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11:55 PM, Thursday July 6th 2023
Starting with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I noticed that towards the beginning you had a pretty notable - albeit superficial - issue where you were filling in the wrong plane with hatching. Generally you were still drawing the cylinders correctly (the end closer to the viewer had a narrower degree and was larger overall, while the end farther away had a wider degree and was smaller - although the degrees weren't always entirely correct), so it seems more like you were consistently drawing them more or less as you should, but filling in the wrong end. Fortunately this appears to have stopped happening around page 5.
The only other point I wanted to note is that it appears you were checking your minor axis lines with a single red line that would pass through the entire cylinder. When doing this in the future, be sure to check each ellipse individually, with its own red line. The manner in which you approached it here would not account for the very real possibility that your ellipses aren't always aligned to one another, and so one might align to your intended minor axis, but the other might be slightly off.
Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, here you've largely done a pretty solid job - at least, until about page 15. 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.
In applying the line extensions correctly, consistently, and fastidiously throughout the set, you've armed yourself with plenty of information of how your approach could be adjusted from page to page, to bring those convergences together more consistently. While it seems unrelated, doing this over and over hones our instinctual understanding of what proportions a given plane should be given in order to represent a square, no matter its orientation.
Now, I mentioned that this was the case until around page 15. From page 16 onwards however, you appear to have stopped following those instructions, and instead drifted into applying the line extensions very differently. Looking at page 17 for instance, we can see that you're no longer identifying the contact point lines at all, and it appears that you're not identifying the minor axis (or at least not doing so correctly) either.
Not really sure what happened there, but while I am going to mark this challenge as complete, I certainly want you to both reflect upon why this shift suddenly occurred, and also go back over the material to review how to apply these line extensions correctly once again.
Next Steps:
Normally this challenge is done between lessons 5 and 6, but it appears you've done it early. So, I guess move onto Lesson 3, once you've reviewed the instructions for those line extensions.
7:24 PM, Saturday July 8th 2023
Hello,
Thank you for your personal feedback, I`m honoured!
I took the challenge early as I was struggling to focus on lesson three but wanted to keep the positive momentum going in the interim.
I completely agree with your first point, as I worked through my drawings I started to see the issues you raise and began to correct them more instinctively.
With regards to checking each individual ellipse, I`ll be sure to check both ends in the future, admittedly I had missed this point completely despite carefully reviewing my submission before sending.
As for the cylinders in boxes exercise, I changed tack half way through, despite feeling positive about the earlier work I had already completed, because I began to second guess myself and drift from the brief. This came about due to the fact that my ellipses were not symmetrical down the contact points lines as yours appeared to be. I`m still not 100% if we are aiming for symmetry in the second exercise though? By the end, I deviated and used the box end division lines as my lines of symmetry hence why the contact points appear to be missing and you can see diagonal coloured lines in their place.
For page 20, I took a completely different approach to draw my initial boxes, this was a mistake (but one I learned from, so was valuable nonetheless) leading me to include an additional page 20+ with aims to finish on a good note.
Thank you again for your time, really appreciate your input.
6:20 PM, Monday July 10th 2023
Ellipses by their nature do need to be symmetrical on both their major and minor axes, and so if they're not symmetrical, they're technically not ellipses. But that is not a major concern for this exercise - that's more what the funnels exercise in Lesson 1 (which should, like all the exercises in the lessons and challenges you've completed thus far, become a part of your regular warmup routine as discussed in Lesson 0). If in this exercise you find yourself struggling with the symmetry of your ellipses, then that would simply be something to note so you can address it by prioritizing your funnels exercise for a bit.
Changing the nature of this exercise's instructions however would not be appropriate - it would remove some of the intended benefit of the exercise. I can understand that there's always a desire to move forwards, to tackle new exercises, in order to maintain overall momentum, but Lesson 0 is very clear on this. Follow each exercise's instructions as closely as you can, and continue practicing those exercises as part of your warmups going forward.
3:43 PM, Tuesday July 11th 2023
Thank you for your feedback, it`s most helpful and will better shape my future efforts.
All the very best.
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