Alrighty! So, starting with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I did notice that your line quality was admittedly a bit wobbly, both in drawing your longer straight lines along the edges of your cylinders, as well as with the ellipses themselves. Now, the lengthy break since your last submission can certainly explain why you might have gotten rusty in this regard, but remember the key principles behind executing your marks. Each and every one should employ the ghosting method, and both your straight lines and your ellipses should be drawn from the shoulder.
Drawing larger is obviously hard regardless, but at this point you should have enough mileage with those exercises to maintain more consistent strokes (assuming you've been doing the exercises from the lessons you've completed previously as warmups). The point I'm mostly making here is that I suspect you haven't.
When it comes to the ghosting method, it exists entirely to help us separate the planning and preparation of our marks into separate stages, so that when we actually execute the stroke, we can do so with full confidence to avoid any hesitation. Hesitation is what causes the wobbling. I explain this in further detail in this response to another student.
Another thing I wanted to point out was that in some of your cylinders, there's a bit of an inconsistency in the relationship between the ellipses on either end of the form. There are two ways in which the ellipses differ - their overall scale, getting smaller as we move to the farther end, and their degree, which gets wider as we more to the farther end. These "shifts" should occur at the same rate - meaning that if we've got a lot of foreshortening on our cylinder, then the farther end is going to be both much smaller and much wider than the closer end. We won't ned up in a situation, like the cylinder in the middle of this page, where the far end is considerably smaller but still roughly the same degree.
Moving onto your cylinders in boxes, while your linework is still quite hesitant and wobbly here, you've applied the exercise itself fairly well. You've done a good job of working towards improving your ability to estimate boxes that are roughly square on two opposite ends, which is precisely what leads to an improvement in the convergences of your line extensions. After all, the additional lines from the ellipses (the minor axis and contact-point-lines) only align to the box's own vanishing points when the ellipse itself represents a circle resting within a face of the box. Improving the convergence of those line extensions inherently improves your judgment when constructing the box.
The line quality did somewhat impede your progress here, but all in all the exercise was applied correctly.
So, while you need a lot of work on your use of the ghosting method, you did complete this challenge reasonably well. As such, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Please be sure to work on your linework in the warmups. From this point on, you will be allowed to use a ruler and an ellipse guide, so I strongly suggest that you do so in order to avoid distracting yourself from the core purpose of those lessons, while you get your line quality back up to speed. Working on both at the same time will not be worth it.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 6.
Hello !
Thank you ! Your post on ghost is really helpfull. I am doing a full page of Ghosted planes with ellipses as warmups, is it enough ? I do it every time and I focus hard on moving with my shoulder but I am still in trouble. Tell me if you think it is a bad/not good enough warmup.
I have 3 questions : https://imgur.com/a/HhJCaSL
A
I have studied perspective with david chelsea perspective for comic book artists and Traite de perspective d'architecture interieure Charles Whorel prior to find your amazing website ! For me the alignement of minor axis (on perfect cube) is an approximating, very true with non dramatic, and more and more false with dramatic perspective. Do we agree ? Do you suggest to use it with dramatic perspective ?
B
If I have an ellipse inside a rectangle with the contact point on two lines separated equally the rectangle, my contact points in perspective will be on a line which shared his vanishing point with the side of the rectangle right ? Even if the minor and major axes will be independant.
C
I noticed you change your mind about ballpoints, should we use it in lesson 6 ? If I have different color of fineliner should I use it ?
Best regards ! You bring drawing into my life, you are a master !
Adrien
To your question about the warmup, even a small amount (whatever you can do in 5-10 minutes) is good, when done consistently over a long period of time. Just make sure that you're not rushing when you do them. If you're aiming to fill a complete page, rather than aiming to do the best of your current ability with the time you're given, then your warmup won't be as effective. Don't worry about how much you can cram into that time - focus on doing it as well as you can.
To your other questions:
A. This is correct. Just to confirm that point, I used a 3D modeling software to get some cylinders at different rates of foreshortening and plotted out the minor axes on top of them, along with the vanishing point for that dimension here. Once we get into truly extreme foreshortening (which we wouldn't really use that often in our own drawings), the rule breaks down, showing that it is indeed an approximation. That said, I would still apply that rule for two reasons:
It still looks correct even at high rates of foreshortening, to have your minor axis align to the vanishing point. That is, frankly, far more important than something being actually correct, in the context of drawing and illustration.
Breaking things down into simple rules that can be applied when quickly generating designs (where we don't have the time nor focus to expend on plotting things) allows us to work more purposely towards the end goal. There are definitely artists whose work requires highly technical and specifically correct perspective, but those are cases where the drawings are used for architecture, engineering, etc. For the rest of us, in illustration, concept art, and so on, using rules like this that are "close enough" but allow us to work quickly without any obvious errors to the naked eye are far more useful.
B. I don't fully understand what you're asking here, your wording is a bit confusing. But I can say that yes, the minor and major axes are independent of what you're doing with the contact points, at least for the most part. The major axis is entirely irrelevant here, so we don't even worry about it at all. The minor axis, however, aligns to the dimension coming off the surface of the plane, whereas the contact point lines define the two dimensions that run along the surface of the plane, as shown here.
C. If I have written it into the instructions, then it is something I allow. If I allow it, then it is equally valid as any of the other allowable choices, unless explicitly stated. I find Lesson 6 and 7 benefit especially from the freedom to use ballpoints, due to how those lessons result in much more construction and subdivision of forms. It is the same way I allow for the use of a ruler and ellipse guide here - I don't want students to get distracted needlessly by the things that earlier exercises and lessons address.
That said, do not use a different colour for your construction and then go back over it with black. The same rule applies if you're using ballpoint - you should not be drawing back over your construction as a sort of clean-up pass. Everything should be drawn with the same kind of pen, and line weight should be used in key areas to help clarify overlaps, but not to redraw your lines fully. You can look back at the form intersections from lesson 2, there are notes there about not using an underdrawing/clean-up pass.
Thanks a lot ! You answered my questions. Sorry for the bad english !
When it comes to technical drawing, there's no one better than Scott Robertson. I regularly use this book as a reference when eyeballing my perspective just won't cut it anymore. Need to figure out exactly how to rotate an object in 3D space? How to project a shape in perspective? Look no further.
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