25 Texture challenge: https://imgur.com/a/SBJMnNJ which killed another Staedler 0.5 Fine Liner. I have switched to an Artist Loft 0.5 Pigment Liner for the last page. This is almost the exact same fine liner but about twice the price. These were done over a very long time but let me revisit some of the textures from lesson 3.
I liked the corn, waffles and Pringles textures but really need some help with what went wrong with the wood and bark textures. They look worse than the textures I did almost six months ago for dissections. Very flat and overworked without any distinct impression of what they are.
Sorry for the delay - I was caught up in the drawabox rebuild, still scrambling to get it done for Christmas.
Anyway, I did most of my critique with redlines (I hope your internet situation is better, I vaguely remember you saying you were back stateside but hopefully I'm not mistaken). Overall you've shown considerable improvement in the way you think about all the detail being laid out. There's a clear increase in how much you're thinking about cast-shadows rather than every form being drawn independently (admittedly you were showing that very well in the pebbles direct study, but it was lacking when applying that to your gradients).
There are a couple demos that were available on the texture challenge page that would definitely have helped somewhat, specifically on your leaves and on your mushroom. Still, by and large you've got a lot of really excellent experimentation here.
One thing I do want to mention is that here and there (less so as you move forwards), I saw you relying on some little bits of scribbly scratching here and there, or some hatching lines. It's great to see that you used less of it as you went on, but I'd definitely make a point of avoiding it altogether. Any kind of randomness is going to take away from the sense of intent behind your textures and muck them up, so take an extra second to think before every mark you put down, even though it's going to be tempting to draw, say, gravel by being more erratic. Think about how those little forms are arranged in your reference image, how they're clustered in some places, or if they're spread out evenly across the whole surface. Identify the kinds of groupings (maybe there's often a large chunk with a few smaller pieces). Anything to distill the characteristics of this texture.
Lastly, I noticed places where you were using some purposely fainter marks (like where your pen might be dying). I can absolutely understand why, but when you're using a given tool, there is a lot to be said about understanding its limitations. Fineliners are, by design, meant to put down really rich, dark marks. When they're running out of ink, or when you use them at an angle low enough that the ink doesn't flow quite as smoothly, it's true that you can get a variety of marks but they tend to be very difficult to control in an intentional manner, and don't play well with the lines that tool is designed to create.
Long story short, when you're using fineliners, stick to the idea that it's only going to make pure, dark marks - and when you have to transition between light and dark, force yourself to use those little bits of stippling or other textural information to cover those transitions by deciding specifically where you want that ink to fall, and which areas you want to leave blank.
There is actually going to be lots of new texture-based content coming with the rebuild, along with a video on how to tackle this exercise (it's actually being incorporated as part of lesson 2, though with just 1 page of 3 textures), so be sure to give that stuff a look once it's up. You'll probably already understand most of it, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.
You comments on the use of fine liners is very helpful. I find in this exercise that if I fail to use my schoulder the lines are faint and scratchy. Using my shoulder on larger images leads to much more solid lines. An example is the waffle - that was not only really fun to do but each of the 'shading' in a wafle well was a small form.
I look forward to the uodates lesson 2 and may attempt it. After I forget how much work those were.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-22 05:47
Old thread got locked, those submitting their texture challenge work for private critique can do so here.
waveclaw
2018-12-22 05:57
25 Texture challenge: https://imgur.com/a/SBJMnNJ which killed another Staedler 0.5 Fine Liner. I have switched to an Artist Loft 0.5 Pigment Liner for the last page. This is almost the exact same fine liner but about twice the price. These were done over a very long time but let me revisit some of the textures from lesson 3.
I liked the corn, waffles and Pringles textures but really need some help with what went wrong with the wood and bark textures. They look worse than the textures I did almost six months ago for dissections. Very flat and overworked without any distinct impression of what they are.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-23 22:24
Sorry for the delay - I was caught up in the drawabox rebuild, still scrambling to get it done for Christmas.
Anyway, I did most of my critique with redlines (I hope your internet situation is better, I vaguely remember you saying you were back stateside but hopefully I'm not mistaken). Overall you've shown considerable improvement in the way you think about all the detail being laid out. There's a clear increase in how much you're thinking about cast-shadows rather than every form being drawn independently (admittedly you were showing that very well in the pebbles direct study, but it was lacking when applying that to your gradients).
There are a couple demos that were available on the texture challenge page that would definitely have helped somewhat, specifically on your leaves and on your mushroom. Still, by and large you've got a lot of really excellent experimentation here.
One thing I do want to mention is that here and there (less so as you move forwards), I saw you relying on some little bits of scribbly scratching here and there, or some hatching lines. It's great to see that you used less of it as you went on, but I'd definitely make a point of avoiding it altogether. Any kind of randomness is going to take away from the sense of intent behind your textures and muck them up, so take an extra second to think before every mark you put down, even though it's going to be tempting to draw, say, gravel by being more erratic. Think about how those little forms are arranged in your reference image, how they're clustered in some places, or if they're spread out evenly across the whole surface. Identify the kinds of groupings (maybe there's often a large chunk with a few smaller pieces). Anything to distill the characteristics of this texture.
Lastly, I noticed places where you were using some purposely fainter marks (like where your pen might be dying). I can absolutely understand why, but when you're using a given tool, there is a lot to be said about understanding its limitations. Fineliners are, by design, meant to put down really rich, dark marks. When they're running out of ink, or when you use them at an angle low enough that the ink doesn't flow quite as smoothly, it's true that you can get a variety of marks but they tend to be very difficult to control in an intentional manner, and don't play well with the lines that tool is designed to create.
Long story short, when you're using fineliners, stick to the idea that it's only going to make pure, dark marks - and when you have to transition between light and dark, force yourself to use those little bits of stippling or other textural information to cover those transitions by deciding specifically where you want that ink to fall, and which areas you want to leave blank.
There is actually going to be lots of new texture-based content coming with the rebuild, along with a video on how to tackle this exercise (it's actually being incorporated as part of lesson 2, though with just 1 page of 3 textures), so be sure to give that stuff a look once it's up. You'll probably already understand most of it, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.
waveclaw
2018-12-23 23:44
Thank you!
You comments on the use of fine liners is very helpful. I find in this exercise that if I fail to use my schoulder the lines are faint and scratchy. Using my shoulder on larger images leads to much more solid lines. An example is the waffle - that was not only really fun to do but each of the 'shading' in a wafle well was a small form.
I look forward to the uodates lesson 2 and may attempt it. After I forget how much work those were.