Lesson 6: Need some guidance on how to use my orthographic plans effectively

11:26 PM, Thursday October 17th 2024

Hello. I'm knee deep in lesson 6 and I feel like I have a solid grasp on multiplying, creating subdivisions, keeping track of lines, and I'm pretty good at making detailed orthographic views of all my objects, but I am struggling to actually use them to my advantage in constructing the 3D view. My strategy so far as been to create a + (plus) shape with the side view and front view intersecting and perpendicular to each other in the center of the bounding box, and then once both are laid in there, I draw lines out to the vanishing points and this basically connects everything and creates the actual volume. The problem is that it results in a nearly unmanageable rat's nest of lines even in ballpoint, and this doesn't seem to be the strategy that other students are employing in their lesson 6 submissions, but it's the best strategy I could come up with after following the mouse demo and the imgur album of the mouthwash. I've been avoiding slapping the orthos on the exterior planes of the boxes because these ortho views by their nature compress elements that are in reality in the distance, and so things like bottle caps which should be centered relative to the body of the bottle end up on the same vertical plane unless I treat these views as though they are cross sectional slices.

How do I leverage my carefully constructed orthographic views correctly? Thanks a lot for any assistance.

As an example, here's my attempt at creating a side view and then a 3D view of the bottle of mouthwash from Uncomfortable's demo:

https://imgur.com/a/Ug7aL9w

0 users agree
5:35 PM, Monday October 21st 2024

To be completely honest, I don't see anything wrong or incorrect with how you're approaching it. Yes, it does result in a rat's nest of lines, but that is an expected outcome of the technique, and while it is definitely a challenge to deal with, it's something students have steadily been getting more and more comfortable throughout the past lessons, starting from the plotted perspective in Lesson 1, to drawing through our forms in the box challenge and form intersections from Lesson 2, and throughout all of the constructional drawings from lessons 3-5 preceding this one. Of course, Lesson 6 marks a pretty significant jump in complexity in this regard, but again - it's intended, and expected. And as it stands, looking at your work, it seems to be something you can, with some additional focus and attention, deal with successfully.

The main thing students are missing at this point is control over proportional relationships across different dimensions. We have you start with a bounding box, but the specific proportions of that bounding box are still largely estimated, based on what we were developing with the cylinders in boxes from the cylinder challenge, which helps to refine those instincts.

That proportional control is something that comes in during Lesson 7. While we are not hesitant to saddle students with a lot all at once, we are still attentive to what we feel students can and can't take on at a given point, and so we leave the proportional stuff - like constructing a unit-sized 3D grid - to the last lesson.

Aside from that though, I'm not really seeing anything I would consider an issue - so if the big concern is just how time consuming and difficult those constructions are, that's entirely normal. Keep focusing on executing the work to the best of your current ability, allowing yourself to spread the work across as many sessions as you require, and you will continue getting as much as you can out of the exercises - which are of course all about following the prescribed process so that your brain is made to work through specific kinds of problems, which in turn rewires the way it engages with those problems subconsciously. The goal is not to create perfect/beautiful drawings right now - it's all about the process and what it does to our brains, and from what I can see you're doing just fine.

12:16 AM, Tuesday October 22nd 2024

Thank you very much. I really appreciate your response. That gives me some confidence to move forward. I’ll be sure to take my time with these and continue to do my best.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Ellipse Master Template

Ellipse Master Template

This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.

I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.

No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.