Lesson 6: Applying Construction to Everyday Objects

9:29 PM, Thursday June 11th 2020

Drawabox - Lesson 6 - by Reset - Album on Imgur

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Hello,

This is my submission for lesson 6.

Not gonna lie, it drove me nuts. More than once.

I don't usually add my demos, but this time I added the mouse.

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8:02 PM, Friday June 12th 2020

Starting with your form intersections, these are pretty well done - though don't forget that in the instructions, I mention you should not be using any forms that are stretched in one dimension, and should instead stick to forms that are roughly the same size in all three dimensions. This helps eliminate unnecessary complication from the exercise.

As it appears you're uncertain as to how to tackle the intersection between two cylinders, here's how it works.

Moving onto your object constructions, these are largely quite well done. You're demonstrating a great deal of patience and care in terms of subdividing your enclosing boxes as much as is needed to put down the majority of your major elements. There are some aspects that you approximate that could otherwise have been subdivided further, but your estimations based on the larger subdivisions appear to generally be well done. Still, as you get into more and more complex objects, really pushing those subdivisions to their limit and pinning down the specific location for each and every feature will be critically important - especially when dealing with things like vehicles in the last lesson.

I'm especially pleased with your hairdryer - I feel it is one of your most successful constructions due to how you responded to the challenges of working with the kinds of forms involved. There's a lot of cylinders here, but more than that, they have a great deal of tapering that adds to their complexity. Despite this, you've established each major form well, and have clearly defined their relationships in space to reinforce the solidity of the object as a whole. Very well done.

This drawing in particular was definitely among the difficult ones as well. One suggestion I'd have here is when dealing with curving tubes like this, using more cross-sections to maintain their thickness throughout (especially where they're bending) will help. Here I think the curving section got a little flattened out, due to there being nothing to actually establish the width it should have been maintaining.

The coffee grinder on this page was obviously the drawing you put the most time into hammering out all of the subdivisions and really nailing everything to the best of your ability. In that regard, it was definitely well done, but I think that in attempting to then separate your drawing from the scaffolding that supported it, you ended up making a choice that severely impacted the result. As discussed in this section, I mention that you shouldn't be grabbing a thicker pen with which to draw "final" lines. Everything should be drawn with the same pen, as this avoids situations where your line weight gets extremely thick, to the point of flattening your drawing into a series of graphic shapes. Line weight, after all, should be subtle, a matter of relative thicknesses, rather than focusing on making things overtly heavy.

Also, make sure the only things you fill in are cast shadow shapes. Don't fill in parts of the object itself because you perceive that they're black in your reference image. Local colour should be ignored.

Aisde from those points, your work here has been done quite well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 25 wheel challenge.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:10 PM, Friday June 12th 2020
edited at 9:11 PM, Jun 12th 2020

Thank you.

Yes, I struggle with intersecting cylinders, thank you for the mini demo.

It feels strange that most of those things I am aware of, yet, at times still do what I shouldn't be doing.

Like, not filling stuff in black (on the mouse that was not intentional, I got distracted when I started filling the hole) and so on.

I actually did make a point of not switching pen when I started. When I got to the grinder, it felt like "going against the rule" was justified because I thought the benefit would outweight (no pun intended) not doing it. I almost couldn't see the grinder through the construction lines, and adding enough lineweight with the ballpoint pen to distinguish the object from that many construction lines was difficult.

Thank you, for the dryer.

About the cane, I didn't think of it, but now that you mention it, adding one more subdivision at the center of that box at the top would've indeed helped, as it would've given me a "target" halfway through. It got indeed slightly flattened on the side that comes out of the cane.

edited at 9:11 PM, Jun 12th 2020
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