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7:33 PM, Sunday June 28th 2020

Drawabox is at its core about teaching a number of concepts (all of which are listed back in this section of Lesson 0). One of them is patience, and through it, discipline.

Patience isn't something we're born with. Just like any other skill, it's something we develop over time. It's true that there has to be a conscious effort towards developing it, but it's fair to say that Drawabox tries pretty hard to force it upon its students.

I get that you're really eager to get to lesson 7, but it is that eagerness and enthusiasm that can cause us to feel like the task we're doing at this very moment isn't important, that it has no direct connection to what we're interested in learning, and therefore doesn't deserve the kind of focus and respect we'd apply if we were truly being serious.

Cylinders are boring, but they're not easy. Drawing one in a single minute, as the others in the patreon channel mentioned to you, is pretty quick. It suggests that you're not necessarily thinking about where you're struggling, nor focusing on actually making each one better than the last. Because of this, we don't really see much improvement between the cylinders at the beginning of the challenge, from those at the end of the first section. Your ellipses are still pretty loose and not particularly well defined, your foreshortening is still reversed (far ends frequently larger than the near ends - not intentionally, and I understand why you may have misunderstood but we have indeed been over the basic principles of perspective a fair bit up until this stage), and your lines still tend to have gaps between them. I don't see any of the tell-tale signs of the ghosting method up until you start drawing your boxes, either.

The cylinders you included in your response are showing a little more mindfulness, though there is still a lot of room for growth in both tightening up your ellipses, and in generally taking your time. I can see that you're applying the ghosting method to the minor axis line, but for some reason not to the side edges of the cylinders. Your everyday object drawings are also looking nice, but again - that isn't the lesson we're on right now, so I'm not concerned with them at this stage.

While there is plenty of room for you to see improvement with your cylinders which I've mentioned above and in my critique, I am primarily reassigning the entire challenge so you buckle down and complete it. So you can prove to yourself that you can complete the task ahead of you regardless of whether or not you feel it to be important. You have after all had faith in my judgment up until this point - I can see that you're uncertain as to whether you should continue, or whether you should move onto something else. That is ultimately a choice for you to make, but this is what I believe to be based on the experience I've had thus far, the necessary course of action.

As a side note on the topic of foreshortening - make sure you explore cylinders of different kinds throughout the challenge. Cylinders with shallower foreshortening (like those in the screenshots you showed) are still important and challenging because of how we can very easily mess up and make the far end appear larger than the closer end. Similarly, cylinders with more dramatic foreshortening are important too. Like in the box challenge, try and keep an even mix throughout your work.

I'd also recommend focusing some of your warmups as you do this on the ellipse exercises. As I mentioned previously, you do need to work on tightening up your ellipses whilst maintaining confident, even shapes, otherwise the cylinders you build with them will appear vague and loose rather than solid and believable.

8:49 PM, Sunday June 28th 2020

Thanks for the help, for the side edges of the cylinders I have been applying the ghosting method but you said there were no signs of it, should I do start and end points on the sides and then do the line?

9:51 PM, Sunday June 28th 2020

Yup, putting down the start/end points are a part of the ghosting method. It's not just a matter of ghosting through the line and then drawing, it's about breaking the mark making process into three distinct stages. First you plan out your mark (determine precisely where it needs to fall, find a comfortable angle of approach, etc. then you prepare by ghosting through the motion, then you execute with a confident, hesitation-free stroke. You don't have to add big noticeable points, but when dealing with a straight line, putting down small marks where the line is to start and end helps a lot when it comes to planning out exactly where that line's going to go.

In terms of understanding how the ghosting method works and what it's all about, you may also want to read this response I gave to another student.

9:26 AM, Monday June 29th 2020
edited at 9:39 AM, Jun 29th 2020

I've tried to incorporate what you've said, im sorry I keep sending these updates I really just don't want to get to the end of it and then have to do 750 cylinders, i still feel i'm struggling a lot with aligning ellipses with larger degrees on the minor axes, and i've been ghosting the side lines, it also took 1 hour 9 minutes and I did a 15 minute warm up before starting: https://imgur.com/a/bfEhylB, thanks!

edited at 9:39 AM, Jun 29th 2020
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