Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
9:25 AM, Monday September 13th 2021
Hi!
Ellipses in planes and Table of Ellipses have become my warmup. Now let's tackle this famous 250 boxes challenge!
Congratulations on getting through lesson 1! It looks, in a word, pretty.
Lines: They look clean and confident, and straight. The frayed lines fray like they're supposed to. I see just a bit of bend in the longest lines, but am not sure if that's camera distortion (you can check with a ruler). The tighter curves look a bit tricky, but if you're practicing ellipses, that should clear up.
Ellipses: The also look clean and confident. I notice you do more than 2 passes on some (usually 3, but up to 4). When you do these in warm ups, just stop at 2, even if you figure you can get it "better" by doing 3rd or 4th pass. Feel free to ghost a bit more, if that helps.
Boxes: These all look great. Confident lines, just a few diverging lines that should converge.
As a fairly minor nitpick, I noticed that it was difficult to get a variety of rotations in the first set of organic perspective, but you did better on the second set.
I did notice that even on the second set, the close corner is in the middle of roughly all the boxes--all 3 branches of the "y" are about the same length. It's as if you stuck a rod through that corner and spun the box around that axis. There aren't really boxes where you mostly look at, say, two of the sides, and the third is angled more away. You'll learn to rotate the boxes' "yaw, pitch, and roll" by adjusting the starting "y shape" when you do the 250 boxes. (Here is a 2 min video defining those terms if you aren't familiar. It's about aircraft, but the idea of different rotations applies to boxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IkPWZjUQlw )
Anyways, this all looks fabulous, and good luck on the 250 boxes.
Next Steps:
Absolutely go forth to the 250 box challenge! You are totally ready for this.
Note the different ways you can rotate boxes in all 3 dimensions by changing the y shape (there's a tool that gives arbitrary y's linked in the 250 box explanation, and it's super helpful for learning to create a greater variety of boxes).
When you do ellipses in warmups, keep that confidence and lovely shape, and stop at 2 passes.
Lines: double check that your long lines don't have a curve to them if you do line warmups (it's hard to tell if I see a curve, or if that's just camera distortion).
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.
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