That’s fine~ Let’s take this one exercise at a time, shall we?
Starting with your superimposed lines, these look good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. You’ll have an easier time with your arcing lines if you draw them a little bigger, next time, but they’re looking solid like this, also. Your ghosted lines start off decent, but they do turn out a little hesitant from time to time, and, as expected, this is worse in the more complicated planes exercise. It’s important to remember that what we’re after, in this course, is not accuracy, but rather confidence. As such, a smooth, straight line is correct, even if it misses its mark. A wobbly line, on the other hand, is incorrect by default, and all the accuracy in the world can’t save it then.
The table of ellipses exercise shows some nice improvement throughout the set. Still, however, even by the end of page 2, there’s some insecure ellipses, so the same thing as above applies here, too. If you’re wondering, this is because of our goals in this course. Our #1 goal is to be able to capture and communicate the form of an object. A smooth mark is able to do this – to paint a subject as solid, and three dimensional, and any accuracy issues are irrelevant to that. A wobbly mark, however, cannot, and if the object doesn’t read as it’s supposed to, how accurate your marks are matters little. The same goes for your ellipses in planes and funnels. One thing you may consider, if you find yourself producing wobbly marks, even when you’re not trying, is to up your speed – really don’t give your brain a chance to butt in. Eventually, you’ll want to decrease it back to whatever your ideal speed is, but as you start out, this is helpful in having you develop proper habits.
The plotted perspective exercise is well done. Your lineweight is a little overt (I find that you always need a little less than you think), but otherwise, it’s looking good. I’ll not bring up confidence issues again, since we’ve already discussed them, but so that it’s clear, the rest of the box exercises also struggle from insecure linework. I just would have to repeat myself, by addressing it. Instead, I’ll talk about your automatic reinforcing habit. Recall, from the ghosted lines exercise, that you’re meant to draw each line once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out. Adding more ink to a mistake doesn’t fix it – it just makes it stand out that much more. Despite your struggles with linework, your convergences in the rough perspective exercise are looking great, so as soon as you solve those issues, you’ll be more than free to move on. Good attempt at the rotated boxes exercise, and good on you for sticking with it to the end, despite your obvious frustrations. Ultimately, that’s what we’re looking for – not that the student perfectly understands everything the first time, but that they try to; not that they succeed, but that they try. And anyway, your boxes here are snug, and mostly rotate well, so you’ve performed better than you may think. The rough perspective boxes, too, are well constructed, and flow well as a result of their size and foreshortening. Well done!
Next Steps:
Now, I could keep you here to be safe, but I think what I’ll do is move you on to the box challenge, and instead request that before you actually move on to it, you take a sheet of paper or two, and try to understand the points I’ve brought up here. Try to draw a line, and have it be fully confident; a box, where each line has been drawn only once; and ellipse that’s not pointy, etc. If you do this, and move on, you’ll be in a good place. If you don’t, however, you’ll only embed those errors in the box challenge. Best of luck!
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
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