Uncomfortable

2017-03-06 19:57

I think you've achieved varying degrees of success here, but there's one big thing that stands out to me in terms of your approach: you tend to be a timid with your markmaking. I see a lot of signs where you're drawing very lightly (at times resulting in gaps in your linework). This isn't an uncommon thing among students, but it generally originates from the student being very preoccupied with the final result, and not viewing what they're doing as a simple exercise - one of many. Don't let yourself get caught up in the idea of finishing up with a pretty drawing. We're not doing these to show them off, but rather their value lies in what we learn from them.

By drawing timidly, the solidity of your forms definitely suffers. In other ways, it also (somewhat ironically) results in linework that tends to be more sketchy and chicken-scratchy, as you end up building up forms in more segments rather than a single continuous line. For example, your hercules beetle definitely has a lot more strokes than it needs.

Push yourself to draw confidently instead. Don't think of it as though your'e sketching roughly, then cleaning up in a subsequent pass. Approach it in a single pass, and focus on each individual form you want to construct. Construct each volume with one stroke. If the form you're laying down is fairly elliptical in nature, feel free to draw through it once more before lifting up your pen, but in general avoid going over a line over and over in an attempt to clean it up.

If you look at my demos, you'll notice that up until fairly late in the process, my forms are drawn in fairly equally - nothing's lighter than the rest. It isn't till the last or second last step that I start working in my weights, purely to emphasize lines that already exist and to help organize what's going on. This is inherently different from a clean-up pass, as it does not seek to outright replace looser, sketchier lines.

You had a question there about shading. As a rule, I try to play down shading so as to keep students from relying upon light and shadow as a means to convey form. So when you reach a stage where you want to add extra detail, the forms and volumes should already be well defined using other techniques (contour lines, demonstrating the turn of form through silhouette, etc). At that point, we're very much beholden to the tools we use.

I talk about this more in the 25 texture challenge, but because we're using felt tip pens, I always build the core of my shadows to be a solid, flat black. Crosshatching with tools of this nature can really cause a lot of areas of high contrast (with white speckling against a sea of black) which becomes quite distracting, so it's generally best to fuse it all together. Then in the transition area from black to white, I use the actual texture of the object I'm drawing as a way to gradually shift values, going from dense to sparse.

Looking at how your drawings ultimately come together, I can see that you do have a solid grasp of form and a good understanding of 3D space. You certainly do need to work on dropping some of these bad habits however.

As such, I'd like you to do four more pages of insect drawings, focusing entirely on construction. I don't want to see any texture, shadow, rendering, etc.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-07 23:38

For the most part, these are much better. The last page is still a little weak and feels kind of misaligned similarly to how the beetles were before, but your first two pages are quite strong. The first drawing was especially well done, and I think the subtle addition of extra weight to the edges of that top layer of shell really pushes the illusion of layering and overlap.

One thing that can certainly use more work though is how you tackle your legs. I brought this up in my last critique, that your legs tend to feel very stiff. I showed you this demo, mentioning that your legs should have a greater sense of flow to them. Sometimes it's necessary to invent that flow yourself (in subtle ways) if you can't quite see it in your reference. Be sure to keep this in mind as you move forwards.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-07 23:48

There's definitely some key problems here:

• You're not drawing through your ellipses. Often times we lay in the major forms as ellipses, then turn them into ball-like forms. Ellipses are really good in this regard because of their simplicity, which helps us maintain a sense of solidity. That said, this only works if your ellipses are even and confidently drawn. We can achieve this by drawing through them. You'll notice my very heavy use of ellipsoids in the notes I gave you in my last critique.

• First drawing - we have no idea how those legs actually attach to the insect on its underside. If necessary, feel free to look up other reference images to inform these decisions better, but don't just leave them as you have. We're not just drawing the images we see, we're understanding how the critter sits in 3D space. In order to do this, we need to draw through our forms much more completely.

• Take more care with your contour curves - some are okay, but many are either not aligned to what that form's minor axis would be, or simply don't hook around enough at the edges to give the impression that they're wrapping around the form

• Additionally, be a little more mindful with how many contour curves you add. I see a lot of students focus more on quantity than quality, as you have here - a couple well executed contour lines can carry the illusion of form for an entire section, while a dozen shitty ones won't quite do the trick. Also, consider how you're spacing them out. Doing so at regular intervals tends to make them look more wireframey, like they've been man-made.

• That bumble bee's proportions are waaay off.

• The legs on the first drawing are quite stiff. Second drawing's definitely better, there's noticeably more flow there.

Try another four pages. I know I'm sending you back repeatedly, but don't be discouraged - this is often necessary to really pin down exactly what the underlying issues with your approach (both technical, and how you see these things) really are, so they can be corrected.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-09 00:45

I'm very glad to hear that you're taking dynamic sketching! Is it in person, or online? Patrick was the teaching assistant for Peter Han when I took the class, he definitely knows his stuff, certainly moreso than myself.

Generally your work looks really nice. Solid form constructions, plenty of examples of great use of line weight. I have a few things to share however that may help as you continue to move forwards:

• I noticed that when legs connect to the torso at a point that is hidden (like when they get tucked under a shell), you tend to have those legs stop as soon as they reach the edge of that shell. Try drawing through them, drawing the entirety of that section of the leg as an enclosed form, as this will help you get a better sense of how the form itself sits in space and how it relates to the larger forms of the body. It helps considerably to force yourself to consider how the legs themselves connect to the body - even if they aren't meant to be visible in your drawing. Having a stronger understanding of this will help you to draw the visible portions more convincingly.

• Also about the legs - I noticed that you have a bit of a tendency to draw legs that are a little on the stiff side. This is pretty normal and comes from an overemphasis on form (which is kind of ironic and contradictory coming from me). The fact of the matter is that rather than having the option of drawing something as strictly 2D or 3D, things exist on more of a spectrum. We can take properties of a 2D shape and apply them with a greater weight, playing down the illusions that establish 3D form (except in certain key areas). When dealing with legs especially, I try to focus more on the gestural quality of 2D shape, relying only on establishing on the illusion of form at either end. Through the length of the long, narrow form, I focus on the sense of flow, and the general rhythm that we get from one section of the leg flowing into the next. I demonstrate this a little bit in this demo of a fly.

• The last thing I want to mention is in regards to your tendency to lay forms in, then to go over them, completely replacing your initial marks with a "clean-up pass". The issue with this sort of clean up pass is that it usually results in linework that is considerably stiffer, as while producing it you're focusing primarily on accuracy. Instead, I encourage my students to draw the initial pass as confidently as possible - applying the ghosting method to ensure the greatest degree of accuracy possible, but ultimately executing each mark with confident, muscle-memory-driven motions. Once the entire thing has been constructed in this manner, we then go back to reinforce line weights in key areas - this may seem similar to the idea of a clean-up pass, but it's fundamentally different. Instead of replacing linework, we merely emphasize what already exists, organizing the lines in a sort of hierarchy, pulling and pushing them to draw attention to some and allow others to recede.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one when you feel you're ready.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-11 01:28

In general, these are exceptionally well done. You do a great job of balancing solid forms and little touches of texture, while also managing to somehow achieve the impression of focusing heavily on line-economy, while somehow also feeling loose and energetic. Even writing it out, it seems fundamentally contradictory.

The fly on the top left of this page is definitely one of my favourites, despite being one of the least detailed. It's a great example of building up basic forms, and then implying greater complexity with key, well placed marks and weights. It shows that your brain understands there to be additional forms there that you haven't yet had to flesh out. While we're still going to be focusing on laying everything in laboriously, what you're doing here points more towards the ultimate goal (beyond the scope of these lessons) of visualizing those constructions without putting them down.

Keep up the great work, and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-13 19:42

While overall you've definitely got a lot of patience and care when applying detail/texture, I do agree that you may have gone a bit overboard - to the point of perhaps allowing it to distract you from the underlying construction, and actually resulting in some of your forms being flattened out.

One major thing to know in terms of the illusion of solidity is that it's something that you imbue your construction with from the very beginning. At the end of each constructional phase (if you consider laying in your initial masses as the first phase, and each step of building up greater complexity from there), you can either maintain the same solidity as you had previously, or you can decrease. You can never gain solidity (obviously that's an extreme exaggeration, but it's a good rule of thumb).

So, it is entirely possible to have a very solid construction, and then apply texture in such a way that you undermine that solidity, and end up with parts of your drawing feeling a little flat. I can see a few key areas where you've perhaps tried to regain a degree of that solidity (like adding those subtle wireframe-like contour lines along your scorpion at the end there), which simply weren't able to accomplish the task.

Additionally, it's not uncommon for students who are eager to get into the detail phase of things to rush their constructions or to skip some of those steps. Lastly, with detailing this heavy, it's actually very difficult to identify where there are fundamental issues with your construction.

While you're not necessarily doing badly, I do feel that there are underlying issues in certain places that are weakening your results. I'd like you to do three more pages of insect drawings, with no detail whatsoever. Focus entirely on construction so I can see exactly what's going on underneath. Make sure you draw everything with full confidence, not hiding any linework (as some people might do if they were focusing on a pretty detailed drawing at the end - which you should not be doing even if you were to detail your drawing heavily).

Before I end this, I did notice one issue that will be good to know for your revisions - when applying contour lines, you have a tendency to do so as more of a wireframe. Try to avoid this, as it always involves draw far more contour linework than is necessary to hint at the nature of the surface. I also noticed that when you do this, you tend to put less thought into the drawing of each contour line - one or two carefully planned and executed contour lines will always be far stronger than a whole mesh of sloppy ones.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-14 20:12

There are definitely some key issues that are plaguing your approach, but before we get into that, I do want to point out that it has been quite a while since your last submission. Over five months. It is definitely common for people to get rusty, so I have to ask whether or not you've been keeping up with the exercises from the first two lessons. Looking at your work, I think it's fair to say that you probably haven't.

This is perfectly fine, but it does mean that you should definitely revisit that material and sharpen up those skills. By jumping back where you left off, you're putting yourself at a very steep disadvantage.

Now, I'll give you a quick overview of things that I'm seeing here that you should avoid in terms of this lesson, so you can apply them once you're back up to speed with those earlier exercises.

• Don't draw a rough sketch, then try to do a cleanup pass with more careful lines. Those 'careful' lines end up being very stiff and don't convey a strong sense of form. You get that from the confidence of your initial lineworks, so focus only on doing things in one pass. Draw through forms as necessary, don't worry about hiding lines at all. We can organize them later by adding line weight to key areas, but you shouldn't be actively burdening yourself with the need to keep certain things less visible.

• When you draw your initial masses, they are not just loose approximations of things. Think of it as though you're placing actual physical balls of matter into 3D space. Once these are present, you cannot simply ignore them and change your mind - you need to deal with them appropriately. This means carving them or cutting them, or building on them. The difference here is that when you carve something, you need to be aware of both the piece that remains, and the piece that is being cut away, and you need to be aware of them as 3D forms in 3D space. You need to yourself be convinced of their solidity.

• Be more mindful of how the different forms connect to one another. I can see a lot of areas where you don't have clear connections between the legs and the torso, the wasp's wings to its thorax, etc. This shows me that you're not really thinking that much in terms of 3D form, still primarily lines on a flat page. This is largely why it's important for you to revisit the old material, as it lays the groundwork for thinking in three dimensions.

Uncomfortable

2017-03-27 19:41

A brush pen's definitely a big asset when it comes to filling in large areas to keep visual noise and distraction down. Overall I think you're doing a really good job of taking the concepts of construction from the lesson and applying them to your drawings. I can see that you're demonstrating a pretty solid grasp of the forms you're playing with, and the space in which you're fitting them all together. Your experimentation with texture is also resulting in nice headway, and I really like how boldly you're playing with those large areas of black and shadow.

There's just two minor points that I want to mention:

• The head on the top right here gives me a great opportunity to mention how one big risk when adding texture is overpowering the underlying construction and losing a lot of the solidity and volume in the initial drawing. Always remember that solidity is something that your drawing starts out with, and that is maintained through the drawing. You can't ever add more solidity, but you sure as hell can lose it. One such way to decrease solidity is through the use of texture. That's why I generally lean towards making fewer marks rather than more. This wasn't really an issue in the rest of your drawings, but I figured I'd jump on the opportunity to work this point in, as it may come in handy in the future.

• I noticed that you were filling in your cast shadows with loose hatching. This is more of a personal observation and you're free to disagree with me here, but I find that this makes the shadow draw the eye too much. The alternating black/white of those hatching lines increases the visual interest in something that really isn't meant to be that eye-catching. The cast shadow should really just be a simple shape there to give the rest of the construction grounding without calling too much attention to itself.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-05 00:41

Over the course of this lesson, I think you've done a pretty good job of demonstrating and improving upon your understanding of 3D space, and how the forms you're using all fit together to create more complex objects.

I have only two things to point out:

• I'm noticing that the legs of your insect tend to be a little stiff at times. This isn't always the case, but I think you do better when you regard the flow of each leg, and worry less about each individual segment. While form is still important, I find that taking advantage of the more gestural flow provided by 2D shapes can help establish something a little more lifelike before building form on top of it. Take a look at step 4 in this demo. Even when tackling them with more form, you can think of the different segments as organic sausage shapes/forms as shown in this demo.

• I find that when you try to go heavier on your use of texture, like the grasshopper at the end there, you fall into the common trap of overpowering the underlying construction. One principle that is important to remember is that the illusion of solidity is something that you imbue your drawing with at the very beginning, based on the decisions you make and how you regard the forms you're sticking together. As you continue to build up your drawing, you cannot increase how solid and three-dimensional it looks. You can only ever maintain it, or lose it. Every mark you put down for texture actually describes that surface - not only in its textural quality, but also how the surface itself deforms through space. As such, if you put down a lot of cluttered marks without considering how that impacts the illusion of form, you could be sending mixed signals to the viewer that ultimately break their suspension of disbelief. For this reason, a good rule of thumb is that less is more - try not to go overboard with texture. Try to think more about what you're trying to communicate, and then consider what's necessary to do just that much. So you may be trying to communicate the particular roughness of a beetle's shell, for example. Don't focus on replicating the photograph you're using as reference. Look at it constantly to determine what your surfaces look like and how you might go about emphasizing certain qualities within it, but filter that information through your own intentions.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You're doing great, so keep it up and feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-07 22:52

Pretty good! One thing that I am noticing is that you're likely a little more focused on detail and texture than you are on the underlying construction. Your construction isn't in and of itself bad, but if I had to apply weights to each one's priority, I'd say that 80% of your effort should be spent on construction, and 20% on texture. It's not uncommon for students to have their mind set on the detail phase, because it's natural to feel that the details make the drawing. They really don't. The solidity, the tangibility and the believability of a drawing really comes from how mindful the artist was in regards to the basic forms that fit together to create the overall construction. Details really only add the last little oomph to set the drawing apart. Alternatively, details can also undermine and contradict the construction, in which case letting your details do all the talking can result in a drawing that simply doesn't look right.

In terms of texture, I can see a lot of great experimentation here. I really love the head on this one where you've captured a nice balance of different textures coming together, with no reliance on randomness. Most of your marks feel purposeful and intentional. The rest of the body is a little more haphazard, which is why you probably felt you didn't do too well on the hairy part. On that note, I have one major hint - you don't have to fill everything in. In fact, you probably shouldn't. When it comes to hair especially, the strongest impact will come from details you've carefully designed and crafted along the silhouette of the form. Anything that breaks that silhouette will immediately be caught by your eye long before it starts processing the internal marks. Having a lot of internal detail on the other hand will result in a lot of noise and distraction, and if you do it everywhere, you'll have everything vying for the viewer's attention. This can in turn be quite stressful and make a drawing unpleasant to look at.

As you push further into the set, I noticed that you think less about the actual textures and details present on your reference image and end up using hatching lines a lot more. This is a mistake. Hatching lines are very often used as a sort of filler, where a student doesn't want to think about what's actually present there and focus more on lighting and shading. So, they end up filling things in with all kinds of scratches just to say there's something there.

The relationship between lighting and texture, and both of their role in your drawing, should be the opposite. Lighting should be used as a tool to capture texture in key areas, instead of texture being used to show light and shadow. In turn, one should not be relying on lighting in order to convey form - that should already be established by one's construction.

There's also another reason that hatching isn't a great idea especially in this medium. Fineliners will force you to work very much in binary - either a mark is down or it's not. There's very little - pardon the pun - grey area. Instead, we achieve the illusion of value ranges by varying the density of black and white within a certain space. This also has the downside of creating really noisy, high-contrast spaces which as I explained before becomes distracting and unpleasant. Hatching does this by its nature, because it's just a bunch of alternating marks. Other kinds of textural approaches will vary, but regardless, it's best to do texture with a light touch, only getting more intense when you actively want the viewer to look somewhere.

So. When you're approaching texture, I want you to think about what is actually going on in your reference. Ask yourself, what makes this surface appear bumpy, rough, wet, smooth, etc. What specific marks are there that communicate that to me, and how can I use them to communicate that same idea to the viewer.

After having talked at length about texture, I'd like you to do two more pages of insect drawings with absolutely no texture or detail. Focus entirely on construction.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-10 20:51

I think I've grown a little numb to the creepy crawlies... at least when they're on paper. That said, a few people have still managed to utterly disgust me - that's usually a good sign.

So you're doing pretty well. I especially love the beetle on the upper right of the first page - you're demonstrating there a really solid grasp of the basic forms there. The ant there is pretty well done too, while the beetle on the bottom is a little flatter.

Construction consists of many successive passes where you break down your forms and increase complexity. At the end of each pass, you need to be fully confident and convinced of the three dimensionality of what is sitting there. I think that's where that second beetle falls through a bit - you probably would have benefitted from adding one or two contour curves to the first construction pass before building on top of it.

Moving through the set, there's some good and some less good, but I think one trend that I'm seeing is that when you set your sights on a more texture, detailed, and more finely rendered final drawing, you end up flattening things out. This relates back to what I was saying about the state of a drawing at the end of every successive pass. Basically, solidity is something that starts at the beginning - it cannot be added later on, it can only be maintained or lost. One common way to lose it is actually to contradict or undermine what the underlying construction tells us about how those forms sit in 3D space. Every mark of a texture sits on that surface and tells us something about it - when we get a little too engrossed in the idea of capturing every little detail in a texture, we can very easily lose sight of the big picture and lose the solidity that was once there.

There's also the fact that when people have their sights set on texture, they behave differently during the constructional phase. They'll draw more timidly, be more faint in their mark-making, and generally dedicate less focus to construction, hoping to jump forwards into texture.

That isn't to say you haven't had your successes amongst the textured drawings - the beetle on this page still retains a great deal of its underlying form and solidity, largely because you approached its texture with a much less overbearing hand.

So, when drawing, always approach construction as though all your drawing will consist of is that. Once you feel your construction is solid and conveys what you're trying to communicate to the viewer about those forms and volumes, then you can start to add detail and textural information. Keep in mind that the goal is always communication - you don't have to (and really shouldn't ,especially in this particularly harsh medium) capture every little detail you see in the photograph. Instead, you should use all of that visual data to help you to figure out how to best communicate the various qualities present on each surface. Think about what on that reference image makes the shell feel smooth or bumpy or rough, and limit yourself to only what you need to convey that message.

Anyway, you are demonstrating good understanding of form when you set your mind to it, so I am confident that you're moving in the right direction. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-04-16 16:58

Your understanding of construction definitely improves over the set. I'm especially liking that fly, as it feels particularly three dimensional and believable. The ground beetle is also fairly well done.

There are a couple issues that I'd like to bring to your attention though.

• Draw through your ellipses to keep them even, and therefore have them read as solidly as possible. You are doing through some of them and not others, although even when you draw through them there's a visible sense of timidity to how you put the mark down, as though you're hesitating and attempting to hide them. Draw with more confidence.

• Remember that your initial lay-in is a collection of solid forms, not arbitrary shapes. If you've put down a solid form onto the page, you cannot simply change your mind down the line and ignore it. An example of you doing this is with the head study of the ground beetle, where you started out with an exploratory ellipse, then then went on to disregard it to a large extent. What sells the solidity of a construction is how you perceive it while working with it. You need to respect the fact that it exists in space, and in order to work with it, you must carve and cut into that form. This means being as aware of the pieces being cut away as they exist in 3D space, as you are of the part that remains. What you've done here is work within the two dimensional confines of the initial ellipse. If you allow yourself to think about these things in two dimensions instead of three, your results will be flatter.

On the matter of texture, you're not actually applying texture - what I'm seeing is that you're attempting to add light and shadow to your drawing. This is inherently different, and it's why you can't seem to move past using hatching lines which contain no actual textural information relevant to your subject matter.

You're not answering any questions in regards to what makes this surface appear rough, smooth, wet, bumpy, etc. and are merely filling things in where you feel the light does not hit the surface directly. This is not an uncommon thing students try. Many students, especially those with prior experience with drawing, will try to use lighting and shading to build up the illusion of 3D form. Some will take that further and use texture as a tool to create areas of dark and light to accomplish the previous goal.

What I encourage is quite the opposite. Firstly, if construction is done well, there is no need for rendering (the application of light and shadow) to reinforce the illusion of form. Construction can stand on its own to communicate this aspect of the object being drawn without additional support.

What construction cannot communicate is the texture and tactile quality of the various surfaces of an object, so that is where texture comes in. Instead of using texture as a tool when applying lighting/shading, we can use lighting as a tool to help us communicate texture. This can be done because texture is effectively just a bunch of very small forms that exist along a surface - what we actually see of a texture is a matter of how light plays off it. The marks we see are effectively just shadows.

I go into this in greater depth in the 25 texture challenge so be sure to read through those notes. That said, there's one thing I want to make clear:

It's very obvious to me that you're too focused on the challenge of applying texture/rendering. While your underlying constructions are generally well done, it's quite clear that while working on construction, you are too focused on jumping ahead to the detail phase. This causes you to draw somewhat more timidly (not drawing through some ellipses for example). Additionally, the way you currently apply detail has a habit of seriously undermining your constructions. Every mark you put down for a drawing communicates something to the viewer - that's effectively what we're doing. We're communicating ideas, and describing things about those ideas. If the construction says one thing about an object, but the details you go on to apply contradicts that, a drawing will come out looking off. Always keep in mind that every mark on an object serves as a contour line, in that it runs along the surface of that form and in doing so, describes how that surface warps through 3D space. You need to always be completely aware of the forms you're working with, and ensure that any later details you add respect the construction that is already there. It is for this reason that I often opt for being subtle with my use of detail, so as to keep from overshadowing and overwhelming the underlying construction.

One last thing - I can't quite tell what scale you're drawing these at, but using your handwriting for scale, you may not be using as much room as you have on a given page. Drawing smaller will cause you to stiffen up and will pose greater challenges in terms of thinking in 3D space. Make sure you take advantage of as much of the space a page offers you.

I'd like you to do four more pages of insect drawings, but with no detail or texture whatsoever. Focus on drawing confidently, and on respecting the underlying construction. I believe removing the pressure of detail will really allow you to cement your grasp of the underlying forms.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-03 20:10

Your drawings here are very well done. You're demonstrating a strong understanding of how the objects you're drawing break down into simpler forms and how they all fit together. You put contour curves and other similar techniques to good use, taking enough care with each one to make it effective without drawing too many. I also see you taking advantage of many natural details within the drawing that serve as contour lines on their own.

The issue with finding center lines will definitely improve with practice - specifically as you continue to develop your understanding of how all of these objects exist in three dimensions. I think you're already well on your way to that, but don't be afraid to do things wrong - it's those mistakes that will help you fine-tune your sense for where those center lines are actually positioned along a form.

Usually I'd encourage students to avoid skipping any steps, but ultimately whatever you're doing here seems to be working well for you. Ultimately the goal is to internalize the kinds of things we draw explicitly right now, so we go from having to put those marks on the page to simply being able to see and understand them with our mind's eye. This is the sort of thing that takes a lot of time and practice to develop though, but far in the future the goal is to be able to "skip" a lot of steps (although skipping isn't the best word for it, which is why I said 'internalize' before).

Since whatever you're doing is resulting in a clearly demonstrated understanding of form, I'm not going to ask you to modify that at all. If in the future I see signs of your grasp of form becoming more relaxed and sloppy, I will point that out - but for now, keep doing what you're doing.

As for suggested lines (sometimes they're referred to as lost-and-found lines), they're a great technique especially when it comes to adding additional details or when your goal is a beautiful end drawing (unlike our exercises, which are really more about the process and what they teach us). I wouldn't worry about doing that for the basic constructions of things, since solid, continuous lines play a big role in reinforcing our understanding of form and space, but in general it is a useful tool that will come in handy in the future.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-15 00:59

Overall this is really quite well done! You're doing a great job of capturing the various forms that make up your constructions, and are demonstrating a well developed sense of three dimensional space. Your constructions exist in all three dimensions, and play with the dimension of depth specifically instead of just going across the flat two dimensions of the page you're drawing on.

If I had to pick on a couple things that might be what looks off to you, here's what comes to mind:

• I notice that you have a bit of a tendency to draw your initial construction more timidly, as though you're purposely trying to hide that linework from the final result. This inherently gives the overall drawing a much less confident feel, and the underlying construction ends up feeling less solid. Confidence really is the name of the game here - do not focus on the end result, and always make sure you're drawing every stroke with full confidence. This will inevitably mean that your construction will show through much more, but this is perfectly fine. These are all just exercises. Their purpose is to push both your grasp of 3D space, and also your ability to imbue your forms with an illusion of solidity (which comes from that confidence). You can always come back on top of your confident lines to add a little subtle weight here and there to help organize your linework, but even in this case it's important that you add that weight with confidence, applying the ghosting method and opening yourself up to the possibility of making a mistake. If you add that weight slowly, being super-careful in order to follow the line that already exists, you will end up with stiffer linework.

• I did notice that the legs you draw have a tendency of feeling a little stiff. Take a look at step 4 on this demo. Notice how I draw each section of the leg as a single, flowing enclosed form? Try that, as it should maintain the flow a little bit better. In your attempts, you tend to be jumping in with more complex shapes (specifically drawing in how each section fits into each other, rather than "drawing through" the forms and sorting out the intersection afterwards.

Anyway, you're generally doing quite well, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-18 01:20

There's definitely some good stuff here, but overall from your work and from what you mentioned when submitting it, you are definitely being distracted by your texture-woes. You're attempting to take on too much all at once, and as a result are not doing particularly great in either area. That isn't to say either is bad, but there are definitely some issues that you probably would have avoided had your attention been focused on one thing at a time.

In terms of your construction:

• You're being somewhat sloppy. When laying in your initial forms, take the time to make them feel solid and three dimensional - don't treat it like you're laying down a loose sketch that will be solidified later. Make sure your contour curves wrap around the object in a way that really describes how the surface flows through space. Draw your "blobs" as ellipses, and draw through those ellipses, as that it's relatively simple to make an ellipse feel solid (as long as the shape is even) and build on top of that.

• Apply the ghosting method everywhere. This is really just an extension of the previous point, but I can see signs of you drawing rather erratically in certain cases (more where you get frustrated with something, and respond to that frustration by drawing more rather than stepping back and thinking about your approach). One mark per line, don't correct your mistakes by drawing another line on top.

• You'll notice that your smaller drawings tend to be more stiff - this is normal, as this kind of construction consists of spatial problems, and our brains tend to handle them better when given more room to think and work.

• Always consider how different forms connect to one another. You'll often see in my demos that I draw an ellipse to specifically show the intersection shape between two balls/blobs - this really grounds that intersection in reality. If you leave it all in your head, it's less likely that you'll really believe that you're drawing 3d forms yourself. The first step to convincing other people that your drawing is three dimensional is to convince yourself, and to buy into your own illusion.

For texture:

• You're scribbling a fair bit. If an area should be filled in, make sure it's filled in completely - don't leave little slivers of white behind, as those will cause your drawing to become very noisy, drawing the viewer's eye to certain places unintentionally.

• The thing about more texture flattening your drawing out is perfectly normal. Ultimately, your construction communicates certain things about how your forms sit in 3D space, and how the surfaces flow through it. Texture sits on those surfaces, and just like contour lines, they will also describe that deformation. If the texture contradicts what the construction says about your drawing, you will find that your drawing flattens out. For example, if you draw a sphere, and then draw straight lines across it, that sphere will immediately become a flat circle. It is for this reason that you need to be very careful about what lines you choose to put down on a drawing and not scribble or draw in any sort of uncontrolled or unplanned fashion. Less is often far better than more, and holding yourself back to think and observe your reference will often be a much better use of your time than drawing more.

I'd like you to do four more pages of insect drawings, but I want these to include no texture whatsoever. Focus entirely on your constructions, and make sure that at the end of every successive pass of construction, that your forms feel solid and three dimensional. Solidity is your goal, not detail.

If you're interested in delving into texture separately, I recommend the 25 texture challenge. Keep in mind that it is meant to be done over a long period of time, in parallel with the other lessons. Texture takes a fair bit of time to sink in, as it requires you to work on your ability to observe and study without relying on your memory (continually looking back at your reference instead of drawing from what you remember), and eventually leans on your capacity to organize the visual information you've pulled from your reference. It's quite complex on its own, and is not the sort of thing that sinks in by simply grinding it out in one sitting.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-29 17:29

Looking over your homework, there's a few things I've noticed:

• Your linework has a bit of a tendency to be stiff. Your initial constructional ellipses/balls are fairly smooth, but as you build up from there (especially as your forms get smaller), things get very stiff. Take a look at the difference between the legs on your black widow and mine. The segments on yours feel like they're more or less rigid cylinders, whereas mine tend more towards being like the sausage type forms that we dealt with in lesson 2. Additionally, if you look at the connection points between segments, you can clearly see how they connect to one another, with each segment being tucked into the one before it.

• You also struggle with your proportions in certain areas, especially in things with a distinct head/thorax/abdomen. It suggests that you could definitely observe your reference more carefully, as right now you seem to be glancing at it, and then working from memory for quite a while before looking back once again. Memory is faulty - you must ensure that you return your gaze to your reference constantly, looking away only for a second or two before refreshing your memory anew.

• You're definitely putting significantly more time and effort into those intricate textures, than you are in your construction. Construction is however our main focus here, and texture frankly doesn't matter. If the construction is not solid, if it does not convincingly convey three dimensional form, then detail will not save the drawing. When building up your construction, ensure that at the end of every phase, what you have drawn feels solid and three dimensional. For example, when you start, don't draw ellipses - draw three dimensional balls. If they don't feel solid, then use the tricks covered in earlier lessons (contour lines, etc) to reinforce their solidity before moving onto the next step.

I wrote these notes yesterday for another student, and I think in many ways they should help. Also, make sure that you are continuing to practice your earlier exercises as warmups so as to keep your linework confident and smooth, and to further develop your ability to construct solid primitive forms.

I'd like you to try 6 more pages of insect drawings, but I don't want you to go into any detail or texture. Focus entirely on construction.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-31 22:19

You are 100% fine in including a crustacean in your homework for this set, as they pose all of the same constructional challenges and really fit the same sort of configuration as arachnids. They're not arachnids, of course, but both crustaceans and arachnids belong to the umbrella group of "arthopods".

Anyway, overall you did a pretty great job with this lesson. You're demonstrating a really solid grasp of form and construction, as well as keeping your priorities in order. While you did pay some attention to texture and detail, you didn't let it distract you from building up your underlying forms and attempting to produce a solid basis for your drawing. The detail seemed to be more of an afterthought, which frankly, is exactly how I like it.

As far as construction goes, there is one thing that I want to stress a little bit. Remember that everything you put down on the page is not like placing a loose abstraction that will become something more solid later on. It's not like a sort of fog that eventually materializes once you're more certain of how things are going. A lot of artists do approach it in this way, and do so with a more loose sort of sketchy manner. That's not what we're after here.

Instead, try to perceive everything added as a form - something solid, with weight and volume to it - being added to this three dimensional pocket universe that is only perceptible through the window that is your piece of paper. Should you wish to change what you placed there, you'll have to deal with the form that was created in some fashion. If it were just smoke, you'd ignore it and go about your changes, and whatever was there previously would just evaporate. But because what's there is hard and unyielding, you must approach it as such. If it were marble or stone, you'd cut into it, and carve away the pieces that you didn't want.

This may sound arbitrarily similar to simply drawing in your changes, but the difference is that when carving and cutting, you must be aware of both resulting pieces. There's the piece that you're after, and the piece that you cut away. Both exist as three dimensional entities within this space, and by approaching it in this way, every cut effectively reinforces the solidity of your construction. Treat it as stone, and it will feel like stone. Treat it like smoke, and.. well, you get my meaning.

So for example, with this beetle, look at its abdomen. We can see the loose ellipse you started with, and the form that existed at the end - but we cannot see any clear carving or cut that took us from the former to the latter. Instead, it was simply decided that you wanted to go in a different route.

There's just one other thing I wanted to mention on the subject of texture. Every mark we put down on the page serves a purpose. Its purpose is to communicate some sort of description of what is being depicted to the person looking at it. The marks we put down when constructing things convey information about how it is put together, how it takes up and sits in space. It tells us about whether it is round, or angular, or pointy. Then there's the smaller details which tell us about whether it's rough, smooth, sticky, wet, bumpy, etc.

It's absolutely possible - and this happens frequently - that a mark you put down to communicate one idea, also speaks volumes about something you never meant to say. Sometimes, one part of our drawing says something strongly, but then another contradicts it entirely, resulting in a message that is muddy and unclear.

This sometimes happens when adding texture. Think back to contour lines - they're simply details that run along the surface of an object in such a clear way that they communicate to the viewer how that surface deforms and twists through space. They're very useful in the constructional stage of a drawing. Texture, however, can very much accomplish the same thing since it sits on the surface of that form - or, if you aren't careful and mindful of what your application of texture says about that surface, it can entirely contradict what you had made clear previously. In this way, applying texture too heavily and without thought for the form underneath, can cause an image to ultimately become unclear, and effectively become very flat.

Very long story short, always remember the form underneath. Try not to go overboard with texture, because the more you add, the more you're likely to contradict that kind of information. Instead, remember that it's all just communication - you only need to add enough texture to communicate a certain idea. If you pile on loads of detail that all says the same thing, it will all start to feel very overbearing and needlessly noisy.

Anyway! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Also, thank you for increasing your pledge! It's much appreciated.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-02 23:15

Your work certainly improves over the set, but overall I think you're in many ways still preoccupied with the beauty of the end result, as though you're approaching these exercises with the intent of having something nice to show off. For that reason, your mind is set on rendering, line weight, the use of hatching, and so on, while you're also failing to draw through your ellipses, establish your forms in a way that appears solid and really conveying the illusion that these objects are three dimensional.

The spider near the beginning is definitely one of your weaker drawings, and I really went to town on it adding these notes. Key things to take away from it:

• Draw through your ellipses

• Not sure why you're applying hatching in the way that you are, but it's flattening out your forms and serves no purpose whatsoever

• Don't guess or work from memory (which is very similar to guessing). If you're not sure how certain things fit together, or about the specifics of some part of your subject matter, don't hesitate to find other reference images that are clearer, or shot from a different angle. Always look at your reference image over and over, constantly refreshing your memory, effectively putting down only a few marks before looking back again.

This ant definitely shows a better grasp of 3D space, and the legs are coming along well too. I'm not sure there's very much benefit from drawing them as lines initially though, which you're doing in a few places (you mentioned this yourself when submitting). If anything, they make things feel somewhat stiffer than they otherwise could.

This mite looks interesting, though while the details are neat, the form is generally still quite flat, especially on the top. The part where the legs connect to the body give it a little bit more dimension, but even the legs themselves feel very flat.

I'd like you to try another four pages of insect drawings, but I want to see no texture or detail whatsoever. Focus entirely on construction. Also, if you haven't already, make sure you give these notes I posted last week a read.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-03 18:03

With many of these drawings, you are definitely demonstrating a good internal model of 3D space, and a solid understanding of how your forms intersect with one another and how they sit within that space.

The only issue of significance that I'm noticing however is more about your linework. You're noticeably sketchy, and your earlier lines shown signs that you're actively trying to make them less noticeable. This in turn causes them to be less confident, which then impacts the perceived solidity and believability of your forms.

Keep in mind that you should be applying the ghosting method to every single mark you put down. This means planning and forethought preceding every line, not drawing from the gut. Additionally, don't think about it as drawing line-by-line. Think about the forms themselves - focus on drawing each one such that you believe it to be a solid, three dimensional mass in 3D space, and ensure that each one is self-enclosed. I noticed a lot of gaps between your lines.

Another very important piece of advice is that at every stage of construction, you should confidently believe in the solidity of each and every form you've already put down. I can see in certain drawings that you start off by drawing ellipses - which is fine, that's part of my instructions. The point is, however, that these ellipses should be turned into three dimensional balls.

What's the difference? Think of it as though you're placing a ball of marble into a three dimensional world, and your piece of paper is a window into that world. If you decide that the ball of marble no longer fits the exact shape you need, you cannot simply ignore it and draw something else on top - the form exists there, whether you like it or not. If it were just lines on a flat page, you could do whatever you wanted, but since it's solid marble, it needs to be dealt with in a way that suits its properties.

So, we cut and we carve. The difference between cutting a drawn form and simply drawing over it is that cutting requires you to understand how both the piece being cut away and the piece remaining exist in 3D space. You need to understand them as forms, not as flat shapes. This allows you to manipulate the forms in your three dimensional world, whilst continuing to respect the fact that they are solid. This in turn will allow that solidity to continue to imbue your drawing, resulting in a drawing that does not feel flat.

I'd like you to do four more pages of insect drawings, but I want you to focus entirely on construction. Don't get into any detail or texture and focus entirely on creating those confident, self-enclosed forms. The goal here is ultimately to get you in the habit of planning out each form independently, rather than being quite as sketchy as you are right now.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-16 21:12

Nicely done! You start out a little bit weak but things really pick up quickly and your sense of construction and form vastly improves. Here are a couple things to keep in mind though:

• It's important to figure out the connection area between any two forms. It's often going to be represented with a contour line. For example, take a look at these poorly drawn spheres (i had to draw them on a shitty old tablet i have at work). The red ellipse there is the connection area between them, where they fuse together. Understanding this connection will help you better flesh out your construction.

• Remember that everything you put down on the page is a solid form, not a loose sketch. Like dropping a piece of marble into a 3D world, you can't then decide to ignore it and draw something else. That form needs to be carved and cut, and effectively dealt with in some manner. If you were just drawing 2D shapes on a page, you could certainly decide to ignore parts of it. Since we are constructing solid things, we must respect the tangible, solid, firm nature of what we create. A good example of what to avoid is how you've created some loose ellipses for the thorax and abdomen for this grasshopper, and then drawn an entirely different shape on top. Also, I mentioned that you need to cut/carve - what this effectively means is that you need to be aware of both the piece left over and the piece that is being cut away, and how they exist in three dimensions (rather than just as shapes on the page).

• You're also being a bit sloppy with your contour curves. Overall other elements of many of your drawings hold it up, but you need to be more mindful of having those contour curves wrap around the forms, accelerating as they reach the edges and hooking around. Make sure you're practicing the exercises from the basics lessons - in this case, specifically the contour curve exercises.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson. Just be sure to keep these three points in mind, as they are quite important.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-23 19:58

I've got a few moments before I need to get back to work (I've been pulling 12-15 hour days all week, and I have to keep pushing through the weekend and into next week! I might die!), so I'm jumping in to give you a critique. Hooray!

Your work is fantastic here. You've definitely got a very clear understanding of form and construction, and you're pushing those concepts to the full extent to create insects that feel both three dimensional and solid. The thing about successful drawings is that while certain marks may be missing (like the connection area between two forms), it's very clear that you still understand exactly what those marks would have otherwise described. You merely were able to visualize them in your mind, without having to put them down concretely. This ultimately is the goal that we strive towards.

The only thing that I want to stress is to be careful with your contour curves. I noticed that in a lot of cases, while your forms definitely suggest that you fully understand how those surfaces move through 3D space, your contour curves tend to be drawn a little more sloppily, and are a little rushed, so they don't quite deform along that surface too convincingly. It's usually just a matter of taking a little more time.

So, keep up the fantastic work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-30 00:50

Sorry for the delay. Work's still got me bent over a barrel, and it doesn't seem to end. Somehow on the few bits of time where I'm not working or sleeping, I'm catching up on homework critiques.. bah.

This is a pretty good start. While there's definitely room for improvement, I see a lot of great signs that you're working towards thinking in terms of 3D form. In a lot of these drawings, you're building actual solid masses and considering how they exist in relation to one another. This fly, though simple, is a great example of this. One thing to notice about this fly is that it's made up of really simple elements. Its head, thorax and abdomen are all basic balls. There's no complexity there, just nice, solid forms. This makes for an excellent basis on which to build up the rest of your construction, and you've not allowed yourself to get distracted by detail.

Conversely, take a look at this wasp. Notice how the thorax and abdomen aren't quite so evenly shaped? This immediately undermines the illusion of solidity, as you're trying to develop more complexity before you've really built up a good base. Once you've got some solid forms down, it doesn't take a lot to carve into them, or add pieces on top. (In case I haven't mentioned this in the past, 'carving' is the process of adjusting a drawn form where you understand how both the remaining section, and the part being cut away, sit in 3D space - this is different from just drawing some arbitrary change on top of an existing shape, as it requires you to really know how things exist in space).

Also, look at the stinger of the wasp - notice how it reads as being completely flat? This wasn't introduced as an additional form on the end of the abdomen. We haven't defined how it connects to it. Lastly, the contour curves don't wrap particularly well around the form. I believe this is because you may have gotten caught up in the patterns/designs of the wasp's stripes, rather than focusing on just reinforcing the 3D form. If you look at the fly, those are much better executed.

Here's a few demos I've done in the past regarding the construction of insects. It's really mostly about building up with really simple, even ball-forms, but also take a look at how I tackle the legs and maintaining a sort of flow to them:

• One

• Two

• Three

I think you're moving in a good direction, and I believe you'll benefit from a little extra exploration towards construction more like your fly, and less like your wasp. I'd like to see another four pages of insect drawings.

Keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable

2017-07-05 14:48

These are looking vastly better, and demonstrate a much better grasp of how the individual forms sit in space, and how they interact with one another. For the attachment points you cannot see, try and give your best educated guess. Try to avoid having forms that are cut off arbitrarily, as for now it'll flatten your forms out. By drawing them all the way through, you'll continue to develop your mental model of how things exist in 3D space. Later on, you'll be able to visualize that more than having to rely upon drawing it explicitly, but for now it helps considerably to put it down on the page.

I'd like to see two more pages, this time taking them to completion. Don't worry too much about going overboard with texture - construction is still the most important element here, and it is very possible for texture to contradict and undermine what you've established with your basic forms. I do however want to see how you'd complete a drawing, now that your grasp of the foundational aspects has improved. It may help to look at the "other demos" section of the lesson, to see how I don't tend to really push too hard on texture/patterning.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-07 23:29

Looking at the flies as a sort of benchmark, there is definitely improvement over the set, with the last one being significantly better than the first. In that last one, you're drawing through your ellipses, which helps keep them more evenly shaped and ultimately makes them feel more solid (so we read them more as being 3D forms rather than flat shapes). The fly's legs also flow much better in the last one, where the first one's leg segments swell in strange places.

A few things that could use some work on that last fly drawing however include:

• The head's quite small in proportion to the rest of the body

• The contour curves do not convey a form that is properly rounded - they don't hook back around as they reach the edge of the form, and so if they were to continue, they would fly off the form. You need to continue practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2, in this case specifically the organic forms with contour curves.

• The hairs don't serve any purpose, as they don't actually reflect anything you can see on your reference. Rather, they're your interpretation of what hairs would look like (from memory) rather than directly observed details.

• The detail on the wings, much like the hairs, aren't a great example of careful observation. The patterns on the wings don't actually look like that, but that is your brain's simplification (or cartoonization) of what was actually present. For now though, I wouldn't recommend paying much attention to that kind of texture/detail, as there's much more benefit from focusing entirely on construction for now.

I definitely think the scorpion is a bit too complex for you at the moment - there's a lot of complicated forms in there, and in general a whole lot going on. As a result, it can be quite difficult to carefully observe all of the forms present, and is likely to lead to more frustration.

I do have a few additional things to say about the wasp drawing at the end though:

• You're not drawing through your forms - the thorax should be drawn in its entirety, rather than stopping where it is hidden by the head.

• Don't let sections of the drawing get cut off, and if that does happen, don't let them just stop arbitrarily. If you've got a leg that goes off the side of the page, cap it off with an ellipse (to reinforce the fact that it's cylindrical).

• Definitely getting way too distracted by detail here, with those arbitrary hairs.

• Draw through all of your ellipses, and start out simple - that head definitely started off as a form more complex than a basic primitive form, so you should have started simpler and built up to that.

Here are a few resources:

• A fly demo

• A wasp demo

• A critique of another student's wasp - pay special attention to the bottom right where I construct a head

• Some notes on the importance of carving your forms, building them up step by step, and avoiding unnecessary guesswork.

I'd like to see another four insect drawings, but I want you to include no detail/texture whatsoever. That means that you should take the construction as far as you can (meaning manipulating forms and building them up on top of one another) and then stop. Be sure to include a fly and a wasp in these four pages.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-11 00:15

To be honest, I should have called this out last time. In my defense though, I haven't had a day off in twenty two days, and have worked almost 220 hours in that time, so I'm definitely not on the top of my game right now.

Your constructions, as always, are coming along fine, but what is demonstrably lacking is observation. What you're drawing is not really what you actually see when looking at your reference, or looking at the object you're drawing. It's what you think you see. Your memory of these objects is drastically simplified, and while you're leveraging construction in a fantastic way to make them seem vaguely plausible (in a way that made me miss it entirely in the previous set), what you're constructing isn't accurate.

Here's an example using your cricket. You've got to pay much more attention to what it is you're actually drawing. Make sure you look back at your reference frequently, taking only a moment to put a new form down before looking back. If you spend too long looking away, you will end up drawing from memory, and our memories are not designed for this sort of thing.

I'd like you to do two more pages.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-13 23:39

Fantastic! Third time's indeed the charm, you've done very well here. Your forms are still solid, but this time your proportions and general observation takes it to a whole new level. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-14 18:27

Very nice work! You're demonstrating a really solid grasp of the 3D forms you're constructing and how they relate to one another. You're not at all getting distracted by detail and a lot of the superfluous visual information that we need to filter out, and you're doing a great job of focusing on the underlying structure that exists for each object.

To be honest, I don't really have much in the way of actual critique to offer. You're applying all of the principles covered in this lesson and those prior to it, and you are absolutely moving in the right direction. Your constructions feel solid, you're observing your references carefully and not working from memory. You're mindful of your proportions and you are always striving to start simple and build up complexity in successive passes.

While there's certainly room for improvement in areas, you're clearly aware of each issue and show marked improvement with follow up drawings later in the set.

All I can really say is keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-20 21:41

All in all, not bad. You seem to be understanding how your forms relate to one another, and there does appear to be a sense of solidity to your forms. You're also applying a variety of interesting approaches to your textures, depending on the particular surfaces you're describing.

Before all that though, first thing's first: DRAW THROUGH YOUR ELLIPSES. I pointed this out in my last critique, it's very important that you do so. As it stands, your forms are okay, but they do have an inherent unevenness to their shapes that ends up making the silhouette of the form more complicated.

Simple forms read as being solid and three dimensional far more easily than complex forms. So, we always strive to start out dead simple, and then build up that complexity. That isn't so much the problem here - it's just that where you intend forms to be simple, they have that slight unevenness that comes from executing your rounded shapes more slowly (to compensate for the fact that you're not drawing through them). Draw them with a confident pace, and through the rest of my lessons, make sure you draw through them as instructed. I know Scott Robertson has a different opinion on how one should approach ellipses, but as you are following my lessons, you should follow my instructions to the letter. Doing so will improve your muscle memory, and in the future you will be able to do as you please with greater confidence.

Now, the fact that you're not drawing through your ellipses suggests an issue that is also reflected in how you approached this crab. Notice how in its legs, your forms are not enclosed, rather they bleed into one another. The issue I'm seeing is that you're stressing the cleanliness of your resulting drawing over the actual purpose of the exercise itself.

It is, after all, an exercise like any of the others we've done in these lessons. It's an exercise in combining a variety of different kinds of solid forms to create more complex objects, and understanding how each of these forms sit in 3D space and how they relate to one another. If your priority is set on the end result being clean and pretty, you will not be spending as much of your brain power on understanding the spatial problem before you. Presentation is important, but the overall goal of the exercise is paramount. So, while we don't waste lines, we should be entirely willing to put down lines so long as they help describe how that form sits in 3D space. If a line contributes to that goal, then it should be included. Otherwise it should be left out. In this particular case, you should ensure that your forms all feel solid and enclosed.

One last issue I noticed is that I noticed a couple areas where you somewhat ignored the initial forms you'd laid down, as though they were a rough sketch for getting a sense of space. That is certainly one way of doing it, and it's not inherently wrong. Just remember that the way we're approaching these drawings is as though we're placing solid chunks of form - let's say it's marble - into a three dimensional world. Then we work around that form, carving it in places and building it up in others, to create the resulting object we want. In this regard, we cannot simply ignore a form that has been placed on the page. We need to deal with it in some way. I expand on this a little bit in these notes.

Now when it comes to line weight, I'm not too familiar with the particular approach of Scott Robertson's that you mentioned. That said, your use of it generally seems fine to me. Generally my goal with line weight is to help clarify overlaps. It's a simple goal, and it's particularly important when we've got all of these forms sitting on top of each other in this drawing. Line weight is generally applied to sections of a line, rather than the whole thing, and giving a line a bit of thickness will help give it a sense of dominance over any other lines it may intersect with. It also allows us to maintain a sense of continuity (thick line obviously doesn't flow into a thin line, so it's going to flow into the other thick line of the intersection) though this is rarely unclear on its own.

One thing to consider though is the name of Scott's technique - atmospheric line weight. I'm certain the technique has applications in all areas, but that name does suggest that it is especially useful when applied to larger objects, where parts of those objects would sit far enough away from us that the illusion of depth needs to come into play. 'Atmospheric' is likely a reference to atmospheric perspective, which is the visual illusion that causes far away colours to generally be lighter in value and less saturated, due to the amount of air between your eye and the target. The particular choices involved in the technique may be focused on creating the illusion of depth. This can be useful at smaller scales, but not quite as much.

As far as texture goes, I quite like this spider. I think the willingness to go so bold with your large shadow shapes is important. How you approach the edges of those shadow shapes is what implies the content of the shape itself, and I think you broke up those edges quite well in certain places. The long straight edge could have used some more breaking up though. I also like the fact that you created a focal point with your texture, being quite sparse with it elsewhere, but focusing quite a bit on the thorax and head, and tapering off from there. The ladybug and crab seemed considerably more spread out in that regard, and didn't do quite as good a job of guiding the viewer's eye.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson, but make sure you draw through your ellipses!

Uncomfortable

2017-07-20 21:51

You are absolutely demonstrating an exceptional grasp of form, construction and 3D space. Your insects generally feel very solid, and give a sense of tangibility and believability, as though they're sitting in an actual three dimensional world rather than just on the flat page. As that is the primary focus of my lessons in general, you're more than ready to move onto the next lesson.

The only shortcoming I noticed was in your use of hatching. It's not really a shortcoming in most areas, but it is something I wanted to raise. It's very common for students to use hatching as a way to convey simple shading here and there, which is generally fine on its own as long as you're aware of how those hatching lines function as contour lines. One place this stands out is the black widow on the first page. Notice how you have straight lines coming down its abdomen? These lines immediately flatten out that form and make it read as a flat circle, rather than a bulbous, voluminous mass. This is extremely important to keep in mind.

There are times where we want to flatten our forms out, from a compositional stand point. For example, sometimes the far legs on the other side of a creature can be distracting, and so we flatten them out in order to draw more attention to the volume and form of the legs facing us. What's important is that this is intentional, and not done by accident.

It's also important to know that hatching is often used by students as a shortcut when they don't want to really look into what textures and detail is present on an object. Alternatively, this is an excellent opportunity to practice one's texturing and rendering skills, and for that reason, I generally encourage students not to use hatching lines at all when drawing actual objects. It's not uncommon for students to not even realize that they're skipping over this whole other part of the drawing.

When it comes to insects, there can be all kinds of textures present on a surface, and we can leverage the shadow areas of our drawings to suggest different kinds of surface quality. I explain this in greater detail in these notes, so I recommend that you give them a read. Those notes also go over the importance of observation, and drawing what you actually see rather than what you think you see. This comes into play a fair bit when we look into some of the hairy legs you've drawn here, where those hairs look to be drawn more from memory than from actual observation.

Anyway, as I mentioned before - you've nailed the core of this lesson, and are demonstrating a fantastic understanding of form and 3D space. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-24 02:38

There's definitely a lot of good going on here, but there's one fundamental issue that I'm seeing across your work that should be fairly easy to fix once pointed out.

Basically, the issue is in how you perceive and handle the masses you start out with. Based on what I'm seeing, you treat the initial ellipses you lay-in as a general sketch, figuring out where you're going to put your 'real' lines. As a result, they tend to be purposely fainter, and also tend to be more or less ignored - not playing a role in the final drawing beyond being a guide by which to place later lines.

Instead, I want you to think of every mark you put down as defining a solid form that exists in 3D space. Instead of thinking of it as a flimsy ellipse on a flat piece of paper, think of it as a solid ball of marble being introduced into a three dimensional world. You can't simply ignore a solid chunk of mass like that. You need to deal with it somehow, once it's been placed in the world. You need to either build on top of it, by adding new forms to it, or you need to cut and carve into it. Carving specifically means to cut away pieces in a way that leaves you aware of how both the piece that remains, and the piece that is removed, sit in 3D space. This is integral to developing the belief that you are in fact drawing something three dimensional, not just a two dimensional drawing on a flat page.

Here are some notes on the topic, and here are some others on more general pitfalls that are worth reading. Overall you're doing quite well, but this is something quite fundamental to the idea of construction that will help you apply the method better in the future.

Also, try and avoid going over your work to uniformly increase the line weight, or replace lines with a "clean-up pass". Adding line weight is fine, but that is something that is generally done to portions of a larger shape, usually to clarify overlaps in local areas, rather than outlining the entire form all the way around.

I'd like to see three more pages of insect drawings, applying what I've mentioned here.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-05 19:15

Overall you're doing very well. Your drawings convey a strong understanding of form and how those forms relate to one another in 3D space, which really is what I'm after.

There are a few qualities that I try not to encourage in these exercises, but because of the previous points I mentioned, I'm not as keen on having you change your ways here. Specifically, you draw with a degree of timidity - it's very clear to me, when looking over your work, that your end result is very much in your mind. When you put lines down, you're consciously considering whether or not you want them to be visible in the end, and while you are certainly laying down your initial masses in their entirety, you do sometimes skip steps in order to preserve the relative cleanliness of the drawing at the end.

Ultimately the goal of these exercises is to improve one's grasp of 3D space, and how these forms all fit together, and the best way to do that is to draw everything in its entirety, without skipping over constructional steps (remember the principle that any complex form you draw should be supported by the construction already on the page). Over time, the expectation is that a stronger grasp of 3D space will allow you to do more of that underlying construction in your head rather than on the page, so eventually you'll be able to draw more cleanly - not because steps were necessarily skipped, but because they were done through visualization instead.

So when I say you skip steps here, you are demonstrating to a degree that you're doing it in your head, rather than actually skipping through them entirely. The result is, as I mentioned, that your constructions still retain their sense of volume, form and solidity.

That doesn't mean that this is the best approach right now however. I think there certainly are benefits to drawing things in their entirety even when you don't necessarily need to, because doing things explicitly will always grant you more insight. Again, that is what these exercises are about.

Anyway, I have a pretty easy solution that should work into your approach - just draw bigger. I think you're currently holding back on some of your lines because of the space you're left with - a confident mark here and there stands out a lot more when your drawing is a few inches wide, than when it's half a page. This should give you more freedom to explore those forms more explicitly.

Anyway, like I said before - you're doing great as it is, I think you just need to give yourself the freedom to draw a little less hesitantly, and remember that it's the exercise itself, not the end result, that matters to us here.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-20 00:09

These are very well done. You're demonstrating an exceptional level of care when it comes to understanding how each form sits in 3D space, and how they relate to one another. Your constructions, as a result, feel solid and tangible - quite possibly the worst thing one can have when drawing these awful creepy crawlies.

I had seen one of the posts you made earlier, working your way up to the ladybug, and I think you really made some major strides forward. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-23 04:33

Well, your work is looking pretty solid as it is. You're demonstrating a well developing grasp of how these 3D forms exist in space, and how they can be manipulated and built upon to create more complex objects. I don't think there's a whole lot to offer in terms of critique, as you're heading in the right direction, so instead I'll address your questions.

So the thing about thse additional lines (like drawing through your forms) is that while they're not a necessary part of an actual finished drawing, they are an important component when it comes to learning how to draw the lines that do serve as the core of the end result. These additional constructional lines help us to better understand the space we're constructing within, and better understand the forms themselves. Ultimately you will continue to deal with these kinds of lines, but the long term goal is for them to become something you visualize in your mind's eye, rather than placing them explicitly on the page.

In order to achieve that end, you must be drawing them conscientiously right now. Don't worry about whether or not you're reaching that ultimate goal - it's a direction we're heading in, but as all of these drawings are exercises, they are the perfect place to grind that information into our brains by drawing them directly on the page.

This is actually a big part of learning how to avoid flattening things out - by understanding how the forms themselves exist in space, and by really convincing ourselves of the fact that they are 3D and not just flat images, we start making subconscious adjustments to how we draw that actually conveys that same idea to our viewers. If we truly believe our drawings are 3D, then we will make more of the correct decisions (knowingly or not) that make others also believe the same.

Now, line economy is definitely important, but don't make the mistake of thinking this means reducing the number of construction lines, because it certainly doesn't. What it means is, reducing the number of lines that serve no purpose. Construction lines absolutely serve a purpose (aside from the times that we needlessly draw those that are frivolous), and are valuable. Sketchy behaviour, thoughtlessly placing additional lines down just because, and other things like that however should be trimmed away largely by applying the ghosting method, which forces you to think before you draw.

As for foreshortening, it's really something that is built into the material rather than dealt with specifically. Foreshortening is just perspective, and in most cases you'll find that things are only really heavily hit by foreshortening when they're very close to the viewer's eye. That dramatic change between near and far planes of boxes (and therefore of everything else) happens most significantly at the closest point to the eye. The further away from the eye you are, the more distance you need between near and far planes to achieve the same relative shift between their sizes. If you want to practice foreshortening, it really means you should be practicing boxes themselves. Then, once you can construct the object you wish to foreshorten within that box, you can apply the same dramatic shift from the box to that object.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Your insect drawings are, as I said, coming along quite well (I even showed them to my grandmother, as I first saw them on my phone when I was in the car with her), and they certainly received her seal of approval. Not that she knows the first thing about drawing...

Feel free to move onto the next one, and keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-23 05:01

Look into form language. I think John Park's 'Foundation' patreon covers this somewhat (I took one of his classes a couple years ago that helped me a lot). I'm hoping to cover that some day in a new set of lessons for drawabox (probably reserved for a higher pledge rate than $3), but we'll see when that happens.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-26 20:02

Your underlying construction starts off very solid. Pages like this are at the core of what I'm looking for. As you start to get more concerned with texture and detail however, you lose your hold of that sort of solid, clear construction.

This isn't abnormal - when detail is entered into the equation, students will often find that they start thinking about that detail from the very beginning, instead of separating your drawing out into numerous stages.

It's important to understand that detail is unimportant. Texture doesn't matter. It's just decoration, and if your underlying construction is not solidly built, the drawing will ultimately collapse.

So, when you draw, focus on the step you are moving through right at that moment, and don't think ahead. Focus on how each form you add to your construction exists not as a shape on a flat page, but as a three dimensional chunk of marble in a 3D world.

Keep in mind that any form you've added to this 3D world cannot simply be replaced or ignored, if you feel that it is no longer a part of the drawing you want to produce. It's there in the world - it's solid, you can't just decide that it's not there. In that situation, you have to build on top of it, or cut into it, in a way that requires you to understand how all of these components sit in 3D space. When cutting a piece away, you have to understand how both resulting pieces exist as three dimensional forms. I talk about this a little further in these notes.

So, I want you to try another four pages of drawings, but with NO detail or texture whatsoever. I want you to really cement your grasp of form and construction on its own.

As for texture, I did notice that you do have a tendency to scribble quite a bit, and rely somewhat on randomness/chaos in areas where you feel things are fuzzy or hairy. As a rule, never rely on any kind of randomness. Every single texture has some kind of predictable rhythm or flow to it - though it may be hidden and difficult to find. Capturing a texture is all about observing the reference image and identifying what elements exist there, and how they're organized or spread out over the surface. It's also about understanding which parts are necessary, and how one can communicate the idea of that surface with as little linework as possible. Randomness doesn't involve any of this thought - it cuts it off at a point, and simply fills areas of the drawing in with thoughtless marks. On top of all of that, this results in areas that end up being very distracting, due to the increased contrast of having so many white/black marks, densely packed together.

I recommend that you give the notes over at the texture challenge for that.

Anyway, for now, focus on construction only. The goal is to convey the solidity, weight and tangibility of your object.