me to do Critiques of the Joints lesson. We're going to have Marshall here just for this

one, and then for the other bones of the torso I'm going to do it on my own. I just thought

it'd be great to have Marshall here for this lesson because he did the demonstrations for

it. If you haven't seen his demos and the original joints lesson you can find it in

this link, or also in the description below. So thank you for coming Marshall.

I'm glad to be here.

Always good to have you.

All right.

You want to go and just jump right into the critiques?

Yes. Let's jump right into the critiques.

All right.

This is Gabriela? Is that right?

Yes, this is Gabriela.

Gabriela, you are a victim of brushes, Photoshop brushes that make marks that seem like they're

out of your control. And until you're able to put something down that is a bit more precise

and not so scruffy like that and go from point to point and get some control of these, this

is going to be too difficult to do. I think you just are off right from the beginning,

that if Photoshop brushes are new to you, you would be better off just doing this with

pencil on bond paper. Partly because pencil on bond paper is probably something you used

ever since the time you were small, and so you're familiar with it. And when you're using

brushes, brushes and Photoshop and thick and thin and control with a Wacom tablet or a

Cintiq or whatever else you're using is such a formidable gauntlet to get through so that

you're competent with it. That's my first thing for you is switch media or practice

just doing lines where you're in Photoshop and you're working on doing parallel lines

and working on doing ellipses, even with this ellipse over here. When you do an ellipse

that is more like a fish because you did it like that, that's something that can create

trouble. And when you don't get it exactly right, you can, you can either erase and finesse

it a little bit. But this is, the issues of form are hard to critique in this because

it's too hard to see them, even just this area in here right here. That's got to be

brought up to a level where you've got control of the lines and then turned into the boxes

and cylinders and wedges and other things.

Yes. She's just drawing two-dimensional shapes, the contours of the shapes, rather than thinking

of form, right?

Yeah. And this is really, really common with people who work on the computer. I don't know

whether you did this in Photoshop, but the computer, Photoshop is, the textures you can

get with it and the line quality you can get with it can be interesting and useful. But

they are such a separate discipline from learning how to draw simplified forms that I'd say

dump that, work with something you're familiar with, and that way you can focus on one thing

at a time. . Let's move on to N-K L-P-Z. I'm just going

to pronounce that Nick Lopez.

Nicklezpz

Nicklopez. Okay, so with Nick's, I see a lot of exploration, a lot of studying. He's drawing

these forms from different angles, just imagining other angles that he could draw from. Or actually,

I think he was just using the 3D model on the premium section. But that's good. That's

what that's for. You can take that model, rotate it, and draw it from every angle. If

you're looking at one angle and you don't understand it, rotate a little bit see what's

going on there. That's what that model of there for. But the main thing I really wanted

to say is this is actually another example of something good, is that he didn't just

copy the reference or he just didn't just draw in the position of the reference, but

he also extended this arm to be straight. In this one it's bent and that's the reference

photo. He drew the same one but straightened out just to show that that hinge joint rotates

like this. And that also shows that he understands the forms, because if you can draw it like

this from reference, can you then imagine it like this? And so if you can, then that

shows you understand how that perspective works.

This shows good process. This shows someone who's really working on problem after problem

after problem. And look at that from the shoulder all the way down to the elbow, to the hands

and willing to make it so that it's even a little bit sketchy and scratchy, but it's

trying to find it.

Yeah. It's a little, yeah, like you said, it's a little scratchy, maybe needs to be

cleaned up, but I don't want people to think that they have to clean up their homework

before they post it on the group. It's nice if your lines are clean, but I'd rather see

these works in progress than nothing at all. If you're too embarrassed to show it because

it's messy, that's also not good. But you should just try to keep your lines clean even

during the exploration stage. If they're too scratchy you're just confusing yourself. So

but there is a little bit of messing is that, it's fine and sometimes it's actually good.

Actually like sometimes people sketchbooks are a little bit of that messiness.

I plead guilty to messiness.

But you make it work.

By the time it's finished, by the time it gets dressed up. Okay, this is Miguel.

Miguel. Yes, the elbow joints in yours, this one and this one. You're simplifying the forms

into simple, primitive geometric shapes, but I think you can simplify them in a different

way that will show the function of the joint better. You simplified . . . let's go to this

one here on the left. You showed this wrench shape on the humerus. But that wrench really

doesn't provide any function to the humerus. That's not what it does. It doesn't hold anything

on the outsides. The humerus is really there for the ulna to rotate, to grab onto, and

rotate around it like a hinge. And so the much . . . I guess better, much better to

simplify that bottom of the humerus as a cylinder, just as a shape that the ulna can rotate around.

So instead of this, you would just draw a cylinder, and then the ulna wrapping around

it. I'm not going to go all the way into it because Marshall already did that demonstration.

But basically, it grabs on around it.

Yeah, the ulna is more of a wrench than the epicondyles. I mean, it's gripping up here

like a wrench on there that's coming toward you, as opposed to seeing one that's in full

profile.

Yeah, yeah you did show these two forms, this ball, and this little, I don't know what shape,

bow-tie shape, and that's the part of the humerus that the ulna grabs onto, and that's

the more important part to show the function. But you put a lot of emphasis on this wrench.

Same thing in here on this side. You showed this shape which really doesn't do anything,

and then you have this, this cylinder really small in here. That's the important one, that's

the part that the ulna grabs. And then also I would say maybe instead of putting a cylinder

all the way through, do something in this area that shows that the radius and the ulna

have a joint between them. It's a pivot joint. So if we were looking at it from the top,

this would be the ulna and then you have the radius like that. Put a little thing in there

to show that this locks in there, and it'll spin inside of that notch.

Hey, do you know what this bow tie shape is? Do you know what technically what that bow

tie shape is? I mean from, yeah, what they call what they call that shape?

Oh, . . .

It's a word you may have never heard before, this is just . . .

Just one side of it, or if you put two of them together?

Oh, there's just one, what is, technically what's the cone shape called? A truncated

cone shape?

A cone with a thing cut off?

It's a frustum.

I had never heard of that word.

I'd never heard of it either. It might even be a frustrum, but I think it's a frustum.

F-R-U-S-T-U-M. We'll look it up on Wikipedia and see if I'm wrong. But anyway, yeah . . .

I'll just call it a cone with the top cut off.

I just wanted to throw in some trivia so I can look smart.

Jasza Dobrzanski.

We're guessing that pronunciation again huh? Jasza . . .

Jasza Dobrzanski. Somewhere from Eastern Europe. Maybe Ukraine? From Ukraine? Jasza. Oh, yes.

Right in here, to simplify it to a nice socket, and instead of showing the flat plane in there,

show that it is concave. That socket is a socket, it's something that that ball inserts

into. The shoulder socket is not a very deep ball and socket like the hip is, but it's

still concave a little bit. So showing that will help. And actually, I want to show an

example by Andreas where he does that very nicely, just to show. So thank you, Andreas,

for that. Back to Jasza. The other thing I want to talk about is right in here, this

wrist. The wrist to the radius is an ellipsoid, and so when you draw those two forms, make

sure that they connect as an ellipsoid. You have nice structure, could be a little bit

cleaner, but it's good. You're showing this plane in here. But again, it looks like a

flat plane. It doesn't look like a socket that this rounded part of ellipsoid will fit

into. Also, this part of the wrist or the hand would be the rounded part of the ellipsoid.

And so this boxiness that you put wouldn't really work. I would do something like this.

Let's say there's your hand, you drew it as a box. I would round it off like that. So

showing that that is . . .

Convex.

Convex, thank you. So this tip is the apex. It's not flat like a box, it rounds off and

it can rotate inside of this concave form. Okay.

I want to address something that I think is going on here, Jasza, is that when you're

trying to do a study like this, you can only concentrate on one thing at a time when something

is new to you. And if this is new to you and you're trying to get cross contours around

here, and you are doing that and conscientiously, but you can also forget, while you're working

on that, to exaggerate and to figure you've got a very slight curve up there on that,

that glenoid cavity. So you may have been thinking, but you weren't thinking enough

to where it say, "Hey take a chance with this." And if you brought it up to this level, to

where at least you're wrapping lines around things, trying to understand their forms,

then to have one session where you're going to really take it over the top and make these

things radically exaggerated, then it can remind you that things that might be subtle,

when you've exaggerated them, then you know that that's how they are. You can always make

them subtle later. It's easier to whisper something when you know how to pronounce it

than it is to pronounce it when you don't know how to pronounce it. So you're trying

to exaggerate this and then later scale it back.

Okay. So that's it for Jasza?

That's it for Jasza.

All right. Thanks Jasza.

Yeah. Same thing here, Roderick. This could just use a reminder that this is a particular

shape, a particular form, and this gets . . . I'm not sure about what's going on in there.

That's what I have to say about this one too is that you didn't . . . you simplified the

forms. These look very simple, and I can see there's a top plane in here and there's a

side plane in here. You're really showing that, right? But the forms you chose to simplify

into, they don't show the function of that joint, which was really the whole lesson,

it was the types of joints. So we've got your ball and socket, your pivot, your ellipsoid,

saddle, all those joints. You need to identify each joint as whatever type it is and then

simplify it to resemble that geometric shape. And I think you were looking at it and you

were just looking through observation of all the little bumps on the bone instead of asking

yourself what is the function of it, and now how do I draw this geometric shape to have

that function?

Yeah. And this is hard to do when you're faced with all sorts of little perspective problems.

It is one of the most common problems in creating any work of art, is to get caught up in small

things at the expense of large things. This is why composers paint . . . painting composers

work thumbnails. Thumbnail means you're going to work a small thing before you put any detail

in there, and when know that . . . excuse me. When you work as thumbnail, you're working

big things because there's only room to do big things. And when you're working on the

function of these joints, to try to not look at the small parts first, but to get that

great big, that's a hook, that's a bar, that's a swivel, and we name these different types

of joints. And when we have a name on each one, see how simply . . . look what you've

done in the upper left here. You've done it. You've done it as diagrams, and you're trying

to turn these things into the simplest things possible. Although you'd put a nice color

in there too.

Let's go to the previous one, I want to see what Roderick did in the . . .

In his first one?

Yeah. Yeah, okay this is Roderick, same person. This shows an exploratory spirit that again

I'm running into the same thing happened with Lars. I was admonishing him on something and

then he says, "Yeah? Well watch this." This is exploring around, trying to find the big

things.

Yes . . .

Go ahead.

But that elbow is still . . . I'm not seeing a hinge. You're showing a hinge here in this

side drawing, but you didn't put it into your drawing of the reference photo. So I can see