Avanke in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-04-24 23:35

Ha. That's funny. I tried, you know. I feel like I improved over the course of this lesson to the point where the first few could have been redone but I left them alone for you. Although I guess the fact that I saw, understood and corrected my own mistakes means I don't need your help after all. :D (Okay fine, I actually just keep reading your critiques to other people and applying it to my own work.)

Anyway, on to the next one. I hope sea bugs such as lobsters and shrimp count because I'm planning to do some. They have exoskeletons and lots of crazy legs so I figure that's close enough despite not technically being insects or arachnids.

Avanke in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-04-23 21:39

Lesson 3: http://imgur.com/a/tO2r0

Finally.

Avanke in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2017-04-11 19:36

"establish the illusion of form without light" That's it! I need to write this down somewhere so I can keep it in mind at all times.

"I wouldn't have thought my lessons had any impact at all"

Oh, they totally have! With a lot more than just the texture stuff too. I wont go into painstaking detail about it, but -

All the little bits and pieces of drawing how-to I've accumulated over the years are being re-presented and tied together in a cohesive way that makes me go, "Ooooooooh." Everything is starting to make sense now in a way it definitely didn't before. The idea that every line should be contributing information about form was somehow foreign to me. I guess I've heard it mentioned, but I never really understood it.

I also like your teaching style. Not only are you good at explaining things, but the emphasis isn't really on explanations at all. It's very "wax on, wax off."

I think I found your lessons at a really good time. I've been working on confidence (in art and otherwise). It's definitely a struggle sometimes. I have to keep telling myself that my first goal is confidence and that whatever I do, as long as I do it confidently, I haven't really failed. deep breaths lol

I'm also being forced to rely on my intuition which is something I really really need but have been scared to do. It's a good thing you specifically said NOT to pull out a 3D modeling program for those intersections because I would have been all over it otherwise. I'm a plot every point kind of girl, which is incredibly impractical considering I want to learn animation - can you imagine??

But yeah, I'm getting a lot out of these lessons and thanks for putting them out there. I'd pay you more if I could. =/

I'll go paint the fence now...

EDIT: Totally forgot to mention the whole bit about NOT thinking on the page. Before I found these lessons I was just throwing down and hoping for the best. Not really thinking things through, on the page or otherwise. Turns out this whole "think about what you're doing and why" thing is pretty important. Ha.

Avanke in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2017-04-10 18:51

Lesson 2!: http://imgur.com/a/W6ERG

With dissections I somewhat misunderstood how to approach textures. In my mind I was simply trying to communicate "hey, this is a leaf/water/glass" etc.

After reading through your critiques of 25 texture challenges I realized a few things:

• Textures are a collection of tiny FORMS that group together in predictable/identifiable ways. These tiny forms exist in 3D space just like the objects they cover.

• While part of my goal is to represent textures in their own right, the textures should also help communicate the macro forms that they lie on top of (the sausage shapes in this case). My first instinct was to convey this via shading...which kind of misses the mark in a way I can't quite put into words. Instead the focus should be on subtle changes in size and spacing as the texture moves away from the viewer, and the pattern that the texture follows should be wrapping around the object in the same manner as the construction lines.

• When drawing textures, information about color/value, reference lighting, and original macro object are irrelevant.

I really started cursing your name somewhere in the middle of the form intersections. At first it would look like one form was completely in front of the other, then they would switch. Getting any kind of a sense of them actually intersecting is like trying to remember a song while a totally different song plays in your ear.