Starting with the cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I can see that you've put a good deal of effort into checking the alignment of your ellipses from one cylinder to the next, and that as a whole you do appear to be tightening up your range as you push through this part of the challenge. That is to say, from the beginning you vary between getting very close to the correct alignment, to some that come out more skewed, but towards the end, that variation diminishes. That said, I am noticing a tendency to be a touch hesitant with your ellipses, which suggests that you're not executing them with as much confidence as you ought to. Don't forget that you should be applying the ghosting method and executing these marks from your shoulder in order to achieve the most confident, controlled linework you can. These are topics that have both been more recently revised and updated in Lesson 1 - so in case you need a quick refresher, I recommend you give them a read/watch.
A bigger overall concern I have with this first section of the challenge is that you appear to have missed a clear instruction I left in the homework section, in bold:
Be sure to vary the rate of foreshortening across your cylinders across the set.
You appear to have stuck to what is effectively no foreshortening at all, focusing on keeping the side edges effectively parallel to one another on the page. One of the basic principles of perspective is that when a 3D object is drawn in 2D, we perceive lines that are parallel in 3D space to converge (whether gradually or rapidly) towards a shared vanishing point. We use this rate of convergence to help us estimate roughly how long the cylinder is, in regards to its overall scale. If however there is no convergence at all - something that really only happens when we get a form in a very specific orientation (running perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight, something that we can assume doesn't happen much when rotating our cylinders freely) - that tells the viewer that the cylinder has a length of 0. This is also something we can visibly see to be false, leading to a contradiction.
Taking that a step further, we also want to make sure that the two signs we have of foreshortening - that is, the shift in the scale of the ellipse (which is tied to the convergence of those side edges) and the shift in the degree of the ellipse (just how much wider it gets on the far end), should be consistent. If we get a more significant shift in degree, it should be matched with a more significant shift in scale/convergence as well.
Moving onto your cylinders in boxes, it seems that there are some other instructions you neglected as well. This is explained both in the video, and in these notes - your line extensions should include those of the box, as well as the ellipse's minor axes and the lines going through the contact points of the ellipses. It is this which allows us to check if the ellipses represent circles in 3D space, which in turn help us to improve our ability to estimate the construction of boxes which feature a pair of faces that are proportionally square in 3D space.
I mean, the boxes themselves are coming along nicely, but you've definitely missed a pretty solid chunk of the assignment. So, I'll assign some revisions below. Please read the instructions more carefully in the future - and be sure to go back over them now as well. Do not rely so much on memory.
Next Steps:
Please submit an additional:
20 cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, being sure to vary your rates of convergence
30 cylinders in boxes
Hi Uncomfortable,
Thank you for looking over the submission. I'll get to work on the additional homework.
I saw the instructions about varying foreshortening on cylinders, and, er... thought I was doing it. I'm evidently very poor at doing so. Do you happen to have an example of extreme foreshortening on a cylinder? Or another student's submission that did it well?
I did misunderstand how to check the cylinders in boxes, and will be sure to fully extend the minor axis and all contact points for the next 30.
As you can see here, this student's got some cylinders where the farther end is considerably smaller than the closer end (resulting in a more rapid convergence of the side edges), and some cylinders where the scale is roughly the same.
I'm not looking for extreme foreshortening - just a greater variety. This explanation of what foreshortening is from the box challenge may also be useful, but all it really is, is the rate at which the lines that are parallel in 3D space, converge when drawn on a 2D page. You can also think of it as how close the vanishing point is placed to the object (the closer it is, the more rapid the convergence will be, the greater the foreshortening).
Thank you very much! I think I better understand what I was doing wrong now. I'll get started on the extra pages.
Hello Uncomfortable,
Here is the additional homework. Thank you very much!
Whoops sorry, I see I was supposed to reply to the original critique, not down the comment chain. Here are the revisions:
https://imgur.com/gallery/ilHBdaG
Thank you again!
As a whole, this is a significant improvement. You're following the instructions correctly this time around, and are putting the exercise to good use.
The only thing I want to point out is that your ellipses fairly frequently do show signs of hesitation, causing their shapes to come out a little less even, a little more distorted, a little wobbly. This isn't always the case, and it's usually fairly minimal, but it does suggest that you're still struggling to consider the confidence of the execution as your foremost priority. Remember that the ghosting method itself is all about breaking the markmaking process into distinct stages - the last of which, the execution, only worries about making a confident stroke using the whole arm.
I actually updated the material for the ghosting exercise (along with a bunch of other stuff in Lesson 1, as I steadily work through an overhaul of the whole course). The new video goes into the breakdown of stages a bit better than the old stuff did, so just as a refresher I recommend you review that material.
Anyway, all in all, you're doing much better than before. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 6.
Thank you very much! I'll check out the new ghosting video-- you're right, I am still having trouble with confident execution of ellipses.
Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.
The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.
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