3:21 PM, Monday March 25th 2024
I love how you took a tiny piece of her and leveraged it into such a classy design!
I love how you took a tiny piece of her and leveraged it into such a classy design!
Oh wow, what a lovely use of her coat pattern!
The first piece based on Sleeves! She's gonna love it.
Two things to keep in mind, then:
What you described about doing extra cylinders is grinding, which goes against the spirit and instructions of the course. I'd recommend reviewing the material (mainly the video) on this page of Lesson 0, as it explains that you should only be completing the assigned quantity of work. This newer overview video for the box challenge which was released last month also discusses grinding and further defines what we consider to be grinding, and what we don't.
Insofar as having trouble drawing through your ellipses, it's perfectly okay to struggle with something as long as you continue to make the effort to do it - as that's the only way such things become easier. It's fairly easy to slip into the mindset that we'll avoid doing something because it's difficult, but ultimately everything we seek to learn starts out that way. If you find yourself undershooting, try to draw through a little further to counterbalance it (which hopefully your brain will continue to overshoot, accomplishing something closer to two full turns). Then later, if you find yourself overshooting too much, do the opposite - this is similar to the solution to arcing lines that's explained in the ghosted lines exercise page. That is, where we intentionally try to draw a line arcing in the opposite direction. Over time this rewires the brain's understanding of the relationship between the intent, the action performed, and the result achieved.
It seems that you have done a good job of identifying areas in which your efforts could have been better used. Only plotting one point instead of both, opting for chicken scratching on a situational basis, etc. all suggest that you're following the instructions of the course less intentionally and carefully than you should be, and that you're opting to make adjustments to them. As stressed in Lesson 0 (and I'd recommend you review the video on Lesson 0 Page 3 for this purpose), you need to be making every possible effort to follow the instructions to the letter - especially if you're to make use of the subsidized official critique services we offer, because they only work on the basis of the student doing everything they can to follow those instructions already.
Keep in mind that the form intersections exercise is one that introduces us to the concept of spatial relationships - that's really at the very core of what this course as a whole addresses, and so you are by no means expected to be comfortable with a concept that is worked upon from lessons 3-7 on Lesson 2. Rather what we're doing here is introducing the problem, so as to steer the student as we venture into this territory, and plant the seed that will be cultivated throughout the rest of the course.
You're not going to get the intersections right, and that's okay - but you need to make sure that you are applying all of the steps that have been covered previously in terms of executing each and every mark with care, and your adherence to those instructions should not be loosened in the face of complexity and uncertainty. When you feel uncertain, make sure that at the very least you are nailing what is already clearly defined. That will likely demand more time from you, but that is ultimately what this course demands.
Anyway, review that Lesson 0 material, and it would also probably be a good idea to review your Lesson 1 linework concepts as well. Then do two more pages of form intersections to demonstrate to me that you are able to execute your linework with care, and adhere to those instructions more closely, even in the face of a complex exercise.
Tofu passed this onto me, as there seem to be some issues that he's called out that you still don't seem to be addressing. I wanted to try and see what the reason for this might be.
Specifically, if we look at your form intersections work, there are two main things that stand out:
Your linework is quite rough. While there are certainly areas where you've executed reasonably straight and confident lines, there are a lot of areas where it's unclear whether or not you're actually employing the ghosting method. Normally the little points we draw in the 'planning' phase are more visible, especially because it's normal to still struggle with accuracy. So, when students execute their marks confidently, they may end up missing the end point while prioritizing the confidence of that execution. So based on your work here, my initial assumption was that you simply weren't using the ghosting method or weren't applying it in its entirety (skipping over or rushing through the planning phase), but looking at it more closely I'm thinking that it's possible you may be trying to apply the ghosting method, but rather executing your mark incorrectly. If you recall from Lesson 1's principles of markmaking, one of the major points for students to keep in mind is that we prioritize the smooth/confident flow of our strokes above worrying about the accuracy of those marks. We can also see other places where you revert to chicken-scratching in certain places, which suggests that you are not being mindful of how you're executing these marks, and therefore aren't allowing yourself the option of executing them as instructed by the course. Now, I'm not sure which issue is at hand here - either you're not applying the ghosting method at all, or you're not prioritizing the confident execution at the end, and allowing yourself to hesitate and draw more slowly in order to gain back accuracy, contrary to those instructions. Ultimately only you can tell us which it is - but looking back at some of your box challenge revisions, you are clearly capable of executing these lines far better.
You continued not to draw through your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen. Like the ghosting method issue, this was something that was explicitly raised in Tofu's last round of feedback. I can see that you are drawing through those ellipses in your organic forms with contour ellipses exercise, but there isn't really any reason for you not to be doing it here, as you are aware of it as a requirement.
Before we can move forwards, I do need some clarification on the reasoning for these issues - based on what I've explained, can you suggest reasons why your approach isn't adhering to the instructions from Lesson 1? If there's something about those instructions that seems unclear, it would be best for us to identify what it is now, before deciding how to move forwards.
I think you may have done this without realizing, but the submission you replied to is one that already was in the process of receiving feedback from a TA (and had been assigned revisions), as it had been submitted for official critique.
I'm hiding your feedback simply because it could potentially cause confusion, especially since your characterization of the submission does somewhat contradict the fact that Tofu assigned revisions.
DIO will be around to look at your revisions as per usual but I wanted to address what you mentioned at the end. If you have tendonitis - and by that I mean are in the process of recovering from it - you really shouldn't be continuing to aggravated the issue by continuing to practice drawing until it has had adequate time to heal, otherwise you risk making it worse.
If you have consulted over this with a physician - specifically continuing to draw and the grips you're using, and they confirmed that it's okay to continue, then that's fine, but if this is an adjustment you made on your own to keep going in the interim, that could be quite risky.
As to having to restart due to changing your grip, no that's not an issue, and you do not need to restart. But please, allow your arm to heal properly before continuing with the course, unless you've specifically discussed this with a doctor.
Jumping right in with the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I'm not sure I follow your numbering scheme here, so I'm working under the assumption that the album is indeed in order. Imgur isn't the most reliable when it comes to the ordering of images (we still prefer it for other reasons), so it is important to ensure you're using a standard numbering scheme to avoid confusion.
Aside from that, your work on these cylinders is looking solid. Your ellipses are confidently executed - although I did notice that you tend not to draw through your ellipses two full times, which is still required for every ellipse we freehand throughout this course as noted back in Lesson 1 - but as a whole, they're still very well drawn. I'm also pleased to see that you were fastidious in checking the alignment of your ellipses' minor axes, catching not only the obvious mistakes but also those discrepancies that could easily be overlooked. Lastly, I noticed that alongside varying your rate of foreshortening throughout the set, you were mindful of maintaining a consistent relationship between the two manifestations of that foreshortening - the shift in scale and the shift in degree from one ellipse to the other. You ensured that as one such shift was pushed towards being more dramatic, the other matched it, which helped to avoid cases that would look "off" to the viewer (even though they wouldn't necessarily understand why).
Carrying onto your cylinders in boxes, I'm glad to see that you switched to a more standard numbering scheme, and that you shifted to uploading complete pages rather than close crops. This definitely makes the feedback process easier.
As a whole these are similarly well done, although I noticed that due to your not drawing through your ellipses (which I noted above), you did run into more issues in getting your ellipses to fit snugly within their enclosing plane, which likely would have been easier with the second pass of the shape.
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.
As a whole you did this quite well, although in cases where the ellipses don't quite fit snugly, it does reduce how accurately the ellipse and its own extension lines describe the plane in question. This is an issue that'll occur to some degree anyway, since we're not perfect machines and it's natural to have issues fitting the ellipse correctly, but in this case being sure to draw through all of your freehanded ellipses going forward will help mitigate this through process, rather than simply requiring more mileage and practice.
Anyway, all in all, very solid work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto Lesson 6.
One of the arguments we make in favour of the 50% rule is focused on allowing each half of your time focus on a specific purpose. During the study portion, we focus on study, and during the play portion, we focus on play. It's very common to want to mix them together, and I can't strictly speak for cases where the student has things like ADHD - but in general, we find that doodling during the time you intend to spend on studying will cause you to shift some of your mental resources away from focusing on following and adhering to the instructions, and will make it more likely that your work won't be done to the best of your current ability.
Rather, if you find yourself losing focus or getting bored, it's better to set the studying aside for the time being.
This is a remarkable little pen. Technically speaking, any brush pen of reasonable quality will do, but I'm especially fond of this one. It's incredibly difficult to draw with (especially at first) due to how much your stroke varies based on how much pressure you apply, and how you use it - but at the same time despite this frustration, it's also incredibly fun.
Moreover, due to the challenge of its use, it teaches you a lot about the nuances of one's stroke. These are the kinds of skills that one can carry over to standard felt tip pens, as well as to digital media. Really great for doodling and just enjoying yourself.
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