Drawabox lesson 2 critique guide

This is a quick guide to help people who feel they aren't ready to critique lesson 2 submissions. It's definetely not meant to substitute feedback, so even if you have this guide, submit your homework to the website. As stated on lesson 0, feedback is super important and if you don't get it there are things you will miss, don't skip it!


I'll try to summarize the main mistakes I see on each exercise, as always, I might miss things, and this guide won't be fullproof, so please point me out if you find a mistake, or anything that could improve this, and I'll gladly edit it. For the same reason, just like with the other guides feel free to add your own stuff to the critiques, and don't hesitate on going back to the lesson material or asking once you start having doubts, because that's how you'll learn.

**Arrows**
1.Mistakes on lines.
Those are the same as I explained on the lesson 1 critique guide.:
-Confidence of lines; the lines on the arrows need to be confident, and ghosted.
-Repeating lines; lines should not be repeated even if they're wrong, as always, if there is a mistake it should be ignored.

2.Arrows not compressing.
The arrows need to get bigger and bigger as they go towards the viewer. Both in size, and the spacing between each fold.
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/0f7c806c.jpg

3.Lineweight related.
-When adding lineweight to the arrows, they should only be done with 1 line, no more so the lineweight is not overdone.
-Lineweight needs to be done with a confident, ghosted line. Tracing over the previous line slowly is a mistake.
-Lineweight should only be added to the part that overlaps as well, it is not needed to add lineweight to the full line.

**Organic forms**
-Mistakes on lines.
Same as the described previously. All ellipses and lines need to be drawn confidently. In the case of the ellipses the need to be drawn through 2-3 times. (Preferably 2 times).

-Not following the simple form they need to be; they should be 2 identical balls connected by a tube of consistent width:
https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/simplesausage
	Depending on if the student is having trouble with the sausage shapes, you can recommend them to start ghosting them, just keep in mind that some students get worse results when they ghost them, so it might happen for them as well. Another thing that can help is to tell them to plot with a few dots the general sausage shape, so when they ghost they have a few guidelines that can help them not to lose track of the ghosting.

-Degrees of the ellipses/contours don't change, they stay static.
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/6822fd02.jpg

This shouldn't happen even if the sausage is straight, here's an example of it with a top and a front view:
https://imgur.com/rXLBxSg

-Not hooking contours:
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/77f2ca1c.jpg

-Misaligned ellipses and not drawing the axis line:
Ellipses need to be alligned to the minor axis line (Like in the previous lesson 1 funnels exercise), and the axis line needs to be drawn:
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4d7871e1.jpg

-Ellipses not touching the boundaries, or getting out of them:
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/60054aa2.jpg
This one can be caused by rushing or not ghosting enough, so you can mention that to help in that case.

**Textures**
In this section the main important thing to look for is if they are actually drawing cast shadow shapes and not lines.
In the texture analysis exercise only cast shadow shapes should be drawn, there should not be any kind of form shading:
Here is explained the difference between form shadows and cast shadows: https://imgur.com/L21Mqxh.

And when the shadows are attempted, it's better to approach them like this, because they force you to think in shapes instead of lines:
https://i.imgur.com/M9JJfr4.png

Now, these things are more secondary, but are still important:
TEXTURE ANALYSIS
-Doing dotting or any kind of hatching to achieve transition:
This is the same thing as focusing on only drawing cast shadows explained before, but just adding it here as it's pretty common. On this exercise you can only cast shadows with bold shapes of black or white, nothing else.

-Not doing a seamless transition on the gradients, if either the black bar on the left or the white bar on the right are really easy to spot because the transition isn't smooth enough :
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/7d1f3467.jpg

-All marks on this exercise should be done purposefully, and by looking at the reference before, so scribbling or doing non planned marks is a mistake:
https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/scribbling

DISSECTIONS
-Not wrapping the textures around the form:
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/e58b7887.jpg

-Not breaking the silhouette:
Silhouette is super useful to convey the texture, so it should not be ignored. Keep in mind that the silhouete is the only place where you can actually outline the forms, as it's necesary for breaking it.
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4dd5336a.jpg

**Form intersections**
-In this exercise all mistakes explained on the box challenge guide apply. (Except line extension related issues)
Mainly repetition of lines, lines not being confident, not planing lines, not ghosting, clear divergences, not drawing through ellipses, etc.

-The main objective of this exercise is to make all the forms on the picture to resemble that they share the same scene. To do this the forms need to have consistent foreshortening.
It's easier to achieve this if you keep your forms equilateral and focus on only shallow foreshortening, so mention it, if the student isn't doing it.

-About the intersections, as it's secondary, you don't have to worry much about them. As long as you point out the previous issues it's enough, and if the student is having trouble with the previous issues it might even be a good idea to ignore the intersections entirely not to confuse them.

If you choose to critique them, try to see if the intersections feel solid to you, if you find some particular intersection that doesn't feel solid, give it a try and do a drawover so the student sees how it should be done instead. But like I said, don't worry too much if you don't do it, as the intersections are just an introduction in this exercise.

**Organic intersections**
In general in this exercise, when people start having trouble with it redirect them to uncomfortable's demo, as it clears up a lot of the common issues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgcmB26CHLY&feature=youtu.be

-Not drawing simple forms. On this exercise the forms should be kept simple, just like in the previous organic forms exercises. 2 identical balls connected by a tube of consistent width.
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4213ce18.jpg

-Shadows sticking to the forms. The shadows have to follow the form of object they're being casted on, not the form of the object that casts it.
https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/516f8d4f.jpg

-Same mistakes on lines as previously mentioned. Not ghosting lines, not hooking the lines, adding linweight by tracing instead of drawing confident lines etc.

-Not drawing through forms. You should always draw through forms, just like in the form intersections exercise.

-Drawing non stable forms. As in this example:
https://i.imgur.com/KJQhpn8.png
Where there are floating or non supported sausages, that look like they're about to fall. All of them should be supported. A good thing to do is to think of them as if they're water baloons, and try to think about how they would fall on top of the other forms, drawing their final positions.

In general, try to feel if the whole drawing is solid as a whole.

Links of the other guides:
Lesson 1: https://pastebin.com/dbjR9MFj
Box challenge: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ