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Is using the pen as an angle helping tool considered fair?

7:38 AM, Saturday May 16th 2020

Despite constant practice, and visible improvements in many areas, I still struggle at eyeballing angles, I just fail at placing good points, and even ghosting does not help me find out if my angle is correct.

However, once I draw the line, I can immediately tell how well I did. I can draw a red correction line freehand, and funnily enough, I am rarely off what the ruler+vanishing point tell me.

During warm-ups lately I was so frustrated by the boxes, that I tried a technique I used in traditional drawing a few years ago. I I eyeballed the line as before, placed the point, but instead of ghosting/drawing, i used the pen as my imaginary line, to gauge the angle. If it's okay, good, proceed as normal. If it's not, place another mark as seen by the pen, and retest.

The difference is huge. While still not perfect, most of the boxes are at least good enough for the lines to converge decently when checked. It does slow down my box drawing approach, but it has also vastly lowered my frustration at the results.

However, upon reviewing Lesson 1(as I do once per month), I couldn't help but feel weary when the part about following instructions to the letter came on.

Read as written, it does feel like cheating. At the same time, I feel entirely incapable of visualizing how two dots are connected with a line. I even used the connect dots warm-up as a means to train my brain to "see" the line that will come, but I've had 0 success.

So...can I use this visual aid tool, or I should just man-it-up, and accept that while I do DaB, my boxes will be terrible?

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2 users agree
8:59 PM, Saturday May 16th 2020

Honestly, go for it. Whenever it comes to determining whether or not something is going to end up being a harmful crutch, I ask myself whether or not a student would be able to do something like this in any circumstance. Given that you're just using a pen and holding it as a straight edge to check how a line is going to behave, that's something you'd be able to do regardless of the circumstances. So, I don't see it as something harmful.

3:43 PM, Tuesday May 19th 2020

Where can I learn about "harmful crutches"?" How is holding a pen up to estimate an angle different than putting on my reading glasses before I pick up my pen?

5:24 PM, Tuesday May 19th 2020

I feel like you may have misread my initial answer, where I was stating that using the pen to estimate angles was not harmful.

Whether or not something is a "harmful crutch" depends on whether or not it is something we'll be able to use in the various circumstances in which we'll be expected to use it. It's very contextual. For example, if you're deciding to use digital tools to do Drawabox for whatever reason, and end up using the various straight-line tools to do your super imposed lines exercise, that's going to be a crutch because you're not going to be able to reach for that kind of tool whenever you're drawing.

If you're using the pen you're already holding to estimate an angle, you're always going to have such a pen/pencil/whatever with which to do that, no matter what you're doing. Painting something? You've got a paint brush. Airbrushing? You can make it work.

There are however contexts where something could be classified as a 'harmful crutch', but it is still acceptable within its given context. For example, how in Lesson 1 I stress the importance of rotating your page to find a comfortable angle of approach for every line you draw throughout this entire course. Will you be able to rotate the page in every possible context? No. If you're working on a big mural, or some other large-scale piece or something that is really pinned down, you won't be able to rotate it. Eventually you'll have to learn how to draw lines in more than just one repeatable angle - but that isn't a high priority immediately, so that "crutch" is okay because it allows us to move forwards onto far more important concepts without having to sit there and grind out lines for weeks.

To that point, you'll learn how to identify crutches that are and are not acceptable as you go. It comes down to understanding the entirety of the context in which the crutch is being applied. It's a sort of understanding that comes from experience, so don't worry if you're confused right now. That's essentially why it's important to follow the instructions as they're written, and to ask questions.

5:30 PM, Tuesday May 19th 2020

very helpful explanation, thanks so much for taking the time.

5:32 PM, Thursday May 21st 2020

That is relieving to hear, boss! I hope I can overcome the need for it after practice, as my errors in estimations tend to follow a pattern (usually the front corner, by 3-5o overestimation, and 1o-2o underestimation in 4th horizontal of top plane).

Thank you for your answer!

1 users agree
9:32 AM, Monday May 18th 2020
edited at 9:33 AM, May 18th 2020

I use rotating the page as the way to estimate angles:

  • Rotate the page

  • Do a couple ghosting motions

  • If angle feels off then rotate the page again

  • repeat this once or twice to get the angle almost perfect

  • ghost once or twice

  • execute line

Making a complete box becomes just a matter of rotating the page in the right directions. I look at the part of the box that's drawn so far to tell how much to rotate the page.

edited at 9:33 AM, May 18th 2020
5:23 PM, Thursday May 21st 2020
edited at 5:40 PM, May 21st 2020

Yeah, I always rotate the page and ghost the line a few times, but it is never enough to know if an angle will come alright or not. It is almost always off by a few degrees.

Still, boss said it's not that big of a deal, so I can rely on it as I continue my journey!

edited at 5:40 PM, May 21st 2020
8:10 PM, Friday May 22nd 2020

A few degrees off is not all that much. We are only human. :-)

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