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

2017-09-24 16:21

The badge system is built on top of reddit's custom-css feature, which means it's quite limited in what I can do. Instead of receiving a new badge for each lesson, the badge for the given lesson set (basics, dynamic sketching, etc) increments. You'll notice that you have a badge showing that you completed the basics lessons. The challenges are different, where it'll show a badge for boxes as well as one for cylinders, but even then once you complete all three it displays one big C instead of three distinct badges.

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

2017-09-24 03:59

Very nicely done! You're demonstrating a great grasp of the concepts covered in the lesson. Your arrows flow quite nicely through all three dimensions of space and your organic forms with contour lines capture a good sense of volume. You've also got a nice, wide variety of textures with plenty of experimentation, and you're clearly tackling them on a case-by-case basis, rather than trying to shoehorn the same approach into multiple situations. Your form intersections show a well developing sense of 3D space and your organic intersections capture how the sausage forms wrap around each other where their weight is supported, and how they sag when they're not.

Just a couple of recommendations as you move forwards:

• Give these notes a read, should help you get a better grasp of what the degree of your contour ellipses suggests about the cross-sectional circles they represent in 3D space.

• It's pretty normal for contour curves to end up a little deformed (relative to the contour ellipses), but keep striving to mimic the path they'd take if you were drawing full ellipses.

• Remember that your dissections should start out as just regular organic forms with contour lines attempts, with no consideration for the fact that you're going to add texture afterwards. This helps you to start out with a form that is more solid, which in turn helps you when wrapping your textures around it.

• When drawing minor axes for your cylinders/cones/etc, make sure they penetrate all the way through your ellipses, rather than starting from the center point.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-22 21:18

Excellent work. Your grasp of the constructional method is very solid, and you have a good sense of how your leaves flow fluidly through 3D space. You're also doing great as far as texture goes, you have a tendency to apply it only where it counts, avoiding a lot of extra distraction and noise.

I have just a couple of points to raise. Firstly, there are places where you're a little too light of hand when it comes to drawing your lines. I generally try to discourage students from purposely trying to hide their lines while laying down their construction, as doing so distracts them from capturing the solidity of their forms. There haven't been any overly significant issues here, but it could become a problem later on. Just keep in mind that these drawings are exercises to develop your grasp of 3D space and of construction - the end results are entirely unimportant, so taking steps purely to ensure that your drawing looks nice at the end doesn't really serve a purpose.

Secondly, if you try to fill an area in fully, ensure that it is filled. Using hatching lines results in a lot of packed areas of light and dark, which becomes quite noisy and distracting. Any areas of high contrast like this should clearly be intentional and planned (hatching lines tend to have a touch of randomness to them).

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-22 21:12

Good stuff! This is way better than your last submission, going back over lessons 1 and 2 was definitely worthwhile. I have just a few recommendations, that I've pointed out here. As far as I can see, your leaves are coming out just fine for the most part. The only thing I can recommend there not to be afraid to let your leaves fold back onto each other. Since they're thin, there's no real tension that keeps them flat and straight, so they have a tendency to bend and twist very easily.

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

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

2017-09-22 20:39

Alright, you're generally doing better, so I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. That said, you still have a lot of room for improvement, so make sure you're incorporating exercises from lessons 1 and 2 into a regular warmup routine (doing two or three exercises for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each sitting). Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Your ellipses are a little stiff and wobbly. Make sure you're applying the ghosting method to these, and executing the marks with a confident, persistent pace. Don't hesitate once you're actually making the mark, the wobbling generally occurs when students are afraid they're going to make a mistake, so they slow down.

• Your contour curves are getting there, but in a lot of cases you're not quite accelerating the curve enough as it reaches an edge, so it gives the impression that the form is coming to a sharp turn, rather than a rounded transition. You want the curve to accelerate in its curvature and hook back around to continue on along the other side. What I mentioned in my last critique (which you very clearly ignored) would have helped with this:

I recommend using the 'overshooting method' described here.

Following my instructions is extremely important, as one might imagine. You need to get better at reading and following what I write in these critiques.

Oh, lastly, give these notes a read, they should help give some context as to what the degrees of your contour ellipses mean about the cross-sectional circles they represent in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-22 00:13

Congratulations! Great work pushing through and completing the entire challenge. I especially appreciate how conscientious you are about applying your corrections, and extending those lines to find errors for the first 200 or so of them. The last 50 are admittedly less so, but I can certainly understand that you definitely wanted to get through them by that point.

I do however recommend that you do the same for those at some point. You certainly deserve a break for now. There are mistakes there that I can see, and at the end of the day the best way to improve is to identify them so you know what kind of mistakes you tend to make. Of course it's a lengthy process, and you're certainly on the right track.

Keep up the good work, and consider this challenge thoroughly complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

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

2017-09-20 00:31

They're pretty hideous. The little creepy crawlies, that is, not your drawings - your drawings are very well done. You're continuing to demonstrate a good grasp of form and construction and as a result your insects feel solid and believable. While I can certainly see what you mean by overdoing the line weight, it's not to the point that it's doing harm to the end result. I've seen plenty of cases where the artist is far too heavy handed, and it has the tendency to flatten things out. In your case, you've still got a fair bit of control over where that weight goes, and achieve a good range of them in a way that helps push the dynamism of the drawing.

At the end of the day, I'll always vouch for the beauty of construction lines, but at the end of the day that's something for you to come to terms with. As it stands, you've still enough awareness of how your choices impact the end result to keep from doing any significant harm there.

Anyway, I have nothing critical to offer here. Your work's coming along great, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-20 00:26

Excellent work, the fact that you put forward your full effort really comes across in these. The constructions are solid, and your line weights do a great job of reinforcing the cohesiveness of the forms. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, you're clearly taking the time to identify even minor mistakes, and to apply the extension method to find those that may not be obvious.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2017-09-20 00:10

The good news is that the texture challenge is both optional, and designed to be done in parallel with other lessons (rather than grinding it out first). Taking more time with it, giving yourself lots of opportunities to soak in what you've learned through each step helps you learn it better.

The bad news is that your excitement to move forwards onto more "interesting" subject matter is keeping you from applying yourself here. While there's definite improvements over your last attempt, you're still rushing through the exercises, and going on auto-pilot where you should be thinking about every mark you put down.

Yes, I understand that these exercises are boring, but what is perhaps most important is for you to work on your ability to give something your full attention, even if it isn't interesting.

[Here are some notes about your arrows and your dissections](). I also recommend that you read through the notes on the texture challenge once we're done with this lesson. It'd probably be a good idea to start working on the challenge as well, bit by bit. Again, that's for after this lesson is marked as complete.

A few other points worth mentioning:

• You don't seem to have included the organic forms with contour ellipses or contour curves section at all.

• Your form intersections aren't bad, though when it comes to your ellipses, I'd recommend aiming to draw two full rounds of the shape before lifting your pen. No more, no less. You're definitely drawing through them way too much here, and not at all in your dissections.

• Your organic intersections are in places demonstrating a well developing grasp of the principle of contour lines, but it's not quite there yet. You're also scattering the forms all over the place, rather than maintaining any kind of real structure. When doing this exercise, it's best to create one centralized pile, and try to avoid any sausage forms that are particularly long or stretched out. Also, the minor axis line is very important when it comes to lining up your contour lines. Lastly, when drawing your contour curves, I recommend using the 'overshooting method' described here.

I'd like you to complete the organic forms with contour ellipses/curves (one page with contour ellipses, one page with contour curves), which were skipped here. I also want you to redo the arrows exercise and four pages of organic intersections. With each exercise, be sure to reread the instructions for it, and try to follow along with the steps I outline as closely as possible.

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

2017-09-18 23:49

Pretty nice work. I do agree that the textures still do leave a fair bit to be desired, but the rest is quite well done. For the textures, one recommendation I have is to stay away from the use of hatching lines, as well as any kind of marks that are at all random or unplanned. It's very easy to get caught up in trying to follow some kind of set pattern (because we can usually draw these on auto-pilot), but that approach really shows through and tends to manifest as sloppiness.

I do believe that tackling the texture challenge is a good idea, but don't grind it all out at once. Instead, try one or two rows at a time, and spread them out. You'll benefit more from it if you allow yourself the chance to slowly absorb the material. For that reason, the challenge is designed to be done in parallel with other lessons.

Definitely read through the notes there a few times though, as it goes over things like the importance of observation, and the two individual stages of learning how to approach texture (first observing all of the detail, then learning to organize it).

The only other thing I wanted to mention was in regards to your arrows. This isn't a huge issue, but I would recommend when practicing these in the future, make a point of trying to explore more of the third dimension (the depth of your scene) with your arrows. That is to say, a lot of these are more restricted to moving across the two dimensions of the page itself, so try and think about how one end of the arrow might be much farther away from us, and the other end might be close. I say this isn't a big issue because you are doing this to an extent, but perhaps not as much as you could. This point becomes quite relevant when dealing with things like leaves.

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

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

2017-09-18 23:43

Looking good! You're doing a much better job of capturing the volumes. Don't let up the practice though, so the concept continues to solidify, but I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-09-18 14:03

I'd say get started on both. The texture challenge is meant to be spread out over a longer period of time, and done in parallel with the other lessons so you don't end up just grinding out on textures. Giving yourself the opportunity to really absorb the process and sleep on it in between tends to help a fair bit.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-09-18 02:39

Old thread got locked, those eligible for having their work reviewed by me can post it here.

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

2017-09-17 23:55

I can see why it might be a bit confusing, as there are a few rules that come into play that apply in different areas. For example, "don't draw what you THINK you see, draw what you see" is a major part of observational drawing, which is a skill we use in all things.

Conversely, constructional drawing focuses primarily on "don't just draw what you see - actually construct it from rudimentary forms, and build up towards more complex ones".

If you think about it though, these aren't really contradictory statements, but rather a sort of chain that combines observation and construction in one process.

We use the observational skills to determine what it is that needs to be constructed. We cannot rely on our shoddy memory, so we need to continually refresh and reinforce our understanding of what's there by looking at our reference again and again as we draw.

Once we determine something that has to be drawn, we again use our observational skills to break it down into its simplest components. Remember that the tools we have at our disposal are the five primitive geometric forms (boxes, spheres, cylinders being the main ones, along with pyramids and cones), organic sausage forms and ribbons (which are effectively flat 2D shapes that exist in 3D space). By observing the specific complex form we want to draw, we identify its core elements that serve as the sort of foundation of the more complex form. This is because the simpler the form we draw, the easier it is to make it feel solid and three dimensional. Jump into a complex form too early, and it'll end up feeling flat without the scaffolding made up with the more basic ones.

Now, we've identified a simple form that needs to be established in our scene. Let's say it's a ball. We add it to the scene, and then come to realize that it's a little too big relative to other forms already present in the scene. But being a solid, unyielding form, it is there, and it must either be accepted or modified somehow. Often times fixing an unintentional mistake like this will result in far too much linework and messiness (which will probably undermine the solidity of our construction), so the best option is to simply accept it and move forwards with the construction as it is currently. Yes, this part will be a little too big, and as a result the proportions will be off somewhat. This is a mistake we accept in order to avoid upsetting the illusion of solidity of our drawing.

I make mistakes like this all the time. I accept them because in my mind, I am not reproducing the photograph exactly. Instead I am using the photograph as reference to create a general copy of that object. A plausible sibling, for instance, or a member of its species (if it's an animal), but not an exact clone. I use the photograph to tell me of all the things I don't know about it - what its proportions are like, how its parts connect to its other parts, what the texture of its various surfaces are like, etc. but at the end of the day, my goal is not to create a photocopy. My goal is to understand it better, and one can certainly do that while making mistakes. You can even see the mistakes as an opportunity for the sort of reflection and analysis that allows us to learn more about the subject.

At the end of the day, keep in mind what your goals are. There are plenty of artists out there who are exceptional at reproducing a photograph perfectly in full detail, but if you have them draw something new, using several photos as reference, they'll fall apart. What we're doing here is learning how everything fits together, so you're able to extract important information from these sources in order to do with them what you like.

That's why the next lesson ends with the 'hybrid' exercise, where students try and merge different animals together into one creature that feels plausible.

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

2017-09-17 23:15

Pretty solid work. I do have a slew of tips however:

• For your arrows, they're flowing quite nicely, but one thing to think about is right now they're primarily flowing through the two dimensions of the piece of paper, and not so much through the depth of the scene. Try and consider where the arrow is farther away from the viewer, and where it is closer, and how it moves through all three dimensions of the world to which your page is a window.

• Your organic forms with contour ellipses are coming along well, though I do recommend that you give [these notes a read]() to help give some context as to what the degrees of your ellipses really tells us about those particular cross-sections of your organic form.

• Your organic forms with contour curves are definitely getting there, but you'll definitely want to keep pushing yourself to get your curves to accelerate as they near an edge and really hook back around. The 'overshooting method' described in these notes can help you to achieve that. Also, make sure your curves align to the central minor axis line, as this will put them in the best position to wrap around successfully.

• Your dissections are very nice, lots of great experimentation. Watch the alignment of your ellipses though (to the minor axis), and also make sure you're remembering that the forms themselves are rounded. If you look at the zebra skin texture, you'll notice that you've drawn the stripes as though the form itself were quite flat. The texture needs to wrap around the form, deforming and distorting around it like wallpaper being wrapped around a tube.

• The form intersections were definitely challenging, but you pushed through and really nailed them by the end. Great work.

• Your organic intersections are alright. There's definitely room for improvement, and that will come with practice as your grasp of 3D space and the relationships between the forms develops, but as it stands you're demonstrating a reasonable understanding of how they support each others' weight. As for the shading, I do have two suggestions. Firstly, decide on where your light is coming from - this is important in establishing a consistent lighting scheme. Think of it as a point in the world, and in your mind, project out how the rays are going to go from that point to your object. Rather than thinking about where the shadow will fall, think about it as where the light falls, and where the object will block that light. Secondly, remember that shadows are cast onto other surfaces. In this case, a lot of shadows would fall onto other rounded organic forms, and so like the contour lines, and like textures, they need to run along those surfaces (like wallpaper wrapped around a tube, using my previous example).

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Be sure to incorporate these exercises into your warmup routine, but feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-17 22:41

It's fine to tackle multiple courses simultaneously, just make sure that you're not mixing-and-matching instructions. If one lesson plan tells you to do things a certain way (for example, drawing through all of your ellipses), make sure you continue to do that for those lessons.

Additionally, don't invest the same amount of time in completing this lesson as you have previously, and fill the rest with other stuff. Make sure you're taking your time with each drawing, doing the lesson 1 and 2 material as warmups (as mentioned at the beginning of lesson 1), and reading through the material frequently to refresh your memory.

Also, if you are going to tackle other lesson plans, I'd recommend going back and forth through the week, as opposed to doing all of one in your first couple days, then all of another in your next few days. Spreading it out should give you the chance to absorb the material a little better.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-17 21:41

Your last submission for lesson 2 was submitted on Thursday. You posted your first submission for lesson 3 on Friday, less than 24 hours after you received my critique for the previous one. Now here's another submission, less than 18 hours after my critique of the last.

Yes, you're rushing, and haven't made any marked improvement. You're not giving yourself any time to absorb what is being imparted to you, be it through the lessons, the videos, or my critiques.

I want you to redo the entire lesson (reread/rewatch all of the material and complete the work listed in the homework section) and I don't want you to submit anything to me for a full week. Nothing before Monday, September 25th. Enthusiasm is great and all, but this course works around you putting in the hours of work required (spread out as needed) reading, rereading and absorbing the material and putting it into practice, and then me giving periodic review of what you've done during that time. Currently your rapid-fire approach seems to hinge more on me giving critiques very frequently, holding your hand every step of the way.

Drawabox is more about guided self-learning, which is why critiques are only $3 a month.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-17 04:10

Yup, looks like your pledge was processed so everything seems to be fine. Thanks for letting me know.

Your work here definitely improves over the set, and by the end of it you're doing a pretty good job. There are a few things that I'd like to mention however:

• For your leaves, right now they're mostly limited to flowing in two dimensions - so more or less across the page you're drawing on. One thing you'll want to work on is pushing past the idea that you're drawing on a piece of paper, to manipulating forms in a 3D space to which your page is a window. The leaves are more or less flat shapes that flow through three dimensions, and can move through the depth of a scene as well as across the viewing plane of the person looking out onto this 3D world.

• You've definitely got a bit of a habit of drawing quite small. This has the tendency of causing your drawings to stiffen up considerably. We can see this in your branch/stem exercises especially. They also suffer from the whole two-dimension vs three-dimension thing I mentioned for your leaves. Try to think about how the forms you draw flow as they move through space - it certainly is a matter of breaking past one's current manner of thinking, but it definitely is something we all go through. The arrows exercise in lesson 2 is particularly good for this. Try not to think of things like your branches as going from point-to-point, but rather think in more gestural, fluid terms.

I believe this page is where things started to pick up more. The stem is still quite stiff, but the leaves certainly do start to flow better. I do however want to mention that the top left leaf there starts off with a more complex shape than it should. If you look at the steps I outlined for constructing a leaf, the second step is to establish and enclose the space a leaf occupies - effectively taking the flow of the line (one dimensional object moving through 3D space) in the first step and extending it to a shape (2D object moving through 3D space). The extra ripples and waviness come afterwards. The constructional method is all about breaking things into individual steps, so you can deal with one challenge at a time, rather than trying to handle both establishing that flow and creating the wavy edges simultaneously.

Also, for a stem as straight as that, you've definitely used far too many contour ellipses. In my lessons, I share a lot of different techniques, but rather than memorizing them and learning it by rote, you need to think about what its actual purpose is, what it accomplishes and how it accomplishes that. Then you can put it in your tool belt for later.

In this case, the contour ellipses are used in two ways. Firstly, there's what was covered in lesson 2 - they are lines that run along the surface of a 3D form, and in turn help describe and reinforce the curvature of that surface. Often times two or three will do just fine through most objects. Contour lines are subject to diminishing returns. If you add too many, and especially if you do so at regular intervals, you'll end up making the form feel quite stiff and man-made. Breaking up the pattern (making them less evenly spaced out) and limiting yourself to just a few is best in this case, but of course you can determine what is necessary on a case-by-case basis.

The other way we're using contour ellipses here is specific to what is described in the branches exercise. Many branches require us to draw longer, more challenging tube forms, and it's often very difficult to maintain a consistent width throughout their length if they have a lot of twists and turns. We use the ellipses as markers to define those twists and turns (I describe here how ellipses can be used to show how a tube-form moves through space), and we also use those markers as a sort of connect-the-dots to help break up our longer lines into more manageable segments, drawing from one ellipse to the next, then overshooting it towards the third, before starting another line at the second ellipse to and past the third, overshooting to the fourth, ensuring that all of these segments flow together smoothly to appear more like one continuous stroke.

In the case of this stem, it's quite straight and simple with no major twists or turns. So, there is no real need to have quite so many contour ellipses.

I have just one last piece of advice to offer. On this page, you would have benefitted considerably from constructing that fruit form around a minor axis. It would have given you something to help align your ellipses around, similarly to how one would for a cylinder.

Now, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one, but be sure to continue working on the things I've mentioned here. It should also help to give these notes a read. They cover some of the matters I mentioned here, as well as a few other common pitfalls that should be worth reading.

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

2017-09-17 03:49

To be honest, these are actually quite well done. The first page's not great, but the rest are fairly solid. My one major concern however is that many of these seem to have some kind of lighter underdrawing that appears to be quite a bit more scribbly and erratic.

Underdrawings, in the context of these lessons, are dangerous because of a few reasons:

• They reduce the focus on properly planning and preparing before each stroke, and really thinking about whether or not the mark you're going to put down serves a purpose.

• If you then go back over those lighter marks to 'clean' them up, you're inevitably going to do so with a much slower, potentially wobblier and less confident mark - the kind we really want to avoid.

• They encourage some bad habits, such as correcting mistakes (rather than accepting them and moving forwards as best you can). I noticed several places where you drew, then redrew certain forms. Try and think of it all as though every form you put down is like a chunk of marble being placed into a 3D scene. You can't simply ignore it once it's there - you can cut into it or build on top of it, but you can't outright act like it has ceased to exist, then replace it with another. It's there, so you have to deal with it. Often times that means moving forward with that form being a part of your construction, and learning from the mistake rather than striving to "save" that drawing. Remember that the end result of these drawings is irrelevant - they are all just exercises to help us learn about how these forms relate to one another in space, and how they can be combined to create something more complex whilst continuing to feel solid and tangible.

On that note, what you mentioned about not being able to "see" or "get" the details is relevant here. What I just mentioned about understanding how forms relate to one another is the core of the lesson. Detail and texture is not, it never has been, and it never will be - because detail is unimportant.

My biggest focus here is to teach you how to draw forms and objects that feel solid and three dimensional. Once you've got that, detail's no big deal. But until you get that down, detail and texture tends to serve as a huge distraction, especially when students don't quite grasp how much more important construction and form really is. This distraction causes them to try and reproduce the photo they're working from, focusing on it as a 2D image rather than thinking about the forms and construction.

Anyway, your work here is definitely moving in the right direction. The most important thing you can strive for in all of my lessons is convincing yourself that the things you're drawing exist not as 2D drawings on a flat page, but as solid, unyielding forms in a 3D world.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson. Some time in the future, you may want to take a look at the texture challenge, but I wouldn't do anything more than read the notes there until you've really solidified your grasp of form and construction.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-17 03:29

Your leaves are generally looking pretty good, but one thing I want to stress is that for the most part, your leaves are limited to the two dimensions of the page. They move across a consistent plane with little movement in the third dimension, which is the depth of the scene.

Your branches are pretty well done, and are coming along well.

For your constructions, I decided it'd be best to write it out by hand. Overall while you're showing many signs of heading in the right direction, your work appears to be somewhat rushed.

In addition to that critique, I'd like you to give these notes a read.

Once you've had the chance to go through those, I'd like you to try another four pages, but this time I want you to focus only on construction, with no texture. I think you're getting distracted by detail, and it's causing you to make some odd decision as far as texture and line weight goes.

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

2017-09-14 20:32

Definitely better. As for determining which degree of ellipse to use where, give these notes a read. 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"

2017-09-14 20:31

It's coming along fairly well. I do have a few points to raise though:

• When it comes to detail, I think you should continue to push yourself to spend more time observing your reference image and less time drawing. Right now I think much more of your detail ends up being what you remember seeing, rather than what you actually saw. As our memories are quite bad at remembering specific visual information, we really do need to continually return our gaze to our reference images in order to keep from drawing things in an overly simplistic way.

• If something gets cut off the side of a page - like a flower pot for instance - don't just let the two edges along the sides stop suddenly. Instead, cap off the section (in the case of a cylindrical pot with an ellipse) to help reinforce the illusion of 3D form. Letting the lines suddenly stop will cause the form to flatten out instead.

• In cases like this page, where you've got a lot of overlapping elements, it's still important to draw everything in its entirety - even where the lines would be occluded by other forms. Remember that these exercises are all about understanding how each form sits in 3D space, and this is a key part of it. I also want to stress that in that page, you definitely could have been more mindful of how each stalk/leaf/whatever flows through space when drawing its initial line (step 1 of the leaf construction process). That first step is all about establishing how things are going to flow through space, so you really need to be bold and confident in how you approach it, so that sense of life and flow carries through into the resulting leaf.

• Your flower pots are cylinders, so construct them as such. That is, around a minor axis as shown in the 250 cylinder challenge notes.

• Also be sure to draw through those forms. Including the ellipse of the base in its entirety on this flower pot would have helped you maintain a believable form. Remember that these drawings are not about creating a pretty image at the end. They are exercises about understanding how all of these forms can relate to one another and move through 3D space. Drawing through your forms is a huge part of developing that mental model of space you hold in your head.

Anyway, keep those points in mind. Also, just for the hell of it, give these notes a read. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Also, congrats on the baby!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-14 20:22

I'd like you to give these notes a read, and then reread it a couple more times over. These are the major issues that are present in your work.

I'll outline them below as well, along with a few others I noticed:

• Your leaves are extremely flat. That is, when you draw them, you're doing so as though they exist in a space limited to the two dimensions of the page itself. Instead, you need to look at the piece of paper you're drawing on as though it is a window to a larger, three dimensional world. When drawing the initial line around which your leaf is constructed, you need to think about how it moves not only across your viewing plane, but also through the depth of the scene. Consider how it really flows - your leaves have very little flow, they're quite stiff. Try to think about fluidity. Once you've established that flow in your initial line, you then continue to enclose the remainder of the leaf around it, following that line.

• When drawing your branches, you're applying the method outlined in the exercise where you construct longer lines in planned segments, from ellipse to ellipse. That is good, however you are missing an extremely important element. Those segments must flow into one another, so they end up feeling like a single continuous line. Each of yours curl and arc away where they start and end resulting in a very clear and obvious break in that flow. When you overshoot past an ellipse, you need to aim towards the next one, so when you start up the next segment, it falls directly on top of the previous one.

• Your drawings tend to feel more like a collection of individual lines, rather than a collection of solid forms. This is partially because of the issue I raised in the last point, but in general you seem to be regarding them as just collections of lines yourself. What you see and perceive is a big part of what you will convey to others. You need to understand that you are drawing solid, three dimensional forms rather than just shapes and lines on a flat page, and if you don't buy into that illusion yourself, you will not be convincing your viewers of it.

• Don't just draw what is visible - draw through forms as though you have x-ray vision. This page is a good example, where you allow the leaves to stop where they are hidden by other forms. You should be drawing them in their entirety, so you can yourself grasp how they sit in 3D space.

• In general there is an element of sloppiness that I can see. It's true that there is a large element of you not yet understanding what you're drawing as being 3D forms, but beyond that, part of the issue is that you're clearly not taking the time and care with each line. This means that you are holding yourself back - it's not that you cannot execute the marks more effectively, but that you are not giving yourself the time you need to do so, and that you're not thinking and planning your strokes as you should be. You should probably be investing far more time into each drawing than you currently are.

Your observational skills need a lot of work, as they do for many people at this stage. As human beings, our ability to remember specific details is quite poor. We're great at remembering overall concepts and patterns, but when it comes to the amount of visual information contained in everything we see, we're awful. Instead, our brains are great at breaking down what we see into their simplest components.

This is of course not particularly useful when it comes to drawing. In order to get around this, we need to look at our reference images almost constantly, taking only momentary breaks to put down a few new marks before looking at our reference again. We need to constantly ask ourselves about what we're looking at, and refresh our memories.

Now, the vast majority of your drawings stick to the most basic construction, which is perfectly fine for now. That said, looking at what you've drawn thus far, and the few areas where you've attempted to go into a little bit of detail, suggests to me that you are primarily spending your time looking at your drawing, rather than at your reference image. As a result, you're drawing what you think you saw, rather than what is actually present.

Now, this is a lot to take in so I'll leave it at that. I encourage you to not only read and reread the notes I linked at the beginning of this critique, but also to do the same with the lesson material and the intro video. I raise a lot of important points throughout that are easily lost and forgotten along the way. It's more or less imperative that you go through the content repeatedly and frequently in order to absorb all that is there.

Lastly, I do have to ask - are you keeping up with the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 (as part of a warmup routine)? I know it's been many months since your last submission, and looking at your work here it seems likely to me that you've probably forgotten a great deal of what was covered there. If that is the case, it may be better for you to start over at the beginning.

That said, I remember your post previously about burning out, and in it you'd mentioned that you spent something like six months on lesson 1. As noted at the beginning of that lesson, that's not how these lessons should be handled, and you should only be completing the recommended amount before submitting them for critique. Going back in this way is not at all stepping back, or throwing away what progress you've made. It's often an incredibly wise decision to do so, and many people who've worked all the way up to lesson 5, 6 and 7 have decided to do the same in order to fill the gaps that have opened up in their understanding of the material due to long breaks and erratic schedules.

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

2017-09-13 19:11

To be honest, it's all just doing observational studies. The more you practice drawing an object as it appears (and not as you think you see it), the better you'll get at it.

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

2017-09-13 19:10

There's definitely some strong stuff here, though there are some core issues that we need to address. Primarily, when it comes to the first half of the lesson, you're being a bit sloppy and not quite following the instructions as carefully as you could.

For your organic forms with contour ellipses, you seem to be drawing your ellipses somewhat timidly - as though you're afraid of putting too much of a mark down. It's important that you draw these confidently, applying the ghosting method. At the same time though, your ellipses end up being really hairy, so it's a bit contradictory. Either way, don't try to hide your lines, and also try to limit yourself to drawing through them two full rounds. That's probably going to be ideal.

Secondly, you seem to have left the minor axes out for some of these. Including them and working around them as a guide for the alignment of your ellipses is part of the exercise, so don't neglect them. Yes, the goal is to be able to align those ellipses without explicitly drawing the minor axis, but doing it a few times is not going to be enough to achieve that. For the forseeable future, when doing this exercise, make sure you include the minor axis.

You definitely got a little bit derailed with the organic forms with contour curves (and I fully understand why - the examples included in the homework section are thoroughly outdated and need to be removed). As a rule, follow the exercise description as closely as possible. In this case, it's the same as the contour ellipses exercise, but you only draw the portion of each ellipse that would be visible (rather than the whole thing wrapping all the way around).

Your dissections are also on the sloppy side, but in this case I'm a little more forgiving, as this was less of a test and more of a way for me to see how you currently approach drawing textures. As you move forwards, it's important that you avoid relying on any kind of randomness or unplanned strokes, especially when it comes to texture. Every texture's got some kind of rhythm and flow to it, even though it may not be immediately apparent. You've got to take your time and really identify what makes a surface appear to be rough, smooth, sticky, wet, bumpy, etc. Find the visual elements that give it that impression, and then consider how they're arranged - are they spread out across the surface evenly, are they grouped into clusters, etc. I go into all of this in much more detail in the texture challenge, so be sure to give those notes a read.

The rest of your exercises were done quite well. The arrows are solid, the form intersections demonstrate a good grasp of how those objects relate to each other in space, and your organic intersections are pretty well done.

I want you to do another page of organic forms with contour ellipses, followed by another page of organic forms with contour curves. With the contour curves, make sure you're pushing the illusion that they wrap around the rounded sausage form. Many students tend to struggle with this, and forget to have their curves accelerate as they reach the edge (to give the impression that they hook back around and continue along the other side).

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

2017-09-13 18:39

You're demonstrating an exceptional grasp of the techniques and principles covered in this lesson. You're extremely patient and careful when it comes to building up your measurements and constructions - the only area where you're demonstrating weakness is really in the more rudimentary and fundamental areas - primarily the construction of your initial boxes, at times the straightness of some of your initial lines, and some of your ellipses.

That said, I'm actually very pleased at how you handle those issues. The fact that you hold true to the forms you established in those steps (even if they're somewhat off) is important. Yes it impacts the resulting drawing, but what's most important is that you're keeping to the principles of construction. You're breaking the approach into bite-sized steps, tackling problems one at a time, and once a problem has been "handled", you're not muddying up your process by going back to revisit it.

Ultimately once your boxes, lines and ellipses are solid - which is frankly just a matter of practice and focus, and is absolutely something you will achieve - you'll already have established a strong grasp of the process that follows.

I'm confident in marking this lesson as complete. The next one does offer a little more leniency (you're allowed to use a ruler, and even an ellipse guide if you have one) since the complexity of the constructions gets quite rough, and I encourage you to take advantage of that. I also encourage you to continue practicing your box and cylinder constructions on the side.

To be honest, I actually think that the weakness in your boxes and cylinders was primarily due to the fact that it's been 3 months since your last submission. I don't know how much you've done in the interim, but looking over this set, it's clear that by the last page those elements are coming out stronger than they did at the beginning. Your ellipses are smoother and more even, your boxes are better, etc. So - keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-09-13 18:31

You're doing pretty well! I think you start out a little uncertain, which is normal, but over the course of the lesson you show considerable absorption of the material, and strong application of the principles of construction. In some places, like the horses, proportion gets to be a bit of concern, but that's not uncommon at all.

I actually really love how you captured the seagull's wings near the end. The construction overall for that one is quite well done. You're showing a strong ability to construct even in smaller spaces (like the heads), which is definitely an important skill. You can see the same in the hyena.

Speaking of the hyena, I'd recommend that when tackling the fur, that you avoid creating a sort of continuous zig-zagging effect. This sort of pattern ends up becoming quite repetitive and distracting. It's often much better to reduce the number of visible tufts, but at the same time take more care and focus when 'designing' each one. Rather than zig-zagging, drawing each line individually with a greater sense of purpose and planning generally has better results.

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

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

2017-09-13 18:23

There's a lot of good stuff here. There's also room for improvement, but you're definitely going in the right direction. One of your drawings that I particularly love is this fly (on the left side). It's very clear that you fully understand how each form there exists in relation to its neighbours, and you're entirely convinced that what you've drawn is three dimensional. Your legs also flow very nicely in a way that maintains their gestural flow without appearing stiff.

I do believe that where your drawings are weakest is primarily where you get a little too caught up in the detail, or perhaps too overwhelmed by all of the information present in your reference image. This is a fairly normal issue, where we find it difficult to push through and see the simplest elements. This can cause us to rely more on what we remember seeing, rather than drawing what is actually present, and as a result our drawings become less believable. The scorpion is an example of this, where the forms feel much less solid and sturdy, and the contour details don't quite reinforce the illusion you're trying to achieve. This bee is also another case of the same. It's primarily a matter of pushing yourself to observe your reference more carefully, and forcing yourself not to rely on your memory. Human memory is after all quite faulty, and we need to always push ourselves to look back and forth between our drawing and our reference in order to assure ourselves that the marks we put down reflect something that is actually present. It is also necessary when it comes to capturing the specific nuances of our forms and shapes, and the relationships between them.

With that bee, I definitely see you trying to tackle the furry/hairy texture in a few different ways, and I'm very pleased to see the experimentation. Neither approach really worked out quite well, though your attempt on the right side to focus more on the silhouette was definitely closer to the mark.

In that particular case, it's very important to 'design' each tuft of fur specifically, rather than allowing yourself to draw a continuous back-and-forth zigzag. Since each tuft carries so much more weight (being on the silhouette of the form), you need to think much more about how each one is presented. Again, it also becomes a situation of less-is-more, where drawing fewer tufts but taking more care with them will be more effective than creating a continuous but repetitive pattern all around. There will of course be more opportunities to tackle that when drawing animals.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. There certainly is room for growth, as there always is, but I think you should be ready to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-09-13 18:12

There are certainly some issues that come up. Firstly, in terms of your leaf and branch exercises, take a look at this. For larger leaves with multiple sections, break them down into individual sections and then merge them together afterwards. Remember that the point of the whole leaf construction process is to establish how a leaf flows (with the initial line), then enclosing the space the leaf occupies (with two simple lines, one on either end that start and end at the start/end points of the initial line). If you've got multiple independent directions of flow, then build them up separately.

For the branches, you've got to ensure that when you overshoot past one ellipse, you aim towards the next one. The idea is that the next line you draw will run directly on top of the extended portion of the previous one, so they flow together smoothly. If they end up breaking off and going in different directions, the continuous flow will not be maintained, and it will look quite chicken scratchy.

I did also notice that in general, your linework is very stiff. There are multiple reasons for this. Firstly, a lot of key areas in your drawings tend to be quite small and cramped. Here's an extreme example, where the actual forms are tiny despite there being loads of room on the page. You're also more than likely drawing from your wrist for at least some of these lines, as they lack the sort of gestural flow that comes from drawing from your shoulder with confidence.

Lastly, your lines tend to be very uniform in their thickness throughout, with no nuance. I talk about this in these notes (at the bottom of the page), so be sure to give it a read. Instead of keeping your lines entirely uniform and stiff, try to apply pressure such that you start and end a little more lightly, resulting in a bit of a taper.

Personally, I think you'd benefit most from starting a little further back and revisiting the lesson 1 material in order to help refresh your memory in regards to drawing more confidently and smoothly. It's always a good idea to go back as you have when you've found yourself going off track a little bit, but you'll get the most out of it by revisiting the basics, as nine times out of ten, that is where all of our struggles lie. That's why I encourage students to continue practicing those exercises regularly.

If you do decide to go back to lesson 1, make sure you read through the material there, rather than just jumping into what you remember of the exercises.

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

2017-09-13 13:53

While it's fine to do some studying of other peoples' work, the majority of your practicing should still be from reference images or from life. Copying other peoples' work doesn't go too far in terms of helping you come to certain decisions on your own, as those decisions are already made in the piece you're reproducing.

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

2017-09-12 20:53

Overall you're doing a pretty good job. There are a few things I want to stress however:

• For the organic forms with contour curves, treat this just like the contour ellipses, but only drawing the portions of the ellipses that would be visible, and doing so around a central minor axis line. Right now instead of minor axes, you've just got more lines flowing over the form in another direction. The minor axis is still important for aligning your curves, so continue to use it as you did in the previous exercise.

• Your dissections are excellent. You've got a great variety of textures, and you've tackled them with great care and specificity, rather than applying a sort of generic, one-size-fits-all approach.

• For your form intersections, do not draw your initial lines lightly, and then go back over them with a clean-up pass. This results in your initial lines lacking the sort of confidence that keeps your linework smooth and your forms feeling solid. Also draw through all of your boxes - you did this for some, but not others. This exercise is about improving your understanding of how those forms relate to each other in 3D space, not about creating a pretty picture. Hiding some of those lines may result in something that feels cleaner, but it will diminish the value of the exercise itself.

Anyway, keep those points in mind. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Also, if you want more work on the texture side, be sure to take a look at the texture challenge. It's meant to be done in parallel with other lessons, so you can chip away at it little by little.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-09-12 20:44

The constructions are fairly decent, but my concern lies more with your line quality. Compared to your other work, these definitely feel somewhat more hesitant, and even scratchy. I can see a tendency to reinforce your lines (rather than sticking to one-mark-per-line). Some of your ellipses also appear to be somewhat wobbly - for example, 246, which is the most egregious, though others exist to varying degrees.

On another note, a point I do see you struggling with somewhat is getting your ellipses to fit snugly within those planes, especially with the planes on the farther end of the box/cylinder construction. I'm not sure if this is accidental or intentional - but if it is an intentional attempt at fixing something midway, I'd advise you against it. The constructional approach is all about answering certain questions and solving certain problems in one step, and then moving forward with the knowledge that it's been dealt with - that everything else you do from then on can rely on the fact that the problem's been handled. If however you decide to revisit that problem in a subsequent step, it leads to a muddier process, and a loss of trust in the method itself.

That applies as much to these simple cylinders as it would to anything else - the box defines the space the cylinder will occupy, so if you then decide to make the far end narrower, you're effectively revisiting the problem the box already took care of. It's better for your general confidence to keep moving forwards rather than attempting to correct things along the way in such cases.

Anyway, I hope that gives you enough feedback to work with. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

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

2017-09-12 20:25

Your constructions are excellent. You may have struggled with your proportions, but I think you certainly showed them who's boss, as you did a pretty good job with them too. I'm particularly impressed with the fact that you managed to capture a very strong sense of form without neglecting any construction lines or ending up with anything that felt too stiff. You balanced the solidity of those forms with the flow of the various limbs, and applied line weight to great effect.

You certainly made some strong efforts with the texture and detail, and as far as I'm concerned, you are heading in the right direction. There definitely is a lot of personal experimentation that is necessary to really figure out how you want to tackle that. The one piece of advice I want to offer is always to remember that the detail and texture rests on the surface of your other forms, and end up playing the role of contour lines of a sort, whether you want them to or not.

As a result, they can really help reinforce existing forms, or they can undermine what you'd already established by contradicting them. One example of this is the black widow (on the left side of the page), where its abdomen ended up looking a little deformed once texture was applied. This factor will definitely come into play when deciding what details should be included and which should be left out. After all, as this is a drawing you are creating, you can choose what will help you communicate what you're after, and what won't. You're not married to reality, but reality happens to give you a lot of great information that you can choose to use or ignore.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Tackling the texture challenge next certainly wouldn't be a bad idea, though try not to grind on it too much. Perhaps hammering out 5 to 10 of them would be a good way to get a handle on what is conveyed on the notes there, but after that you should definitely work on them in parallel with lesson 5, as it's the sort of topic that should be tackled over time (letting your brain rest in between). The time you spend away from the challenge ends up being as valuable as the time you spend on it, especially if you're paying greater attention to the objects around you in your daily life.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-09-12 11:36

Wider degrees, and more overlap between the two ellipses. So the minor axis would be pointing towards the viewer, rather than across our field of view.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-09-11 22:10

Pretty good overall. The one thing that jumps out at me though is that your cylinders are all fairly similar in how they're angled relative to the viewer's eye. You do have some that turn away more (like 249), but I don't really see any that angle more towards the viewer (so we'd be closer to looking right down the length of the cylinder, like looking through a spyglass/handheld telescope.

Anyway, just keep that in mind for when you practicle cylinders in the future. 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"

2017-09-11 22:06

These are definitely looking much better. The camel head definitely still needs work, but you are moving in the right direction. The rest of the drawings feel considerably more solid and far better constructed. Just make sure that when you're drawing the small things like the rat's paws, that you work towards keeping them from getting cartoony. If this means leaving things as a more general form blockout (not necessarily broken into all of the fingers, but something that feels solid), then that's fine. Just don't let yourself symbol draw those areas just because they're very tiny.

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

Oh, one more thing, about the 'maybe just for multijointed legs?'

All mammals have fairly similar legs. The additional joint you see on some exists on humans as well, between the ankle and the ball of the foot. In this case, the animals are walking on the balls of their feet or their toes.

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

2017-09-11 21:55

Generally quite well done! You're doing a great job with all of the exercises. Your arrows flow nicely through 3D space, your organic forms with contour lines show that you seem to understand the purpose behind contour lines themselves, your dissections demonstrate a nice variety of textures, and your form/organic intersections show a well developing grasp of 3D space and how those forms all relate to each other.

There's only one thing that stood out to me, and it's a pretty minor point. In your dissections, I noticed that you were using cross hatching here and there. In general, I'd recommend avoiding any kind of hatching or cross-hatching. It tends to be a sort of generic technique that isn't really specific to any particular material you're trying to capture, and when students use it they have a tendency not to look deeper into the actual textures and patterns that are present in their reference images. If you avoid using this particular technique, you'll find that you'll have to dig deeper, which will benefit you more.

Aside from that, very nicely done. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the nexto ne.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-09-10 00:50

I actually quite like the torso of this camel. It feels quite solid and cohesive. The legs are still somewhat weak, in that they feel more like a set of lines loosely grouped together, rather than suggesting that they belong to the same shape. For this reason, I always stress the importance of drawing things as complete forms - or in the case of legs (where the flow of 2D shapes is quite advantageous), complete shapes.

Additionally, if you look at its head, there's no clear definition of how the muzzle really connects to the cranial ball. This in turn makes the muzzle feel somewhat flat and arbitrary, rather than like a solid protruding form of its own. One of the most important things when it comes to making something feel like a solid form, beyond making it 'complete' and cohesive, is how that form interacts and connects to other forms. You can have a box with absolutely no internal lines (just the silhouette), but if its silhouette conforms around a neighbouring form, it will look believable. Notice how the muzzle in this demo conforms around the rounded sphere of the cranium? Considering the various planes of the boxy form is important too, but that intersection is key.

The head on the top left of this page is definitely approached somewhat better in that regard, though it is quite rough and loose. The head to the right of that page suffers from the fact that the neck is not clearly defined - rather, you've kind of encased the cranium as a sort of loosely floating ball inside of a larger shape, and you've not established how the neck connects to the torso. You'll notice that in many of my demos, I clearly define that neck-torso connection with a cross-sectional contour ellipse.

The other issue I wanted to raise about your rats was their arms - notice how you've fleshed them out as a series of ellipses? This results in a sort of michelin-man appearance, where the appendage swells out and then tapers. Instead of this, instead try and treat the appendages as noodles - that is, if the left side bulges out to the left, the right side should echo this (rather than mirroring it). As a result, the width remains fairly consistent, rather than notably swelling or tapering. You can always build up additional muscle forms over this later on as individual forms, but the basic flow should be established in this way. The continuous bulging/tapering has a tendency to really kill the flow.

Here's some redlining/notes. I'd like you to try another four pages. You're welcome to try redoing some of the same ones, or choose others.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-09 23:51

Really nice work. Your boxes look solid, and your use of line weight goes a long way to help improve the sense of cohesion. You're also doing a good job of applying the ghosting method to your lines, so they tend to be quite confident and smooth.

The only advice I want to offer is that as your boxes improve, the nature of the mistakes you'll make will change. You'll still be making mistakes, but they'll be more subtle and difficult to detect. This is where extending your lines to make them more obvious comes into play in a big way. It's probably a good idea to take your last couple pages and apply the approach across the board, just to see where things are still a little bit off. It's tedious, but it's necessary to continue making meaningful gains once you've reached a certain point.

You're welcome to move onto lesson 2 - the 250 cylinder challenge is also there if you'd like to try it, but you're by no means required to do so at this point (it'll be a prerequisite for lesson 6, but that's a ways off). That said, it will help with the form intersections in the next lesson, so at least reading through the notes is definitely worthwhile.

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

2017-09-09 23:44

Pretty nice work. Your form intersections are looking very solid, your dissections explore a healthy variety of textures in a slew of different ways, and your arrows flow nicely through space. Your confidence with your organic forms does improve over the set, but I'd say this is the only area where there's a little bit of weakness.

For most, the issue lies with struggling to get the contour curves to wrap properly around the forms. While this isn't perfect in your work, it's not the actual source of the problem. I think the primary issue is actually in the alignment of those curves (to the minor axis), and also the particular degree you choose to use for a given ellipse or curve.

The alignment of the curve/ellipse comes into play because the further off your alignment is, the more difficult it is to wrap the line around properly on one side. Always ensure that the minor axis cuts your ellipse (in the case of curves, imagine the full ellipse all the way around) into two equal, symmetrical halves.

For the degree issue, give these notes a read. They should help give some context as to what the degree of a given ellipse says about the circular cross-section it represents in 3D space, and how it's oriented relative to the viewer.

This issue does improve as you get into the organic intersections exercise, but I believe you'll benefit from a little more focus in this area. That said, I do get the impression that you fully understand the premise behind it all, that the contour lines need to be running along the surface of a given 3D form.

So, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one, but as always, make sure you incorporate these exercises into a 10-15 minute warmup at the beginning of each sitting.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-08 17:34

It would certainly help, though it's not required.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-08 00:35

Nice work! Your line quality definitely improves over the set, as well as your general confidence. I'm also very pleased to see that after a point, you become quite dedicated to applying that line-extension method to help identify the mistakes that may not be entirely obvious to the naked eye. This clearly helps quite a bit, as your box constructions become a fair bit more consistent throughout.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2017-09-07 23:04

Generally you're doing pretty well, but there are a few things that caught my eye, mostly related to your organic forms exercises. The first of those is that you almost completely neglected to include the minor axis line stressed in the exercise instructions. That is, the line that runs through the center of reach organic form. This line serves to help align your contour ellipses and curves, and is mentioned as the second step to the exercise.

The other issue is with how your contour curves behave as they reach the edge of the form. Some of yours are fine - they'll accelerate in their curvature and hook back around as though they continue along the other side. Others however hold a fairly consistent curvature (rather than accelerating) and give the impression that they'd shoot right off the surface of the form. I talk about this somewhat here, and the 'overshooting curves' approach I mention there often helps to build up a better grasp of how that curvature should behave.

The point is to convey the illusion that these curves run along the surface of the form, so maintaining the idea that the line turns away as the surface does so is very important. I think this would have helped greatly with this page of organic intersections, as those forms gave the impression that their undersides were flatter than you likely intended.

This page however does have a few of its own issues. You should draw each form in its entirety (as you did in the other page), and the line quality is extremely rough and sloppy.

Aside from that, your work was quite good. Your arrows flow fairly nicely, and your form intersections demonstrate a pretty good grasp of how those forms sit and behave in 3D space.

Anyway, before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do two more pages of organic forms with contour curves, with minor axes included.

Oh, one last thing - give these notes a read. May help in terms of deciding what degree to choose for a contour ellipse or curve, and what that would suggest about the form itself.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-07 22:53

I think you're being a bit rough on yourself, and definitely overdoing it with the self deprecation. Your work here is quite strong. Your constructions feel sturdy, your line weights do a great deal to add solidity and cohesion to each form, and your corrections are ample and conscientious. I'm not sure what you're referring to as 'ugliness', but the corrections are not something to be ashamed of. That's what you learn from - of COURSE you're going to make plenty of mistakes, that is a given. The point is to identify them, even when they're not obvious, and to grow from them.

Lastly, you definitely improved over the set. Keep up the great work, and don't fuss over whether or not your work is up to scratch - because there's no standard to be comparing yourself against. That's all in your head. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

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

2017-09-07 22:49

I'm sure you've heard this before, but it's entirely counter productive to compare yourself to other students. It doesn't tell you where you should be, because people start these lessons from different points in their lives, from different circumstances, etc. Furthermore, as I mention at the very beginning of lesson 1, you should not be aiming for perfection with each exercise. The point is to do it to the best of your current ability so I can assess where you're going wrong. If you were just to submit perfect work to me, what purpose would I serve? That's why I recommend an amount of work - you do that much, and then you submit it and I tell you what and how much you need to redo.

Anyway, your first three exercises are pretty well done. The arrows are solid, the organic forms with contour ellipses are fine, and your contour curves generally wrap nicely around the forms. You did misunderstand the concept of 'overshooting' the curves somewhat though - the lines still need to be sitting on the surface of the form, as that is the point of contour lines. All I mean is that you continue the line a little further after it hooks around.

Either way, you achieved the illusion of them wrapping around just fine in the next page. I do want to mention though that when practicing this exercise, you should be still including the central minor axis line to help with alignment, as mentioned in the instructions.

Your dissections are well done - they demonstrate a wide variety of textures, all tackled in their own manners rather than attempting to apply any kind of one-size-fits-all approach. Keep up the good work.

Your form intersections are generally okay - one thing that jumps out at me is that you seem to have not noticed the instruction about avoiding any forms overly stretched in any one dimension, and to keep things fairly equilateral. Avoiding too much stretching keeps things simpler, whereas the way you approached it brings more foreshortening into the equation, which complicates an already difficult exercise. Many of your ghosted lines here are also a touch sloppy, in that they're arcing through their lengths rather than being entirely straight.

As for your question about pyramids, I construct pyramids like this, by starting with a box and finding the center point of the two opposite planes. For cones, I use the minor axis of the base ellipse, as the minor axis is always going to run perpendicular to the circle the ellipse represents in 3D space. Like this.

Your organic intersections do need work, but they're getting there. It helps to keep your forms relatively short and sausage-like. I noticed that some of yours are a bit flatter, rather than being fully inflated. How you perceive the forms themselves will strongly influence the result, so you've got to hold onto the illusion that they're all sausage-shaped balloons, with circular cross-sections, rather than flatter ellipsoid ones. Then place each form into the scene one at a time, focusing on how the newly added one interacts with those already present. Think about where their weight would be supported, and where they'd sag. Once one form has been placed in the scene, it's not going to yield to any new ones, as it's already been drawn - so it's the subsequent ones that need to conform to those already in the scene.

Anyway, you're moving in the right direction, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Remember that you're to continue practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as part of a regular warmup routine, picking two or three exercises at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-09-07 22:34

I really have to ask. Have you done the following?

• Read the lesson

• Watched the intro video

• Followed along the lesson demos and those in the 'other demos' section?

• Read my previous critique

I'm 100% sure you have, but your work does not show much evidence of this. Perhaps you read these things before, but not as you were doing the work itself, so it wasn't actually fresh in your mind at the time. Regardless of the reason, you're doing a lot of what I pointed out in my last critique. I'm sure you can understand that I am not interested in repeating myself.

An example of a very specific issue I mentioned previously: the ribcage. I my last critique, I pointed that out very specifically, but you're still making the same mistake. The issue I raised about your observation of your references also still stands. In a few places it's improved slightly, but overall you're still primarily drawing what you think you remember seeing, rather than continually looking back to refresh your memory.

I really cannot help you if you're not going to pay attention to the advice I offer, especially when it's as specific as pointing out that your ribcages should be considerably larger. If you're going to try again, then I strongly insist that you revisit the lesson content frequently.

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

2017-09-06 00:39

Old thread got locked, those eligible for critiques from me can submit their work here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-06 00:15

Excellent work. Your line quality is very self-assured and confident, your box constructions are solid and I'm very pleased to see the extent to which you double checked your boxes afterwards. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-09-04 16:29

Very nicely done! You're very fastidious when it comes to building around your minor axes, and your linework looks very confident and self-assured. Keep up the great work. The only thing I'd recommend is to try more that are constructed inside of an existing box, as this will come in quite handy in much later lessons (6 and 7). You're absolutely ready to move onto lesson 2 though.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-09-04 16:27

Yup, I've given you the badge for the box challenge and for lesson 1. The only things I want to mention in regards to your lesson 1 work is as follows:

• For the funnels, remember that the far ends of the funnel should have ellipses that have the highest degrees (more circular), and the middle of the funnel should have a lower degree (narrowest).

• For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

• Your organic perspective boxes' foreshortening is definitely way too dramatic. By this I mean the vanishing points are too close, resulting in the far end of the boxes being waaay smaller than the close end, despite not having that much distance between them. As I mention in these notes, this throws off the sense of cohesion between all the boxes in the scene, and messes with the sense of scale. This is why it's a good idea to put a fair bit of practice into drawing boxes with shallower foreshortening, where the difference between the near/far planes is more subtle.

Be sure to continue working on that, but feel free to move onto lesson 2 as I mentioned before.