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Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-07 04:18

Your trees, especially the baobab are utterly phenomenal. The control of value with your ink, and the way you're capturing such complex silhouettes in your brush strokes but somehow transitioning seemingly effortlessly from high detail to basic construction blows my mind. I actually tell students to stay away from trees for this lesson (the clumping of leaves is generally too complex for this stage), but you've nailed it a few times over.

So overall you're doing really well (as the previous paragraph may suggest), but there are a couple of things I want to draw your attention to in the more traditional lesson-3 fare. A good example to use is the right side of this image.

Firstly, always draw through your forms. See how you've got some leaves' edges ending when they get hidden behind other leaves? Draw the edges all the way through anyways. This is what helps us understand how the leaves exist in 3D space, and as soon as a shape or form is left incomplete, we revert to thinking about it in terms of being a flat, 2D shape on a piece of paper.

Secondly, always remember the matters of simple --> complex. A simple line is one that follows a single consistent trajectory. It might be an arcing trajectory, but it's not going to change that pattern of motion. Think of it like physics - if something suddenly changes its motion, you're going to assume something else influenced it. That outside factor added complexity to the system.

So, when you look at some of the petals of the flower at the top, you see some that have clear complexity to their edges that are not supported by a previous stage of simpler construction. This means that you're handling both the more complex edge detail along with establishing how the overall petal flows through space. Construction is all about splitting challenges and problems up into different bite-sized steps, so try not to jump ahead and tackle everything at once.

We can see similar issues on the right side of this image, where the leaves are quite wavy and complicated.

Lastly, on the topic of wavy edges, when you do add them to your leaves on top of a simpler construction, don't draw them as a single continuous edge going back and forth, zig-zagging along your simpler scaffolding. Instead, draw each individual bump on its own, rising up from the previous simple line, and coming back to merge with it once again. Here's an example of what I mean, from a critique I did yesterday.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. It's certainly fortunate that the few issues I've pointed out along the way haven't really been significant to invalidate your later lessons. I'm expecting that the next one will be the last in this streak? Then hopefully you can settle down and take your time with the fifth, giving me a bit of a breather :P

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-07 03:49

You've got a lot of great overall construction going on here, and that's definitely a huge strength. As a result, the majority of your drawings' bodies look quite believable and solid, and despite having all kinds of complexities they still retain the sort of firm structure that keeps them from flattening out.

I do want to touch on one of the things you mentioned about proportion though. It's true that proportion is quite the struggle, and it takes a lot of time and practice to train one's eye. That said, while proportion that is drastically off target can certainly make things look weird, there's a pretty fair margin of acceptable error. Proportion itself is not what makes a drawing look off or not. The bigger contributing factor would be the solidity of the construction.

One thing I noticed - and it's likely because of that fear of making mistakes - is that you're not drawing through any of your ellipses here. While this has less impact in areas like the torso, it's a pretty big deal for the head. Your cranial masses end up a little bit uneven and misshapen, and this undermines some of that solidity. Overall you're still doing a good job, but it's definitely a significant factor.

One area you definitely do need work on is your head constructions. In case you haven't given it a watch, do check out the animal head construction video. If you have watched it, give it another watch, as there certainly is a lot to absorb.

Most important is to really get your head around the contour lines. That is, how they ought to be flowing over the surfaces of the forms you're drawing. Right now while the forms themselves feel fairly solid on their own, when you add contour lines (especially with the heads) they tend to feel off and rushed.

You also need to ease up on that fur texture. Take a look at some of the demos from the lesson page's other demos section, like this raccoon. Focus on putting a few well designed tufts in key areas along the silhouette, rather than trying to cover whole sections. Less is definitely more in this case.

Here's a couple pages of notes/demos focusing on the head construction issues:

I'd like you to do two more pages of animal drawings. Focus particularly on their heads, and don't delve into any detail. You are definitely allowing yourself to get more than a little distracted by texture, and I think that's contributing to some of the sloppiness we see in some of the smaller (but still important) constructional forms of the heads.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-06 12:35

Ah! Looks like a mushroom or mushroom-like growth, so I'd say it's still a plant. In that case however, one thing you sort of missed was the thickness of the rim around its opening there. Yours look quite thin, while there's a lot more meat to it in the reference. You can leverage contour lines a little bit to achieve that sort of effect, as shown in this leaf demo.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-05 17:08

Lovely work! You're demonstrating an exceptional gras pof the material, especially in regards to the use of form to produce composite objects that feel solid and three dimensional. Your use of texture is also fairly nice, especially on surfaces where you've achieved a sense of bumpiness or other irregularities. I especially love these aloe leaves.

There is one issue that I noticed which I wanted to touch upon - it has to do with how you add additional wavy detail to your leaves, but it also applies to places like the mouths of these plants (I'm actually not really sure what they are), as well as the stem of this mushroom.

Basically, if we have something wavy, we start out with a simple, smooth stroke (which you were certainly doing), and then we build on top of it to add the waviness in a subsequent step. When we add that waviness however, we don't want to add a single stroke that zigzags back and forth. These kinds of marks end up following a regular 2D pattern that can flatten out our result. We end up focusing on the back-and-forth motion more than how the edge we're creating is actually meant to sit in 3D space.

Instead, as demonstrated in these notes, draw each bump independently, and use the previous construction phase as a sort of base, either marking the bottom or top extremes of your resulting edge. By building onto it in this manner, we retain the flow of that simpler leaf, while giving it the additional character and detail that we're after.

So in the case of the mouths of this plant, we'd build on top of the ellipse, allowing the more complex edge to ripple away from it, but always coming back to it as a solid scaffolding (rather than turning it into something that we wish we could erase afterwards).

Lastly, try and ease up a little on your use of line weight. I noticed that when you use line weight, you do so with the intent of separating the entirety of your "final" drawing from your construction lines. As a result, a good deal of the drawing ends up being very heavy, and then when we want to break away from uniformity, we add yet more weight resulting in a graphic, somewhat flattening effect. Line weight is meant to be subtle, applied sparingly and with careful consideration. Use line weight only in key areas (subsections of lines, rather than their entirety) to clarify specific overlaps.

Anyway, aside from those two points, you're doing remarkably well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-04-05 16:38

Good work across the board. Your arrows flow nicely through 3D space, and explore all three dimensions (including the depth of the scene). Your organic forms with contour ellipses are fairly well done, though while you are varying the degree of your ellipses in some cases, I think you could stand to push that a little further. There are some (like the one in the bottom right corner) where all the ellipses are the same degree, so it feels kind of stiff.

For your organic forms with contour curves, you're moving in the right direction, but take a look at these notes. You have a bit of a tendency in some places to make your ellipses a little too shallow in their curvature, so it calls into question whether or not that line would continue running along the surface, as the surface turns away. Also watch your alignment to your minor axis.

Phenomenal work on the dissections - you've attacked each texture with a very specific, case-by-case approach, and are clearly paying close attention to your reference images as well as the way light plays across these surfaces. The variety of textures you've attempted is fantastic, and you've really nailed each one.

With both your form and organic intersections, you're demonstrating a strong grasp of 3D space and the interaction of these different forms within the same scene.

Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-05 16:00

Looking good! Your boxes feel solid and confident, and your lines are confident. Your use of weight definitely adds a great deal to the constructions and helps keep them cohesive, as though you're drawing a single form rather than a collection of lines.

One (minor) issue that I noticed that you will want to keep an eye on is something I see frequently from students. If you take a look at 256, specifically at the pink lines that head towards the left, you'll see that you're starting to see two groups of two lines with their own convergences, rather than one group of four lines all converging together. In this particular case it's only really one line that's off. A better example might be 226.

Anyway, it only comes up here and there, but always keep in mind the fact that all four lines are converging together. It's easy to lose track of the relationship between all of the lines.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-05 01:34

The page I mentioned liking has some great line weight. Earlier on you're adding it too generally and heavily, and it becomes a matter of you trying to make the whole drawing stand out. Successful line weight is applied sparsely, only to clarify certain overlaps. So overall just try and be subtle with it, don't overdo it.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-05 00:05

You've got a lot of great work here! Process-wise, you're applying the principles of the lesson very nicely, and you show considerable improvement (especially in your use of construction specifically) over the set. I especially love this page. You've drawn through everything meticulously, and have achieved a fantastic sense of solidity and volume with each section. I'm glad to hear that the louse demo helped.

I'd say the one area that could use the most attention at the moment are your branches. While they show improvement like everything else, you'll want to work both on keeping the parallel edges consistently spaced out (avoiding any pinching or swelling through their length, which may benefit from adding an extra ellipse or two along the way) and also on keeping your segments flowing smoothly together.

I see areas here and there where segments start midway between two ellipses, rather than having each segment solidly rooted to an ellipse as its starting location. I've circled a few instances here.

Anyway, aside from that, you're doing very well. Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-04-03 23:55

It took a few tries, but I think you've finally gotten it. These drawings are just the kind of conscientious application of subdivision and construction that I was looking for. It was peeking through in some areas before, but now this is a proper collection of it.

So with that, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching lessons!

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

2018-04-03 23:54

Nice work! Overall you're doing a great job of capturing your forms and constructing objects that retain a good sense of solidity and believability. Even that ant with the ridiculously large head (which I'm guessing is actually how they are) looks weird, but still entirely believable because of how you've built it up applying the constructional methodology.

I definitely appreciate that you included a couple of shots through the drawing process, before adding detail.

I think the only particularly weak drawing was this one, which seems to be a pretty strong outliner compared to the others. The legs are kind of stiff, and the rest of it feels rather awkward - but I'm sure that was just an off day or something.

I do have a couple suggestions and observations, but rather than trying to explain them here, I wrote them out directly on your work. Here you go.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-03 23:37

Nice work! You're visibly improving over the set, and I'm very pleased to see that you applied the line extension method across the board. Your boxes are quite solid, and your linework is confident. While sometimes your convergences are still a little off (this'll of course improve with time and practice), regardless they still feel believable as three dimensional forms. They may not always come out as perfect boxes made up of 90 degree angles, they never feel flat or implausible.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2018-04-02 20:52

It looks like you cancelled your pledge back in September, so you're not currently eligible for homework critiques. Also, considering that so much time has passed since your last attempts, unless you've actually kept up with the exercises from previous lessons, I strongly recommend going back and starting from the beginning. The material itself has been updated with videos for every exercise in lessons 1 and 2, so you may find things to be a bit clearer now than they were before.

Also, looking back at your previous submissions, I'm a bit confused. It looks like you submitted lessons 1, 2 and 3 all at once, and were assigned the 250 box challenge but never completed it.

Anyway, if you do wish to continue pursuing homework critiques from me, I'd recommend starting over (and of course you'd have to repledge on patreon).

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-04-02 17:48

I'm glad to see how thorough you've been in extending your lines towards their implied vanishing points. You're definitely showing improvement with the convergence of your lines, but I think there are still some room for growth. One thing I want you to do is think more about how your lines are meant to converge as you draw them. Think about how they relate to each other and where you want them to all come together. For example, if you look at box...

err, I can't actually make out the number. But it's the one that's directly about 241. If you look at its vertical lines, specifically at the two that sit towards the middle of the drawing (one on the front side and the other on the back side of the form), you'll notice that these two lines are actually very close to each other, so you can very easily determine how they're going to come together while you're actually drawing them. When lines are relatively close, there's going to be relatively little change in their angles - they'll be almost parallel to one another. In this case however, you've got them converging quite dramatically.

Always look for lines that should be parallel in 3D space, and are in close proximity to one another in the drawing itself. When you're drawing a mark that sits close in this manner to another edge that's already been drawn, think about how much its angle actually needs to be changed. The closer they are, the more similar the angle should be.

You also may want to try playing with line weight a little more. I see you did so in a few cases (like box 232, i think), though in that particular example your additional weight has been added in a somewhat scratchy fashion, rather than utilizing the ghosting method as you would with any other mark.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep working on this sort of thing as part of your warmup routine (mixed in with the various lesson 1 exercises), but feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-04-01 19:08

Really, really nice work. Your constructions are fantastic, you do a great job of capturing the solidity of the forms, and the relationship between them. You're also achieving a good deal of fluidity - where sometimes being overly firm on construction can result in some stiffness (especially in the limbs), you've got a nice, relaxed and confident approach that establishes a good balance.

One area where I do believe you could use some advice is with fur. Here's some notes on how you're approaching it vs how you may want to try changing things. Also, this demo from the lesson page may also help.

On that note however, I did actually really like how the hedgehogs' spines came out. I suppose it's a matter of communicating just how prickly they are, versus other animals who certainly are quite furry, but shouldn't read as though they're made up of razorblades.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-04-01 18:55

Pretty well done. You start off with some rather rough plant drawings, but you improve considerably over the set. I have some notes about your jack in the pulpit and your branches.

I especially liked your Ponderosa Pine Bonsai, your lines are very fluid and confident, and you pay far more attention to that flower pot (which is one of the things I brought up in my redline notes).

Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-04-01 18:37

Thanks for providing your references. I spent about forty minutes going over four of your drawings and writing out notes - while the ones on the left side are a bit disorganized as they require pointing to specific things, those on the right are overarching issues or potential issues that I've noticed. Here you go.

I quite liked your aphid (the green one, third from the top).

Deviation from your reference is quite normal - as we draw, we end up making mistakes that accumulate, and we then have to compensate for them which results in a construction that is not likely to match the reference perfectly. There are areas here however where I feel it's far enough that you may not be looking back at your reference frequently enough. Always remember that as human beings, we were are not evolved to retain a perfect mental image of the things we've seen.

The second we look away from a reference, our brains go to work simplifying what we can recall, and throwing away a great deal of information. For this reason it's integral that we continually look back at our reference again and again, even when we feel we can recall information well.

The process of doing studies does help rewire our brains to at least focus in on the key information, but for quite a long time to come, it's going to be integral that you look back at your reference after every mark or two.

Finding high-resolution reference is also extremely important. The praying mantis for example was low resolution enough that I could barely make out how its head was supposed to fit together. If I myself struggled with it, then it is definitely going to pose unreasonable challenges for you.

I want you to go over the notes I've written there, and take your time in absorbing them. Once you have, I want you to do one more drawing of this specific ant. You may reference other images as needed to understand how it fits together (for example, how the legs connect under the thorax, which is something you struggled with in the last few drawings).

I also want you to take pictures of your process, after every individual phase of construction. I don't want you to apply any detail, and I want you to draw this entirely with one 0.5mm pen. Apply line weight only where you need to clarify certain overlaps, do not go over the entirety of shapes. Focus on fleshing out your 3D forms, and use contour lines where necessary - but don't overdo them. Whenever you add a contour line, be aware of what you're trying to achieve with it. Students often draw too many when they stop thinking about why they're drawing them in the first place.

Looking at photographs of each individual stage will help me to provide you with additional advice on things that aren't entirely clear in final drawings.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-31 20:09

Nicely done! I'm glad to see that you applied the line extension methods to your boxes pretty stringently. There is certainly room to continue growing, but you've made considerable improvement over the set. There's a definite confidence to your linework, and the consistency of your constructions definitely improves. Continue to think about how your lines are going to converge as you draw them, and when you extend those lines, think about where you tend to make your mistakes. For example, with box 211, you've thought more about the convergence of two lines at a time, rather than all four. It's a common issue, so just be sure to keep in mind as you move forwards.

A couple things to keep in mind:

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-03-31 00:40

You've got some really nice, conscientious constructions here - like your mercury cougar. That's definitely what I'm after, although you've got to watch your core boxes for slants and inconsistencies. The cougar's suffering quite a bit from skewed horizontals and slanted verticals as shown here.

In your last page, you mentioned that you were pleased with the fact that the drawing was cleaner than your others, and that this is what you'd been focusing on. While it's certainly true that it is cleaner, that is not what you should be investing time or effort into. While we want to ensure that we do not waste linework, we do not want to attempt to hide the lines that we do draw. Worrying about this will only cause you to split your attention and distract yourself. You'll end up inclined to skip important lines (in order to keep your drawing tidy), and that's how you end up with misaligned constructions. Your earlier, more conscientious constructions are far better and are exactly what you should be doing - just with a little more care for your initial boxes and such.

On that same vein, watch your ellipses - you're visibly holding yourself back with them in order to keep them cleaner. They are admittedly very tricky, so in all likelihood they're going to be a bit of a hassle, but allowing them to come out clean-but-uneven isn't going to teach you much about drawing them.

Another thing I noticed is that in your tank, you don't seem to have constructed the turret of the cylinder around a minor axis line. .. Actually, you don't seem to be using a minor axis for any of your wheels, at least that I can see.

For some reason, I really, really like your first two pages. The first two datsun drawings are a bit rough around the edges, but they're really quite charming. You've captured the feel of the car quite nicely and unlike the third page, your hatching was limited to the cast shadow shapes and silhouettes (as opposed to trying to shade with it). The construction feels more solid, and the ellipses in your wheels are considerably more confident and even.

I've mentioned a lot here, so take some time to absorb it. Try another four pages, and try to work more on starting from a single box and subdividing it rather than stacking multiple boxes. This method seems to work better for the way you think.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-03-30 21:47

Sorry about forgetting your question.

Rendering is essentially about two things. Firstly, knowing where your light source(s) are, and secondly understanding the nature of the texture of the various surfaces. Given that you understand how these objects relate to one another in 3D space, understanding where your light source is should be enough to grasp how the basics of how light travels around your scene - in other words, it's enough to tell you which faces will be in shadow and which will be lit. Understanding how light bounces is something you'll grasp by doing a good deal of studies, from life and from photo reference.

As far as texture goes, it would probably be a good idea to give the texture challenge a try, as it moves into the territory of light, though still in a rather harsh, full-dark vs. full-light kind of way. It does get you thinking about light sources a little bit though.

Once you've moved beyond that, black and white digital painting studies would be next, then moving into colour.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-03-30 21:15

You've made a considerable amount of improvement over this set. When you started out, you had some individual components down reasonably well on their own (for example, the front wheel on your tvr griffith came out really nicely, but as you push farther to the back, your proportions start to fall apart). By your third page, the structure and proportion certainly improves (going with a less dramatic angle was definitely a good call), though the back wheel well comes out a bit strange, as does the front wheel.

Now, I think your biggest jump is when you hit this beauty. There doesn't seem to be an iota of guesswork here - you've laid it all out and applied the construction and measurement techniques to great effect. The body of the vehicle, especially towards the front, feels very solid and convincing.

I do have mixed feelings about using different tools (mixing ballpoint and felt tip), for a couple reasons. Firstly, we get caught in the trap of drawing too carefully when we try to go over an existing mark to totally replace its linework. So when we go over with a felt tip pen, we naturally have to replace everything, which puts us at great risk of getting wobbly and undermining the solidity of our forms.

As far as that goes, this attempt didn't suffer from this problem in the slightest. Your linework is confident and smooth, so fantastic work there.

The other reason is that there's a certain pleasantness to the subtle separation of object from construction - when we only have to worry about adding a bit of line weight here and there to clarify line weight and draw the eye to the right places, the drawing gently emerges from the construction lines. But that's really just a matter of opinion, but for that reason I really like the version of the drawing that was ballpoint only.

As you moved into other subject matter - like that helicopter - you definitely demonstrated your overall grasp of the material. The motorcycles seemed a bit strange (I think it was mostly the wheel, but also perhaps the length of the overall thing, but I could be wrong). Your more fictional vehicles were a pleasure to look at as well. The B wing shows a fantastic focus on construction.

So, all in all, you've done an excellent job. It fills me with pride to see how you've taken to these geometric objects. You did a pretty good job with the everyday objects in the last lesson, but it's clear that you've grown considerably even since then. I'm hoping that you'll be able to take some of the principles you've learned here from these less-than-forgiving topics and apply them back with your animals. Many find that once they've been forced through the grueling gauntlet of vehicles, they're able to look at organic matter in an entirely different way.

Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching lesson set! You should feel proud of yourself, you certainly deserve it.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-30 02:42

Pretty good work, though I have a few recommendations:

You are definitely making progress, but need to be more conscious of what you are trying to achieve with each mark. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete - as you move onto lesson 2, be sure to incorporate the lesson 1 exercises as well as some freely rotated boxes into a regular warm up routine so as to continue developing on this front.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-30 02:37

Fantastic work! I'm really pleased to see that you applied the line extension method to each and every box without fail - and it's clear that you did learn a great deal from doing so. Over the course of the set your linework becomes more confident and your constructions become more solid. There certainly is more room for improvement (there's still some convergence issues like 248 which is honestly totally normal), but you're doing great and are improving at an excellent rate.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lice: Disgusting, but good for demonstrating the use of constructional techniques on organic subject matter."

2018-03-28 17:12

I'm not going to give an in-depth critique (as that would be unfair to the patrons who pay for that), but a few things jump out at me. You should be drawing through your ellipses (as covered in lesson 1). Also, don't draw your initial masses as though they're meant to roughly enclose the more developed forms later on. At every stage, the forms you add to a construction are meant to represent a solid mass, which you build up over successive phases. Right now you're treating it very much as though they're just 2D shapes, so it ends up reading as being rather flat.

Look more closely at my demo - you'll see that I build the core of the head, for example, and then add new forms to it - at no point do I suggest that the previous forms I've put down are approximate or exploratory.

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

2018-03-27 02:49

I was going to leave your submission for tomorrow (11 hours at work, plus an hour of critiques by the time you'd submitted, so I'm definitely tired) - but luckily for me, your work is pretty solid, so it's a fairly easy critique.

Your arrows are flowing quite nicely through 3D space, pushing into the depth of the scene rather than staying trapped in the two dimensions defined by the page itself. You're achieving this by playing with the scale of the two ends, having a clear point that is farther, and a point that is closer to the viewer.

Your organic forms with contour lines are well executed - the cross-sectional cuts defined by the contour lines are aligned fairly well (off in a few places, but generally pretty solid) to keep them running perpendicular to the overall flow of the form. The contour curves specifically are also hooking around the forms very nicely, and I can see the shift in the degree of your various ellipses and curves, which effectively describes the movement through space.

You've tackled a great variety of textures with your dissections, and applied a great many different techniques to achieve them. I'm a little uncertain about the mushroom texture - you mention the hatching lines being part of the texture, but I'm not sure as to how - the lines themselves cut straight across the surface (flattening it out somewhat), which suggests to me that they're not correct. You've wrapped your textures around your sausage forms very well in each other case however, so I'm more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here.

Your form intersections demonstrate an exceptional grasp of how these forms all interact with one another. They all feel very consistent within the same space, and the intersections are for the most part well done - which is surprising, since I'd expect that to be beyond most students at this point.

Lastly, your organic intersections show a good grasp of how these forms sag against one another, reacting to their weight being supported (or not). For the most part, you're maintaining a good sense of volume and flexibility without sacrificing their solidity.

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

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

2018-03-27 02:07

You've got a lot of solid constructions here. While proportion can take some time to gauge successfully, and we're not necessarily going to be easily matching our reference images, what I focus on most is the solidity of the resulting drawings, and their believability. If a construction has been successful, when we put the reference image away and show the drawing to someone, they'll feel like it could absolutely be some plausible creature.

I'd say your strongest construction was the spider. I don't like looking at it too long, as it's that creepy. One thing I did notice however was that while the forms convey a strong sense of volume, they're misaligned. The center line you've got going down the abdomen isn't following the actual balanced center of the critter, and its head ends up being a little off to one side. The grasshopper is also very well done. The mosquito too.

While that bee doesn't look like anything I've ever seen, it does look solidly built - pretty close to being some kind of creature, even if I wouldn't necessarily be able to identify it as a bee (maybe I just haven't seen that species before).

I definitely do feel like you may be getting a bit ahead of yourself in terms of detail - that moth for instance is a good example of detail vastly overshadowing the core construction, resulting in an object that doesn't feel entirely solid.

Another thing I noticed, going back to Mr. Beetle's head, is that you seem to have constructed by drawing an ellipse that would ultimately contain the entirety of its head. You basically started big, and then cut back - which can work (though it's tricky), but in this case when you cut it back, you did so by treating it like a 2D shape rather than a 3D form. Cutting a form in a way that retains its three dimensionality means doing so such that the show an understanding of the various sides of the pieces you're cutting away, as well as those left behind. More often than not it is easier to simply start with a smaller ball and build up forms around this. I demonstrate this in the lice demo I did yesterday for Slate.

Here are some redline drawings that touch on the bits I've mentioned here. The bit about the sausage legs is also demonstrated pretty well in the lice demo.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep the points I've mentioned here in mind, and feel free to move onto lesson 5.

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

2018-03-25 20:42

There is some improvement, but overall there are clear signs that you're rushing through these drawings and there are quite a few things that you're ignoring in regards to the critique I gave you previously. For example, the point about drawing sausages instead of ellipses for your leg constructions, and treating every form you put down as a solid form that must be dealt with and cannot be ignored. There are also numerous cases where you stop drawing forms where they become occluded by others, rather than drawing through them completely. You must draw each form in its entirety, as this will help you better grasp how they each sit in space and how they relate to one another.

All three of these issues are present in your lice drawing, so I set aside the time to create a demo specifically from the reference you used. You'll find it here.

In order to help you give these drawings a little more time and attention (the fact that you submitted so soon after receiving the critique was a bit of a red flag), and also because of the number of lessons you've submitted for critique this month (5 submissions across 3 lessons and 1 challenge), I'd like you to hold your next submission until at least April 1st. Please take your time with each construction and focus only on the forms. For the demo I just did, the drawing alone took me at least 20 minutes, likely more. I don't want to see any detail, and ignore the surrounding environment. Every mark you draw must be planned and thought through.

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

2018-03-25 04:29

Much, much better. The additional time was definitely beneficial. 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"

2018-03-25 04:28

You've got some nice drawings here, although there are a few points I want to bring to your attention. In a lot of cases, you're getting a bit too preoccupied with detail, or at least with more complex visual information that you're skipping certain constructional steps, or are at least overlooking aspects of the initial, simpler constructional phases that ultimately end up causing problems later on.

Always remember that while what's most interesting to draw is all the detail and complexity, that is not what we should be focusing on here. We want to ensure that the core construction is solid, and build on top of that as needed. You'll also want to put every mark down as part of a complete and planned form - don't think of your linework as being individual marks.

One significant issue I caught was that you have a tendency to get chicken scratchy and rough. You're not exhibiting the kind of controlled, pre-planned and confident linework the exercises in lesson 1 encourage. Are you continuing to practice those exercises as part of a regular warmup routine?

Here are some notes I've written on top of your work, pointing out issues I'd like you to deal with. I'd like you to submit four more pages of insect drawings. Ease up on the amount of detail - focus on the core construction, not the fancy stuff. In your last few pages of scorpions, you pretty much stop doing construction altogether, for whatever reason. While that very last scorpion tail with the heavy shadow work is really beautiful, it's not what this lesson is about.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-24 01:40

While there is room for growth, I think you've shown some improvement here. Your leaves and petals do feel more aware of all three dimensions of space, and feel somewhat less trapped on the page. Your branches exercises are also looking smoother.

As for your plant drawings, I do have one big piece of advice to offer - ease up on those ellipses. Think about the purpose they're meant to serve, and consider that before you add each one. They exist to accomplish two things:

In most cases, you are adding WAY too many, especially in areas where there isn't much complexity to their curvature (resulting in no need for extra segments). In turn, so many without consideration for their purpose results in the branches looking remarkably stiff.

Lastly, when you do add contour ellipses, always consider what their degree describes about their orientation in 3D space. Each ellipse is a cross-sectional cut of that tube, and the orientation of the cross-section (defined by the ellipse's degree) tells us about how the tube as a whole flows through 3D space. If all the ellipses have the same degree, they will break the illusion that this is a real 3D form. I've got more information on that here.

Now, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. Go ahead and move onto the next lesson, but keep these points in mind.

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

2018-03-24 01:33

Your arrows are fairly well done, although your little hatching bits are rather sloppy. While it's not part of this exercise, they're exceptionally scribbly, and the pattern of the linework suggests that you're doing it from your wrist when those lines would really benefit from being drawn from the shoulder. The meat of the exercise - the flowing ribbons exploring all three dimensions of space - are pretty solid however.

Pretty good work with your organic forms with contour lines. You'll want to continue working on improving the control of your ellipses, though your confident execution achieves some nice, smooth and even shapes, so be sure to maintain that.

Very nice work on your dissections. Lots of different kinds of textures, and you're exploring them with a great sense of balance between areas of interest and areas of rest. I'm also pleased with the way you're managing light, treating your linework as cast-shadows rather than marks that need to enclose and define every little bit of information.

Your form intersections are somewhat haphazard. I'm not getting a confident sense that you properly understand how these forms relate to one another in space. By this I don't mean the intersections themselves, which from the looks of it, you didn't attempt much of (you should have, but that's not really my concern here).

The bigger issue is that the foreshortening is not consistent between your forms - they get smaller at different rates as they push further back. It's generally better, when dealing with so many different forms together, to keep your foreshortening shallow so as to imply a smaller, more relatable scale. More dramatic foreshortening suggests that objects are quite large.

Also, consider the difference in your cylinders' ellipses - you have your far ends getting considerably wider in their degree. A change this extreme, like dramatic foreshortening, suggests that the form is so long that their orientation relative to the viewer's angle of sight changes a great deal. Your ellipses also struggle in their alignment to your minor axes, and you have minor axes that stop midway through an ellipse, rather than cutting all the way through (making it more difficult to gauge your success in aligning them).

The issue of making your shift in degree more subtle is something I mentioned when critiquing your cylinder challenge.

Funnily enough, while your cylinder challenge submission had you not drawing through your ellipses at all, you're certainly overdoing it here. I recommend drawing through them two full times, three at most. You don't want to end up losing track of the ellipse you're trying to draw.

Your last couple pages do end up getting better (although your cylinders are still out of whack), so you are moving in the right direction. Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do two more full pages of form intersections. Before doing so, review the material and watch the video again. I recommend that at least for your first page, you do it with boxes only. I noticed that your boxes were looking somewhat weak as well, so you may want to warm up with some freely rotated boxes on their own, and apply the line-extension method to get a better idea of where those convergences are off.

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

2018-03-22 03:09

Your quick turn-around is a significant red flag. Most of the time when students are this quick to come back with revisions, it signifies that they probably could have taken more time to think through the problems, review the material, etc.

Take a look at these notes, then try again: https://i.imgur.com/MxFQvsY.png

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-03-21 22:56

At least a chunk of it certainly wouldn't hurt. I'd definitely practice a variety of cylinders and boxes as part of some of your warmup exercises (in rotation with exercises from lesson 1 and eventually lesson 2), although a day or two focused on cylinders specifically wouldn't be a bad idea.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-03-21 22:50

Overall fairly well done, but I have a few things to point out.

Firstly, your ellipses here seem to get a little stiff and wobbly at times. It's not to a great extent - and frankly, I believe it is actually coming from you attempting to add line weight to those ellipses more carefully, and in doing so draw more slowly. It's important that regardless of what you're drawing, you do so with marks that are drawn with confidence in order to maintain the smoothness of your stroke. If you allow yourself to hesitate, your line will wobble, and it will undermine the solidity of your forms.

In the video for the form intersections in lesson 2, I actually talk about this. I mention that when it comes to line weight, one should not expect to have to apply weight to the entirety of a shape, or even the entirety of a line. Line weight is to be applied to sections of lines, and will taper from being light to heavy, and back to being light.

Secondly, always ensure that you're placing your ellipses so they straddle the minor axis line completely. You seem to be drawing them partially on and partially off - perhaps with the intent of centering them around the endpoints of your minor axis. Remember that the goal here is to use the minor axis for aligning those ellipses, and ensuring that they are cut all the way through by it is the best way to judge whether or not your alignment is correct, and effectively assess whether or not you need to adjust your approach.

Lastly, you'll want a healthier balance between cylinders constructed around an arbitrary minor axis, and those constructed starting from a box (which in turn helps you determine the minor axis for a specific orientation in space). The latter is quite useful when using cylinders as specific parts of a larger construction, as you'll see a great deal in lessons 6 and 7.

Anyway, keep those three points in mind. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Again, you should be good to move onto those lesson 2 form intersections.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-21 22:43

Very nice work! As before your line quality is very confident and consistent, and you're clearly taking your time to apply the ghosting method as needed rather than getting preoccupied with the greater goal of creating a box. I'm also very pleased to see that you're extending your lines here, and I do believe that your convergences are improving over the set.

One thing that I noticed however is that you have a tendency to keep your vanishing points quite close, resulting in foreshortening that is quite dramatic. I highly recommend that you practice a greater variety, especially in terms of how far or close your vanishing points rest. You'll find as you move forwards that the vast majority of boxes we'll be using will actually have vanishing points that are quite a but further off, resulting in the shallower foreshortening that implies an object of a much more relatable scale (like something you could carry in your arms). Dramatic foreshortening is more in line with larger structures, like looking at the top of a building from the ground floor.

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

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

2018-03-21 22:35

Very nice work! I do have a few things to offer, but overall you're doing a great job. Your organic forms are capturing their volumes quite nicely, and your dissections have an excellent variety of textures, all tackled in a case-by-case fashion rather than attempting to apply the same approach across the board (and you're showing a good deal of improvement between the two pages as well, with the first page being decent and the second being considerably stronger). Your form intersections are also quite consistent and cohesive, with your forms appearing as though they belong within the same scene.

For your arrows, they flow quite nicely, my only recommendation there is to play a little more with exaggerating the scale of the ends of the arrow. That is to say, determine which end is farther from the viewer and which is closer, and ultimately pushing the size of the closer end to be much larger and pushing the farther end to be much smaller. This way we can explore the depth of the scene, rather than trapping our mind within the two dimensional slice of space defined by the page itself.

Admittedly this isn't as big of a deal as it has been for some students that I've seen - you do explore some of the depth to varying degrees (like the bottom left corner of the first page) but exaggerating that scale differential more will help push it much further.

For your organic forms with contour ellipses and curves, try playing with the degrees of your ellipses a little more. The degree communicates the orientation of the cross-section of the form you're defining, and therefore tells the viewer how that overall form is flowing through space (as I describe here). You'll find that your results will look more natural if there is a gradual shift of the degree, getting wider or narrower where appropriate.

I believe your organic intersections were by far the weakest section, for a few reasons. Firstly, while in some areas you have forms wrapping properly around each other, in others you have them cutting across in a manner that neglects their volumes, effectively flattening them out to the viewer's eye. You've also got areas where, for example with the bottom most form, you've allowed the edge to get quite wavy. This kind of visual complexity severely damages the solidity of that form. A sausage form with a completely consistent width defined by smooth lines will maintain its solidity, while allowing the edges to get wavy at this stage undermines that.

I think it's largely a matter of practice. I'd like you to give this exercise one more shot before I mark this lesson as complete. Go ahead and do another two pages of it, after you've had the chance to read through its instructions again, and rewatch the video. Sometimes having the content refreshed, or even visiting it a few times can help clarify some things that may have been missed. Always remember for this exercise that your forms are big and bloated - like balloons filled with water that have been piled on top of one another.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-03-20 23:26

I hate to do this, but I'm going to have to ask you to post this again on April 1st. You've received 4 critiques from me this month already, and it's getting a bit out of balance with your pledge. I understand that you had that many submissions because you'd already completed a great deal of work before pledging, but I need to place limitations on that kind of thing so I don't have students who attempt to get all of their work reviewed within a month or two.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-20 23:15

Really nice work! What impresses me most is that your line quality is extremely confident and self-assured. There's no hesitation there, nor any desire or attempt to hide your marks. You apply line weight quite nicely as well, and achieve a good relationship between your lighter and heavier edges.

Despite the issue you caught on occasion, I can certainly see you getting a better grasp of how your parallel lines ought to be converging. There's definitely still room to grow, but the improvement is notable especially when examining the extended lines.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-20 01:01

Your work here is excellent. Your boxes were fairly decent to begin with, but over the course of the set the consistency of your convergences and the confidence of your linework definitely progressed. Don't worry at all about the fact that you were taking about 6 minutes per box. There's nothing wrong with that at all. You're frankly meant to take as much time as you need at this point. My bigger concerns are with people who feel they're not going fast enough, and as a result end up rushing. If the methodology feels intuitive and makes sense to you, that's fine. When I spoke of formulas, I was referring to the tendency in many people to focus too much on each individual step one might apply to a task, and in doing so find themselves paralyzed, unable to move forwards without knowing what the next ten steps will be. A great deal of learning comes from making mistakes and scraping our knees, so if we are unable to actually make those mistakes, we do not grow.

Gradually you will find yourself taking less time - it's not something that requires any conscious effort, but the more we repeat these processes, the more we internalize them. The more our subconscious understands that on the basis of being told several lines are parallel to one another, that they must converge together at a similar rate. The more this internalizes, the less we need to actively think about it.

Ironically, this internalizing comes from taking the time, every time, to go through those steps, and to analyze our mistakes. You are very clearly doing this, and to great effect. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects"

2018-03-20 00:53

There is definitely a considerable improvement. It mostly comes down to following the instructions and taking your time when constructing these forms. The only thing that really jumped out at me in this set is that you decided to make the shaft of this hatchet much shorter than its enclosing box. Think of the initial construction steps as making decisions - decisions that you are not going to go and unmake afterwards. Meaning, if you planned the shaft to be that long, then you need to stick to it rather than change your mind halfway, even if that means you won't be matching the reference perfectly.

That's what the constructional method is all about - splitting up your construction into steps, dealing with problems in isolated chunks.

I do have one other thing I want to mention, and I actually brought it up a few critiques ago: when you're adding line weight, don't apply it to the entirety of a shape, form or line. Only add it where appropriate, to certain local areas. Never apply line weight with a slow, careful stroke, because this will wobble and stiffen. You want to add line weight with the same kind of confidence with which you'd draw your initial mark.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Go ahead and move onto the next lesson, but don't stop practicing those basic exercises.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-03-20 00:37

Overall you're demonstrating a good grasp of form, and you've got a handful of quite successful drawings here, like your various abstract form studies, this tank (minus the turret) and this mini cooper.

A lot of your other constructions do have merits as well, but for the most part they suffer from a considerable amount of sloppiness. I'd say the mini was the only drawing where you really buckled down properly and went through all of the appropriate steps of constructions. In other cases you had verticals that were visibly slanted relative to your horizon line (leading to a skewed look).

You also have a tendency to draw enclosing boxes that are larger (usually vertically) than the actual vehicle you intend to draw, resulting in a vehicle that does not fit snugly into any vertical confines, somewhat defeating the purpose of the technique.

I'm not sure if you were aware, but in this lesson, you are fully allowed to use a ruler when drawing your lines. It's mentioned near the beginning of the lesson.

I'd also like to point out that your use of hatching is extremely haphazard, and tends to make your drawings look very messy. The moment you get scribbly with your hatching, your drawing will look rushed and frantic, and the sense of solidity and structure will fall away. You should also not be colouring in things that are darker in terms of their local colour. Imagine that everything in your subject matter is solid white.

Now, I do want to mention again - your last drawing is really quite good. I'd like to see you do another three pages of vehicle drawings, approaching them all exactly as you have done with the mini cooper. Strive to be more controlled in the use of your lines (don't go reinforcing lines automatically, that's a bad habit you should have shed earlier on in the lessons - you should be applying the ghosting method whenever drawing freehand, which means thinking before every individual stroke).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-03-18 18:36

Old thread got locked, those of you who are eligible for private critiques can submit your work here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-03-17 01:26

So there are a couple things that jump out at me, and they're somewhat related. When drawing your lines, are you applying the ghosting method? If you recall from lesson 1, it involves laying out points where you want a line to start and end, ghosting through the motion several times to build up muscle memory, and finally executing that mark with a confident, persistent pace so as to keep it smooth, and maintain a consistent trajectory. Wobbling is almost always a sign that you're drawing your lines too slowly, and in comparison to your work from lesson 1, your lines are drastically less confident here.

For your ellipses, you're similarly neglecting to apply the methodology covered in lesson 1 - you're not drawing through your ellipses. You are expected to apply this technique to every single ellipse you draw, largely to help you maintain a confident pace as you do so.

These two points definitely weaken your constructions considerably. Aside from that, you appear to be hitting the points of alignment to your minor axis and such as well as you could be. The only other thing I want to point out is that you should try and keep the shift in degree from the near end to the far more subtle. In many cases you appear to be exaggerating it excessively.

I'll mark this challenge as complete, but you must absolutely be more mindful of techniques covered in previous lessons.

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

2018-03-15 16:03

Your work is looking great as usual. I'm actually pretty pleased with your progression as far as your texture goes (you're doing a lot of great experimentation with different ways to approach it, and I feel that your willingness to use large areas of solid black is really working to your benefit. As far as the wings go, they can be tricky as wings are generally the opposite of what we strive for in our constructions (they're light, as opposed to weighty and solid), but I think you're capturing them quite well. You're simplifying them and building up their patterns in a way that communicates their essence effectively. This one was definitely rather rough, and it seems like less thought went into the marks individually - but your later wings were much better and more representative of your subject matter.

I do have one thing that I want to draw your attention to - in a couple of places (not often by any means) I noticed you ignoring the initial mass you'd put down in favour of a more refined shape/form. It is extremely important that when you place a form onto the page, that you regard it as being solid and present - like a mass of marble floating in a 3D world that cannot simply be ignored at will. If you disregard the solidity of one of the forms present in your drawing, it will effectively undermine that of the rest of the object.

I explain this further in these notes I've written on top of two of your pages. When you've placed an object in the scene, it must be dealt with as though you respect its presence in that space. If you must cut away pieces of it, you must do so in a way that establishes how both the piece that's being removed and the piece that is left over sit in 3D space (usually by defining the cut itself as a cross-section rather than just a simple 2D line). Better yet, construct those initial masses as the core forms and then build on top of them as needed, as you did with the less detailed fly construction.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Overall you're doing very well, and your drawings are remarkably successful. Just keep that one point in mind - you may not be doing it much, but it is a core principle of construction, that we respect the solidity of all our forms, and that we express to the viewer our own belief in the illusion we've created starting from the initial steps and all the way through.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-03-13 21:56

Ah yeah, whenever a thread reaches 6 months of age, it automatically gets archived and locked, so I have to create new ones. It's.. quite the pain, but thanks for letting me know.

You're demonstrating an exceptional grasp of 3D space and form here, and are putting it great use in constructing these complex objects. On top of that, your use of texture shows a lot of thought and consideration, as well as careful observation. You do a pretty good job of organizing your details, and while there is room to grow, you're heading in the right direction and most of that growth will come through continued practice.

I had to look a bit closely to go beyond the details to identify some areas where I could recommend a few things, but I was able to find something. Always remember that construction is a matter of moving from simple to complex - in the vast majority of cases you do this quite well, but there have been a few places where it may have been overlooked.

Take a look at these notes that I've written on top of your desert weevil.

Aside from that, fantastic stuff. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-13 21:35

Very nice work! Your boxes have come out quite solid and confident, and convey a good sense of weight. You've used line weight to great effect to really enhance the cohesion of each form (instead of having the boxes feel like a loose grouping of lines). I'm also pleased to see you applying the line-extension method, though not applying them to all of your boxes is definitely a missed opportunity.

Overall you're doing great, so keep up the good work. I did notice though that in my critique of your lesson 1 work, while you added the rough perspective boxes that I'd requested, you never actually notified me. I'm glad to say that they're looking fine, so I'll go ahead and mark lesson 1 as well as this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-13 21:31

Congrats on completing the challenge. One thing that stands out to me in this set is that while you were very diligent about extending your lines towards their implied vanishing points for the first fifty or so boxes, you seem to have stopped doing that altogether after about 56, despite the fact that you were bringing to light certain clear inconsistencies in the convergence of your lines. I'm not sure why you decided to stop, but this is something you need to keep doing.

It'll help to also think more about those convergences as you draw the lines - to consider where your vanishing point might be (even if it's well off the page) and try and envision how the line you're about to draw will converge with other lines that are meant to be parallel to it.

I also noticed that the majority of your boxes have vanishing points that are quite close, with not a lot that play with the foreshortening being much shallower (with VPs that sit much farther away). Unfortunately the shallower foreshortening is going to be much more common, as it implies a much more relatable scale (whereas dramatic foreshortening with closer VPs implies a much larger scale). You'll definitely want to make sure you can handle boxes of both sorts, but if you had to pick just one, I'd lean towards shallower foreshortening.

Lastly, and perhaps least importantly, I noticed that the hatching lines you were using to help distinguish the front-facing faces and back-faces were quite scribbly and haphazard. Take a bit more time and ensure that your hatching lines are parallel to one another and stretch all the way across the planes from edge to edge, rather than having them floating arbitrarily in the middle of a given plane.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure to keep the points I've raised in mind, as these are things you'll definitely want to continue to work at.

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

2018-03-12 23:32

Old thread got locked. If you're eligible for private critiques, feel free to post your work here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-11 20:08

Congratulations on completing the challenge. I can definitely seem improvement over the set, in terms of your general grasp of 3D space. I am however also noticing that you do seem to continue to make some of the same kinds of mistakes at times, which suggests to me that you may not be entirely thinking about the results of your last page's line extension phase and incorporating all of what you learned here.

When drawing a box, try and think about where you want your lines to converge towards. Try ghosting in the direction of your implied vanishing point, and before drawing a mark, consider how it's going to relate to the other marks that belong to the same set. For example, the green lines in 244 suggest that you may have gotten a little bit lax (I've seen this tendency with other boxes).

In the majority of cases, you are going to have minimal convergence - this in some regards is easier to deal with, because they are mostly staying parallel. On the other hand, it can pose other difficulties because it's very easy to slip into the mistake of actually making those lines diverge by accident. This is the sort of thing you've got to keep your eye on as you continue to move forwards.

Lastly, you'll want to consider playing around with your line weights in the future. There's some notes on that topic in the challenge, and it's a great way to kick your boxes up to the next level, by making them feel more cohesive as a single form. Uniform lines tend to make them feel more like a collection of lines within the same space.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-09 01:06

Goodness, you are definitely quite conscientious when it comes to your corrections, and I believe it's paid off quite a bit. While your constructions were fairly confident from the beginning, the consistency of your angles and convergences improves a fair bit over this set.

I'm also pleased to see the greater emphasis on line weight in your last 50 boxes, it goes a long way to maintain a sense of cohesiveness for the box as a whole, helping you move from drawing a collection of individual lines to drawing a single solid form that carries a sense of weight.

When possible, it'll always be best to extend your lines further - the more you do, the more it'll tell you about how they're all behaving as they converge. I did notice that some of your boxes had minimal extension, while others had much more, so I figured it would be worth pointing out.

It will also always be better to draw boxes that are on the larger end. While most of your boxes were of a good size, I noticed that you had some that were quite small (for example, many on your last page) that definitely could have been larger. The reason for this is that our brains are able to think through complex spatial problems with much more ease when we give them more room to play with. Cramping our drawings up result in our spatial awareness suffering to a degree.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-09 00:57

Overall, nice work. I caught a few things that I wanted to point out to you, but overall you're doing a pretty good job and have a lot of nice constructions here. Before we get into the tips/suggestions, I wanted to point out a couple of your drawings that I especially liked.

Here are some notes drawn directly onto a few of your pages. The biggest issue that I noticed, which I point out there, is how you were handling the segmentation of the branches exercise. Remember that the lines are meant to overlap and flow smoothly together - you were largely starting one segment where the previous one left off, rather than giving it a nice runway during which to meld with that previous stroke.

As far as detail goes, I do think that you're moving in the right direction, but you're still somewhat drawing the smaller elements from memory rather than a more direct observation, resulting in them being a little awkwardly simplified. Remember that when you're drawing, you want to spend the majority of your time looking at your reference to inform your decisions. Don't trust your memory - always refer back to that reference, and keep refreshing your mental model of your subject. There is always a lot more going on that can very easily get overlooked if you're not continually looking back.

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