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10:55 PM, Friday May 6th 2022

Your current website layout is definitely a big improvement (at least in terms of making it easier to critique), so I thank you for that. I'm not worried about not being able to click on them to enlarge, since I can technically still do that by opening the images in a new tab - but this definitely simplifies the critiquing process by reducing the number of steps I need in the vast majority of situations.

Jumping right into your form intersections, your work here is definitely demonstrating an improving grasp of how these forms engage with one another in 3D space. There was just one little thing that caught my eye - when you define the elliptical intersection between cylinders and boxes, where you're placing that ellipse itself may need a little extra consideration. Here I've highlighted the intersection in question. Ostensibly that cylinder is only intersecting with one of the planes, resulting in that elliptical intersection line, but if that's the case, then the intersection line should remain within the bounds of that plane (since it sits upon its surface) as shown here. Alternatively, the cylinder may be intersecting with two planes - that same front plane as well as the side plane - in which case the cylinder would actually be protruding out of the side of the box, as shown here.

All in all it's a pretty minor mistake, but it is still worth mentioning.

Continuing on, your cylinders in boxes are on the right track, but it appears you're not applying the additional line extensions for each ellipse, and have only extended the box's edges. Be sure to review these notes here so you can apply this exercise in its entirety. The line extensions are quite important for it, because they're what allow us to gauge the proportions of each box, and how far off we are from achieving ends that are proportionally square.

Moving onto the first set of vehicles - the "form intersection vehicles", you're doing well, although you've actually gone well beyond what was asked here. The purpose of this exercise was to basically do the same thing as the form intersections exercise, but with the forms themselves arranged such that they roughly match the layout of a particular vehicle. So cylinders for the wheels, a few boxes for the body, that sort of thing. While it's admirable that you jumped in as far as you did with building up your 3D unit grid, that was more something expected for the last set of vehicle constructions. Either way, no real harm done.

Continuing onto the detailed vehicle constructions, there's two main elements to your work here, and I'm going to address them in turn. First, the way in which you've approached your constructions - building up those unit grids, establishing your proportions, using subdivision in order to meticulously identify the correct location for each element... You've done a great job there. That matters, a lot - it's at the heart of Lesson 6, and that's no different here, except that it's pushed much farther, and you've held to that well.

The other element however, is the actual linework you've used to draw the vehicles. Where the initial grid and subdivision is all clean and precise (you've obviously used a ruler there, which is great), the actual linework for the vehicles themselves is extremely haphazard and sketchy. We can see this throughout your drawings, but in specifics, here in your coastguard demo drawing, and here in the car at the end. You're going back over the same areas over and over, without the planning/preparation of the ghosting method - and even when you merely need to put down a straight line, you don't seem to be reaching for a ruler when you really should. As a whole, it looks very much like you've forgotten the principles of markmaking from Lesson 1.

Of course, I know for a fact that you haven't. Whatever happened here, it was a wrong turn, and these things happen. To summarize, there are two main problems:

  • When freehanding your marks, you're not holding to the concepts from Lesson 1 (principles of markmaking, the ghosting method, etc.)

  • When a line is suitable to be drawn with a ruler, you don't appear to use one when drawing the vehicle itself. You only seem to use a ruler when drawing the bounding box, which is not a restriction or limitation that was mentioned in the lesson. In fact, you're entirely encouraged to user a ruler.

Now, this is easily corrected, because I've already seen you draw your linework far more conscientiously in the past. So, I'm going to assign just one page of revisions below, so you can correct this.

Next Steps:

Please submit 1 more page of vehicle constructions. I'd like this one to be another car. With every mark that you can use a tool to draw, you absolutely should. For everything else, use the techniques you've learned throughout this course, and do not sketch haphazardly. Execute your marks mindfully, one at a time, with appropriate planning and preparation.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:12 PM, Wednesday May 11th 2022

https://www.jasonbui.com/drawabox-lesson-7-part-2

I drew an Audi R8.

I realized two things about my drawing process while completing this:

The first is that I draw so many construction lines that I end up having a hard time drawing the actual car. By the time I finish my construction lines, there are so many lines that I have a hard time placing the parts of the car.

The second is that I tend to chicken scratch the actual car because I want to those forms to be darker to so they stand out on the page. If I don't emphasize those forms, I get lost among my construction lines.

I could draw fewer construction lines but then I would lose the shape of the car. I'm not sure what to do here.

Do you think that I diagnosed my problem correctly? Do you have any tips on dealing with this issue?

These are my thoughts but as always I'll let you be the final judge.

10:15 PM, Wednesday May 11th 2022

So I do understand where you're coming from, and I'm not going to have you do another round - but there are definitely still some points to consider when it comes to how you're approaching this.

  • Firstly, your reasoning is fair - those construction lines are already quite dark (a ballpoint generally allows far more variation in just how dark the marks are, allowing us to be a little lighter with the earlier lines as shown here in another student's work. This is something we avoid in earlier exercises, but the fact that we're executing these with a ruler makes a significant different. We avoid drawing faintly earlier in the lesson for two main reasons - we don't want it to impact the trajectory of the line (from being drawn more timidly), and we don't want to trace back over them in a hesitant fashion. The ruler addresses both of these, by allowing us to execute a smooth, consistent stroke without issue, and to be able to use that ruler again should we have to go back over these lines. All that said, it's likely you may have used another kind of pen that provides more consistent marks (a gel pen perhaps).

  • Secondly, the main thing that sets chicken scratching apart from other manners of markmaking is the lack of preparation/planning, resulting in less control, and more separation between the marks. We can go back over our lines as you attempted to do, but it requires a lot of time to do so with accurate control and confidence. The separation of your lines suggests that you did not put enough time into each stroke, and it's easy enough to imagine how that phase may have gone down. Most students wouldn't be inclined to take too much care with adding line weight, given how long they'd have already spent. But, of course, that doesn't make it correct.

  • Thirdly, you could have gone over the straight lines using your ruler - plenty of opportunities to do that to yield an improved result.

I definitely think given these points that you can yield far cleaner, less messy results, but I don't want to hold you back further over something that is essentially a series of choices that can be made about how to approach the drawing.

So! You may consider this lesson, and the course as a whole, as complete.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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