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7:39 PM, Monday April 1st 2024
Jumping right in with your form intersections, by and large these are well done. As a whole I'm seeing a well developing understanding of the relationships between these forms, including both those intersections involving flat surfaces (which at this stage we expect students to be fairly comfortable with), as well as those involving curving surfaces (which most students do continue to have some difficulty with).
There was only one point that jumped out at me - the fact that the curve here wasn't divided into two separate curves when it hit the edge between the box's planes - but looking at the rest of your form intersections work, this is something you've navigated correctly plenty of times, so I think this was just a simple slip-up.
The only other thing to be mindful of would be that your ellipses tend to be just a touch hesitant. Always be sure to execute them with confidence, from your shoulder and engaging your whole arm. I can see that you're applying the ghosting method for your straight edges, but just in case you're approaching your ellipses without it, keep in mind that it should be used for all our freehanded strokes throughout this course.
Continuing onto your object constructions, as a whole you've done a fantastic job. While you didn't include any orthographic plans (the instructions of this lesson don't specifically tell you to, so you haven't done anything wrong there, though I would definitely include them for Lesson 7), your work still makes it very obvious that they were used extensively. You've held very closely to the principles of perspective that are espoused throughout this lesson, and the orthographic plans are a very important part of that.
Precision is often conflated with accuracy, but they're actually two different things (at least insofar as I use the terms here). Where accuracy speaks to how close you were to executing the mark you intended to, precision actually has nothing to do with putting the mark down on the page. It's about the steps you take beforehand to declare those intentions.
So for example, if we look at the ghosting method, when going through the planning phase of a straight line, we can place a start/end point down. This increases the precision of our drawing, by declaring what we intend to do. From there the mark may miss those points, or it may nail them, it may overshoot, or whatever else - but prior to any of that, we have declared our intent, explaining our thought process, and in so doing, ensuring that we ourselves are acting on that clearly defined intent, rather than just putting marks down and then figuring things out as we go.
In meaningfully analyzing the proportions of our intended object in two dimensions with an orthographic study, we're able to then apply those same proportions to the object in three dimensions without the distraction of having to solve many different problems all simultaneously. They allow us to break the process out into its individual concerns, and tackle them cleanly one at a time.
I really have just one complaint in regards to how your work was approached - it's very minor in principle, but it was something that was mentioned in the instructions, so the fact that it was missed makes it ever so slightly more noteworthy. In the tools section, I specifically mention the following:
Ballpoint pen for your linework (don't switch pens to do any sort of "clean-up" pass - use the same pen through all your lines, including construction/box subdivision/etc)
The reason for this is that students often get too caught up in redrawing their linework accurately when they go back over it for a clean-up pass that they shift to thinking more in 2D rather than 3D, and they forget the principles of confident linework. In your case I don't really see you falling into that pitfall, but all the same it's important that you adhere to those instructions and avoid things I specifically call out to be avoided, because you never know which pitfall will be the thing that catches you up.
Anyway, all that said, fantastic work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto the 25 wheel challenge, which is a prerequisite for Lesson 7.
11:42 AM, Tuesday April 2nd 2024
Hi Uncomfortable, hope you are well.
Thank you for taking the time to carefully critique my work, all input is very much appreciated and the points you have raised spot on.
Regarding my hesitancy whilst drawing ellipses, I am ghosting but also very conscious of trying to over correct my curves, mid way through, as they are being drawn. Here`s hoping the 25 Wheel Challenge will help to build my confidence/commitment in this area. (It may also break me!)
I will be sure to include my orthographic plans for lesson 7, I`m glad to hear that my work reflects that they were used for this lesson too.
Onward to tools, I did only use a single black ballpoint pen for all drawings other than the 3 initial pages of Form Intersections. I did however consciously vary my pressure early on to help with readability as the number of visible lines was becoming bewildering.
Following this, one question I would like to ask if I may? If a part of a construction is not visible from the viewers perspective, and in no way helps to inform other vital aspects of a drawing, can it be safely left out in an effort to aid clarity? A good example would be the wheels on the opposite side of a vehicle, they themselves requiring many lines for accurate representation/construction. Apologies if this is covered in lesson 7.
Thanks again for your time, help and words of encouragement.
All the best.
6:30 PM, Thursday April 4th 2024
The thing about the ghosting method to keep in mind is that it's less about the act of ghosting itself, and more about breaking the process of markmaking into those three distinct phases so that when you actually execute the mark, you're doing so confidently. It's entirely possible for one to ghost through the motion, but ultimately still hesitate when it comes time to commit to the stroke. Executing a mark with confidence means pushing through and accepting that any mistake that will occur cannot be avoided from the moment your pen touches the page.
When it comes to the clarity, varying pressure, etc. the important thing to remember is that these are exercises - the end result and its clarity is less of a concern than the actual process of performing the construction. So, if in the interest of clarity we alter the exercise, then that means we're no longer getting all we could from the exercise, as it was intended.
That doesn't strictly mean that leaving an irrelevant part of the structure out is bad, or should be avoided, and honestly there are plenty of situations where I would do that myself. Ultimately the key to keep in mind is that your reference images/object are a source of information. That information is used in order for you to solve a spatial puzzle. Whether the puzzle is simple or complex, or whether it could have been complex but was pared down to be simplified - what's important is that you are performing the exercise, and working your brain through this spatial reasoning problem.
Additionally, keep in mind that we do have other tools for improving clarity. Line weight, as explained here (this video is a newer addition to lesson 1, and previously this was conveyed in a smaller demo in the box challenge), can be used to help clarify how different lines overlap one another. This is performed separately from executing the marks in the first place (so we're not worrying about how thick the lines must be when we first execute them), and it also involves adding weight to specific localized areas of lines, rather than generally throughout their entire lengths.
10:58 AM, Friday April 5th 2024
Thank you for taking the time to reply, very much appreciated and helpful going forward.
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