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9:23 AM, Saturday March 23rd 2024

Nice to hear from the man himself!

I followed this weird numbering scheme because I was facing this issue where I chose some cylinders to include in the homework, but on a second look I decided not to include them because I had spares that were better (drew quite more than 150), so I had to revise the numbers for all subsequent cylinders, and because I wanted the numbering to be penciled in rather than adding it digitally, I had to erase and rewrite the numbers. Basically the moment I decided to drop or include a cylinder that previously wasn't, I had to horse around with the numbering a lot. So I numbered them this way and now it doesn't matter if I choose to drop or include a cylinder as the sequence isn't numerical anyway (but they are presented in the correct chronological order on the imgur album).

I drew a handful more than 100 cylinders in boxes, so I numbered them normally. And since the extension lines of one cylinder were quite close to those of another, I decided to uploade complete pages. Although in doing so I was a bit worried about the color accuracy, focus and resolution, it seems to be just enough. It was probably difficult to make a distinction between the magenta extension lines and the red lines for edges of the boxes themselves.

I have a really hard time drawing an ellipse two full times in a single run. For some reason my brain either always wants to fall short on that or go overboard, but it's rarely ever two full times. And when I do go overboard it seems I've undermined the work done with the first full ellipse.

I did feel that I couldn't get a lot of variety in my angles in the 100 cylinders in boxes, and it seemed largely due the constraint of a pair of opposite faces being a square, which of course they need to be if we want to draw cylinders in them.

I have to say, the one example of drawing cylinder in a box that was included in the lesson material was a very odd angle. I found it very difficult to identify the "Y" of that box as two arms of that Y were almost conjoined as a single straight line on account of one face of the box being quished into a tiny sliver due to the angle.

Thanks again.

5:23 PM, Saturday March 23rd 2024

Two things to keep in mind, then:

  • What you described about doing extra cylinders is grinding, which goes against the spirit and instructions of the course. I'd recommend reviewing the material (mainly the video) on this page of Lesson 0, as it explains that you should only be completing the assigned quantity of work. This newer overview video for the box challenge which was released last month also discusses grinding and further defines what we consider to be grinding, and what we don't.

  • Insofar as having trouble drawing through your ellipses, it's perfectly okay to struggle with something as long as you continue to make the effort to do it - as that's the only way such things become easier. It's fairly easy to slip into the mindset that we'll avoid doing something because it's difficult, but ultimately everything we seek to learn starts out that way. If you find yourself undershooting, try to draw through a little further to counterbalance it (which hopefully your brain will continue to overshoot, accomplishing something closer to two full turns). Then later, if you find yourself overshooting too much, do the opposite - this is similar to the solution to arcing lines that's explained in the ghosted lines exercise page. That is, where we intentionally try to draw a line arcing in the opposite direction. Over time this rewires the brain's understanding of the relationship between the intent, the action performed, and the result achieved.

2:51 PM, Tuesday March 26th 2024

I see.

I didn't plan on doing the extra cylinders. It just happened that when I stopped to take count I found out that I drew more than what was asked. So I thought might as well select the ones that are objectively better.

3:17 PM, Tuesday March 26th 2024

I see. In that situation I would probably stick to submitting those that are most recent instead. Picking those that appear better overall skews the data set, whereas picking the most recent gives me a more accurate sense of the full gamut of where you are right now, and has a better chance of highlighting issues that may be present.

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How to Draw by Scott Robertson

How to Draw by Scott Robertson

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