Rabuuhs

For an easier version to build up from, doing box intersections as a warmup could help.

But it could also help to change the way you approach the intersections.

Instead of thinking of the intersections as between a "box" and "sphere" you could instead think of them as between surfaces. What does this mean exactly? This diagram shows how the surface of the box and sphere interact. The box has flat surfaces which make the sphere have sharp curves in image 3, but when the box changes to a curved surface in image 4 the interaction with the sphere also changes.

Thinking of them in terms of surfaces means that the exercise becomes simpler. Instead of seeing it as complex forms interacting with each other you can see it as flat on flat surface interactions (box/box, box/cylinder(flat side)/cone(flat side) / flat on round/curved interaction (box/cylinder, box/sphere) / round on round (sphere/sphere, sphere/cylinder, clyinder/cylinder) interaction. This works for any form interaction not just the simple ones in this exercise. You could go through this album composed of multiple different interactions made by optimus on discord, and use this thinking to see how these surfaces interact. Notice the different interactions between the surfaces (not the forms) and you'll notice a pattern which may help you when you do form intersections.

If, after this, you still struggle you could also follow this guide to use paint 3D to make your own forms to see how they interact.

If you have any questions / if anything is unclear don't hesitate to reply.

Congrats on completing the cylinder challenge! I'll jump right into the critique.

Starting with the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I think you've definitely shown a good deal of progress across this set. Earlier on, I could see that you were struggling with your ellipses - you tended to hesitate as you executed them, worrying more about keeping them accurate than maintaining a confident execution and a smooth, even shape. This resulted in ellipses that were wobblier and less consistent, which in turn undermined the solidity of the form. Over the course of the set however, you kept working at it, and seemed to ease yourself into a more confident execution and greater use of the ghosting method, which gradually did the trick. I'd say this is an issue you managed to largely address in the first two thirds of this section, so congrats on that!

One thing you should be careful of is when you check for errors you should be aligning to the minor axis. In some you ended up checking the wrong direction like in 15. You also ended up not checking about 1/3rd of your cylinders which defeats the purpose of the whole exercise. You also end up over estimating where the minor axis actually is like in 13, 18, 21 etc.

Due to the large amount of missed / incorrect checks I'll be asking for a revision of 15 cylinders, all properly checked.

Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, overall you've done pretty decently here, although there are some points to pay closer attention to. 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.

In being as fastidious as you have been in applying the line extensions as instructed, I can see that you've been giving yourself ample opportunity to assess where your approach could be adjusted to bring those convergences together from one page to the next. As a result, your awareness of those proportions has improved.

Overall your boxed cylinders turned out pretty well, and if you do the revisions for the cylinders around a arbitrary axis you will be well equipped to continue improving at drawing cylinders.

Congrats on completing lesson 6 tempestsnow. I'll be critiquing your other submissions as well.

Starting with form intersections. Everything I wrote in your lesson 7 critique still stands so I won't go over it too much here.

What I'll focus on instead are your object constructions. The point I made in lesson 7 about precision still stands in this lesson, as well as not using a ruler etc. So I'll focus on something I didn't cover in your lesson 7 critique. Now the bit of advice I wanted to offer is basically about how we can get the most out of our orthographic plans. In the computer mouse demonstration where the orthographic plans are first introduced, we really only subdivide it into quadrants, using them as rough references to place our landmarks. But we can do better! We can go further than just quarter divisions, and the further we go the more precise we get. Since precision is all about decision making, doing this on an orthographic plan before construction allows us to focus fully on spatial reasoning (same reason as to why we use a ruler) to get the most out of the exercise. Note that I said "making decisions" - this is not about finding the "correct" proportion, but rather deciding which one you will be using. So if you had a drawer face with a handle on it, and that handle extended from the 19/50ths subdivision to the 31/50ths subdivision, that's... a lot to ask of a person. There's not a lot lost in rounding it to 2/5ths and 3/5ths, as long as that rounding doesn't accidentally eliminate some other important elements as a result.

That's pretty much all I can comment on. The points I made in the lesson 7 critique still stand so there's no need to re-state them here.

Congrats on completing lesson 7! Not many people make it this far so it's quite the achievement.

Before I start I want to bring your attention to a guide I made for lessons 6/7 which you can read over to maybe clarify some points I may miss in the critique https://drawabox.com/community/submission/EKYD69DA

Anyway, I'll start with your form intersections. Overall they look good, although there are a few points I want to call out. With form intersections there are 3 types of intersections that occur between the surfaces of the forms, not the forms themselves. What this means is that instead of thinking of intersections as between cubes and cylinders for example, they are instead between a flat surface and a curved surface (or a flat surface of the cylinder top / bottom). This diagram may clarify things a bit. When you have an interaction of flat and curved you will usually end up with a simple curve that would change direction when it hits an edge. In your intersections if you look at the bottom of the page between the sphere and the box, I can see that you've attempted a curve but it defies the surface of the sphere and makes it look deformed. On that same box between the cylinder instead, you've used a straight line which makes the cylinder look flat. It should instead conform to the surface of the cylinder more and be curved. For additional resources on form intersections you can check out this pack made by optimus on discord and this paint 3d guide I made to better understand form intersections.

An additional point with your intersections is your repeated attempts to try and correct a line causing the edges to look messy and bloated. The first stroke that you made the mistake with is now hidden, thus hindering any growth you could have gained if you had just left the mistake on the page. Do be careful with this and avoid going over the same mark over and over again.

Moving on to your boxed cylinders. There are two problems. First, elipses should only be drawn once over and not continually drawn over. It again hides the issue that you made and you can't grow from it. The other problem is you aren't checking for your mistakes. Every box should have line extensions going out like you did with the box challenge. Here is how you correctly check for mistakes. Make sure you do this going forward in your warmups.

For your vehicle form intersections. They are well done, this exercise is just meant as a warmup to the more complicated vehicle constructions you do later.

Finally your vehicle constructions. I can see when you started to make changes from the discord feedback and honestly you've really done a great job for a few of them. By being precise and intentional with every choice we make, we train our instincts to develop a strong, reliable understanding of 3D space even when we decide to be a little quicker, a little more instinctual, and a little more loose. Ultimately the purpose of the course is to drill those principles ad nauseum, and to a truly tedious point so as to fundamentally restructure how we, in our most careless moments, engage with the things we draw.

But that can only be said for a few of your constructions, mainly the truck, 7 and 5. The biggest issue I can see is that you opted to not use a ruler, which in turn limited how much value you would have gained from the exercise. By not using a ruler you stop the brain from focusing on just the spatial reasoning and it now has to worry about ghosting and line accuracy as well. Because of this you can't fully focus on improving your spatial reasoning (which is what this course is all about), thus hindering your growth. The second issue I can see is that in the second airplane you decided to do away with all the lines in the orthographic plans and decided to just eyeball most of it. This goes against what lesson 6 and 7 is about, precision.

Precision is often conflated with accuracy, but they're actually two different things (at least insofar as I use the terms here). Where accuracy speaks to how close you were to executing the mark you intended to, precision actually has nothing to do with putting the mark down on the page. It's about the steps you take beforehand to declare those intentions.

So for example, if we look at the ghosting method, when going through the planning phase of a straight line, we can place a start/end point down. This increases the precision of our drawing, by declaring what we intend to do. From there the mark may miss those points, or it may nail them, it may overshoot, or whatever else - but prior to any of that, we have declared our intent, explaining our thought process, and in so doing, ensuring that we ourselves are acting on that clearly defined intent, rather than just putting marks down and then figuring things out as we go.

In our constructions here, we build up precision primarily through the use of the subdivisions. These allow us to meaningfully study the proportions of our intended object in two dimensions with an orthographic study, then apply those same proportions to the object in three dimensions.

You did this in the constructions I mentioned earlier and a few others but neglected it for other constructions. Which would mean you have to re-do the lesson. But since you did more drawings than needed (probably after the discord critique) it should still be fine.

Finally, you've used pure black for some shadows in your constructions in a way which is similar to form shading which is to be avoided in this course and instead you should only be drawing cast shadows. Here is the difference between them.

And that's it for this critique. Again congrats on completing drawabox and if anything was unclear don't hesitate to reply with any questions you have.

It depends on how precise you want to be, I would personally just add a few more subdivisions to make a chain of small straight lines to make it look like a curve. This is also what the lesson recommends, but if you want to wing it, it isn't a huge deal. You're just sacrificing precision in favor of it looking good.

For now I have a written guide for how to do lesson 7 which is here https://drawabox.com/community/submission/EKYD69DA

I'll be adding a video of me doing a construction by the end of tomorrow which will just be showing me following the steps I've outlined to make it more clear if there is some confusion.

You wait until it's reviewed to move on to the next lesson.

Lessons 6 and 7 tackle things in a different manner to 3 - 5 because they focus on precision and planning compared to the earlier lessons which are more reactive in nature. E.g. If you drew the head a bit too big in lesson 5 that isn't an issue because you can adjust the rest of the drawing. In 6 and 7 however it's much more methodical and requires more planning. In terms of how long it takes to do 1 object construction vs 1 animal construction, I'd say that an animal could range from 1 - 4 hours roughly as it will vary from person to person. A lesson 6 object (orthographic studies + construction) could take up to 2 - 12 hours depending on the complexity of the object + how precise you want to be. One lesson 7 vehicle (orthographic studies + construction) takes around 4 - 24+, again depending on the complexity of the vehicle and how precise you want to be. These are just rough estimates and everyone will take differing amounts of time so take them with a grain of salt.

I would say the difficulty spike isn't that large if you take your time and read through the lesson material thoroughly. I've also recently written a guide for both lessons (which you can find here) which should make the lesson easier if you didn't quite understand the material on the website. Most students are intimated when they see a million lines but when you start the lesson and go through the demos it isn't as bad as it seems.

For each question I'll answer in terms of lesson 7 instead of 6.

1) For vehicle references you can take a screenshot of a side / front view and draw over it in any digital drawing software for your orthographic plan. Here is an example of how you would do that https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1NeE_AiE7szr_vJEicrHbQBe43dcu96kr (focus on ref study 1 and 2). You can also just eyeball how many wheels wide / tall it is to train your observation skills.

2) You decide proportions through your own observation and judgment and by drawing orthographic plans of vehicles based on their wheel lengths. Once you've drawn the plane of the orthographic using the wheel lengths you can just use subdivision + your observation + judgment to place everything.

3) Through observing the object and making your own decisions about how much space it should take up. Uncomfortable came to the conclusion that it was less than 1/3 but more than 1/4 through just looking at it. You could also have a different judgment about how much space it should take up and that would be equally valid because it's based on your observation.

4) This is again based on your own judgment and how precise you want to be.

5) Orthographic plans are only drawn in 2d. The final vehicle should be drawn in 3d and based on the orthographic plans.

6) No, that is just observational drawing (drawing what you see) drawabox uses a construction method which involves observing a subject, understanding how it sits in 3d space, and drawing your understanding of the object in 3d space.

So there are many ways to get good reference

• to use search engines, first you need to think about which vehicle you want to find, for example Boeing 747, then you need to google 'Boeing 747' and add 'side view', 'top view', 'blueprint' and so on

• to use online 3d model galleries/shops for example sketchfab, turbosquid, etc

• to use 3d games

• to use real life toys, or relevant magazines/books

• to use online car re-sellers like facebook marketplace, usually people post a lot of pictures of their car when they are selling it so it can be good reference to use.

The easiest method is to find a vehicle you want to draw first and then get an image of it and use google image search to find similar pictures. If it's a popular vehicle then there will be loads of images.

Good luck with lesson 7!