Uncomfortable

2015-01-12 23:42

Welcome!

kmelkon

2015-03-09 11:31

I just found this sub too and I wanna devour everything here. Thanks a lot for doing this <3

Uncomfortable

2015-01-21 16:03

I'm going to add you to the approved submitter list, since this would be far more visible as its own link. Feel free to post the video again when you read this.

Uncomfortable

2015-01-21 23:11

Pretty good. From page 3 onwards, you seem to have hit your stride. I would have liked to have seen you drawing through those ellipses though to capture a rounder shape instead of just going around once to achieve a cleaner (but less correct) shape.

Still, good work and the shakiness you mentioned seems to be improving.

Uncomfortable

2015-02-09 23:36

That's a whole lot of cylinders! Good work, I see a lot of progress between the first set and the last.

Uncomfortable

2015-02-16 23:38

Nice work! The later pages definitely show some progress over your first few.

Uncomfortable

2015-02-17 18:46

I'd recommend that you wait for the new one. Your cylinders are looking solid though, good work.

Uncomfortable

2015-02-22 21:08

Don't be afraid to lay in those ellipses as you do in lesson 1 - drawing through them a couple times before lifting your pen. Of course, the target is for the ellipses to be tight and clean, but achieving the intended shape of the ellipse is the higher priority.

Also, always remember that the end that is visible to us is the one that is closer to the viewer - therefore, by the rules of perspective, it should be larger than the further end. There's a few instances of you having this reversed, such as 260, 261, 265, 247, etc.

Good work on completing the challenge though, and on doing more than 250!

Uncomfortable

2015-03-06 18:05

Nice work! This should help you get into lesson 2's form intersections with a little bit more ease.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-12 22:32

Congrats on completing the challenge. I do think you'll gain more from practicing these cylinders by drawing through the entire form - that is, including the full ellipse of the far end of the cylinder. One major issue that I'm seeing often is the degrees of your ellipses. In a cylinder, the far end ellipse will always have a larger degree (width) than the closer end.

I mention that in the Cylinder Basics notes that were included in this post.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-18 18:18

These cylinders look solid. That said, I don't think you should be aiming to nail the ellipses on the first go-around. Instead, keep drawing through them a couple times and aim to tighten up those lines. By which I mean, ideally you wouldn't be able to tell that you went around several times, because the lines would line up cleanly. Once you've achieved that, the ellipses you draw around only once will look much better.

As for the pace, when I did these lessons, I had one week to do each of them. Granted, I was taking other classes at the same time, and the homework I did was limited to 8 pages (I've added extra exercises where I thought they'd help), so usually I'd spend a full day or two completing them. Take that into consideration. If you were to spend 8 hours a day, I'd say a good goal would be one and a half days, perhaps. That said, it's a vague estimate, and I by no means want anyone to rush.

Uncomfortable

2015-03-20 22:27

Nice work! The impact of studying Scott Robertson's stuff really shows through.

Pontmercy

2015-04-14 06:29

And now that I think about it that last page was the one I did the quickest and I think those cylinders look the best.

Uncomfortable

2015-04-14 21:29

Congrats on completing the challenge. One thing to consider is that it's probably better to draw through your ellipses whenever you draw them. Your shapes aren't always the best, so that should help.

There are a few other things to take into consideration when drawing cylinders, and I've been meaning to make a video about it, akin to my 'how to draw a box' one. I'll be doing that soon.. probably. GTA V came out on PC today though soo... maybe not too soon.

Uncomfortable

2015-04-27 22:11

Congrats on completing the challenge! I definitely see some improvement, though I think you might want to spend more time drawing through the cylinders completely. You did that at the beginning quite a bit, and I'm glad to see that, but I did see that when you stopped drawing through them, your cylinders started getting a little wonkier.

Also, you should still be drawing through the ellipses themselves - going around a couple times before lifting your pen. With cylinders, it's very important to nail the shape and degree of the ellipse you're trying to draw. You may also want to revisit the notes about ellipses from lesson 1 - the minor axis of the ellipse aligns to the center line of the cylinder it would produce.

I'm actually intending to put out a video on the topic of drawing cylinders at some point, but I'm not sure when that'll be.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-02 20:22

Nice job! Don't forget though - the farther ellipse will always have a higher degree than the closer one, as I described in the notes. I'm going to be posting a 'how to draw a cylinder' video eventually (though possibly not for a few weeks), so keep an eye out for that. I'll elaborate the use of the minor axis as the spine of your ellipse, as it's been touched upon in lesson 1.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-06 22:13

It generally doesn't help that much (at least in my experience) to even bother trying to nail them in the first try. I mean, that's my own opinion and some people will disagree. Still, I prefer to suggest that people continue to draw through their ellipses, focusing on nailing the consistent, round, even shape. Once they get that down, they can work towards getting all of those lines to tighten up, coming together until they more or less overlap into one somewhat thicker line. At that point you'll probably have a much better shot of getting them right in one shot.

Anyway, good work on completing the challenge. I can definitely see that you've worked towards getting the degree relationship between the two ends of the cylinder, and I see a good bit of progress from start to end. You may also want to go back to lesson 1 and just read the notes about the minor axis - which aligns to the spine of the cylinder. I'm going to make a video about how to draw cylinders that goes over this at some point, but I've been very busy as of late.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-23 17:59

I can definitely see that you put your all into this. I actually just finished a new video specifically on drawing cylinders, where I go over a method that uses a box lay-in to start with. You may want to check it out.

Another thing I noticed is that you avoid drawing through your ellipses, so the shapes don't always come out evenly. Don't be afraid to draw through them two or three times before lifting your pen. It'll both improve your ellipses in the long run, and will improve your forms right now. Shape is the top priority.

Anyway, congrats on completing the challenge.

Uncomfortable

2015-05-31 16:44

Nice work. Your lines are confident as always, and your corrections seem to be on point. It may have been helpful to draw through that farther end of the cylinders a little more at the beginning, to help solidify your understanding of the form, but generally your size/degree relationships between the near and far ends seem appropriate.

Be sure to watch the how to draw cylinders if you haven't already though - I introduce a different technique that starts off with a box and focuses on the more technical anatomy of the ellipse (mainly the minor axis) to help position it in relation to other objects. Practicing a few of these will probably help you out in the long run.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-02 21:50

Nice work. I'm glad to see that you experimented with many different orientations and cylinder lengths.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-03 22:01

Nice work! I just have one critique - be careful with that hatching. I see a lot of cases where you use straight lines as shading. Those little lines function a lot like the contour lines in lesson 2, so they reinforce the curvature of a surface. By using straight lines on a curved surface, you're telling the viewer that the surface is flat.

You can use curved lines, or alternatively you can do hatching in the opposite direction - running lines up and down the length of the cylinder instead of wrapping around it.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-08 19:22

Unless you want to start getting really scientific and talking about field of view and focal lengths (which I know next to nothing about), a cylinder drawn properly in perspective can look the same as a cone that's had its tip lopped off (basically a cylinder that tapers instead of remaining straight).

The second cylinder you drew, with two parallel lines, is not an impossible shape/form - it is what you'd see with a cylinder that is smaller at the end closer to you than at the farther end. That tapering would counterbalance against perspective's distortion, resulting in straight, parallel lines.

The fact of the matter is, however, that we are in the business of communication, and in most situations, this would confuse the viewer. You usually have other objects in a scene that the viewer can compare against to help explain what they're seeing, but more often than not if you have a tapering cylinder, you're going to want to exaggerate it. That way the viewer can be sure that you're not simply making a mistake.

It is for that reason that your box/rectangular prism on the second page still reads like a box - it's still within the range of what we'd expect to read as a box. If it were far more dramatic, we'd start questioning it. If it were next to other boxes that did not show a particularly dramatic perspective distortion, we'd start be able to compare against them and get the sense that there is something special and different about this one.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-09 00:15

Congrats on completing the challenge. Or, at least I assume you did - you posted up to 196, I'm going to guess that there's another 54 hangin' out somewhere.

There's a few areas where you can improve:

• First off, watch the video at the top of the challenge post. It goes over the concept of the minor axis of an ellipse, and explores a method that starts with a box to ensure that the ellipses are aligned properly.

• You have a very sketchy approach to drawing, that's something that we'll need to fix. You do improve on this considerably as you move through the cylinders, though. Still, I want to reiterate on the mentality you should have while drawing:

It's all about the ghosting technique. It forces you to think before you put a mark down on the page, by splitting the drawing process into three steps.

1. Identify the line you want to draw. Where does it start and end? Does it curve?

2. Prepare to draw the line. Find a comfortable angle of approach and start ghosting through the motion. Keep ghosting through it until it feels right.

3. Finally, once you feel comfortable with the motion, as you continue ghosting, put the pen to the page and draw the mark in a smooth, steady, but swift motion.

You force yourself to do this every time you draw a mark - it keeps you from drawing unnecessary lines and forces you to draw one mark per line, instead of being sketchy. It also forces you to think through everything you do, instead of exploring your shapes right on the page.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-15 22:12

You definitely improve considerably throughout this set. At the beginning you had a strong tendency to reverse the size relationships between the near/far ends of the cylinders. Your lines also seemed somewhat uncertain. By the end, you show far more confidence, a better sense for those size relationships, and a much nicer use of line weight. There's always room to grow, but you're definitely heading in a good direction.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-15 23:26

Not bad. I really liked seeing the constructional stuff early on. One thing that you're sorely missing however is that you're not drawing through your ellipses. Because of this they have a greater tendency to come out uneven or lopsided. You absolutely need to draw through those ellipses all the time, so you can build the muscle memory that will eventually allow you to work without doing that.

Anyway, congrats on completing the challenge. I'm glad to see that you pushed through them, keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable

2015-06-22 21:35

Nice work on the challenge! I'm glad to see that you've been focusing on that minor axis. You're moving in a great direction. I think that overall, I see a great deal of improvement - it drops off as you get through the last 10 (241-250) but I think that might be because you were getting tired.

Uncomfortable

2015-06-23 20:09

Not bad. Generally the cylinders look pretty well done, though you should be more aware of things like alignment to the minor axis, constructing cylinders from boxes, etc. Basically the things I cover in the video in the challenge post.

Anyway, I'll mark the challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2015-07-09 20:04

Looking fantastic. I'm loving your attention to the minor axis, and the general solidity of your forms. Just one thing to think about though - instead of shading the sides with short curving lines which stop abruptly, consider applying lines that run length-wise along the cylinder, keeping them closer together at the core of the shadow and letting them space out more, becoming less dense as they radiate outwards. That kind of hatching generates less contrast and fewer tangents, tending to become lower key and generally look smoother.