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9:45 PM, Monday April 15th 2024

Jumping right into the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, overall you show a great deal of growth over the course of the set. Your work starts out quite weak to be honest, but through its second half (so 90 to 150) these issues become significantly less prevalent.

The first issue is that for your first two or three pages, you draw cylinders with vanishing points forced to infinity, resulting in side edges that are parallel on the page. This is specifically addressed in these reminders as something to avoid, so that suggests you may not have gone through the instructions as carefully as you could have before starting. You did address this after those few pages though, and I didn't really see the issue come up again.

The second issue is that for a lot of cylinders between 18 and 90, you've got cylinders where the degree shift is inverted, resulting in the ellipse closer to the viewer being wider when it should be narrower as stressed here in the lesson material. This is also explained back in Lesson 1's ellipses section, which is linked from there.

So for example, if we look at 80 on the top right corner of this page, there are two ellipses. The top one is wider, the bottom one is narrower, proportionally speaking. But the top one is also larger in overall scale, and the bottom one is smaller in its overall scale. Compare this to the cylinder below it, number 81. Here the left side ellipse is bigger in its overall scale, but proportionally narrower, and the right side ellipse is proportionally wider, but smaller in its scale.

81 gives us a very clear idea of which end is closer to the viewer, and which end is farther away, because both representations of foreshortening (the shift in scale and the shift in degree) agree with one another. To go back over those briefly, narrower degree is closer, wider degree is farther, larger overall scale is closer, smaller overall scale is farther away. 80 however mixes these up, with each end having an argument for being both closer, and farther away.

Now, if the last third or so was consistently correct throughout, I'd chalk this up to a misunderstanding that was cleared up through practice, but unfortunately while the issue is less common later in the set, it does still come up. Even on the last page here, we can see that 146 and 145 are both incorrect. This means that we will require some revisions in order to confirm your understanding of the concept.

Moving onto your cylinders in boxes, this exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

Unfortunately, looking at your work for this section I noticed one critical piece missing. Alongside the 12 line extensions from the box itself (3 sets of lines x 4 lines each), each ellipse would feature 3 of its own extensions. Two "contact point line extensions" which you have consistently included, and which generally seem to be correct, and one minor axis line (per ellipse), which unfortunately are missing.

Without checking all three, you're essentially leaving a large blind spot where mistakes can hide. In other words, the box's proportions can be quite skinny in one dimension (for example, number 229 on this page), and you would never know to correct it, because you wouldn't have seen that the minor axes were not aligning to the box's own edges as shown here. That does sadly mean that you didn't get nearly as much out of the exercise as you could have. Instead of relying on a complete and reliable analysis, you were left with more guesswork (which must have been frustrating and a bit confusing).

In addition to this, I did notice some spots where you mistakenly extended your lines incorrectly. 228 on that same page, as well as 223 on this one.

Ultimately I will need to assign revisions for this exercise as well, to confirm that you understand how to employ it correctly going forwards. You will find your revisions assigned below.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 25 cylinders around arbitrary minor axes. Ensure that none of these have the degree/scale shift mixed up, and be sure to take your time in thinking about how each individual ellipse should be drawn.

  • 40 cylinders in boxes, ensuring that you are applying the line extensions in their entirety.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:55 AM, Thursday May 2nd 2024

I took my time and think I followed the instructions right this time. Thanks.

https://imgur.com/a/ID1hWI5

6:00 PM, Thursday May 2nd 2024

Starting with the first section of the revisions, your work here is looking pretty solid. You may have noticed that as your ellipses get wider, they tend to become harder to keep evenly shaped. This is pretty normal, but it can suggest that you may have room to focus more on engaging your whole arm from the shoulder, as those wider ellipses really benefit from it. Just something to keep in mind going forward.

For your cylinders in boxes, there's one main thing I want you to keep an eye on - right now you're drawing your boxes such that their individual sets of edges tend to run pretty close to parallel to one another on the page. I can't speak to whether this was intentional or your intent was to simply keep the foreshortening shallow, but this is an issue that is explained in this section of the notes, so I strongly recommend that you go through it - although I believe I did link you back to these reminders in your initial critique, though in regards to the first section of the challenge.

The other point I wanted to note is that for the cylinders in boxes, it can be extra easy to assume the minor axis line is closer to being correct than it necessarily is, which in turn can simply make it easier for us to make mistakes when identifying it. For example, here I noted on 32 that the minor axes were off by a fair margin, so be sure to always take your time when identifying so your line extension analysis is always giving you the most relevant and useful information.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so be sure to apply what I've mentioned here in your warmups.

Next Steps:

Move onto Lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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