My third attempt at the project. This time, I focused on lightly blocking out the structure of the house before trying to deform it. I think having the boxy form as the base to begin with is very helpful, and I think the houses turn out quite good.

Ah, the sprial staircase isn't working out for me. I've looked at many on the internet and they seem to be very complex. I was trying to work out if the stairs here need redrawn or if the drawing can be fixed so the middle section looks 3D as the steps go down around the tree. For a moment I thought the depth of the steps going down could be achieved by shortening each step to give the illusion of depth but then that runs out of step width and the steps don't wrap around the tree ! Any advise would be great, thanks

Thanks for sharing the Gestural Architecture Critiques. I too woulkd be interested to learn how to approach drawing Juices spiral staircase. I Got confused drawing a simpler cored Pinapple spiral !

Thanks as ever for the critique @Stan Prokopenko! Yeah, after this course, Marshall’s perspective course, figure drawing fundamentals and the Marvel comics course, I will get on to that anatomy course….honestly, if it wasn’t for those pesky distractions (wife, kids, day job) I may have had a chance at becoming competent in the 10 year window oft quoted on Draftsmen Podcast 😂. Still, the kids appreciate my Pokémon drawing skills that have resulted from this drawing basics course…what other ambitions are more important than that !! ❤️

Thanks Stan, these are always very useful and fun to watch. I hope you feel better soon!

I'm reposting my submission along with a description of what I was going for. I'm doing this because of a comment @Stan Prokopenko made in the critique but also, because it will do me good to relate visual art to prose. Something I'm not good at. I've labeled the pictures from one to four if for some reason they get mixed up when I post them. My goal in all this was to play around with different architectural gestures like bloating and twisting. But at the same time I wanted a reason for these gestures. First thing I did was simplify a castle. There are five characters (the five towers). I made each of them unique. I used windows to infer eyes to anthropomorphize them. There are two main characters and three subordinate characters. The main characters are the Captain and the Sergeant. The Captain is the one in the middle. He is young, promising, but somewhat inexperienced. The Sergeant is next to him on his right, our left. He has a flag. And he takes this duty seriously. He is strong in character, he has the square personality. The first scene shows them at attention in a calm peaceful situation. It is the base architecture. The second scene is a very windy day. You can see this by the flag and the gesture of the towers (along with the gesture of the leaves flying and the clouds). The subordinate towers (the foils) are buffeted by the wind and appear helpless, the Captain is fighting the wind (somewhat unsuccessfully). The Sergeant is not backing down. He is leaning in to the wind. The only evidence that this is a challenge for him is the squint in his eyes. The third scene was conceived so I could experiment with the twist. I wanted to give the towers something to look at. A person has snuck up on the Sergeant tower and burned the flag. You can see the reaction of the Sergeant again in his eyes. Not so much in his body (although he is red with embarrassment). The other towers are all looking at the burning flag, except the Captain who is looking at the perpetrator who is diving into the moat. In the fourth scene the flag has been restored and there are additional signs of pageantry. Including a man with a trumpet. Perhaps the perpetrator was captured or some further devilry was thwarted. At any rate, all the towers are proud and are bursting at the seams. The Sergeant, of course, shows his pride with his bearing, but still retains his dignity and his manly square shape. I took on a fairly simple set of shapes to deform. But being a level one student, I feel like simplification is my friend. It still allowed me to play with various gestures and it was fun.