To clarify the bit about the ellipse guide/french curve set, french curves wouldn't be all that relevant here, whereas with ellipse guides it can be a bit tricky to get the right kind. I go over this in the tools video in Lesson 0, but basically the ellipse templates that feature only one degree are generally part of larger sets where each sheet is dedicated to a different degree of ellipse. There are however "master" ellipse templates which are more limited in size, but cover a range of degrees. Either way, not a huge problem here - given that the wheels themselves aren't terribly thick, if we end up with an ellipse guide that doesn't allow for a degree shift from one end to the other, it's not a huge loss. Getting a master ellipse template for Lesson 7 will be important though.
Starting with the structural aspect of your wheels, you've largely handled this pretty well, although there are a couple points I do want to draw to your attention. As for the good, you've done a good job of ensuring that the profile of your wheels (that is, the shape when seen front-on) has a bit of an arc to it, rather than straight entirely straight as it would in a usual cylinder. This helps a great deal in making the wheel structure - specifically the tire - appear more "inflated", such that it would land with a bounce rather than a heavy thud.
One area where you could certainly see some improvement is how you're thinking about structures like the spokes that comprise your wheels' rims. I can see a lot of cases where you're only drawing the outward face of those spokes (meaning not including the side planes of those forms, causing the rims to appear entirely flat). 22 is a good example of this. There are however other cases where you do include the side plane, but the way in which you have that connect with the cylindrical frame of the wheel tends to be incorrect, as shown here.
Another point that I did want to call out is that on 22, we've got an example of your non-elliptical line work being quite sloppy, not applying the ghosting method and generally falling back to chicken-scratching. This is something that I often see when a student ends up in a situation where they have to rely on less ideal situations (like for example freehanding the main ellipses). It lowers the overall standard for that exercise, giving the student the impression that since their ellipses were kinda sloppy, that they may as well be sloppy regardless - of course this is not a conscious consideration, but it's a tendency we're liable to fall into.
That makes it all the more important to always force yourself to apply the principles of markmaking from Lesson 1 regardless of the situation. To apply them consciously and actively at every stage, and not to allow your subconscious or instincts to make any decisions throughout the work we do in this course.
As a side note, I did want to mention that given your limited ellipse guide, you may have found yourself in many situations where the wheel in your reference is at a different orientation than the ellipses your template can achieve. To be completely clear, you have no obligation to specifically draw the wheel at the orientation shown in the reference. You can change its orientation to fit the ellipse guide you have, when doing this kind of exercise in the future. All that matters is that you have the information to flesh out the angle you end up drawing it at - so if your reference is primarily looking at a wheel from front-on, meaning that the rims/spokes/etc. would not be visible enough to use as reference, then that would be a bit of an issue - but if the rims/spokes are pretty clearly visible, then you can feel free to change the orientation of the wheel as needed.
Now, continuing onto the second part of this challenge - handling the texture of the tire treads - I must admit that this challenge is something of a trap. Being as far removed as we are from Lesson 2 and its texture section, it is extremely common for students to just... forget, and neglect to go back and review those concepts. This challenge serves as a reminder that it is incredibly important for students to keep up with the exercises from those lessons, even when - and perhaps especially when - those sections tend to be more torturous than most.
Overall you certainly fall into that category, in that you've relied fairly heavily on explicit markmaking (that is, outlining the textural forms themselves or attempting to draw flat patterns instead of working implicitly by limiting yourself only to drawing the shadows those forms would cast on the surfaces around them.
To give credit where it's due, there are certainly places where you've tried to consider how you might work implicitly, which we can see in this page, but there's two main issues in how you were approaching it here:
Firstly, you're still outlining (either in full or in part) the textural forms themselves in most such cases. That is to say, you are (entirely understandably mind you) hesitant to let go of the outlines of your textural forms, because it is hard to maintain an understanding of where everything is, if we don't draw or sketch them. But that ultimately is the skill we're attempting to develop - to learn how to organize and prioritize the information we're working with, to focus on small localized areas, and so on. It's totally fine for us to end up doing things wrong because we lost track of which form was where, as long as we are indeed applying the instructions as they're expressed. I will note that this area here is the closest to correct insofar as you did not start out with outlining your textural forms, you didn't attempt to lay down any structure first - you forced yourself to do it all in your head. It's still not entirely correct, for the next reason I'll call out.
Secondly, the areas you filled in with solid black weren't actually the shadows those textural forms would cast. You were filling in the side planes, which is more akin to form shading (where the orientation of the surface dictates whether it should be lighter or darker). Cast shadows specifically require us to consider the form casting the shadow and the surface receiving it, and the design of the shadow shape itself is what establishes that relationship in 3D space. What you were doing was more in line with filling in existing shapes - if you ever catch yourself tempted to fill in an existing shape without having to first design a new one, take a step back and consider whether you're actually leaning more into form shading rather than cast shadows.
Now, overall you simply need to review the Lesson 2 texture material, but I will offer you a few specific things to focus on. Do however be sure to go back over the material in its entirety.
This diagram demonstrates how we think about texture, as applied to the texture analysis exercise. It involves a texture of melted wax. The first row shows the actual textural forms as we're arranging them (although these wouldn't be drawn on the page, this is what you'd be thinking about generally in your head). When it comes time to define the shadows they'd cast (the second row), we think about one form at a time, and consider the surfaces immediately around it. For every such form, we would outline its cast shadow, keeping the relationship between the form/surface in mind as we design it. And finally in the third row, we simply fill in the shadow shapes.
This diagram shows a given texture arranged on a surface, seen from the side in relation to the actual light source. It demonstrates why the shadows on the far right of our gradients are so small - they're closer to the light source, and so the angle from which the shadow is being cast is much steeper, resulting in a smaller shadow. Further to the left however, as the distance from the light source increases, the angle of the light rays gets shallower, resulting in longer shadows. This is what allows us to achieve our gradient.
This diagram explains how to think about textures that involve grooves, holes, cracks, etc. - basically where the "thing" you can actually name is not a textural form, but rather an absence of form. Students have a tendency to just fill them in, rather than thinking about how the actual textural forms are the walls around the holes, casting shadows upon one another. The difference can be subtle, or imperceptible, but what matters of our purposes here is how the student is thinking about the forms, and avoiding oversimplifying the problem that's being solved.
And lastly, review these reminders from the lesson material.
Anyway, as this aspect of the challenge is an intentional trap, it's not something I hold students over. Do however be sure to review everything I've laid out, all of the texture material from Lesson 2, and perhaps most importantly, do not allow yourself to forget the principles of markmaking and the use of the ghosting method when freehanding your linework.
I will go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto Lesson 7.
Thanks as always for your helpful critique!
Can I just check I'm applying your advice regarding cast shadows (on this page https://imgur.com/FzVjBUE) correctly:
They're something I played about a bit a lot with on and felt that when I just did the cast shadows as shown that it didn't always convey the full shape.
Out of interest, do you tend to stick to largely cast shadows when drawing outside of the lessons? I appreciate that the emphasis here is on them as they help to understand 3D space better.
With regards to the texture on the holes shown in your diagram here https://imgur.com/SCnATRK how would that apply to the long deep thin grooves that run round the edge of an entire tyre? I assume extra line weight in the areas with less light, until running into completly shadowed areas - but would it seems unlikely even a strong light would completely obliterate their visiblity.
So the example you made in Procreate is going in the right direction, but the thing to keep in mind is that it's not enough to take a texture and simplify it into a 2D pattern that can then be repeated mindlessly as needed. A repeatable 2D pattern would have to ignore the variation in surface orientation of the object upon which the texture rests, and the relationship each individual textural form being implied has with the light source.
I have a bit of an explanation I wrote up for another student that may help... or may just make things more confusing. So before I share it, I'll state this - what you've drawn there is a step in the right direction, as you're focusing only on implicit markmaking, using cast shadows. Even if the cast shadows may or may not be 100% correct based on the forms casting them and all the variation I mentioned, by focusing on drawing your cast shadows this way, you'll gradually develop a more "correct" understanding of texture, and that'll be refined as you continue to practice it. What matters is going in the right direction, which the previous approach of employing explicit/constructional markmaking was not.
The explanation hinges around this diagram:
In the top, we've got the structural outlines for the given form - of course, since we want to work implicitly, we cannot use outlines. In the second row, we've got two options for conveying that textural form through the use of filled black shapes. On the left, they fill in the side planes, placing those shapes on the surface of the form itself, and actually filling in areas that are already enclosed and defined on the form and leaving its "top" face empty. This would be incorrect, more similar to form shading and not a cast shadow. On the right, we have an actual cast shadow - they look similar, but the key point to pay attention to is shown in the third row - it is the actual silhouette of the form itself which is implied. We've removed all of the internal edges of the form, and so while it looks kind of like the top face, but if you look more closely, it has certain subtle elements that are much more nuanced - instead of just using purely horizontal and vertical edges, we have some diagonals that come from the edges of the textural form that exist in the "depth" dimension of space (so if your horizontals were X and your verticals were Y, those diagonals come from that which exists in the Z dimension).
As to your other question, the point of the distinction about grooves/holes/etc. is that you still need to be focusing on the fact that the marks you're drawing are cast shadows, and that they are resulting from the textural forms that are present. Correctly identifying what those textural forms are (and not thinking of the grooves themselves as the textural forms, or the things you actually draw) is the key here.
So simply wrapping a bunch of cross-crossing lines around your tire and then fiddling with line weight would be incorrect, because no part of that actually involves thinking about how the textural forms at play relate to the surfaces around them.
While the result may still be the same in some cases, or pretty close in others, the point is that this is an exercise that is focused on getting you to think about those spatial relationships. The end result doesn't matter, it's the approach you use to get there and how it forces you to think. The goal is the same as it is throughout the rest of the course - to rewire how your brain thinks about the things you're drawing, as they exist in 3D space, and not to simply regard them as the lines and 2D shapes that ultimately result and make up the drawing.
Thanks - I think that diagram helps, but I am slightly confused on why there is a shadow along the bottom of the 3rd row left diagram.
I assume the light is coming from the bottom left to create the diagonal on the top, so wouldn't the light be removing all shadow along the bottom?
I guess from there, as the texture moves round the tyre and light hits different parts of it you'd get different shadows in different places which would eventually describe the entire shape of the texture.
My thinking was in my second texture https://imgur.com/a/JlGgbhG (the weird X like shape) because I've decided the light is coming from right to left, the shadows edges run horizontal to the page.
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
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