Lesson 7: Applying Construction to Vehicles
3:46 AM, Tuesday October 26th 2021
Hi,
Thank you so much again for your time!
All the best!
Starting with your form intersections, you're doing an excellent job of establishing how these forms all exist in their shared space, as well as how they all relate to one another within that space through their intersection lines. I did catch one minor issue with an intersection in the bottom right between a cylinder and a sphere - here's my correction but all things considered you've really knocked it out of the park. Just be sure to always think about how each form's surfaces are curving,
Continuing on, your cylinders in boxes are similarly coming along well, and I'm pleased to see how well your line extensions are coming out. Just one thing - be sure to have those minor axis lines penetrate all the way through the ellipses, rather than having them start at the center point.
Moving onto your vehicle constructions, I am ecstatically pleased with your work. You've done an incredible job of demonstrating not only that same strong grasp of 3D space, but also an inordinate degree of patience and care as you work through all of the tedious steps of building these from the ground up. Starting with your simpler vehicle constructions, you've really established how the core structure of each vehicle can be simplified to its main components.
When you get into the more developed vehicle drawings, there's immediately one issue that jumps out at me. It's not particularly significant in the long run, but it does technically deviate from the instructions, and in doing so, shifts your focus more towards producing polished, attractive end results, which can be a bit of a distraction. As explained in the 'About your Tools' section from the lesson, you should not be switching to a different kind of pen or going back over your drawing to separate your "final result" from the construction. Obviously it can be quite tempting to do so, but that is not what we're really concerned with in this lesson, or in this course. The construction is what is most important. The way you handled those earlier, simpler constructions was perfect - the more developed drawings simply involve taking those constructions further, but not altering your methodology.
Now I'm not sure if this is a result of that choice or not - as the shift towards thinking more about the end result can often cause students to skip some steps - but I did notice that when you deal with some of the curving forms in your constructions, especially the cars, you tended to jump ahead a little without appropriately laying down the structure to support it. It certainly came out really well regardless, due to your strong grasp of 3D space, but it's important to remember that everything we do in this course - even right up to this lesson - is an exercise. When we skip steps and focus on the end results, it's because we're treating them more as performances, but the real goal here is to ensure that the student understands how to continue practicing, and how to continue progressing. That's why taking each step is critical, because those steps are what help impose the manner of thinking that we're trying so hard to push down into our subconscious. Here's a rough example of the kind of structure that should be underpinning your more organic curves. Build everything up with boxy structures, because those are the easiest tool with which we can capture the clearly 3D structure of our constructions. Then, towards the end, we round it all out, adhering closely to that scaffolding.
Of course, it's easy to forget that when you're already doing an amazing job with the drawings themselves.
Now, aside from that, you're doing great. There are still plenty of ways in which you're applying the principles of the lesson, and you're using those techniques - like the one using ellipses to create a grid to a specific proportional scale - to excellent effect. Despite the few skipped steps, you're also doing a fantastic job of capturing the specific character of each car, something that is quite challenging to achieve.
So! Having gone over your work, I have found you deeply worthy. I will go ahead and mark this lesson, and with it the course as a whole, as complete. Congratulations!
Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.
The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.
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