I am definitely glad to see that though you went through the first 50 incorrectly, you caught the mistake on your own and corrected it. I am curious though - when you say that you had to read the prompt a few times, was it this section to which you're referring? And if so, was there anything in particular that felt confusing or unclear about it?
After the 50 mark, your work certainly improves a great deal. I am noticing a touch - and I really mean a touch, it's quite subtle - of hesitation in your markmaking. This is more prominent in your ellipses, which more frequently will be a little uneven. There's a bit of wavering in your straight edges as well, although it's not as obvious. The solution for both of these points is the same - make sure that when you're freehanding any of your linework, that you're always holding to the 3-step process of the ghosting method to ensure that you're giving yourself ample time to plan out your stroke, to get comfortable with the motion, and finally to execute with confidence. We see very subtle signs of hesitation like this generally when a student has developed their muscle memory well, but is not giving themselves enough time to plan/prepare, and compensate by being a little less confident upon execution. And of course, for those marks, you'd want to execute them from your shoulder as well.
Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, here we do run into some more notable issues - especially when it comes to the tendency to extend your boxes' lines in the wrong direction. We can see this in cases like 14 and 35 in the beginning, and even in cases like 80, 86, and 97, so it's present throughout the set. This is no small problem - it's addressed here in the box challenge notes, along with a simplified approach to ensure lines are extended correctly here (in the case that the student doesn't necessarily understand the logic of it, which isn't strictly necessary, but still of course needs to be able to apply it correctly in order to benefit from the exercise). It is also reiterated here in second point in the reminders section of the box challenge.
Looking back at your 250 box challenge submission, this mistake was not present there. What this suggests to me is that you may not have been incorporating your box challenge exercise, along with its line extensions, into your regular warmups, and so you may have forgotten significant elements as to how the exercise works. Furthermore, it does suggest that you may not have reviewed those instructions when delving into this exercise, and instead simply pushed through. I of course can't know those things for a fact, but this is generally what is suggested by these kinds of results.
As a side note, I noticed that for some reason you appear to draw only half of each contact point line extension, starting from the center, and extending off in one side only. While I assume you did this by aligning your ruler to both contact points and drawing starting from the middle, this is not what was demonstrated in the instructions, and there is no good reason not to follow the instructions exactly as demonstrated. When we make arbitrary choices to deviate from the instructions, it becomes that much easier for us to miss more important elements without ever having realized it.
Lastly, I'm not seeing extensions of each ellipse's minor axis line - rather, I'm seeing a single intended line for the minor axis you wish to follow, but no further lines to identify the actual minor axis for each resulting ellipse. This is very important. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).
Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square. All three on each ellipse works together to give you a full picture of where adjustments need to be made - if you're only looking at two out of three, issues can very easily hide in the area you're not inspecting.
I'm going to be assigning revisions for this last section, but rather than hitting you with a ton of cylinders in boxes, we're going to split them up between basic boxes from the box challenge, and some boxes with cylinders in them. You'll find your assigned revisions below.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
25 boxes with line extensions, as from the box challenge
25 boxes with cylinders in them, with line extensions for the boxes and each ellipse.
Note that there's no reason for your lines to be extended in the wrong direction - so take special care to ensure you don't run into that mistake again, as that is a point I will be focusing upon.
Hi Uncomfortable,
The link to my redone work is here: https://imgur.com/a/gwAgBja
And here are the answers to your questions:
Initially I thought the perspective was how round or oval the two circles were. When I read the red box it made me wonder if I was mistaken so I read the entire prompt a few times and I happened to look at other people's homework for the lesson. I noticed that some people varied the actual size of the circle and realized that was the perspectice you were mentioning. The sizings of the circles not the degree of roundness or ovalness.
I had done that on purpose thinking it was giving another perspective but I have corrected this in the boxes I redid.
I don't know if I fully understand this point and hope that I have fixed this correctly in the resubmitted homework.
I believe I fixed this. In the sample that you did, there were so many lines that I think I missed the fact that the minor axis lines went though the entire circle.
Thank you for your time and critiques,
mbl5042
Overall your revisions are considerably better. There's one minor point I'll mention a little further down, but the only other thing I wanted to call out was that when you apply hatching, or really draw any mark you've made the decision to add to your construction, give it the appropriate time it needs to be executed well. Don't just put random marks down. There's either marks that are not important enough to draw to the best of our current ability, in which case they probably shouldn't be drawn at all, and then there are marks that definitely should be drawn, and thus should be drawn to the best of our current ability.
Now, onto your responses to my questions:
I just wanted to clarify one point in regards to this one - foreshortening is conveyed through two distinct "shifts". One is the overall scale, which I assume is what you're referring to by saying "I noticed that some people varied the actual size of the circle). End that's closer to the viewer is overall larger in scale, end that's farther away from the viewer is overall smaller in its scale. The other shift is the shift in the degree, where the farther end is proportionally wider than the end closer to the viewer, due to the difference between the angle at which that surface is oriented, and the angle at which the viewer is looking. This difference in angle is much smaller for the end closer to the viewer, so we see less of the face of that circular end, making the ellipse that represents it narrower. So, to be clear: both overall scale and degree change as we slide from one end of the cylinder to the other.
Fair enough.
You do appear to be doing this correctly this time around, but just to illustrate what I meant, I've drawn on top of one of y our previous boxes here. Your red contact point lines start from the center of their corresponding ellipse. I filled in with broken lines the portion of each line that was missing, from the contact point where your each line should have started.
This is the last bit I wanted to call out in regards to your revisions. It appears that you are still neglecting to identify the minor axis for each individual ellipse. Here I've identified each different set of line extensions. Dark red for the 4 contact point lines (2 per ellipse), blue/green/lighter red for each of the box's individual sets of lines. This leaves just a single remaining line, the one I've highlighted in purple. This may be the line you intended to check the minor axis, but that would be incorrect. Each individual ellipse needs to have its minor axis identified separately, with its own mark. While it is entirely possible for the two minor axes to align to one another perfectly (as that is the goal we're striving to achieve), going in and using a single line for both in the first place assumes that to be the case, and thus robs us of the ability to identify cases where it was not so.
Anyway, I hope that makes sense. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto Lesson 6.
Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.
Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.
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