Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-05-01 21:05

Very nice work! You've got a lot of strong constructions, and solid examples of form. I'm especially pleased with how your branches and leaves exercises came out - you've got a very strong sense of form, while maintaining the lightness of the leaves, and the solidity of the branches. You're also demonstrating some excellent control of your linework.

There are a couple things that jumped out at me that are worth mentioning.

• This page was done quite well - one thing that I do want to suggest however is that when you have two solid, 3D forms that intersect one another, it helps a lot to draw along the contour right where they intersect with each other. It is at this location that a contour line will be most effective, as it will reinforce the intersection between the two forms, and also reinforce the illusion of solidity for both. It's also a completely reasonable mark to have, as it denotes where the lighting would change between the two surfaces, so it's not the sort of intrusive contour line that you might want to cover up.

• On this page, I noticed your use of overall leaf-like shapes, inside of which you constructed all of the smaller leaves. This is an entirely reasonable approach for this kind of problem, but whenever you construct a large leaf form, make sure you continue to apply the same methodology (strong directional line, followed by the enclosing edges that end where the initial flow line ended). You're basically constructing a slice of space that you'll use later to construct the more complex branch/leaf structure - but you don't want to skimp on this initial phase just because its result won't be a part of the final result. Draw it completely and confidently.

• Your other leaf constructions are coming along well, but one last thing that I'm noticing is that when you're drawing from reference, they have a tendency to be a little more stiff than those you drew from your imagination. This is actually quite normal, but keep in mind that what we're doing here is not a matter of perfectly replicating the photo, but rather communicating what it represents. Sometimes this means pushing and exaggerating certain features that are at the core of what we're seeing. In this case, it'd be a good idea to really push the flow of those leaves, making them feel even more organic than they may appear in the photograph.

Aside from those three points, great work. I particularly like how you've been experimenting with texture, leveraging stippling and other such techniques to balance areas of interest and rest areas. Keep it up, and consider this lesson complete.

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

2018-05-01 20:53

Pretty well done. Your arrows flow quite nicely and demonstrate a good grasp of the depth of the scene, with how you've exaggerated the scale differential of the two ends of each arrow. Your organic forms with contour ellipses are quite well done, with a few areas where the alignment of your ellipses could be better (for example, the bottom left of the first page of the exercise). I definitely would have liked to have seen more organic forms with contour curves (you only drew two), though they're coming along well. You've got a good grasp of how those curves need to wrap around the surface of each form.

You've handled the various textures on the dissections quite nicely. It's clear that you're tackling each one in a manner tailored to the specific features you're trying to capture, rather than applying a sort of one-size-fits-all approach. You're also balancing your details fairly well, and avoiding any considerable areas of visual noise.

Your form intersections are alright, though there's definitely room for improvement here. As far as the grasp of space goes, that's fine, though the bigger issue is the quality of your lines. At times they're a bit sloppy, and at others you indulge in bad habits like reinforcing lines or correcting mistakes (adding more ink to a problematic area is only going to draw more attention to it, it's often best just to leave it be). You do have some solid, confident lines, but there are a lot that need work. Also, in regards to your use of line weight, you should not be adding weight to the internal lines of your boxes. When the lines inside of the silhouette of a form are heavier than those that define the silhouette, it ends up feeling more like a loosely associated collection of lines. Generally it's those outer edges of the silhouette which should be a little heavier (keep your line weight subtle, mind you) - this creates an enclosing effect which makes the form feel more cohesive.

Very nice work on the organic intersections - you've done a great job of capturing the interaction between the forms, and how their weight is supported in certain spots, and how they sag in others.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete (though I'd still like you to tackle the 250 box challenge next). It looks like you're using a ballpoint pen. Once you move onto lesson 3, you'll want to pick up some fineliners (specifically the 0.5 size), as ballpoint pen is only allowed for lessons 1 and 2 (and the box/cylinder challenges).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-05-01 20:44

Overall you're doing pretty well, though there are a few things worth mentioning.

• Your lines section, across the board, is pretty solid. Your marks are confident and smooth, and there isn't much in the way of wobbling or stiffness. You've got that flow going nicely, so that's great.

• Your ellipses are pretty well done, though earlier on you were definitely tending towards losing control of those ellipses a bit. That is, they were loose enough that the intended ellipse you were trying to draw was getting lost. As you progressed, things got better, and they started to tighten up without losing the wonderful confidence of your stroke. Keep working on that, but I'm pleased to say that your progress was in the right direction.

• For the funnels, watch the alignment of your ellipses. You tend to have them slanting slightly - the central minor axis should be cutting each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension.

• I think your linework starts to get a bit sloppy in your rough perspective boxes. Most importantly, remember that each line in one point perspective will follow one of three possible behaviours. Either the line will go off towards the vanishing point, or it'll run parallel to the horizon line, or it'll run perpendicular to it. You've got a lot of lines that seem to be more guesswork than driven by intent. I explain this further in these notes

• In your rotated boxes, you definitely lose track of the ghosting method and end up with a lot of hairy, heavily reinforced lines. This is a habit you need to steer clear of. Every mark you put down should be planned and prepared for beforehand without exception - no drawing by reflex. You did however get the rotations fairly well, so that's good, and I'm glad to see that you kept the gaps between your boxes narrow, allowing you to look at neighbouring forms and edges to help inform your decisions when drawing new lines.

• You're making a good start with your organic perspective boxes. There's definitely room for growth, but your work here is about where I'd expect it to be. The intention here is more to push students to think differently about how to rotate forms in 3D space, and on that front you're doing great.

Now, at this point I'd mark the lesson as complete (which I certainly will) - but generally the next step I'd assign would be to move onto the 250 box challenge to help better develop your grasp of form and 3D space. Since you've already completed lesson 2, I'll go ahead and critique that, but you should still tackle the 250 box challenge. It's time consuming and rather tedious, but it's well worth the repeated cycle of constructing forms, checking for errors using the line extension technique, and constructing more.

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

2018-04-30 22:47

Unfortunately before I can critique your lesson 2 work, you're going to have to start by submitting lesson 1. Each lesson is designed to emphasize certain kinds of issues, so it's important that I critique them in order.

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

2018-04-30 20:42

Pretty decent work overall, though I do have a few points to address. The biggest one has to do with your linework. I see quite a few signs that when you put your marks down, you're putting more emphasis on their accuracy than their flow, when the order of those priorities really should be reversed. It's extremely important that after applying all of the preparatory measures of the ghosting method, you execute your marks with a confident, persistent pace, driving the motion from your muscle memory rather than your conscious mind, as I explain here. It's normal to worry about accuracy, but it's necessary to accept that your marks may go awry despite all your practice, and that once your pen touches the page, you've committed yourself. There can be no room left for hesitation.

Be sure to keep practicing the exercises from lesson 1 as part of a reuglar warmup to ensure that you keep refining your technique on this front.

As for the specific exercises:

• Your arrows came out well, although the pages were a bit sparse. You definitely could have fit many more. You did however demonstrated a good sense of flow, and I can see that you made an effort to push the scale differential between the different ends of the arrow to give the impression of depth to the scene. Keep pushing on that front.

• Your organic forms with contour ellipses were fairly well done, although there were some alignment problems (in regards to your ellipses aligning to the central minor axis line). Also, watch the degrees you use. I think you are demonstrating a developing grasp of how those degrees need to shift along the length of a form, but these notes should help you develop your understanding of how that works.

• Your organic forms with contour curves are pretty well done. Like the previous exercise, keep working on that alignment.

• Nice work on the dissections - you've got a great variety of textures that you've tried to tackle, and you've handled each texture in its own specific fashion (rather than attempting to apply catch-all methods like hatching or relying on randomness/chaos). I did however notice that you weren't drawing through your ellipses here, and you didn't start the exercise as one of the organic forms with contour lines as you were instructed to, in favour of making them cleaner. It's much more important that you have a solid, well defined organic form to work off of, and you'll find in later lessons that aiming for something clean and tidy is not what we're after. Also, if you look at the marble texture, you'll notice that while the texture itself was quite well done, it's very flat and doesn't wrap around the rounded organic form as it should.

• Your form intersections are fairly well done, though the stiffness/wobbling of your lines does show through a bit more clearly here than it does in some of the other exercises, and it does have an impact. That said, the main core of the exercise (drawing forms in the same space that feel cohesive as though they belong to the same scene) has been done fairly well. The intersections (which as mentioned in the instructions is really an additional, much more challenging thing that I just wanted you to try) has room for improvement, but you're heading in the right direction. It's really just a matter of continuing to develop your understanding of 3D space, and the relationships between these forms through practice.

• Very nice work on the organic intersections - you do a good job of capturing how these forms interact with one another, where their weight is supported, and when they sag from lack of support.

While there are certainly issues you need to address, these are the sort of things you'll need to tackle through continued practice. As I mentioned before, the exercises from lesson 1 (and now, lesson 2) should be practiced continually, picking two or three at the beginning of each drawing session to do as a 10-15 minute warmup. This will help you build confidence with your linework, and develop your understanding of 3D space. Be sure to keep up with this, even through periods where you can't work on other lessons, so as to keep your skills from getting rusty.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-29 19:27

You've done pretty well, and have shown a considerable amount of improvement over the course of these.. various sets of boxes. I'm pleased to see that you applied the line extension method (sporadically at times - doing it for every box is always best, but you still did a fair bit regardless).

Overall, you're doing great. I do have a couple recommendations as you continue to move forwards though:

• You do show a tendency throughout to try and correct or reinforce certain lines where things don't go entirely according to plan. This isn't a great habit, and one you should definitely fight against. If a line doesn't go the way you meant it to, or you notice a mistake after the fact, leave it alone. Piling more ink onto a problematic area will only draw more attention to that blunder.

• I'm definitely glad to see a good balance between boxes with dramatic foreshortening (where parallel lines converge quite quickly) and those with shallower foreshortening (where the vanishing points are much farther away, so lines converge at a more gradual rate). The latter tend to be more common in our drawings, as shallower foreshortening implies a more relatable scale, and dramatic foreshortening suggests a very large scale (like looking at the top of a tall building from the ground). With shallower foreshortening, there is a tendency that I see in some of your boxes, where of the four lines in any given set, they will start pairing off together, resulting in two vanishing points closer to the box, rather than a single one much further away. It's a pretty common issue that you should just keep in mind as you continue to progress.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-29 19:20

You start off.. pretty terribly. Early on, there's clear issues even in your capacity to wrap contour lines around 3D forms, as well as in your ability to observe your reference carefully enough to make informed decision with each and every form or shape you add.

That said, you progress considerably through the set, and by the end you're considerably further along. Your head constructions especially show a much greater understanding of form and the constructional method, and you seem to have taken demonstrations more to heart.

I ended up redlining two of your drawings - one from early on, which I feel was among your weakest, and one from much later, which I felt was one of your strongest.

• Hawk

• Elk

Now, there certainly is still room for improvement. A couple areas that need work include the way you draw legs, your general observation (you still need to be looking at your reference more frequently, and tying each mark you draw to a particular feature you're trying to capture - and again, your legs tend to be very simplistic), and of less importance, your approach to drawing fur (I also touch on this a bit in the redline notes).

One other thing I want you to keep in mind is that when we draw, we're drawing complete, closed forms and shapes on the page. That's the big difference between how you're drawing your legs, and how I draw them. You draw a collection of lines that end up sharing edges, so you really end up with some closed shapes, and some open ones that have been attached. When I draw legs, I draw individual overlapping shapes, and then define their joints with a contour line. This results in a much more fluid, flowing leg that also manages to maintain its illusion of 3D by use of the contour line at the end.

Keeping all of this in mind, I'd like you to do four more pages. Two pages of animal drawings, focusing purely on construction with no detail or texture whatsoever, followed by two pages that follow the same process, but where you will be allowed to add further detail (once you feel your construction is solid enough). A common problem in students is that they will look ahead to how they're going to handle the detail, and end up half distracted as they tackle the construction. Removing detail from the equation allows them to refocus their efforts.

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

2018-04-27 20:34

Definitely an improvement. You're on the right track, though there's still plenty of room for growth. Be sure to keep up with the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as part of a regular warmup routine so as to keep refining the confidence of your linework, and your grasp of 3D form. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-04-27 20:30

When I read the word "quickly", I immediately felt a little worried that you may have rushed. Overall it doesn't seem that you did, although there were a couple minor things that could have been the result of trying to get through these faster than you ought to have. In general, try not to let yourself fall into the trap of wanting to get things over with. Though they certainly are tedious, you're doing them for a reason!

Anyway, overall you did really well. Early on the alignment of your ellipses are often off (relative to that central minor axis), but over the course of this set of cylinders you correct it quite well.

I did notice in a handful of places that your minor axis lines tend to have two issues:

• They're not usually long enough - rather than being an issue with the minor axis line, it's more that you're placing the ellipses incorrectly. You should be aiming to have the minor axis cut through both ellipses completely, as this allows you to judge its alignment more easily.

• A lot of your minor axis lines get a little bent or wobbly at the ends. Possibly because of rushing? Be sure to apply the ghosting method everywhere to avoid this kind of issue.

One other thing - in the video, I discuss the mechanics of using a box as a starting point. It's definitely a good idea to practice this, as it'll help you place a cylinder in a very specific orientation. The cylinder's orientation is largely determined by its minor axis, and it's kind of difficult to orient a simple line in 3D space on its own. Because of this, getting used to leveraging boxes (which can be placed and oriented in space more easily) and determining our minor axis from them, is a very useful tool.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-27 20:25

You may not have enjoyed it, but it certainly helped! Though there's still room for growth, I can see the cohesiveness of each set of parallel lines improving. Alongside that, the confidence of your linework is solid, as is your use of line weight to add to the illusion of solidity.

As you draw these boxes, I want you to keep pushing yourself to think about each line as part of the set to which it belongs. As you prepare to draw a mark, think about which lines it's meant to be parallel to (in 3d space), and think about what that means about its angle in relation to those other lines. For example, look at 248, specifically the lines going off to the right. The far back corner's line is obviously off, but if you look at it, it runs quite close to the topmost corner that is closest to the viewer. Because it runs quite close to it, it's actually going to be very close to actually being parallel to it when drawn in 2D.

Things like this are important to watch out for. In this particular case, it wasn't as easy to notice while drawing it, and only became clearer once the lines were extended. So think about how those lines would extend, and what kind of relationships that emphasizes between other lines within the same set.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-04-26 20:49

Very nice work! I do have a couple things to point out that should help over all, but you're doing very well.

One thing I noticed is that you are straddling the fence between having really confident, smooth linework, and slowing down a little (resulting in a bit of stiffness and wobbling). Your super imposed lines are great. Your ghosted lines exercise end up showing a little more hesitation - but once you hit the planes exercise, you go back to nailing it again.

With your ellipses in general, I think you could stand to push the confidence a little harder. They're pretty well done, but there's a little bit of hesitation there that results in the lines getting a little stiff. It's totally expected that this adjustment will throw your accuracy off a little at first, but accept that as a necessary sacrifice - and one that itself will be corrected with practice and development of your muscle memory.

Jumping into the boxes, these have generally been successful. One thing I want to advise you against is the use of dashed/dotted/broken lines. In the particular situation where you used them, it's a non-issue since that exercise uses a ruler. That said, anywhere that you might freehand broken lines, you're asking for trouble. Reason being, every time a line breaks, its flow also breaks and when you resume it, there's a high likelihood that your trajectory has shifted slightly. Do this enough times and you can no longer really trust the mark you've drawn. Solid lines are far more reliable, so stick to those.

The inaccuracy you identified from the rough perspective boxes is totally normal. Everyone experiences that, and it's usually quite shocking. That's really the point of the exercise, and by identifying those by extending the line back, you can start compensating for it every time you attempt the exercise.

Fantastic work with your rotated boxes. I'm very pleased with how you kept all the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, as this helped keep things structured and generally helped inform your decisions quite well.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes definitely need work. I assigned this exercise here with the full expectation that most students would struggle with these quite a bit, as it's the first time you're really being asked to rotate boxes freely in 3D space without ever really being instructed on how to do so. The taste of failure is important, but the exercise also has great value in forcing you to think a little differently about how things can be rotated. We'll work more on this next, and I'll show you some techniques you can use to help with the construction and to check your work after the fact.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Your next step will be the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page and watch the video linked there before you start the work. You should find that with drawing through your boxes and focusing on which lines should run parallel to one another (in 3D space, and therefore converge towards the same location) will help quite a bit.

Keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-04-26 20:38

Great work! Overall you're doing very well. Your lines are confidently executed, resulting in smooth, straight lines and evenly shaped ellipses. Your boxes also demonstrate a really nice grasp of 3D space.

There's always going to be room for growth and improvement - a lot of the issues you noticed yourself were of that sort, in that I fully expect them to be there. Struggling with the curved super imposed lines for instance, or your ghosted lines not being 100% accurate (overshooting/undershooting your end point), working on tightening up your ellipses, and so on. These are normal, and while being aware of them is important, they're the sort of thing that just need additional practice over a longer period of time.

The issues I'm going to point out - of which there are only a couple - are going to be the sort of thing that present a more consistent pattern that needs adjustment.

• In your funnels, you remarked upon this yourself, but I did see a pretty strong tendency to slant your ellipses a little bit, which resulted in them falling out of alignment. This wasn't so much something that happened near the end as you mentioned yourself (though it may have been more prevalent towards the ends) but rather it was a pretty consistent trend that the ellipses were at least a little off each time. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

• Your rough perspective boxes are overall really well done. Just the slightest thing that I noticed - keep an eye on your horizontals. I see cases where they're slightly off from running parallel to the horizon. It's slight enough that I'm not sure if I should have mentioned it - but in cases like this I always err on the side of pointing those things out.

• For your rotated boxes, excellent work for the main central axes. Towards the corners, the rotations taper off a little bit, so they end up less rotated than they ought to be. Again, just something else to keep an eye on. Overall this exercise is meant to be very challenging, and I expect most students to fare considerably worse. You've demonstrated that you've already got a well developed grasp of 3D space, and while there will be more work to solidify it, it's coming along great. I'm also very pleased to see that you kept the gaps between your boxes nice and tight, allowing you to leverage neighbouring boxes and edges when making decisions regarding the next lines you have to draw (that is, pulling information about the space you're drawing in from the forms already present within it, rather than always having to think back to far-off vanishing points).

• Your organic perspective boxes were really well done. I don't have any actual issues to remark upon here, but rather just a congratulations to offer. Like the previous exercise, this one was assigned with the expectation of students to mess up. I also purposely neglect to tell students to draw through their boxes, so they'll appreciate the technique more when it's actually introduced. That you applied this anyway shows a careful absorption of the material not only here, but also further on.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'm not going to assign the 250 box challenge, and allow you to move directly onto lesson 2 if that's what you'd like to do. I do however recommend that you go through the notes on the 250 box challenge page and do a bit of them for yourself - specifically so you can apply the line extension method explained in the how to draw a box video. This will allow you to identify all kinds of problems that may otherwise remain hidden, and will generally help refine your skills and understanding of space.

You're certainly welcome to do the whole 250 box challenge if that's what you'd like to do (and it certainly would be beneficial). I'm simply not making it a requirement, as you've demonstrated a strong enough understanding of that material to move right onto lesson 2. Keep up the great work.

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

2018-04-26 20:25

You made a solid attempt, but there are definitely some issues that need to be addressed. I'll go exercise by exercise.

• Arrows. The arrows themselves are fine. I can see that you're pushing nicely into the third dimension by playing with the scale of either end of your arrows. Your line quality however isn't very good. Your lines are quite wobbly, and there's very clear breaks in the flow. The confidence that you demonstrated in your lesson 1 work as well as your box challenge is mostly gone here - you're drawing more slowly, causing your lines to waver and your hesitation adds a visible degree of stiffness to your marks. The second page is definitely better as far as the breaks in flow go, but you're still not drawing with that same confidence.

• In your organic forms with contour ellipses, I see a few signs that suggest a bit of confusion in regards to what the degree of your ellipses mean, and how those little contour ellipses/circles we add at the end that is facing the viewer really work. Firstly, give these notes a read - they explain how the degree of an ellipse communicates the orientation of the circle in 3D space that it represents. Then, give this a look - I figured it might be easier to explain the contradictions in your use of contour lines right there on your work with some redlining. You may also want to watch the video for this exercise once more. One last thing on this exercise - watch the alignment of your ellipses. They should be aligned to the central minor axis line, such that it cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension.

• Your organic forms with contour curves are fairly well done. You're wrapping around the form pretty well. A better awareness of the matters of degree that I discuss in regards to the previous exercise will also help here though.

• You've made a pretty great start with your dissections. You're very clearly trying to tailor your texture work to each individual case, which is great to see. You've also got a good deal of variety in your textures. As you continue to work on this, try to spend more time observing your reference. It's a skill that takes time and practice to develop - observation that is - and the more you work at it, the more things you'll start to notice. Try to build up a habit of looking back at your reference to refresh your memory after every couple of marks you put down. Furthermore, try and think about what specific detail or feature each mark is meant to capture.

• In comparison to your box challenge work, your form intersections are again, lacking in some ways. The forms are less solid, the linework is less confident, and I just can't shake the sense that you've let certain things slide a lot more. They're not inherently bad or notably poorly done - just that you haven't put your best into it. One thing that may be a considerable factor here is how you go about applying line weight - I think it might be an issue elsewhere as well. There's a visible break and disjointedness where that line weight ends - you need to work on making it considerably more subtle, executing it with the same kind of ghosting method you're applying everywhere else, and generally blending it back into the rest of your linework. Overall you may be applying too much pressure when drawing. This is a bit of a guess, but I'm saying this because it's a common cause for lines being more uniform, and lacking the kind of tapered ends that give lines a bit more interest and life. Your use of hatching here is also rather sloppy, so you need to be more careful there. Ensure that your hatching lines stretch all the way across the planes from edge to edge, rather than letting them float, arc, or hook at their ends (which I'm seeing a lot of here). I'd also like to see pages of form intersections that are more densely packed with forms, taking greater advantage of the space on the page rather than leaving large areas blank.

• Your organic intersections are okay, they're just suffering from the issues I mentioned about your contour lines section. As far as the understanding of the forms and their relationships go, you're doing reasonably well.

I'd like you to do the following:

• 1 page of organic arrows

• 1 page of organic forms with contour ellipses

• 1 page of form intersections

Before each exercise, I want you to review the specific video made for that exercise. Draw with confidence - don't execute slow and laborous strokes. Apply the ghosting method. Draw from the shoulder. Don't let all these important points raised in lesson 1 slip away.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-04-25 23:10

Definitely much better. Despite how challenging they were, you did a pretty good job with the rotated boxes. Just two things to keep in mind:

• Do your best to keep neighbouring edges lined up. They're so close to each other that you can get away with having them run parallel to one another, rather than guessing each one's position.

• Try not to be sloppy with that hatching - you put a lot of work into this, so put a little extra time into keeping those hatching lines stretched all the way across their planes from edge to edge so as to preserve the presentation.

Your rough perspective boxes are definitely more consistent now. There's still a few lines that veer off a bit here and there, but it's clear that your intent is correct, and that these were just individual mistakes rather than a larger pattern of misunderstanding.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Go ahead and move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through those notes and watch the video, and take this as an opportunity to further refine your use of the ghosting method as well.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-25 23:07

Really, really nice work. You started off with some confident and precise linework, and just the application of the techniques of drawing through your forms really helped bring things together from the get go. That said, extending your lines definitely brought to light some inconsistencies in your convergence.

It's very clear to me that over the course of this set, you paid careful heed to what the line extensions taught you about your own approach and your own tendencies, and gradually corrected those mistakes. By the end, your convergences are considerably more consistent, and your forms feel much more solid and convincing.

You've done really well in putting this challenge to good use, and clearly gained a great deal from it. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge thoroughly complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-04-24 21:10

This is a pretty solid start. There are some issues that I'll touch upon, but this is largely to do with how you're approaching things. This is generally the best kind of problem, because it's one that's fairly easily corrected.

To start with, your linework is definitely confident - this is a good thing. A lot of students will start out with a very slow, careful stroke, and they'll take their time, focusing on accuracy. This will result in a wobbly line that goes back and forth, guided by their brains rather than trusting in their muscle memory.

In your case, the confidence is good, but you're not quite backing it up with enough preparation beforehand. That is, the "ghosting" part of the ghosting method. You'll want to invest a good deal more effort into ghosting through that drawing motion before executing.

That applies to every single mark you put down. Your actual ghosting exercise wasn't too bad, and for the most part you were able to maintain a decent amount of accuracy, coming from a fair bit of preparation. When it comes to the ellipses and boxes however, I feel that you went ahead without enough of a chance to get accustomed to the motion you'd need to make the mark you were after.

This is totally normal, as the methodology of preparing before each stroke can take some getting used to, and it can also take some time to learn your own balance as far as how quickly you should ghost, how many times you should ghost, and so on. There's a lot going on, so don't feel by any means that your results here are outside of the norm.

Putting more time into ghosting through those motions will help give your ellipses a little more control - I noticed that you did find it a little challenging to keep them within their intended bounds.

Another thing worth mentioning is in regards to your funnels - keep an eye on the alignment of those ellipses. The central minor axis line should cut each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension. Yours are a bit slanted in this regard.

Lastly, your boxes. Your plotted perspective boxes are spot on. For your rough perspective boxes however, always remember that since this is one point perspective (and all our boxes are aligned to be parallel to one another), each and every line you draw is going to follow one of three possible behaviours:

• All your horizontals will run parallel to the horizon

• All your verticals will run perpendicular to the horizon

• All the lines that go off into the distance will run towards the vanishing point

I explain this further in these notes

For your rotated boxes, you did a pretty decent job of maintaining narrow gaps so you could use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines, so that's great. What's important to note though is that you didn't see the exercise through to the end. You left most of your corners unfinished and moved on.

It's extremely important that you see everything through to completion, even if the result is not ideal because certain parts were challenging. If you don't give yourself the opportunity to fail, then you will be robbing yourself of the chance to grow.

Your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be at this stage. This exercise was included largely to force students to think a little differently about 3D space, and I fully expect you to have faced quite a few struggles in this. Don't worry - that's totally fine, and we'll take the time to focus on these with a more structured approach soon.

So, here's what we're going to do. First, I want you to do the following:

• 1 page of rough perspective boxes.

• 1 page of rotated boxes.

Once you're done those, submit them to me and I'll mark the lesson as complete. Make sure you apply the principles I've mentioned here. Once I mark the lesson as complete, I'll ask you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get some more work in on solidifying your grasp of those freely rotated forms. Don't worry about it now, I'm just mentioning it here in case I forget to later on.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-24 20:45

Really nice work! You're demonstrating a really well developed grasp of how your forms sit in space, and how you can combine them to create more complex objects. You're also demonstrating a well developing grasp of texture and detail. I do believe however that in some cases, where you decide you want to go particularly heavy on texture, you sometimes skimp on otherwise important construction lines. Make sure that you push any thought to texture and detail out of your head while you're moving through construction - only think about how you're going to deal with it after the fact, once you've got something that feels solid and well built up.

One thing that stands out to me in this regard is the thorax of this mosquito (or I assume it's a mosquito). It's quite clean, but it also feels a little flat - so focusing on its construction and giving it even one contour line could have helped give it a sense of volume. In general, it does look like texture and detail took the wheel here, which should generally not be the case.

Aside from that, there's two suggestions that I have to offer, and I outline them in these notes. For the first, when you've got two forms that intersect with one another - especially when they're early masses at the beginning of your construction - place a contour line right where the two forms intersect. This will help reinforce the sense of solidity and will improve the believability of what you're constructing. It's also important to always draw through forms when they overlap, rather than letting one get cut off where it is hidden by another. You do both, sometimes drawing through them, other times stopping lines where they should continue on.

Secondly, when dealing with insect legs, try and start them out as simple sausages, and focus on how they flow. Dont' worry about where they might bulge or pinch - just build their cores and pay attention to how they flow back and forth. You can always add additional forms afterwards if they get particularly bulgy at certain places.

Sausages are important, over stretched ellipses, as they maintain a consistent width through their length, and only round off at the ends. This allows them to be more directional and maintain a stronger sense of flow, whereas stretched ellipses tend to feel more stiff and rigid.

Anyway, I hope those points help. Other than the things I mentioned, you're doing a pretty great job, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-24 20:26

You're definitely showing some improvement, and better use of the material in the lessons. Going through it a second time was certainly worthwhile.

I did identify some things worth noting, which you'll find in these notes. I do believe there is plenty of room for growth and improvement, but I think it'll be a good idea for you to move onto the next lesson. Once you've made it through the rest of the material, you may want to see how your understanding of construction as it applies to animals has changed by trying this lesson again. (and of course, up until then it's still worthwhile to practice this stuff now and again - but I mean, upon completing the rest of the curriculum, you may want to try this lesson again and submit it for critique once more).

One other thing worth stressing, which I point out in those redline notes, is that I'm noticing some stiffness to your linework. It looks to me like you may have fallen off the bandwagon of practicing lesson 1/2 stuff as a regular warmup routine, so you should probably get back on that. It'll help loosen you up, and ensure that you're executing your marks with the kind of confidence that keeps them smooth and clean.

Anyway, consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-04-24 15:31

Hey, I was just glancing at your work as I added it to my backlog and noticed that there are a a few pages that show "Whoops! There was a problem loading this page."

If you can't get that sorted out, imgur.com is also a good place to host your homework.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-23 23:05

At first glance, your work is really well done. You're applying the principles of construction really well, and your understanding of form and space is being leveraged to create some solid, believable plants. As far as my expectations for students goes, you're doing a great job.

Now, that's not an entirely useful critique, so I did grab a few pages of yours and wrote notes regarding any issues (minor or otherwise) that I identified. You'll find them here: https://i.imgur.com/wZYCXbI.png

The points I raise there include:

• Capturing all intersections with contour lines (where any two forms connect to one another)

• Minding the pots' rim thickness (some of them were paper thin)

• Adding line weight with lines as confident as you would when drawing them initially (with ghosting and all)

• A few points about leaf construction

• Capping off your tube forms rather than leaving them open.

If you have any questions about any of the points I mention, feel free to ask.

So- I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson!

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

2018-04-23 22:34

Really fantastic work. You've nailed each and every exercise, and have demonstrated a phenomenal grasp of 3D space and how to sell the illusion of solid form.

You're showing a good sense of how your arrows flow through all three dimensions of space, and I can see clearly where you've varied the size of each end to show which is farther away from the viewer, and which is closer. I'm also quite pleased with how consistent you've managed to keep their widths - often times matching either edge of the ribbon can be quite tricky.

Your organic forms with contour lines (both ellipses and curves) convey a clear grasp of how those surfaces sit in 3D space. You're wrapping those curves very nicely around the forms, and are also showing a subtle shift in their degree as those cross-sectional slices' orientations change in relation to the viewer.

I did notice that where your sausages turn, you have a tendency to miss the alignment to that central minor axis line by a bit, so you'll want to keep an eye on that.

Your dissections are coming along well - you've got a lot of variety here, and for the most part you're attacking each texture in a manner specific tailored to it, and you're focusing a great deal on the minor forms that come up off their surfaces and the shadows they cast.

One thing that I would like you to tone down however is the use of hatching lines. These can be quite value in a lot of media, but in this case they have a tendency to distract the student from the intricacies of the surfaces. You don't use hatching too much, so like I said, in most cases you're paying more careful attention to the little bumps and divets and scratches, but there are areas where you settle for more this more generic approach.

Also, when filling in something with shadow (like on this page of dissections, the bottom-left form, its upper half), be mindful of two things:

• Firstly, the curvature of that surface. In that particular example, your hatching there ends up functioning as contour lines. Since they are quite visible, they suggest to the viewer how that surface turns in space, and because they were drawn straight across, they end up flattening the form.

• Secondly, the visual noise that can occur when you allow little white slivers to shine through. A brush pen can be quite effective in this regard, in filling areas in with solid black, so as to downplay the contrast of having a lot of white/black areas packed so closely together. This leaves only the edge of your shadow to be considered, and how you craft that shadow shape can imply a lot about the texture hidden beneath it.

Your form intersections are spot on, and I'm very pleased to see that you started off with boxes only. In both pages, you've shown an excellent mental model of 3D space, and your ability to manipulate these forms is going to help you considerably in later lessons.

More of the same for the organic intersections - you've captured the sense of how these forms interact with one another, and how they sag where their weight is not supported, and how they have a tendency to wrap around the things that do support them. Your use of shadow, and how it wraps around the forms upon which it is cast also helps reinforce the illusion that all of this is three dimensional and solid.

Anyway, keep up the fantastic work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I noticed that you submitted lesson 3 as well. Keep in mind that in general, you'll want to submit a lesson as soon as it is finished, so I can address any issues that might be present so they don't trickle into the next lesson. Of course, none of the issues I touched on here had a significant impact on your work in the next lesson, but it could have - so in the future, submit them one at a time.

I'll mark this lesson as complete, and move onto critiquing the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-23 20:32

Nice work! I can definitely see certain patterns of improvement across your set. For example, earlier when you extend your lines, we can see that the lines' relationships to each other (that is, to the other ones within their parallel group) don't end up being entirely clear, but several pages later, there's a more consistent convergence between them. It shows that you move from attacking your lines as individual components, to thinking about how they all work together.

One thing that caught my eye is that when you add line weight, there are in some cases signs that you may be going over your linework with a less confident stroke than you ought to. Remember that even when adding weight, you should still be executing your marks with a confident, persistent pace, and applying the ghosting method. It can be very easy to fall into the trap of drawing slower in order to match the line you're adding weight to, but this will generally cause the resulting mark to feel stiff (even if the wobbling is minimal).

Also, in that last little rotated boxes attempt, your alignment of your boxes is pretty well done, and I like the fact that you are aware of how the boxes relate to one another, using their proximity to help you make decisions in regards to how each mark should be drawn.

That said, make sure you're still applying the ghosting method - the gaps between your lines suggest a bit of a lack of planning/preparation, and they make the whole thing feel a little more loose and less solid. So keep an eye on that in the future (though I understand that this was probably a loose doodle).

LASTLY - thank you for the kitty paw. It's much appreciated.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work, and feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-21 00:31

Really great work! The considerable change from the first couple of false starts you had there and the last pages is immense, both in your understanding of 3D space, as well as your confidence with your linework. You're very clearly taking your time with each and every mark, and I see no wobbling or hesitation - just smooth, confident strokes.

There's of course still room for growth, as there always will be, but you're pretty consistently good enough to fool the naked eye. Once we start extending our lines, we see some issues here and there, like how in box 252, the lines going off to the left seem to group off in pairs rather than all converging together. Same thing happens for the lines going downwards.

As you continue to move forwards, you'll want to continue to practice boxes where the vanishing points are further away from the box, and the convergences are much shallower as a result. I think this is probably where you'll run into the kinds of issues we see on 252. Boxes with shallower foreshortening are also going to be more common, because it implies that the form is at a much more relatable scale to the viewer. A box with very dramatic foreshortening, and vanishing points that are close to the box, tend to suggest a really large scale (like looking at the top of a building from the ground).

Anyway, like I said - you're doing great. Keep up the fantastic work and consider this challenge complete. I've told you this before - I fully expected you to give up. But you kept pecking away, and became a proper drawing chicken. This is not the end of the road, but you've set off with your little chicken backpack, and are heading towards great terrifying things.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-21 00:20

It certainly is something that takes a great deal of time and dedication, but you're definitely heading down the right path. You've shown considerable improvement with both the confidence of your linework and the solidity of your forms. There are a couple things to keep an eye on, but overall you're doing well.

One thing that jumps out at me is that when you're applying additional line weight, the confidence with which you draw your initial lines disappears, and you start drawing your lines much more slowly, carefully and hesitantly, resulting in them wobbling a little. Keep in mind that each and every mark you draw should be done so with confidence, applying the ghosting method - even when you're adding line weight.

Another thing worth mentioning can be seen in box 243 (as well as many others). Take a look at that box, specifically the lines that go off towards the left. There's four lines, focus on the two in the center that are quite close to one another. Because they're close to each other, and we know that these two edges are parallel in 3D space, this tells us that they're going to be very close to parallel when drawn on the page. In this box, there's a pretty big difference between them however, and they're actually diverging a fair bit. This is the sort of thing that extending our lines makes quite clear in a lot of cases, but in this particular case it's something we could identify even as we were drawing.

Whenever you're drawing an edge, think about the other edges you want your line to be parallel with, and consider how close they are. If they're as close as this pair are, then you can more or less draw your new line as being parallel to the other.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-19 21:49

Hahaha, it definitely is pretty taxing, and challenging to one's sanity. But rejoice! You beat it, and you beat it good. Great work completing the challenge. I'm very pleased to see that you applied the line extension method, and that you also demonstrated a pretty good grasp of the mistakes you uncovered with your corrections in green. I can see your understand of space and form improving, and your convergences becoming considerably more consistent over the full set.

As you continue to move forwards, you'll want to think about line weight as well. There are some notes on this topic on the challege page, as well as in the lesson 2 form intersections video, so be sure to check those out.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-19 21:45

Nicely done! Your linework and constructions definitely become considerably more confident throughout the set, and I'm very pleased to see that you're applying the line extension method to get a sense of what you need to work on from page to page. I can see clearly where certain issues with the convergence of your lines start to disappear, so that's fantastic.

Just a few points to think about:

• The extension method is, of course, a good thing to use all over. I totally understand dropping off from that near the end, but it's still a worthwhile analytical tool, so try not to leave it out from exercises like this.

• I wouldn't get in the habit of scribbling out boxes that aren't going well. Even if you fully understand what you did wrong, you should see every drawing through to the end. Every drawing can teach us a lot, and while certain things may not be as we intended them, there is still much to be gained by pushing through.

• When adding hatching to the face of a form, it's important to ensure that all your lines are consistent, parallel and stretch all the way across the plane, for presentation's sake. Anything being a little sloppy will take away from the effort you've put into the other aspects of your work.

• Something to consider as you continue to move forwards is line weight. There are some notes on that topic on the challenge page, so be sure to give them a read. I also talk about it in lesson 2's form intersection video.

Anyway, consider this challenge complete. Keep up the good work.

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

2018-04-18 23:01

These are vastly improved. You're applying the principles of the lesson and demonstrating a significantly better grasp of how the forms sit in space and interact with one another. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-18 22:59

Much, much, much better! You've definitely applied much of what I mentioned in my last critique to great effect. I can see two issues that I'd still like to point out, but overall you're doing well:

• Lets look at this page. Notice how you've got a ball for the head, and it's floating a bit inside of the final form of the head? Same goes for the thorax. This kind of floating inside of a relatively arbitrary outer form is still contributing to a sense of weak construction. You want to build up - don't obliterate the original mass, but attach more forms to it. Don't wrap a single highly complex form around the original one, either, as this means that your subsequent form doesn't have enough scaffolding to support it from the previous step. You can think of it kind of like constructing a building, where if a wall is erected without the appropriate support system put up to hold it together, it will fall apart. If you look at my demos, you'll notice that wherever possible, I tend to still have parts of the initial masses still play a role in the final drawing, because I haven't replaced it - I've built onto it.

• Keep an eye on your insects' feet - you're definitely still being a bit sloppy there, not putting enough time and effort into actually observing and constructing them. This isn't an uncommon issue - people tend to disregard the feet, putting the odd afterthought of a line or two. If you put any marks down for anything, they should be considered, planned, confidently executed, and reflect the forms you actually see present in your reference image.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Be sure to continue to apply what I've mentioned here in the next lesson. I believe my first point is reflected fairly well in the otter and head-construction demos in the animal lesson, so be sure to give those a watch.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-18 22:52

Overall you've done a pretty great job. You've an excellent eye, and generally demonstrate a good grasp of form and construction. There is one significant issue that's holding you back somewhat, but it's a matter of approach and priority rather than skill.

So the issue is that you're looking at the intent of this lesson to be to produce a nice drawing as an end result. I say this because of a few signs I see - you're willing to draw some extra constructional linework (which is good), but often times it's faint, loose, and very specifically drawn in such a way that it leaves as little of a footprint as you can manage (which is not good). When you draw in this manner, you miss out on a lot of the benefit of those lines, and have to focus too much on visualization skills that simply haven't yet been developed enough to be relied upon so heavily. After all, we develop those visualization skills by drawing through our forms concretely and confidently. Ultimately these drawings are exercises to that end - to build up our understanding of 3D space, of how forms sit within that space, and how they interact with one another. That is the goal - not a pretty drawing at the end.

So, one case where this is very clear is this page. Notice the cylinder of the pot itself. You did start out drawing a full ellipse for its base, but did so quite faintly, and then went back to draw your "final" mark to replace the exploratory ones. This arc ended up being a little misshapen, which resulted in a rather awkward cylinder. I am pleased though that you aligned your ellipses to a minor axis line (though it wavered somewhat), and that you drew two inset ellipses to construct the rim of the pot - many students don't notice this, and try to get by with a single ellipse, resulting in a paper-thin container.

Back to the issue though, even drawings where you've been much more successful (like this one) could have been better construction-wise had you drawn each ellipse with more confidence, rather than trying to hesitate and hide your strokes. Drawing through your ellipses is still extremely important to both encourage that confidence, and also to give you the tools to develop your control further.

There's one other thing I'd like to point out - with your branches, for the most part you seem to have attempted to construct each long, flowing tube with a single stroke for each edge. You'll notice that in the instructions - both the demonstration in the lesson, and the video provided - I talk about constructing each side in segments, and working on being able to get those segments to flow convincingly together to create the illusion of being a single, confident stroke. This technique is quite important, as it avoids a few things we can see in some of your branches, such as the tendency for the width to become inconsistent (pinching in places, swelling in others). Definitely something to keep in mind.

Overall though, you are demonstrating a good deal of skill, it's just your approach and priorities that need to be adjusted. Always remember that these are just exercises with an express purpose. We want to practice our use of construction, and through that develop our understanding of form and space. If you focus on the end result being pretty and clean, and spend too much of your mental capacity on texture and detail, you'll come out with some beautiful drawings but won't grow all that much.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Be sure to apply what I've mentioned here as you tackle the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-17 21:15

While I do think that it's definitely important that you keep doing exercises from the first two lessons as warmups, but I don't think it's necessary for you to step back a lesson. Just be sure to review all of the material for lesson 5 carefully.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-17 00:08

Overall you're doing fairly well as far as construction goes, but there are a few important points that are worth mentioning.

In regards to your branches:

• Draw through your ellipses. This is pretty important, as it helps you to keep your ellipses evenly shaped by encouraging a more confident execution. This should be done for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons.

• I did notice a tendency for your branches to move across the page - that is, across the two dimensions of space as defined by the page. This suggests that your perception of the space you're constructing within is still somewhat restricted to and defined by the page - push yourself to think beyond it, to view the page as a window to a larger, infinite three dimensional space in which you are creating forms that can move up, down, across, as well as further into the scene. When tackling branches or leaves, you can think about which end of the branch is going to sit farther away from the viewer, and which end will sit closer, and consider this when drawing either end (as the closer end will be considerably exaggerated in size, while the farther end will be much smaller). This issue of moving across the two dimensions of the page also applies to your leaves.

When drawing flower pots, I can see that you are, albeit faintly, constructing drawing through them and constructing a minor axis around which to align your ellipses. This is great, although I want you to draw them more confidently and avoid dashed or broken lines. This goes for construction in general - do not attempt to hide any linework that you deem important enough to be a part of your drawing. We are not here for a pretty end result. Rather, each and every drawing is just an exercise in understanding 3D space, and by attempting to conceal those lines, you are missing out on part of that exercise.

Also, on the topic of flower pots, remember that each one has some thickness to it, and so the rim should be defined by two ellipses, one set into the other. On this page, at the bottom, you certainly did give it some thickness, though I'd like you actually draw the full ellipse for it, rather than simply thickening the outer one. It's a good opportunity to work on inset ellipses.

On that same flower pot, take note of the ellipse at the base - cylinders, as described in the cylinder challenge, will have an ellipse on the far end that has a slightly wider degree than the closer end. It's a subtle change, but one that you should take into consideration. You might notice that the flower pot feels a little weird - this is why.

Other than this, you are generally doing a good job. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to keep these points in mind, and continue to practice them when you have the opportunity. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

As for your question, I strongly insist that you stick to a single pen weight, ideally the 0.5 recommended in the homework sections of all these lessons. This forces you to develop a great deal of control over the amount of pressure you apply when drawing. One can create a considerably variety of weights from a single tip, simply by varying the amount of pressure they apply. This is a skill that is not only important when dealing with a variety of traditional media, but is also invaluable when working digitally.

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

2018-04-16 23:57

Overall you're doing fairly decently, but there are a few things that jump out at me. First and foremost, your ellipses. You need to be drawing through them. All of them. At least, all of the ones you draw for my lessons. This, in combination with applying the ghosting method to them, will help you maintain both an even shape and an accurate execution, which is pretty important when it comes to fitting them inside of organic shapes.

When it comes to the organic forms with contour ellipses, you're also going to want to think a little more about the degree you're using for each ellipse. The degree tells the viewer about the orientation of that circular cross-section of the form, which in turn shows how that form is moving through 3D space. I explain this further in these notes. Also, keep an eye on your alignment to that central minor axis line, and try to stick to simpler sausage forms for this exercise. Branching, or having forms that pinch or swell awkwardly is more likely to distract you from the core of the exercise.

Your dissections were fairly well done, and you demonstrated a good variety of textures and certainly put a great deal of effort into approaching each one. There are a couple things I'd like to mention however. Looking at the roofing tile, it's a good example of somewhere you've thought about each tile as a graphic element - bounded by lines on each side, and stamped down onto the surface of the form. Instead, think about how the tile exists as a form - rather than thinking about the lines that enclose it, think about the shadows it casts, as this is what the lines we see actually are. Depending on how the light hits it, you may end up with a portion of that outline being blasted out completely, or a portion of it being made to stretch further as it casts its shadow down upon the tile beneath it.

Another texture I wanted to point out was the snake skin. You approached this in a way that tackles the texture more as it exists as part of a 2D drawing - that is, you constructed it creating a criss-crossing grid of lines. While this isn't inherently wrong (and is actually a clever technique that can be used to great effect later on, as long as you pay more attention to how that grid should wrap around the form), in this particular case it's causing you to think less about how those scales exist as individuals. Just like the roofing tiles, think about how they exist as little forms, little shifts on the surface of the snake, and how they cast little shadows onto each other.

Your form intersections are definitely a bit of a mess at first, but they do improve over the set. This is something you're definitely going to want to continue working on quite a bit, but you're making progress. Remember that as it stands right now, I'm more interested in how the forms feel within the same scene (whether they feel cohesive or not, and if their sense of scale is consistent), rather than the intersections themselves. On the first page, your boxes are all kinds of off, but by the last page there's a considerably better grasp of space. Of course, you need to be drawing through those ellipses - though I do admit that your ellipses are fairly good, the effort you put into getting each of those in one go would be better spent elsewhere, and the additional muscle-memory training from drawing through them a little more would go a long way.

Though you do need to work on getting your contour ellipses to fit properly within their intended organic forms, the organic intersectiosn came out pretty well and do convey a good grasp of how those forms pile on top of one another, where they ought to sag, and so on.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but keep the points I've raised here in mind as you continue to move forwards.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-15 20:16

I think you show a great deal of growth over this set, and while there's certainly room for more, you're got some clear signs of improvement where your understanding of form and 3D space is concerned. I was especially pleased with this page, specifically how the interaction between the head, thorax and abdomen show that you're really grasping how everything sits in space.

There are a few things that I'd like to point out that should help you as you continue to move forwards, but overall I'm quite pleased with your improvement.

• You've got varying degrees of success with your legs. In some places you're drawing the leg sections as sort of stretched ovals. This isn't a great idea, because they tend to come out quite stiff. In other places you're drawing them more as sausages, which have a consistent width through their lengths - this is much better, but you should also be paying more attention to how those legs flow from segment to segment. This is a common issue, which I explain towards the bottom of these notes I wrote for another student. Make sure that the ends of your sausages overlap comfortably - you can then add a contour curve at the joint itself to reinforce the illusion of form - but I don't recommend putting contour curves along the length of a segment, as this can cause things to feel a little stiff at times.

• For the ladybug, I noticed that you laid in some spots there. One thing to consider when doing so is how those spots wrap around the surface of the form they're on. You've drawn them as pretty evenly shaped ellipses, but since the surface of the shell actually turns in space, you're going to end up with the ellipses being more curved and warped. It's little details like this that really help sell the illusion of 3D form.

I do think that you may be getting a little bit distracted by the detail, texture and rendering of your drawings, to the point that you might be thinking ahead to that when you should be focusing more on ensuring that your construction captures all of the forms present in your insect. This results in some areas being a little oversimplified at times. The ends of legs, where they have their little feet, tends to be a pretty big victim of this sort of thing.

I've got a couple extra demonstrations that I'd like you to look at. This one looks to be done using one of the reference images you used for your ladybugs, so it should help to see how I'd tackle the same one you attempted. Also, this one's pretty recent and goes into a lot of detail in regards to the whole process, and how I deal with each problem one at a time.

You've got plenty of room to grow, and you will continue to do so with practice, but your work is coming along quite well. Be sure to keep practicing this stuff on your own, but I'm going to mark this lesson as complete - so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-15 19:53

You've got some good constructions here, and I can see that you're striving to apply a lot of the principles from the lesson in various places. I also see, however, that you have a tendency to get a little distracted at times. I think that might be part of why you were working on this on and off over four months. This allowed you to forget things here and there, and made some of your work a little more haphazard. You end up skipping steps, or breaking certain cardinal rules (no pencil for the homework you submit!)

I think looking at the gazelle drawings is probably the most productive, as there's a good balance of strong construction, alongside some important issues worth touching upon. Here's some notes I wrote on the page.

The point on the left is important - at every point in a drawing, it's very easy to slip into ignoring the construction you've built up thus far and to draw strictly from observation from there (as though you're simply transferring the 2D information from your photo reference to the 2D drawing). Instead, you absolutely must hold to your understanding of 3D space, and the forms that make up the object you're constructing. Following the surfaces of those forms is very important - you've got to grasp how the lines you're drawing move in 3D space at all times.

Given that your lesson 4 work was submitted back in November, there's a good chance that you may have missed some important new content I added. This includes:

• A detailed demo on how I go about constructing an otter

• A video on head construction

Now, I'd like you to do four more pages of animal drawings. Doesn't matter what kind of animals, as long as you're following the lesson strictly (no pencils, no drawings focusing on a pretty result, none of that). I only want you to focus on construction with no detail or texture whatsoever. Make sure you're drawing from high resolution photo references, so you don't end up oversimplifying areas where there's not enough information to work from. If necessary, you can draw from multiple reference images to fill in missing detail.

Before you do that however, review the lesson material. Rewatch the videos, and go through the demos again. Try not to spread this out over too long a period, and make sure the material is always fresh in your mind. I think there's a lot of signs that you understand it and apply it well, but you simply got rusty and distracted halfway through.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-15 19:05

In my experience, focus and patience are hard, but they're things we develop over time. Give someone a pen and some paper for the first time, and they'll sit down and draw for ten minutes, tops. They'll feel that what they drew in that time will define their ability forever, that they will never have it in them to sit for longer, to think harder, and to take their time.

But as we all know, as we work at it, our tolerance for the tedium and the repetition and all the little things increases. We find ourselves able to focus for longer, to go from spending minutes on a sketch, to hours and even days. But the main thing to remember is where we started. Of course, I don't know how this applies to those with additional concerns like ADHD and whatever else, but I'm going to assume my point here does apply to you.

Keep at it, and when you feel your focus drifting, and your ability to think about each mark you put down to fizzle, take a break. Ensure that the work you do is at or around your peak performance, and push yourself just a little bit each time to go for longer.

For some people, the pomodoro technique has worked (where you set a timer, usually for 25 minutes but really it's whatever predetermined period of time suits you), followed by a 5 minute guilt-free break. The point is about letting the timer govern things. So when the timer says you're on break, you're on break and there's nothing you can do about it.

Anyway, back to your work - you're doing pretty well, but I do have a couple things to mention about your line extensions. I'm definitely pleased that you're doing them for all your boxes, though keep in mind that you only want to extend them in the direction of their implied vanishing point (towards which they should be converging). No need to extend in both directions. It's also more helpful to extend them as far as you can, to get as good of a sense of the nature of that convergence as possible.

Lastly, while you do seem to have a pretty good balance of boxes with dramatic foreshortening (where the VPs are very close) and shallower foreshortening (where the VPs are way further away), I'd recommend putting more emphasis on the latter. Shallower foreshortening is the sort of thing that's going to come up more frequently, and also tends to be more difficult since it's more difficult to visualize a VP that's distant. They're more common because shallower foreshortening suggests a more relatable, human scale, whereas dramatic foreshortening tells us that an object is very large (like looking at the top of a tall building from the ground floor). So, practicing having the VPs much further away will be more useful for most things.

Anyway, keep up the great work. Your boxes feel quite solid, and despite your struggles you have demonstrated a great deal of patience and focus here. Pushing yourself on that front will always help of course (especially when it comes to analyzing the results while extending those lines), but you're doing pretty well as it is.

Consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-04-15 18:30

There's a lot of good stuff here, but there's a few things that caught my eye that are worth mentioning.

• For your organic forms with contour curves, you've got a few places where the alignment of your curves ends up out of whack, and other areas where the curves don't quite hook around enough, which flattens out the form somewhat. You've got a lot of neat experimentation there, but I think that you should stick to the basic rounded sausages for now and really solidify your grasp of that before playing with different kinds of volumes. Here are some notes I made directly on your work. Your organic forms with contour ellipses were generally pretty well done, although I'd like you to think a little more about the degrees of the ellipses (and ultimately curves) that you're drawing. As explained here, the degrees should change slightly as the circular cross-section they represent turn in space relative to the viewer.

• Your dissections are coming along nicely, with a lot of wonderful variety in your textures and how you approach drawing them. I did notice however that you tend to jump into the texture a bit too early - you've got to focus more on constructing a solid sausage form just as you would for the organic forms with contour lines exercises, before even thinking about the dissection/texture part of it. Your forms were definitely more solid on the second page. Also, try to ease up on the use of hatching lines as you did with the NASA Jet plating. You're getting a little too random and haphazard there, rather than focusing in on specific details and shadows cast by the little variation on the surface you're drawing.

• Your form intersections were pretty fantastic. Great line weight, solid forms. My only critique here is to go for shallower foreshortening - right now it's all quite dramatic, where the forms get smaller very quickly, which suggests that each form is actually quite massive in scale. A shallower foreshortening, where the parallel lines converge more slowly suggests that the scale is smaller and more relatable to humans, which also helps keep it all more consistent and cohesive as an overall scene.

• I think you're showing some grasp of the organic intersections, but it's getting quite muddled here. The alignment of your contour curves are off, your line weights are very heavy (which is flattening things out), and overall I don't get the impression that you fully understand how the forms are interacting with one another. I think you may want to do a little more of this, and perhaps review the video and notes on this particular exercise.

I'd like you to do two more pages of organic forms with contour curves, followed by another two pages of organic intersections. For both of these exercises, focus on simple sausage forms, on keeping the contour lines running perpendicular to the directional flow of the form (think about that central minor axis line), and ease up on that line weight in the intersections. In my examples, the heavy blacks you see there are cast shadows, and are projected from one form onto the forms beneath it. Give a lot more thought to how these are solid forms sagging against one another - try to picture a bunch of balloons filled with water all piled on top of another.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-15 17:48

Looking good! I'm glad to see that you went over the vast majority of your boxes to extend their lines, and from the looks of it, properly analyzed them to identify where your convergences weren't quite right, or where certain lines were drifting off course.

From the beginning, you were applying the techniques of box construction covered in the notes and video pretty well, but this careful analysis definitely helped push you forwards. Your line quality is also looking quite confident, and your experimentation with line weight is bearing fruit.

One piece of advice I have to offer is to try and keep those line weights a little more subtle. Avoid lines that get overly thick, relative to their neighbours, as this can start to flatten things out. Even if the difference in line weight is minute, the subconscious can pick up on it, and it can contribute a lot to a drawing, so strive for that kind of subtlety instead.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-14 20:56

1. People often fuss about posting only work they feel met a certain standard, and as a result grinding out far more pages than were assigned. I regularly try and discourage this due to the reason you've found here - the shitty drawings tell us a lot.

2. Your understanding of proportion and relationships between forms will improve over time, but yes - don't fuss over them too much right now. Your initial masses are what's meant to make those initial proportional decisions, and sometimes they end up off by a fair bit. That's totally fine, and with lots of mileage and iteration, your ability to eyeball those proportions will improve. You can also delve into ways to improve your proportions later - but right now our focus is on the use of the constructional method to create objects that feel solid and three dimensional.

3. Exactly right - use sausages to create the bases, then build up the areas where you see greater volumes.

4. Remember that every technique that you're introduced to is a tool with a purpose. Only use the tools when you need them, and if you need them, give them the appropriate amount of attention. I often see students covering things with sloppy contour lines, and only getting about half the effect they were striving for. Often times one or two well-placed and well-executed contour lines will be enough to reliably reinforce the volumes of a form.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-04-14 18:38

Overall you're doing pretty well. Your cylinders built around arbitrary minor axis are pretty well done. The ellipse alignment is pretty close (though avoid constructing them around the ends of the minor axis - make sure they're sitting so the minor axis penetrates all the way through them, as this makes it easier for us to gauge their alignment aftewards).

Your cylinders in boxes definitely do bring some extra challenges to the table, and some struggles with them as you mentioned in your video. The most important thing that I'm catching here is that you're allowing the plane itself to govern the angle of the ellipse, and it often ends up misaligned from the minor axis line shared by both ends of the cylinder. It's that minor axis line that should always be followed, and as long as it is, you can be guaranteed that the relationship between the two ellipses will be correct.

This doesn't mean that the cylinder is going to be composed of two perfect circles in 3D space, however. Any single ellipse alone in a scene can be said to represent a perfect circle - but as soon as you end up with two (as in the case of a cylinder), or other objects against which to compare them, this assertion grows a little weaker. It is entirely possible that our cylinders actually end up being squashed, with ovular faces on either end.

As I mentioned when commenting on your video, I definitely am going to create a new "how to draw a cylinder" video that uses the criteria presented in my perfect circles/squares in 3D space video as a way to error-check our cylinders once they've been drawn, as we do in the 250 box challenge. Since that video doesn't yet exist, and it's probably going to be a little while yet before I can get around to that, I've written out a demonstration of the process right onto one of your pages: https://i.imgur.com/Xdm1bNz.png

I've written out the process on the left side, and applied it to some of your cylinders-in-boxes, and drawn one of my own on the far right. Just like the box-checking methods, it's all about margins of error. If mistakes are egregious enough, they'll be way out of whack. If they're close enough, we can more or less say that they're correct.

Anyway, I hope that helps clarify at least some of your confusion. You've done some pretty solid work here, so I'm going to go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Oh, actually there is one last thing worth mentioning, though it might make something worse. Once you rotate a circle on two axes in 3D space, it's not actually going to be an ellipse anymore. We still use an ellipse, because it's still our best approximation, but in truth the ellipse ends up getting distorted in this situation, with two opposing corners being pulled out more than the others. While it can be useful to keep this in mind, I wouldn't recommend attempting to be more accurate than a normal ellipse allows you to be, because it's going to mean sacrificing the evenness and smoothness of your stroke, which are things the viewer is more likely to pick up on.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-14 18:07

So I went to town writing notes on your first page, and while I think doing so is probably the most valuable thing I could do, you show improvement over this set. Some of the issues with construction that you have on that first page definitely get better to varying degrees on the rest of it, but I think being able to point them out as directly as I could with that wasp is definitely important.

So here are the notes. There's a lot written there all over the place, so I kind of ordered them, from points 1 to 4.

A few other things I noticed:

• Your linework's a bit stiff. Make sure you're ghosting your lines and drawing from your shoulder, as you may have slipped back to drawing from your wrist, and drawing less confidently.

• Drawing through your initial masses (as we do with all of our ellipses) is definitely useful to keep them more evenly shaped, fluid and smooth.

• Your contour lines have a tendency to be a little rushed and weak in places. I can't remember if these pages were done earlier (before I actually critiqued lesson 2 or not), but that area does need work if it's recent. Be sure to continue practicing the exercises from the first two lessons as part of a regular warmup so you don't get rusty on that front.

Here's an additional demo that I did for another student some time ago that covers the whole construction process in great detail. It's currently present on the lesson 4 page's 'other demos' section, though as it's fairly new it may not have been there if your work for this lesson is a little outdated.

I want you to do another 5 pages of insect drawings. Focus entirely on construction - I don't want to see any detail or texture whatsoever, just focus on the forms you're building, how they sit in 3D space, how they relate to one another, and generally mind the constructional method more closely.

One thing I should reiterate about the construction method is that it is built around the idea of dealing with one problem or decision at a time. Drawings consist of a lot of decisions that have to be made. How different sections relate to one another, proportions, the arrangement of things, and so on. Construction is all about breaking the decisions into steps - once you make a decision though, you may decide later on that the decision was incorrect. By that point, it's TOO LATE. You cannot do anything about it - the biggest mistake one can make is to try and correct and change a decision that has already been made. Ultimately all you can do is work within the framework you've set out. If early on you happened to make the head too big, you need to respect that decision and keep working to draw something that happens to have a head that is larger than it should be.

If you try to correct it, the whole thing will start to unravel. Keep that in mind as you push onwards. Every step is a decision.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-12 23:00

Your grasp of 3D space, and your ability to capture forms that feel solid and concrete is strong, no question of that whatsoever. The only thing I do want to point out however is that you are, at least in some places, notably loose with your construction.

In the grand scheme of things, that's fine. You've clearly already pushed far enough for that grasp of 3D space to be internalized, so the marks you put down are really all you need (for the most part) to work through the spatial problems and determine how the various parts relate to one another. That said, being able to actually sit down and construct everything in its entirety, on the page, is still important, and it is the focus of this lesson (as opposed to just focusing on drawing pretty pictures).

That means a few things:

• Drawing each form in its entirety, even when they're blocked by other forms, so we can fully see how they relate to one another, and ensuring that each form is represented by a closed circuit. If you lookat your dragonfly, you'll see that its tail actually flattens out quite a bit - it's because the way the segments were drawn, each one reads more as a 2D shape on the page, rather than being presented as each being an individual three dimensional form that were then connected. Of course, if you were doing a finished drawing, you wouldn't be able to draw through each form - but the point is that drawing through them here in these exercises trains your brain to figure out all of the subtle nuances that would be visible in that final-drawing scenario.

• Understanding that each and every form or mass or mark we put down represents a solid 3D form present in the scene (so if you put down a circle to represent, say, the thorax of an insect, that is not just an arbitrary mark on a piece of paper, it should actually be treated as though it were a ball of clay or marble set into a 3D world. Meaning, that if you then realize that the sphere is too big, or that you want a piece of it to be taken away, you can't simply draw on top of it in hopes that the original mark will be ignored. That tells the viewer that it wasn't solid or 3D after all, and undermines that very illusion for the rest of your drawing. As a result, one would more often start out with smaller masses and build up around them by adding additional volumes and layers. If you look at the top of this page, you can see the three loose balls that make up the abdomen of that spider. Those initial ellipses don't actually feel three dimensional, and rather than being a sort of scaffolding for the resulting construction, they're really just 2D explorative sketches that you used to draw the composite shape. Construction as we use it goes much further than just putting down a few marks - they tell us about how things sit in space. Your resulting compound shape still doesn't actually read as being terribly three dimensional - there's nothing there leveraged to communicate to the viewer how that surface turns in space. Had you taken the time to think about how its building blocks were solid and 3D, that belief in the illusion would have likely carried over, making you think more about the resulting 3D nature of the abdomen as a whole. Long story short, don't rush through the early phases - take the time to ensure that every component you put down feels solid and three dimensional, as you see in my demonstrations. This is after all a series of exercises - not an attempt at impressing folks with your pretty drawings (though they are indeed both pretty and impressive).

Anyway, aside from that, you really are doing phenomenal work here. While the issues I mentioned certainly have their impact, the majority of your forms and drawings feel very convincing, and you've done a great job of balancing texture and detail without undermining the underlying solidity.

Keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next one. Since this was your 7th submission this month, I'd like to ask that you hold onto your next one until May 1st. I cut off most people at about 5 submissions, but your work wasn't as challenging to critique in most cases, and your pledge is a little higher than what you needed to receive critiques for the lessons you submitted, so I gave you a little more leeway.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-04-09 23:56

Good stuff! Your confidence and your use of line weight improves a great deal over the course of the set. I can see you pushing yourself early on to go beyond the natural urge to stiffen up and be overly careful, but you seem to force your way through, and to great effect.

Your cylinders are also coming out quite nicely. The shift of degree between the two ends of your ellipses are subtle but present, your alignment seems to be pretty solid, and your cylinders in boxes are coming out well too - even though as you noticed yourself, constructing ellipses in planes is notoriously challenging. With those, always go for the fluidity and shape of your ellipses over having them fit snugly. There is some unevenness to those ellipses in planes, so try and remedy that before you fuss over having them fit perfectly.

Aside from that, fantastic stuff. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-09 23:52

This is definitely a considerable improvement. You're clearly doing a much better job grasping the planar nature of form, and how the various parts of the head fit together like a puzzle. It will certainly take some practice to apply that understanding to the usual detailed drawings (where some of the construction will have to be visualized more than drawn explicitly), but you're definitely going in the right direction.

Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one (where you'll likely find this emphasis on construction quite useful).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-09 23:49

Excellent work! Your constructions here are really phenomenal, and the confidence of your linework is spot on. Your leaves flow smoothly and convincingly through 3D space, and your flower pots feel solid and heavy (aside from that one whose rim you forgot to draw, but you were aware of that so it's not really worth mentioning). You tackled a great variety of plants here, and handled each challenge with an excellent grasp of the material.

There's really just one thing I can think to mention in terms of critique, and it's more of a reminder: https://i.imgur.com/6qkSity.png

I say it's a reminder because from the looks of your leaves exercise, you're doing it correctly there (or at least I think you are).

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-09 23:37

There's a mix of things here - some signs of solid constructions, others some issues that undermine the solidify of your forms. Rather than writing it all out, I redlined some of your drawings and wrote out some notes by hand: https://i.imgur.com/gB866ck.png

Overall points to be aware of:

• Remember that the initial masses represent actual forms (especially the rib cage). You get it right in some cases, but draw it smaller in others. Pay attention to your reference - it's true that we can't see the bones themselves, but we can see hints and suggestions of how far they extend if we look closely enough. In general though, ribcage is about 1/2 the torso, pelvis is about 1/4. Pretty much the same kind of proportions you see on a human.

• When drawing legs, we do go for more 2D, flowing, gestural shapes - but make sure your shapes are closed, and don't draw them loosely. Focus on pushing that sense of flow, and exaggerate your curves to that end.

• Your contour curves tend to be kind of wasteful - you're not putting a lot of attention towards each individual one, and compensate by drawing many. They're really not necessary, just focus more on each individual mark you put down.

• Mind how your forms connect to one another, especially in terms of head construction. Watch, or rewatch as the case may be, the head construction video from the lesson. There's a lot of information there, so it can take a few watches to absorb it all. Also review the demonstrations in the "other demos" section of the lesson.

Overall, you're making progress, but I think you might be getting a little ahead of yourself and breaking away from the methodology and approaches detailed in the lesson, demonstrations and videos. Since I see you applying certain parts quite well, and other parts less so, it seems to me like it might be more an issue of forgetting parts of the lesson over an extended period of time. It's often quite helpful to review the material several times over.

I'd like you to do another 4 pages of animal drawings. This time, stay away from any detail that goes beyond construction. Focus all your time on establishing forms that feel solid and three dimensional, and most importantly, spend more time observing your reference carefully. Only put down a couple marks at a time before looking back at your reference and refreshing your memory.

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

2018-04-09 22:47

Overall you're doing pretty well. There are some small issues I'd like to point out, but over the course of all the exercises you show considerable improvement with your grasp of form and space, as well as the confidence of your lines.

The first issue I noticed was with your ellipses in your organic forms with contour ellipses. On the first page, you weren't drawing through them (so some of them were rather uneven and stiff) - you did correct this by the second page, though they were still kind of stiff, as though you were hesitating while drawing them and trying to guide your hand with your conscious brain, rather than trusting in muscle memory. Always apply the ghosting method for these, and execute your marks with confidence.

Also, for this exercise as well as the contour curves, watch the degrees of your ellipses/curves. As explained in these notes, you'll want the degrees of the ellipses to change to reflect the orientation of that particular cross-section of your organic form in space. Aside from this issue though, your organic forms with contour curves were quite well done. You wrapped the curves along the forms' surfaces very nicely.

Your careful observation of your textures in the dissections exercise and the care with which you attacked each one with a variety of approaches is great. The only issue here I noticed was that at least for several of these, you didn't follow the instruction in regards to starting the exercise off as an organic form with contour lines like any other. The focus is to create a solid sausage form first, then cut it up and add texture.

Your form intersections establish a really strong grasp of form and space. In the instructions, I did say not to create small groupings of forms and to push yourself to fill the entire page with a single, dense network of forms - but since your forms look solid and cohesive, I'll let it slide. Your organic intersections are also very well done, and show a good grasp of how these forms interact with one another. The last page is especially quite believable, and shows the sagging of the forms under their own weight very nicely.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-04-09 01:11

Really, really lovely work. Your line weights are wonderfully confident, and your constructions feel solid and convincing. You're even managing to maintain that sort of confidence when adding additional weight to sections of your ellipses, which is rather impressive. Most people stiffen up and slow down on those curves, which results in wobbling and wavering, but you push on through.

I'm also pleased to see that you've struck a pretty good balance between cylinders constructed in boxes, and those around an arbitrary minor axis. The only thing I want to point out is that you should try and extend your minor axes so they're going to cut through both ellipses completely, at both ends. Right now you've got a lot of cases where the ellipses are positioned on either endpoint, so the minor axis only cuts through halfway. This makes it a little trickier to gauge alignment.

That said, it's not that big of a deal, since you're clearly going beyond that with that green pen to do some error-checking.

... so that kind of becomes a moot point. In which case, EVERYTHING IS FINE, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Consider this challenge thoroughly complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-08 15:34

That's great to hear!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-08 15:20

Yup, doing more is okay, but don't overdo it. Keep in mind that the recommended amount is really more about building a body of work large enough to let me (or whoever else) assess where things are going well, and where you're not quite grasping certain concepts. So what I don't want is a student who just sits there drawing more and more pages out of dissatisfaction and a desire to impress me. Of course, I don't think there's much risk of that from you, so a few more pages is totally fine.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2018-04-07 04:38

I think this shows a much better grasp of the issues I mentioned previously. You've been quite meticulous in your documentation, and I can now confidently say that though there's room for growth, you're moving in the right direction. So, I'll go ahead and mark it as complete.

As you move onto the next lesson, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Take advantage of as much of the space on the page as you can. More room will make it easier to think about the forms you're drawing as they sit in 3D space - this is particularly critical for features of the head, like the ant's beak. When you're forced to be quite cramped, it's harder to consider how these forms relate to the larger ones.

• Whenever two forms touch each other, think about how one wraps long the surface of the other, or how the intersection itself runs along their surfaces. Understanding how things flow along the surfaces of other objects is definitely key, so the contour line exercises from lesson 2 are very useful.

• I did notice from your video that you have a tendency to draw towards your body (or at least, along the diagonal that runs from the upper left to the bottom right, relative to your body). In my experience, most right handed people find bottom left to upper right to be most comfortable. That doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, I'd imagine, but it is something to consider. It could be a factor when considering that things like your ant's antennae tend to be a little wobblier than other marks in your constructions.

Anyway, keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.