250 Cylinder Challenge
4:19 PM, Sunday March 28th 2021
My 250 Cylinder challenge. I did it! Any comments are appreciated.
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11:05 PM, Monday March 29th 2021
So it took me a little bit to figure out the numbering on your cylinders, and the order of the files themselves, but I think I've got it now.
Starting with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, you've done a pretty good job here - I'm pleased to see that you're fastidiously checking the alignment of your ellipses, and that you're varying your rates of foreshortening. It also appears that as you increase the shift in scale from one end to the other, you're matching that with an increase to the rate of shift in the degree - so as the far end gets smaller overall, it also gets wider, keeping both signs of foreshortening consistent within the drawing.
Just keep an eye on two things:
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When drawing the side edges, I'm noticing you doubling up your marks pretty often. Using the ghosting method means a single mark for every line, and avoiding the temptation to draw an extra follow-up mark. Every single stroke should be planned and prepared for. It's just a bit of a habit.
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Keep an eye on those ellipses - you're often doing a great job, but there are definitely some that come out a little more hesitantly, which results in a bit of wobbling or stiffness. This may be a result of momentarily forgetting to draw from your shoulder. Fortunately this doesn't happen too often.
Moving onto your cylinders in boxes, you're doing fairly well throughout. There are issues (and I'll point out some of them below) but overall I'm not seeing any patterns of misunderstanding - just individual cases where either you slipped up or experimented a little bit, and it didn't turn out well. For the most part, I'm seeing you following the instructions quite well, and as a result, your estimation of the proportions of your boxes (working on getting the two opposite faces to be proportionally square) is definitely improving over the set.
One of the issues I noticed is that on page 44, the bottom left one has the ellipses floating in the plane - not touching all 4 edges of the plane enclosing them. For the top right it's similar, and in general your ellipses are a little hesitant and uneven here, likely because you're very worried about accuracy (which appears to be making your accuracy worse).
The issue of having the ellipses not touch all 4 edges comes up again in a few other places (like page 62) but overall you seem to be doing it correctly throughout most of the set.
All in all, you're moving in the right direction and are showing a good grasp of the instructions. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 6.
5:07 PM, Wednesday March 31st 2021
Hi Uncomfortable! Thank you for your feedback. I typed my reply here, but i send it as a report by mistake. Can not find or cancel it. Sorry for that ((
10:59 PM, Wednesday March 31st 2021
No worries, I got the message either way. For what it's worth, in the future treat the exercise as though it is more about learning to draw boxes that match this particular proportional requirement, rather than focusing on the cylinders. Treat the cylinders like an extension of the box challenge's line extensions. By adding the cylinder (or really, the ellipses), we're able to check how far off their own line extensions (the minor axis line, the contact point lines, etc.) are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points. This in turn tells us how far we are from matching those proportions.
Of course, this only works if we draw the cylinder such that it fits inside the given plane, as shown in the instructions.
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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.