There are indeed a lot of issues here, and I think at least some of the difficulties you faced came down to a number of the choices you made, in terms of how you set out to tackle this challenge.
First and foremost, you've just drawn way too many on each page. This works against you in a number of ways:
Drawing small inherently makes it more difficult for one's brain to sort through spatial problems, and makes it harder for one to remember to draw from their shoulder. This makes you sloppy.
I get that you were trying to fill up each page to get the most out of it, but the result was a lot of clutter. It's possible with some exercises - like the planes exercise from Lesson 1 - to fill up the page completely, and to do so in a structured, organized manner that promotes structure in how we think about approaching the exercises, the result here was very much the opposite. The pages became chaotic, and with that chaos, your brain responds by being more chaotic and haphazard, forgetting what you know and what you've learned throughout this course, and focusing only on the most basic actions of making marks, often without nearly as much thought as you should be employing. This, again, makes you sloppy.
Secondly, your linework is very messy. I'm not sure if you're attempting to use the ghosting method, but either way you're really not employing it correctly. I'm not going to dwell on this one, but I do think a refresher is in order. As I mentioned to you back when I marked your Lesson 5 work as complete, I've been working on a complete overhaul of the lesson material. It's very, very slow going, but at the moment I have the Lines section of Lesson 1, along with the main Ellipses lecture completed, both with updated notes and newly recorded videos, with live demonstrations so you can see my arms moving as I draw.
I'd like you to go back to Lesson 1 and go through the new material. I will also be assigning some of the Lesson 1 exercises (which as always you should be doing as part of a regular warmup routine, so you should be plenty familiar with them) with the revisions - though I definitely want you to rewatch/reread the instructions for those as well.
Anyway, linework and cluttered pages aside, let's look at the cylinders themselves.
For the first part (the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes), there are a few issues that come up:
It seems you're more or less drawing the ellipses on either end of each cylinder at the same scale, resulting in side edges that are parallel on the page, with no foreshortening whatsoever. In the assignment (as pictured here), I specifically did mention that you should be varying the rates of foreshortening between shallow (far off vanishing point with gradual convergence) and dramatic (closer vanishing point with more rapid convergence). Note that what you did here was neither of these - it's a complete absence of foreshortening. This would only really occur when the form is specifically perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight - since we're rotating these freely in space, it's unlikely that we'd end up with this configuration. There should always, therefore, be some convergence.
Based on your hatching (which itself is pretty sloppy - take more care and patience in applying it, being sure to stretch each line from edge to edge, avoiding overshooting or undershooting), which I assume you're using to mark out the end closer to the viewer, you frequently (though not always) mark the end with the wider ellipse as being closer to the viewer. This is incorrect. The farther end is always the wider one. While this is explained in many places throughout the course, I made a point of explaining it in the new lesson 1 ellipses video, using physical discs to demonstrate why. Now it's worth noting that you get this wrong about as often as you get it right - which suggests to me that you seem to be picking an end to fill in with hatching at random.
As a side note, the shift in degree from one end to the other is always going to be roughly the same as the rate of the shift in overall scale, from one end to the other. Meaning that you're never going to end up with a significant shift in degree and no shift in scale, or vice versa. They are both ways in which the foreshortening is represented.
I'm honestly kind of confused as to what you're doing with your corrections. I'm assuming that the blue lines are indeed the minor axis corrections, but you've got them stretching across the entirety of the cylinder. Since you end up with these lines overlapping both ellipses, it becomes very visually confusing and hard to parse. Note that in the notes I don't draw the arrows overlapping both ellipses. The only line that stretches that far is the original minor axis line I drew when constructing the cylinder in the first place. From what I can see, you're doing way more than what's shown in the notes where I address how to check this section of the lesson for errors.
For your cylinders in boxes:
The same points about linework stand. It's all very loose, and it's very clear that you're not investing as much time as you could into executing each and every line to the best of your ability. Instead, because you have so many cylinders to draw, you're allowing yourself to invest less time in each one. That's not how this works - each mark takes as much time as it demands, regardless of how complicated the drawing is, overall. This is discussed back in the ghosted planes exercise.
I understand that the error checking for this exercise is complicated, but it looks like you just tried to do the same error checking approach as you used for the first section. This section uses an entirely different technique, which starts with applying the same kind of line extensions used for the box challenge. I explain this error checking technique starting around this timestamped link of the cylinders video. Like I said - this one is definitely much more complicated, but the fact that you just tried to apply the same technique to both parts of this challenge, I suspect you may have gotten confused, and conflated both parts together.
Now, we're going to get back to these cylinder exercises, but before we do, I think it's best for you to do some Lesson 1 exercises first, because they are the blocks upon which this challenge are built - and those blocks are extremely rusty. I'll list your revisions below.
Next Steps:
Here's what I want you to do:
Read/watch the Lines section of Lesson 1
Read/watch the Ghosted Lines exercise instructions
Read/watch the Ghosted Planes exercise instructions
Do 2 pages of the Ghosted Planes exercise
Read/watch the Ellipses section of Lesson 1
Read/watch the Ellipses in Planes exercise instructions (these aren't updated yet - they will be in the coming weeks)
Do 2 pages of the Ellipses in Planes exercise
Read/watch the Funnels exercise instructions (again - not updated yet, but they will be in the coming weeks)
Do 2 pages of the Funnels exercise
I cannot stress this enough - the complexity of a given task does not change how much time you need to put into each and every mark. The task ahead of you determines the pace at which you work, not how quickly you'd like to complete it.
Also, note that for each of the exercises above, there are full realtime recordings of ScyllaStew working through them, which will show good pacing. You'll find links to her recordings in the description of my instructional videos, as well as at the bottom of the instructions pages, under the audio recordings sections. They can be extremely helpful, as many students have a tendency to rush, and seeing someone else spend hours on a seemingly simple exercise can remind them that it's okay to just take your time.
Hopefully these pages look better.
As far as I am able to tell most of the planes look fine but,
I still had trouble with the ellipses and funnels.
I'm not sure where to go from here...
If these were submitted as part of Lesson 1, they'd all be pretty solid. Plenty of room for improvement, but definitely moving in the right direction.
Your ghosted lines definitely have the capacity of being straight and smooth, although it varies as you still have quite a few that waver somewhat. This begs the question, what exactly changes from one line to the next? Some lines are shorter and others are longer - this is a very common factor, and struggling with drawing particularly long segments is going to be hard one way or the other. We still do however see wavering with some of the shorter ones though, like this one from the top right of this page.
There are other possible factors, but these are only things that can be known from actually watching how you draw. So either you can assess this for yourself, or perhaps if possible, perhaps you could record yourself from the neck down, as you work through some of these exercises. Anyway, here are the other factors that come to mind:
Are you rotating the page for every mark, to find a comfortable angle of approach
Are you drawing from your shoulder, using your whole arm
What kind of environment are you working in - do you have a relatively clean space, a proper desk, and is your chair the appropriate height such that you can rest your hands face-down on the tabletop and have your elbow set at a 90 degree angle?
Are you investing as much time as you need into each and every step, and are you making good use of that time by going through all of the steps of the ghosting method? Generally I'm seeing you putting points down for the 4 corners, but not as consistently for the midpoints of those edges when drawing the cross through the plane's center.
As a whole, your ghosted lines are okay but considering that you've been working on Drawabox for as long as you have - and therefore I can only presume that you've been practicing these exercises as part of a regular warmup routine, it seems fair to expect improvement on these fronts.
The same goes for your ellipses - while there is a tendency to stiffen up a little more when dealing with larger, more awkwardly shaped planes, you're still doing okay with the more straightforward ones. You're drawing your ellipses with an amount of confidence, and while they all appear to have a certain degree of looseness to them that I'd expect to be tighter (again, assuming you've been practicing them all this time as part of a regular warmup routine), they are all roughly functional for our purposes. I'd just push you to keep forcing yourself to draw more confidently, prioritizing the evenness of the shape over getting it to fit snugly in a given space, and to keep working on tightening up those ellipses when drawing through them (also, limit yourself to drawing through the ellipses 2 full times before lifting your pen, rather than going for 3).
I've referenced the whole "practicing them as part of a regular warmup routine" a lot, and the reason is this: If a student understands what they should be aiming for, which you appear to, then they will likely demonstrate a sort of hit-and-miss spread of results. A good chunk of it will be pretty good, with some issues present as well. It almost seems like "the luck of the draw" where whether or not it'll come out well isn't entirely in the student's control.
Practice takes that understanding and allows the student to build up their consistency. With more regular practice (whilst frequently reviewing the instructions to avoid forgetting things), we start executing things as we intend them more often, and make mistakes less frequently. If of course we don't practice all that frequently, then this consistency doesn't develop. I can't really speak to whether you do in fact practice these exercises multiple times a week, and have been doing so for the 1.5 years since you first tackled these exercises, but the results themselves don't suggest that you have.
I'd like to hear your own thoughts on this. How frequently do you do your warmups, and what do they consist of? What I mentioned previously - a recording of you actually drawing something like ghosted planes - would be extremely helpful if you are indeed practicing these things regularly, as there may be some key misunderstanding that is getting in the way, which I cannot identify through your work alone.
I understand that not everyone can record themselves drawing easily, but a cheap mini-tripod and a phone, or even some other person present to record you, can make this much easier.
I'll leave you to answer those questions and provide a recording (if possible), and we'll move forward from there.
• Are you rotating the page for every mark, to find a comfortable angle of approach
I tend not to rotate the page enough. I usually try to keep things upright. If I don't sometimes I find it harder to refind the vanishing points when it comes to perspective.
• Are you drawing from your shoulder, using your whole arm
Yes, for the most part. Very small lines/ellipses are difficult to draw like that though.
• What kind of environment are you working in - do you have a relatively clean space, a proper desk, and is your chair the appropriate height such that you can rest your hands face-down on the tabletop and have your elbow set at a 90 degree angle?
My environment is clean and it feels like I have enough space. I am able to set my hands face down and have my elbows at a 90 degree angle. I feel it is comfortable enough to work in.
• Are you investing as much time as you need into each and every step, and are you making good use of that time by going through all of the steps of the ghosting method? Generally I'm seeing you putting points down for the 4 corners, but not as consistently for the midpoints of those edges when drawing the cross through the plane's center.
That is not something I know. Sometimes I think I'm taking too little time other times I think I'm taking too long or wasting time looking at something that isn't relevant.
How frequently do you do your warmups, and what do they consist of?
Not frequently enough. I spend a lot of time doing warmups outside of class related material (IE Gesture drawing, portraits, and a couple of other things). I need to refocus on perspective related materials because I'm still having trouble.
Most of my warmups are ellipses in planes and funnels and sometimes boxes but, not much else.
What I mentioned previously - a recording of you actually drawing something like ghosted planes - would be extremely helpful if you are indeed practicing these things regularly, as there may be some key misunderstanding that is getting in the way, which I cannot identify through your work alone.
I have no tripod for my cellphone and no one else is around here so I needed to use my webcam on my desktop and record it through OBS. Unfortunately the files are incredibly large since I'm not sure how to properly compress them.
I also hosted on them media fire since that was the first decent file host I came across
Ghosted Planes (almost 853 MB / 5:11 )
https://www.mediafire.com/file/cip3ym9rbo0qks2/1+Ghosted+Planes.mkv/file
Funnels (635 MB / 4:07)
https://www.mediafire.com/file/f0rw6j4va9b2efs/2+Funnels.mkv/file
let me know if you want me to record more.
Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"
It's not magic. We're made to think that when someone just whips off interesting things to draw, that they're gifted in a way that we are not. The problem isn't that we don't have ideas - it's that the ideas we have are so vague, they feel like nothing at all. In this course, we're going to look at how we can explore, pursue, and develop those fuzzy notions into something more concrete.
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