Uncomfortable

2015-03-16 23:01

The problems are definitely in the lay-in stage. It's kind of difficult to pinpoint what you're doing wrong though, since a lot of the clues are covered up by detail. Could you give me four or five drawings stopping before the detail phase?

Uncomfortable

2015-03-23 18:20

It's all about building a focal point - the circle is just a tool to make you, as the artist, remember where you want your focal to be. It's easy to get distracted.

The problem arises not so much from the amount of detail, but the result of the detail - contrast. Adding a lot of visual information in a spot will generally increase the contrast between light and dark in that area. That's what draws the eye, and if you're drawing the eye to an area that is not a focal point, you'll have competition between it and your intended focal point.

I'm far more interested in seeing peoples' understanding of depicting structure and form - so I leave the amount of detail up to you guys. All that matters to me in regards to that is that you have more detail in the focal area, and less outside of it. That doesn't mean you have to leave everything else empty - you just have to have a notable ramping up as you enter that focal circle, so the eye is drawn to it.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-24 19:24

Excellent work! Your animals all look extremely lively and fluid, whilst maintaining clear volumes, forms and constructions. Your notes are also very informative, it's clear that you studied your subjects a lot.

I believe you came in with very strong observational skills, but what's really kicked your work up to the next level is the attention you're paying to the underlying forms and how they fit together.

I really liked your winged fish by the way, it looks really believable! I ended up showing it to my coworkers.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-25 21:55

Definitely a good idea to study /u/VirtualSoldier's work. In doing so, one thing you'll notice is that you're not really solidifying your forms early on. I'm noticing that you seem to be getting overwhelmed by the detail, so you quickly end up jumping into that - because it's very difficult to see anything beyond it.

Think about how you approached your insects. They all had clear volumes and forms. You used contour lines to reinforce that, and you understood how each piece connected together. Take a look at this.

Some of your drawings are good, but the problem is that they're hit-and-miss because they don't rely on any sort of underlying framework and understanding to ensure their quality.

To help you deal with this, I'd like to see three more pages of animals - whichever animals you like. This time, however, only draw their lay-ins. They should be entirely recognizable, but without any sort of extra detail. Remember to treat them like a more organic version of the form intersections, and if you get stuck, look back at your insect homework.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-26 23:15

Definitely an improvement. I'll mark this lesson as complete, though you definitely have a lot of room to improve, so I'll point out things that you missed out on.

Most importantly, I think you're still not putting enough into your lay-ins/constructions. Sometimes you'll do more construction work on the legs, for instance, but often times you still leave them underdeveloped. See?.

You should be focusing on the initial construction. Think back to the previous lessons. Everything is a form intersection, everything is made up of rudimentary 3D forms. We may draw them as 2D shapes initially, but we always keep those volumes in mind and try and reinforce them whenever we can. Don't let the details overwhelm you.

Though at times your proportions are still off, you do have quite a few good ones that make me confident you're understanding the general idea. #2 on page 7 looks good, as does #1 on page 9. Your squirrels and sharks are pretty well done too.

Anyway, you should definitely keep practicing the animals, but for now I think you're ready to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-31 21:31

I'm glad to hear that you've mustered up the courage to post some of your homework, but you need to start at the beginning. The reason I insist that everyone submits all of their homework is because it makes it much more straightforward for me to deal with the lower-level problems that become obvious on those initial exercises.

It has both the benefit of being much clearer for the person receiving the critique, and of being much easier for me to give the critique. So, if you would like me to help give you direction, please start by submitting your homework for lesson 1.

Uncomfortable

2015-04-01 22:20

You definitely show a great deal of improvement over the three attempts. That said, there are several major issues with your approach.

• Most significantly, I see a lot of wasted linework. Your lines are uncertain, and therefore unplanned. It means that you are thinking on the page itself, rather than attempting to think through in your mind and draw the results. It's true that I encourage drawing through forms, but that is because those forms are key to understanding how the object sits in 3D space. The forms themselves, their positioning and orientation, you understand in your head and then transfer on paper. They're generally easier to understand because they're but simple forms.

• Sometimes you're skipping a lot of the steps I demonstrate in the lesson, other times you do the steps but do them very loosely or incorrectly. When you start, you block in the three major forms - cranium, ribcage, pelvis. You're not just drawing arbitrary ellipses, you're blocking in where the entirety of that form exists. Actually look at your reference and see where the rib cage begins and ends, how it's angled and oriented. Then draw a simplification of it that roughly matches in position, rotation and scale.

• Remember that while these forms are generally organic, they're still form intersections (like from lesson 2). Every form should fit together. This is a mistake I see a lot of people make, and a good example of it is on heads. They'll draw the cranial mass (which is a ball) and then arbitrarily draw the head around it. The snout is a box that connects to that ball, so you should draw it as one, keenly aware of how they fit together. The entire body should be treated in this fashion.

• Don't forget that these forms you're drawing are 3D. A lot of the torsos I see look very flat because you yourself are not perceiving them as 3D forms as you draw. Practice your organic forms with contour lines beforehand, and then try and apply those principles to your animal drawings.

Keeping everything I've mentioned above in mind, give this lesson another shot.

Uncomfortable

2015-04-19 18:17

Great work. I especially liked how your birds came out. I'm not 100% sure where I sit on doing your lay-ins with marker. It kind of sidesteps the benefit of doing the whole thing with black ink (which forces you to really think through your decisions). It'll probably be better for you to stick to just the black pen for these exercises.

Either way, overall you did really well. Some of your lions are a bit derpy, but it happens. Onwards to the next lesson!

Uncomfortable

2015-04-21 23:02

You're getting there, but you're not spending enough on the lay-ins. Right now I don't see anything resembling figure 2.3 (from the mexican wolf demo), where I flesh in all of the major forms. You jump too early from a basic lay-in of the cranial mass, the ribcage and the pelvis, to the whole animal.

A really good example is on page 8, the front view of the rhino. We have no idea at all how that horn - a solid, 3D mass - connects to the rest of the head. Similarly, we don't know how the muzzle of the rhino connects back to its cranial mass. If you look at the wolf demo, I've got a solid shape coming off the circle to represent the muzzle.

You always want to be building forms off of other forms. If you find yourself with random shapes floating around, chances are you're missing an intermediary step.

Generally you did a good job with the detail, though. You're very close, I think just fixing up the lay-in stage will push you to the next level.

I'd like to see two more pages of animals, with a greater focus on lay-in constructions.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-02 20:32

Your birds are pretty awesome - especially that eagle. The reason it's awesome is because all of your forms connect to each other at specific points. The wings, the legs, you can see how they fit together with the body.

Your quadrupeds, however, do not. You pretty much draw three circles and then ruuuuush to the detail phase. No form, no connections, nothing solid whatsoever. With those lynxes, you seem to try to move more towards fleshing things out, but there's little attention paid to how those legs connect to the main body, and even less to how the upper leg connects to the lower leg, and the paw to that.

Remember that everything is a 3D form. That circle of the head is a sphere, and your muzzle is going to be a box that extends off of it. Nothing should be floating around arbitrarily.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-09 15:55

I'm noticing a couple things - your lay-in linework is very timid and uncertain, and also rather sketchy. Draw with confidence, but think about whether or not a mark you're making contributes anything of value before you make it. A valuable mark will do one of two things - it'll either be a part of the final drawing, intended to help convey information to your viewer, or it'll help you as the artist understand the forms you are depicting (like contour lines, or drawing through forms). If a line does not fall into either of these categories, then it should not be drawn at all.

I did want to point out that I do not take homework submissions when the prerequisite lessons have not been completed (in this case, lessons 1 to 4), as it puts extra work on my plate to go through material that may have been covered earlier on. That's why I haven't given you a critique that's terribly specific to your drawings.

You're welcome to my critiques of course, but only if you start from the beginning.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-17 17:54

Hm... There's definitely some problems here. Some of them are better than others, but they generally feel like your foundation - your lay-in, basically - is not being done correctly. The drawings tend to be very sketchy and exploratory, and some of your textures/details are very scribbly. Essentially, you're not paying enough attention to your reference, and you're not looking closely enough.

The biggest concept I try to push with all of these lessons is the idea of thinking before you put a mark down on the page. There are two kinds of acceptable marks. The ones that help convey information to the viewer (these are the ones we usually attribute to a clean, final drawing), and those that help you as the artist understand what you're doing. If a mark you're about to make does not fall into either of these categories, it should not be made. We make a lot of these marks when we're sketching roughly and trying to explore right on the page, rather than trying to think through it in our heads first.

As for the specifics of what you're doing wrong, I'd like to ask you for two pages of lay-ins. Don't go into any detail, just do what you consider to be the lay-in phase, and I'll be able to point out things you might have misunderstood. Right now it's hard to discern your lay-in from your details, so I don't want to accidentally misinterpret part of your process.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-17 18:02

Nice work! Generally you seem to have a good sense of form and detail. There's only one thing that really bugs me - your lines don't feel terribly confident. I'm not sure if it's because your pen is dying or the ink just isn't flowing well, or if it's something else. That does lead me into another point though - consider playing with line weights. I've got these old notes from the box stuff which might help. You can use line weight to show overlap or just play with dimension in a drawing. If all your lines are generally the same weight, it'll result in a somewhat boring drawing.

On another note, you may want to look into including as part of your lay-in the specifics on how the limbs connect to the torso, specifically on your quadrupeds. It seems you're leaving some of the shoulder-structure up to chance, rather than cleanly defining how those forms connect. Considering how that part of the body works itself out will help increase the impact of your drawings.

Anyway, I'll leave you to practice that on your own. As far as the lesson goes, I'll mark it as complete so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-19 22:55

Okay, one thing is clear to me. You're getting overwhelmed. You're seeing a lot of information in your reference photos, and you've reached that point where you don't know how to tackle it and you forget a lot of the things we cover in these lessons about simplifying things.

Here's a breakdown of your rhino. I purposely picked the worst drawing of the lot, just so I could cover as many issues as possible.

Compare yours with mine - the main difference is that yours is SUPER complex. There's a lot going on, all of these lines and little details and your forms are bumpy and uneven.

You're jumping into the complicated forms way too early. Go back and read over the lesson again, focus on how the first steps discuss dealing with simple forms only. Also, remember that everything needs to be connected, not just floating arbitrarily on the body.

Then there's the way you're actually drawing. You're using that two-phase drawing technique that we all learn to do. Sketch messy, then cleanup. Don't do that in my lessons. I want you to draw confident, complete forms, and don't clean them up afterwards. See in my breakdown, how I'm drawing entire forms and shapes, and I'm not erasing them afterwards? That's what I want to see from you. You can worry about being clean when you've gotten an handle on this.

Lastly, study your reference more. I've written it in multiple places in that breakdown, so I won't stress it more here. All I want to say is that you're missing a lot of major and obvious elements.

Like I said - reread the lesson, and then redo the homework from top to bottom. You are fully capable of doing much better than this, you're just letting the complexity of the subject matter psych you out.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-12 22:33

It's definitely a good start. There's a few things that I noticed where you can improve though:

• When you lay-in, I'm seeing a lot of very timid linework. There's little confidence behind your lines. You're not drawing through your ellipses, your lines are wobbling or broken and scratchy. If you think through what you want to draw, prepare and ghost through it, and then execute when you feel comfortable with your decision, your forms will come out looking more sure of themselves. Then, the forms you construct based on these marks will in turn look more solid.

• I find you drawing a lot of contours, rather than exploring the different forms and how each part of the construction comes together. For example, for a lot of the limbs you draw the shape of the whole leg, which bends at the joints. You should be drawing each section - separated at each joint - as separate shapes. A solid break at each joint will help you consider how the leg itself bends. This will also force you to consider each individual form, rather than jumping into complex forms (like a bending limb) too early. Simpler, more rudimentary forms are much easier to think about as three-dimensional elements. When you jump into the complex stuff, it becomes dangerously easy to forget about perceiving your own drawing as three-dimensional.

• Coming off the last point, it doesn't look to me as though you are convinced that much of what you're drawing exists in three dimensions. You need to be able to visualize these things as being 3D in order to convince others of it.

Instead of talking about your texturing for now, I'd like to set that aside. Instead, do another 4 pages of animals, but do not move into texture/detail. Focus on constructing them as 3D objects. Understand how the different components come together in the construction, where they fit together, etc.

Here's a few more demos I did for others that may help you. Focus on how I break up the forms.

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

Uncomfortable

2015-06-12 22:58

Not bad. Lots of room to improve, but you're doing okay. I did notice that you have a tendency to have somewhat scratchy lines. This is especially noticeable when you're putting in texture - you tend to scribble very lightly, which tends to make things look very much as though you're drawing with pencil. The thing about ink is that it forces you to think through the underlying patterns of lines, stippled-dots and other such things to capture the texture of a surface in a way that does not create large amounts of contrast, as your current approach does. The way you approach it creates a lot of visual noise, which makes it a bit confusing to pinpoint a focal area.

Another thing I noticed is that your general constructions are lacking just a little bit. Most specifically, you don't seem to be paying too much attention to how the various components connect to each other, like the shoulder area where the legs connect to the torso. If you look at the following few demos I did for other people, you'll see that I pay special attention to how things connect in the construction phase:

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

I'd like you to do two more pages of animal drawings, but don't go into the detail/texture phase. Just focus on the construction. Also, you'd probably benefit from drawing significantly larger on the page. Tiny drawings have a tendency to cause the artist to stiffen up.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-24 20:20

Nicely done. Your forms are pretty good, and I like your constructions in general. I'll mark the lesson as complete, but here's a couple things to note:

• Your proportions sometimes need work. Your maned wolf gets taller and taller, your warthog's legs looks kind of like those of a sassy woman.

• When you draw fur, you don't have to draw every individual line for it. Try to think of ways to draw it instead as clumps, focusing on defining the shapes on the edge of the silhouette instead.

• When you do your underlines with the green pen, the underdrawing looks great (because you clearly feel more free and confident) but your black lines on top end up looking clunky. Try and achieve that underdrawing in black, and don't bother with the 'cleanup' stage. It's not necessary.

I love your rhino-frog, by the way.

Uncomfortable

2015-07-06 20:03

Not bad! There's definite improvement as you move through the lesson. I love page 11, and some of your horses and bisons are quite well done.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but there are a few things I want you to consider, and I definitely think you have room to grow here. First off, there's a lot of benefit that comes from focusing on the animals as 3D constructions. You're still mostly working in the 2D realm, though many of your final drawings do read as 3D objects. The only problem arises where different parts of the body connect - often times, it appears that you do not necessarily have as clear an understanding of where and how they connect to one another. For examples, the limbs connecting at the shoulder to the torso.

This kind of 3D understanding of the animals is what allows the more imaginative merged animals at the end of the lesson to read more believably. If you understand how all the parts fit together, you can interchange them more confidently.

Here's a few demos I did for others who experienced the same problem to varying degrees. Some of them were very much beginners, but ultimately this problem can be seen at a variety of skill levels. I'm sure that once you start to grasp the concept, you'll see a significant improvement in your drawings.

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

As you can see, they rely very heavily on simply expanding the lay-in process a little further.

Uncomfortable

2015-07-07 22:27

I liked your llama bear.

I think you're definitely getting there, and early on with your birds, you're definitely fleshing out some nice forms. This, however, falls off when you reach the bears, which come out very flat because you start jumping from flat circles right into full detail (probably because at this point you become very, very concerned with fur). Forget about fur for now.

These animals are constructions of forms that all connect together. In your drawings, the limbs have no clear forms, and when they do, there's no sense of how they connect to the torso. Looking at the llama at the bottom of page 7, its legs just kind of come out of nowhere, rather than connecting to the torso. It may have a heavy coat of fur, but it's up to you to really study the photo reference for the tell-tale signs of how those forms connect to one another. The information is there, but you're not spending enough time looking. Don't trust what you think you see - always go back to the reference to confirm what you think. It's very common for our memory to get distorted and simplified within seconds of observing something, especially when it comes to some of the nuanced detail that we need to learn to pick up on.

Now, you're not alone in this. The vast majority of students who reach this lesson exhibit the same problem. Because of that, I've got a few extra over-drawing demos that I can share with you, that I did for some of the others.

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

It's all in the lay-in. Detail really doesn't matter at all. Think back to how you laid in your insects - they had concrete forms that all snapped together at specific points. Try to carry that over.

I'd like to see four more pages of animals, but this time I don't want to see any detail or texture. No fur! Just form constructions. Once you've got that down, remind me to explore fur with you a little more, because I will definitely forget.

Uncomfortable

2015-07-24 22:28

Generally you did a great job. Good variety of animals, a good illusion of volume in your forms. There's only one issue that will take your drawings much further as far as the construction goes.

The animals are made up of several different forms - we must be aware of how each of these forms connect to one another. The biggest issue is that the shoulders are often left undefined in your drawings - so you've never really made the decision as to how the limbs connect to the torso. See?.

This is a really common mistake that people make, and chances are I don't cover this in enough detail in the lesson itself. As a result, I've ended up with a bunch of rough demos that stress the idea of connecting forms to one another. You should give them a look.

I'd like to see two more pages - I was considering letting you head to the next lesson, but ultimately decided that you'd benefit more from just spending a little longer here.

On another note, your bird fish made me laugh. Kind of scared it's going to want to eat itself though. Thank goodness it hasn't got a beak.

Uncomfortable

2015-07-24 22:35

Very cool! It's really neat to see how they were filling in all of their blanks with animals they knew - specifically horses. Thanks for the great links.

Uncomfortable

2015-07-27 22:06

Your drawings are beautiful. Unfortunately, you didn't really follow the lesson at all. You've demonstrated strong observational skills, but didn't do much as far as laying in and using basic forms to construct your subjects. These lessons are not just about being able to draw what you see in a photograph - it's about understanding them, and how their smaller components relate to one another, how those forms connect to each other. This understanding allows you to draw them in different poses and positions from those seen in the reference images.

Please give the lesson another shot. Also, since I am not marking this one as completed, I will not be critiquing your submission for the next lesson. Please refrain from moving forward before having the previous lesson marked as complete.

Uncomfortable

2015-08-01 15:51

Those zebras came out really well.

In general though, many of your concerns (in regards to gesture, form and proportion) are rooted in your lay-ins. Right now yours are looking rather loose and unclear. Rather than dropping in rough ellipsoid shapes and then going to town on them, it's important to hold yourself back and try and think through the spatial problems.

The lay-in is a construction. It's composed of 3D forms that intersect with one another at specific points. No elements float arbitrarily, they all exist in relation to their neighbours.

Right now, you're drawing loosely because you don't have a firm idea of what it is you want to draw before putting your pen to the page. I call this 'thinking on the page', where you explore your shapes before really thinking them through and visualizing them in your mind's eye.

Before you draw, take a step back and consider what forms you need. There's always the cranial mass of the head. This isn't the whole head, just the spherical mass that functions as a base for the rest of the skull. So, you draw a sphere. It's great that you draw through your ellipses, but you should probably work towards tightening them up.

Next you've got the ribcage and the pelvis. The relationship between these three elements will define your gesture. Consider, looking at your reference, the size and orientation of the ribcage and pelvis, and try to capture those forms on the page. Of course, we're doing this in a simplified manner, so an organic egg often works, but it's important to focus on the fact that it has volume and is sitting at a relevant angle.

The same way, you continue to build up your forms. After adding the spine (which like a string, flows through the cranial mass, ribcage and pelvis, as the embodiment of your gesture), you keep building it up by adding more solid forms. Consider where the shoulders sit, where the limbs attach to the torso, and so on.

Here's a bunch of other demos I've done on the same idea, of constructing with solid forms and clear points of intersection:

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

You're not particularly far off, but I would like you to do four more pages of animals. I'd like you to take pictures of the lay-ins before you move onto any stages of detail as well.

Uncomfortable

2015-08-09 23:01

Some are definitely better than others. Your hybrids were interesting, and they do bespeak a growing understanding. But we've got to take it further.

In a lot of these, I see a core problem that I've seen in a lot of others. Your lay-ins are lacking.

Basically, you've got to perceive the whole body - every part of it - as a form that connects with other forms. The limbs connect to the torso at some discrete point, the lower leg connects to the thigh at another, and so on. These have to intersect clearly, not just float around in relations to one another.

Check out these extra demos I've drawn over the past few months.

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

• https://i.imgur.com/OaCnkxG.jpg

Focus on how all the bits connect together, and remember that they are 3D forms with volume. Like this.

I'd like you to try another six pages, but don't go into detail. Stick to only drawing the lay-ins, focusing on drawing complete and discrete forms (don't be loose - think before every mark you draw, and don't think on the page, you should have a clear idea of what the mark you're going to draw looks like).

Uncomfortable

2015-08-10 13:55

Unfortunately, I recently made an announcement about critiques in August being limited to patreon supporters only, since I'm totally swamped with work from my full-time job this month. Regular free critiques will resume on September 1st, so you should resubmit your homework then.

If you do happen to be a patreon supporter though, send me a message via Patreon with your Reddit username so I know to associate the two accounts.

Uncomfortable

2015-08-12 01:41

Some of these are quite well done! Others show a bit of a struggle with proportion, but that's par for the course.

One thing I think my lesson may have failed to explain particularly well (I see this problem from the majority of people) is the idea of these animals being composed of solid forms that all connect to one another at specific locations. Nothing floats arbitrarily in space - everything is grounded in something else.

You actually did a pretty good job of this in many places, especially when thinking of how the legs connect to the torso. In other areas however - specifically the heads of your jaguars - you tend to have more arbitrary floating.

Check out these demos I did for other people who were facing a similar problem:

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

Focus on both the fact that the forms connect to one another in an explicit fashion, rather than just floating, and also on how I draw each form completely. Before I draw anything, I stop and think about what form I need next to continue constructing this animal. I don't try and feel it out on the page, and I'm not loose or sketchy. The next step is just another mark, but it's a specific mark and I think hard about what that mark is. Then, once I know it, I draw it in.

I'd like to see another four pages of animals - don't worry about going into detail, just construct a solid lay-in taking these points into consideration.

Uncomfortable

2015-09-01 23:51

Generally not bad. Your constructions have nice volumes, and generally feel quite dynamic and fairly solid. One issue that I did notice however that your approach does seem to have a full grasp of the idea that all of these basic forms connect together to make the whole. You seem to understand that on some level, but you're not taking it all the way.

The biggest thing related to that which is missing is an acknowledgement of the shoulder joint. Sometimes I see it marked in vaguely, but generally it doesn't seem to be afforded a whole lot of importance, and the arm doesn't necessarily seem to be sprouting from there.

The shoulders/hips are very important - as are pretty much any joint like the knees and so on where multiple 3D forms come together and connect.

As you move forward, take a look at these examples, paying special attention to how I construct the animals from simple forms that connect at specific points.

• http://i.imgur.com/1nFmI45.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/F2pRsA1.jpg

• http://i.imgur.com/k9bHvRB.jpg

I'll mark this lesson as complete, and seeing as you already completed lesson 6, I'll go on and critique it.