Hello. here it is: http://imgur.com/a/HXj2r. Some photos are a bit unfocused, don't now how to solve it. First images are quite messy.
Free content itself is definitely fine. The only problem - your film composition study demo, it contains too much important stuff, you should probably open it.
I want to believe what I will get some good stuff till the end of year in a pinch, otherwise I am infantile idiot :) Should not let myself spend time this year. Nevermind, I am in anticipation of lesson 7, demos look badass.
Looking good! Just about all of your drawings have a really clear sense of solidity to them - they don't feel flimsy or light, they each feel firm and as though they weigh a fair bit. I especially love how well the computer mouse came out, and the variety of proportion studies you did on the side.
In general, the only area you appear to be struggling is with ellipses, and only in certain circumstances. Admittedly, they are really difficult, and do take some practice. Be sure to check out the Drawing Perfect Circles and Cubes in 3D Space and Constructing to Scale videos when you get the chance - of course, they're both linked near the beginning of lesson 7. The whole idea of how to figure out how to get the correct degree for an ellipse to represent a circle within a certain perspective system is pretty important.
Aside from that though, you're doing very well. Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.
Hi Uncomfortable, i need some advise. What if i have multiple parallel lines to different direction. i mean i know that they should also converge into one point on the horizon line, but i got really disoriented. Is there any method or just practice can help me?
To be honest it's hard to understand what you're saying, but if I had to guess, I'd say you were asking about drawing lines so they converge at a consistent location. The best practice for this - and it is largely a matter of practice - is drawing boxes. Boxes have three sets of parallel lines, each going to a different vanishing point, with four lines in each set. The better you get at drawing boxes, the more capable you will be in visualizing where a vanishing point is and whether or not your lines converge in roughly the same area.
If you're getting disoriented, then you're probably trying to draw objects that are too complex - try to approach simpler things that have very clear configurations of basic forms, and flesh everything out as a box initially.
Here's my lesson 6. Not sure how well I'm doing with these. I know my lines tend to get a little wobbly depending on what part of an object I'm drawing. I was pretty satisfied with some, but fairly unhappy with others.
Honestly, for the most part you're not really applying the principles covered in the lesson. I'm not seeing any subdivision to measure your proportions more accurately, you rarely draw through your boxes and you don't apply the concepts of the minor axis to your cylinders. This also relates to the fact that you haven't completed the 250 box challenge nor the 250 cylinder challenge, as recommended at the beginning of the lesson.
There's a lot of content in the lesson - in the intro video and across all three demonstrations - that you're just not applying. For most of these, you start off with a box and then draw the rest purely from observation, rather than constructing it. You really should go through it again and take another shot at this.
Okay, yeah, looking back on it I don't think I understood the concepts in the lesson particularly well or how to employ them successfully. But I also didn't notice all the new material that's in the lesson now, so I'll definitely look at it again and try to get a better grasp on it. I do draw a ton of cylinders and boxes daily, but because it's during free time that I have at random moments, it's all on scraps of paper that I don't keep, so I never submitted the two challenges.
Definitely much better! I can see a lot more construction and subdivision here - I particularly like the anvil, and the box cutter (or whatever kind of knife that is on the first page). The only thing I want to mention is that the shoe was definitely more of a situation where you'd use the technique I demonstrated in my computer mouse demo.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
i would post this in reply to my first submission in L6 where you suggested redoing it but it's archived now , so here is the second try , i am still not satisfied about my work but i really understand the whole thing now & i know i just need more time & practice .. besides i have to catch the deadline right :)
anyway i'm excited about the next lessons not because they are easy but because i understand things better now , even if i did it wrong i can now define my mistakes.
as for the submissions , i have some lines that are a bit messy and in some cases- like the juice glasses ones - i draw the right side of the cup line ok then when trying to do the left one i mess up
another thing is the ellipses ... you know when i draw them carelessly they come out right but when i focus on the final try that should be sent to you it comes really ugly :( i think it's tension that makes me like that ... also i did the boxy drawers wrong 1st, so i redone it on the last page
sorry for too much talk, looking forward for your reply ..
You're right, these do still need work, and ultimately you're still not really applying a lot of the principles I talk about in the newer content for this lesson. Checking out the content for the next lesson would also probably be helpful, but I wouldn't consider this lesson complete yet.
First off, your utensils are just drawings strictly from observation. Admittedly spoons and knives aren't the best choice for this lesson (although the concepts I cover in the lesson can still be applied to them), but you still didn't really attempt to break them down into simpler forms. For example, you drew the entire spoon as a single object, rather than separating the bowl end of it from the handle.
Across all of your constructions, you don't draw through any of your boxes, giving you no real sense of the opposite side of the form.
The left side of page 3's not badly done, and in general it's a solid attempt at that object. Still, you're not drawing through your forms - you should have drawn each ellipse going all the way down the form. Your glasses also suffer from your not drawing all of the ellipses present in their entirety, resulting in cylinders that don't really feel rounded.
We only really start to see any use of subdivision techniques near the end, showing very little regard for proportion and symmetry.
Thank you for the critique but I have to say that I've done this before you add the new lesson content except for the last page!
i already reviewed the new content and even practiced drawing the Cintique demo but with pencil .
i only wanted to send those because i already done it & it's the last day , hoping i could use the new concepts in the assignment of the next lesson . i feel i have taken a lot of time in this lesson :(
any way i know you care a bout the quality rather than quantity .
oh god oh geez, here's my lesson 6. The first 8 pages are new. Apologies for the older work being riddled with red, I hadn't really planned on showing it here.
Proportions, perspective, alignment, consistency, sticking to the ortographic drawings while also drawing straight lines freehand... Hell is real.
Though I think it's getting easier. Especially the more and more I force myself to just stick to dividing the "big box" into as many smaller boxes as possible, before tackling any curves and whatnot.
I'm having immense problems with objects that have a more organic forms going on, like shoes, but I hope I'm heading in the right direction. I found myself carving out the sole as if it's lying flat on the ground, when really it's kind of arching down and then back up, so I think that threw me for a loop. And the way the overall form swells in and out... Oh boy.
I'll probably take a wee breather before tackling vehicles.
Looking great! Your new pages are definitely showing some considerable improvement. I especially like your use of line weight in pages 5 and 6. I'm not really sure what page 5 is (a coffee maker maybe?) but I love how solid and conscientiously constructed it is.
The only thing I wanted to point out is actually kind of a moot point since it's on your older work and I'm sure you've already moved past it. Still, I figure I'll go ahead and mention it anyway so it seems like I'm doing something helpful here. It's this chair. Basically, I would have been much boxier with the construction of the seat back and seat bottom, maintaining solid box forms much longer before adding the bulges of cloth and cushion.
In regards to the issues you were having with your shoe - I think you did a pretty good job of it. Ultimately I usually do the same thing - carving out the base of the object as though it's laying flat on the ground. At least, that's my first step - I drop in the footprint of the form, regardless of where there is contact. Then, by looking at the side orthographic views, you can see the rising of the arch, and then construct that as well. You'll actually see me doing more of that in the next lesson.
Anyway, really nice work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete - enjoy your break, and I look forward to seeing you cry in lesson 7.
Unfortunately i haven't got to much time to draw so i just prepared the 8 pages... I bought a scanner for this but the quality is not that good. Some drawings happen to be small...
There's definitely a lot of good stuff here. The coffee maker on page 3 feels very solid and quite well constructed. The cylinder at the base is a little off (alignment of the ellipses to the minor axis isn't quite right), but overall it's fairly well done.
The game controller was definitely a complex one to approach - I think I would have applied the technique I demonstrated with the computer mouse demo here, due to all of the organic curves and specific proportions.
The biggest issue I'm seeing here isn't an uncommon thing - you're struggling with your proportions. This will definitely improve with a lot of practice, but unfortunately there's no real trick to it other than giving yourself plenty of chances to draw from observation in this manner, and taking your time whenever you do. In the next lesson, you'll see me stress proportion studies much more (where you do orthographic drawings trying to break down how an object's height, width and depth relate to one another overall), so make sure you get used to doing those.
The only other thing I wanted to recommend is that you take more care in terms of having things fit snugly. That is, when you draw an encompassing box to start your construction, make sure the components of your drawing fit tightly within that box. Don't let them float arbitrarily within that box at all, as it undermines the purpose of constructing the box in the first place. Since at times it's harder to imagine how, say, a cylinder might fit snugly into a box, it can help to try and picture that cylinder as being a box instead, at least in terms of how to get it to fit snugly within the encompassing form, rather than having it floating inside or having little bits and pieces sticking out.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. There's plenty of room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction.
Very nicely done! I absolutely love the gallon jug drawings - the angles were admittedly quite difficult, but your use of the various constructional tools covered in the lesson were spot on. Yeah, sure, the ellipses aren't the greatest, but it's still an impressive drawing. Just remember to work on aligning your ellipses to minor axes! And you'll be glad to know that in the next lesson, I outright tossed freehanding out the window and allow students to use ellipse guides and rulers. But it's still important to practice doing them freehand, as reaching for an additional tool will generally be a little jarring when it comes to the design process.
In general, very nice work. The only one I feel was somewhat weaker was your gear-sphere. Admittedly a very interesting and unique challenge, but I think you jumped into the teeth of each gear a little too early, and could probably have applied some more constructional steps in between.
Anyway, keep up the great work, and consider this lesson complete! Feel free to move onto the next one.
I always find it amusing how, when I do the homeworks over a handful of sessions with a handful of drawings in each, it's always VERY VERY OBVIOUS in retrospect exactly when in each set I started losing focus and tried to sneak in some halfassery. ;) Damn you and your halfassery detector I will aspire to your instructorly patience! --or maybe just take breaks sooner. xD
What exactly is an "ellipse guide" with respect to physical drawings? Are we talking about those stencil things with some finite set of predefined ellipses? Or is there an equivalent of a compass for ellipses? Seems like there should be, since they're defined by the same sort of mathematical constraint as a circle, but I can't recall ever seeing one and I think I'm missing the word to ask google.
I'd probably use them more if there was such a compass type device, though I haven't actually looked it up. There could be. I mean.. technically I don't think it should be impossible, you'd just have to have two focii instead of a single central point. But either way, by ellipse guide I am referring to the stencil type thing. In the intro video to lesson 7, I believe I momentarily bring up a photo of one.
It'd be easy enough to rig something up with a couple pins and a variable-length string, but without some sort of "nice" handle/holder it would probably be too annoying to use. Might give it a shot until I can get some of the stencil kind.
I was thinking of also trying something like a coin with a toothpick taped across it, back-illuminated by a flashlight. Then, with some combo of rotating the toothpick and adjusting the distance to your paper, you could project an ellipse of any size and degree. You'd still have to draw the thing freehand, but at least you could have more than 4 guide-dots.
That's a pretty interesting concept - it's basically taking the whole principle of what an ellipse is in 3D space and projecting it back down onto a 2D plane.
I mean, if you can make the real world do the work for you... ;) Tried it out yesterday -- works well enough but my flashlight sucks. Or, rather, my flashlight is the kind with 9 little LEDs instead of one bulb in a paraboloid, and consequently can't cast a sharp shadow to save its life. Sunlight works, though. I'll take some pictures later.
It's a good start, but there are a few things that I do need to point out in order to get you on the right track. Firstly, for a lot of the more complex objects, I'm seeing you starting off with a box and subdividing it.. and then kind of ignoring it (at least partially) when drawing your object. For example, the pliers and the scissors on the second page - it's extremely important that if you do decide to use the encapsulating box method (which isn't always the best approach) that the object should fit very snugly within the box. That means that each extremity of the object should be touching one side of the box. With your pliers, the tip falls short of the end of the box, with your scissors, the left side of the handle doesn't quite touch the box either. Additionally, all of these objects kind of ignore the whole "start as simple as possible" rules, and jump in with fairly complex forms rather than simple, primitive forms. Admittedly these kinds of objects are actually considerably more challenging choices, since they have so many small components that are connected at odd angles. It'd probably be better to focus on things with simpler forms arranged in a more predictable fashion.
Cameras are definitely a good choice as a subject matter. In this one, you've got a lot of complex curving going on - near the top, a lot of those curves are the result of some degree of guesswork. A better approach would have been to construct boxes inside of your overall encapsulating box to construct the bulk of the forms concretely, before just lightly rounding off the corners near the end. This is another example of jumping into complexity way too early. Check out how I approach a similar challenge in this demo.
In general, your boxes and cylinders do need to be refined for sure. I definitely want to stress the importance of drawing through all of your initial boxes here (you do for a lot of them, but not all), and in general you do need to work on avoiding near/far plane size relationship problems. Your general construction of cylinders also needs some work - specifically when it comes to aligning them to the minor axes. For example the mug on this page wasn't great. Extending your minor axis further and having the ellipse sit such that the line cut all the way through it (rather than stopping at its center point) would have helped.
Lastly, just a note about the hairbrush. It raises an interesting issue - how do you deal with all these little bits? The answer is actually a matter of interpreting them as a single, solid mass. You can treat all the bristles as being a short, wide cylinder-like form, basically repeating that base ellipse above. This is similar to how artists are encouraged to deal with hair - when drawing a portrait, for example, we don't draw every individual strand. Instead we deal with hair in chunks, identifying how the strands naturally group together to create larger forms.
Anyway, I've mentioned a lot of things here, so take some time to absorb it. I also recommend that you give the lesson another read through, revisit the demos and rewatch the demo recordings. Then I'd like you to try another 4 pages of object drawings. Try not to pick anything too complex - this subject matter is quite difficult, so what's most important is just getting the hang of constructing solid boxes and ellipses together, and getting used to breaking things down into their simplest forms.
I'm thankful for your critiques, but it's also very frustrating because I'm at my limits here.. I drew for hours and hours and I still can't get it right.. I see my issues but seem not to be able to solve them.. :/
Try this - first, revisit the 250 box and cylinder challenges. You don't have to draw as many, but you do need to work on getting those basic building blocks down. My guess is that you've allowed yourself to get a little rusty in those areas - looking back on those completed challenges, they were a fair bit better than they're looking now.
Once you've done that, try replicating my demos - the speaker in the intro video, the wooden barrel, etc. working your way up to the computer mouse. This should also help you absorb the concepts more effectively, since you'll be able to follow along with the steps. Just don't rush through.
I noticed something else.. You say that my boxes in my box challenge are way better.. It's because I don't care much about proportions but when I try to draw my camera, I suddenly have to care about proportions.. I tried this small camera several times, I have many sheets of paper with failed attempts because I have big troubles to get the proportions right.. It's already starting with my first stroke.. I'm uncertain which stroke I have to put down first to get it right. Even with the ghosting method I just can't figure it out..
I'd recommend taking a peek at the next lesson's material then - in general, I accept that proportion is going to not be ideal, because that's something that progresses with time and practice. That said, there are techniques that will help you achieve more accurate proportion. It starts to get pretty heavily in to the technical side of things, but you may at least want to give it a try: Measuring in Perspective: Constructing to Scale.
Keep in mind that right now proportion is not a big concern. It'll be important down the line, but if your only issue were proportion I would have marked the lesson as complete. What's much more significant is generally breaking your objects down into primitive forms, and applying more constructive principles in the manner the lesson describes.
There's some nice stuff here! I liked the gun and the game controller a fair bit, as well as the perfume bottle (#9). Overall you're doing a pretty good job when it comes to applying subdivision and going from very simple forms (boxes) and breaking down your forms to add more complexity in successive passes. You're right though, you definitely do need to work on your cylinders. One thing that should help is giving this video about circles in 3D space a watch. It'll explain why a lot of your ellipses are off.
You certainly do have room to improve with these (proportion is also an area you're struggling with in some of these drawings, such as the table lamp), but I think you should be good to move onto the next lesson, which expands on a lot of the material introduced here.
Honestly, I'm really impressed. I think you've done an excellent job of applying the concepts I covered in the lesson, and many of your drawings show both strong observational skills and a really solid grasp of construction. You've done a great job of using subdivision, as well as some of the other more technical tricks I mentioned.
There's always going to be some room for improvement, but that's just a matter of practice. Here and there your initial boxes are a little bit off, and this does affect the resulting object (like the phone's proportions were definitely skewed and your box's foreshortening was really dramatic so the result was weird) but I'm glad that you still stuck through applying the methodology.
Keep up the fantastic work, and consider this lesson complete. Your pens may all be dead, but they've died for a good cause!
thnx for the flattering comments your really boosted my morale ! and i must admit my architectural education helped me alot ! ( tho i was using rules back then and always having vanishing points. but your lesson opened my eyes in to a new dimention i believe my architectural design sketches will be a lot better in the future)
Not bad! There's definitely plenty of room for improvement, but you're moving in the right direction. I can see you pushing yourself to break those objects down into more rudimentary form, and working towards applying the different techniques and approaches I covered in the lesson.
One thing that does jump out at me is that here and there you seemed to work a bit too small, and that did end up turning against you by making the process considerably more difficult. A good example of this is your page of computer mice. You really did need the additional room to think through those spatial problems. Without it, things definitely got much stiffer, and little mistakes carried much more weight than they might have had the drawing been bigger.
In addition, I do see some places where your basic straight lines waver more than they should - keep pushing yourself to ghost through your lines wherever possible, in order to keep those basic parts of your drawing as clean and precise as possible.
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep what I've mentioned here in mind, but go ahead and move onto the next lesson. You also may want to look into completing the 250 cylinder challenge.
You've done some really fantastic work here. I especially love the webcam and the bike light - both reasonably complex forms with a lot of careful planning and subdivision required, but you did a great job with each of them. You've got a lot of other good stuff, but those were the two that really stood out to me.
In general, I have no complaints (aside from the fact that your writing is near illegible - i think all I can make out is a lot of "fuck fuck fuck" :P). You've demonstrated a solid grasp of the material covered in the lesson, and definitely exceeded my expectations based on your previous progression. And it was nice to see the Canadian quarter, too!
Feel free to move onto the next lesson. I think you might enjoy that one more, since you have the freedom to use a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you happen to have one). Might help keep things cleaner - and honestly, if you want, I give you my permission to use a 0.1mm felt tip pen.
By the way, you should definitely post that photo of the year's work to the subreddit! I'm sure it'd be motivating to some of the newer members (and might help give them a sense of just how much work needs to be put in).
[deleted]
2016-11-09 05:32
Thanks for the reply.
Object | Comment
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Pen Holder | This was a tapered cylinder with a bowl and notches at the top. I had trouble with ellipses at this one, and the thick construction lines were tough to work with.
Eraser | This was a rectangle with one tapered end. I think I got the solids on this, but trying to add pencil marks ruined the end with ink.
Pencil Sharpener | This was alright. It was still messy and small.
Quarter | This was also okay. Not really any solids in it.
Webcam | This took three tries to get an alright box. I forfeited the half-page attempts for this and used a full page. Again I was wishing for a thinner pen for construction lines, but otherwise it went alright.
Whistle | I couldn't figure out the angle on the stifferer near the back cylinder. The angles were rough, as were the millimeter inaccuracies like always.
USB End | This was okay. I should have contour-curved the cable at the back the other way.
Sunscreen Bottle | Honestly this was really tough since it was totally organic. Even all the construction lines I did on this one didn't really help make it accurate.
Bike Light | It's interesting that you think this one is good. I think it's bad, as it too is totally smooth but doesn't look like it. I'm not sure how to show smooth things without only showing an outline. The array of lights at the front was supposed to be a grid but didn't end up that way.
Bike Lock | Oops looks like this page wasn't uploaded. This went alright too, but I had the same problem with the 0.5mm pen and accuracy requirements. I would prefer a 0.3mm pen with 1.0mm pen, but for next time I'll use 0.3mm and 0.5mm. I did this for a couple pages.
Key | This was okay but too thick. I should have bade it both wider and longer, but not thinner or I'd need even more accuracy.
Card Case | This went alright. I screwed up on the last split of the card case by following a wrong construction line. When I physically looked at this card case, it didn't look like a theoretical box (shortening in all directions) but looked like a frustum instead. I drew the theoretical box.
Drumstick | This was super easy. Again with the inaccuracies.
Glass Cleaner | This was alright, lots of construction for the neck and head but the body was all smooth and hard to represent. I added on the label but it didn't look good.
Bike Pump | This was alright in the end, but my first middle plane for the cylinder was wrong. I'm not sure why, but it must have been because of inaccuracies in my diagonal lines.
I think the reason I did alright with this lesson is twofold: One is that I had the physical object so could rotate it and view as required. The other is that I have done technical drawing before but used rulers and protractors then.
I posted the photo on the sub. I'll try the next lesson next week, I'm glad to be able to use a ruler.
I have a problem with ellipses. Whenever I draw one, I have to correct myself almost immediately and it goes on until it's a huge mess. However I tried to force myself to draw only 3 rounds but that often results in bad alignment. Any tips regarding that?
Anyway thank you for keeping this up and have a great day.
Looks to me like you've done a pretty solid job of implementing the things I covered in the lesson. I agree that when it comes to the alignment of your ellipses, there's definitely some work to be done. Overall ellipses are RIDICULOUSLY difficult, which is why in the next lesson you're free to use an ellipse guide if you can get one to make your life a little easier. On top of the natural difficulty of ellipses though, make sure you give the ellipses in planes video from the next lesson a watch, as it will definitely help.
Overall, your objects - especially the boxier ones - have a really strong sense of solidity and construction, and your proportions appear to generally be estimated quite well. I especially love your lighter - even the ellipses there were quite well executed.
Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.
The beginning of this lesson was pretty frustrating as things felt like they were way too hard to draw, but toward the end as I slowly got hang of the methods, they felt easier to do.
Subdividing I always seem to have the problem after doing the first cross, to draw the middle line I always seem to screw it up in a way or another, gets better toward the end though.
I used the final page to give the two plane drawing method a try, after hours of frustration and about 5 tries, finally got it to look like a mouse, learned some major things during those, will definitely give that a try once again at some point. (Maybe when I pick up digital, the messiness from ink was a really huge part of why it was frustrating.)
one really good thing through this lesson though, I learned how to draw straight lines much better during the lesson. (Was ruler allowed in this lesson btw?) but mixed with the 250 cylinder challenge along with this lesson, I'm quite satisfied with the straight lines I've been drawing free hand through the lesson.
I think you're demonstrating a lot of improvement here. A lot of your drawings feel quite solid and well constructed, and while there are issues here and there, you push through them confidently and your results benefit from that tenacity.
All of this stuff definitely is tricky, so I don't expect to see any perfect drawings - even with your mouse drawing, you definitely made a really solid attempt at applying that cross-section approach. The resulting mouse is a little assymetrical, but overall I'm quite pleased with your results. For future reference, you did try to cram that mouse and all of those lines into a pretty small space - drawing larger (maybe putting the orthographics on a separate page) will give you more room to think through your spatial problems, and will also diminish the clutter resulting from all of the lines.
I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson. You're right that rulers weren't allowed for this lesson, but they are allowed in the next one so feel free to take advantage of that (although you did a pretty good job with your use of the ghosting method here).
There's actually more mistakes in average than the ones shown in the submission, as I still tend to aim to get the drawing as perfect as possible. Way less these days as I used to draw weeks until I was satisfied with the drawing I was trying. But as time passes by I'm starting to learn how adapting to the mistakes and working with them can also be a valuable thing to learn and I'll strive to do that.
Looking forward for the next lesson! Drawing simple forms and objects and putting them together to build something bigger is oddly satisfying.
Happy new year to you too. In general you're doing a pretty solid job. Your constructions employ many of the concepts I've covered in the lesson to great effect, and the results feel quite solid. You've even done a pretty fantastic job with that camera at the end, despite its undoubtedly challenging nature. Everyone struggles with those lenses. Admittedly your cast shadow shapes are pretty terrible :P It looks like you got a bit too stressed out with it. There's really no need to try and be quite so accurate - even if the shape doesn't match up that closely to the form, it's really just meant to be something symbolic to help ground the overall form. Personally, even if my object's got lots of curves on it, I almost always go for straight lines.
There are certainly other areas that could use improvement, but overall you're moving in the right direction. More than anything, it's a matter of choosing which concepts to apply where - for example, for your watch drawing, I think the straps may have been better off treated as a more organic, ribbon-like form (with some thickness), rather than trying to fit it all into a box. Keep in mind that just because this lesson is about drawing more geometric forms doesn't mean that everything you encounter will fall into that category. Ultimately all of these lessons are covering a variety of tools you can use, and it will be up to you to choose which ones suit a given task best.
Anyway, keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.
[deleted]
2017-01-02 17:39
I had a lot of trouble with this, but here's the homework for lesson 6. I kept putting it off as I was struggling a lot to draw in this way and had to take a lot of breaks. I'm not really sure why I found it so much more difficult than the previous lessons as I understand the content, even watched all the videos multiple times to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but the drawings still don't turn out that great. I think I just can't draw boxes.... lol
Don't be too hard on yourself - overall your work is looking pretty solid, and there is a fundamental difference between the previous lessons and this one. Before this point, we were dealing with largely organic forms - these tend to give us a lot more leeway, allow us to be much more approximate and vague with our decision making with very little punishment one way or the other. When it comes to geometric forms, things tend to become much more unforgiving.
In the last lesson, we had a bit of a tango with your use of construction. You were falling back quite a bit on your strong observational skills, and relying less on construction - this lesson is ultimately why I've been gradually shoehorning you (and everyone else) into thinking more about how all the forms fit together, and how to manipulate those forms in 3D space. This lesson is all construction.
Now as for your actual drawings, like I said, you did a pretty good job across the board. The proportion studies on the side there definitely helped a lot, and your forms generally feel pretty sturdy and believable. There are some places where your initial boxes were a bit off and that offset the whole drawing (for example, your drawers) but fundamentally that's not a bad problem to have. While it will impact things in a big way, solving it is just a matter of practicing your boxes more. Problems tend to be scarier when it's hard to pinpoint what they actually are.
Overall however your boxes are actually pretty well handled. The next step from there I'd say is a matter of keeping things snug within those boxes. For example, you've got this drawing of a radio (same page as the weird foldy stool thing). The ratio itself, while existing in the box, has some rounded corners. The whole construction however remains very snug within the box, and you round off those corners as a last detail. It's a pretty easy example when it comes to things remaining snug.
Going down to your soap dispenser on the third last page, while the form actually holds its own pretty well, the shape is somewhat off as it is not really all that snug within the form. From the looks of it, you may have been trying to nail a rather awkward object (it looks like the side closer to us is meant to be wider than the end farther to us - I'm not sure if that's intentional or if it was a mistake, but I'll assume the former for now). With a tricky thing like this, it becomes very important to establish some kind of axis or plane across which the whole form is mirrored. Looking at your drawing, it seems you neglected to establish the center through the middle of the base plane, robbing you of a fairly important reference point. As a result, you eyeballed it more, causing the overall form to become less snug within that enclosing box.
As you move forwards, try and think about how you might cut these forms up - think about where and how these forms are symmetrical and use that to your advantage. Also, always push yourself to try and keep things snug in their boxes. If something's floating arbitrarily within another larger form, that's a sign that you probably skipped a step.
Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
[deleted]
2017-01-03 19:27
Thanks so much for the feedback. I actually made a mistake with the soap dispenser, it should be totally symmetrical and I think the box that I drew initially wasn't correctly proportioned. I think at the time I was trying to decide whether the box should encapsulate the entire soap dispenser including the pump or whether I should separate the two (which is what I ended up doing, but I may have decided that after the fact, I don't remember). Just poor planning on my part!
By the end of the set, with the mouse and the charger, your constructions definitely start demonstrating a grasp of the material covered in this lesson. One thing that really stands out to me is the jug, where you're jumping into the complex detail of the handle without building up the simpler steps before it. Since you jump in with that too early, you end up with very little to support those details, and ultimately you end up trying to make up for it all through detail/rendering (which never works).
In general, detail and rendering is really doing more bad than good when it comes to this lesson, because the ability to rely on it even slightly distracts you from really putting your focus towards the constructional steps. In those last two drawings, you definitely start breaking away from this habit, though admittedly the charger is quite simple (but for this reason it was a great choice), and the other one was pulled directly from one of my demos (again, a good choice to get your head around the process).
Another issue that extends from this is that you consciously separate the "final linework" from your construction. That is, looking at your jug, you've got clear constructional lines that are pretty clean, planned out, and well executed. Then you've got your "final" linework that seems to try and replace the constructional lines. They tend to be much looser, more wobbly, more chicken-scratchy and generally look far worse.
You shouldn't be trying to replace those constructional lines. Those initial marks should be drawn with confidence, and then when it comes time to add line weight, it's not a matter of redrawing the whole thing. All you're doing is emphasizing some lines over others, and drawing attention to that which already exists in your drawing.
Before I let you move onto the next lesson, I'd like to see another four pages of these drawings. Keep what I've mentioned here in mind - focus entirely on construction, building up complexity in successive passes, and when your construction is complete, add line weight to existing lines (don't chicken-scratch when doing this) to help organize your linework.
Also, I hope you're still going through the lesson 1 and 2 exercises as warmups, as I've likely recommended previously (2 or 3 exercises chosen each day to be done for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting).
Admittedly, these are better than I expected. You were handling the inorganic stuff pretty well by the end of the last lesson, but I was worried that hard surface objects might pose a very foreign challenge for you.
Now there's definitely plenty of room to grow overall, but one hitch that I noticed was in how you're tackling your cylinder and cylinder-like objects early on. It seems that at some point you went through some of the 250 cylinder material, as you start using your minor axes a little better in drawings like this one, but it's definitely missing in other places. Either way, you'll definitely want to go through the full 250 at some point, preferably before moving onto the next lesson.
Aside from that, I think it's really a matter of continuing to familiarize yourself with constructing boxes and aligning them to one another. You'll find that those base-level exercises will help develop your skills more effectively than just practicing studies until you get it. Not to say studies are in any way bad, but those box constructions are a key point that need some drilling.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Do some boxes, do the cylinders, then feel free to move onto the next lesson. You may find that one a little easier in some ways (in that you're allowed to use a ruler, an ellipse guide if you have one, etc.) but also more difficult in that the scale of the objects tends to make them somewhat more challenging.
I thought this one would be easy compared to the animals, but damn. Anyway, please excuse the messy lines, but despite doing warm-ups and exercises every day, I still can't seem to get them right. (Though at times it was definitely the fault of excessive caffeine intake.) So, I'm not happy with the results, but I'd like to ask for your opinion for what to re-do, and so on.
Construction-wise, you're doing quite well. You're definitely thinking in 3D space, you're subdividing your enclosing boxes properly, and your results feel three dimensional. The only shortcoming really is what you mentioned - your line quality's not great. There's a lot of hesitation there, and overthinking when the time for thinking's done.
Always keep in mind the fact that the ghosting method is about splitting the process into two distinct parts. The phase where you're thinking and planning things out, and building up your muscle memory, and the phase where you execute the mark with bold confidence, trusting in your muscles (and in your previous preparation) and largely shutting your brain off.
Your lines waver because you're having trouble shitting your brain off. One thing that can potentially help is to take two blank pieces of paper. Fill the first one with lines - these lines have no criteria, no planning, nothing to prepare. Just lines - preferrably straight, but ultimately what matters most is that they need to be smooth and confident.
You can pause and take as much time in between as you like, but when you draw them, don't think. Let your arm pick a trajectory and stick to it.
The second page is similar, but this time, ellipses. You're not fitting those ellipses into any particular configuration, you're just drawing them without thought or planning.
Make sure you draw from the shoulder, locking both your elbow and your wrist. Hopefully this will help you loosen up, and make you more comfortable with the idea of drawing with confidence.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Once you've practiced loosening up your linework, feel free to move onto the next one. Lesson 7 does allow you to use a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you can get your hands on one), but ultimately this line quality thing is something we'll have to fix up one way or another.
Thank you! That really is something I have to work on. Even though I can clearly see how bad it is, I couldn't improve in a significant way yet. However I've been getting better at only using my shoulder, can even feel the underdeveloped muscles aching after a longer session. I'm definitely going try your suggestion of drawing unplanned lines and ellipses - all of my warm-up sessions consisted of lesson 1&2's exercises so far. Not to mention a countless amount of subdivided boxes.
Unfortunately I don't have an ellipse guide, but hopefully I'll be okay without. It certainly looks like it'll be one hell of a challenge.
There's some good and some less good here, but overall you are moving in the right direction. I see a lot of solid attempts at incorporating a lot of the stuff from the lesson into your work. Ultimately some of the areas that cause the most problems are really more at the base level (drawing solid, correct boxes and cylinders). It's for that reason that in the intro video, I mention that you should have gone through the 250 box and 250 cylinder challenges. I notice that you don't seem to have submitted anything for the latter. Definitely worth spending some time on.
When it comes to ellipses, you're definitely struggling - but more specifically, you're struggling with two things. Fitting ellipses into planes, and establishing ellipses that represent circles in 3D space. Both of these points are explained in this video, and then elaborated upon in this video. The latter is more related to the next lesson, but the former is presented as part of the 250 cylinder challenge as well.
These are veeery well done. You've applied the concepts covered in the lesson with great focus and patience. I don't see any points where you jump too far ahead - you're meticulous and gradually work through every step of plotting and construction and achieve results that convey a strong sense of solidity without any distraction from superfluous detail or decoration.
I really have nothing negative to say - you've hit this one out of the park. Consider this lesson as complete, and feel free to move onto the next one.
Uncomfortable
2016-09-25 02:13
Old thread got locked, post your homework here.
smashedpixie
2016-10-02 19:38
Hello. here it is: http://imgur.com/a/HXj2r. Some photos are a bit unfocused, don't now how to solve it. First images are quite messy.
Free content itself is definitely fine. The only problem - your film composition study demo, it contains too much important stuff, you should probably open it.
I want to believe what I will get some good stuff till the end of year in a pinch, otherwise I am infantile idiot :) Should not let myself spend time this year. Nevermind, I am in anticipation of lesson 7, demos look badass.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-02 20:55
Looking good! Just about all of your drawings have a really clear sense of solidity to them - they don't feel flimsy or light, they each feel firm and as though they weigh a fair bit. I especially love how well the computer mouse came out, and the variety of proportion studies you did on the side.
In general, the only area you appear to be struggling is with ellipses, and only in certain circumstances. Admittedly, they are really difficult, and do take some practice. Be sure to check out the Drawing Perfect Circles and Cubes in 3D Space and Constructing to Scale videos when you get the chance - of course, they're both linked near the beginning of lesson 7. The whole idea of how to figure out how to get the correct degree for an ellipse to represent a circle within a certain perspective system is pretty important.
Aside from that though, you're doing very well. Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.
Maxigati
2016-10-05 16:29
Hi Uncomfortable, i need some advise. What if i have multiple parallel lines to different direction. i mean i know that they should also converge into one point on the horizon line, but i got really disoriented. Is there any method or just practice can help me?
kr, Csaba
Uncomfortable
2016-10-05 18:11
To be honest it's hard to understand what you're saying, but if I had to guess, I'd say you were asking about drawing lines so they converge at a consistent location. The best practice for this - and it is largely a matter of practice - is drawing boxes. Boxes have three sets of parallel lines, each going to a different vanishing point, with four lines in each set. The better you get at drawing boxes, the more capable you will be in visualizing where a vanishing point is and whether or not your lines converge in roughly the same area.
If you're getting disoriented, then you're probably trying to draw objects that are too complex - try to approach simpler things that have very clear configurations of basic forms, and flesh everything out as a box initially.
ClassicRandy
2016-10-05 21:02
Here's my lesson 6. Not sure how well I'm doing with these. I know my lines tend to get a little wobbly depending on what part of an object I'm drawing. I was pretty satisfied with some, but fairly unhappy with others.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-05 22:02
Honestly, for the most part you're not really applying the principles covered in the lesson. I'm not seeing any subdivision to measure your proportions more accurately, you rarely draw through your boxes and you don't apply the concepts of the minor axis to your cylinders. This also relates to the fact that you haven't completed the 250 box challenge nor the 250 cylinder challenge, as recommended at the beginning of the lesson.
There's a lot of content in the lesson - in the intro video and across all three demonstrations - that you're just not applying. For most of these, you start off with a box and then draw the rest purely from observation, rather than constructing it. You really should go through it again and take another shot at this.
ClassicRandy
2016-10-06 00:21
Okay, yeah, looking back on it I don't think I understood the concepts in the lesson particularly well or how to employ them successfully. But I also didn't notice all the new material that's in the lesson now, so I'll definitely look at it again and try to get a better grasp on it. I do draw a ton of cylinders and boxes daily, but because it's during free time that I have at random moments, it's all on scraps of paper that I don't keep, so I never submitted the two challenges.
ClassicRandy
2016-11-14 14:19
Okay, here's my second attempt. At the very least, I think I was using the techniques you taught.
Uncomfortable
2016-11-14 22:47
Definitely much better! I can see a lot more construction and subdivision here - I particularly like the anvil, and the box cutter (or whatever kind of knife that is on the first page). The only thing I want to mention is that the shoe was definitely more of a situation where you'd use the technique I demonstrated in my computer mouse demo.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
ReDraw-mind
2016-10-07 10:54
i would post this in reply to my first submission in L6 where you suggested redoing it but it's archived now , so here is the second try , i am still not satisfied about my work but i really understand the whole thing now & i know i just need more time & practice .. besides i have to catch the deadline right :)
anyway i'm excited about the next lessons not because they are easy but because i understand things better now , even if i did it wrong i can now define my mistakes.
as for the submissions , i have some lines that are a bit messy and in some cases- like the juice glasses ones - i draw the right side of the cup line ok then when trying to do the left one i mess up
another thing is the ellipses ... you know when i draw them carelessly they come out right but when i focus on the final try that should be sent to you it comes really ugly :( i think it's tension that makes me like that ... also i did the boxy drawers wrong 1st, so i redone it on the last page
sorry for too much talk, looking forward for your reply ..
thankQ
Uncomfortable
2016-10-07 20:06
You're right, these do still need work, and ultimately you're still not really applying a lot of the principles I talk about in the newer content for this lesson. Checking out the content for the next lesson would also probably be helpful, but I wouldn't consider this lesson complete yet.
First off, your utensils are just drawings strictly from observation. Admittedly spoons and knives aren't the best choice for this lesson (although the concepts I cover in the lesson can still be applied to them), but you still didn't really attempt to break them down into simpler forms. For example, you drew the entire spoon as a single object, rather than separating the bowl end of it from the handle.
Across all of your constructions, you don't draw through any of your boxes, giving you no real sense of the opposite side of the form.
The left side of page 3's not badly done, and in general it's a solid attempt at that object. Still, you're not drawing through your forms - you should have drawn each ellipse going all the way down the form. Your glasses also suffer from your not drawing all of the ellipses present in their entirety, resulting in cylinders that don't really feel rounded.
We only really start to see any use of subdivision techniques near the end, showing very little regard for proportion and symmetry.
ReDraw-mind
2016-10-08 10:57
Thank you for the critique but I have to say that I've done this before you add the new lesson content except for the last page!
i already reviewed the new content and even practiced drawing the Cintique demo but with pencil .
i only wanted to send those because i already done it & it's the last day , hoping i could use the new concepts in the assignment of the next lesson . i feel i have taken a lot of time in this lesson :(
any way i know you care a bout the quality rather than quantity .
I'll try my best ISA
Fish_Face_Faeces
2016-10-16 14:30
oh god oh geez, here's my lesson 6. The first 8 pages are new. Apologies for the older work being riddled with red, I hadn't really planned on showing it here.
Proportions, perspective, alignment, consistency, sticking to the ortographic drawings while also drawing straight lines freehand... Hell is real.
Though I think it's getting easier. Especially the more and more I force myself to just stick to dividing the "big box" into as many smaller boxes as possible, before tackling any curves and whatnot.
I'm having immense problems with objects that have a more organic forms going on, like shoes, but I hope I'm heading in the right direction. I found myself carving out the sole as if it's lying flat on the ground, when really it's kind of arching down and then back up, so I think that threw me for a loop. And the way the overall form swells in and out... Oh boy.
I'll probably take a wee breather before tackling vehicles.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-16 17:38
Looking great! Your new pages are definitely showing some considerable improvement. I especially like your use of line weight in pages 5 and 6. I'm not really sure what page 5 is (a coffee maker maybe?) but I love how solid and conscientiously constructed it is.
The only thing I wanted to point out is actually kind of a moot point since it's on your older work and I'm sure you've already moved past it. Still, I figure I'll go ahead and mention it anyway so it seems like I'm doing something helpful here. It's this chair. Basically, I would have been much boxier with the construction of the seat back and seat bottom, maintaining solid box forms much longer before adding the bulges of cloth and cushion.
In regards to the issues you were having with your shoe - I think you did a pretty good job of it. Ultimately I usually do the same thing - carving out the base of the object as though it's laying flat on the ground. At least, that's my first step - I drop in the footprint of the form, regardless of where there is contact. Then, by looking at the side orthographic views, you can see the rising of the arch, and then construct that as well. You'll actually see me doing more of that in the next lesson.
Anyway, really nice work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete - enjoy your break, and I look forward to seeing you cry in lesson 7.
Fish_Face_Faeces
2016-10-16 20:15
Thank you! Bring a bucket.
Maxigati
2016-10-20 20:20
Hi,
Unfortunately i haven't got to much time to draw so i just prepared the 8 pages... I bought a scanner for this but the quality is not that good. Some drawings happen to be small...
http://imgur.com/a/ajJUa
thanks!
Uncomfortable
2016-10-22 17:09
There's definitely a lot of good stuff here. The coffee maker on page 3 feels very solid and quite well constructed. The cylinder at the base is a little off (alignment of the ellipses to the minor axis isn't quite right), but overall it's fairly well done.
The game controller was definitely a complex one to approach - I think I would have applied the technique I demonstrated with the computer mouse demo here, due to all of the organic curves and specific proportions.
The biggest issue I'm seeing here isn't an uncommon thing - you're struggling with your proportions. This will definitely improve with a lot of practice, but unfortunately there's no real trick to it other than giving yourself plenty of chances to draw from observation in this manner, and taking your time whenever you do. In the next lesson, you'll see me stress proportion studies much more (where you do orthographic drawings trying to break down how an object's height, width and depth relate to one another overall), so make sure you get used to doing those.
The only other thing I wanted to recommend is that you take more care in terms of having things fit snugly. That is, when you draw an encompassing box to start your construction, make sure the components of your drawing fit tightly within that box. Don't let them float arbitrarily within that box at all, as it undermines the purpose of constructing the box in the first place. Since at times it's harder to imagine how, say, a cylinder might fit snugly into a box, it can help to try and picture that cylinder as being a box instead, at least in terms of how to get it to fit snugly within the encompassing form, rather than having it floating inside or having little bits and pieces sticking out.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. There's plenty of room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction.
Tis_Unfortunate
2016-10-21 10:52
omfg whoever invented drawing ellipses should be sent to a special ellipse of hell. Seriously, screw ellipses. WHY ARE THEY EVERYWHERE
RRARGH
Uncomfortable
2016-10-22 18:01
Very nicely done! I absolutely love the gallon jug drawings - the angles were admittedly quite difficult, but your use of the various constructional tools covered in the lesson were spot on. Yeah, sure, the ellipses aren't the greatest, but it's still an impressive drawing. Just remember to work on aligning your ellipses to minor axes! And you'll be glad to know that in the next lesson, I outright tossed freehanding out the window and allow students to use ellipse guides and rulers. But it's still important to practice doing them freehand, as reaching for an additional tool will generally be a little jarring when it comes to the design process.
In general, very nice work. The only one I feel was somewhat weaker was your gear-sphere. Admittedly a very interesting and unique challenge, but I think you jumped into the teeth of each gear a little too early, and could probably have applied some more constructional steps in between.
Anyway, keep up the great work, and consider this lesson complete! Feel free to move onto the next one.
Tis_Unfortunate
2016-10-22 22:31
I always find it amusing how, when I do the homeworks over a handful of sessions with a handful of drawings in each, it's always VERY VERY OBVIOUS in retrospect exactly when in each set I started losing focus and tried to sneak in some halfassery. ;)
Damn you and your halfassery detectorI will aspire to your instructorly patience! --or maybe just take breaks sooner. xDWhat exactly is an "ellipse guide" with respect to physical drawings? Are we talking about those stencil things with some finite set of predefined ellipses? Or is there an equivalent of a compass for ellipses? Seems like there should be, since they're defined by the same sort of mathematical constraint as a circle, but I can't recall ever seeing one and I think I'm missing the word to ask google.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-22 22:33
I'd probably use them more if there was such a compass type device, though I haven't actually looked it up. There could be. I mean.. technically I don't think it should be impossible, you'd just have to have two focii instead of a single central point. But either way, by ellipse guide I am referring to the stencil type thing. In the intro video to lesson 7, I believe I momentarily bring up a photo of one.
Tis_Unfortunate
2016-10-22 22:44
It'd be easy enough to rig something up with a couple pins and a variable-length string, but without some sort of "nice" handle/holder it would probably be too annoying to use. Might give it a shot until I can get some of the stencil kind.
I was thinking of also trying something like a coin with a toothpick taped across it, back-illuminated by a flashlight. Then, with some combo of rotating the toothpick and adjusting the distance to your paper, you could project an ellipse of any size and degree. You'd still have to draw the thing freehand, but at least you could have more than 4 guide-dots.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-22 23:27
That's a pretty interesting concept - it's basically taking the whole principle of what an ellipse is in 3D space and projecting it back down onto a 2D plane.
Tis_Unfortunate
2016-10-23 14:40
I mean, if you can make the real world do the work for you... ;) Tried it out yesterday -- works well enough but my flashlight sucks. Or, rather, my flashlight is the kind with 9 little LEDs instead of one bulb in a paraboloid, and consequently can't cast a sharp shadow to save its life. Sunlight works, though. I'll take some pictures later.
disies
2016-10-21 19:09
I did it.. wooh!
https://imgur.com/a/D8maD
Uncomfortable
2016-10-22 18:26
It's a good start, but there are a few things that I do need to point out in order to get you on the right track. Firstly, for a lot of the more complex objects, I'm seeing you starting off with a box and subdividing it.. and then kind of ignoring it (at least partially) when drawing your object. For example, the pliers and the scissors on the second page - it's extremely important that if you do decide to use the encapsulating box method (which isn't always the best approach) that the object should fit very snugly within the box. That means that each extremity of the object should be touching one side of the box. With your pliers, the tip falls short of the end of the box, with your scissors, the left side of the handle doesn't quite touch the box either. Additionally, all of these objects kind of ignore the whole "start as simple as possible" rules, and jump in with fairly complex forms rather than simple, primitive forms. Admittedly these kinds of objects are actually considerably more challenging choices, since they have so many small components that are connected at odd angles. It'd probably be better to focus on things with simpler forms arranged in a more predictable fashion.
Cameras are definitely a good choice as a subject matter. In this one, you've got a lot of complex curving going on - near the top, a lot of those curves are the result of some degree of guesswork. A better approach would have been to construct boxes inside of your overall encapsulating box to construct the bulk of the forms concretely, before just lightly rounding off the corners near the end. This is another example of jumping into complexity way too early. Check out how I approach a similar challenge in this demo.
In general, your boxes and cylinders do need to be refined for sure. I definitely want to stress the importance of drawing through all of your initial boxes here (you do for a lot of them, but not all), and in general you do need to work on avoiding near/far plane size relationship problems. Your general construction of cylinders also needs some work - specifically when it comes to aligning them to the minor axes. For example the mug on this page wasn't great. Extending your minor axis further and having the ellipse sit such that the line cut all the way through it (rather than stopping at its center point) would have helped.
Lastly, just a note about the hairbrush. It raises an interesting issue - how do you deal with all these little bits? The answer is actually a matter of interpreting them as a single, solid mass. You can treat all the bristles as being a short, wide cylinder-like form, basically repeating that base ellipse above. This is similar to how artists are encouraged to deal with hair - when drawing a portrait, for example, we don't draw every individual strand. Instead we deal with hair in chunks, identifying how the strands naturally group together to create larger forms.
Anyway, I've mentioned a lot of things here, so take some time to absorb it. I also recommend that you give the lesson another read through, revisit the demos and rewatch the demo recordings. Then I'd like you to try another 4 pages of object drawings. Try not to pick anything too complex - this subject matter is quite difficult, so what's most important is just getting the hang of constructing solid boxes and ellipses together, and getting used to breaking things down into their simplest forms.
disies
2016-10-22 18:32
I'm thankful for your critiques, but it's also very frustrating because I'm at my limits here.. I drew for hours and hours and I still can't get it right.. I see my issues but seem not to be able to solve them.. :/
anyway thanks
Uncomfortable
2016-10-22 18:38
Try this - first, revisit the 250 box and cylinder challenges. You don't have to draw as many, but you do need to work on getting those basic building blocks down. My guess is that you've allowed yourself to get a little rusty in those areas - looking back on those completed challenges, they were a fair bit better than they're looking now.
Once you've done that, try replicating my demos - the speaker in the intro video, the wooden barrel, etc. working your way up to the computer mouse. This should also help you absorb the concepts more effectively, since you'll be able to follow along with the steps. Just don't rush through.
disies
2016-10-22 18:43
that sounds doable.. Thanks again.. I will take my time and try to do something productive each day ..
disies
2016-10-23 07:43
I noticed something else.. You say that my boxes in my box challenge are way better.. It's because I don't care much about proportions but when I try to draw my camera, I suddenly have to care about proportions.. I tried this small camera several times, I have many sheets of paper with failed attempts because I have big troubles to get the proportions right.. It's already starting with my first stroke.. I'm uncertain which stroke I have to put down first to get it right. Even with the ghosting method I just can't figure it out..
Uncomfortable
2016-10-23 23:11
I'd recommend taking a peek at the next lesson's material then - in general, I accept that proportion is going to not be ideal, because that's something that progresses with time and practice. That said, there are techniques that will help you achieve more accurate proportion. It starts to get pretty heavily in to the technical side of things, but you may at least want to give it a try: Measuring in Perspective: Constructing to Scale.
Keep in mind that right now proportion is not a big concern. It'll be important down the line, but if your only issue were proportion I would have marked the lesson as complete. What's much more significant is generally breaking your objects down into primitive forms, and applying more constructive principles in the manner the lesson describes.
ChevalierFaible
2016-10-24 01:32
Some of these are very messy, and I think I have some trouble to lay down the first big box surrounding an object when it's not square :/
I also think my cylinders might need some extra work :o
http://imgur.com/a/8ZfZS
Uncomfortable
2016-10-24 21:56
There's some nice stuff here! I liked the gun and the game controller a fair bit, as well as the perfume bottle (#9). Overall you're doing a pretty good job when it comes to applying subdivision and going from very simple forms (boxes) and breaking down your forms to add more complexity in successive passes. You're right though, you definitely do need to work on your cylinders. One thing that should help is giving this video about circles in 3D space a watch. It'll explain why a lot of your ellipses are off.
You certainly do have room to improve with these (proportion is also an area you're struggling with in some of these drawings, such as the table lamp), but I think you should be good to move onto the next lesson, which expands on a lot of the material introduced here.
ChevalierFaible
2016-10-24 22:29
Thanks, I'll keep proportions more in mind coming into the next exercise!
memedarch
2016-11-01 20:26
God i hate this one ! beside i run out of pens :( and they are hard to come by in africa...
https://goo.gl/photos/G5DeB7HvHViadnjU8
Uncomfortable
2016-11-01 21:40
Honestly, I'm really impressed. I think you've done an excellent job of applying the concepts I covered in the lesson, and many of your drawings show both strong observational skills and a really solid grasp of construction. You've done a great job of using subdivision, as well as some of the other more technical tricks I mentioned.
There's always going to be some room for improvement, but that's just a matter of practice. Here and there your initial boxes are a little bit off, and this does affect the resulting object (like the phone's proportions were definitely skewed and your box's foreshortening was really dramatic so the result was weird) but I'm glad that you still stuck through applying the methodology.
Keep up the fantastic work, and consider this lesson complete. Your pens may all be dead, but they've died for a good cause!
memedarch
2016-11-01 22:01
thnx for the flattering comments your really boosted my morale ! and i must admit my architectural education helped me alot ! ( tho i was using rules back then and always having vanishing points. but your lesson opened my eyes in to a new dimention i believe my architectural design sketches will be a lot better in the future)
[deleted]
2016-11-07 19:11
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2016-11-07 20:46
Not bad! There's definitely plenty of room for improvement, but you're moving in the right direction. I can see you pushing yourself to break those objects down into more rudimentary form, and working towards applying the different techniques and approaches I covered in the lesson.
One thing that does jump out at me is that here and there you seemed to work a bit too small, and that did end up turning against you by making the process considerably more difficult. A good example of this is your page of computer mice. You really did need the additional room to think through those spatial problems. Without it, things definitely got much stiffer, and little mistakes carried much more weight than they might have had the drawing been bigger.
In addition, I do see some places where your basic straight lines waver more than they should - keep pushing yourself to ghost through your lines wherever possible, in order to keep those basic parts of your drawing as clean and precise as possible.
Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep what I've mentioned here in mind, but go ahead and move onto the next lesson. You also may want to look into completing the 250 cylinder challenge.
[deleted]
2016-11-08 05:45
Wow I don't know how this one only took two weeks when the others took a couple months. Maybe it's the dark of winter making my evenings entirely indoors compared to mountain biking and running in the spring/summer.
E: I counted my pages for a different post and it's been just over a year and 150 pages!
Uncomfortable
2016-11-09 01:17
You've done some really fantastic work here. I especially love the webcam and the bike light - both reasonably complex forms with a lot of careful planning and subdivision required, but you did a great job with each of them. You've got a lot of other good stuff, but those were the two that really stood out to me.
In general, I have no complaints (aside from the fact that your writing is near illegible - i think all I can make out is a lot of "fuck fuck fuck" :P). You've demonstrated a solid grasp of the material covered in the lesson, and definitely exceeded my expectations based on your previous progression. And it was nice to see the Canadian quarter, too!
Feel free to move onto the next lesson. I think you might enjoy that one more, since you have the freedom to use a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you happen to have one). Might help keep things cleaner - and honestly, if you want, I give you my permission to use a 0.1mm felt tip pen.
By the way, you should definitely post that photo of the year's work to the subreddit! I'm sure it'd be motivating to some of the newer members (and might help give them a sense of just how much work needs to be put in).
[deleted]
2016-11-09 05:32
Thanks for the reply.
Object | Comment
---|---
Pen Holder | This was a tapered cylinder with a bowl and notches at the top. I had trouble with ellipses at this one, and the thick construction lines were tough to work with.
Eraser | This was a rectangle with one tapered end. I think I got the solids on this, but trying to add pencil marks ruined the end with ink.
Pencil Sharpener | This was alright. It was still messy and small.
GoPro Screw | This was okay.
Quarter | This was also okay. Not really any solids in it.
Webcam | This took three tries to get an alright box. I forfeited the half-page attempts for this and used a full page. Again I was wishing for a thinner pen for construction lines, but otherwise it went alright.
Whistle | I couldn't figure out the angle on the stifferer near the back cylinder. The angles were rough, as were the millimeter inaccuracies like always.
USB End | This was okay. I should have contour-curved the cable at the back the other way.
Sunscreen Bottle | Honestly this was really tough since it was totally organic. Even all the construction lines I did on this one didn't really help make it accurate.
Bike Light | It's interesting that you think this one is good. I think it's bad, as it too is totally smooth but doesn't look like it. I'm not sure how to show smooth things without only showing an outline. The array of lights at the front was supposed to be a grid but didn't end up that way.
Bike Lock | Oops looks like this page wasn't uploaded. This went alright too, but I had the same problem with the 0.5mm pen and accuracy requirements. I would prefer a 0.3mm pen with 1.0mm pen, but for next time I'll use 0.3mm and 0.5mm. I did this for a couple pages.
Key | This was okay but too thick. I should have bade it both wider and longer, but not thinner or I'd need even more accuracy.
Card Case | This went alright. I screwed up on the last split of the card case by following a wrong construction line. When I physically looked at this card case, it didn't look like a theoretical box (shortening in all directions) but looked like a frustum instead. I drew the theoretical box.
Drumstick | This was super easy. Again with the inaccuracies.
Glass Cleaner | This was alright, lots of construction for the neck and head but the body was all smooth and hard to represent. I added on the label but it didn't look good.
Bike Pump | This was alright in the end, but my first middle plane for the cylinder was wrong. I'm not sure why, but it must have been because of inaccuracies in my diagonal lines.
I think the reason I did alright with this lesson is twofold: One is that I had the physical object so could rotate it and view as required. The other is that I have done technical drawing before but used rulers and protractors then.
I posted the photo on the sub. I'll try the next lesson next week, I'm glad to be able to use a ruler.
Uncompleted
2016-11-19 09:35
Hi Uncomfortable,
Here's what I got for you.
I have a problem with ellipses. Whenever I draw one, I have to correct myself almost immediately and it goes on until it's a huge mess. However I tried to force myself to draw only 3 rounds but that often results in bad alignment. Any tips regarding that?
Anyway thank you for keeping this up and have a great day.
Uncomfortable
2016-11-20 18:46
Looks to me like you've done a pretty solid job of implementing the things I covered in the lesson. I agree that when it comes to the alignment of your ellipses, there's definitely some work to be done. Overall ellipses are RIDICULOUSLY difficult, which is why in the next lesson you're free to use an ellipse guide if you can get one to make your life a little easier. On top of the natural difficulty of ellipses though, make sure you give the ellipses in planes video from the next lesson a watch, as it will definitely help.
Overall, your objects - especially the boxier ones - have a really strong sense of solidity and construction, and your proportions appear to generally be estimated quite well. I especially love your lighter - even the ellipses there were quite well executed.
Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.
Uncompleted
2016-11-20 20:46
I actually already watched all of your videos but I guess it just comes down to practice :P Well I'm going to give lesson 7 a shot
Uncomfortable
2016-11-20 20:47
In that case, take a look at the contact points of your camera's lens ellipses and check their alignment.
Uncompleted
2016-12-01 16:00
Whoops, just saw you answered.
Thanks for your tips, they definitely help out while dealing with Lesson 7.
Here is my Lens but it doesn't seam to be too bad with the alignment. Maybe I just constructed the Box incorrect around the cylinder?
Uncomfortable
2016-12-01 17:07
Oh sorry, my bad. I forgot you had a literal drawing of a full camera lens. I meant the lens on this camera.
dencontrol
2016-12-17 15:32
Hello Uncomfortable! Here's my submission
The beginning of this lesson was pretty frustrating as things felt like they were way too hard to draw, but toward the end as I slowly got hang of the methods, they felt easier to do.
Subdividing I always seem to have the problem after doing the first cross, to draw the middle line I always seem to screw it up in a way or another, gets better toward the end though.
I used the final page to give the two plane drawing method a try, after hours of frustration and about 5 tries, finally got it to look like a mouse, learned some major things during those, will definitely give that a try once again at some point. (Maybe when I pick up digital, the messiness from ink was a really huge part of why it was frustrating.)
one really good thing through this lesson though, I learned how to draw straight lines much better during the lesson. (Was ruler allowed in this lesson btw?) but mixed with the 250 cylinder challenge along with this lesson, I'm quite satisfied with the straight lines I've been drawing free hand through the lesson.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-18 19:48
I think you're demonstrating a lot of improvement here. A lot of your drawings feel quite solid and well constructed, and while there are issues here and there, you push through them confidently and your results benefit from that tenacity.
All of this stuff definitely is tricky, so I don't expect to see any perfect drawings - even with your mouse drawing, you definitely made a really solid attempt at applying that cross-section approach. The resulting mouse is a little assymetrical, but overall I'm quite pleased with your results. For future reference, you did try to cram that mouse and all of those lines into a pretty small space - drawing larger (maybe putting the orthographics on a separate page) will give you more room to think through your spatial problems, and will also diminish the clutter resulting from all of the lines.
I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson. You're right that rulers weren't allowed for this lesson, but they are allowed in the next one so feel free to take advantage of that (although you did a pretty good job with your use of the ghosting method here).
dencontrol
2016-12-19 09:26
Thank you for the feedback!
There's actually more mistakes in average than the ones shown in the submission, as I still tend to aim to get the drawing as perfect as possible. Way less these days as I used to draw weeks until I was satisfied with the drawing I was trying. But as time passes by I'm starting to learn how adapting to the mistakes and working with them can also be a valuable thing to learn and I'll strive to do that.
Looking forward for the next lesson! Drawing simple forms and objects and putting them together to build something bigger is oddly satisfying.
bwbgtr
2017-01-01 22:44
Happy new year! Here's my lesson 6 homework.
Uncomfortable
2017-01-02 20:38
Happy new year to you too. In general you're doing a pretty solid job. Your constructions employ many of the concepts I've covered in the lesson to great effect, and the results feel quite solid. You've even done a pretty fantastic job with that camera at the end, despite its undoubtedly challenging nature. Everyone struggles with those lenses. Admittedly your cast shadow shapes are pretty terrible :P It looks like you got a bit too stressed out with it. There's really no need to try and be quite so accurate - even if the shape doesn't match up that closely to the form, it's really just meant to be something symbolic to help ground the overall form. Personally, even if my object's got lots of curves on it, I almost always go for straight lines.
There are certainly other areas that could use improvement, but overall you're moving in the right direction. More than anything, it's a matter of choosing which concepts to apply where - for example, for your watch drawing, I think the straps may have been better off treated as a more organic, ribbon-like form (with some thickness), rather than trying to fit it all into a box. Keep in mind that just because this lesson is about drawing more geometric forms doesn't mean that everything you encounter will fall into that category. Ultimately all of these lessons are covering a variety of tools you can use, and it will be up to you to choose which ones suit a given task best.
Anyway, keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.
[deleted]
2017-01-02 17:39
I had a lot of trouble with this, but here's the homework for lesson 6. I kept putting it off as I was struggling a lot to draw in this way and had to take a lot of breaks. I'm not really sure why I found it so much more difficult than the previous lessons as I understand the content, even watched all the videos multiple times to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but the drawings still don't turn out that great. I think I just can't draw boxes.... lol
Uncomfortable
2017-01-02 21:03
Don't be too hard on yourself - overall your work is looking pretty solid, and there is a fundamental difference between the previous lessons and this one. Before this point, we were dealing with largely organic forms - these tend to give us a lot more leeway, allow us to be much more approximate and vague with our decision making with very little punishment one way or the other. When it comes to geometric forms, things tend to become much more unforgiving.
In the last lesson, we had a bit of a tango with your use of construction. You were falling back quite a bit on your strong observational skills, and relying less on construction - this lesson is ultimately why I've been gradually shoehorning you (and everyone else) into thinking more about how all the forms fit together, and how to manipulate those forms in 3D space. This lesson is all construction.
Now as for your actual drawings, like I said, you did a pretty good job across the board. The proportion studies on the side there definitely helped a lot, and your forms generally feel pretty sturdy and believable. There are some places where your initial boxes were a bit off and that offset the whole drawing (for example, your drawers) but fundamentally that's not a bad problem to have. While it will impact things in a big way, solving it is just a matter of practicing your boxes more. Problems tend to be scarier when it's hard to pinpoint what they actually are.
Overall however your boxes are actually pretty well handled. The next step from there I'd say is a matter of keeping things snug within those boxes. For example, you've got this drawing of a radio (same page as the weird foldy stool thing). The ratio itself, while existing in the box, has some rounded corners. The whole construction however remains very snug within the box, and you round off those corners as a last detail. It's a pretty easy example when it comes to things remaining snug.
Going down to your soap dispenser on the third last page, while the form actually holds its own pretty well, the shape is somewhat off as it is not really all that snug within the form. From the looks of it, you may have been trying to nail a rather awkward object (it looks like the side closer to us is meant to be wider than the end farther to us - I'm not sure if that's intentional or if it was a mistake, but I'll assume the former for now). With a tricky thing like this, it becomes very important to establish some kind of axis or plane across which the whole form is mirrored. Looking at your drawing, it seems you neglected to establish the center through the middle of the base plane, robbing you of a fairly important reference point. As a result, you eyeballed it more, causing the overall form to become less snug within that enclosing box.
As you move forwards, try and think about how you might cut these forms up - think about where and how these forms are symmetrical and use that to your advantage. Also, always push yourself to try and keep things snug in their boxes. If something's floating arbitrarily within another larger form, that's a sign that you probably skipped a step.
Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
[deleted]
2017-01-03 19:27
Thanks so much for the feedback. I actually made a mistake with the soap dispenser, it should be totally symmetrical and I think the box that I drew initially wasn't correctly proportioned. I think at the time I was trying to decide whether the box should encapsulate the entire soap dispenser including the pump or whether I should separate the two (which is what I ended up doing, but I may have decided that after the fact, I don't remember). Just poor planning on my part!
Mr_Guest_
2017-01-30 06:35
Here is my homework, https://goo.gl/photos/8zX3UWAkk53kKMSX6
thanks
I did the first two during the beginning of the month then midterms started so it was a little delayed.
Uncomfortable
2017-01-31 01:11
By the end of the set, with the mouse and the charger, your constructions definitely start demonstrating a grasp of the material covered in this lesson. One thing that really stands out to me is the jug, where you're jumping into the complex detail of the handle without building up the simpler steps before it. Since you jump in with that too early, you end up with very little to support those details, and ultimately you end up trying to make up for it all through detail/rendering (which never works).
In general, detail and rendering is really doing more bad than good when it comes to this lesson, because the ability to rely on it even slightly distracts you from really putting your focus towards the constructional steps. In those last two drawings, you definitely start breaking away from this habit, though admittedly the charger is quite simple (but for this reason it was a great choice), and the other one was pulled directly from one of my demos (again, a good choice to get your head around the process).
Another issue that extends from this is that you consciously separate the "final linework" from your construction. That is, looking at your jug, you've got clear constructional lines that are pretty clean, planned out, and well executed. Then you've got your "final" linework that seems to try and replace the constructional lines. They tend to be much looser, more wobbly, more chicken-scratchy and generally look far worse.
You shouldn't be trying to replace those constructional lines. Those initial marks should be drawn with confidence, and then when it comes time to add line weight, it's not a matter of redrawing the whole thing. All you're doing is emphasizing some lines over others, and drawing attention to that which already exists in your drawing.
Before I let you move onto the next lesson, I'd like to see another four pages of these drawings. Keep what I've mentioned here in mind - focus entirely on construction, building up complexity in successive passes, and when your construction is complete, add line weight to existing lines (don't chicken-scratch when doing this) to help organize your linework.
Also, I hope you're still going through the lesson 1 and 2 exercises as warmups, as I've likely recommended previously (2 or 3 exercises chosen each day to be done for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting).
inq314
2017-02-06 02:36
Hey again. Here is my lesson 6. Of all the lessons so far, this one was the most fun for me. Thanks~!
http://imgur.com/a/B5jae
Uncomfortable
2017-02-06 20:53
Admittedly, these are better than I expected. You were handling the inorganic stuff pretty well by the end of the last lesson, but I was worried that hard surface objects might pose a very foreign challenge for you.
Now there's definitely plenty of room to grow overall, but one hitch that I noticed was in how you're tackling your cylinder and cylinder-like objects early on. It seems that at some point you went through some of the 250 cylinder material, as you start using your minor axes a little better in drawings like this one, but it's definitely missing in other places. Either way, you'll definitely want to go through the full 250 at some point, preferably before moving onto the next lesson.
Aside from that, I think it's really a matter of continuing to familiarize yourself with constructing boxes and aligning them to one another. You'll find that those base-level exercises will help develop your skills more effectively than just practicing studies until you get it. Not to say studies are in any way bad, but those box constructions are a key point that need some drilling.
Anyway, keep up the good work. Do some boxes, do the cylinders, then feel free to move onto the next lesson. You may find that one a little easier in some ways (in that you're allowed to use a ruler, an ellipse guide if you have one, etc.) but also more difficult in that the scale of the objects tends to make them somewhat more challenging.
dataguard
2017-02-06 04:36
I thought this one would be easy compared to the animals, but damn. Anyway, please excuse the messy lines, but despite doing warm-ups and exercises every day, I still can't seem to get them right. (Though at times it was definitely the fault of excessive caffeine intake.) So, I'm not happy with the results, but I'd like to ask for your opinion for what to re-do, and so on.
http://imgur.com/a/iLdic
Uncomfortable
2017-02-06 21:03
Construction-wise, you're doing quite well. You're definitely thinking in 3D space, you're subdividing your enclosing boxes properly, and your results feel three dimensional. The only shortcoming really is what you mentioned - your line quality's not great. There's a lot of hesitation there, and overthinking when the time for thinking's done.
Always keep in mind the fact that the ghosting method is about splitting the process into two distinct parts. The phase where you're thinking and planning things out, and building up your muscle memory, and the phase where you execute the mark with bold confidence, trusting in your muscles (and in your previous preparation) and largely shutting your brain off.
Your lines waver because you're having trouble shitting your brain off. One thing that can potentially help is to take two blank pieces of paper. Fill the first one with lines - these lines have no criteria, no planning, nothing to prepare. Just lines - preferrably straight, but ultimately what matters most is that they need to be smooth and confident.
You can pause and take as much time in between as you like, but when you draw them, don't think. Let your arm pick a trajectory and stick to it.
The second page is similar, but this time, ellipses. You're not fitting those ellipses into any particular configuration, you're just drawing them without thought or planning.
Make sure you draw from the shoulder, locking both your elbow and your wrist. Hopefully this will help you loosen up, and make you more comfortable with the idea of drawing with confidence.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Once you've practiced loosening up your linework, feel free to move onto the next one. Lesson 7 does allow you to use a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you can get your hands on one), but ultimately this line quality thing is something we'll have to fix up one way or another.
dataguard
2017-02-06 22:50
Thank you! That really is something I have to work on. Even though I can clearly see how bad it is, I couldn't improve in a significant way yet. However I've been getting better at only using my shoulder, can even feel the underdeveloped muscles aching after a longer session. I'm definitely going try your suggestion of drawing unplanned lines and ellipses - all of my warm-up sessions consisted of lesson 1&2's exercises so far. Not to mention a countless amount of subdivided boxes.
Unfortunately I don't have an ellipse guide, but hopefully I'll be okay without. It certainly looks like it'll be one hell of a challenge.
Occultist-Narath
2017-02-13 06:54
here's my homework:
http://imgur.com/a/QrdvD
I was struggling quite a bit with ellipses.
Uncomfortable
2017-02-13 23:56
There's some good and some less good here, but overall you are moving in the right direction. I see a lot of solid attempts at incorporating a lot of the stuff from the lesson into your work. Ultimately some of the areas that cause the most problems are really more at the base level (drawing solid, correct boxes and cylinders). It's for that reason that in the intro video, I mention that you should have gone through the 250 box and 250 cylinder challenges. I notice that you don't seem to have submitted anything for the latter. Definitely worth spending some time on.
There's a handful of drawings that I'm particularly fond of from this set. For example, the lighter, and the box thing on the left here. I'm also rather fond of the proportional studies you did on this page.
When it comes to ellipses, you're definitely struggling - but more specifically, you're struggling with two things. Fitting ellipses into planes, and establishing ellipses that represent circles in 3D space. Both of these points are explained in this video, and then elaborated upon in this video. The latter is more related to the next lesson, but the former is presented as part of the 250 cylinder challenge as well.
Anyway, my recommendation to you is that you take some time to practice more boxes (this 'advanced' box exercise may be up your alley), then doing the 250 cylinder challenge.
I'll be marking this lesson as complete, so once you're done what I recommended above, you may move onto lesson 7.
Zofferro
2017-02-18 15:39
Here's my submission for Lesson 6: http://imgur.com/a/K8sRx Thank you!
Uncomfortable
2017-02-19 19:20
These are veeery well done. You've applied the concepts covered in the lesson with great focus and patience. I don't see any points where you jump too far ahead - you're meticulous and gradually work through every step of plotting and construction and achieve results that convey a strong sense of solidity without any distraction from superfluous detail or decoration.
I really have nothing negative to say - you've hit this one out of the park. Consider this lesson as complete, and feel free to move onto the next one.