Lesson 7: Applying Construction to Vehicles

11:43 PM, Sunday January 8th 2023

Drawabox vehicles: Lesson 7 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/52QccZC.jpg

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And after a whole year... hello again! This lesson took a LOT of willpower but I am here to say I am finished and proud!

This really was the final boss of exercises, it destroyed me. However I feel like I can comfortable sketch vehicles after all that work, so I am very grateful for that.

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10:22 PM, Thursday January 12th 2023

Congratulations on sticking through it! I can definitely imagine how long a year must feel as you gradually chip away at something like this - but I'm glad you held to it, and you've definitely got a lot here to be proud of as a result. At a glance I don't see any overt issues (though perhaps I'll notice something as I work through the set in my critique), so this will probably mostly be a matter of acknowledging what you've done well.

Starting with your form intersections, you've done an excellent job of demonstrating a really solid grasp of how these forms relate to one another in 3D space. Your intersection lines are spot on, demonstrating a clear understanding of the relationships between different flat surfaces, flat and curved surfaces, as well as the most difficult curved-on-curved intersections. Your linework is also really clean and you're demonstrating excellent control.

Similarly, your cylinders in boxes are very thoroughly analyzed with those line extensions, and you're clearly getting better and better in your estimation of the proportions of those boxes to ensure more squared ends. I can also see that the basic convergences of your boxes' edges are coming along great.

Throughout your vehicle constructions, you've got a good spread of simpler constructions and those where you've really demonstrated your capacity for patience, care, and precision. In all fairness you kind of overestimated what was being asked for the form intersection vehicles - as explained here it's really just the form intersections exercise, but with the forms arranged in the layout of a vehicle. Not a huge issue for what we're doing here, but the constructing-to-scale and proportional stuff isn't really necessary here.

That said, I do want to take the opportunity to mention that when we do our proportional studies (even though this one was for a form intersection vehicle and so precision isn't a huge concern), precision is the name of the game, and so it helps to try and identify all your major landmarks, deciding exactly where along a given dimension a specific landmark should fall. So for example, as I've shown here, there are a lot of landmarks you're leaving to be eyeballed/decided while you're doing the construction. In all fairness I end up doing this a lot too, but ideally we want to define as many of those landmarks, making clear decisions for where they fall, as possible separately from the actual construction. Note that these are decisions - it's not about finding what's most accurate (because that's not always going to fit into easy subdivisions), but rather deciding where you want to round. So for example, the peak of the rear windshield where I noted that you could round that to the 3/4 mark which was close by.

Continuing on, your more detailed vehicle constructions are fantastic. You've gone to considerable lengths to flesh them out, and while you didn't necessarily make those landmark decisions on the orthographic study itself, you definitely made them while applying subdivision to the main construction, which still places the point of decision making at a separate moment than actually drawing the marks, so that's still good. The further back we push the decision, the better, but the main focus is separating them from one another.

One small thing I did want to note is that wherever possible (specifically when doing drawings for this course), try to reserve your filled areas of solid black for cast shadows only. Avoid filling in existing shapes/surfaces with black, and always think about how those shadows' shapes are designed based on the relationship being defined between the form casting them and the surface receiving them. Filling these areas in relates more to form shading, which as discussed here, we try to avoid using in our drawings for this course.

Aside from those very minor points, you've done really well, and have absolutely earned the right to say that you've completed this course. Congratulations, and I wish you the best on whatever you intend to pursue going forward.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
4:33 AM, Tuesday January 24th 2023

It’s late but I want to say thank you for the critique, and thank you so much for running this course! I started because I couldn’t understand how to draw a cylinder in perspective, and now I have the confidence that I can draw plants/animals/vehicles, as long as I take the time to understand how the forms work! That feeling of confidence is really special to me so thank you again, I could feel it happening as I went through the exercises. (A whole 193 pages of blood sweat and tears)

Thank you again, and onwards to more learning :)!

6:26 PM, Tuesday January 24th 2023

Thank you for the kind words!

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