5:51 AM, Saturday December 18th 2021
Hello. How are you?
Good work sticking with the exercises. Sometimes they are boring to do and even unbearable sometimes (At least I do). For that alone, you should be proud of yourself. That means that you have what it takes to be done, even when things aren't fun or great all the time.
So, the 1st thing you have to understand after goind through all of this: you can achieve anything you want, because you have proven to yourself that you got the discipline and will to stay focused on your goals. Believe that and stick with it until the end.
I'm going to review your submits in a general way, and after that, I'll tackle each one individually as I see fit.
1. Line Confidence.
On the free-hand boxes perspectives exercises, it's noticeable that you were hesitating to make a decisive stroke. Maybe that's fear, maybe your were afraid to make a mistake. It's allright to feel that way. (I did feel that way and I still do).
I need you to remember and review what Unconfortable taught us about making marks on the paper with intent:
1) Use your whole arm, even your shoulder. Let your hand, fingers and wrist, be steady along when you slide the pen on the paper. That will come with practice as you adapt yourself with the pen and ink behaviour on the paper texture;
2) Ghosting, and Visualization. Don't drop the ink without knowing what you want. Visualize the form or mark you want to make. Practice a few times, maybe 10 times, while ghosting each line. Once you go the feeling that your mark is good enough. Give everything, don't hesitate, and just let go. If the stroke have some errors (wrong direction, overshooting, wobbly lines, etc), that's ok. Just remember that you have more ink and paper to improve yourself by practice and repetition: discipline.
3) Commit yourself. After you decided what you want to put on paper. Accept your fate and go with it. Do it as you were doing this for ages, like an inborn ability that you don't even need an afterthought neither to second guess yourself. Do it your lines and strokes with intent, decidedly, without hesitation.
All of what I said above can be applied to all your homework submits. Keep that in mind.
Now, I want you to compare your own work with your own work. I want you to spot the diference between your free hand boxes lines and your ellipses in planes lines/ghosted planes. I can't say what happened there, but there a clear difference between the lines (remember, just the lines - straight mark, dot-to-dot-). Take your time, as long as it takes and don't rush it, and do them again paying attention, while: 1) using your arm, not wrist and fingers; 2) visualizing what you want and ghosting it before marking the paper; and 3) commiting to your final decision.
Also, everything said about lines applies to ellipses. Take the same steps, and remember to draw through, so you feel the motions, and get familiar with all the shapes.
Plotted-perspective: You got it. There's some mistakes concerning vanishing point line convergence. But you will improve and work on that a lot on the next lessons, namely the 250 boxes challenge.
Ellipses: You'll do them again. This time, remember: 1) use your arm; 2) ghost your lines; 3) draw with intent. And also, in the process of ghosting you'll try to improve in making the ellipses fit the space accordingly. This will be valuable for next lessons where these ellipses are the foundation to understading forms in three dimensions.
Next Steps:
Try repeating the following exercices:
1) Ellipses in Planes, 4 pages
1. The ellipses in planes are just making ellipses on the ghosted planes exercises, so you'll be practicing two things at the same time: line confidence and ellipses.
2. First do the ghosted planes, and do it one step at time. Make one dot. Make the second dot. Connect them with a line. How you do this line? Visualize how it should be, ghost it, and make a line with confidence using your whole arm.After that
2) Table of Ellipses, 1 page: to practice and apply what your are learning with the past exercises.
3) Funnels, 1 page.
4) Rough Perspective. 2 pages: I'll would recommend that you ghost your lines through the vanishing point at least 10 to 20 times, until you are sure that your hand will be going in the right direction. Apply the same techniques for drawing lines. It will work.
5) Organic perspective, 1 page: Apply what you've learned from the roughed perspective exercise, and try using them on the organic perpesetive one.
That's it.
