Lesson 6: Applying Construction to Everyday Objects
11:21 PM, Monday January 18th 2021
Hello!
Here is my lesson 6 again. Thank you for your time!(:
Very nice work as always! Starting with your form intersections, you're demonstrating a strong understanding of the relationships between these forms, which carries over into intersections that are pretty accurate throughout. As always, the forms also feel cohesive and consistent with one another, within their shared space.
Continuing onto your constructions, you've shown considerable patience and care in the application of your subdivisions, and really in pinning down all of the elements of each construction with considerable specificity. With this lesson introducing students to the concepts of such granular draftsmanship, it's not uncommon for students to have... well, let's just call them "limits". Where they'll hit a certain point, decide they're all tuckered out, and that they'll just eyeball the rest. Such students ramp up their patience steadily, eventually being able to knock out the careful construction demanded by the vehicles in lesson 7, but they have a bit of a trek to get to that point.
You on the other hand are there already, and I am not at all afraid to say that.
Now, there are a few issues that are worth pointing out, so it's not all sunshine and roses. Only mostly.
Jumping down to your vive headset, I definitely noticed that your linework here isn't quite as tidy as many of your other constructions, with a number of places where you've gone back over lines multiple times, resulting in something of a rougher, less solid overall appearance. In terms of some of your curvature, like this section, you arguably jump a bit too far from the existing structure, and get close to sacrificing its solidity. As explained here, curves are dangerous territory. It's always best to pin them down as closely as you can with straight edges, before rounding them out at the end. In situations where we push beyond the bounds of our set construction, we really need to weigh whether or not it's worth it. The goal at the end of the day is always the illusion of solidity first, and accuracy to our reference object second. Or third. Maybe fifth.
Really anything that potentially undermines solidity - even correcting mistakes, as you did with the base of your desk lamp, as well as towards the tracking ring of your vive controller, is generally not going to be worth it. I definitely understand that ellipses are very challenging, but sometimes you just need to commit to a stroke and hope for the best (after ample ghosting). Definitely avoid situations where you box yourself into putting down a lighter, more experimental ellipse, only to trace back over it with a more committed stroke. You'll often find that committing with the original ellipse is a better bet.
Anyway, I'm still of course extremely pleased with your results, and at this point while I'm not entirely nitpicking (linework is of course very important, and we want to avoid anything even resembling an underdrawing/cleanup-pass sort of approach, and focus always on these drawings as exercises and not much more than that), you clearly grasp the concepts of this lesson and are applying them quite effectively.
Unfortunately because I'm an Oculus user, as per Facebook's terms of service I am required to send you back to Lesson 1. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto the 25 wheel challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 7.
Lol. No no, I am fully aware that the oculus (and in particular the controllers) is far superior to the vive having been an oculus user as well. How I ended up with a vive and losing my Rift is a long winded unfortunate series of events TT
Thank you for a very encouraging and thorough critique!(:
Marshall Vandruff is a ubiquitous name in art instruction - not just through his work on the Draftsmen podcast and his other collaborations with Proko, but in his own right. He's been teaching anatomy, gesture, and perspective for decades, and a number of my own friends have taken his classes at the Laguna College of Art and Design (back around 2010), and had only good things to say about him. Not just as an instructor, but as a wonderful person as well.
Many of you will be familiar with his extremely cheap 1994 Perspective Drawing lectures, but here he kicks it up to a whole new level.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.