To be honest, i dont know whether i'm not thinking enough or that i'm overthinking too much that i confused myself.
Anyway, here's my submission for lessons 7. I hope imgur doesnt messed up the order of the picture.
i put numbers below the pictures in case it happens.
Thank you for your time, looking forward to the enlightenment.
Starting with your form intersections, there are quite a few issues here (I've marked out corrections here). Part of it is definitely overthinking things - I can see that there are areas in which you're thinking through the spatial problems correctly, but others where you overcomplicate things. Back in my critique of your Lesson 6 work, I provided some advice on this front which I feel you may not have given enough attention more recently, and I can see some mistakes that do suggest that you may have forgotten those points. While I'm going to leave you to review that feedback, I am going to quickly mention the main things to remember:
Intersections are made up of the interactions between separate surfaces or planes of a form. There's no "cylinder-sphere" or "sphere-box" or other form-to-form specific formula for solving the intersections. Rather, it's about breaking each form into its individual faces, and determining how and where they are to intersect.
This diagram which I'd shared with you in Lesson 6's critique demonstrates how we can look at the individual pieces of a given form, identifying the parts that are relevant to a given intersection, and then solving them one by one to establish the whole.
Additionally, while most of the time your linework was fine, I definitely did see places where you may have not been applying the ghosting method in its entirety, or to the best of your ability - sometimes you'd go back over lines repeatedly, other times your lines would be a bit wobbly as a result of a hesitant execution. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
Your cylinders in boxes are looking good, no issues to note there.
Continuing onto your form intersection vehicles, I should note that you actually ended up applying this exercise incorrectly. It's not actually a huge deal, and not something I hold against students (you're not the only one making this mistake, so it's something I'll have to demonstrate more directly in the future) but in essence, the exercise is really just the form intersections, but with those primitive forms arranged in the likeness of a vehicle. A few boxes for the cab, cylinders for your wheels, etc. What you ended up doing was really much the same as the later vehicle constructions. So, I'll be treating them as being work done for the same section.
Across your vehicle constructions, your work is a little mixed. There's a lot you're doing very well, and there are definitely some constructions that stand out as really applying the principles of construction as shown in the lesson, with subdivision and actions that lean heavily into precision in most cases (working with planning and making decisions ahead of time, rather than working in a reactionary fashion in response to how things are panning out) - for example, this tank and this fighter plane.
That said, this level of precision isn't necessarily present in all your constructions. For example, this half-track personnel carrier stands out quite a bit especially due to the extremely loose and rushed nature of its orthographic/proportional study - which, it should be noted, appears not to include its rear section. Additionally, there is not actually a lot of precision here. You've put down a rough grid, but there are many specific elements that have no clearly defined position within the grid, as I've marked out here. If you were to work off this orthographic plan, you'd end up using a lot of arbitrary guesswork at the time of construction.
While our goal with these orthographic studies is to basically decide at which distance along a given dimension every feature will be placed (for example, that sloping hood might start at 5/12ths of the way up, and end at 7/12ths. These are not accurate, but in actually making a clear decision it is precise, allowing us to move onto the construction with a clear idea of what we're trying to achieve, without the need for estimation after the fact.
Ultimately the construction itself was still solid, and you built up your construction well - but keep in mind that the approach, down to how we use the tools like these orthographic plans, do help us make more effective use of the exercise as a whole.
Another point I noticed was that in this construction, if we look closely we can see that your ellipses actually don't touch the edges of the planes that enclose them. While this is understandable, in that our ellipse guides are rarely so perfect as to be able to fit snugly inside of predefined planes, by starting with the ellipses and building our planes around them, we can avoid the limitations of the more limited ellipse guides we may have. This way the ellipses dictate where everything else goes. This is especially useful given that it's these ellipses that determine the scale and proportion of the grid as a whole.
To that point, I've been noticing that you appear to have been starting with the whole box first, by approximating it, then building up your grid inside of it. This results in you then cutting pieces off after the fact, which can be avoided by simply using the constructing to scale approach from the beginning, rather than as a later step.
Now, while I think you're applying the core construction of your vehicles well, I do feel that it's these preliminary steps, and how you employ your proportional studies/orthographic plans that hinders you, and that's definitely something I want to hammer out before we call this lesson done. I'll be assigning some revisions below.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
2 pages of form intersections
3 pages of vehicle constructions with orthographic plans. One of these must be a car, but the rest can be of your choosing.
When working through the vehicle constructions, I would like you to write down the date of each day you worked on it, along with a rough estimate of how long each session was. I'm not sure if you're already spreading your work across multiple days, but if you aren't, I would strongly recommend that you do. These kinds of constructions are very demanding in how much time they require of us, if we are to execute them to the best of our current ability.
Hello, here's my revision for lesson 7: https://imgur.com/a/6gKWKLE
I hope you dont mind me asking this, but i have somewhat a hard time subdividing planes into odds number like 7, 9 , etc, As was seen on the car 3 otographic, i kinda just mirrored the plane until it have 7 equal plane. I dont know if its a valid approach of doing it, so im going to ask this just in case.
i attempted (3 times) to copy the exact method that you post a link to here https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/AndreasAronsson_DividingEqualParts.pdf
the (1/7)
but i always ends up with 8 equal plane, and i dont know why, its so weird.
Also last question, outside of drawabox, is drawing the whole box first than cutting or carving the box a wrong way to approach drawing ? its somewhat easier for me to do that rather than constructing to scale, but if its a bad/wrong method, than i will not do it even outside of drawabox.
Anyway, i'm sorry if im asking to many questions, i hope i dont take too much of your time.
Thank you.
So all in all your work is definitely looking much better. The last one definitely went pretty haywire in terms of the proportions, but I think that was primarily because something went wrong in your approach. I can see a lot of little discrepancies (lines being a little off, little gaps, etc.) that if done frequently enough could throw off one's proportions quite a bit. That said, it's hard to say whether it was just these little inaccuracies (which are also inevitable since we're not perfect robots) were the main issue or if you misjudged some of your lines at some point. Can't really tell without seeing the earlier steps before more of the linework was put down.
That said, as shown here your measurements are definitely quite drastically off on the length dimension, which caused the construction to come out very stretched.
Regardless, you handled the first two really well, and they definitely show a marked improvement over the previous cars, so I am by and large pleased with your growth.
As to your question, in my own demonstrations when I need a very specific proportion (using those ellipses to start, as in the constructing to scale approach), what you describe is what I demonstrate. That is, I establish one unit cube, then I transfer that measurement back in space, rather than starting big and subdividing. This allows me to control the proportions of the final enclosing box, whereas starting with a big box and subdividing it (working from outside-in) has us picking the proportions instinctually from the beginning. Both approaches have their strengths and their applications, and as far as the exercises themselves go, the latter gives us a greater opportunity to approach subdividing, but in this lesson the approach shown in the constructing to scale video fits better.
That said, all I can really say is that if you're trying to apply the odd-numbered subdivisions and they keep coming out even, then you're definitely following the steps incorrectly. I obviously can't speak to that without actually seeing an attempt, but one thing you might do is to try the simplest odd-numbered subdivision (thirds) and see how that turns out. If it comes out incorrectly, send me your attempt (no construction inside of it, just the subdivision). If it comes out correctly, try the next one up (fifths) until you run into one that doesn't come out right. It is ultimately a matter of figuring out which step you're missing.
As to your last question, there are no "right" or "wrong" ways to approach drawings. After all, what we're doing in this course is not a formulaic approach you're going to apply to all of your drawings. Every single construction is an exercise, designed to develop your spatial reasoning skills, and to arm you with tools that you ultimately will decide how and when to use.
It comes down to understanding the nature of each tool, and what each one does and does not give you. For example, starting with a larger box then cutting it to size is not wrong - it just leaves you with additional chunks outside of your drawing. It also results in less accuracy - which again, is not wrong, just a factor of the approach. Starting with a larger box means eyeballing its proportions. Then, cutting into it further to make alterations still relies on eyeballing. Whereas the constructing-to-scale approach gives us more accuracy to match specific proportions.
That said, whether or not an approach is easy or hard is irrelevant. Just like what was discussed in Lesson 1 in regards to drawing from the shoulder, the fact that drawing from the shoulder is hard doesn't mean it's wrong. It also doesn't mean it's always the right tool for the job. But what it does mean is that you're less likely to do it, given that it's difficult, even if it is the right tool for a specific situation. And so, you need to work at it in order to get comfortable with it so you're not picking at the path of least resistance each time.
And with that, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson, and the course as a whole, as complete - so congratulations! One last thing though. Based on your questions, I think it would be a good idea for you to give the videos from Lesson 0 (which you may not have seen given that their current iterations were released in this calendar year) to more fully understand how what you've learned here is meant to apply to your drawings as a whole, and how Drawabox is just a series of exercises designed to develop a specific set of skills, rather than to teach you how to draw in general.
Stan Prokopenko's had been teaching figure drawing as far back as I can remember, even when I was just a regular student myself. It's safe to say that when it comes to figure drawing, his tutelage is among the best.
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