It's likely that the pens you're running into issues with have nibs that are damaged (this can happen from applying too much pressure and smushing the tip into the page). And of course, as a nib gets damaged, we tend to respond to it by applying more pressure, which then increases the damage, turning it into a bit of a vicious cycle. Setting those pens aside as they start to get a little more damaged is best, if it's an option, as you can use pens that aren't working at their best in sketches for your own work outside of the course, but if we continue using them for the homework it can impact the mechanics of how we actually execute our marks, which in turn impacts the value we get out of the exercises.
Anyway, jumping into your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, by and large these are done well, with my only real concern being the ellipses themselves and their tendency to be more stiff and uneven in many cases. I assume that some of this is coming from your pen troubles, although I do also want to remind you of the importance of both drawing your ellipses using your whole arm from the shoulder (when we slip down to the elbow or the wrist, that can definitely cause our ellipses, especially the larger ones, to stiffen up), as well as the importance of employing the ghosting method when executing those ellipses as discussed back in Lesson 1.
Aside from that, this first set is coming along quite well. There's just one other minor point I want you to keep in mind - I say it's minor because you appear to adhere to it well throughout most of your challenge, but you may only be grasping it on an instinctual level rather than a conscious one, as it is contradicted in a couple cases. What I'm talking about is the relationship between the two "shifts" our ellipses encounter on either end of the cylinder. That is, the shift in scale where as we move farther away from the viewer the ellipse as a whole shrinks in scale, and the shift in degree where as we move farther away from the viewer the degree of the ellipse widens. These two shifts represent the same thing - the rate of foreshortening, which helps the viewer understand just how much of the cylinder's length is measurable right there on the page, versus how much exists in the "unseen" dimension of depth. The more dramatic the two shifts, the more foreshortening there is.
In most cases, you correctly maintain a clear relationship between these two shifts - as the shift in scale becomes more extreme, so too does the shift in degree become more extreme. One case where this is not the case however is 145 on this page, where the farther end is dramatically smaller in overall scale, but maintains close to the same degree. In order to convey a more consistent rate of foreshortening, that far end should be much wider, much closer to a full circle.
Of course, this is a minor point, and that you picked up on this in general is a very good thing.
Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, you've done a great job. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).
Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.
In applying your line extensions as mindfully and fastidiously as you have here, and in reflecting upon what that analysis told you as you clearly have (based on the steady improvement in your results), you've helped train your brain in judging those proportions, and you should be well prepared for what the next lesson covers.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto Lesson 6.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
