25 Wheel Challenge
3:49 AM, Wednesday December 21st 2022
Finally done with the 25 wheel challenge. Ready to move to the final lesson! Lets draw cars!
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8:41 PM, Saturday December 24th 2022
Starting with the structural aspects of the challenge, overall you're doing pretty well and are producing fairly solid structures, though there are a couple issues I want to call out.
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For the majority of your constructions here, you've stuck with a fairly straight cylinder. That is appropriate for some wheels/tires (mainly the ones with really hard rubber, like what you'll find in very large vehicles), but for most tires we want to have the center cross-section get larger, creating a profile that arcs as shown here. This can be difficult to achieve with a more limited set of ellipse guides, but if you have to choose between achieving a shift in the degree along the cylindrical structure, or having a greater variety of sizes, go with the latter. due to the limited depth on most of these wheels, the actual degree shift isn't as big of a loss if it isn't included.
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There are definitely areas where your linework appears to fall away from the core principles of markmaking from Lesson 1. For example, like number 24 where your rims/spokes are quite sketchy, and 7 where the linework you use for the larger chunks in the tire tread are haphazardly executed. This undermines the solidity of your structure, and is a pretty big priority throughout the entirety of this course.
Continuing onto the textural aspect of the challenge, one of the purposes this challenge serves is to kind of catch some students - specifically those who due to being as far removed from the textural principles from Lesson 2 forget about those principles - end up forgetting to convey their texture using implicit markmaking, focusing on the use of intentionally designed shadow shapes, and so on (as summarized here.
In your case, your results here are a bit mixed. I can definitely see that you were thinking about conveying many of your tire tread textures with shadow shapes, which is a step in the right direction, although there are places (like number 7) where you define your textural forms using explicit/constructional markmaking. In the cases where you do work with filled black shapes, you tend to also use those filled areas to define the side planes of your textural forms (as we see in 25 and 24) which is not quite what we're after. This is more akin to form shading, where the orientation of the surface dictates whether it's lighter or darker. Instead, we want every filled area of solid black to define the relationship between the form casting that shadow, and the surface receiving it. This requires us to pay attention to the relationships between those forms, and to actively design those shadow shapes, rather than simply filling in the shapes that are already present in the drawing (like the side planes of your forms).
It's not an uncommon mistake, but it is something that we need to be quite attentive to. One thing that can help with this is intentionally using a two step process to make our shadow shapes. First we create an outline for the shadow shape. This step allows us to think purposely about the specific shape we want to design (which in turn requires us to think about the relationship between the form casting it and the surface receiving it). Then we fill that shape in. When we attempt to do it all in one step, we're more likely to think less about that spatial relationship - instead we're prone to just auto-piloting and filling things in.
Another situation that can cause a similar issue is when dealing with the kinds of textures that involve grooves, cracks, or holes. Because these are the things we can name, we tend to think of them as being the textural forms in play. This is not the case however - they're an absence of form. So where a student may be prone to simply filling them in without really thinking too much about it, what we should actually be doing is considering the structure surrounding those void spaces - the "walls" of the holes - as the textural forms which cast shadows upon one another, and onto the floor of the holes. This concept is demonstrated in this diagram.
Ultimately a lot of it comes down to ensuring that you're actively taking the time to identify each individual textural form, and to understand how it relates to the surfaces around it, so you can design a shadow that appropriately captures and establishes the relationship between them. This takes a lot of time, and patience. When we get impatient, we're prone to falling into the easier (and less correct) application of texture.
Now, as I mentioned before, it's a trap that I expect students to fall into, so I won't be holding you back over it. Just be sure to review that texture material before completing the course, and be sure to slow down and take more time in thinking through which marks you're putting down, and what they represent.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto Lesson 7.
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