250 boxes challenge.
Everything looks in order. Good volumes, solid forms, and interesting dissections!
The only thing I have to suggest is that you draw things bigger in the future. When working this small, things tend to come out a little stiffer, and it becomes much harder to get your forms right and apply details properly.
Edit: Heyyyy. I just realized you didn't complete lesson 1! I won't be marking this lesson as complete until you finish the first one. Follow the rules!
[deleted]
2015-01-12 02:35
okay ill do that >.< i had done it in pencil, i need to redo it in ink
It's all done with a single pen. Don't be discouraged if you don't get it immediately, it's a tricky skill to learn, and is one of the major reasons I push people to do this stuff with a felt tip pen specifically. As you said, right off the bat it either writes or it doesn't.
Slowly you'll start to find the nuances in it. Think about what the tip of the pen looks like - it's a little rounded, and as such, the veeeery tip of the pen comes to a single point, but very quickly flares out into a wider sphere. Learn to touch only parts of that rounded tip to the page, rather than the whole thing.
Another trick is to draw big, and also, to vary your line weights. Just the act of adding thicker line weights in certain areas will automatically make other line weights seem thinner in comparison.
Anyways, no, you didn't really do too well on this one. There's a common issue between all of the exercises, though. It's about drawing through your forms.
On your organic forms and dissections, your contour lines are not wrapping around the forms entirely. In the lesson itself, you see a step there where I draw through the full ellipses (contour lines are essentially ellipses, wrapping around the form, even though you only see a curve). You should be practicing drawing through the ellipses before attempting to draw the curves on their own.
Also for those two exercises, draw larger forms. When learning, we have a tendency to draw things smaller on the page - perhaps out of a lack of confidence. This in turn tends to make things come out worse, due to the limited control over pen pressure (the lines appear even thicker at such a small scale), and the nuances in the forms themselves become much more difficult to capture.
The form intersections are all about drawing forms in 3D space, and having them interact with each other. If you haven't read the lesson notes, be sure to check out these notes which were linked in there. You're getting very caught up in planning things out, and worrying about compositions. All you need to worry about is the forms themselves. Drawing through them (think x-ray vision) will help you establish a greater understanding of how those forms exist within their space, and will also help you place other objects relative to them. When you're drawing a form, do not think ahead. Focus on that form until it is drawn in its entirety. Then draw another form - don't worry about how it relates to the other form just yet. Draw it entirely, THEN start making your decisions of how they intersect.
Take a break, and give this lesson another shot. Look through other homework submissions as well, and read through the critiques I gave them, for greater insight.
While it is better, you're still missing the main thing. You're still thinking ahead, and making your initial lines timid because you want them to disappear later. There will be time enough for that later on, but for now you need to push that out of your mind. Be bolder.
You're not treating your ellipses/circles like you did in the exercise from lesson 1, because you picture this as something with a 'final' stage, rather than just a bunch of shapes and forms. In doing so, you're weakening the foundation of your drawing, which in turn makes that final drawing less convincing.
Better! The organic forms and the dissections are okay now. Not fantastic, but definitely an improvement. I like the banana, I think that one was your most successful dissection. The form is simple, but the dissection itself has some nice layering (like the thickness of the peel), and the contour lines wrap nicely around the form, pushing the illusion of volume.
Your intersections are kind of hit-and-miss, but I'm getting the impression that your sketchbook is somewhat at fault. It doesn't look like it's giving you much freedom of motion. You should seriously consider doing this on loose leaf, or on a sketchbook that lays flatter and gives you more space (I used a sketchbook for this course, but it was 9.5" x 9.5" and ringed, so I could lay it nice and flat without having the pages bending back over me.
I'd like to see one more page of intersections done on a loose sheet of 8.5x11. Blank printer paper will do just fine. Draw your forms nice and big, and don't forget your perspective rules - the box on page 12 is wrong (it's converging towards the viewer, instead of away from the viewer, and looks like a pyramid that's had its top lopped off).
I suppose that'll do for now. Remember that these are the foundation of construction. This kind of exercise is generally more difficult than actually constructing objects that you see in reference, but the principles are all here.
It seems that you're grasping them well enough to move forward, but I definitely recommend that you practice these regularly. The next lessons will also probably start cementing more of the ideas by using them more practically.
Frankly, you can do better. I think more than anything it's a matter of not reading the lesson/notes carefully enough.
Your organic forms' contour lines don't quite wrap around the forms properly - they're generally very flat, and at the ends of the curves, they don't go around the form, they treat it very much as though they're just curving lines on a 2D surface. While drawing it, imagine that you are actually wrapping these lines around a 3D form. How you perceive your own actions has a great effect on what you draw. Also, practice drawing the contour lines as full ellipses instead of just curving lines (step C on the lesson) - this will help you nail the curvature better.
Also, I noticed that on the bottom of the second page of your organic forms (page 7 of the imgur album) you have a little cigar shape, where the direction of the curves changes halfway through. The curves themselves are not arbitrary. Read these notes for a better understanding of how those ellipses show the orientation of that particular cross-section of the form.
The problems that affect your organic forms naturally also impact your dissections, since they're essentially the same thing with an extra step tagged on.
Your form intersections aren't bad, but they're not great either. One thing I usually recommend is for people not to use forms that are too long in one particular dimension. Long tubes, long boxes, etc. This brings perspective into the mix way more than necessary, and makes things harder. Try using equilateral forms (equal in all 3 dimensions) instead. Draw them big on the page, and fill the page up.
Also, it looks to me like you're using pencil. If you're not, then great - but if you are, you should be using a felt tip pen. Regardless, you need to be drawing through your forms entirely (like as though you had x-ray vision), so you can get a better understanding of how they work. We are not concerned with creating neat and tidy drawings her - we want our shapes to come out properly. Treating your ellipses like the ones you did in lesson 1 - drawing through them completely to achieve the right curvature - is imperative.
I'd like you to do the homework over, taking into consideration all the things I said above.
Here´s my submission for lesson 2. I kinda wanna do more as fast as possible, but I know that I need time to let the things I learn sink in and a little feedback to correct my mistakes.
Anyway I´ve also been doing lesson 1 exercises as warm up and I think I´m progressing. :D
Yeah, I don't think much good comes from a desire to do things "as fast as possible". If anything, it can be harmful. So tuck those thoughts away somewhere and focus primarily on doing things well.
Which you did! At least, for the first part. Your organic forms are looking fantastic. Nice volumes, your contour lines generally wrap nicely around the forms, and the lines are very confident.
Your dissections are okay, but they can be better. In the top left, there's a very simple form there - one that's very well done. At the bottom left, there's another that's simple, but good. I think when you start venturing into the complex, the crazy, the "interesting" you start losing track of the purpose of this exercise. We're looking to take the concepts of the first exercise (organic forms with contour lines) and we're just cutting out a section and seeing what's inside. Fruits, snakes, etc. are nice candidates, but with the human head, the sandwich, etc. you're getting away from it.
I think it's very important to start it off as just another piece from exercise 1. If you're in that mindset, you get your volumes right already - then you're just playing around with all your important stuff already in. I've noticed this in others, and I'm seeing it in you - as soon as you face the challenge of drawing something that looks like something (the heart, the sandwich), you get overwhelmed with the need for detail and cleanliness. It's no longer an exercise, it becomes a drawing.
Forget about all that. Don't worry about the fact that the original outline of the form stretches across the gap of the dissection. Don't worry if you need to draw a full ellipse to correctly gauge the curvature of the contour line. Don't worry about drawing through forms, it's a great thing to do and you should do more of it.
That takes me to the form intersections which are... a bit crazy. I think you start off okay, but then you start to get antsy and start rushing. Frankly, I think you can do better than this.
Here's a few things you can do to approach it differently.
First off, draw bigger forms. People who have less confidence tend to draw things smaller, and it bites them in the ass. It's harder to get the proper motion and flow from your lines when they're tiny, and a medium-sized pen ends up looking SUPER thick at that scale. The sphere you've got on the right side of page 3 on the imgur album is a decent size - maybe a little bit smaller than that.
Try tackling these on a loose sheet of printer paper instead of a book like that. It gives you more freedom of motion, as you don't have to worry about the pages turning over on you, or bumping into the spine.
Don't use forms that are longer in one dimension compared to the others. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. Try to stick with more 'equilateral' forms. Things that are more or less equal in all dimensions. With the longer, stretched forms, you're bringing perspective more into the mix than is necessary. We want to focus more on just having forms in 3D space, rotating them around and mashing them together. No need to make it more complicated.
Also, be sure to read the lesson notes for every lesson. In lesson 1 and 2 they're sometimes harder to find, but every single lesson has them in the comments section. If you sort by 'top' they should bubble to the top of the list. This one's got this step by step for form intersections listed in the bonus content. Honestly, I think you are approaching things similarly, but I figured I might as well share it in case you didn't see it yet.
So - I'd like to see two more pages of dissections, and two more pages of form intersections, keeping in mind everything I mentioned above.
I got a new pen and to learn how to use it and because I wanted to grasp the concepts I did a little bit of extra work. The pen has a different tip, which allows me more control wether I want thinner or stronger lines, but it´s more difficult to do a thin controlled line!
Your work looks pretty good. I can see what you're saying though, about the difficulty with making thin lines. It sounds to me like you're talking about a felt tip calligraphy pen. I've got some of the faber castell ones - I love e'm to death, but they're a little tough to work with at first.
All of your exercises look pretty good. You seem to have a fairly good sense of 3D forms (from your form intersections) but if you ever find a certain kind of intersection more challenging, don't be afraid to completely draw through the forms. For the most part I see that you've been deciding how your next form will intersect with the ones you've already drawn before drawing it. Usually I recommend drawing in the next form and then deciding how they intersect - but it's fine to do it this way, as long as you're comfortable with it.
You´re completly right about the felt tip calligraphy pen, it´s even a faber castell one, too! I´m loving it!
And is it alright if I ask you some more personal questions? I was wondering why you´re doing all this? I mean what´s motivating you? This whole sub has to be so much work, so I´m corious as to why you decided to help people like me.
A lot of reasons. Some noble, some less so. On one hand, I like teaching, and watching people improve over time. Makes me feel a little proud. Then, there's a big part of me that's rather vain, and soaks up all of the praise and gratitude. And finally, I do want this to help my career in some way or another. Either in making this a more official thing - opening a standalone website that can be monetized somehow, or allowing me to increase my presence on the net in general. I have some plans for that already, but for the moment I'm holding off on them. It's a lot more work, and there are other things I'd rather do right now.
I had a tough time with this lesson! Not being able to erase is a real struggle for me. I also just noticed I left a couple of forms floating on one of my dissections pages just now. Oops. I thought I connected them.
Your organic forms and dissections are looking great. Solid volumes, and a good approach in general. I like the little fishy.
Your form intersections are not so great, but frankly they're some of the most difficult things we tackle in the entire dynamic sketching lesson set. Everything else builds on this in some way or another.
Your approach isn't actually too bad. You're drawing through your forms (which is GREAT, keep that up), and you're not afraid to get messy in order to figure out your forms.
I think what's fucking you over the most is the fact that you're working in a lot of really long forms. Long boxes, long tubes, long cones, etc. Those kinds of things bring in a lot of perspective distortion, and that starts messing everything up. I usually recommend that people avoid those kinds of forms - instead, draw 'equilateral' forms. That is, forms that are more or less equal in every dimension. Start off in the center of the page, and then just keep drawing more around them and connect them.
If you check out the lesson notes in the comments section (every lesson has them, usually the first one if sorted by 'top'), you'll find this step-by-step of how I approach the form intersections. It might help you out.
I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections, taking into consideration what I've said above. I think working with those equilateral forms will help out a lot.
Alright I gave it another try! I got rid of the long forms or at least I tried to (I did a few on the second page accidentally). But man, this is a very difficult exercise. I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around it. This time I tried to follow follow the step by step as well as the one you wrote about the intersecting spheres. It hurts my head to think about. Also the fact I can't erase and that every line is final is tough, I'm so used to pencil or digital.
Yeah, the crutch of being able to erase and undo is a difficult one to throw away - but the benefits are immense. When you can fallback on something like that, you tend to treat your drawings as far too precious, and you also don't put in quite as much thought into your lines.
I think you're starting to get it - enough for me to let you move forward. You should definitely continue practicing these though - and when you do, you could stand to draw your forms bigger. When you draw things so small on the page, it immediately makes it even harder, because your pen's strokes look so much thicker relative to the size of the drawing.
Honestly, if you ask me (which you are, 'cause I'm the art czar >:D) it's a good thing to be taking longer and longer. Initially for a lot of people there's a need to rush through things. When I did these exercises, I spent 6-8 hours on each of the first two lessons, and then the subsequent lessons were given 8+ hours each. The more time you spend, the better. As long as it's being spent effectively, of course.
Overall, you'll have to give it another shot. I'll break down the issues that we need to resolve.
The organic forms' contour lines are not really wrapping around the forms correctly. The curves at the ends of the contour lines are stopping short - if you picture the full ellipse that would go all the way around, it'd end up a little pointy on both ends. Most people seem to skip past step C in the lesson, I'm not really sure why. You need to go back and draw the full ellipses for each contour line, drawing through them completely to get the right curvature, just as you learned to draw ellipses in lesson 1.
The dissections aren't just supposed to be any old object cut in half - it's basically an extension of the previous exercise. You do exactly what you did for exercise 1, drawing an organic form, then adding in the contour lines - then you add on this extra step of saying "this section between these two contour lines is going to be removed." Then you figure out what exists within that space. Also, when you start filling in that space, it's a great opportunity to go out and look at pictures on the internet. Use them as reference for different kinds of detail information you can use to fill that void. Pulling that information from photographs is much, much better than pulling it from your imagination, because right now your 'visual library' is rather empty. It will grow by studying reference images and putting that information into your drawings.
Form intersections are hard - but just because they're hard doesn't mean you can try to make things a little easier for yourself. There's a reason I insist people use pen for these things. You drew a very clean drawing - and it's because you strove to do that above all else, that it was not correct. In the lesson notes (in the comment section), you'll find this step-by-step of how to tackle the form intersections. Draw a form completely - hell, draw through it completely (as though you have xray vision) so you can fully understand how it exists in 3D space. Then you add another form. Each time you focus only on the form you're drawing. You don't leave gaps in the form because it's behind the previous one - you draw the whole thing. Then you can start deciding how those two forms intersect. This means your drawing will have a lot of extra lines - not necessarily messy lines, but more information than one would usually put in a drawing. That's because this isn't a clean final drawing, it's an exercise to understand form and space.
I'm sure you can do much better than this, it's a matter of understanding the correct approach.
Edit: I just saw on your deviantart the version where you draw through all the forms. Good work, (you should have posted that to begin with) but you should still do it in ink. The whole mindset that comes from working in ink is extremely important, especially for the form intersections. Draw everything knowing full well that it will be present in the end, and focus only on what you are doing right then and there. Don't look ahead, and don't plan ahead.
Ahh okay. I must've misunderstood the dissection part of the lesson. I'll give that another go. Along with the rest of the topics in the lesson......sigh. LOL I should've just PM'd you with questions regarding the assignment before I began. And yeah about the form intersection, I first drew all the lines for the shapes and then I started "piecing it together" with a pen. I just erased all the pencil marks for the end result. Once again, I didn't know the emphasis was on the practice and not the final results. Although, these lessons are all about practice and not end results. Otherwise they wouldn't be homework. Right? I'll get back to you a week from now with the updates. Thanks for the feedback!
It's not particularly obvious to most people - but I think there's value in doing it wrong first, because the fact that there is a difference between drawing normally and how I expect you to draw becomes more memorable.
Nicely done! Everything seems to be done fairly well. I like that you drew through all of your forms for your intersections - though I'd much prefer it if you didn't separate them into a lighter underdrawing and a cleaner drawing on top. The second stage kind of mucks up a lot of your ellipses, so generally I find it better for this particular exercise to simply leave everything at the first stage. The underdrawing is what I'm most interested in anyways.
Your dissections look nice. Interesting experimentations, with nice volumes. Your organic forms with contour lines are nice as well.
Looking pretty good. Your organic forms have nice volumes, and your contour lines wrap around them nicely. Your dissections are pretty cool, especially on the second page. I like the hot dog best, but the quarter cut on the bottom right is very neat as well. You've got a good eye for where to apply different thicknesses of layers to the dissections themselves to create interesting objects.
The first page of intersections is a little iffy (your perspective tends to be very dramatic on individual forms, leading to some weirdness that I mention in these notes. Your subsequent pages of intersections are much better.
In the future, don't use different thicknesses of pens - use only the 0.5. This forces you to learn proper pressure control of the pen itself, allowing you to become more versatile with the single tool.
How does one controls the lineweight? Is it okay to go through one line several times? Or ideally I've to make different lineweights in one fluent movement?
You control the thickness by applying more/less pressure. You generally do draw the whole object, then go back to selectively thicken specific lines. Yes, you can move forward. I'm on my phone right now, but I'm pretty sure I changed your flair already.
I wasn't really sure how to do the multiple line weights with a single pen, so I had to use a pencil on one of them them so I could tell what was where. I hope that's okay...
I'm not entirely sure which one you used pencil on, but generally you should avoid that. If you're using a felt tip pen (I always recommend a 0.5mm), you can achieve different line weights by applying less or more pressure.
Your organic forms are alright, with some pages being stronger than others. I'm noticing though that the contour lines aren't quite wrapping around the forms correctly - if they were full ellipses, you'd notice them getting pointy on either end. Doing more exercises like you did on the first page (drawing the full ellipses) should help. Overall your contour lines aren't bad, though - some of them do a good job of showing volume, it's just that the lines don't wrap around the form properly.
For your dissections, they work out better when you treat them like extensions of the previous exercise - which is how I intended them. So, your first page looks a little shabby, while the next one looks much better. The third's so-so; your forms are much less convincing, since a lot of them are based on ellipses that seem somewhat malformed.
Like the rest of your work, your form intersections seem a little hit-and-miss. Where cylinders are involved, you seem to fall short of the mark. With boxes, however, you seem to manage much better.
I'd like to see you do one more page of form intersections - try to avoid using any longer, stretched forms (like long tubes or long boxes) that bring perspective more into the mix than it needs to be. Also, draw your forms larger on the page. For example, on page 8, everything is way too small. It's nice to see you draw so many forms, but I'm more interested in the quality of those individual forms.
Finally, draw through the forms completely. For example, draw all 6 lines that comprise a box, instead of just the ones that the viewer would be able to see. This will help you understand how that form sits in space. Keeping in mind where your horizon line sits will also prove to be helpful.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at. I can see the dissections, and form intersections, though I'm not sure where your organic forms with contour lines are.
Overall, I'd like you to do these again, taking the following into consideration:
These exercises are tedious - so it's very natural to want to spice them up by turning them into interesting shapes, or going off the book in some other way. Don't. It's fine if you already understand exactly what the exercises are trying to teach you, but if you don't, you risk missing a lot of the key points. It also makes it very difficult for me to critique.
For the organic forms, draw a 2D organic shape, then make it 3D by adding contour lines. First practice by drawing those contour lines as full ellipses (step C in the lesson), then once you get the hang of that, try drawing the contour lines as curves that wrap around the form as if it were three dimensional.
For the dissections, you're just taking the previous exercise one step further. You're not starting with any object in mind - instead, you draw a shape, turn it into a 3D form, cut out a piece and then try to see what the whole thing could be. This is your opportunity to be a little creative, but don't let that overshadow the exercise itself. I strongly encourage you to look at photo reference when you're looking for texture/detail to fill into the drawing. Fruits often work well, since you can cut into them and see what they look like on the inside.
For the form intersections, start with a form in the center of the page - then add another form onto the page, draw it in its entirety, and then decide how those two forms intersect. Then add another. Make sure the horizon line for this scene is consistent. Also try to avoid any forms that are stretched more in one dimension than the others, like long tubes or long boxes. Stick to more equilateral forms, which are more or less equal in all three dimensions. Read these notes on form intersections if you haven't already. Also, try not to make your perspective too dramatic on each individual form. These notes explain that concept.
One last thing - I noticed that in your form intersections, on your boxes, you have several places where your perspective is backwards - where the closer plane of the box is smaller than the further plane. If you find yourself making mistakes like this often, I would strongly recommend that you do the 250 box challenge before tackling the form intersections.
It's great to see your creativity and enthusiasm, but there's a time and a place for that. Right now you've got to buckle down and focus on the task in front of you. Don't think ahead, give all of your attention to whatever it is that you're doing.
For the form intersections, they're a little hit or miss. Page 4 isn't bad, though I'm noticing that you're not really drawing through all your forms.
The way you handle it in the top left of page 4 is good - drawing completely through all the forms, not worrying about having lines stop where they start to be blocked by other forms. The forms that you don't draw through completely tend to be weaker because you don't yet have a solid grasp of how these forms work in 3D space. As such, when you don't draw through the whole thing you're guessing a lot, and many of those guesses are ill-informed.
Then you've got some of these cross-sectional ellipses of cylinders and spheres. Doing those is a GREAT idea, except you're using these little dashed/broken lines - an obvious attempt to retain the cleanliness of the drawing. Draw a full, unbroken ellipse. Breaking up the line will mess up the actual shape of the ellipse, making it completely pointless and useless to you. You've got to approach it as you do when doing the ellipse exercise from lesson 1.
Your organic forms and dissections are still weak, largely because you didn't do what I told you to in my last critique. I emphasized the importance of the step C in the organic form with contour line exercise - drawing full ellipses for your contour lines. Looking at page 9 and 10, you're not doing that, and as such the contour lines are still very flat and not wrapping around the forms enough. The banana dissection is a little better in that area, but still could use some improvement.
I'm going to be rewriting lesson 2 some time next weekend (as I did for lesson 1 yesterday), hopefully clarifying things and explaining them better. You may want to hold off and wait for this revised version. Either way, I'm guessing that this thread will hit 6 months of age very soon, and reddit will automatically lock the thread making it impossible to resubmit. So waiting for the revised lesson is probably your best bet for now.
Your form intersections are a little haywire. Your lines aren't entirely straight (they arc often), and your ellipses are weak. The main problem is that you're not drawing through your forms. You're trying to think ahead and plan out how all your forms will sit, but in doing so you don't pay enough attention to what you're drawing at the time. Right now I want you to focus on making each form look solid and complete on its own. Drawing through the forms will help you understand them better, and demonstrating that understanding will make them more convincing to the viewer.
I strongly suggest that you do the 250 box challenge before attempting the intersections again. Also, read over this step by step for form intersections, which was included in the lesson notes in the comments section. Make sure you don't skip those notes, they often include a lot of helpful information.
Once you've done the box challenge, I'd like to see you redo the organic forms with contour lines and the form intersections.
I've started working on my redo of Lesson 2 and I was wondering if you could critic my contours before I get to dissection and intersection. I want to make sure I'm on the right track.
Yup, they're more or less correct. Always focus on the edges, where the contour line meets the outline of the shape. That's generally where most peoples' difficulties lie. The contour line has to wrap around the form. You generally do achieve this, though there are a few occasions where you fall short. Page 4, for instance, is generally better than page 5.
I think you're concerning yourself far too much with how things end up looking, once you're done, and in doing so, you're missing out on demonstrating core concepts.
With the dissections, you drew them with the intent of a clean, presentable drawing - I want to see the guts of it. I want to see the construction itself. The correct approach is to start doing the organic forms with contour lines, and then simply go one step forward and turn whatever the form was into a dissection.
I'd like to see one more page of dissections.
For the form intersections, once again, you're focusing on the quality of the end result. I can see that you drew in pencil and then went over the lines in pen. I want you to do the entire thing in ink, from start to finish, drawing through all the forms as much as you need to properly understand how those forms exist in 3D space. If you look back at the lesson, the little example image from my sketchbook that's included there. The drawing isn't clean or carefully planned. Instead, you can see exactly how I was thinking when I approached it. That's what I want to see from you, so I can evaluate how you think.
So, I'd also like to see two more pages of form intersections, done in ink from start to finish.
I'm starting to struggle with this lesson I think. I've done a quick version of it to prevent myself from thinking through things too much and to resist the urge to polish (and I use the term loosely).
As I suspect, this may still not be what you're looking for. If that's correct I think I'm going to try copying a few other artists samples to see if I can figure out what it is that I'm doing wrong. Are there any samples in this thread that you think demonstrate this concept well that I should focus on?
Your dissections are still leaving a little to be desired, but the form intersections have moved into a passable range. I still think you should continue to practice them on your own, but I will mark this lesson as complete.
Hi Uncomfortable, I've finally finished the second exercise it took a little longer than I hoped although I really enjoyed the intersection exercise. Thanks.
Good work! Your organic forms are very well done, they do a great job of conveying volume. Your form intersections are also pretty good - a few perspective issues here and there (always remember that the farther end of an object should be smaller than the closer end, assuming they're the same size in 3D space), but generally quite good.
Your dissections were alright, though I strongly recommend that next time you're in a position to apply texture to a surface, you should look at photo reference to inform your line work. Right now it's likely that your visual library isn't too well developed, so - for example, with the snake's scales - you'll resort to a very simplified understanding of how those scales work. Looking at reference, understanding it and then expressing that understanding through your use of the texture in your drawing will help in two ways. First, it'll make your drawing better, and secondly, it'll help develop your visual library.
Also, I'd like to point out the jalapeno at the top of page 3. I think you learned this on your own, since you didn't do it anywhere else, but I'll mention it anyways. Don't ever crosshatch against the curvature of the surface. In this case, your crosshatching is flat, going more or less straight down. The surface of the jalapeno is curved, so technically it should wrap around it. That said, I think the better approach is how you did it on your sling shot, having the hatching lines go along the form (I talk about that in these notes).
Anywho- good work, I think you're ready to move onto the next lesson.
Thank you for the feedback, I will take note of my hatching and take more time to think about these details. I think the texture problem is lack of practice and experience drawing in pen as I was using reference photos. Hopefully this will get better with practice and all those plants :)
First off, for the organic forms with contour lines, you're skipping a major step (step C in the lesson), where you draw the contour lines as full ellipses. Every contour line wraps around the form completely, often creating a smooth ellipse - drawn as we did in lesson 1. It is important to practice drawing them this way, so that when we just draw the visible portion of the contour line, we know how it should be curving/wrapping around the 3D form. Yours don't really wrap around, they just kind of stop at the edge of the shape - which makes it look very flat.
Next - the dissections. These are intended to be extensions of the previous exercise. Bascially, you start off with your organic shape, then you add your contour lines. Then, you pick a section of it (between contour lines) and decide that it is going to be cut out - and you fill in the void. I strongly recommend that you look at photo reference when filling that area in, since right now it's likely that your visual library isn't too well developed.
Finally, for the form intersections, they're pretty bad at the beginning, but you do show a marked improvement. The last one is not that bad. What I would suggest is, try to avoid forms that are stretched too much in one dimension - like long tubes, long boxes, etc. Stick to forms that are more equilateral, or equal in all three dimensions. This tends to simplify things. Also, if you haven't yet seen this from the lesson notes in the comments section: form intersections step-by-step.
Very good! Nice volumes and forms, and your drawings look very confident. Spheres are tough for everyone, and are exceptionally difficult to nail - but you'll get it with more practice. Everything else looks solid though.
[deleted]
2015-02-14 15:03
thank you for doing this.
first time ever drawing something,if you can call it drawing that is.
As for your work, your lines look good, but the rest gives me the impression that you were a little overenthusiastic. You definitely rushed through the rest. You also missed these notes about the ellipse exercise. A lot of people seem to miss them, so I reincorporated them into the lesson itself, since I had the chance to rewrite it. You also didn't complete the required amount for lesson 1 (2 pages of each exercise. You only did one for lines/ellipses/organic perspective, and skipped rough perspective altogether).
I'd like you to redo them. Read the new version of lesson 1 carefully, and take your time. Do it in several sittings and don't try and digest the entire lesson at once.
I'm glad to see that you started drawing the full ellipses for the organic forms' contour lines, as when you just draw the curve, it doesn't wrap around the form entirely and comes out rather flat. You may want to continue practicing that, though - I'm not sure what order these were done in.
Looking at the rest of the homework, however, I'm thinking that instead of me critiquing right now, it might be best for you to wait a little. I'm going to be rewriting the second lesson sometime this week or this weekend, as I did with the first lesson. I intend to focus more on issues that seem to confuse people. You may find that to be much easier to understand compared to the current lesson, so if you wait, you'll likely have an easier time with the homework.
It's completely reverse order. Sorry it's just the way they get uploaded into imgur. I'll try to change the file names next time. While I wait, do you mind if I move onto drawing people lesson 1?
metapilgrim
2014-11-21 16:48
Homework Number 2! The intersecting forms were tricky, particularly when I tried to make spheres intersect. Also, I had forgotten how to draw a pyramid. Apologies for the messiness--I tried to bold things to make it clearer, and i numbered the pages this time (scanner still does things in an odd order)
(EDIT--Resubmitted cause the link wasn't working)
Whirly123
2014-11-21 17:51
Here is my submission for Lesson 2. http://imgur.com/a/PkEU8
Uncomfortable
2014-11-21 18:57
Looking good as always! I really liked your dissections, though the one with the little wriggly things coming out is creepy as all hell. your form intersections are pretty good too, though be careful with your ellipses/circles. They seem to be your weakest point.
Onwards to lesson 3!
Whirly123
2014-11-21 23:51
Too true, ellipses are so dam hard! Going to try and do more intersections with cylinders as warm-ups as I move forward. Thanks by the way as I was so happy doing the dissections just with my line quality improvement and I have you to thank :)
Whirly123
2014-11-26 16:05
Before moving onto Plants I did some more compound objects a bit different that before. Hopefully, although these are a little different since its just play, they show a bit more progress. http://imgur.com/a/6Z3PQ
Uncomfortable
2014-11-26 21:31
Looking pretty damn good. Your strengths definitely lie with boxier forms, but your ellipses are getting better.
Whirly123
2014-11-26 21:39
Well you did make me do 250 cubes so I would hope so :P
Uncomfortable
2014-11-26 21:41
Muahahaha! NOW DO A THOUSAND.
megapizzapocalypse
2014-11-21 23:42
I ended up doing just about the whole thing twice
Lesson #2
Uncomfortable
2014-11-21 23:59
Your organic forms with contour lines and your dissections are both looking really good. I'm getting a strong sense of the volume of each form, and I like that you experimented with different kinds of cuts for the dissections. If I had to recommend one thing, it's purely aesthetic - for your dissections, try and keep in mind that things tend to have thickness - so when you cut a long tube-like form, and even if it's hollow, you should see a bit of thickness along its outside 'layer'. A good example of you doing this well is in the middle of page 5, with the fruit-like dissection. An example of it being done poorly is at the bottom right corner of that page.
Still, great work on those.
Now, for your form intersections, I think you can do much better than this. You seem to understand the interaction of forms in 3D space, but your execution can be vastly improved.
I have a few recommendations:
Always do your best to avoid sketchy lines. If you make a slight mistake, often times drawing over it to correct it will only draw more attention to the blunder. Take the error in stride and keep going.
Read the notes listed in the 250 box challenge post. They cover things to do with line weights and common perspective mistakes.
For this exercise, try to avoid drawing elongated forms (long tubes, long boxes, things with a lot of stretching in one direction). These throw in a whole new layer of trouble with perspective that we're not really interested in dealing with right now. Just imagine that you have a bunch of forms that are roughly the same size, like blocks that'll fit in your hands, and picture yourself bashing them together.
Don't shade. One thing I've noticed is that you spend a significant amount of time on lighting, and it's not necessary. More than that, it might be distracting you from the main educational value of the exercise. You are fully capable of conveying the 3D form of these objects - spheres, boxes, cones, pyramids and cylinders - without shading them at all. Lighting merely emphasizes the 3D form that is already there, so it should still work perfectly without it. This concept echoes down through the next few lessons, so it's good to get a solid grasp of it now.
So- your organic forms and your dissections are great. I'd like you to do two more pages of form intersections, keeping what I've mentioned above in mind.
megapizzapocalypse
2014-11-22 00:18
Thanks! Will do
megapizzapocalypse
2014-11-22 21:12
Congrats on the new job!
2 extra form intersections:
1
2
Uncomfortable
2014-11-22 21:39
Looking much better. Feel free to move onto the next lesson!
I did notice one mistake that you made a few times. It's related to your name - you've got a bunch of weird pizza slice shaped cones where you'd actually probably be able to see its base.
Basically, consider how a form is oriented in relation to other objects and the viewer. If a cone is in front of a box, but its tip intersects with the box, the cone is automatically pointing away from the viewer. So, we should be able to see its base. The other option is that we cannot see its base, and therefore it is oriented towards us, so it must in fact be behind the box with which it is intersecting. In which case we wouldn't be able to see that intersection.
Here's a drawn explanation of what I mean.
Aside from that, keep up with the ellipse exercises from lesson 1. Your circles and ellipses are still a little weak, but they'll get better with practice.
hushblessedchild
2014-11-22 16:10
Lesson 2 time. Contours and dissections were fun, not sure if they're good or not, but I enjoyed it, intersections I found horrific. Some intersections seem to work, but idk.
http://imgur.com/a/ydxPY
Let me know if any of the images are too blurry. A couple of pictures are upside down as per usual, wouldn't want to make your job too easy.
Uncomfortable
2014-11-22 17:44
Your organic forms and dissections look pretty good. There are still quite a few cases where your contour lines aren't quite curving enough when they reach the edge of the form. Since some of those don't curve around the 3d form, they start flattening it out. So be mindful of that. Still, you did a pretty good job and I can see a sense of volume and 3D-ness from a lot of them.
You're right though, the form intersections are pretty bad. There's a handful of issues that I can see, so hopefully we can correct those.
Your construction lines are too faint, too timid, they're sketchy and incomplete. What this tells me is that you're focused on the final product - creating something that can be read as a clean drawing, with the construction lines not being entirely visible. Don't do this. When you're drawing your construction lay-ins, do so as though they are the final product. Then go back and build on top of it. The reason is that a lot of people have a tendency of looking ahead to the final image while working on a previous step - and this causes them to fumble the step they're working on. They're so focused on the future. Yesterday, I drew an example for someone on Lesson 3 that emphasized the same principles. Of course this is mostly for these exercises, and doesn't work as well for actual illustrations. But once you're at the stage where you're doing proper illustrations, you should understand the concepts well enough to decide how to go about your construction lines on your own.
Your ellipses are giving you trouble. Check out the Using ellipses to show circles in perspective notes from the bonus notes section in the sidebar. Also make sure you're doing some of the ellipse exercises from lesson 1 as warmups before doing this exercise. Just like in the ellipse exercise, follow through that elliptical drawing motion a few times before lifting your pen. ESPECIALLY for the spheres, because that's where the issues are most apparent.
Something that I've been recommending to people having difficulty with the form intersections lately is not to stretch your forms too much in any given direction. Make all your forms roughly the same overall size, as though you're playing with those big blocks they give to toddlers. When you start stretching them too much in one dimension (for example, your cylinders), you have to start worrying about excessive perspective distortion - where the far plane becomes much smaller than the near plane - and we really don't want to have to worry about that right now. If you look at my form intersection example (sorry for the poor image quality), you can see that my cylinders are pretty fat.
I'd like to see you do two more pages of form intersections, keeping what I've mentioned above in mind.
hushblessedchild
2014-11-22 22:21
Okay, I don't think these are much better, maybe a little. These are hard.
http://imgur.com/a/vE5Ov
Uncomfortable
2014-11-22 23:51
They are better, and more importantly, they're on the right track. The lines are a bit sketchy (you drew quite a few lines where only one was needed), so in the next lessons try to avoid that. It's kind of understandable for the ellipses though, but always strive to put thought and planning behind every mark you make.
There are still some issues with general perspective, but they're not that important to me right now. I like the sense of comfort I'm seeing from drawing these larger forms though, so good work.
Go ahead and move onto lesson 3.
firststatejake
2014-11-22 22:20
Here ya go man: http://imgur.com/a/OvfOW
I'm having a lot of trouble with the Form Intersections. Do you have any extra tips?
Thanks
EDIT: I copied the fish to get an idea, and the doughnut (which was horrible).
Uncomfortable
2014-11-22 23:44
Your organic forms and dissections are good. The organic forms give a good sense of volume, though always be careful about how your contour lines curve when they reach the edge of the form, they've got to wrap around the 3D form, sometimes there's a tendency to flatten them out since you're drawing on a flat surface. Most of the ones you drew are solid though, so good work.
For the form intersections, you're not doing too badly. Always remember to keep your straight lines straight - for example, you've got the cylinder that connects two spheres curving a bit.
As for tips, I usually approach this kind of exercise with forms that are all similar in shape, and I try to avoid forms that are stretched too much in one dimension, like really long narrow tubes or boxes. That stretching tends to bring in more perspective distortion than is necessary, and it just complicates things. Picture it as though you're playing with big children's blocks, and you're just connecting them together.
I like that you're drawing through a lot of your forms - definitely keep that up, it'll make the construction easier to understand.
If you are having a lot of trouble though, the 250 box challenge might help, since it's all about spinning boxes around in space and drawing them at all different orientation.
I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections before I let you move onto the next lesson.
firststatejake
2014-11-23 06:04
Okay a drew some boxes and tried the Intersections again, how'd I do?
http://imgur.com/a/ONnw1
Uncomfortable
2014-11-23 17:07
Good enough to move forward. One thing that I'd like you to remember though is that you should always consider where your horizon is (which represents the height at which your viewer's eyes rest). This is because the further a plane (which is either parallel to the ground or roughly parallel to the ground) is from the horizon, the more of its surface we will see.
With a bunch of your cylinders, you've drawn the caps of the cylinder as the same width/degree. Take a look at this explanation.
Anyways, just keep that in mind in the future. Go ahead and move onto lesson 3.
starfries
2014-12-01 21:11
http://imgur.com/a/4iyMM
Tough exercise! I never thought I'd have to do so much thinking for art.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-03 03:40
Your organic forms and dissections are pretty decent. I really like the dissection with the kiwi texture. Very nice linework there, very convincing. Your first two pages of form intersections aren't very good, but the next two are rather satisfying to look at, especially the last one. It shows a clear improvement and a greater understanding of the concepts in regards to both the intersections and the application of line weights. I'd still recommend that you avoid using forms that have been stretched too much in one dimension (like long tubes) and instead stick to fat forms that are almost cube-like in their dimensions (like a fat short cylinder).
Feel free to move onto lesson 3!
starfries
2014-12-03 03:46
Yay, thanks! I took a break to work on the box exercise after two pages of intersections so I'm glad it paid off.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-03 04:10
:D it worked! I'm glad to hear it, I kind of came up with that challenge as a, "well, if it doesn't work, it's not like I was the one who sat there drawing two hundred and fifty boxes. No skin off my back."
starfries
2014-12-03 04:50
... hey!
pelts Uncomfortable with erasers
but really, it's been super helpful (even if you weren't sure it would work ಠ_ಠ). I'm only halfway through the 250 but I've produced some really sexy cubes on the last page and I'm starting to get a feel for where the vanishing points should go without placing a finger there or drawing them out.
dth0807
2014-12-02 01:18
http://imgur.com/a/PJiZV
Thank you for these exercises. I'm not very creative so I had a hard time with dissections. If you think I should do it again let me know.
When the lines are not that long, should I still use my shoulder? I feel like when I need to make precise marks that are a short distance that it's ok to use my wrist.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-03 03:53
Using your wrist can make precise linework simpler, you just need to be careful as to where you draw the line (pardon my pun, a little drawing humour there). If a line needs to flow continuously - be it a straight line, a wave, an arc, an ellipse, and so on - you'll likely want to use your shoulder. If it's just a quick, precise mark, your wrist should be okay.
I did notice that the first ellipses you were playing with as the contour lines for your organic forms were very scratchy, like you drew a bunch of short lines with your wrist to slowly complete a full ellipse. Here, it'd be much better to draw the full ellipse all the way around in a single stroke.
Aside from the scratchiness of the ellipses, your organic forms with contour lines were done quite well. Good work on the textures as well, very few people tackled that optional section (or even noticed it was there). The dissections were nicely done.
I am concerned about your form intersections though. More than anything, it's how you draw them. I've mentioned this before - your lines are wobbly and uncertain. They're also very uniform - by which I mean, they are all of the same weights.
Often times you end up drawing very small, and I don't think that's working in your favour. You'll have an easier time of it if you keep your forms fairly large on the page, and also try to avoid forms that are stretched in one dimension. For example, avoid long tubes or long boxes. Instead, imagine that you're playing with a children's set of blocks, and that you're piecing them together. They should all be roughly the same size, like a cube, a fat cylinder, etc. These should be much easier to draw.
If you're having trouble, you may want to try copying the example I included in my notes, or you may want to try looking through some of the work other people submitted. Even copying the arrangement of the forms will work for this exercise, as long as you're able to imagine those forms in 3D space.
Before I let you move forward, I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections.
dth0807
2014-12-04 05:04
http://imgur.com/a/7nKSa
Thank you for the critique. I don't know why my lines are still wobbly even after I warm up, I guess I just need more mileage. after I draw the picture then I go over the whole picture adding weight to the lines where I think it needs it. If you don't think this is a good process let me know or if you think I should do it again let me know.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-07 17:11
Aside from the wobbliness you mentioned, these look much better! I can definitely see that you have improved your understanding of how these forms work in 3D space.
For the wobbliness, one thing that might help is to use what some people call 'ghosting' for your straight lines. You mark a point where you want the line to start, and another point where you want it to end. Then you go through the motion of drawing the line between them, but don't actually put your pen to the page. You ghost through that motion once, twice, however many times you need until you feel comfortable enough - then you lower the pen slightly to the page and follow through the same motion, making the mark.
Anyways, feel free to move onto the next lesson!
[deleted]
2014-12-02 03:38
Should I draw these from shoulder or wrist?
I drew 2 organic form w/ lines from wrist.:l
Uncomfortable
2014-12-02 13:40
You should definitely get in the habit of drawing from your shoulder for most things. There is a bit of grey area, but it all comes down to the mechanics of your pivot (wrist, shoulder) being the radius of your drawing mechanism (your arm). With a small radius, longer lines won't flow as well.
CtrlAltZdraw
2014-12-09 18:53
Here. http://imgur.com/a/uW2By
Uncomfortable
2014-12-09 22:57
It's perfectly find to go over your lines to give them some extra weight, that's the way I generally approach it.
Your organic forms with contour lines are pretty solid. I like your line quality too, they flow quite nicely. Your dissections look pretty good too, though your surface textures were rather rushed. I like the orange/fruit quite a bit, and the dissection on the banana. Your snake skin's sloppy though - if you feel the need to rush through something, it's probably a good time to take a break. Leaving texture out might make something look a little bland, but rushing texture will make it look bad.
I did notice though that it looks like you may want to practice your circles/ellipses more. The globe came out badly shape-wise, but I'm really happy with the way you pushed through it and applied your texture and line weights without dwelling on the mistakes. Often people will try to correct something like that, and it usually just draws attention to the problem. The way you did it, it's noticeable, but it isn't shouting at me to look at it.
Now your form intersections... those things are bloody difficult, and they didn't go too well. I'm happy to see how many attempts you made on them - you're tenacious and persistent, qualities that will serve you well.
One major thing that I'd like to suggest is that you try not to work with objects that are "stretched". What I mean by this is long tubes, long boxes, things that feel like they've been stretched very much in one dimension. Instead, try to work with forms that are equal in size in all three dimensions - like a cube, or a sphere. When applying this to a cylinder, you'd end up with a somewhat fat looking cylinder.
In my mind, it reminds me of being a child and playing with oversized blocks, mashing them together to try and make something more complex. With forms like this, we don't end up worrying about the perspective we get when we make things too long. Instead we just draw a form on the page, on its own, then draw another beside it, and play with how they come together.
If you want to take a bit of a break from the form intersections, you may want to look at the 250 boxes challenge. I added the challenge specifically because people were having some trouble getting into the mindset of the form intersections, and it seems to have helped people out. The notes included in the challenge post are also quite relevant.
Once you feel ready to tackle it again, I'd like to see another two pages of form intersections. Good luck!
CtrlAltZdraw
2015-01-02 14:56
Tried again. http://imgur.com/a/wo3NA
Uncomfortable
2015-01-02 16:50
Biiig improvement in the general confidence of your constructions. Your lines and shapes are much more solid, so kudos for that.
There are still some issues that I'd like to fix before we move forwards, though. One is your spheres. Drawing circles is really difficult, so the likelihood of you nailing it the first time is really low. So, I recommend that you draw through the circle a couple times before lifting your pen. The first time you go around the circle, it'll be approximate (ie: incorrect), but those mistakes will inform the second time around. Your muscles will automatically correct some of the mistakes you made, resulting in a much better circle. Yes, it's messier, but we're interested in drawings that are correct, moreso than ones that are clean.
Secondly, the perspective on your boxes is a little bit off each time. The far plane of the box comes out a little bigger than the near plane, which directly contradicts the rules of perspective. It's not an uncommon mistake to make, but I strongly recommend doing the 250 box challenge to try and fix that. There are also a bunch of notes included in the challenge that might help.
I actually just looked back at my old response, and noticed that I recommended the 250 box challenge there as well. Deeefinitely give that a shot.
Here's a bit of an overdrawing to help explain the things I mentioned.
Once you've done the 250 box challenge, submit to me one more page of intersections. I'm not sure if you've seen this, but in the last month I created a step by step on how I approach the form intersections. It might also be of some help.
CtrlAltZdraw
2015-01-05 00:26
The micron 05 ran out of ink, so did these with 03.
250 boxes http://imgur.com/a/jH49t
intersections http://i.imgur.com/cyrqoCA.jpg
Uncomfortable
2015-01-05 00:32
You made a considerable amount of progress with those boxes. For the intersections, I definitely see a lot of blank space, but I'll mark it as complete anyways :P
I've never really been fond of microns, but if they work for you, then that's all that matters.
Ajynn
2014-12-09 23:23
Hey there! This set of exercises took me a little longer because I had to figure out how some of the shapes intersect and how to draw the different connections between all of them (still not satisfied, but I had a lot of "A-ha!" moments). I ended up doing at least 40 pages, but i just threw the warm-up sketches away (mostly out of frustration... :P)
But here it is - my homework. I also included two pages of boxes, because in the last lesson you told me to be more confident with my lines (and now I'm starting the 250 boxes challange). As always - sorry for the photo quality, I need to get a hold on a scanner.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-09 23:44
Holy crap, those boxes are really good. It looks like it must have taken forever, considering the precision. I'd have almost thought you were using a ruler, if I hadn't taken a closer look. Very nice!
Also, don't worry about finding a scanner - the photos are perfect. Strangely enough, often the easiest to critique have been photos - often people who use scanners use the wrong settings and it ends up coming out almost looking digital. For me, these photos are ideal.
Okay, onto the lesson critique.
Your organic forms with contour lines are looking pretty good. Nice volumes, and for the most part your contour lines are curving around the edge of the form nicely. In a few instances they flatten out a bit around the edges though (mostly on page 4). The previous page is much, much better. So more of page 3, less of page 4. The rest of the organic forms are looking pretty good.
.. I'm still flipping through them. I honestly thought I'd reached the end, but.. they just keep going. My goodness you're thorough. Okay, I'm at the dissections now. It appears you might be somewhat disturbed. Good!
I like the variety of experiments. The forms and volumes are all good, and I'm glad to see thickness around the edges of the cuts. In the future though, you should look at photo reference whenever you try and put texture to a surface. Reason being, right now you're relying very heavily on your imagination, and the part of your imagination that stores visual information regarding the smaller details, isn't as developed as it eventually will be. We develop this part of our brain by pulling information from reference material. The more you do that, the less you'll have to rely on it - but most of the time we'll still look at a whole lot of reference, even if we don't necessarily need to.
Great work with the form intersections! I usually recommend that people stay away from the longer, stretched forms (long tubes, long boxes, etc) because they start bringing perspective into the mix. Still, despite that added complication, you pulled it off quite well.
Onwards, to lesson 3!
Ajynn
2014-12-09 23:53
Thank you very much for the critique (I'm impressed how fast you reply :o)! I'll get to the third lesson as quick as I can.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-09 23:55
Hahaha, yeah, I'd actually just gotten back from work and I finished critiquing one that had been submitted a few hours prior. By the time I was done, yours and another showed up in my inbox. The fuckers are multiplying!
blizz79
2014-12-13 01:12
Hello, here is my second set of exercises. Sorry about the duplicate images in my album. I am having issues with imgur, for some reason. I find the spheres fairly tricky to keep from looking to flat.
http://imgur.com/a/sepBV
Uncomfortable
2014-12-13 02:25
Okay, I'm kind of baffled. Your first two pages - the organic forms with contour lines - were really very good, especially the second page. You're getting the volumes, your line weights are interesting, your lines flow very nicely, etc. Then you move into the dissections - which are 90% the same exercise as the first, and it all falls apart. What you nailed in the first one is completely missing in the first part.
What happened? I'm thinking that you may have gotten overwhelmed with the idea of the exercise, perhaps the fact that you're drawing (somewhat) concrete objects rather than seemingly abstract forms. This sort of thing is what shuts the brain down, and is often the reason a lot of people find it difficult to draw.
It's also the main problem that these lessons try to target - stopping people from feeling overwhelmed.
Here's a few notes/overdrawings of your first page of organic forms. You did pretty well, but there's some issues with how you handle the end of the form, and sometimes you aren't quite wrapping the contour line around the form entirely.
I also did a quick demo of how you could turn one of your forms from exercise 1 into a dissection. Try doing another two pages of dissections, starting them off as the organic forms with contour lines, and then taking them further into dissections. Dealing with these things step by step - and not worrying beyond the step you're on - might help.
Your form intersections will need work as well, but don't worry about those right now. I'll tackle that critique once we've taken care of the dissections and increased your comfort level in that area.
blizz79
2014-12-13 05:01
Thank you for the feedback. You are correct that I get overwhelmed when drawing the physical objects. I'm so much looser when drawing the abstract objects. It feels like there's so much more room for error.
Here are the 2 pages of abstract dissections.
http://imgur.com/a/LyctD
Uncomfortable
2014-12-14 02:29
That is definitely looking WAY better. The forms look voluminous and full, like they swell into 3D space. Just a couple things to add to that - minor touches. First off, in page one you have an open hole in one of your dissections. When you do that, it's usually best to add a little bit of thickness around the edge of the hole. The way you've got it, it's looking paper thin - which you COULD be going after, but chances are you just meant for it to be a regular hole. A little bit of thickness usually looks far better anyway, since it helps the brain process how this form could exist. Were it paper thin, it probably couldn't support its own weight. The other thing is just that when you're putting in textures for the different dissected pieces, looking at reference imagery and just pulling out that sort of texture detail and embedding it into your image is a great way to push the believability and realism in your drawing. This applies all across the board, and this particular exercise is a great way to practice it.
Still, great improvement.
Next there's the form intersections. Again, I think you're getting overwhelmed. Usually at this stage I'd recommend skipping over to the 250 box challenge. The reason this has helped people is because it demystifies these forms. Really, all you're doing is drawing one individual form at a time - and then you draw another beside it. Worrying about how you're going to build them all and put them all together is troublesome, and pointless. Just attack it one at a time.
So, the challenge is probably a great place to start, since it's all about attacking one reasonably simple form from all sorts of different angles, each isolated and on its own. The challenge post also includes some extra notes that should help.
When you do end up going back to the form intersections though, avoid forms that stretch in one dimension. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. When you start stretching a lot, you throw in more emphasis on the perspective, and that's really not what we're interested in right now. Large, equilateral forms (like a cube in the context of a box - all the dimensions are equal in size), are our best bet. Like playing with big children's blocks. You start with drawing, say, a cube in the middle of your page. Then maybe you decide you're going to draw another cube beside it, but it just so happens they're overlapping (intersecting) a bit. That presents a problem, which you solve by investigating how they intersect with one another. Then you draw another form, and so on.
But yeah. Boxes first!
Uncomfortable
2014-12-14 03:42
When answering another person's questions about form intersections, I wrote up another set of bonus notes that would definitely be of use to you. More of a step by step for approaching form intersections.
Domdomtom
2014-12-13 05:35
I've done the homework up until the form intersection part, I'm finding lots of difficulty with. I did some practice of small bits here and there. I'm wondering if you could tell me if I'm missing something or if I'm the right track, etc.
http://imgur.com/a/NQePF
Also, do you have any advice on intersection two round objects? I think I understand intersecting hard objects (cube, prism) into round objects (sphere, cylinder). I don't really understand intersecting cylinders and spheres.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-14 03:41
They're not looking particularly great, though you're on the right track. The problem isn't so much with your understanding of space and intersections, it's more how you're approaching them.
Don't draw them so small. In general, don't draw things tiny, it comes out really timid looking. Be confident! Drawing seems to be a lot like dating, now that I think about it...
Don't think about how your form's going to intersect with what's already on the page before you draw it. Draw the form (in full, draw THROUGH the form, don't worry about what gets blocked out and what doesn't) and then decide how it intersects with the other forms.
For now, avoid really long shapes (long tubes, long boxes, etc). They bring perspective too much into the mix, and it just complicates things.
One set per page. Draw a form, draw another form and connect them, then another and intersect those, and another, and another, until the page is full. No individual little segregated communities of forms in different school districts and racial barriers. Free, inclusive societies only! ... for 3D forms!
It's about time - I finally created a step by step explanation of how to deal with form intersections. It's one of the hardest things we deal with in these lessons, I should have done it sooner.
Also, as for your question - I didn't really know, to be honest. So, I did a bit of research (mostly googling) and came up with these cylinder/sphere intersections.
Domdomtom
2014-12-15 06:42
Thanks for the reply!
http://imgur.com/a/dmDYj
I decided to just post what I have so far. I took into consideration the advice you gave me, but as you can see I still don't understand the intersection part very well. I guess you'll be seeing more form intersections from me very soon =P
Uncomfortable
2014-12-16 00:31
You're showing some improvement over the course of the organic forms with contour lines. They start off rather flat (the contour lines don't really wrap around the forms). As you progress, I can see that you correct that, so the later ones (page 4) look much better. Drawing the full ellipses definitely helped.
Your dissections are kind of weak, though - you revert back to flattening them out as you did at the beginning of the previous exercise. They should simply extend from the organic forms. Draw an organic form, and then once that's finished, you can turn it into a dissection. That said, your second page of dissections also looks better. It seems that at first you reverted to drawing them flatter, but as you got used to it, you corrected some of your mistakes.
The form intersections are... they're not awful. They're not great either, but while the execution leaves something to be desired, the underlying understanding you're demonstrating is decent.
The biggest problem is your spheres, they're making the rest of it look bad. You're trying to draw the circle in a single motion, and just like the rest of us, you're not skilled enough to do so. Instead you have to resort to drawing around the circular motion a couple times. Practicing your ellipse exercise from lesson 1 as a warmup will also help. See how I tackle the circles in the top right corner? It both helps me practice more effectively, and also results in a more generally correct circle. It's messier, and won't be suitable for a proper illustration, but these are all just exercises.
Do one more page of form intersections, keeping all that in mind, and going over the links I provided in my last response. Draw your forms a little bigger, and make them more equilateral. Avoid long, stretched forms (like lengthy tubes or long boxes) and stick to forms that are equal in all three dimensions.
Also, is there a particular reason you're avoiding doing these exercises in ink?
Domdomtom
2014-12-16 05:55
Only the first two pages of the organic forms are in pencil. The rest of them are in ballpoint. I didn't have a pen on me until i got home when I first started the exercise
Uncomfortable
2014-12-16 15:47
Ahh, I see. Sometimes it's hard to tell pencil and ballpoint apart in photos and scans, so I always have to be vigilant.
Domdomtom
2015-01-08 21:13
I wasn't sure if you missed my last post, or if you just hadn't gotten to it yet. I've been waiting for 23 days, so I wasn't sure what was happening. I'll just repost this again I guess.
http://imgur.com/a/GVhxU
I tried following the tips you provided, and I feel a little more comfortable with the intersections. I'm not sure if that's evident though...
Also, I left question marks on some intersections because I'm not sure if I did those ones correctly.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-08 21:33
Sorry about that. I tend to get inundated with homework, usually at least 5 a night, so every now and then things do fall through the cracks. Looks like you were one of the unlucky few! It's perfectly fine if you don't hear back from me for two or three days, to send me a PM.
These are much better than before. The spheres could use a bit of work, but the rest looks great. Nice work drawing through all the forms.
ohmygezuz23
2014-12-14 00:09
Well I was finally able to finish this lesson after doing it off and on for three weeks I ended up doing more than required until i felt comfortable with each. I also wasnt quite getting the dissections until i started doing them from real objects. The intersection were a real pain i had do them in pencil first and seperate before I did them in ink.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-14 04:20
Your organic forms with contour lines are really well done. I like the flow of the forms, and they all feel like they carry great volume. Your dissections are quite interesting too. With the fish, the only thing that bugs me is the fact that the skin is paper thin. I did this explanation for someone earlier this evening, it applies very much here. Always add just a touch of thickness, it'll really help sell the drawing. Still, I really like your different subjects. All the different textures are really neat.
I'm not terribly pleased to hear that for the form intersections, you did them in pencil first. Try to avoid that in the future, because while it may help you succeed at the assignment, it defeats the purpose of working in ink at all. You've got to build the confidence that will allow you to work in pen as comfortably as you would in pencil.
That said, page 4, and even moreso page 3 came out very well. One thing that definitely needs improvement though is your use of hatching when you're shading. Depending on how you use it, it can very easily flatten out a drawing, even if everything else works towards successfully demonstrating volume and form. The reason for this is that every single line is interpreted as a tiny contour line. If it's flat, the surface will appear flat. Here's some notes explaining what I mean.
I would like you to do one more page of form intersections - strictly in ink, no preliminary pencil work. Try to follow these steps that I drew out this evening. Don't plan too far ahead, just draw a form on the page. Then draw another form. Once it's drawn in its entirety, THEN start making decisions of how it will intersect with the other one. Then repeat this process over and over.
ohmygezuz23
2014-12-15 02:21
I think I may have worded that wrong I meant I did the first two pages in pencil and the rest are all ink regardless I did another page and the hatching tip worked really well, thanks.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-15 02:33
Very nice! Onwards to the next lesson.
dranjo
2014-12-14 12:34
[Homework!]
(http://imgur.com/a/SeA9t)
Please take a look! I noticed that my contours started becoming more flat when I started on the dissections :(
The from intersections were really difficult! I had to think for really long before I started drawing, and I definitely made a few mistakes along the way. It was certainly a learning experience though.
Thank you for your time!
Uncomfortable
2014-12-14 17:11
Your dissections (mostly) look fine to me. I really like them, actually, they're very creative and explore all different sorts of objects. Similarly, your organic forms came out very full and voluminous, which is definitely what we're after.
Your form intersections are remarkably well done. You made some choices that I wouldn't have (for example, using a lot of stretched shapes like long tubes and long boxes that make things more complicated by emphasizing perspective too much) but you still handled them pretty well. The last page is a bit weaker, but the first two are quite strong.
I drew these notes yesterday, a step-by-step on how to approach the form intersections. Though you did them well, I figure they might help just a bit, if you were curious as to how I approach them.
Feel free to move onto lesson 3!
dranjo
2014-12-14 18:07
Thank you for the swift critique! The perspective felt comfortable to do since I had to draw 250 boxes in perspective :) the fruits of labor are showing!
I will move on to lesson 3 now. Thank you for your time.
AyaWind
2014-12-17 15:52
http://imgur.com/a/ILBBs my second homework! Sorry I took a real long break before I gotten around to doing this, college sucks. I think page 3&4 were terrible... mainly because I was trying out some new pen/markers :(
Also pretty proud of my form intersections, albeit for a few mistakes :D
Uncomfortable
2014-12-17 23:33
Welcome back!
Your organic forms with contour lines are looking quite good. The first page of dissections is alright as well, though the second falls flat. I've noticed this a lot with other people, that they'll do really well with the organic forms, but the dissections don't work out as well - despite essentially being the same thing. When approaching things like that, remember that the dissection is basically taking the organic form one step further - so first, you draw the organic form, put in your contour lines, and then worry about how to dissect it. It's very easy to get overwhelmed by the concerns of detail that are involved in later steps, but you have to work towards ignoring them, and focusing only on the step you're on. This becomes more important as you move onto the next lessons.
Your form intersections start off kind of meh, but by the end they're pretty good. I like seeing that kind of progression, it shows that the practice is paying off. One thing you should keep an eye on though is your ellipses. Sometimes they're alright, but especially when you're working with a sphere, an ellipse that's off can have a big impact. Definitely keep up with doing those first two exercises from lesson 1 as warm-ups.
Anywho, you're more or less ready to move onto lesson 3.
AyaWind
2014-12-18 03:03
thank you for your comments! I know my dissections ain't good but I think I get the gist of it. I'll slowwwwly move on to lesson 3, thanks once again :)
Sephirenn
2014-12-18 14:48
Hello!
Here's my homework for Lesson 2!
As others have been saying, the form intersection was really tough. I actually found a quick online program tinkercad.com to test what some shape intersections looked like (hope that's not cheating!). I didn't build out my structures there or anything, I just used it to see how specific shapes interacted.
Thanks again for putting all of this together, although it takes me a while to finish these exercises, it is really some good fun.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-18 22:44
Fantastic work on the organic forms and the dissections. You carried the volume through very well on both exercises, and I like all of the different kinds of textures you experimented with. You were definitely willing (and eager) to get into the tedium of it all - that will definitely serve you well in the future.
The form intersections were definitely the weakest section - and as you said, they are friggin' hard. There's a few things in your approach that I would definitely like to see changed.
One thing we want to try and emphasize throughout all these lessons is confidence. People have a tendency to start off timidly, carefully, afraid to ruin the final drawing by being too sure at the get-go. This causes an artist to undermine their own strengths and it comes through into the final drawing.
I can see in your form intersections the fainter lines where you tried to draw through the forms. Drawing through the forms is great, but the way you approached it is not. At every step in a drawing, you should be focusing 100% on that step, as if it were the final step. Meaning, you if you're blocking in a sphere, you draw a solid circle (similar to how you'd do it for the ellipse exercises, going around the circle a couple times if need be - this should also help you achieve some better circles, since your spheres are definitely a weak point). You try and be neat, but what's most important is getting a solid circle on the page.
Afterwards, you can pick which lines you'd like to emphasize with extra line weight - the ones you don't emphasize will automatically recede. You'll notice that the example I included in the lesson (from my own sketchbook - that is the homework I submitted to my instructor when I was doing this exercise) shows each line as quite visible. Nothing attempting to hide.
Secondly, while you were kind of drawing through the forms in that method, there are some forms that you didn't draw through entirely - for example, the pyramid at the bottom of page 8, the box at the top left of page 9, etc. Right now you're at a stage where you're not 100% sure of how these forms work in 3D space at different orientations, so draw through them as completely as you can. Admittedly, you did do this for a lot of the forms, so kudos for that.
Lastly, you are making this exercise harder on yourself than it needs to be. There's a lot of stretched forms that you're using - long tubes, long boxes, things that have been stretched significantly in one dimension. That puts an emphasis on perspective in the scene, and we don't really want to be bothering with that any more than we need to. So- instead, try sticking to forms that are more equilateral. Equal in all three dimensions. So for a box, something more cube-like. For a cylinder, a tube that is kind of squat, only as tall as it is wide. This way you can picture it as though you are playing with large blocks, and merely mashing them together.
As for that tinkercad thing - nice find! It's definitely perfectly okay to use 3D modeling software to find out how two forms might intersect in a given situation. There's at least a couple different kinds of intersections that I don't understand myself (usually involving curves) so I generally have to look that stuff up as well.
Anywho, I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections from you, keeping in mind the things I've mentioned above. I'm not sure if you saw this in the notes (I added it a week ago), but take a look at this step by step for form intersections. It might help with the whole idea of focusing on the step you're on, and keeping yourself from looking too far ahead.
Sephirenn
2014-12-23 16:33
Allrighty! I've listened to your tips and completed two more form intersections. I tried to draw the entire shapes before I went back and enphasized the intersections and overlaps. Hopefully this is more towards what you had in mind!
Here they are!
Thanks for the comments on the organic forms and dissections also. It is pretty amazing how interesting a simple shape can become once you add some simple contour lines to it!
Uncomfortable
2014-12-23 17:52
Big improvement. There's still room to get better, but I think you've definitely demonstrated the level of skill required for this lesson, so I'll mark it as complete.
One thing to note about the second page - the box in the centre of the construction is, well.. wrong. Perspective-wise, anyways. Your near-plane is smaller than the far-plane. Perspective dictates that the far plane, if it is the same size in 3D space as the near plane (which we know it to be, being a box and all), it will always appear smaller when drawn in 2D. Now we can sometimes get away with drawing it as the same size (because the eye is not an exact measuring tool), but we can never get away with it being larger. The eye will immediately pick up on something being off, even if it isn't sure what it is.
Just something to keep in mind! Anyways, if you feel at all uncomfortable with drawing forms at different rotations, there's always the 250 box challenge. Otherwise, feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Sephirenn
2014-12-24 16:55
Thanks! I noticed immediately when I had finished that center box that something was off, so I think I may go through the box exercise after all just to get a little more practice. Looking forward to lesson 3!!
NoddingKing
2014-12-20 00:49
It's been a little while since I've had time to sit down and draw, and I think it shows.
I don't think these came out particularly well, but it's good to at least be putting out work again.
Lesson 2.1
Uncomfortable
2014-12-20 01:28
The first page is better than the second, but I do think you're getting the idea. As you wrote along some of them, the contours aren't always quite curving enough to wrap around the form, but you are successfully conveying a sense of volume. Keep at it!
KingPizzaHead
2014-12-20 04:26
Alright here is my stuff for this lesson - http://imgur.com/a/O6v0L
Brain almost exploded with those intersections.
Man, that scanner of mine doesn't do any justice to the drawings.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-20 15:24
Great work! Your organic forms convey a good sense of volume, and the contour lines wrap nicely around them. Your dissections have done a good job of creeping the fuck out of me. Good volumes, nice experimentation with different textures, also great work with the pressure control. The ellipses you drew for your contour lines are faint and sometimes a little bit broken, but they follow through the shapes very well. Usually when they're so faint, they end up being tentative and timid - yours are confident, so that shows through into the final drawings. I really like the one you labelled 'wtf'... It was well earned.
Your form intersections are pretty good. I would like to see more drawing through of the forms, but they seem to be mostly correct. Usually I try to discourage using forms that are stretched in one dimension (long tubes, etc), because they complicate things and bring perspective more into the equation than what is ideal. Still, you handled it quite nicely.
I only noticed one obvious mistake: the cylinder in page 8 is backwards. The further end is larger than the closer one. The visible cap, as well, its ellipse is very.. pointy.
Overall though, very well done! Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Oh - I also noticed the vast difference between your previous lesson and this one. You were far more careful, and the thought you put behind every mark is very clear.
KingPizzaHead
2014-12-20 18:52
Oh I did draw though the forms in the intersections but the original drawing was really messy. I just did an overlay to polish things up so people could understand what was going on in the mess up ink on the page. Anyway, onward to plants!
Uncomfortable
2014-12-20 19:06
In the future, refrain from doing that. The lessons and exercises here aren't about making pretty drawings - there are a lot of benefits to not letting yourself do an overlay afterwards.
It helps me understand how you approached the drawings, allowing me to do give more helpful critiques
It helps you learn how to draw with a greater sense of purpose and direction. You end up having to think about every mark you make. You become more careful, and you also learn to bring the viewer's attention to certain lines over others, causing the original construction lines to recede.
KingPizzaHead
2014-12-20 21:27
Alright no overlays for me.
KingPizzaHead
2014-12-20 21:47
Here are the intersections I did without the overlay -
http://imgur.com/a/vdomp
Uncomfortable
2014-12-20 21:51
Ah, this is definitely much more interesting to look at. If you'd simply gone over them to thicken the important lines (as you did on your overlay), they would have been just about perfect.
KingPizzaHead
2014-12-20 22:07
But...but...but the overlay. The overlay is so much cleaner!! Eh suit yourself, no arguing with the teacher.
Uncomfortable
2014-12-20 22:38
Haha, eventually you'll come to understand what I mean. The whole dynamic sketching curriculum that this lesson leads into is all about visual communication. It's a really important skill that is very useful in just about all facets of representational art. When your goal is to communicate a concept for something that exists in 3D space, you may find yourself needing to throw in elements that aren't actually there to further emphasize your points. Contour lines are a great example of this.
But then again, I personally just really like looking at the raw stuff when it's done well!
KingPizzaHead
2014-12-20 22:42
Hmm I kinda get what you're saying. Maybe I'll get it when I finish all of the lessons.
[deleted]
2014-12-21 21:58
Here is my submission
Holy crap intersections are hard. I found myself drawing intersections that made absolutely no sense. I think I started to get the hang of it though...
Uncomfortable
2014-12-21 22:54
Overall, you did good. Your organic forms with contour lines, as well as your dissections, are very well done. They show great volume, they feel very three-dimensional. Your dissections are really interesting, too.
As far as understanding space goes, your form intersections are well done. The intersection part of it has mistakes but despite the name of the exercise, that's not the focus. Rather, it's more about learning how objects can exist in the same 3D space, and how they can relate to each other in terms of orientation, position and scale.
For that, you showed strong understanding. However...
I am very against how you approached it, with the dashed lines. It shows a preoccupation with the quality of the final drawing. When you look too far ahead, you do not pay the appropriate amount of attention to the step you're currently on. As such, your forms don't come out as well as they could. A great example of this is your spheres.
Draw your forms out completely. Solid lines, using the techniques for ellipses and lines that we covered in the last lesson. As soon as you start using dashed lines, your brain starts doing the drawing, because the flow becomes broken up. What we want is for your brain to tell your muscles what you want, and your muscles to concern themselves with how the shapes are drawn.
At the end of the day, these are all exercises. They are expected to be messy. Gradually you will learn how to bring the viewer's attention to specific lines, and make your construction lines recede and even disappear. Here's an example by my instructor, Peter Han. All of the construction lines are there, and they're solid, but you can barely even make them out.
Anyways! Despite my rant, you did pretty well. Just keep that construction drawing thing in mind, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
[deleted]
2014-12-21 23:16
I definitely think that's my lack of confidence showing. I definitely think I'll practice this exercise a few more times before going on. No dashed lines!! :)
jpbouzas
2014-12-22 19:56
Uff! Finally here is my homework.
This lesson was much more difficult than the last one I have to say, but I like it because it forced me to go out of the comfort zone.
I did a lot of sheets of organic forms but still didn't like it at all, and dissections too.
The intersections exercise is very exhausting for me, but it improved a lot my perspective skills. I will try to make more of this exercise to warm up and practice every day. Thanks again Uncomfortable for your work :)
Uncomfortable
2014-12-23 00:30
You've done pretty well.
For the organic forms with contour lines, the vast majority of them are good. There are a few where the contour lines don't wrap around the form properly (to varying degrees). Bottom left of page 2, for example, is probably the worst of the lot. On the top left of that same page, I really like how you've drawn through the full ellipses. A lot of people skip that step, but it's very important. If you ever find yourself struggling with the contour lines, go back to doing that for a bit, and it should set you straight. Still, in general they're quite good!
Your dissections are alright. The forms are drawn well, and I like the attention to layers in the dissections themselves - for example, the thickness of the coconut shell, or the layer of the fish skin. Your textures leave a bit to be desired. This is definitely a great time to look at photo reference, and use it to inform the kind of details you work into your textures. Try to avoid random scribbles, like on the coconut, and try and show intent and forethought behind every mark you make. All that said, I really like the surface texture on the object above and to the left of the fish. It's simple, subtle, but attractive. Reminds me of a cucumber.
On the following page, the other fish-like-thing largely went wrong because you over did it with the texture, and applied it as though the object was flat. You've got to remember that as the form turns, the scale texture will also turn and will grow somewhat denser around the sides. Furthermore, putting in all that detail must have been very tiresome for you - and unfortunately, it made the whole drawing far too busy and noisy. A drawing needs to direct the viewer's eye around, using focal points (areas of high detail or contrast) and rest areas (areas of empty space with very little detail or information). You can use these concepts to save yourself some time (it gives you an excuse not to render the crap out of everything). I go more into this sort of thing in the future lessons.
Your form intersections have been done well, but I see that you drew them in pencil originally and then went over it with ink. Unfortunately, that runs a little contrary to some of the things I'm trying to teach. Our focus here is not on the quality or attractiveness of the resulting drawing, but rather the steps that bring us to completion. Every step requires the artist's full attention - some people will have a habit of looking ahead, and tweaking their approach so the end result is cleaner. I'm trying to break that habit, for now. It'll come in handy later on, but only once you know what you're doing. For now it's getting in the way.
I'd like you to do one more page of form intersections, from start to finish, in ink. I want to see you draw through each form - including the lines that are hidden. Basically, approach it by drawing a form in the centre of your page in its entirety. Then draw another form nearby, in its entirety. Then decide whether they intersect, and how that occurs. This decision places them in relation to each other.
This step by step I included in the bonus content section of this lesson goes over that process. Also, you may want to avoid drawing long forms that are stretched in one direction - like long tubes and such. You've actually handled them quite well (most people have difficulty with it since it makes perspective a far larger concern than it really needs to be for this exercise). Equilateral forms (more or less equal in all three dimensions) are way easier to deal with.
jpbouzas
2014-12-23 01:04
Thank you very very much for the critique, yes I have kind of trouble with texture, I'm not quite skilled yet to apply it succesfully.
With the interseccions I'm sorry for using pencil first, I'll try now exclusively with ink!
jpbouzas
2014-12-23 01:40
I made one more page of intersections but I feel quite strange about it, probably tomorrow I'll try another page (only using ink).
Here it is
Uncomfortable
2014-12-23 01:55
I think you're going in the right direction. There are some mistakes here and there, but I think overall you're getting the idea. I'll mark this lesson as complete.
jpbouzas
2014-12-23 02:00
Thak you, I still be practising this two lessons to get more confident with fundamentals :)
[deleted]
2014-12-27 01:55
Here's my homework for lesson 2! http://imgur.com/a/dVHwS
Had a lot of trouble with intersections and some trouble understanding the forms, but i think i understand better now and again thanks for the lessons!
Uncomfortable
2014-12-27 03:01
Well done! The last two sets of form intersections were quite well done. I really liked your dissections as well - they show some improvement over the organic forms, which are a little hit-and-miss. Some are very well done, while others flatten out something dreadful.
When it comes to those contour lines, always remember to wrap nicely around the form, especially when you reach the edge. For example, the bottom right of page 1 was very well done, while the one just above it is awful. More were done well than not, however, and you show a marked improvement as you progress.
I really liked the dissection at the middle-top of page 3, with all of the little layers and folds. Very interesting, and very well executed! Some of your other subject matters were pretty clever too - the mouse, the sketchbook. That poor frog - great attention to its innards!
I think you're definitely ready to move onto lesson 3, so go ahead with that whenever you feel comfortable.
[deleted]
2014-12-27 03:52
Haha yeah the first two pages of forms left something to be desired. The contour lines didn't really click with me for a while until the second page.
Thanks for the comments and tips i'll keep them in mind! :D
ArtistMW
2015-01-02 14:59
Hi Uncomfortable! I hope you're enjoying your new year.
Here's my work for lesson 2: http://imgur.com/a/pN8zS
Please let me know what you think I need to improve on.
Thank you!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-02 16:55
Overall, you did a good job. Early on, your organic forms with contour lines are a little bit hit-or-miss. None of them are really incorrect, but some of them feel a little weird (3, 5). Others are far better, such as 1, 8 and all those on page 3.
Speaking of page 3 - the way you applied the line weights is... EHH. The principles are correct, I'm just not a fan of the way the line weights come up out of nowhere, jumping from thin to super thick. #8 was an excellent example of how to apply line weights, try to stick to that. When the weights get too dramatically thick, it starts to look rather stylized.
Your dissections are done well. Lots of interesting cuts, lots of nice surface textures. Your animals look really cool, and I love the dissection on the shark.
Your form intersections are well done. The line weights get really distracting, so on the surface they don't look great, but after a bit of focusing, I can tell that structurally they are quite good. Your lines are straight, your perspective looks solid, etc. Good job.
Keep that line weight stuff in mind, but feel free to move onto the next lesson when you feel ready.
Mero1
2015-01-03 16:33
Here's my submission! It took a while to complete in between holidays, specially if we account for my semi-comatose state from eating so much, but I did it.
I really liked doing the dissections, and the form intersections were a pain at first, but, as with the last lesson, I feel like the last try was definetly better than the first (in this case I think it shows even more).
So, that's it! I hope you like it.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-03 17:59
I'm glad you enjoyed the exercise.
Overall, you're grasping some of the concepts, but certain things are slipping past you. Actually, it's really just one thing. You need to draw through your forms, because for now, you're not able to fully visualize what the entire forms look like - including the sides you cannot see.
First off, in the organic forms with contour lines, there are a lot of instances where your contour lines are not wrapping around the form completely. Every now and then, they're more or less straight. This is because your'e skipping the second step in my lesson - drawing the contour lines as ellipses. Eventually you'll be able to skip straight to step 3, but for now you need to be drawing full ellipses for your contour lines, so you can carry through the proper curves.
This applies heavily to your form intersections as well - which all in all, weren't too bad. The bigger issue is that you were doing a lot of guess-work, rather than discovering and understanding. Forget about drawing clean and tidy things - we have no interest in those. We are focusing on gaining an understanding of forms and how they interact in 3D space.
From the lesson notes (which you should always read carefully), there's this step by step form intersection demo that I added a month ago. Follow that process, but you may want to draw through the forms even more - for example, all 8 lines that compose a box. Treat them all as wireframes.
Another thing that might help with your form intersections is to try to avoid forms that are stretched in one dimension. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. Stick to objects that are more 'equilateral', more or less the same size in every dimension. This allows us to focus on the forms themselves without bringing added perspective complications.
Last of all, your dissections were nice, though I'd strongly recommend looking at photo reference when applying surface textures. It's a good habit to get into, as it helps build your visual library, and also gets you used to the idea that the information you currently carry in your mind is a simplified version of what things actually look like.
Anywho- I'd like to see you do one more page of organic forms with contour lines, one more page of dissections and two more pages of form intersections, keeping in mind the things I mentioned above.
Mero1
2015-01-04 23:22
Here you go!
I hope it's what you're looking for. For the first set, I actually did draw through the forms for the intersections, but I used an hb pencil and then erased it. This time I did it first with the pen only and didn't get very far, then I did it with coloured pencils and had a more productive time.
I'm having a problem with the Staedtler I bought tho. I don't know if it's faulty or if I'm using it wrong, but everytime I try to make lines fast, the ink doesn't come out right, so I keep having to draw as slowly as I can, and my lines end up being all squiggly and wrong. I bought two 0.5 pens and I have this problem with both, so I'm guessing I'm not really using it right. I also tried a Faber Castell and had the same result. I tried holding it upright, tilted, all the ways, and I can't move it very fast across the paper or pass it over the same line over and over or it stops working (this was a big problem with the first line exercise).
Uncomfortable
2015-01-04 23:47
The organic forms with contour lines are much better. Your dissections are alright, though using some photo reference to help inform your surface textures would have been nice. Try to do that more in the future.
I'm not really sure why your pens aren't flowing well. Based on the results I see, they seem to be okay. I do remember my instructor telling us to keep the staedtlers upright when drawing with them (though I found that to be a little hit-and-miss). Sometimes keeping them at an angle was actually a little helpful for keeping my initial draw-throughs and lay-ins from being too noticable. Still, you mentioned that you tried drawing with them upright, so I'm not sure.
You ignored this part of my last critique, and your drawings suffered for it. Still, your drawings are somewhat improved, and I have a greater sense of your understanding of form in 3D space.
It's a little weird though how thick your lines are coming out in the form intersections. They seem fine everywhere else, but here they're super thick. Did you switch to a thicker pen?
While your forms are better, since you're having trouble with drawing through your forms in ink, I'm not going to let you move forward just yet. That is a core element in all of the Dynamic Sketching lessons (3-6) so you need to get a handle on that.
Draw your forms large, and make sure to follow the principles in the step-by-step I included in my previous critique (which was from the lesson notes). Focus on each form individually, and then simply add another and then decide how they intersect. Ellipses should always be drawn in a smooth motion, not a bunch of smaller overlapping lines. Same with long, straight lines.
Practice your form intersections until you feel you are more comfortable with drawing them completely in ink. Then show me the ones you feel that show you've grasped the concepts.
Mero1
2015-01-05 00:38
I did use a much thicker pilot pen for the form intersection because the staedtler wouldn't work over pencil for some reason. I should probably buy some new ones.
I did try to avoid the stretched dimension in the dissections, but the first few ones went that way almost on their own. I had some trouble trying to make 3D objects without making them long and going off into the distance, but I tried to force myself to come up with some that wouldn't go that way, such as the snake adn the bottle.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-05 00:42
In that case, look into doing the 250 box challenge. Before you start it, look at the notes I've included there, and some of the stuff other people have submitted.
Mero1
2015-01-16 04:08
Took a while, but I think I finally did it...maybe...^ohgodpleaseberight
Here are three of the countless tries I did. Obviously, there are some perspective mistakes and the lines are all wiggly and the elipses suck, but I think the intersections themselves are much better than before. And I finally figured the staedtler out, it's been much more fun drawing without having to figure the pen out.
I'm currently at box 100 of the 250 box challenge, it's coming slowly, but it's coming. Maybe I should post what I have so far so I have feedback for the rest? Would you take a look at it?
Anyways, I appreciate all the time you're taking doing this for all of us in this subreddit. You rock!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-16 04:15
Looks like they're more or less correct. This mistake did jump out at me, but overall they're much better than before, so I'll be marking the lesson as completed.
For the boxes, post them when they're complete. It's a little easier for me to give feedback once for the whole set, rather than doing so multiple times. It does mean that you might end up making the same mistake for 250 boxes instead of just those first 100, but these days I have far many critiques to do per day to look at things that are half done.
ambrdst
2015-01-04 20:36
I finally got some new pens and feel way less frustrated now that I'm not smudging ink all over the place. Here's my homework for this lesson: http://imgur.com/a/OKCFt
Things I noticed: On the organic forms, I have trouble predicting where my contour lines should stop and end up with a little flick at the end of them. I really enjoyed the dissections (as most other people here it seems). The shape intersections gave me the most trouble. The first full page set I did, I broke down and used a pencil after some false starts (not pictured) to figure out how stuff worked. The next two I did just in pen without reference and found my lines to be really shaky. For the last one, I played with some 3D models in Blender to get a better idea of what was going on and try to make my lines more confident.
I should mention I'm left handed, so on each page, my first forms are on the right and I finish off on the left.
I'm looking forward to your feedback, thanks so much!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-04 21:26
Not bad. Your organic forms with contour lines are well done. Your dissections are alright as well, though I'd strongly recommend that this is a situation where you should try to rely on reference images to pull in some nice surface detail. This early on, we cannot really rely too heavily on our imaginations, largely because what we carry with us in our minds is often a gross oversimplification of detail. By pulling that kind of information from reference images - what a fish's scales look like, what kind of textures you might see on internal organs, etc. - you can create much more interesting imagery.
For your form intersections, they were ultimately done well, but I'm concerned about your process. Looking at reference, using 3D and all is perfectly fine, though what I'm most concerned about is the fact that you seem to be concerned with the final drawing. I see this in the fact that you used pencil, then went over it with pen (as you explained in your post).
Don't worry about what the final drawing looks like. Concern yourself with understanding the forms themselves. Draw through them entirely, including the lines and faces that would be occluded by other forms, and the form itself.
I had included this step by step in the lesson notes. Every form should be included completely, and confidently - and in ink, so I can fully understand your approach.
I'm still going to mark this as complete, because it does seem like you understand the concept - but keep this all in mind for the next lessons. The construction is the most important thing I want to see in these lessons, not the final drawing.
ambrdst
2015-01-04 21:36
Ah I didn't realize we were supposed to be realistic with the dissections in any way. I must have misunderstood.
I'll practice the intersections a bit more. I felt like I was getting more hesitant and shaky drawing through them because the number of lines going on completely disoriented me, but maybe that won't be as big an issue now that I understand how they interact a bit better.
As always, thank you for your great feedback!
aaylmao
2015-01-04 22:27
Took me some time for this one; anyway, here's my HW:
http://imgur.com/a/1qhUS#BZpe3xy
Had some trouble with the intersection, but personally, I think it turned out alright. Oh, and happy new year too!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-04 22:40
Your second pages of things are generally better, as far as the organic forms and the dissections go. This shows that you're learning from the exercises, and understanding them better as you go along.
My only concern are your form intersections. You're treating these things too delicately, like you're too concerned with the final drawing, and not the understanding of the forms themselves. Draw through your forms. The result wasn't bad, but this is more of an issue of mindset that will ultimately cause problems for you in later lessons.
I'm not sure if you saw my step-by-step in the lesson notes, but here it is again. You may want to take it further than that, and draw the lines of each form that are blocked out by its other planes (for example, drawing all eight lines that make up a box). This is about understanding how forms interact in 3D space.
I would like to see one more page of form intersections. Try to follow my step-by-step process.
aaylmao
2015-01-05 00:07
Following your advice, I have extended each shapes:
http://i.imgur.com/OkKWkgh.jpg
However, I've got to admit that doing so can make the intersection line harder to find, even after adding extra line weight on them.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-05 00:12
It's much, much better. Ultimately despite being part of the exercise's name, I don't actually care that much about the intersections. It's more about whether or not you can draw a bunch of forms and have them exist together within the same 3D space. And you can, so congrats - this lesson is complete.
ffflay
2015-01-05 01:24
Lesson 2 done!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-05 02:01
Fantastic work on everything! That squid tentacle gives be the heebiejeebies. Your organic forms carry a nice sense of volume, your dissections have great detail and your form intersections are solid. Lesson complete!
ffflay
2015-01-05 11:09
Sweet, thanks man. :)
I've got a job that I need to finish, so it might be a little while before I get lesson 3 done.
[deleted]
2015-01-06 00:45
http://imgur.com/a/BySeg
I had a ton of fun with the first part of the homework. The dissections were a little tough, especially when I tried to draw from life. I really enjoyed creating from whenever happened on the paper. Just making shapes and seeing how they come together. But yeah, I could really use some pointers on the dissections.
I'll be doing the form intersections tomorrow, along with more dissections. I murdered my back over the weekend and have pretty terrible posture when drawing. I wanted to make sure I got some pointers before I started on dissections again, though.
Edit: Lemme know if I should retake the pictures. I just realized how poor the lighting is.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-06 03:45
Hm... I can see that you're struggling a fair bit with these, though not for any lack of effort on your part. I commend the amount of practice you've thrown at this.
For now, I'd like to see another page of the organic forms with contour lines - but don't try to add to your line weights or anything like that, and don't try to make any of your preliminary lines overly faint. Draw each shape, each line as though it is intended to be visible in the final result.
What I mean is, when people sketch they have a tendency to be somewhat timid with their lay-ins, so their ellipses sometimes go a bit out of whack, or their lines become broken or too faint. The energy isn't there, because in their minds it's still just the sketch - they're trying to avoid those first mistakes that usually occur.
Don't fall prey to that. Draw the ellipses like they're the star of the show. Also, please draw through them a couple times before lifting your pen, as you would when doing the ellipses exercise. Right now we want to focus most of all on capturing the correct curve.
Once we are able to figure out your organic forms, your dissections should start falling a little more into place. Usually when I do these dissections, I - as you said - just make shapes and forms and see what happens. Then, once my major forms are there (which is basically the exact same as an organic form with contour lines), I pick a chunk between two contour lines and decide, this is going to be my cut-out.
Then I just start thinking about what it looks like, what could fill that void. And that is when I start looking for reference images, to help inform some of my textural choices. Until that point, I'm just letting myself create freely, and explore.
[deleted]
2015-01-06 18:19
I thought some of those organic forms looked really cool when "cleaned up".
I will do this thing! I've really been enjoying this. :D
[deleted]
2015-01-12 17:54
http://imgur.com/a/WinKB
I'm really not a fan of these two pages. I'm going to give it another shot today. I really think I can do better.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-12 18:08
I'll critique your work once you feel that what you're submitting is the best you can do - and once you've completed tje form intersections. It's easier for me to critique the whole lesson in one sitting.
[deleted]
2015-01-12 18:40
Okay! Lots of practice shall be had!
thesadnman
2015-01-06 06:28
This is my Lesson 2. The intersections were SO tough. 250 box challenge will come as soon as I can find the time :)
Uncomfortable
2015-01-07 01:37
Nice work! Your organic forms with contour lines are looking good, the contour lines are wrapping nicely. Your first set of dissections were good, though a little boring. Once you've got your major forms set up, you might want to think about looking at some reference images to get some nice surface detail in there. Your second set was more interesting, but you could have definitely pushed the textures.
It's perfectly normal to struggle with the form intersections - they're very difficult. You definitely did improve as you went through them, especially when you started drawing through your forms. The only thing that really stands out to me right now is that your spheres are not round - this is because you're forgetting to draw through your circles a couple times before lifting your pen. Your first time around is rarely ever going to be spot on - but if you keep drawing around it once again without lifting the pen, your arm will try to correct it. We need some nice round spheres for this exercise, so be sure to keep drawing through.
When you get the chance (maybe after you've done some more ellipse exercises - drawing through those ellipses - and once you've had the chance to tackle the 250 box challenge), I'd like to see just one more page of form intersections, similar to how you did it in page 8.
thesadnman
2015-01-18 04:30
Here are some more sphere/ellipse exercises and another page of intersections.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-18 05:19
Looking good! I'll mark this lesson as complete.
Airward
2015-01-06 18:25
And here is my Lesson 2. I know that is not enough yet...
Uncomfortable
2015-01-07 01:49
Great work on the organic forms and the dissections. Your surface texturing is fantastic, and your forms give a great sense of volume.
For your form intersection, you're not doing too badly, but I'd like you to change your approach. Right now you're very focused on creating pretty final drawings. It was clear in your dissections (which admittedly look great), but that is definitely not the point in these lessons.
We're focusing entirely on structure and construction. The first step to move towards this is to put away your pencil. Don't draw in pencil, erase your mistakes, etc. before drawing over it all with pen. That has some impact on your technique, but more importantly it keeps you in that frame of mind where everything needs to be clean and tidy.
Take a look at this step-by-step form intersection guide, which was included in the lesson notes. I draw through all of my forms. I don't erase, I don't clean anything up. Instead, I think a lot about every mark I'm going to make - but if I make a mistake, no big deal.
I really like the little ellipse exercises you included, and quite frankly, it's a great way to warm up to doing the intersections. Most importantly, you draw through your ellipses a couple times before lifting your pen. Do the same when you're doing the intersections themselves - that way you can get a much better shape to your forms.
Putting away the pencil is tough, but I know you have it in you - and I think adapting to that method of drawing and thinking is what will really take your current work and kick it up to the next level.
So - I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections, all in ink, drawn through every form as you saw in my example. If you'd like another example, check out this and this. They're not perfect by any means, there's plenty of mistakes with the lines and such. But in terms of construction, I can tell that the artist could visualize those forms in their head, and that they understood how they worked in 3D space.
Airward
2015-01-07 10:04
Thanks a lot! I was thinking about this a lot myself, that maybe I'm not suppose to use pencil and here you go.
Thanks again for all the feedback, advice and support.
Back to work.
Airward
2015-01-07 15:00
And my two pages of intersections.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-07 23:41
These are much better. I'm still a little dubious about how faint the construction lines/draw throughs are, you should be drawing them with more confidence. That said, it came out well, so I'll mark this lesson as complete.
headcrab1991
2015-01-09 03:33
And here is my Lesson 2 :)
Uncomfortable
2015-01-09 03:53
Lets finish dealing with lesson 1 first. Once I've marked that lesson as complete, you can look back on your lesson 2 stuff and decide if there's anything you'd like to change. Then you may resubmit it (so it pops up in my inbox again). It's always best to wait for my critique on lessons before moving forward, otherwise you won't be able to incorporate the things you've learned, and I'll end up repeating things.
PLsim
2015-01-09 17:09
here we go: http://imgur.com/a/aJ0Wn
i actually had more fun with this lesson than i had expected. the form intersections really hurt my head at first but they definitely got easier after a while, though not even close to perfect. looking forward to your feedback!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-10 00:17
Great work. Clean linework, great volumes, nice textures and solid forms. Also neat faces! This is exemplary work.
There's only one thing that could make it better. It's about perspective.
It's not that your perspective is incorrect exactly - at least, not in the traditional sense. The thing is, your forms are all receding into perspective too quickly. The far planes, in box terms, are too much smaller than your near planes. This would be perfectly fine if each form existed in isolation, but when placed in a scene with all these other forms, it presents a problem. The problem is that the eye is uncertain of what scale this whole scene is drawn at. Is it something you could hold in your hand? Is it something enormous?
Usually when objects recede quickly into the distance, it tends to imply a much larger, less relatable scale.
So in summary, try to ease up on that perspective distortion. But still, you did very well! Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
PLsim
2015-01-10 01:06
woohoo! great to hear. i understand from your explanation where the perspective would become an issue in a scene with multiple forms, i'll have to ease the habit of exaggerated perspective i picked up during the 250 boxes challenge.
[deleted]
2015-01-12 01:44
here is my work http://imgur.com/a/i23YF
Uncomfortable
2015-01-12 01:58
Everything looks in order. Good volumes, solid forms, and interesting dissections!
The only thing I have to suggest is that you draw things bigger in the future. When working this small, things tend to come out a little stiffer, and it becomes much harder to get your forms right and apply details properly.
Edit: Heyyyy. I just realized you didn't complete lesson 1! I won't be marking this lesson as complete until you finish the first one. Follow the rules!
[deleted]
2015-01-12 02:35
okay ill do that >.< i had done it in pencil, i need to redo it in ink
[deleted]
2015-01-18 04:27
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2015-01-18 05:18
It's all done with a single pen. Don't be discouraged if you don't get it immediately, it's a tricky skill to learn, and is one of the major reasons I push people to do this stuff with a felt tip pen specifically. As you said, right off the bat it either writes or it doesn't.
Slowly you'll start to find the nuances in it. Think about what the tip of the pen looks like - it's a little rounded, and as such, the veeeery tip of the pen comes to a single point, but very quickly flares out into a wider sphere. Learn to touch only parts of that rounded tip to the page, rather than the whole thing.
Another trick is to draw big, and also, to vary your line weights. Just the act of adding thicker line weights in certain areas will automatically make other line weights seem thinner in comparison.
Anyways, no, you didn't really do too well on this one. There's a common issue between all of the exercises, though. It's about drawing through your forms.
On your organic forms and dissections, your contour lines are not wrapping around the forms entirely. In the lesson itself, you see a step there where I draw through the full ellipses (contour lines are essentially ellipses, wrapping around the form, even though you only see a curve). You should be practicing drawing through the ellipses before attempting to draw the curves on their own.
Also for those two exercises, draw larger forms. When learning, we have a tendency to draw things smaller on the page - perhaps out of a lack of confidence. This in turn tends to make things come out worse, due to the limited control over pen pressure (the lines appear even thicker at such a small scale), and the nuances in the forms themselves become much more difficult to capture.
The form intersections are all about drawing forms in 3D space, and having them interact with each other. If you haven't read the lesson notes, be sure to check out these notes which were linked in there. You're getting very caught up in planning things out, and worrying about compositions. All you need to worry about is the forms themselves. Drawing through them (think x-ray vision) will help you establish a greater understanding of how those forms exist within their space, and will also help you place other objects relative to them. When you're drawing a form, do not think ahead. Focus on that form until it is drawn in its entirety. Then draw another form - don't worry about how it relates to the other form just yet. Draw it entirely, THEN start making your decisions of how they intersect.
Take a break, and give this lesson another shot. Look through other homework submissions as well, and read through the critiques I gave them, for greater insight.
[deleted]
2015-01-18 14:51
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2015-01-18 18:06
While it is better, you're still missing the main thing. You're still thinking ahead, and making your initial lines timid because you want them to disappear later. There will be time enough for that later on, but for now you need to push that out of your mind. Be bolder.
You're not treating your ellipses/circles like you did in the exercise from lesson 1, because you picture this as something with a 'final' stage, rather than just a bunch of shapes and forms. In doing so, you're weakening the foundation of your drawing, which in turn makes that final drawing less convincing.
Take a look at this comparison and then give it another shot. Next time submit to me the full two pages each.
[deleted]
2015-01-18 21:08
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2015-01-19 23:28
Better! The organic forms and the dissections are okay now. Not fantastic, but definitely an improvement. I like the banana, I think that one was your most successful dissection. The form is simple, but the dissection itself has some nice layering (like the thickness of the peel), and the contour lines wrap nicely around the form, pushing the illusion of volume.
Your intersections are kind of hit-and-miss, but I'm getting the impression that your sketchbook is somewhat at fault. It doesn't look like it's giving you much freedom of motion. You should seriously consider doing this on loose leaf, or on a sketchbook that lays flatter and gives you more space (I used a sketchbook for this course, but it was 9.5" x 9.5" and ringed, so I could lay it nice and flat without having the pages bending back over me.
I'd like to see one more page of intersections done on a loose sheet of 8.5x11. Blank printer paper will do just fine. Draw your forms nice and big, and don't forget your perspective rules - the box on page 12 is wrong (it's converging towards the viewer, instead of away from the viewer, and looks like a pyramid that's had its top lopped off).
[deleted]
2015-01-20 03:21
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2015-01-20 03:38
I suppose that'll do for now. Remember that these are the foundation of construction. This kind of exercise is generally more difficult than actually constructing objects that you see in reference, but the principles are all here.
It seems that you're grasping them well enough to move forward, but I definitely recommend that you practice these regularly. The next lessons will also probably start cementing more of the ideas by using them more practically.
argle523
2015-01-20 17:36
Alright. I'll definitely keep doing all of this stuff. Thanks again for all the feedback!
AlphaAsPuck
2015-01-18 21:09
Lesson 2 ready the form intersections were hard! http://imgur.com/a/oX8Am
Uncomfortable
2015-01-19 23:41
Frankly, you can do better. I think more than anything it's a matter of not reading the lesson/notes carefully enough.
Your organic forms' contour lines don't quite wrap around the forms properly - they're generally very flat, and at the ends of the curves, they don't go around the form, they treat it very much as though they're just curving lines on a 2D surface. While drawing it, imagine that you are actually wrapping these lines around a 3D form. How you perceive your own actions has a great effect on what you draw. Also, practice drawing the contour lines as full ellipses instead of just curving lines (step C on the lesson) - this will help you nail the curvature better.
Also, I noticed that on the bottom of the second page of your organic forms (page 7 of the imgur album) you have a little cigar shape, where the direction of the curves changes halfway through. The curves themselves are not arbitrary. Read these notes for a better understanding of how those ellipses show the orientation of that particular cross-section of the form.
The problems that affect your organic forms naturally also impact your dissections, since they're essentially the same thing with an extra step tagged on.
Your form intersections aren't bad, but they're not great either. One thing I usually recommend is for people not to use forms that are too long in one particular dimension. Long tubes, long boxes, etc. This brings perspective into the mix way more than necessary, and makes things harder. Try using equilateral forms (equal in all 3 dimensions) instead. Draw them big on the page, and fill the page up.
Also, it looks to me like you're using pencil. If you're not, then great - but if you are, you should be using a felt tip pen. Regardless, you need to be drawing through your forms entirely (like as though you had x-ray vision), so you can get a better understanding of how they work. We are not concerned with creating neat and tidy drawings her - we want our shapes to come out properly. Treating your ellipses like the ones you did in lesson 1 - drawing through them completely to achieve the right curvature - is imperative.
I'd like you to do the homework over, taking into consideration all the things I said above.
Milvolarsum
2015-01-18 22:34
Thanks again for doing this :)
Here´s my submission for lesson 2. I kinda wanna do more as fast as possible, but I know that I need time to let the things I learn sink in and a little feedback to correct my mistakes.
Anyway I´ve also been doing lesson 1 exercises as warm up and I think I´m progressing. :D
Anyway, Go Lesson 2!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-20 00:09
Yeah, I don't think much good comes from a desire to do things "as fast as possible". If anything, it can be harmful. So tuck those thoughts away somewhere and focus primarily on doing things well.
Which you did! At least, for the first part. Your organic forms are looking fantastic. Nice volumes, your contour lines generally wrap nicely around the forms, and the lines are very confident.
Your dissections are okay, but they can be better. In the top left, there's a very simple form there - one that's very well done. At the bottom left, there's another that's simple, but good. I think when you start venturing into the complex, the crazy, the "interesting" you start losing track of the purpose of this exercise. We're looking to take the concepts of the first exercise (organic forms with contour lines) and we're just cutting out a section and seeing what's inside. Fruits, snakes, etc. are nice candidates, but with the human head, the sandwich, etc. you're getting away from it.
I think it's very important to start it off as just another piece from exercise 1. If you're in that mindset, you get your volumes right already - then you're just playing around with all your important stuff already in. I've noticed this in others, and I'm seeing it in you - as soon as you face the challenge of drawing something that looks like something (the heart, the sandwich), you get overwhelmed with the need for detail and cleanliness. It's no longer an exercise, it becomes a drawing.
Forget about all that. Don't worry about the fact that the original outline of the form stretches across the gap of the dissection. Don't worry if you need to draw a full ellipse to correctly gauge the curvature of the contour line. Don't worry about drawing through forms, it's a great thing to do and you should do more of it.
That takes me to the form intersections which are... a bit crazy. I think you start off okay, but then you start to get antsy and start rushing. Frankly, I think you can do better than this.
Here's a few things you can do to approach it differently.
First off, draw bigger forms. People who have less confidence tend to draw things smaller, and it bites them in the ass. It's harder to get the proper motion and flow from your lines when they're tiny, and a medium-sized pen ends up looking SUPER thick at that scale. The sphere you've got on the right side of page 3 on the imgur album is a decent size - maybe a little bit smaller than that.
Try tackling these on a loose sheet of printer paper instead of a book like that. It gives you more freedom of motion, as you don't have to worry about the pages turning over on you, or bumping into the spine.
Don't use forms that are longer in one dimension compared to the others. For example, long tubes, long boxes, etc. Try to stick with more 'equilateral' forms. Things that are more or less equal in all dimensions. With the longer, stretched forms, you're bringing perspective more into the mix than is necessary. We want to focus more on just having forms in 3D space, rotating them around and mashing them together. No need to make it more complicated.
Also, be sure to read the lesson notes for every lesson. In lesson 1 and 2 they're sometimes harder to find, but every single lesson has them in the comments section. If you sort by 'top' they should bubble to the top of the list. This one's got this step by step for form intersections listed in the bonus content. Honestly, I think you are approaching things similarly, but I figured I might as well share it in case you didn't see it yet.
So - I'd like to see two more pages of dissections, and two more pages of form intersections, keeping in mind everything I mentioned above.
Milvolarsum
2015-01-25 22:08
So a bit delayed but here is my homework :)
I got a new pen and to learn how to use it and because I wanted to grasp the concepts I did a little bit of extra work. The pen has a different tip, which allows me more control wether I want thinner or stronger lines, but it´s more difficult to do a thin controlled line!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-25 23:53
Your work looks pretty good. I can see what you're saying though, about the difficulty with making thin lines. It sounds to me like you're talking about a felt tip calligraphy pen. I've got some of the faber castell ones - I love e'm to death, but they're a little tough to work with at first.
All of your exercises look pretty good. You seem to have a fairly good sense of 3D forms (from your form intersections) but if you ever find a certain kind of intersection more challenging, don't be afraid to completely draw through the forms. For the most part I see that you've been deciding how your next form will intersect with the ones you've already drawn before drawing it. Usually I recommend drawing in the next form and then deciding how they intersect - but it's fine to do it this way, as long as you're comfortable with it.
Milvolarsum
2015-01-26 00:05
You´re completly right about the felt tip calligraphy pen, it´s even a faber castell one, too! I´m loving it!
And is it alright if I ask you some more personal questions? I was wondering why you´re doing all this? I mean what´s motivating you? This whole sub has to be so much work, so I´m corious as to why you decided to help people like me.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-26 00:35
A lot of reasons. Some noble, some less so. On one hand, I like teaching, and watching people improve over time. Makes me feel a little proud. Then, there's a big part of me that's rather vain, and soaks up all of the praise and gratitude. And finally, I do want this to help my career in some way or another. Either in making this a more official thing - opening a standalone website that can be monetized somehow, or allowing me to increase my presence on the net in general. I have some plans for that already, but for the moment I'm holding off on them. It's a lot more work, and there are other things I'd rather do right now.
cartoonishguy
2015-01-19 05:08
Here is my attempt at lesson 2!
http://imgur.com/a/CJkcu
I had a tough time with this lesson! Not being able to erase is a real struggle for me. I also just noticed I left a couple of forms floating on one of my dissections pages just now. Oops. I thought I connected them.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-20 00:14
Your organic forms and dissections are looking great. Solid volumes, and a good approach in general. I like the little fishy.
Your form intersections are not so great, but frankly they're some of the most difficult things we tackle in the entire dynamic sketching lesson set. Everything else builds on this in some way or another.
Your approach isn't actually too bad. You're drawing through your forms (which is GREAT, keep that up), and you're not afraid to get messy in order to figure out your forms.
I think what's fucking you over the most is the fact that you're working in a lot of really long forms. Long boxes, long tubes, long cones, etc. Those kinds of things bring in a lot of perspective distortion, and that starts messing everything up. I usually recommend that people avoid those kinds of forms - instead, draw 'equilateral' forms. That is, forms that are more or less equal in every dimension. Start off in the center of the page, and then just keep drawing more around them and connect them.
If you check out the lesson notes in the comments section (every lesson has them, usually the first one if sorted by 'top'), you'll find this step-by-step of how I approach the form intersections. It might help you out.
I'd like to see two more pages of form intersections, taking into consideration what I've said above. I think working with those equilateral forms will help out a lot.
cartoonishguy
2015-01-20 22:44
Alright I gave it another try! I got rid of the long forms or at least I tried to (I did a few on the second page accidentally). But man, this is a very difficult exercise. I'm having a tough time wrapping my head around it. This time I tried to follow follow the step by step as well as the one you wrote about the intersecting spheres. It hurts my head to think about. Also the fact I can't erase and that every line is final is tough, I'm so used to pencil or digital.
http://imgur.com/a/wss7Q
Uncomfortable
2015-01-21 00:01
Yeah, the crutch of being able to erase and undo is a difficult one to throw away - but the benefits are immense. When you can fallback on something like that, you tend to treat your drawings as far too precious, and you also don't put in quite as much thought into your lines.
I think you're starting to get it - enough for me to let you move forward. You should definitely continue practicing these though - and when you do, you could stand to draw your forms bigger. When you draw things so small on the page, it immediately makes it even harder, because your pen's strokes look so much thicker relative to the size of the drawing.
mabasakura
2015-01-20 00:29
Forgive me Art Czar for I have sinned. I might've used a pencil on the form intersections portion of the lesson. :<
http://imgur.com/a/3rhxy
Also I've noticed that the lessons are getting longer and longer to finish. Is this normal?
Uncomfortable
2015-01-20 00:48
Honestly, if you ask me (which you are, 'cause I'm the art czar >:D) it's a good thing to be taking longer and longer. Initially for a lot of people there's a need to rush through things. When I did these exercises, I spent 6-8 hours on each of the first two lessons, and then the subsequent lessons were given 8+ hours each. The more time you spend, the better. As long as it's being spent effectively, of course.
Overall, you'll have to give it another shot. I'll break down the issues that we need to resolve.
The dissections aren't just supposed to be any old object cut in half - it's basically an extension of the previous exercise. You do exactly what you did for exercise 1, drawing an organic form, then adding in the contour lines - then you add on this extra step of saying "this section between these two contour lines is going to be removed." Then you figure out what exists within that space. Also, when you start filling in that space, it's a great opportunity to go out and look at pictures on the internet. Use them as reference for different kinds of detail information you can use to fill that void. Pulling that information from photographs is much, much better than pulling it from your imagination, because right now your 'visual library' is rather empty. It will grow by studying reference images and putting that information into your drawings.
Form intersections are hard - but just because they're hard doesn't mean you can try to make things a little easier for yourself. There's a reason I insist people use pen for these things. You drew a very clean drawing - and it's because you strove to do that above all else, that it was not correct. In the lesson notes (in the comment section), you'll find this step-by-step of how to tackle the form intersections. Draw a form completely - hell, draw through it completely (as though you have xray vision) so you can fully understand how it exists in 3D space. Then you add another form. Each time you focus only on the form you're drawing. You don't leave gaps in the form because it's behind the previous one - you draw the whole thing. Then you can start deciding how those two forms intersect. This means your drawing will have a lot of extra lines - not necessarily messy lines, but more information than one would usually put in a drawing. That's because this isn't a clean final drawing, it's an exercise to understand form and space.
I'm sure you can do much better than this, it's a matter of understanding the correct approach.
Edit: I just saw on your deviantart the version where you draw through all the forms. Good work, (you should have posted that to begin with) but you should still do it in ink. The whole mindset that comes from working in ink is extremely important, especially for the form intersections. Draw everything knowing full well that it will be present in the end, and focus only on what you are doing right then and there. Don't look ahead, and don't plan ahead.
mabasakura
2015-01-20 06:10
Ahh okay. I must've misunderstood the dissection part of the lesson. I'll give that another go. Along with the rest of the topics in the lesson......sigh. LOL I should've just PM'd you with questions regarding the assignment before I began. And yeah about the form intersection, I first drew all the lines for the shapes and then I started "piecing it together" with a pen. I just erased all the pencil marks for the end result. Once again, I didn't know the emphasis was on the practice and not the final results. Although, these lessons are all about practice and not end results. Otherwise they wouldn't be homework. Right? I'll get back to you a week from now with the updates. Thanks for the feedback!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-20 13:58
It's not particularly obvious to most people - but I think there's value in doing it wrong first, because the fact that there is a difference between drawing normally and how I expect you to draw becomes more memorable.
Penisbreathlikeroses
2015-01-23 01:15
Finally here is my HW # 2. http://imgur.com/a/dp5ET
Uncomfortable
2015-01-23 01:40
Nicely done! Everything seems to be done fairly well. I like that you drew through all of your forms for your intersections - though I'd much prefer it if you didn't separate them into a lighter underdrawing and a cleaner drawing on top. The second stage kind of mucks up a lot of your ellipses, so generally I find it better for this particular exercise to simply leave everything at the first stage. The underdrawing is what I'm most interested in anyways.
Your dissections look nice. Interesting experimentations, with nice volumes. Your organic forms with contour lines are nice as well.
Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
thetickdr
2015-01-25 21:09
Greetings!
Here's my attempt at lesson 2.
I don't know if it's a right way to do it, but I've made the lines solid (heavy) by going several times with a pen over one line.
Used 0.1 and 0.5 pens.
I've got some contradictory thoughts about these drawings, so I'm really looking forward to your feedback.
Uncomfortable
2015-01-25 22:05
Looking pretty good. Your organic forms have nice volumes, and your contour lines wrap around them nicely. Your dissections are pretty cool, especially on the second page. I like the hot dog best, but the quarter cut on the bottom right is very neat as well. You've got a good eye for where to apply different thicknesses of layers to the dissections themselves to create interesting objects.
The first page of intersections is a little iffy (your perspective tends to be very dramatic on individual forms, leading to some weirdness that I mention in these notes. Your subsequent pages of intersections are much better.
In the future, don't use different thicknesses of pens - use only the 0.5. This forces you to learn proper pressure control of the pen itself, allowing you to become more versatile with the single tool.
thetickdr
2015-01-26 06:57
Thanks for the reply and detailed feedback.
I've got some questions however:
How does one controls the lineweight? Is it okay to go through one line several times? Or ideally I've to make different lineweights in one fluent movement?
Do I qualify to move to the next lesson?
Uncomfortable
2015-01-26 10:57
You control the thickness by applying more/less pressure. You generally do draw the whole object, then go back to selectively thicken specific lines. Yes, you can move forward. I'm on my phone right now, but I'm pretty sure I changed your flair already.
thetickdr
2015-01-26 14:54
Great! Thank you!
gustamos
2015-01-27 01:02
Here's #2.
I wasn't really sure how to do the multiple line weights with a single pen, so I had to use a pencil on one of them them so I could tell what was where. I hope that's okay...
Uncomfortable
2015-01-27 15:32
I'm not entirely sure which one you used pencil on, but generally you should avoid that. If you're using a felt tip pen (I always recommend a 0.5mm), you can achieve different line weights by applying less or more pressure.
Your organic forms are alright, with some pages being stronger than others. I'm noticing though that the contour lines aren't quite wrapping around the forms correctly - if they were full ellipses, you'd notice them getting pointy on either end. Doing more exercises like you did on the first page (drawing the full ellipses) should help. Overall your contour lines aren't bad, though - some of them do a good job of showing volume, it's just that the lines don't wrap around the form properly.
For your dissections, they work out better when you treat them like extensions of the previous exercise - which is how I intended them. So, your first page looks a little shabby, while the next one looks much better. The third's so-so; your forms are much less convincing, since a lot of them are based on ellipses that seem somewhat malformed.
Like the rest of your work, your form intersections seem a little hit-and-miss. Where cylinders are involved, you seem to fall short of the mark. With boxes, however, you seem to manage much better.
I'd like to see you do one more page of form intersections - try to avoid using any longer, stretched forms (like long tubes or long boxes) that bring perspective more into the mix than it needs to be. Also, draw your forms larger on the page. For example, on page 8, everything is way too small. It's nice to see you draw so many forms, but I'm more interested in the quality of those individual forms.
Finally, draw through the forms completely. For example, draw all 6 lines that comprise a box, instead of just the ones that the viewer would be able to see. This will help you understand how that form sits in space. Keeping in mind where your horizon line sits will also prove to be helpful.
going_on_adventure
2015-01-28 09:07
http://imgur.com/a/v5rWs
Thanks!
Uncomfortable
2015-01-28 23:28
I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at. I can see the dissections, and form intersections, though I'm not sure where your organic forms with contour lines are.
Overall, I'd like you to do these again, taking the following into consideration:
These exercises are tedious - so it's very natural to want to spice them up by turning them into interesting shapes, or going off the book in some other way. Don't. It's fine if you already understand exactly what the exercises are trying to teach you, but if you don't, you risk missing a lot of the key points. It also makes it very difficult for me to critique.
For the organic forms, draw a 2D organic shape, then make it 3D by adding contour lines. First practice by drawing those contour lines as full ellipses (step C in the lesson), then once you get the hang of that, try drawing the contour lines as curves that wrap around the form as if it were three dimensional.
For the dissections, you're just taking the previous exercise one step further. You're not starting with any object in mind - instead, you draw a shape, turn it into a 3D form, cut out a piece and then try to see what the whole thing could be. This is your opportunity to be a little creative, but don't let that overshadow the exercise itself. I strongly encourage you to look at photo reference when you're looking for texture/detail to fill into the drawing. Fruits often work well, since you can cut into them and see what they look like on the inside.
For the form intersections, start with a form in the center of the page - then add another form onto the page, draw it in its entirety, and then decide how those two forms intersect. Then add another. Make sure the horizon line for this scene is consistent. Also try to avoid any forms that are stretched more in one dimension than the others, like long tubes or long boxes. Stick to more equilateral forms, which are more or less equal in all three dimensions. Read these notes on form intersections if you haven't already. Also, try not to make your perspective too dramatic on each individual form. These notes explain that concept.
One last thing - I noticed that in your form intersections, on your boxes, you have several places where your perspective is backwards - where the closer plane of the box is smaller than the further plane. If you find yourself making mistakes like this often, I would strongly recommend that you do the 250 box challenge before tackling the form intersections.
It's great to see your creativity and enthusiasm, but there's a time and a place for that. Right now you've got to buckle down and focus on the task in front of you. Don't think ahead, give all of your attention to whatever it is that you're doing.
going_on_adventure
2015-02-16 02:09
Thank you for the advice! Here's my resubmission
http://imgur.com/a/6YL0C
Uncomfortable
2015-02-16 02:29
For the form intersections, they're a little hit or miss. Page 4 isn't bad, though I'm noticing that you're not really drawing through all your forms.
The way you handle it in the top left of page 4 is good - drawing completely through all the forms, not worrying about having lines stop where they start to be blocked by other forms. The forms that you don't draw through completely tend to be weaker because you don't yet have a solid grasp of how these forms work in 3D space. As such, when you don't draw through the whole thing you're guessing a lot, and many of those guesses are ill-informed.
Then you've got some of these cross-sectional ellipses of cylinders and spheres. Doing those is a GREAT idea, except you're using these little dashed/broken lines - an obvious attempt to retain the cleanliness of the drawing. Draw a full, unbroken ellipse. Breaking up the line will mess up the actual shape of the ellipse, making it completely pointless and useless to you. You've got to approach it as you do when doing the ellipse exercise from lesson 1.
Your organic forms and dissections are still weak, largely because you didn't do what I told you to in my last critique. I emphasized the importance of the step C in the organic form with contour line exercise - drawing full ellipses for your contour lines. Looking at page 9 and 10, you're not doing that, and as such the contour lines are still very flat and not wrapping around the forms enough. The banana dissection is a little better in that area, but still could use some improvement.
I'm going to be rewriting lesson 2 some time next weekend (as I did for lesson 1 yesterday), hopefully clarifying things and explaining them better. You may want to hold off and wait for this revised version. Either way, I'm guessing that this thread will hit 6 months of age very soon, and reddit will automatically lock the thread making it impossible to resubmit. So waiting for the revised lesson is probably your best bet for now.
asplosions
2015-02-01 23:39
Hello! Here is my second lesson submission.
Thanks in advance!
Uncomfortable
2015-02-02 00:37
Your dissections are mostly well done, though I have some critiques regarding your organic forms with contour lines. Hopefully the overdrawings and notes are clear enough.
Your form intersections are a little haywire. Your lines aren't entirely straight (they arc often), and your ellipses are weak. The main problem is that you're not drawing through your forms. You're trying to think ahead and plan out how all your forms will sit, but in doing so you don't pay enough attention to what you're drawing at the time. Right now I want you to focus on making each form look solid and complete on its own. Drawing through the forms will help you understand them better, and demonstrating that understanding will make them more convincing to the viewer.
I strongly suggest that you do the 250 box challenge before attempting the intersections again. Also, read over this step by step for form intersections, which was included in the lesson notes in the comments section. Make sure you don't skip those notes, they often include a lot of helpful information.
Once you've done the box challenge, I'd like to see you redo the organic forms with contour lines and the form intersections.
asplosions
2015-02-02 01:22
Will do! Thanks for taking the time to write the critique!
asplosions
2015-02-06 17:21
Good afternoon Uncomfortable,
I've started working on my redo of Lesson 2 and I was wondering if you could critic my contours before I get to dissection and intersection. I want to make sure I'm on the right track.
https://imgur.com/a/jsvwm
I understand that you very busy and if you would rather wait for me to submit my entire lesson before you take a look though. Just let me know. :)
Uncomfortable
2015-02-06 18:19
Yup, they're more or less correct. Always focus on the edges, where the contour line meets the outline of the shape. That's generally where most peoples' difficulties lie. The contour line has to wrap around the form. You generally do achieve this, though there are a few occasions where you fall short. Page 4, for instance, is generally better than page 5.
asplosions
2015-02-06 18:21
Thanks again!
asplosions
2015-02-09 21:12
Hello once again. I've finished redoing the second part of the lesson and am ready for my critique.
https://imgur.com/a/IGjRB
As always I really appreciate your honest feedback and your taking the time to do this.
The more time I spend working on the lessons the more I'm seeing the method behind the madness.
Uncomfortable
2015-02-10 00:02
I think you're concerning yourself far too much with how things end up looking, once you're done, and in doing so, you're missing out on demonstrating core concepts.
With the dissections, you drew them with the intent of a clean, presentable drawing - I want to see the guts of it. I want to see the construction itself. The correct approach is to start doing the organic forms with contour lines, and then simply go one step forward and turn whatever the form was into a dissection.
I'd like to see one more page of dissections.
For the form intersections, once again, you're focusing on the quality of the end result. I can see that you drew in pencil and then went over the lines in pen. I want you to do the entire thing in ink, from start to finish, drawing through all the forms as much as you need to properly understand how those forms exist in 3D space. If you look back at the lesson, the little example image from my sketchbook that's included there. The drawing isn't clean or carefully planned. Instead, you can see exactly how I was thinking when I approached it. That's what I want to see from you, so I can evaluate how you think.
So, I'd also like to see two more pages of form intersections, done in ink from start to finish.
asplosions
2015-02-10 02:06
I'm starting to struggle with this lesson I think. I've done a quick version of it to prevent myself from thinking through things too much and to resist the urge to polish (and I use the term loosely).
http://imgur.com/a/fh6hW
As I suspect, this may still not be what you're looking for. If that's correct I think I'm going to try copying a few other artists samples to see if I can figure out what it is that I'm doing wrong. Are there any samples in this thread that you think demonstrate this concept well that I should focus on?
Uncomfortable
2015-02-10 02:46
Your dissections are still leaving a little to be desired, but the form intersections have moved into a passable range. I still think you should continue to practice them on your own, but I will mark this lesson as complete.
Examples:
/u/ffflay's lesson 2 homework
/u/PLsim's lesson 2 homework
MALC0
2015-02-02 14:28
Hi Uncomfortable, I've finally finished the second exercise it took a little longer than I hoped although I really enjoyed the intersection exercise. Thanks.
http://imgur.com/a/Z9OFc
Uncomfortable
2015-02-03 00:31
Good work! Your organic forms are very well done, they do a great job of conveying volume. Your form intersections are also pretty good - a few perspective issues here and there (always remember that the farther end of an object should be smaller than the closer end, assuming they're the same size in 3D space), but generally quite good.
Your dissections were alright, though I strongly recommend that next time you're in a position to apply texture to a surface, you should look at photo reference to inform your line work. Right now it's likely that your visual library isn't too well developed, so - for example, with the snake's scales - you'll resort to a very simplified understanding of how those scales work. Looking at reference, understanding it and then expressing that understanding through your use of the texture in your drawing will help in two ways. First, it'll make your drawing better, and secondly, it'll help develop your visual library.
Also, I'd like to point out the jalapeno at the top of page 3. I think you learned this on your own, since you didn't do it anywhere else, but I'll mention it anyways. Don't ever crosshatch against the curvature of the surface. In this case, your crosshatching is flat, going more or less straight down. The surface of the jalapeno is curved, so technically it should wrap around it. That said, I think the better approach is how you did it on your sling shot, having the hatching lines go along the form (I talk about that in these notes).
Anywho- good work, I think you're ready to move onto the next lesson.
MALC0
2015-02-03 09:08
Thank you for the feedback, I will take note of my hatching and take more time to think about these details. I think the texture problem is lack of practice and experience drawing in pen as I was using reference photos. Hopefully this will get better with practice and all those plants :)
-Mikhail-
2015-02-07 22:39
Homework
This Lesson took me longer than I thought it would.
The Form Intersections gave me the most trouble, especially the spheres and cones.
Even after some practice, I had to think alot about every intersection before I would draw it.
Uncomfortable
2015-02-08 01:17
There are definitely several issues here.
First off, for the organic forms with contour lines, you're skipping a major step (step C in the lesson), where you draw the contour lines as full ellipses. Every contour line wraps around the form completely, often creating a smooth ellipse - drawn as we did in lesson 1. It is important to practice drawing them this way, so that when we just draw the visible portion of the contour line, we know how it should be curving/wrapping around the 3D form. Yours don't really wrap around, they just kind of stop at the edge of the shape - which makes it look very flat.
Next - the dissections. These are intended to be extensions of the previous exercise. Bascially, you start off with your organic shape, then you add your contour lines. Then, you pick a section of it (between contour lines) and decide that it is going to be cut out - and you fill in the void. I strongly recommend that you look at photo reference when filling that area in, since right now it's likely that your visual library isn't too well developed.
Finally, for the form intersections, they're pretty bad at the beginning, but you do show a marked improvement. The last one is not that bad. What I would suggest is, try to avoid forms that are stretched too much in one dimension - like long tubes, long boxes, etc. Stick to forms that are more equilateral, or equal in all three dimensions. This tends to simplify things. Also, if you haven't yet seen this from the lesson notes in the comments section: form intersections step-by-step.
Ekspertyz
2015-02-10 20:13
Hi,
First, thanks for your comment on my lesson 1 entry.
Here is lesson 2: http://imgur.com/a/X21F8
Remarks:
Ex 1: Figuring out 3d shape from contour is quite interesting.
Ex 3: Drawing sphere is non-trivial :)
How does it look?
Uncomfortable
2015-02-10 23:08
Very good! Nice volumes and forms, and your drawings look very confident. Spheres are tough for everyone, and are exceptionally difficult to nail - but you'll get it with more practice. Everything else looks solid though.
[deleted]
2015-02-14 15:03
thank you for doing this.
first time ever drawing something,if you can call it drawing that is.
here goes nothing. this
Uncomfortable
2015-02-15 05:32
I'm guessing you submitted here because the lesson 1 thread was locked - I did post a warning in the sidebar, but I guess you missed it.
I just finished rewriting and restructuring the first lesson.
As for your work, your lines look good, but the rest gives me the impression that you were a little overenthusiastic. You definitely rushed through the rest. You also missed these notes about the ellipse exercise. A lot of people seem to miss them, so I reincorporated them into the lesson itself, since I had the chance to rewrite it. You also didn't complete the required amount for lesson 1 (2 pages of each exercise. You only did one for lines/ellipses/organic perspective, and skipped rough perspective altogether).
I'd like you to redo them. Read the new version of lesson 1 carefully, and take your time. Do it in several sittings and don't try and digest the entire lesson at once.
iambaneguin
2015-02-15 09:06
Here's my homework
/u/Uncomfortable
Uncomfortable
2015-02-16 21:00
I'm glad to see that you started drawing the full ellipses for the organic forms' contour lines, as when you just draw the curve, it doesn't wrap around the form entirely and comes out rather flat. You may want to continue practicing that, though - I'm not sure what order these were done in.
Looking at the rest of the homework, however, I'm thinking that instead of me critiquing right now, it might be best for you to wait a little. I'm going to be rewriting the second lesson sometime this week or this weekend, as I did with the first lesson. I intend to focus more on issues that seem to confuse people. You may find that to be much easier to understand compared to the current lesson, so if you wait, you'll likely have an easier time with the homework.
iambaneguin
2015-02-16 21:16
It's completely reverse order. Sorry it's just the way they get uploaded into imgur. I'll try to change the file names next time. While I wait, do you mind if I move onto drawing people lesson 1?
Uncomfortable
2015-02-16 21:18
You're welcome to do whatever you like, but I won't critique the work you've done before completing both basics lessons.