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French curves and elipse guides

1:40 PM, Sunday October 18th 2020

Hello everyone,

I have slowly worked my way top to lesson 6, where I can use french curves and elipses. For those of you who have been using them for lesson 6 and beyond, is it worth it?

The biggest weakness I see in them is the fact that there are only so many different elipses on an elipse guide. But when drawing, you have to adapt to exactly what you have - if you made a box of a certain type to carve it into a cylinder, maybe your elipse guide will not have the exact size and degree of the elipse you need. What do you do then?

Are there any good instructions to utilizing french curves/elipse guides?

Which elipse guides/french curves are worth buying?

Thanks in advance,

MisterSpades

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9:31 PM, Sunday October 18th 2020

I didn't find much use for either in lesson 6 but the ellipse guide at a minimum is very useful for the wheel challenge and beyond. Since you're taking the official critique route, you should be aware that if you opt not to buy an ellipse guide, you might be asked to redo part of the wheel challenge or lesson 7 if your ellipses aren't tight enough.

12:38 PM, Monday October 19th 2020

Thanks for the reply! I decided to get them in the end, since I will be forced to learn a new tool and I can focus on the meat of the exercises and not have to worry about my elipses looking like crap.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
PureRef

PureRef

This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.

When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.

Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.

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