The first 15ish wheels were a mess of me alternating between freehanding, french curves, and a master eclipse guide, eventually I settled on the latter as the only thing that worked. (Image of those tools is provided, just in case I need to be corrected on that.) Took me until wheel 13 to properly start using reference, which probably shows.
As always, thank you for your time.
Before I get to the actual challenge work, I should note that the material for this lesson doesn't actually refer to french curves at all - only to ellipse guides (being the recommended option, even in the face of the more limited sizes of the master ellipse templates we recommend for the sake of frugality) and freehanding (which we strongly discourage, due to the additional cognitive resources it requires, which then leads to more distraction from the core focus of the challenge in favour of worrying about drawing ellipses, which other exercises from earlier in the course do a better job of training).
The reason french curves were not suggested for this is because they are not actually intended for this purpose. Rather, they're used to execute either single partial curves, or complex irregular shapes - they provide us with a lot of different edge paths to follow, allowing us to for example execute highly specific curves in a car, or on a particular object. When drawing ellipses, we reach for ellipse guides or freehanding because our focus there is on creating a regular, even shape.
Now, this admittedly does hinder the effectiveness of the challenge, as you ended up pursuing a tool that was never really meant to be used for it, but I'll continue moving forwards with the critique with what you've done here, keeping that point in mind. Similarly, the "Took me until wheel 13 to properly start using reference" is unfortunate - it'd be rather difficult to perform this exercise correctly without paying close attention to your reference, as would be the case for anything after Lesson 2, aside from the cylinder challenge.
Starting with the structural aspect of the challenge, I am glad to see that you've been mindful of the inclusion of a larger ellipse towards the center, to create a more arcing profile for the tire. This helps a lot to make the structure as a whole feel more inflated, as though it would land with a bounce rather than a heavy thud.
Looking at how you've approached the spokes of your wheels' rims however, I am noticing some points I wish to address. I've marked them out here.
You tend to fill the side planes of your forms with solid black. Generally speaking we want to reserve our filled areas of solid black for cast shadows only, where the filled shape is designed to convey the relationship in space between the form casting it and the surface receiving it. When we fill in an existing shape, like the side plane of a given form, what we're doing is more in line with form shading, where we're making a surface lighter or darker based on its orientation - not because something else is blocking the light from reaching it. Of course, as explained here in Lesson 2, form shading should generally be avoided for this course (although there are plenty of demos that still employ it, as this is a policy we implemented after several rounds of updates/revisions, as it helps keep students more on target - we're working hard to update the demo/video material to keep up with the things that have changed, but it's quite a task, and we're making fairly slow progress on it).
I also noticed that there are places where you have the far edge of the side plane continue along with the closer edge to the viewer, extending just as far even when it should be cut off to show that side plane intersecting with other structures. As I marked out on the image linked above, the inner rim structure would cut off that side plane surface.
Continuing onto the textural aspect of the challenge, one of the purposes of this challenge is to serve as a reminder for those students who - being as far removed from Lesson 2 and its discussion of textural concepts - have not really continued practicing those concepts in their warmups, but rather allowed their memory of them to lapse. In other words - it's a trap for the large portion of students who haven't continued practicing the older material, focusing on texture but really there to urge students to go back and review sections they may have forgotten.
You certainly have fallen into that trap, as primarily what I'm seeing here is that you've focused on drawing what you see in your reference image, without really including the intermediate step of interpreting what you're looking at to understand which forms are present there along the wheel's surface, and how they relate to the surfaces around them. You can read more about this in particular in hese notes from the texture section.
Alongside that however, there is some additional information I want to provide for when it comes to textures that involve shallow grooves, holes, or cracks. There are many tire tread textures that are made up only of shallower grooves, and that's another reason why it becomes significantly easier for a student to end up just drawing what they see, and drawing those grooves directly as lines, rather than considering the small forms being represented and thinking about how they relate to one another in 3D space. Many textures are "named" after the kind of forms they're composed of. Bumpy textures have bumps, rocky textures have little rocky protrusions, etc. and these names correspond directly to the textural forms that are present. With grooves, cracks, and holes on the other hand, the words used to label them don't actually correspond to the textural forms. Instead, they correspond to negative space, where no form exists. Instead, the actual forms that are relevant here are the walls that surround those gaps, and it's those walls that cast shadows upon one another, and upon the floor of the hole below. I explain this further in this diagram.
Now, while I normally don't assign revisions for this challenge (since it's meant to be more of a reminder), in your situation with the issues involving the french curves, I think it would be wise to give you a further opportunity to demonstrate your best when you aren't hindered by misunderstandings. I'll be assigning some revisions below. When you work on them, keep the following in mind:
The ellipse guide's forcing you to draw small - this can be quite challenging when it comes to the fineliners, as it requires us to be more delicate with our pressure.
Remember that when drawing our shadow shapes, we're not just painting them on with our pens - outline them first, so you have an opportunity to intentionally consider how you're designing/shaping them, as it's that shape that will define the relationship between the form casting the shadow and the surface receiving it.
Every filled solid black shape is a cast shadow - meaning, if you're going to fill something in, ask yourself whether it's a shape that already exists as part of your construction, or if it is a new, separate shape based on the spatial relationship you're trying to define. Some shadows may be very thin, and you'll be tempted just to draw them in one go, but don't. Even in those cases - and again, it'll be challenging due to the limited scale of the wheels - take care to outline them first, then fill them in.
If you feel working with fineliners for this is too difficult, I will allow you to work with ballpoint pens as well, just take care when filling in your shadow shapes, and if you choose to use a ballpoint pen for the wheel construction, use it when filling the shadows in as well.
Next Steps:
Please submit an additional 10 wheels.
It's less that I forgot the texture lesson, but rather I didn't understand it in the first place. Even trying to apply "draw the shade as opposed to what's casting it", I still can't say I understand it. Hopefully it won't crop up again in this course, because I'll absolutely need those lesson materials to be remade until I feel comfortable retrying the 25 Texture Challenge.
Continued using fineliners as all my regular pens appear to be that exact same width anyway. I did my best at applying everything you mentioned, but I'm unsure on if I've made much of an improvement.
In regards to your choice of continuing to use fineliners, perhaps I should have been more clear that by ballpoint pen, as it can be easy to confuse them with gel pens. Ballpoint pens, which most classically look like this, but also come in a wide variety of retractable forms as well, function kind of like permanent pencils in that their ink can be drawn faintly with very light pressure, and can be built up. This makes it much more forgiving than a fineliner, even if the thickness is the same.
There are other pens - specifically gel pens - which may appear to be the same, but have much richer, darker ink and do not build up the way a pencil does. You can see the difference illustrated here. I strongly recommend you use ballpoint when you move onto Lesson 7, as it will be considerably less demanding.
Looking at your revisions, starting with the structural aspect, I have some points to raise:
Don't skip over the rims/spokes of your wheels, as you did in 2 and 4. There's no real reason to neglect that opportunity for further practice.
In number 7, you appear to have only drawn the outward face of the spokes, without the side planes. This makes them appear paper-thin, so be sure to establish a side plane for structures like this.
I'm unsure what was going on with 7 - it could be that the particular reference was particularly unique, but the way this was drawn suggests more that you may have been copying directly what you saw without considering how it sat in 3D space. As a result, what you attempted to capture may have been a particularly unique spatial relationship, but drawn on the page it falls quite flat, as though it was only ever really considered in the two dimensions of the reference photo.
Cases like number 8 show the same issue I noted on your original work, where you were continuing the side plane's far edge way too far. I'm suspecting you didn't understand my initial explanation/diagram, so let's try it again.
As shown here, the inner tube of the rim - that is, the cylinder upon which the tire sits - has a front edge in red which is closer to the viewer, and a back edge in blue which is farther from the viewer. The cylinder in the center of the wheel also has a front and back edge. When we draw the spokes that connect the cylinder and the inner tube of the rim, we're drawing edges that extend from the back edge of the cylinder to the back edge of the tube, and edges that extend from the front edge of the cylinder to the front edge of the tube, as shown here. I've also added the edge that runs along the surface of the rim's inner tube in purple, where it connects the front edge to the back edge. Here it is cleaned up a little bit in case that's more clear.
When you drew these spokes, you had both front edge and back edge connect to the front, which is incorrect.
Continuing onto the texture aspect, you are correct in that this is the last time texture really plays a significant role in the course, and you may have more luck when we overhaul those demonstrations - but there is a bit more I can offer right now.
This rough demo explains the thought process in terms of these reminders I linked in my previous feedback.
First, we look at our reference (which in this case is not something laid out flat, in case that helps to better understand the distinction between simply looking and copying a reference image, and actually attempting to represent the forms it breaks down to). These globs of wax can be identified as individual structures, one at a time. They're not primitive forms, but the focus on simplification is more on breaking them into bite-sized pieces we can focus on individually.
Using the texture analysis exercise as an example, the next row down (right below the reference image) demonstrates taking those kinds of forms we identified in the reference and arranging them across the gradient. These are not outlines we actually draw - it's what we're thinking about. Note that I'm not saying we have this full idea of all of these individual forms held firmly in our minds - rather, our mind is probably shifting the arrangement constantly, because that's way too much information to retain all at once. For now, the focus is on the fact that we are thinking of these globs of wax as being arranged in a manner informed by the reference image. They're overlapping, they're not all the same size, some are a little more complex than others, etc.
With this held loosely in mind, we actually start putting marks down. These marks are drawn one at a time for each individual mass, because again - we're not thinking about the whole arrangement all at once, but rather each form one at a time. The marks we're drawing design each individual cast shadow one at a time. We think about one specific form, and then consider how that form would cast a shadow onto the surfaces around it. We are not outlining the forms themselves, nor are we drawing the shadows we see in our reference. These are new shapes that we are designing based on what we understand of how each individual glob sits in space, one at a time.
Once all of our shadow shapes are laid out, we can fill them in. Filling them in at the end can be helpful, because as we lay out all of our shadow shapes' designs, one at a time, we'll find that they overlap one another in places. That's fine - shadows can of course overlap one another, but we might feel more resistant to doing so if we draw and fill them in all at once.
Now, looking at your work, you're still largely copying what you see, and you're also still filling in existing shapes. I expect absorbing this information will certainly take a lot of time, but it is something you're going to have to revisit and practice in order to conquer - so when practicing on your own going forward, don't avoid it because it's confusing or unpleasant.
Jumping back to the structural aspect, I'd like to work on this a little more before we continue forwards. I'll note your revisions down below.
Next Steps:
Please submit 5 more wheels, adhering to the following:
Use a ballpoint pen. Make sure it's not a gel pen, and that the ink builds up more like a pencil as illustrated in my feedback. The kind of ballpoint pen we're talking about is generally the sort that is available very cheaply and widely, whereas gel pens are usually considered a bit fancier. This style of bic ballpoint is generally very common - while I can't guarantee its availability in every country, if I had to bet on a particular kind of pen being available world-wide, this would be it.
Don't get into texture at all, so don't worry about the tire treads. Just focus on constructing the body of the wheel as a whole, then the rims/spokes, especially on ensuring that back edges don't accidentally connect to parts of the front.
As I've already needed more revisions on this lesson than the average person (and my issues are things I should've inferred from previous lessons), I'll reiterate that my mental health has improved to the point where I have no issue with being issued further revisions.
(Besides, I'm friends with artists my age who've spent years effortlessly drawing for fun without formal education and are decades better than me, and they consistently praise my sloppy homework as technically impressive - my glacial pace isn't too humiliating in that context.)
I've never drawn with a bic pen before (since starting the course I've exclusively used fineliners for everything), which probably shows. And thank you for the texture advice: I will likely attempt to finish that challenge soon enough.
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.
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