Welcome! Let’s look through this~
Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking a little wobbly. Remember that our #1 priority here is confidence, and that it’s fine for a line to be a little inaccurate (so, in the context of this exercise, for it to miss the guideline) in pursuit of it. I also notice that these lines haven’t been superimposed 8 times. Or perhaps it’s your pen? I feel like it might be thinner than a 0.5. Whichever the issue, I’d be grateful if you could address it. The ghosted lines/planes look a little better, and their confidence continues to improve throughout the set. Still, I have a few recommendations. First, spend some more time considering your speed. Oftentimes you’re going a little too fast; other times, taking too long to line up your pen. Be consistent. Also, plotting start/end points for their non-diagonal center lines was the correct thing to do- you should’ve stuck with that!
The table of ellipses exercise is okay. They’re not quite as confident as we’d like them to be, so definitely continue pushing them in that respect, but it’s a good start. Again, the best way to go about this is to ghost a lot, and become comfortable with the motion before committing to it. Also, see if you can lift your pen off the page at the end of your rotations, rather than flicking it off- it’ll get rid of those tails. The ellipses in planes exercise is where the lack of confidence starts to become a problem. This isn’t a surprise, considering how this exercise has you thinking about the 4 sides of the plane, in addition to everything else, but it doesn’t change the fact that anything relating to accuracy is to be thought of after our smoothness/roundness is in check. In the context of this exercise, this means that a confident, circular ellipse that overshoots its bounds is correct, and one that doesn’t, and is wobbly, isn’t. The funnels exercise has more of these same issues, and I also notice that you’ll sometimes continue adding ellipses when there’s no minor axis to align them to. Aligning them to it is the entire point of the exercise, so I’d not recommend that. Either extend the axis, or stop there.
The plotted perspective exercise looks good- well done. The rough perspective exercise is a bit of a mixed bag. The convergences themselves are fine, and the line-work is confident, but it’s also a little sloppy. There’s a lot of automatic reinforcing (re-drawing of the same line over and over), and there’s a frame in particular (page 2, frame 1) where you’ve phoned it in a little bit. Try to do your best on each exercise, please. Nonetheless, most of this is well done. The rotated boxes exercise is incomplete. You’ve only gone as far as this step, but, as you’ll notice, there’s more. The organic perspective exercise looks good, the boxes being of a similar, shallow foreshortening, and consistently increasing in size, but it seems like you missed (or ignored) the instruction about framing your composition, and having multiple frames per page. I won’t tell you to re-do this, but you have cheated yourself out of some much-needed practice. Before I send you off to the box challenge, I’d like to see:
Next Steps:
1 page of the ellipses in planes exercise, where your priority lies in the smoothness/roundness of your ellipses, first and foremost, and the rest of the rotated boxes exercise.
Hi Benj,
Thank you for the feedback! I had to take some time off due to other obligations, but I really appreciate the depth of your critiques and so I went back and tried to apply what you said to the revisions. As you said, I definitely overlooked the multiple frame compositions in the organic perspective exercise so I made sure to go back to do that again. I felt like I made a significant improvement on the ellipses exercise after keeping in mind the "roundness" of my mark-making, but felt like I deviated a little in my mark-making and technicality on the rotated and organic boxes. It felt like I was trying to take into account too many things at once so that's definitely something I want to focus on going into the 250 boxes.
Please let me know if there is anything else I should look back on / redo. Thank you again!
Best,
Yang
Hi! Congrats!, both exercises are much improved, though both could stand to improve even further (I’ll tell you how in a second!) For now, I’ll be moving you onto the box challenge. In regards to your question, that’s very much expected. After you complete the box challenge, you’ll have a much better understanding of the purpose each line in a box serves, and that aspect of the rotated boxes exercise will be much easier to understand.
Now, in regards to the ellipses in planes exercise, though they’re quite a lot more confident, there’s still the occasional ellipse that starts off a little stiff, then stabilizes, and there’s a few that haven’t quite been drawn through. I’d spend a little longer on the ghosting stage, not committing until I felt 100% ready, and when I did commit, I’d be mindful of my marks, still, to make sure I’m lifting my pen off the page at the correct moment. As for the rotated boxes exercise, it’s clear that you were a little overwhelmed here, judging by the errors in spacing, and the fact that a bunch of the boxes haven’t been drawn through. As mentioned, this is very much expected, so it’s not anything to worry about, just something to keep in mind for next time. For now, all we’re looking for is an exercise which has been seen through to the end, and this has.
Well done, once again, and good luck in the challenge!
Next Steps:
250 box challenge
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.
