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Question-Lesson 2: Form Intersections Exercise

3:59 PM, Friday April 1st 2022

This is more about a method to be applied to the exercise rather than the exercise itself.

During the video Uncomfortable mentioned something about guessing where the vanishing points were and being able to get better at it over time.

At this point, should I begin making a rough guess of the VPs and let practice hopefully correct my mistakes?

My current practice is more involved, and perhaps more so than it should, but it does usually lead to fairly accurate boxes:

Current practice:

  1. After the initial "Y" setup for the boxes: Pick a point anywhere (without drawing it) and ghost in my lines for my boxes

  2. Place a dot where I believe each point of the box should be in relation to that VP.

  3. Double check by ghosting through the dot to see if it lines up.

  4. If the dot lines up, keep the dot and work on the rest of the points for the box, using the other dots to make sure the rest are lining up correctly

  5. Draw a line for each dot

  6. for the back "hidden" point of the box, use the old invisible VP's to find out where it is located, using all three visible box points as a reference.

I would hate to be wasting time on overcomplicated methodology when I could be working on other things.

Thanks

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3:30 AM, Saturday April 2nd 2022

Your approach here is correct. The thing to keep in mind is that while Drawabox focuses on developing your instincts and intuition, it does not do so by having you use them. Rather, it is through these kinds of tedious, "overcomplicated" methodologies that we train our brain to think about all of the factors at play, and it's that which pushes down into our subconscious and trains our instincts.

Training reflexes by using reflexes merely results in a malformed mess.

3:24 PM, Monday April 4th 2022

Thanks for the explanation. I will be sure to do that for the official course work.

This leads to a second question dealing with practicing and warm-ups. Using the "overcomplicated" method above during practice, how should I challenge myself in practice? Try using less ghosting and see if I get the lines sooner? Do it a little faster? Or more or less keep to the same pace?

6:56 PM, Monday April 4th 2022

You do it exactly as the exercise prescribes - although as the focus is on drawing confidently (rather than quickly), you can play with reducing your pace to see if you can still maintain confidence and avoid hesitation, while regaining some extra room for control.

That said, I think you might benefit from giving this new video, which dropped a few days ago, a watch.

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