Lesson 6: Applying Construction to Everyday Objects

2:24 AM, Thursday August 20th 2020

Lesson 6 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/gpyGhAV.jpg

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Hello uncomfortable, hope youve been well.

I have finished lesson 6 with a ton of struggle and help from others, I tried to push myself with the last two submissions but it ended supperr bad ... Id really like to know what I did wrong with the last two in particular since they look the worst to me haha thanks for the critique as always! :)

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9:28 PM, Thursday August 20th 2020

Alrighty, starting off with the form intersections, there are just a couple things to keep in mind here:

  • Most notably, your choice of adding hatching lines to certain surfaces (like the spheres) was not a good call. Any lines that sit on the surface of a form function like contour lines, in that they describe how that surface warps through space. If it's a flat surface, no problem. Straight hatching lines will just continue to make that form feel flat. But straight hatching lines on a rounded surface will flatten it out, so all your spheres ended up reading more as flat circles. Same thing goes for your cylinders on the last page. In general, I'm not really sure what the hatching lines were meant to add to the drawing - it's important that you understand precisely why you're adding any lines you choose to draw, and what they're meant to accomplish. Don't just put marks down because you feel you're supposed to.

  • You didn't do this too much, but don't forget that you want to avoid forms that are more stretched out (like the pyramid on the first page), as explained here. Some of your cylinders get a little longer in some places but it's mainly that pyramid which is a problem.

Moving onto your object constructions, I think it makes the most sense to go through these one by one.

Starting with the pencil sharpener, there are a few issues here, but for the most part they come down to taking more time in the planning of every line, before actually executing it. The box you started with itself wasn't entirely correct - this is pretty normal though, we do our best to judge a proper box construction, and then move forward with what we've got. More importantly however, once the box was in place, the alignment of the ridges along the side were pretty far off, as shown here. When drawing each line, you need to look at all the other lines in the existing construction that ought to be converging towards the same vanishing point, and use them to determine how the next line you're adding needs to be oriented. Since you're allowed to use a ruler for this lesson, it should be easier to judge what the alignment will end up being before you actually execute the stroke - it's just a matter of investing a little more time before actually making the mark.

Next, the laundry machine's initial box is definitely better (not perfect, but much better than the pencil sharpener), but again the subsequent lines aren't really lining up all that well. One that stands out the most is the minor axis for the ellipses. That line should be converging towards the left horizontal vanishing point of the box itself, but it seems to shoot off on its own trajectory, suggesting that you weren't necessarily thinking about how exactly it should be oriented.

Moving onto the radio, the first thing that jumps out at me is that your construction isn't centered correctly. You've got a large overall box, presumably with speakers of the same size on either end, but as shown here, the radio proper in the middle is off center, suggesting that the speakers are of drastically different sizes. Please review the mirroring technique from the notes, as these would have been quite useful here, to set an arbitrary size for one of the speakers, then mirror it across to the other side.

I also noticed that the overall enclosing box is again pretty far off the mark here, with the top face being notably smaller than the bottom face. You likely need to be practicing your freely rotated boxes a lot more, in case they haven't been a consistent part of your warmup routine.

Now, while there are similar issues moving forward, I'm getting a little happier with the crane machine. Yeah, you've got alignment issues where I frankly don't think you're putting the time into each individual mark to properly identify other similar lines against which to base the orientation of the mark, but as a whole you appear to be making better use of those techniques (mirroring, subdividing, etc.) here.

Looking quickly at the two cylindrical objects - the spray can and the fire extinguisher, I'm seeing that same issue as the radio again, where your box gets larger as it gets farther away, implying that the lines are diverging as they move away from the viewer, rather than converging.

The old washing machine was an interesting structure, and definitely a challenging one. I think you handled the core cylinder fairly well, as well as the structure along the top. The pipe along the left side however should have made use of the branches technique from lesson 3 in order to maintain a more consistent width through its length. The erratically changing width made it a more complex shape, causing it to appear flat. Secondly, for the feet, I would have built it out with a basic box base first, before placing one of the 'legs' at each corner of said box base. This would have helped you keep their position in space more consistent and cohesive.

Lastly, your mouse was honestly pretty well done. Again the enclosing box wasn't perfect, but the resulting object still feels solid and sturdy. It's probably the best drawing of the whole set.

Now, you do have a number of things to work on:

  • You're not thinking enough about how every individual line you're drawing ought to be oriented on the page. You have full freedom to work with a ruler, which means you can place it on the page and move it around to think about how the resulting mark will be converging with or diverging from the existing lines. Take advantage of this, and don't jump into actually drawing the marks too quickly. This is by far the biggest issue, and it impacts your overall enclosing boxes, as well as the subdivisions you draw within it.

  • Don't guess. The subdivision and mirroring techniques may be tedious, but they're there so you can pin down the specific locations of where you're going to draw certain features with precision. It means you're going to put down a lot of lines (using ballpoint pen can help with this), but it's worth it. Don't try and cut corners - if you even suspect subdividing a little more will help, do it.

I'm going to assign some additional tasks for you to complete.

Next Steps:

To start, I want you to do 25 subdivided boxes, as shown in the 'advanced exercises' section of the 250 box challenge. I want you to subdivide each box into 16 pieces (what is basically shown in the thumbnail for the video).

Then, I want you to do 4 more object constructions. Focus on boxier objects - they can have cylinders, but don't go for things like the computer mouse, as that is not where your weakness lies.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:29 PM, Monday August 24th 2020

thanks uncomfortable. sorry for the question, i tried to ask the discord but i didnt get any answers and im not sure if i wanted to wait and see if someone would reply to me so hopefully its okay to ask here but how exactly do you subdivide it into 16 boxes? i can do it once or twice but after that i dont know where to put my next lines.

http://imgur.com/a/v9Jyc0T

8:44 PM, Monday August 24th 2020

This is demonstrated in the video, but also in the notes from lesson 6. Basically once you subdivide a plane into 4 quadrants, each of those quadrants is itself a plane of its own. You just repeat the same process, drawing diagonals across each quadrant to find its center.

12:34 AM, Thursday August 27th 2020

https://imgur.com/a/y1e2gLe

i tried to draw two as a sample, and also i had a small inquiry on my second one, when the subdivision lines dont exactly match up do we push foward with the mistakes (even if they are extremely off?) or if its off by a lot we can fix them? i know we arnt suppose to correct our mistakes but if its super off, wouldnt it ruin the drawing exercise if you cant do it correctly?

ive been trying to "compensate" for my mistakes but im not sure whether if im doing it right by correcting my mistakes if that makes sense. i think im confused between compensating mistakes vs which mistakes i need to push through

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