Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
8:34 AM, Sunday April 12th 2020
That was quite the experience. I've done a lot of art yet nothing ever like that, it was a good time though.
Yo, TA qzhans here!
First, superimposed lines. You’ve in general kept a good grip on those finicky horsetails, but I see a few where there’s fraying at both ends. Remember, no matter how long it takes, slowly and precisely place your pen before making that line. I do like the amount you did here, but it seems like that contributed to some of the hairiness.
Moving onto ghosted lines, the confidence looks good here and I generally don’t have complaints. Very little arcing as well.
Your ghosted planes show a lot of the same good stuff. I also like how you aren’t afraid of your mistakes; I don’t see any redrawing of lines that missed the mark.
Moving onto your ellipse tables I like that you're keeping your ellipses tightly packed within the bounds that you've set, and drawing through reach one. In general it’s clear that you’re using your shoulder and making them loose and confident. However, I do think that you’re perhaps drawing through a few too many times; try to keep it under 3, otherwise the ellipse won’t look tight enough.
Your ellipses in planes have the same issue. I think I’m seeing just a teensy bit of deformation of your ellipses to hit those bisection points on the edges of the planes, but it’s a little hard to tell because at the moment your ellipses are kind of turning into formless masses instead of being defined by lines.
Your funnels show a good improvement in this regard, getting much tighter. They also generally do a good job of aligning to the minor axis that you've set.
No problems with plotted perspective either!
For your rough perspective, in general, you’ve kept your horizontal and vertical lines parallel and vertical to the horizon line respectively as well. However, you’ve applied the wrong method of error checking here; you’re supposed to follow the line you drew back to the horizon line, not plot the correct line back to the vanishing point. You should end up with a smattering of lines that hit close to the vanishing point but not quite. Another problem I do want to address is a little bit of degradation in your line work, with an extra line here and there, perhaps to correct some perceived mistake. Resist sketching lines, rather draw everything in one neat stroke, and if it doesn’t hit the mark let it go; redrawing will draw eyes to that mistake.
And now, the one you’ve been waiting for: rotated boxes. Before anything, I wanted to congratulate you on its completion; it's not something you're supposed to be ready for. First off, I have to address the curvilinear perspective; while it’s not done bad here per se, try and follow Uncomfortable's examples as much as possible, without copying it from observation. Even with that however, you still have the issue of not enough rotation with the boxes. If you look at Uncomfortable’s examples, the boxes towards the edge will have their faces shrunken down drastically by distortion, which is why this doesn’t quite look right yet. Additionally, the tendency to sketch out lines instead of plotting them and using the ghosting method seems to reappear here.
Finally, onto organic perspective. In general, your boxes do a good job of shrinking and growing as they move through space, but there could be a lot more overlapping here. Take a look at Uncomfortable’s example to see what I mean. There's also work to be done in getting those parallel lines to converge to their shared vanishing point, but you can iron that out with the box challenge
In general, the technical execution overall isn’t bad, but there seems to be a tendency to get a little carried away from the instructions of the lessons. There’s also places where you revert to habits instead of following the drawabox method, most noticeably ghosting. For that reason, I’d like to see one more page of rough perspective from you, focusing on nice usage of the ghosting method and refraining from sketching any lines.
Next Steps:
1 page of Rough Perspective
I wasn't sure what to expect in this critique but I am very happy with the amount of feedback I got. My bad on overlooking that one assignment, when doing it again for the follow up I did it with heavy consideration of the weaknesses you pointed out and I was flabbergasted at how the convergence points turned out. I know you guys said don't overdo it but I did a second page because I felt like I got a bit of a break through with everything you said and just needed to apply it to be sure and I feel like it helped.
Here's the link to the follow up assignment
Mattmillerink follow up lesson 1 https://imgur.com/gallery/34xEbmh
And thanks for the feedback! Don't be afraid to pull any punches, I appreciate honest critiques
Hey, these are looking a lot better! It's clear there's been a lot more attention to detail applied. You're good for the 250 box challenge now.
Next Steps:
250 Box Challenge
Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.
Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.
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