Lesson 6: Applying Construction to Everyday Objects

3:26 AM, Wednesday September 8th 2021

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First, apologies in advance for the somewhat bad linework in my form intersections. This was the first time I used ballpoint pen to draw (with the exception of warmups) and I wasn't quite used to how bumpy the drawing process was compared to fineliner. I realized later on that I was pressing way too hard on the pen to get the dark lines, causing a lot of that bumpiness, and I'm drawing smoother with ballpoints now. I'm perfectly fine with redoing the form intersections if you feel the linework is a problem.

During this lesson, I found myself thinking many times that I wasn't ready for this, and definitely not the rest of the course. Then I remind myself that someone who knows a lot more about art than I do told me I was ready for this lesson, and that same person will tell me whether or not I am ready to move on.

Thanks for the critique!

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8:31 PM, Thursday September 9th 2021

I'm honestly not too concerned with the linework in your form intersections. I can see some hesitation and uncertainty, but it seems to resolve itself pretty quickly. As a whole, these form intersections are well done - you're drawing through all your forms, ensuring they all individually feel solid, and the intersections themselves convey a strong understanding of how these forms all interact with one another in 3D space.

Continuing onto your object constructions, your work throughout this lesson is honestly exceptionally well done. This lesson is the first one that really demands a high degree of precision (or at least an attempt at it), and with it comes the necessity of an enormous degree of patience and care. It is entirely normal for students to kind of dip their toe into this manner of working - of subdividing things and gradually building up a more significant scaffolding - but to ultimately decide at a point that they've done "enough", and to kind of eyeball/approximate the rest.

From what I can see, you reached no such threshold - you were willing to delve into every nook and cranny, subdividing everything as much as is necessary to pin down every element of your construction with specific, precise bounds and characteristics. I see this in every construction, and it leaves me with very little to actually criticize.

More than that, I'm also very happy to see that you tackled such a wide variety of subject matter, with entirely different kinds of challenges - from the garage door opener which requires you to figure out how to position the little holes/buttons/etc. to the chess piece, which focuses on proper alignment and layout of ellipses. You also tackled both subject matter with a lot of straight, blocky surfaces, as well as some with more rounded corners, and you handled each of them very effectively.

I suppose if I had to pick something to nitpick about, it'd be the tendency to start with bounding boxes that have very parallel side edges. In the garage door opener, I feel this backfired a little, as you ended up with a bit of divergence. I am however pleased that despite that, you stuck to the structure you'd already laid down, rather than trying to fix a mistake. It shows a lot of respect for the constructional process as a whole, as being a process focused on making decisions, then holding to them as you move forwards.

It's definitely true that objects of this size would not have much foreshortening applied to them (being as small as they are, they'd only get highly foreshortened if we brought them very close to our eyes), but there should always be a little convergence, even if fairly gradual. Just enough for the viewer to notice it.

Aside from that, your work here is phenomenal. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so keep up the great work.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto the 25 wheel challenge, which is a prerequisite for lesson 7.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
1:29 AM, Friday September 10th 2021

Thank you very much! I definitely aimed for too shallow a convergence on some of these objects. Will keep that in mind for the future.

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