Lesson 7: Applying Construction to Vehicles

10:51 AM, Thursday March 25th 2021

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Hello,

This is my submission for the Lesson 7.

As always, thank you for your critiques!

Charles

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8:55 PM, Thursday March 25th 2021

Starting with your form intersections, your work here is looking pretty good. The intersections between the forms show that you're clearly grasping the relationships between these forms as they exist in 3D space. The only minor point I wanted to call out was that when you deal with intersections between rounded forms - like a sphere and a cylinder - you approach the intersection line correctly, but it tends to be a little more timid. Try to push yourself to be a little more intentional with how you draw your curves. It's quite easy to end up in the situation where one's uncertainty can result in less purposeful marks - so first make sure you think about how you want to design a given curve, and then execute it. We're most likely to end up with more timid, less intentional marks when we try to do the thinking and execution at the same time.

Moving onto your cylinders in boxes, I did notice one pretty significant point - there is absolutely no foreshortening on these boxes. Given that none of them are oriented such that they're sitting perpendicular to the viewer's own angle of sight (which would result in some of the vanishing points going to infinity, as discussed back in Lesson 0), there should at least be some foreshortening for these sets of parallel lines. Just ignoring vanishing points altogether and opting to keep the lines that are parallel in 3D space, parallel as they're drawn on the page, is incorrect. It basically tells us that the boxes have a size of 0 in each dimension (since there's no change in scale from the close end to the far end), but we can clearly see that this is not true. This results in a visual contradiction, and undermines the viewer's suspension of disbelief.

Now, all that said, as we move into your actual vehicle constructions, I think you've largely done a pretty good job, although there are some drawings which are better than others.

Most notably, some of your earlier drawings - specifically the cars in 3 and 4 - have two main issues. Firstly, the assignment for these initial drawings was to basically just be like the form intersections, but arranging your major primitive forms. So it's not about actually drawing the cars, but rather exploring the core simple forms that could be used to start fleshing out something in the likeness of a particular vehicle.

The second issue is more based on the fact that you did attempt to draw the cars themselves, but in some areas tried to capture certain levels of complexity that didn't really have the structure to support them. In this regard, the Delorean was honestly fine. The other one however (Drawing 3) ended up with certain elements - like the windows, the door handle, etc. that felt like they were kind of guessed at, instead of being pinned down through more extensive structure being put in place first.

Fortunately, you definitely did a much better job at laying down structure in drawing 6. Here it's not only that you extended all of these lines off into the distance (and you showed a solid ability to work without necessarily having the vanishing point in the frame, but instead relying on the convergences between the lines going off to the left), but you also kept all of your constructed forms very specific, pinning down curves that don't feel vague or estimated at all.

Touching on what I said about not necessarily having to work with vanishing points on the page itself, I do think there are some drawings - 9 and 10 specifically - where you limited yourself to drawing the actual object quite small on the page in order to either give yourself a more concrete vanishing point, or just to extend those lines far more than was really needed. Giving yourself more room on the page is extremely valuable, and I definitely feel that motor cycle suffered for having all of its construction crammed into a smaller space. Of course, perhaps it wasn't the vanishing points - I imagine it could have been a limitation of your ellipse guides, in which case that would be understandable.

Now you definitely do jump back and forth between being really conscientious about your construction (laying down all of the structure/lines necessary as you do in drawings 6 and 7) and being much lighter on that structure in favour of relying more on estimation as you do in the boat in drawing 11. Relying on estimation like this is very much not in the spirit of this lesson, and as a result, many students end up spending 5-10 hours (some even more) per drawing, pinning every last little bit of structure down so that each and every detail they add is firmly grounded with precision.

I can clearly see that you are capable of doing that, but that you made the choice in certain cases not to do so. Normally I'd assign revisions on that basis, but in this case, I think you've made your overall understanding of the concepts, and the significant development of your spatial reasoning skills over the span of this course, fairly obvious. You do know what you're doing, it's just a matter of investing more time. For example, I can see you being entirely capable of something along the lines of this Jeep drawing by veedraws (7 hours), or this Mitsubishi Lancer by LordNed (12 hours).

Anyway, I will be leaving that for you to explore on your own. I am still fairly happy with your results, and while you definitely pushed outside of the "no form shading" restrictions for this course, I really did like the direction that covered wagon at the end was taking (even though it was notably not finished, for whatever reason).

So! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson, and with it the entire course, complete. Congratulations.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:20 PM, Saturday March 27th 2021

Thank you for your critics and your kind words!

I should have taken more time on my drawings but after laying my perspective and my major forms, I can see some big mistakes and I lose interest... adding details after that feel like a waste of time and I'm wrong because this lesson is about construction and not pretty drawing!

To fix my issues and improve my drawing, do you think I should work more on this lesson or move on to the 100 chest challenge?

6:11 PM, Monday March 29th 2021

One thing that will probably help with you losing interest is to simply break things up over multiple sittings/days. It's normal for interest to wax and wane, but there's really no reason you can't get up before you consider the lesson "complete".

To your question, I did mark the lesson as complete - so you can take that as a sign that you're doing well enough, and that you're expected to keep practicing this kind of thing, along with everything else, periodically as you move forwards into other matters. You don't have to sit here right now and grind away - you're welcome to move onto the 100 chest challenge.

8:24 PM, Monday March 29th 2021

Thanks you !

I will keep working on it from time to time, see you for the 100 chest challenge ! [In 3 months or more I think :')]

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