I'm on phone and when I expand a point I'm left reading from the middle of the text. Slightly annoying having to scroll up every time. Other than that nice tutorial!
I'm on phone and when I expand a point I'm left reading from the middle of the text. Slightly annoying having to scroll up every time. Other than that nice tutorial!
You'll have to be a little more specific than that if you want clarification. That said, if you haven't completed the lessons prior to this one, it would be unwise to jump in here. There's a lot of gradual exploration of various concepts that lead up to this point, so skipping on that makes confusion inevitable.
Hello, Irshad. Here is my submission: http://imgur.com/a/0MIs3 . Perspective in some cases is too shallow, and some stuff is sloppy. But I have to. Was interesting
Really nice work! I love the variation of subject matter (that old ship is fantastic), and I love the precision of your constructions. To be honest, these are considerably better than what I can do - admittedly I'm horribly out of practice, but all the same, you've nailed the points I outlined in the lesson and have definitely taken them further with some fantastic use of line weights, and some excellent use of form.
Keep up the great work and congratulations on completing all of the dynamic sketching lessons! I'm not sure if you're planning on moving onto figure drawing, but if you are, it'd be great if you gave yourself a little break in between (so I can get a chance to at least release the first rewritten figure drawing lesson).
Doubt it :) Such entertaining to look at your old sketchbook now, then I understand something. Can learn from it.
Your course is just right. comparing to other approaches. The brand new version is even more concrete. so far it was exciting. Huge thank you! I can't even really appreciate it now. Going to reap some fruits.
I am aiming at your advanced topics, really.
I was about to forget: you have a wrong link on your submission button for this lesson.
Thank you, it's inspiring. You should probably look at old threads' submissions, they have some cool studies, though I am sure you have already seen them. I will make side notes for my own. Maybe they will turn out some way useful. Actually I have tried this course on my own about 4 months ago. Don't want to submit comparisons until become comfortable with my skills. But here I can do a little exception.
Don't have any real changes to share. It's not my first experience. But there is an improvement on perspective, solidity of forms, with which you struggle. And clearness, but it's a personal. It didn't take way too much, so you will succeed, it's a study after all.
Well, it's funny, we are in such different situations. I am on a senior year in high school and got here looking for any meaningful sense in my life. Enjoy your journey. Once a month is really rarely, though you have all the time, improvements will come and interest will increase.
It's coming along. There's a lot of shortcomings, but I think it comes down to needing practice (this kind of construction is goddamn difficult) and a matter of patience.
There's definitely a considerable improvement when you transitioned from freehanding your straight lines to using a ruler. A similar thing would happen if you did the same thing for your ellipses, but admittedly ellipse guides aren't the sort of thing most people have lying around.
One thing that I don't see you doing as much as you should though is starting your cylinders off as boxes, and your ellipses off as rectangles. You do it here and there, but as you progress through the set, your willingness to go through all of the steps definitely decreases. For example, you've got a lot of cylinders for which alignment is imperative for that locomotive, but most of them were not constructed as boxes first. Creating the box first, then using the approach I demonstrate in this video to ensure that the ellipse's degree is correct goes a long way towards helping you align these forms believably. The alignment being even slightly off tends to contribute a lot to the overall willingness of your viewer to buy into the illusion you're creating.
Ultimately it is really important that you focus on drawing a bunch of primitive forms for 80-90% of the drawing process, rather than trying to draw the exact objects you're seeing. There's definitely a lot of signs here of you getting too caught up in the little details before your overall structure is properly built up. While your first two pages definitely were rough, I think they were going in the right direction. Using an enclosing box and a couple of proportion studies would have been a big plus, but overall you were very clearly drawing cylinders and boxes, rather than a cab, wheels, an engine block, a cement mixer thing, etc.
Lastly, about the shadows/black parts, keep in mind that I generally don't make those decisions based on the actual reference image. I'm not really drawing shadows so much as using the heavy black sections as a tool. It allows me to choose what parts of the drawing I want to really emphasize, and which parts I want to push back. Often times, even when drawing cast shadows (like on the coast guard boat) it'll be my own shadows rather than those I see in the reference image. It's largely a matter of deciding where your primary light source is in 3D space, and then considering how that's going to hit your forms. Admittedly it's not something I talk about at all in the lessons, because I find that people tend to get distracted from the main matters of form and silhouette.
One last thing I want to mention is that your boxes do need work - that is, the initial boxes you construct to contain everything. The integrity of your boxes is going to really determine how solid and believable the forms you construct inside of them are going to feel. So always remember that you should continue to practice just drawing regular boxes, and stay on top of pinning down the mistakes you tend to make when doing so, so you can grow from them.
As I said before, you're showing that you've understood most of the techniques I explained in this lesson - for the most part, you just need to push forwards with more practice and more patience. Keep it up, and consider this lesson complete.
Thanks for you reply! I've tried to most something under lesson 8 bit i couldn't. It says it's locked and i couldn't comment on that one. Am i doing something wrong there? :)
i have another question. So is it a good way to transition to digital media if i do the lessons over again? i know i should learn to draw on paper first, i would like to practice on both.
Ah, yeah, the thread must have gotten locked for being too old. Usually in this situation I create a new one, but I'm not sure I will just yet. Reason being, I'm not at all pleased with my figure drawing lessons, and am sure that I can do better. Rewriting those lessons is next up on my list, I just have to get a solid grasp of how exactly I want to go about it.
If you want to submit homework for that lesson, I guess you could send me a PM and I can critique it there. For now I'm going to wait until I rewrite those lessons before I actually post the homework threads again (since I'll want to draw attention to the new versions, as opposed to the old ones).
Aaaand an hour or two later, I remembered there was another part to your question. Now that you've completed this lesson set, you should be okay to practice in digital media. Just make sure you reread this article so you can be more aware of the certain challenges (that aren't necessarily always obvious) that come up when working digitally.
Overall I think you're doing a really solid job of implementing the concepts covered in the lesson. Your constructions are very carefully laid out, and you're very meticulous in your subdivisions. I kind of wish I could have seen the drawings before you went at them with the black pen, as they'd give a fuller sense of your spatial sense, but it's still pretty clear that it's come a long way. At this point, it's largely a matter of continuing to practice, as you're moving in the right direction. Your biggest challenge is likely going to be a matter of proportion - which is already pretty solid, but stumbles a bit in places like the truck on page 9.
Also, your ellipses-in-planes do need a bit of refinement. I think they're feeling a little slanted in a few cases (more in the earlier drawings, so they're definitely improving). Just keep the whole 'contact points' matter that I explained in the ellipses-in-planes video in mind, and ensure that they are aligned vertically (usually straight above/below each other in 2 point perspective, or towards the vertical vanishing point in 3 point).
Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching set! I'm not sure if you're planning to move onto figure drawing next, but I do want to let you know that I hope to start an overhaul of that material during the holiday season, as I'm not pleased with the state they're in currently. I feel I can express that content much more clearly, much in the way that I've overhauled the dynamic sketching material.
Each lesson's got a homework section with required/recommended tools - this is because they're not always the same. I'm much more relaxed for the figure drawing lessons, and generally don't actually recommend drawing in pen. I know it's contradictory, but it's a matter of judging when adding the extra challenge is beneficial, and when it becomes distracting.
Nice work! I think you're demonstrating a strongly improving sense of form and space, and your constructions are starting to feel much more concrete and solid. It looks like you decided not to take advantage of my suggestion of using a ruler - that's ultimately up to you, but keep in mind that mixing challenges isn't generally a good idea. There are some areas where I purposely make things a little more difficult, while in others when a subject is already difficult enough, I alleviate those restrictions.
So your constructions are looking great - the main areas where you could use some more work is generally where observation comes into play. Proportions, details, etc. These are the sort of things that will improve with continued practice, of course.
Another area where I see some mixed results are your ellipses - generally I'm seeing development in this area, but I often notice that the initial studies you do before attempting the full drawing tend to be more successful in this area. This is understandable, as you seem to be much more timid with your construction linework in the full drawing (probably because you want to avoid clutter). In this sense, using a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you can manage to get your hands on one) would help considerably, because your lines would be much more precise, allowing you to avoid that sense of clutter without being quite so light and faint with the lines themselves. Also, remember that drawing larger will reduce the clutter as well, since your lines while remaining confident, will be thinner relative to the overall size of the drawing.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll mark this lesson as complete, so congratulations on completing this lesson set. If you're interested in moving onto the figure drawing material next, keep in mind that my plan is to overhaul it closer to the end of the month, so you may want to hold off until I have the chance to start posting that new material. Doesn't hurt to take a bit of a break, or to refresh your memory on material in previous lessons that may have faded a little from your mind.
Ultimately it is primarily just a lot of practice, both to further develop your sense of space (so you can manipulate forms more confidently and accurately in your head) as well as to push the development of your visual library (by studying a wide variety of subject matter in depth). Generally it's pretty straightforward to outline how someone should start (which is what drawabox is), but unfortunately the hours and weeks and months and years of mileage are unavoidable.
So looking through your work, I can see two major issues that are trickling down and really giving you a hell of a time with these drawings.
The first one is your boxes - but you're aware of this, I can see it in some of your scribbled notes. If your overall, encapsulating box is wrong, then this will have a considerable impact on everything constructed within that box. Ultimately that's why I stress the importance of boxes and have gone so far as to name the website after them - if you could only practice one thing over and over and over, it should be drawing boxes.
The second point is the angle of your subdivision lines. It's tricky business when you've got your diagonals set up and you've found the center point of a given plane, but you have to draw the line that passes through it - figuring out its angle is something people struggle with a lot. Looking at my demos, you can see that I mess it up frequently, though often I can recover when the deviation isn't too drastic. When drawing these lines, there are clues you can rely upon (all the other lines that run parallel to this one in 3D space), but ultimately there is some guess-work involved, and it's the sort of skill you can hone through repetitive practice.
I came up with an exercise that may help you - I was actually going to just describe it in text, then thought an image demo would be better. Ultimately I ended up making a video instead, so you can check it out here.
Man, I just left this critique alone for a few hours while I made that video... where was I... Ah, right. So another issue you're definitely struggling with is proportion. I can see that you made some attempts at proportion studies - some of which were more fleshed out than others. One good example where you're struggling is the hatchback you drew. One big factor is that you didn't study the front view of the car at all, and as a result had no real sense of how wide it should be. If you remember from this video (which was included in the lesson), there are approaches you can use to figure out how to draw unit measurements out in three dimensions. I think that might answer your question, "how to do 100% wireframe box?"
Lastly, I do see that there's a part of you that is always urging you to move onto details, to jump forwards and rush ahead. This is pretty normal, but it's a part of you that you need to rein in pretty sharply. Looking at your forklift - which actually is pretty nicely done - one good example of jumping too far ahead is the actual fork-lift part at the front. The two prongs that stick out, specifically. At their simplest, each prong is just two boxes arranged in an L shape. A long flat box laying flat, and another tall flat box going up from its right side. What you drew was a little more complex - a single L form, with a rounded transition at the corner, and rounded edges at the tips of the prongs.
So here's what I'd like you to do:
50 of the subdivided boxes exercise that I devised for you.
Draw 10 boxes if specific unit measurements. That is, decide on its width, height, depth and then construct a box that matches those measurements, using the technique demonstrated in the "Measuring in Perspective: Constructing to Scale" video.
5 more vehicles. Try not to focus on any of the details, focus entirely on making sure that your basic forms feel solid and tangible.
You're welcome to use whatever tools may make your life easier - a ruler, an ellipse guide if you can get one, and so on. No pencil of course, but you're welcome to use ballpoint pen. As you called it in your first page.. easy mode :P
On right, looking at your first page reminded me - that stuff you did to imply water... don't. Ignore actually drawing the water itself altogether. Drawing bits of dirt and stuff to help ground an object is fine, but never draw careless squiggles, it's a great way to degrade the results of your hard work.
[deleted]
2016-12-14 04:44
How do you accurately get the hidden back point of a box? I can get all the other points accurately enough, but the back point is where, unless accuracy is 100%, the lines don't meet. See photos of interim work.
I'll continue doing these boxes but I don't think it's useful. I get how to subdivide boxes. I get how to draw a box in 3D. I'm not a computer and can't accurately get all the angles perfectly so the back point never matches. That's why the midpoints aren't accurate and internal planes aren't either, since they all rely on the back point.
It's true, they won't meet unless they're 100% accurate, and as you said, we are not computers and therefore our boxes will not be 100% accurate. If you look at my demos, you probably wouldn't be able to find a single box that is perfect.
As I mentioned in the video, an important skill to learn is how to compensate for those mistakes as they start to accumulate, so you can keep them under control. In the case of this back corner, it's a bit like jugging. You've got three lines to draw, but if you draw them each one at a time, you'll end up with what you have there - three different points of intersection, instead of just one, because the box already has some errors by the time you start on these three lines, and because each line will probably have its own slight errors. If the box was perfect up to that point, and you were able to draw the lines perfectly, then they'd match up just right - but again, we're only human.
So we're juggling these three lines - we're trying to visualize all three of them so that we can get them all to be close enough within our given parameters (that is, each line must fall within the convergence of its own set of parallel lines towards their own VP off in the distance), while ensuring that they all converge at the same back corner.
Thinking about it strategically, we can lay out these parameters and consider which ones have the highest priority. A deviation in convergence to a far-off vanishing point affords some leeway. On the other hand, we can see the convergence at the back corner right in front of us, so this cannot be sacrificed.
Now, you COULD try to draw the three lines while juggling this mental balancing act, but it's a lot to do all at once. Here's an easier solution - work backwards from your highest priority. Draw the point where you feel the corner should go. Just having a point there will anchor your visualization, allowing you to roughly judge whether you feel that the lines going from the other corners to that point will feel okay-ish (in terms of convergence with the far-off VPs). If you think it's a little off, then just place another point - points are low cost, they don't have much of a footprint, so that kind of adjustment is nothing. Once you're comfortable with the position of that point, it just becomes a matter of ghosting your lines from the corners.
You mentioned your opinion on the usefulness of drawing these boxes when I assigned the extra work. I will explain to you their value, but before I do so, I do want to point out that you're here because you trust my judgment. You've drawn these countless pages over the past year, and you continue to because - I can only assume - you still see value in what I have to teach you. Or at least, I hope that's why.
You're absolutely welcome to not trust me, of course. But doing both simultaneously is extremely unwise. You end up putting in the work, but without trusting that what you're doing is worth while, you can't possibly put in all the effort you have to offer. And if you can't put in your full effort, then you can't reap the full rewards of the time you're investing. Of course, then you'll come back and point out that the boxes didn't help, and your trust will be further eroded, contributing to the vicious cycle and giving me no clear way to dig you out of your rut.
Muddiness comes up a lot in terms of how I teach. I teach people to work with straight lines instead of curves, and to start with boxes before rounding off those edges - because curves are indistinct, they're muddy approximations of a more solid form. I team people to draw from a single pivot in their arm (usually the shoulder), not to combine shoulder and elbow as some people try to do - because it's muddy, and this leads to a variance in how much they rely on either given pivot, leading them to never really be fully aware of what their arm is doing. And when students follow the my particular lessons, or my critiques - I always encourage them to focus entirely on the instructions as they are written, and to temporarily set aside what they think they already know. After all, if they mix what I explain with other material before being able to see what I have to offer in its entirety, they won't understand the little things I insist upon, and therefore won't be able to judge their value.
So, I will always insist that students of anything assess their choices first, but once they dive in, to do so completely. There will always be a point at the end for reflection, to decide whether or not I utterly wasted your time. If you try to do that throughout the process, I cannot accept responsibility for the result.
So, as I promised, here's the specific benefits to practicing these boxes:
You'll develop your ability to draw lines that run towards the same far-off vanishing point more accurately, given repeated practice and reflection thereafter to consider where your angles were off. Long term, this will diminish those accumulating mistakes, which will relieve a lot of pressure on your overall drawing. As a side note, you'll notice that in my video I demonstrate running those lines farther than the corners of the box when drawing them in colour - this is to help make that convergence clearer, for the sake of making the practice more valuable in this area. You don't seem to be doing this in yours.
Dealing with those mistakes is just another skill that is honed through having to face those problems repeatedly. Understanding it, or anything else (such as how you know how to subdivide boxes) on a theoretical level is valuable, but it is the repeated application of those principles that will have the greatest impact. You want to be able to hold a much stronger sense of the box and the lines it's composed of in your head, and this isn't something most people start off with. Pushing your brain through these spatial challenges over and over is what will train the ability to juggle multiple lines in space, in your mind. For now, you'll rely on laying down points as I explained earlier to help anchor your brain to the features of the box you're drawing, as you figure out where and how to compensate for the accumulating errors, but this is what will lead to this increased mental flexibility.
Now it's late - I need to go salvage the hours I've got left before I have to get up for work. I hope this clarifies at least to some extent why I'm so neurotically obsessed with boxes. If ultimately you've decided that my methodology does not suit you anymore, I'll take no offense. It's always best to walk the route you're able to follow with full confidence, and I don't want you to feel as though you're wasting your time. That said, were I to tell you to draw a thousand boxes, I could do so without the slightest bit of guilt, because I genuinely know it to be an extremely valuable exercise (as long as you put your all into it).
It's true, they won't meet unless they're 100% accurate, and as you said, we are not computers and therefore our boxes will not be 100% accurate. If you look at my demos, you probably wouldn't be able to find a single box that is perfect.
As I mentioned in the video, an important skill to learn is how to compensate for those mistakes as they start to accumulate, so you can keep them under control. In the case of this back corner, it's a bit like jugging. You've got three lines to draw, but if you draw them each one at a time, you'll end up with what you have there - three different points of intersection, instead of just one, because the box already has some errors by the time you start on these three lines, and because each line will probably have its own slight errors. If the box was perfect up to that point, and you were able to draw the lines perfectly, then they'd match up just right - but again, we're only human.
So we're juggling these three lines - we're trying to visualize all three of them so that we can get them all to be close enough within our given parameters (that is, each line must fall within the convergence of its own set of parallel lines towards their own VP off in the distance), while ensuring that they all converge at the same back corner.
Thinking about it strategically, we can lay out these parameters and consider which ones have the highest priority. A deviation in convergence to a far-off vanishing point affords some leeway. On the other hand, we can see the convergence at the back corner right in front of us, so this cannot be sacrificed.
Now, you COULD try to draw the three lines while juggling this mental balancing act, but it's a lot to do all at once. Here's an easier solution - work backwards from your highest priority. Draw the point where you feel the corner should go. Just having a point there will anchor your visualization, allowing you to roughly judge whether you feel that the lines going from the other corners to that point will feel okay-ish (in terms of convergence with the far-off VPs). If you think it's a little off, then just place another point - points are low cost, they don't have much of a footprint, so that kind of adjustment is nothing. Once you're comfortable with the position of that point, it just becomes a matter of ghosting your lines from the corners.
You mentioned your opinion on the usefulness of drawing these boxes when I assigned the extra work. I will explain to you their value, but before I do so, I do want to point out that you're here because you trust my judgment. You've drawn these countless pages over the past year, and you continue to because - I can only assume - you still see value in what I have to teach you. Or at least, I hope that's why.
You're absolutely welcome to not trust me, of course. But doing both simultaneously is extremely unwise. You end up putting in the work, but without trusting that what you're doing is worth while, you can't possibly put in all the effort you have to offer. And if you can't put in your full effort, then you can't reap the full rewards of the time you're investing. Of course, then you'll come back and point out that the boxes didn't help, and your trust will be further eroded, contributing to the vicious cycle and giving me no clear way to dig you out of your rut.
Muddiness comes up a lot in terms of how I teach. I teach people to work with straight lines instead of curves, and to start with boxes before rounding off those edges - because curves are indistinct, they're muddy approximations of a more solid form. I team people to draw from a single pivot in their arm (usually the shoulder), not to combine shoulder and elbow as some people try to do - because it's muddy, and this leads to a variance in how much they rely on either given pivot, leading them to never really be fully aware of what their arm is doing. And when students follow the my particular lessons, or my critiques - I always encourage them to focus entirely on the instructions as they are written, and to temporarily set aside what they think they already know. After all, if they mix what I explain with other material before being able to see what I have to offer in its entirety, they won't understand the little things I insist upon, and therefore won't be able to judge their value.
So, I will always insist that students of anything assess their choices first, but once they dive in, to do so completely. There will always be a point at the end for reflection, to decide whether or not I utterly wasted your time. If you try to do that throughout the process, I cannot accept responsibility for the result.
So, as I promised, here's the specific benefits to practicing these boxes:
You'll develop your ability to draw lines that run towards the same far-off vanishing point more accurately, given repeated practice and reflection thereafter to consider where your angles were off. Long term, this will diminish those accumulating mistakes, which will relieve a lot of pressure on your overall drawing. As a side note, you'll notice that in my video I demonstrate running those lines farther than the corners of the box when drawing them in colour - this is to help make that convergence clearer, for the sake of making the practice more valuable in this area. You don't seem to be doing this in yours.
Dealing with those mistakes is just another skill that is honed through having to face those problems repeatedly. Understanding it, or anything else (such as how you know how to subdivide boxes) on a theoretical level is valuable, but it is the repeated application of those principles that will have the greatest impact. You want to be able to hold a much stronger sense of the box and the lines it's composed of in your head, and this isn't something most people start off with. Pushing your brain through these spatial challenges over and over is what will train the ability to juggle multiple lines in space, in your mind. For now, you'll rely on laying down points as I explained earlier to help anchor your brain to the features of the box you're drawing, as you figure out where and how to compensate for the accumulating errors, but this is what will lead to this increased mental flexibility.
Now it's late - I need to go salvage the hours I've got left before I have to get up for work. I hope this clarifies at least to some extent why I'm so neurotically obsessed with boxes. If ultimately you've decided that my methodology does not suit you anymore, I'll take no offense. It's always best to walk the route you're able to follow with full confidence, and I don't want you to feel as though you're wasting your time. That said, were I to tell you to draw a thousand boxes, I could do so without the slightest bit of guilt, because I genuinely know it to be an extremely valuable exercise (as long as you put your all into it).
[deleted]
2016-12-14 07:09
I lost my original reply and now need to retype and remember it.
Thanks for the reply. I hate writing short responses when you write essays every time. I'll add the back point before adding lines as suggested. It seems that a larger box has a more acceptable error tolerance, as shown.
I don't like dropping out or quitting. DrawABox was suggested to me so I started a year ago, but I'm not sure it's worth the stress and required perfectionism of using an unforgiving pen. The lessons have definitely helped with understanding how things are drawn, but I think it's better with limited time to use a pencil and ruler as necessary, and to fix your mistakes while reading the lessons and completing partial homework. For me personally, I know I understand the concepts and can draw them, but not 100% perfectly every time as required. In terms of this lesson, the subdivision I get, the measurements I get (but aren't applicable when objects aren't evenly spaced), the solid forms of vehicles I get, but I can't draw any them accurately in ink. I know that if I graduate here, I won't be using a pen to draw the base and constructional layers, I'll be using a pencil or tablet. And when a pen is used, it'll be after photocopying the pencil sketch/drawing so, in the event of a mistake, not everything's ruined like it is now.
I thought I'd quit at plants. Then insects. Then animals. Then objects. And now vehicles. And I've been sitting here for 40 minutes, trying to decide whether to continue with the stress and requested extra homework, or to continue with a pencil as above. And now that I've retyped my entire reply to the best of my remembrance, I've stayed up an hour and a half past my bedtime just like every time I try to draw. And I'm still perpetually tired and I still don't have an answer, so I guess it'll be the status quo with another year of frustration, tiredness, and shallow skill increases. Or at least another month.
required perfectionism of using an unforgiving pen
It's really the opposite of this. People start like this when working in ink, stressing over making everything correct like each drawing they do must be the perfect embodiment of skill, but most will reach a breaking point. One of the big reasons I push ink is so that eventually students are forced to come face to face with the fact that perfectionism doesn't work. That the final drawing that comes out is not going to always be pretty, and that there's a lot of garbage that's going to come out of it.
It's the idea that the time you're putting in is not to make pretty pictures, but rather what you get out of that investment is the practice and training itself.
I think you've been riding right at that breaking point for a long time now, but you haven't allowed yourself to break. Instead you've revelled in the frustration of every single drawing falling short of your expectations, and it's quite possibly driving you mad. It's not healthy to be so ensconced in all of this negativity, covering your pages in self-critical scribbles, and it certainly isn't helping you.
Maybe you should take a break. I'm not saying give up, but I'm saying that maybe you should give your mind the time and room to recover a little, so that when you do come back to this stuff, you can look at it from a fresh perspective rather than that of someone who's been hammered day in and day out, coming back every day for more. Do you ever draw just for the sake of drawing? Do you doodle, or illustrate, or do whatever you might see yourself attempting once you've achieved the skills you're after? Maybe you should spend some time doing that for a spell. Remind yourself why you're going through this.
[deleted]
2016-12-15 07:31
Thanks for the reply. I'm sure you get this already, but I don't like using a pen. Even if you say the idea is to lose the perfectionism desire, the fact remains that these non-perfect pen drawings reflect only the first yet final attempt at a line or arc or sum of marks; whereas a fixable drawing with pencil or other modifiable media, while still flawed, reflect the true ability of the drawer. Even if I know perfectionism isn't the requirement, it's still the output since every line is final and permanent.
Unfortunately I don't have any identical pen/pencil comparisons but during the insects phase I did a moth in pencil, for comparison sake. The moth is better and more accurate than the spider before, mostly because it's done in pencil and I had the chance to test a solid, fix it, and continue as required. The greyscale helped too.
You asked if I did any drawing outside of DrawABox: the answer is yes, but it's all just procrastinatory scrawls in preparation for the doozy of the final DrawABox drawing for the night. Easily 150 duplex pages. All pencil, by choice. There's a lot of junk in there, but also some things I'm happy with. This kettle and earbud from a year ago, this guy and his weird dog, this horse, this cartoon squirrel and calligraphy, this dog and bootleg Mickey, this whale, this lion. Other things that aren't shown too. I can partially thank DrawABox for the basis of some of these, but also a pencil for the accuracy of each one. If you asked me to draw these same things in pen, I wouldn't be able to.
A note, as I was about to take a photo of the first thing to share above, I stopped and thought this is not good enough to share. I keep thinking of your article on ink, and one of your points on using ink is that it builds confidence by allowing you to fail. First, I'm not sure that's how you usually build confidence. Multiple failed math tests don't make you confident for an exam. Confident that you'll fail, maybe. Second, both your and your friend's sketchbooks were originally private, allowing failure. Every DrawABox drawing isn't private, so the need to prove your worth to someone is present in your mind while trying to draw.
Somehow it's 11:30pm again and it's an hour past my bedtime and I'm tired again, and I didn't even draw at all today. And I still don't know whether to continue or stop the official pen critique version of DrawABox. I almost don't want to spend all my drawing time doing boxes and eventually vehicles for the next month or two. It's not likely that I'll be drawing rigid, static, boring vehicles on my own time after this is all done, I'd likely be drawing plants, animals, objects, humans, insects; essentially anything but technical, precise, perfect vehicles. And definitely not in pen.
[deleted]
2016-12-16 05:52
I think I'm going to continue with the route mentioned above (below?): continue with the concepts from the lessons of DrawABox but without the demand and shackles of a pen. Thank you for your detailed responses, critiques, support, and material over the last year.
Well, I'm glad you were able to come to a decision. Best of luck! - and remember, the ink thing is a restriction for lessons 1-7, but 8 onwards (which will be rewritten starting in the next couple weeks) are much more lax in their requirements.
Well done! There's a fair bit of stumbling and struggling through the beginning, but even with some of the proportions fall out of whack (like this car), there's a clear sense of solidity and awareness of the forms and how they exist in 3D space. Rather than looking like a failed drawing, it looks like a failed car - like you drew some wacky proportioned car with belt wheels and did so faithfully.
Of course, things definitely get better. Your batmobile is excellent, as is your TIE Interceptor. In your new set, I love this one. It's clear and solid and demonstrates a really solid ability to carve and turn 3D form. And this bike! I'm not sure what design you were following, but it looks fabulous. In general you're doing extremely well. The far at the end's got some weird stretching going along on the side, so something's up there - though admittedly, I struggled a lot with that myself.
Keep up the great work, and congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching material (and in under 4 months!). As I've mentioned to a few others, if you plan to move onto the figure drawing material, hold off a little bit, as I'm hoping to release some new rewrites of those lessons later this month when I get some time off from work.
I think technically it's taken ne 8-9 months or so. As for the bike, it's insane.
I definitely noticed that stretching-thing, and I'm not entirely sure what happened - Did I overestimate the length? Underestimate how much the side curves inward? Is the angle between the front- and side planes of the box too obtuse (If that makes sense)?
I'm not sure how to word another thank you, so I'll just go ahead and thank you; So, so much. Your site and critiques turned out to be the ideal jumping-off point I needed to get into drawing, or rather learning to draw and the drawing habit. Suddenly the idea of studies and value and other million things I don't know, don't feel as paralyzingly scary anymore.
Anyway, I'm rambling. To keep me occupied until you revise the figure-drawing-section, I'm planning on checking out Ctrl+Paint and maybe just churning out some stuff for the boxes/cylinders-challenge. Just to get dat badge.
Thanks again, and have a good christmas or holiday or what have you!
Excellent work! A month isn't particularly surprising to me. The material is challenging, and back when I was going through this sort of material, all of my time was focused on the classes I was taking, and even then we were given a full week per lesson. On top of that, I kind of think that spacing the work out over time helps give you time to process what you're doing, to reflect and think back on past mistakes (as long as the intervals in between sittings isn't too large).
You've generally shown an excellent use of the subdivision technique with a lot of these, like the V22 - Osprey, the Caterpillar 797F and so on. I especially loved the Chevy Camaro lay-in and the proportion study. Despite being a fairly early block-in, you can feel the solidity of the overall construction, and that's what I want to see more than anything else. The notion that even if you deviate from the original design, that it feels tangible and plausible when you're done.
At this point, all I can say is keep at it - practice will only sharpen your skills, improving your ability to maintain consistent proportions, to drop in accurate ellipses, etc. You're absolutely on the right track though, so keep up the great work and a big congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching material.
In case you're planning on moving onto the figure drawing material stuff, wait just a little bit - I'm planning on putting out the new stuff for lesson 8 very soon.
Hello Uncomfortable, today while doing the lesson for the lay-ins while drawing tires, I ran into the problem not knowing where should I end the other side.
What methods can I use to know where the the same sized tire ends on the other side (That is further from the viewer) especially when you are not using the "encapsulating box" method?
Hopefully the question was clear enough, otherwise I could throw in some drawings I've been doing to see if that helps! So far I've been doing the measuring in perspective - video technique to expand the box with the tire's width until it seem to make sense where the tire sits on the other side and draw it like that.
You solve this problem by mirroring across the center of your form - I talk about this technique in the intro video to lesson 6, specifically at around 10:34. If you know where the tires stop closest to you, you can find that line on the ground plane, then mirror it across the center to find the same line on the opposite side.
I was thinking of that method, but since I didn't know where the plane ends while still constructing the box, it lead me into not knowing where's the center point of the plane.
Here's the situation I was stuck with. I was constructing the box, had the lines head toward the vanishing point, but I had no clue where should I close the box at the exact spot where it would be accurate in perspective on where the other tire ends. So I used the width of the closer tire as a measure and expanded it few times until I landed somewhere which seemed to be accurate and close the box there. Is this a viable method and is there easier way to do this?
I'm sorry if the drawing is really messy, it's mostly a prototype where I drew bunch of lines seeing what works for the question I asked (Also bunch of laziness). Also sorry if the question was confusing!
You have a box up there on the top which I would assume is sitting in the middle of your overall construction. You've even found the center of that plane, and drawn a line down from there. That's your middle.
From what I can see, you've even drawn a line from the top right corner of your right tire, through the center, but where it intersects with your other tire, you used it as the inner side rather than the outer. Meaning, that tire is too far out.
Yeah, I kinda came to the realization I could've used the box up there could be used as the middle. I added some lines after reading your advice and tried different stuff before taking the picture, so there's WAY too many lines around and I definitely missed them and that they had their uses.
But asking this question helped me a lot with this, guess some of these stuff comes with experience! Thanks a lot for the help this was really useful.
Also to confirm (if my method was understandable that is), was my way to tackle it with the width of the tire and expanding the plane that way also a correct in term of perspective?
Hey Uncomfortable. Passing by asking something related to the earlier question again.. Sorry for asking so much, been trying to figure this out, but after over 5 hours of drawing over and over, I just don't seem to understand this and don't seem to progress with this at all.
So for the earlier question, I seem to generally understand where and how the other side ends, but I'm tiny bit confused with it. I drew a little example of it. Example picture. I highlighted the green area I was confused of. If the tires (boxes in this case) are on the same position, shouldn't they be in the same position on those side planes?
One thing I could come up with was that the tires aren't attached to the main bigger box, leaving gap between it, which is why it looks different on the opposite side plane. If that is the case, how do I draw a tire that leaves a quite big gap between the ground and the main structure of the vehicle (A tractor for example.)
Hopefully the explanation was good enough, thanks again and sorry for the extra questions. I've tried over 20 pages trying different things without quite coming up with a conclusion for this, so I decided to seek for help as I got a quite headache over few days because of this not knowing how to advance..
You done goofed. You didn't find the correct center point to mirror across, so your wheel boxes are offset from the center, shifted more towards the right. Hence there being no space between your left wheel and the main box, but lots of space between the right wheel and the main box.
Camera angle sure did some tricks on that. On paper the verticals don't seem that bad, but certainly learned from that and will be using the ruler to help in the future. Just seem to have a little trouble with ruler and ballpoint pen and end up drawing things on different places where I want (Like the arbitrary point mirroring which wasn't my intention at all..)
this certainly helped me a lot and some stuff clicked from me after this, so thanks a lot!
I got a little question to add. How should I draw the side wheels if I want them to be attached to the main box with no space between the wheel and main box? This is what I feel like I'm struggling with and just can't get it right at all. I want the tire to be on a lower level than the main box, but I seem like I just keep putting space between them instead of making it lower. I'm sorry for all these extra stuff, but I just can't seem to continue these stuff as this has been bothering my head all week lol.
I feel like these stuff are slowly starting to click on my head though, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my extra questions. I'll make sure to donate extra next time I'll finish a lesson. You have been REALLY HUGE help ever since I picked up the pen approx 1 year ago after seeing your site. I feel like I definitely need to show some appreciation! :)
I'm a bit confused, because it seems like you're asking two different questions.
How do I draw wheels that are right up against the box rather than some amount of space away? The answer to this one is very straight-forward, you just draw your first wheel's box right up against your main box. Mirroring across will result in the other wheel being positioned correctly.
How do I place the wheels lower than the main box of the vehicle? There's a few ways you can approach this, but I would probably just do what you've been doing (keep them level with each other), then cut away a section from the bottom of the main box. In the diagram I drew for the last question, you can see how the big red plane I drew is some distance into the initial box, so it would line up with the front of the wheels. You can do the same thing for the underside by picking an arbitrary height level, drawing a line at that level across the front plane of the box, and then continuing it all the way around the rest of the box. Alternatively you could just start out by constructing two boxes stacked on top of each other - one representing the negative space under the vehicle, and one representing the main box.
Generally stayed on the safe side of 2 point perspective, but came out from the comfort zone here and there to try out the 3 point one.
Also, I've found when searching for references of vehicles, searching for their blueprints proved to be really useful to get clear side/front view of the specific vehicles. Used this site a lot during the lesson.
That aside, really looking forward for the reply! Been waiting to finish this up to continue other goals for quite awhile now! :)
You're definitely moving in the right direction with these. There's a lot of good going on, though I do have a couple recommendations I'll get into in a bit.
Firstly, I think that when you're focusing more on blocking out larger forms (without getting into a lot of the little bits), you're demonstrating some really good grasp of form and construction. The steam roller, the cab-over truck, the pontoon boat, etc. all show solid box forms, and I really like the way you approach dealing with their rounded corners. That is, leaving them aside until the very end. As such, they end up feeling very solid.
You're also quite diligent with your measuring, your mirroring, and your subdivisions. Though you certainly did struggle before asking me those questions you'd had, it seems that you're starting to grasp the use of these different techniques more firmly.
As I mentioned, there are a few ways you can modify your approach that will likely help improve your work on some fronts:
A simple one - try to keep your foreshortening shallower. There were a few that stood out as being particularly extreme, like the steam roller. On the other hand, the pontoon boat was better. overly dramatic perspective distortion can be very difficult to work with, and it also throws off the sense of scale, as it tends to be reserved for things the size of buildings, rather than vehicles.
You've got some very thick, heavy pens being used, or at least, you're laying the weight on quite thickly, and this should be avoided. Thick lines in general tend to make things look too graphic and flat, and when you have those thick lines existing on the inside of an object (like how you've handled some of your wheels later in the homework set), it starts to break up the cohesion of the forms. Even when trying to separate some lines from the heavy mess of construction, you need only be quite subtle with it for them to read.
When doing your proportion studies, focus on both side and front/back views, and apply the measurement techniques described in this video when drawing in three dimensions. Your vehicles have a tendency of being quite stretched along the front (this is a common issue, it happens to me too when I get too lax in regards to studying the proportions in both dimensions). Though you did do proportion studies for the front in that last car, and in the bike/two-wheeled-car-thing, I don't see any sign of you actually carrying your unit measurement over into that dimension as it is described in the video. The main sign is that you have an ellipse to establish your unit plane along the side of the construction, but you don't have one to establish it in the front.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, just be sure to continue to practice this material and keep what I've mentioned above in mind. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching curriculum!
Well, here it is. I've made tons of mistakes, but I feel like I've became better at spotting them too. Line quality is still rubbish, made even worse how I've had to add a lot of line weight to separate stuff from the construction lines. Trying the curvy boat was a mistake, but I had to challenge myself. Wheels are hard too, I hate wheels.
Also, using a fineliner and a ruler makes for a terrible mess, ink stains everywhere.
Your constructions are definitely looking pretty solid. The only area where you need a hell of a lot of work is your ellipses. It's completely understandable and honestly fairly normal, but you're visibly afraid of them. Whenever you attempt to draw an ellipse, especially one that needs to fall into a specific plane or to a specific alignment, you hesitate and choke. The only way around this is to practice them a lot, more or less as you've been doing. Do them in isolation, but also do them as part of larger drawings - you're definitely doing a good job of pushing through each drawing even when the ellipses end up a little uneven or awkward, and that's great. Keep at it.
By the way, I'm especially fond of this car. The front's a little lopsided, but it's adorable, and the solidity of your forms and the patience with which you've planned out every detail really pushes it that extra mile.
Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Congratulations on finishing the dynamic sketching material.
Thank you! It was really a fun and rewarding experience to go through your lessons, I've learned so much. I plan to make the switch to digital and focus on figure drawing from this point on, hopefully going through your revised lessons on that material later on, once you have the time to finish them.
I'm definitely going to keep up the daily practice, my ellipses really need it, but my lines are far from perfect too. Already burned through a lot of pens and this stack of papers, it's not a habit that I can easily drop now. Might even give that scary texture challenge a go once I'm more confident.
Nice work! I think you've got a lot of strong examples of construction here. I do think you definitely need to continue working on your ellipses (and frankly, we all do, they're ridiculously difficult to master) but your vehicle constructions are coming along great. There's just a couple things I noted that are worth mentioning:
There's a few cases - like the pickup truck - where doing a proportion study of the front and applying the constructing to scale method would definitely have helped avoid some of the strangeness you've encountered.
The curvature of your rivet-contour lines for the submarine didn't really convey the intended volume, and there wasn't really much else to help describe how that surface curves through space, so the result was a form that felt like it came down to an edge. I generally am not too fond of using 'dashed' lines because they're tricksy. Continuous lines are confident and reliable, while broken lines lie to us. Every time that path is broken, the trajectory shifts a little, resulting in a line that does not quite follow the path we intended for it. In this case using regular continuous contour lines would have been best, because the primary priority is to convey the appropriate volumes and forms, rather than worrying about details. Still, experimentation is always good, even if they lead us down the wrong path, so we'll file this away under learning what not to do.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Congratulations on completing lesson 7, and with it the entirety of the dynamic sketching lesson plan.
I really shouldn't freehand things when I'm allowed to use stuff :< Ended up in ellipse hell since the guide didn't have big enough ellipses for my drawings lol
There's a lot of good here, and also some definite things that you should avoid or shift your attention towards. More or less what I'd expect to see at this point.
The first thing that jumps out at me is with your bulldozer - specifically, its treads. This is a really specific thing I'm nitpicking on rather than an overarching problem, but I figure it's worth mentioning. The tread itself exists in three dimensions - it's not paper thin, it's got thickness to it. In some parts of the tread (like the bottom length) you're aware of this thickness, but in others you aren't. How the various cylinders around there sit against the tread, and how you've communicated its form has a lot of inconsistencies, where towards the top section it's reading as having no thickness at all.
That said, I think the way you started out this construction, and the way you handled a lot of the explicitly boxy forms is coming along quite well. Your understanding of how to place boxes in 3D space seems to be well developed.
The biggest problem I see across this entire set however is that you're not taking enough advantage of this strength. You have a tendency to construct really nicely, laying in all those boxes, doing your subdivisions and measurements, and then for some reason you kind of let them go. You go over all of your forms and linework with a darker stroke, replacing those lines and rounding off corners in a way that really does not maintain the solidity that existed there initially.
Rounding off a corner slightly is normal, and perfectly fine as a finishing touch. If however you need to round that corner off beyond a certain point, it starts to become less structurally solid without having laid in the correct groundwork to support it. Basically you end up jumping across too wide a chasm, and the solidity you previously had won't quite stretch far enough to support what you're trying to create. It needs more specific scaffolding.
The other aspect of what I mentioned was the fact that you're going over your linework, replacing it with a thicker line. Usually I catch this in peoples' drawings earlier, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned it to you before - but adding line weight is very different from straight up replacing lines.
The latter is what a lot of beginners tend to do, sketching something in quickly to get a feel for something, then being very slow and careful and precise (and consequently, stiff) to "clean up". Now this isn't necessarily what you're doing, but it is similar. Ultimately you need to treat your initial lines - those drawn confidently and solidly - as being more or less final. All we can do to help organize those lines is to pull and push them with line weight. This means adding additional thickness to key areas to accentuate overlaps and draw attention to certain places. We do this to specific places, not all of our linework.
Basically, since you have a tendency to do this replacement thing, you're really tossing aside a lot of the strengths in your boxes - you build them up so nicely, and then set them aside. Now while you've got some really strong boxes, your cylinders aren't quite so great, and definitely need a lot of work. Note that in the intro video, I definitely state that by this point you should have completed the 250 cylinder challenge by now, though it looks like you haven't tackled it yet - or at least haven't submitted it.
This page is a good example of a problematic cylinder. The end of that front cylinder that is closest to us is totally misaligned. I can't tell if there's a minor axis present there, but if there is, it's definitely not cutting that ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves.
In general, but especially for you, it's best to construct those cylinders by starting them off as boxes. I say that it's particularly good in your case because, again, you're really good at constructing boxes. By doing so, we don't have to worry quite so much about the overall alignment of a given cylinder. The main problem we're left with is building our ellipses properly within the planes of our boxes, as discussed in this video from the lesson.
There's just two more points I want to raise, and I'll make them quick. First, don't just focus on the side when doing proportion studies. Especially with cars, the front is very important. Breaking down the proportions in both dimensions allows us to construct them more accurately to scale, as discussed here.
The other point is about detail. You're thinking about it far too much, and it's distracting you. I strongly recommend that you leave detail completely out of the equation for the time being and try getting each vehicle drawing as far as you can with construction alone. When we know we have detailing as a next step, we have an inherent tendency to start stamping things on as arbitrary details (thinking more about how they sit on the flat page than as part of 3D space), when we really should be constructing them as solid forms.
I'd like you to first complete the 250 cylinder challenge. Then submit four more pages of vehicle drawings and we'll see how you've progressed.
[deleted]
2017-03-04 07:11
Thanks for the feedback. I did have a lot of trouble with this lesson so it's super helpful. I do have a really bad habit of replacing stuff, I think because I don't 100% finish the construction as I should. I lose confidence halfway through and don't think I can do it and so jump ahead of myself. I fall back on just drawing what I see when I can't wrap my head around a form in 3D.
I can do the cylinder challenge again, but I have actually done it (it was quite a few months ago now though)... it's here. To be honest, the cylinders back then weren't great either. :P Should I do the whole thing again?
Ah, I must have forgotten to give you the flair badge for it then. Still, yeah - looking at your cylinders in that lesson 7 work, you would benefit considerably from doing it again, especially since you weren't making use of any minor axes.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-02 03:45
Old thread got locked, post your homework here.
flashnet
2016-10-03 03:39
I'm on phone and when I expand a point I'm left reading from the middle of the text. Slightly annoying having to scroll up every time. Other than that nice tutorial!
flashnet
2016-10-03 03:39
I'm on phone and when I expand a point I'm left reading from the middle of the text. Slightly annoying having to scroll up every time. Other than that nice tutorial!
Uncomfortable
2016-10-03 13:13
Probably a low priority issue, but I'll add it to my list!
Ezechield
2016-10-04 14:04
Same on my pc since the bigining, but it don't harm mutch if you got a screen big enough.
BassWool
2016-10-06 16:13
I can't figure out the measuring stuff.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-06 16:40
You'll have to be a little more specific than that if you want clarification. That said, if you haven't completed the lessons prior to this one, it would be unwise to jump in here. There's a lot of gradual exploration of various concepts that lead up to this point, so skipping on that makes confusion inevitable.
BassWool
2016-10-06 16:47
Alright. Thanks for replying
smashedpixie
2016-10-18 21:40
Hello, Irshad. Here is my submission: http://imgur.com/a/0MIs3 . Perspective in some cases is too shallow, and some stuff is sloppy. But I have to. Was interesting
Missing proper shadows.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-18 22:15
Really nice work! I love the variation of subject matter (that old ship is fantastic), and I love the precision of your constructions. To be honest, these are considerably better than what I can do - admittedly I'm horribly out of practice, but all the same, you've nailed the points I outlined in the lesson and have definitely taken them further with some fantastic use of line weights, and some excellent use of form.
Keep up the great work and congratulations on completing all of the dynamic sketching lessons! I'm not sure if you're planning on moving onto figure drawing, but if you are, it'd be great if you gave yourself a little break in between (so I can get a chance to at least release the first rewritten figure drawing lesson).
smashedpixie
2016-10-19 20:38
Doubt it :) Such entertaining to look at your old sketchbook now, then I understand something. Can learn from it.
Your course is just right. comparing to other approaches. The brand new version is even more concrete. so far it was exciting. Huge thank you! I can't even really appreciate it now. Going to reap some fruits.
I am aiming at your advanced topics, really.
I was about to forget: you have a wrong link on your submission button for this lesson.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-19 21:19
Ack, I'll fix that right away. Thanks for the heads up.
disies
2016-10-21 15:30
nice work!
smashedpixie
2016-10-21 18:14
Thank you, it's inspiring. You should probably look at old threads' submissions, they have some cool studies, though I am sure you have already seen them. I will make side notes for my own. Maybe they will turn out some way useful. Actually I have tried this course on my own about 4 months ago. Don't want to submit comparisons until become comfortable with my skills. But here I can do a little exception.
smashedpixie
2016-10-22 17:07
Here is some stuff to comparison: http://imgur.com/a/8iivc. First of all it's a mess.
disies
2016-10-22 17:15
oh wow.. although it's still very good work I can see that you improved considerably.. very well done..
smashedpixie
2016-10-22 18:01
Don't have any real changes to share. It's not my first experience. But there is an improvement on perspective, solidity of forms, with which you struggle. And clearness, but it's a personal. It didn't take way too much, so you will succeed, it's a study after all.
disies
2016-10-22 18:08
Yeah. I struggled a lot with the everyday objects lesson.. I don't draw very often..once a month maybe. no wonder I'm not improving.. heh..
smashedpixie
2016-10-22 18:53
Well, it's funny, we are in such different situations. I am on a senior year in high school and got here looking for any meaningful sense in my life. Enjoy your journey. Once a month is really rarely, though you have all the time, improvements will come and interest will increase.
disies
2016-10-22 18:58
I just put a small reminder in my cellphone to make it easier on me to know that it's time to practice.. haha
wish you all the best in finding some sense.. to me it's basically just living..
Maxigati
2016-10-29 20:35
Hi!
Here is my lesson 7 submission. I think what is really missing is the feel of where to put the shadows/black section...
Oh and the front of the snowmobile has so many curves i could not figure out how to draw them properly
http://imgur.com/a/85uFe
Cheers
Uncomfortable
2016-10-30 17:59
It's coming along. There's a lot of shortcomings, but I think it comes down to needing practice (this kind of construction is goddamn difficult) and a matter of patience.
There's definitely a considerable improvement when you transitioned from freehanding your straight lines to using a ruler. A similar thing would happen if you did the same thing for your ellipses, but admittedly ellipse guides aren't the sort of thing most people have lying around.
One thing that I don't see you doing as much as you should though is starting your cylinders off as boxes, and your ellipses off as rectangles. You do it here and there, but as you progress through the set, your willingness to go through all of the steps definitely decreases. For example, you've got a lot of cylinders for which alignment is imperative for that locomotive, but most of them were not constructed as boxes first. Creating the box first, then using the approach I demonstrate in this video to ensure that the ellipse's degree is correct goes a long way towards helping you align these forms believably. The alignment being even slightly off tends to contribute a lot to the overall willingness of your viewer to buy into the illusion you're creating.
Ultimately it is really important that you focus on drawing a bunch of primitive forms for 80-90% of the drawing process, rather than trying to draw the exact objects you're seeing. There's definitely a lot of signs here of you getting too caught up in the little details before your overall structure is properly built up. While your first two pages definitely were rough, I think they were going in the right direction. Using an enclosing box and a couple of proportion studies would have been a big plus, but overall you were very clearly drawing cylinders and boxes, rather than a cab, wheels, an engine block, a cement mixer thing, etc.
Lastly, about the shadows/black parts, keep in mind that I generally don't make those decisions based on the actual reference image. I'm not really drawing shadows so much as using the heavy black sections as a tool. It allows me to choose what parts of the drawing I want to really emphasize, and which parts I want to push back. Often times, even when drawing cast shadows (like on the coast guard boat) it'll be my own shadows rather than those I see in the reference image. It's largely a matter of deciding where your primary light source is in 3D space, and then considering how that's going to hit your forms. Admittedly it's not something I talk about at all in the lessons, because I find that people tend to get distracted from the main matters of form and silhouette.
One last thing I want to mention is that your boxes do need work - that is, the initial boxes you construct to contain everything. The integrity of your boxes is going to really determine how solid and believable the forms you construct inside of them are going to feel. So always remember that you should continue to practice just drawing regular boxes, and stay on top of pinning down the mistakes you tend to make when doing so, so you can grow from them.
As I said before, you're showing that you've understood most of the techniques I explained in this lesson - for the most part, you just need to push forwards with more practice and more patience. Keep it up, and consider this lesson complete.
Maxigati
2016-11-02 19:33
Thanks for you reply! I've tried to most something under lesson 8 bit i couldn't. It says it's locked and i couldn't comment on that one. Am i doing something wrong there? :)
i have another question. So is it a good way to transition to digital media if i do the lessons over again? i know i should learn to draw on paper first, i would like to practice on both.
Uncomfortable
2016-11-02 22:09
Ah, yeah, the thread must have gotten locked for being too old. Usually in this situation I create a new one, but I'm not sure I will just yet. Reason being, I'm not at all pleased with my figure drawing lessons, and am sure that I can do better. Rewriting those lessons is next up on my list, I just have to get a solid grasp of how exactly I want to go about it.
If you want to submit homework for that lesson, I guess you could send me a PM and I can critique it there. For now I'm going to wait until I rewrite those lessons before I actually post the homework threads again (since I'll want to draw attention to the new versions, as opposed to the old ones).
Uncomfortable
2016-11-02 23:24
Aaaand an hour or two later, I remembered there was another part to your question. Now that you've completed this lesson set, you should be okay to practice in digital media. Just make sure you reread this article so you can be more aware of the certain challenges (that aren't necessarily always obvious) that come up when working digitally.
ChevalierFaible
2016-11-30 01:52
Hey, here it is, still have a lot to work on but hopefully you can point me in the right direction :p
http://imgur.com/a/ZycL6
Uncomfortable
2016-11-30 23:24
Overall I think you're doing a really solid job of implementing the concepts covered in the lesson. Your constructions are very carefully laid out, and you're very meticulous in your subdivisions. I kind of wish I could have seen the drawings before you went at them with the black pen, as they'd give a fuller sense of your spatial sense, but it's still pretty clear that it's come a long way. At this point, it's largely a matter of continuing to practice, as you're moving in the right direction. Your biggest challenge is likely going to be a matter of proportion - which is already pretty solid, but stumbles a bit in places like the truck on page 9.
Also, your ellipses-in-planes do need a bit of refinement. I think they're feeling a little slanted in a few cases (more in the earlier drawings, so they're definitely improving). Just keep the whole 'contact points' matter that I explained in the ellipses-in-planes video in mind, and ensure that they are aligned vertically (usually straight above/below each other in 2 point perspective, or towards the vertical vanishing point in 3 point).
Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching set! I'm not sure if you're planning to move onto figure drawing next, but I do want to let you know that I hope to start an overhaul of that material during the holiday season, as I'm not pleased with the state they're in currently. I feel I can express that content much more clearly, much in the way that I've overhauled the dynamic sketching material.
ChevalierFaible
2016-11-30 23:42
Hi, I'll wait for the next updated lesson, I was planning on taking on the texture challenge and working on animals anyway :p
ChevalierFaible
2016-12-01 00:08
I forgot to ask, are you still recommending other mediums than ink for the next lessons, or have your thoughts changed on this subject?
Uncomfortable
2016-12-01 00:14
Each lesson's got a homework section with required/recommended tools - this is because they're not always the same. I'm much more relaxed for the figure drawing lessons, and generally don't actually recommend drawing in pen. I know it's contradictory, but it's a matter of judging when adding the extra challenge is beneficial, and when it becomes distracting.
[deleted]
2016-12-05 16:23
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2016-12-06 22:13
Nice work! I think you're demonstrating a strongly improving sense of form and space, and your constructions are starting to feel much more concrete and solid. It looks like you decided not to take advantage of my suggestion of using a ruler - that's ultimately up to you, but keep in mind that mixing challenges isn't generally a good idea. There are some areas where I purposely make things a little more difficult, while in others when a subject is already difficult enough, I alleviate those restrictions.
So your constructions are looking great - the main areas where you could use some more work is generally where observation comes into play. Proportions, details, etc. These are the sort of things that will improve with continued practice, of course.
Another area where I see some mixed results are your ellipses - generally I'm seeing development in this area, but I often notice that the initial studies you do before attempting the full drawing tend to be more successful in this area. This is understandable, as you seem to be much more timid with your construction linework in the full drawing (probably because you want to avoid clutter). In this sense, using a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you can manage to get your hands on one) would help considerably, because your lines would be much more precise, allowing you to avoid that sense of clutter without being quite so light and faint with the lines themselves. Also, remember that drawing larger will reduce the clutter as well, since your lines while remaining confident, will be thinner relative to the overall size of the drawing.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll mark this lesson as complete, so congratulations on completing this lesson set. If you're interested in moving onto the figure drawing material next, keep in mind that my plan is to overhaul it closer to the end of the month, so you may want to hold off until I have the chance to start posting that new material. Doesn't hurt to take a bit of a break, or to refresh your memory on material in previous lessons that may have faded a little from your mind.
[deleted]
2016-12-06 22:22
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2016-12-07 04:40
Ultimately it is primarily just a lot of practice, both to further develop your sense of space (so you can manipulate forms more confidently and accurately in your head) as well as to push the development of your visual library (by studying a wide variety of subject matter in depth). Generally it's pretty straightforward to outline how someone should start (which is what drawabox is), but unfortunately the hours and weeks and months and years of mileage are unavoidable.
[deleted]
2016-12-11 03:51
Is lesson 7
Uncomfortable
2016-12-11 21:39
So looking through your work, I can see two major issues that are trickling down and really giving you a hell of a time with these drawings.
The first one is your boxes - but you're aware of this, I can see it in some of your scribbled notes. If your overall, encapsulating box is wrong, then this will have a considerable impact on everything constructed within that box. Ultimately that's why I stress the importance of boxes and have gone so far as to name the website after them - if you could only practice one thing over and over and over, it should be drawing boxes.
The second point is the angle of your subdivision lines. It's tricky business when you've got your diagonals set up and you've found the center point of a given plane, but you have to draw the line that passes through it - figuring out its angle is something people struggle with a lot. Looking at my demos, you can see that I mess it up frequently, though often I can recover when the deviation isn't too drastic. When drawing these lines, there are clues you can rely upon (all the other lines that run parallel to this one in 3D space), but ultimately there is some guess-work involved, and it's the sort of skill you can hone through repetitive practice.
I came up with an exercise that may help you - I was actually going to just describe it in text, then thought an image demo would be better. Ultimately I ended up making a video instead, so you can check it out here.
Man, I just left this critique alone for a few hours while I made that video... where was I... Ah, right. So another issue you're definitely struggling with is proportion. I can see that you made some attempts at proportion studies - some of which were more fleshed out than others. One good example where you're struggling is the hatchback you drew. One big factor is that you didn't study the front view of the car at all, and as a result had no real sense of how wide it should be. If you remember from this video (which was included in the lesson), there are approaches you can use to figure out how to draw unit measurements out in three dimensions. I think that might answer your question, "how to do 100% wireframe box?"
Lastly, I do see that there's a part of you that is always urging you to move onto details, to jump forwards and rush ahead. This is pretty normal, but it's a part of you that you need to rein in pretty sharply. Looking at your forklift - which actually is pretty nicely done - one good example of jumping too far ahead is the actual fork-lift part at the front. The two prongs that stick out, specifically. At their simplest, each prong is just two boxes arranged in an L shape. A long flat box laying flat, and another tall flat box going up from its right side. What you drew was a little more complex - a single L form, with a rounded transition at the corner, and rounded edges at the tips of the prongs.
So here's what I'd like you to do:
50 of the subdivided boxes exercise that I devised for you.
Draw 10 boxes if specific unit measurements. That is, decide on its width, height, depth and then construct a box that matches those measurements, using the technique demonstrated in the "Measuring in Perspective: Constructing to Scale" video.
5 more vehicles. Try not to focus on any of the details, focus entirely on making sure that your basic forms feel solid and tangible.
You're welcome to use whatever tools may make your life easier - a ruler, an ellipse guide if you can get one, and so on. No pencil of course, but you're welcome to use ballpoint pen. As you called it in your first page.. easy mode :P
On right, looking at your first page reminded me - that stuff you did to imply water... don't. Ignore actually drawing the water itself altogether. Drawing bits of dirt and stuff to help ground an object is fine, but never draw careless squiggles, it's a great way to degrade the results of your hard work.
[deleted]
2016-12-14 04:44
How do you accurately get the hidden back point of a box? I can get all the other points accurately enough, but the back point is where, unless accuracy is 100%, the lines don't meet. See photos of interim work.
I'll continue doing these boxes but I don't think it's useful. I get how to subdivide boxes. I get how to draw a box in 3D. I'm not a computer and can't accurately get all the angles perfectly so the back point never matches. That's why the midpoints aren't accurate and internal planes aren't either, since they all rely on the back point.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-14 05:36
It's true, they won't meet unless they're 100% accurate, and as you said, we are not computers and therefore our boxes will not be 100% accurate. If you look at my demos, you probably wouldn't be able to find a single box that is perfect.
As I mentioned in the video, an important skill to learn is how to compensate for those mistakes as they start to accumulate, so you can keep them under control. In the case of this back corner, it's a bit like jugging. You've got three lines to draw, but if you draw them each one at a time, you'll end up with what you have there - three different points of intersection, instead of just one, because the box already has some errors by the time you start on these three lines, and because each line will probably have its own slight errors. If the box was perfect up to that point, and you were able to draw the lines perfectly, then they'd match up just right - but again, we're only human.
So we're juggling these three lines - we're trying to visualize all three of them so that we can get them all to be close enough within our given parameters (that is, each line must fall within the convergence of its own set of parallel lines towards their own VP off in the distance), while ensuring that they all converge at the same back corner.
Thinking about it strategically, we can lay out these parameters and consider which ones have the highest priority. A deviation in convergence to a far-off vanishing point affords some leeway. On the other hand, we can see the convergence at the back corner right in front of us, so this cannot be sacrificed.
Now, you COULD try to draw the three lines while juggling this mental balancing act, but it's a lot to do all at once. Here's an easier solution - work backwards from your highest priority. Draw the point where you feel the corner should go. Just having a point there will anchor your visualization, allowing you to roughly judge whether you feel that the lines going from the other corners to that point will feel okay-ish (in terms of convergence with the far-off VPs). If you think it's a little off, then just place another point - points are low cost, they don't have much of a footprint, so that kind of adjustment is nothing. Once you're comfortable with the position of that point, it just becomes a matter of ghosting your lines from the corners.
You mentioned your opinion on the usefulness of drawing these boxes when I assigned the extra work. I will explain to you their value, but before I do so, I do want to point out that you're here because you trust my judgment. You've drawn these countless pages over the past year, and you continue to because - I can only assume - you still see value in what I have to teach you. Or at least, I hope that's why.
You're absolutely welcome to not trust me, of course. But doing both simultaneously is extremely unwise. You end up putting in the work, but without trusting that what you're doing is worth while, you can't possibly put in all the effort you have to offer. And if you can't put in your full effort, then you can't reap the full rewards of the time you're investing. Of course, then you'll come back and point out that the boxes didn't help, and your trust will be further eroded, contributing to the vicious cycle and giving me no clear way to dig you out of your rut.
Muddiness comes up a lot in terms of how I teach. I teach people to work with straight lines instead of curves, and to start with boxes before rounding off those edges - because curves are indistinct, they're muddy approximations of a more solid form. I team people to draw from a single pivot in their arm (usually the shoulder), not to combine shoulder and elbow as some people try to do - because it's muddy, and this leads to a variance in how much they rely on either given pivot, leading them to never really be fully aware of what their arm is doing. And when students follow the my particular lessons, or my critiques - I always encourage them to focus entirely on the instructions as they are written, and to temporarily set aside what they think they already know. After all, if they mix what I explain with other material before being able to see what I have to offer in its entirety, they won't understand the little things I insist upon, and therefore won't be able to judge their value.
So, I will always insist that students of anything assess their choices first, but once they dive in, to do so completely. There will always be a point at the end for reflection, to decide whether or not I utterly wasted your time. If you try to do that throughout the process, I cannot accept responsibility for the result.
So, as I promised, here's the specific benefits to practicing these boxes:
You'll develop your ability to draw lines that run towards the same far-off vanishing point more accurately, given repeated practice and reflection thereafter to consider where your angles were off. Long term, this will diminish those accumulating mistakes, which will relieve a lot of pressure on your overall drawing. As a side note, you'll notice that in my video I demonstrate running those lines farther than the corners of the box when drawing them in colour - this is to help make that convergence clearer, for the sake of making the practice more valuable in this area. You don't seem to be doing this in yours.
Dealing with those mistakes is just another skill that is honed through having to face those problems repeatedly. Understanding it, or anything else (such as how you know how to subdivide boxes) on a theoretical level is valuable, but it is the repeated application of those principles that will have the greatest impact. You want to be able to hold a much stronger sense of the box and the lines it's composed of in your head, and this isn't something most people start off with. Pushing your brain through these spatial challenges over and over is what will train the ability to juggle multiple lines in space, in your mind. For now, you'll rely on laying down points as I explained earlier to help anchor your brain to the features of the box you're drawing, as you figure out where and how to compensate for the accumulating errors, but this is what will lead to this increased mental flexibility.
Now it's late - I need to go salvage the hours I've got left before I have to get up for work. I hope this clarifies at least to some extent why I'm so neurotically obsessed with boxes. If ultimately you've decided that my methodology does not suit you anymore, I'll take no offense. It's always best to walk the route you're able to follow with full confidence, and I don't want you to feel as though you're wasting your time. That said, were I to tell you to draw a thousand boxes, I could do so without the slightest bit of guilt, because I genuinely know it to be an extremely valuable exercise (as long as you put your all into it).
Uncomfortable
2016-12-14 05:37
It's true, they won't meet unless they're 100% accurate, and as you said, we are not computers and therefore our boxes will not be 100% accurate. If you look at my demos, you probably wouldn't be able to find a single box that is perfect.
As I mentioned in the video, an important skill to learn is how to compensate for those mistakes as they start to accumulate, so you can keep them under control. In the case of this back corner, it's a bit like jugging. You've got three lines to draw, but if you draw them each one at a time, you'll end up with what you have there - three different points of intersection, instead of just one, because the box already has some errors by the time you start on these three lines, and because each line will probably have its own slight errors. If the box was perfect up to that point, and you were able to draw the lines perfectly, then they'd match up just right - but again, we're only human.
So we're juggling these three lines - we're trying to visualize all three of them so that we can get them all to be close enough within our given parameters (that is, each line must fall within the convergence of its own set of parallel lines towards their own VP off in the distance), while ensuring that they all converge at the same back corner.
Thinking about it strategically, we can lay out these parameters and consider which ones have the highest priority. A deviation in convergence to a far-off vanishing point affords some leeway. On the other hand, we can see the convergence at the back corner right in front of us, so this cannot be sacrificed.
Now, you COULD try to draw the three lines while juggling this mental balancing act, but it's a lot to do all at once. Here's an easier solution - work backwards from your highest priority. Draw the point where you feel the corner should go. Just having a point there will anchor your visualization, allowing you to roughly judge whether you feel that the lines going from the other corners to that point will feel okay-ish (in terms of convergence with the far-off VPs). If you think it's a little off, then just place another point - points are low cost, they don't have much of a footprint, so that kind of adjustment is nothing. Once you're comfortable with the position of that point, it just becomes a matter of ghosting your lines from the corners.
You mentioned your opinion on the usefulness of drawing these boxes when I assigned the extra work. I will explain to you their value, but before I do so, I do want to point out that you're here because you trust my judgment. You've drawn these countless pages over the past year, and you continue to because - I can only assume - you still see value in what I have to teach you. Or at least, I hope that's why.
You're absolutely welcome to not trust me, of course. But doing both simultaneously is extremely unwise. You end up putting in the work, but without trusting that what you're doing is worth while, you can't possibly put in all the effort you have to offer. And if you can't put in your full effort, then you can't reap the full rewards of the time you're investing. Of course, then you'll come back and point out that the boxes didn't help, and your trust will be further eroded, contributing to the vicious cycle and giving me no clear way to dig you out of your rut.
Muddiness comes up a lot in terms of how I teach. I teach people to work with straight lines instead of curves, and to start with boxes before rounding off those edges - because curves are indistinct, they're muddy approximations of a more solid form. I team people to draw from a single pivot in their arm (usually the shoulder), not to combine shoulder and elbow as some people try to do - because it's muddy, and this leads to a variance in how much they rely on either given pivot, leading them to never really be fully aware of what their arm is doing. And when students follow the my particular lessons, or my critiques - I always encourage them to focus entirely on the instructions as they are written, and to temporarily set aside what they think they already know. After all, if they mix what I explain with other material before being able to see what I have to offer in its entirety, they won't understand the little things I insist upon, and therefore won't be able to judge their value.
So, I will always insist that students of anything assess their choices first, but once they dive in, to do so completely. There will always be a point at the end for reflection, to decide whether or not I utterly wasted your time. If you try to do that throughout the process, I cannot accept responsibility for the result.
So, as I promised, here's the specific benefits to practicing these boxes:
You'll develop your ability to draw lines that run towards the same far-off vanishing point more accurately, given repeated practice and reflection thereafter to consider where your angles were off. Long term, this will diminish those accumulating mistakes, which will relieve a lot of pressure on your overall drawing. As a side note, you'll notice that in my video I demonstrate running those lines farther than the corners of the box when drawing them in colour - this is to help make that convergence clearer, for the sake of making the practice more valuable in this area. You don't seem to be doing this in yours.
Dealing with those mistakes is just another skill that is honed through having to face those problems repeatedly. Understanding it, or anything else (such as how you know how to subdivide boxes) on a theoretical level is valuable, but it is the repeated application of those principles that will have the greatest impact. You want to be able to hold a much stronger sense of the box and the lines it's composed of in your head, and this isn't something most people start off with. Pushing your brain through these spatial challenges over and over is what will train the ability to juggle multiple lines in space, in your mind. For now, you'll rely on laying down points as I explained earlier to help anchor your brain to the features of the box you're drawing, as you figure out where and how to compensate for the accumulating errors, but this is what will lead to this increased mental flexibility.
Now it's late - I need to go salvage the hours I've got left before I have to get up for work. I hope this clarifies at least to some extent why I'm so neurotically obsessed with boxes. If ultimately you've decided that my methodology does not suit you anymore, I'll take no offense. It's always best to walk the route you're able to follow with full confidence, and I don't want you to feel as though you're wasting your time. That said, were I to tell you to draw a thousand boxes, I could do so without the slightest bit of guilt, because I genuinely know it to be an extremely valuable exercise (as long as you put your all into it).
[deleted]
2016-12-14 07:09
I lost my original reply and now need to retype and remember it.
Thanks for the reply. I hate writing short responses when you write essays every time. I'll add the back point before adding lines as suggested. It seems that a larger box has a more acceptable error tolerance, as shown.
I don't like dropping out or quitting. DrawABox was suggested to me so I started a year ago, but I'm not sure it's worth the stress and required perfectionism of using an unforgiving pen. The lessons have definitely helped with understanding how things are drawn, but I think it's better with limited time to use a pencil and ruler as necessary, and to fix your mistakes while reading the lessons and completing partial homework. For me personally, I know I understand the concepts and can draw them, but not 100% perfectly every time as required. In terms of this lesson, the subdivision I get, the measurements I get (but aren't applicable when objects aren't evenly spaced), the solid forms of vehicles I get, but I can't draw any them accurately in ink. I know that if I graduate here, I won't be using a pen to draw the base and constructional layers, I'll be using a pencil or tablet. And when a pen is used, it'll be after photocopying the pencil sketch/drawing so, in the event of a mistake, not everything's ruined like it is now.
I thought I'd quit at plants. Then insects. Then animals. Then objects. And now vehicles. And I've been sitting here for 40 minutes, trying to decide whether to continue with the stress and requested extra homework, or to continue with a pencil as above. And now that I've retyped my entire reply to the best of my remembrance, I've stayed up an hour and a half past my bedtime just like every time I try to draw. And I'm still perpetually tired and I still don't have an answer, so I guess it'll be the status quo with another year of frustration, tiredness, and shallow skill increases. Or at least another month.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-14 17:06
It's really the opposite of this. People start like this when working in ink, stressing over making everything correct like each drawing they do must be the perfect embodiment of skill, but most will reach a breaking point. One of the big reasons I push ink is so that eventually students are forced to come face to face with the fact that perfectionism doesn't work. That the final drawing that comes out is not going to always be pretty, and that there's a lot of garbage that's going to come out of it.
It's the idea that the time you're putting in is not to make pretty pictures, but rather what you get out of that investment is the practice and training itself.
I think you've been riding right at that breaking point for a long time now, but you haven't allowed yourself to break. Instead you've revelled in the frustration of every single drawing falling short of your expectations, and it's quite possibly driving you mad. It's not healthy to be so ensconced in all of this negativity, covering your pages in self-critical scribbles, and it certainly isn't helping you.
Maybe you should take a break. I'm not saying give up, but I'm saying that maybe you should give your mind the time and room to recover a little, so that when you do come back to this stuff, you can look at it from a fresh perspective rather than that of someone who's been hammered day in and day out, coming back every day for more. Do you ever draw just for the sake of drawing? Do you doodle, or illustrate, or do whatever you might see yourself attempting once you've achieved the skills you're after? Maybe you should spend some time doing that for a spell. Remind yourself why you're going through this.
[deleted]
2016-12-15 07:31
Thanks for the reply. I'm sure you get this already, but I don't like using a pen. Even if you say the idea is to lose the perfectionism desire, the fact remains that these non-perfect pen drawings reflect only the first yet final attempt at a line or arc or sum of marks; whereas a fixable drawing with pencil or other modifiable media, while still flawed, reflect the true ability of the drawer. Even if I know perfectionism isn't the requirement, it's still the output since every line is final and permanent.
Unfortunately I don't have any identical pen/pencil comparisons but during the insects phase I did a moth in pencil, for comparison sake. The moth is better and more accurate than the spider before, mostly because it's done in pencil and I had the chance to test a solid, fix it, and continue as required. The greyscale helped too.
You asked if I did any drawing outside of DrawABox: the answer is yes, but it's all just procrastinatory scrawls in preparation for the doozy of the final DrawABox drawing for the night. Easily 150 duplex pages. All pencil, by choice. There's a lot of junk in there, but also some things I'm happy with. This kettle and earbud from a year ago, this guy and his weird dog, this horse, this cartoon squirrel and calligraphy, this dog and bootleg Mickey, this whale, this lion. Other things that aren't shown too. I can partially thank DrawABox for the basis of some of these, but also a pencil for the accuracy of each one. If you asked me to draw these same things in pen, I wouldn't be able to.
A note, as I was about to take a photo of the first thing to share above, I stopped and thought this is not good enough to share. I keep thinking of your article on ink, and one of your points on using ink is that it builds confidence by allowing you to fail. First, I'm not sure that's how you usually build confidence. Multiple failed math tests don't make you confident for an exam. Confident that you'll fail, maybe. Second, both your and your friend's sketchbooks were originally private, allowing failure. Every DrawABox drawing isn't private, so the need to prove your worth to someone is present in your mind while trying to draw.
Somehow it's 11:30pm again and it's an hour past my bedtime and I'm tired again, and I didn't even draw at all today. And I still don't know whether to continue or stop the official pen critique version of DrawABox. I almost don't want to spend all my drawing time doing boxes and eventually vehicles for the next month or two. It's not likely that I'll be drawing rigid, static, boring vehicles on my own time after this is all done, I'd likely be drawing plants, animals, objects, humans, insects; essentially anything but technical, precise, perfect vehicles. And definitely not in pen.
[deleted]
2016-12-16 05:52
I think I'm going to continue with the route mentioned above (below?): continue with the concepts from the lessons of DrawABox but without the demand and shackles of a pen. Thank you for your detailed responses, critiques, support, and material over the last year.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-16 13:48
Well, I'm glad you were able to come to a decision. Best of luck! - and remember, the ink thing is a restriction for lessons 1-7, but 8 onwards (which will be rewritten starting in the next couple weeks) are much more lax in their requirements.
Fish_Face_Faeces
2016-12-13 13:39
Oh do I have a doozy for you to sift through, lesson 7. The newer drawings are towards the end of the album.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-14 00:54
Well done! There's a fair bit of stumbling and struggling through the beginning, but even with some of the proportions fall out of whack (like this car), there's a clear sense of solidity and awareness of the forms and how they exist in 3D space. Rather than looking like a failed drawing, it looks like a failed car - like you drew some wacky proportioned car with belt wheels and did so faithfully.
Of course, things definitely get better. Your batmobile is excellent, as is your TIE Interceptor. In your new set, I love this one. It's clear and solid and demonstrates a really solid ability to carve and turn 3D form. And this bike! I'm not sure what design you were following, but it looks fabulous. In general you're doing extremely well. The far at the end's got some weird stretching going along on the side, so something's up there - though admittedly, I struggled a lot with that myself.
Keep up the great work, and congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching material (and in under 4 months!). As I've mentioned to a few others, if you plan to move onto the figure drawing material, hold off a little bit, as I'm hoping to release some new rewrites of those lessons later this month when I get some time off from work.
Oh, as for one of the questions that I noticed - this is how you'd tackle creating three equal sections.
Fish_Face_Faeces
2016-12-14 07:39
I think technically it's taken ne 8-9 months or so. As for the bike, it's insane.
I definitely noticed that stretching-thing, and I'm not entirely sure what happened - Did I overestimate the length? Underestimate how much the side curves inward? Is the angle between the front- and side planes of the box too obtuse (If that makes sense)?
I'm not sure how to word another thank you, so I'll just go ahead and thank you; So, so much. Your site and critiques turned out to be the ideal jumping-off point I needed to get into drawing, or rather learning to draw and the drawing habit. Suddenly the idea of studies and value and other million things I don't know, don't feel as paralyzingly scary anymore.
Anyway, I'm rambling. To keep me occupied until you revise the figure-drawing-section, I'm planning on checking out Ctrl+Paint and maybe just churning out some stuff for the boxes/cylinders-challenge. Just to get dat badge.
Thanks again, and have a good christmas or holiday or what have you!
Uncompleted
2016-12-22 19:37
Alright. Here we go. Let's do this. ^Time ^to ^work. ^^The ^^clocks ^^are ^^running. ^^^Theres ^^^stuff ^^^to ^^^do ^^^^aand ^^^^work ^^^^to ^^^^be ^^^^done. ^^^^^Really ^^^^^need ^^^^^to ^^^^^start ^^^^^now. ^^^^^^hmmm...
Damn you procrastination! Can't stop me!
It's been over a month... none of your lessons took me that long, although it's not procrastinations fault.
Anyway thank you for providing these great lessons and offering critiques!
Uncomfortable
2016-12-23 02:05
Excellent work! A month isn't particularly surprising to me. The material is challenging, and back when I was going through this sort of material, all of my time was focused on the classes I was taking, and even then we were given a full week per lesson. On top of that, I kind of think that spacing the work out over time helps give you time to process what you're doing, to reflect and think back on past mistakes (as long as the intervals in between sittings isn't too large).
You've generally shown an excellent use of the subdivision technique with a lot of these, like the V22 - Osprey, the Caterpillar 797F and so on. I especially loved the Chevy Camaro lay-in and the proportion study. Despite being a fairly early block-in, you can feel the solidity of the overall construction, and that's what I want to see more than anything else. The notion that even if you deviate from the original design, that it feels tangible and plausible when you're done.
At this point, all I can say is keep at it - practice will only sharpen your skills, improving your ability to maintain consistent proportions, to drop in accurate ellipses, etc. You're absolutely on the right track though, so keep up the great work and a big congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching material.
In case you're planning on moving onto the figure drawing material stuff, wait just a little bit - I'm planning on putting out the new stuff for lesson 8 very soon.
Uncompleted
2016-12-23 22:09
Thanks, I'm gonna revisit some of the earlier lessons and probably get the 250 cylinder badge in the meantime.
Anyway I wish you a lovely Christmas, your efforts are definitely appreciated!
dencontrol
2017-01-02 17:18
Hello Uncomfortable, today while doing the lesson for the lay-ins while drawing tires, I ran into the problem not knowing where should I end the other side.
What methods can I use to know where the the same sized tire ends on the other side (That is further from the viewer) especially when you are not using the "encapsulating box" method?
Like this on the demo
Hopefully the question was clear enough, otherwise I could throw in some drawings I've been doing to see if that helps! So far I've been doing the measuring in perspective - video technique to expand the box with the tire's width until it seem to make sense where the tire sits on the other side and draw it like that.
Uncomfortable
2017-01-02 17:27
You solve this problem by mirroring across the center of your form - I talk about this technique in the intro video to lesson 6, specifically at around 10:34. If you know where the tires stop closest to you, you can find that line on the ground plane, then mirror it across the center to find the same line on the opposite side.
dencontrol
2017-01-02 19:30
I was thinking of that method, but since I didn't know where the plane ends while still constructing the box, it lead me into not knowing where's the center point of the plane.
Here's the situation I was stuck with. I was constructing the box, had the lines head toward the vanishing point, but I had no clue where should I close the box at the exact spot where it would be accurate in perspective on where the other tire ends. So I used the width of the closer tire as a measure and expanded it few times until I landed somewhere which seemed to be accurate and close the box there. Is this a viable method and is there easier way to do this?
I'm sorry if the drawing is really messy, it's mostly a prototype where I drew bunch of lines seeing what works for the question I asked (Also bunch of laziness). Also sorry if the question was confusing!
Uncomfortable
2017-01-02 19:42
You have a box up there on the top which I would assume is sitting in the middle of your overall construction. You've even found the center of that plane, and drawn a line down from there. That's your middle.
From what I can see, you've even drawn a line from the top right corner of your right tire, through the center, but where it intersects with your other tire, you used it as the inner side rather than the outer. Meaning, that tire is too far out.
dencontrol
2017-01-02 19:56
Yeah, I kinda came to the realization I could've used the box up there could be used as the middle. I added some lines after reading your advice and tried different stuff before taking the picture, so there's WAY too many lines around and I definitely missed them and that they had their uses.
But asking this question helped me a lot with this, guess some of these stuff comes with experience! Thanks a lot for the help this was really useful.
Also to confirm (if my method was understandable that is), was my way to tackle it with the width of the tire and expanding the plane that way also a correct in term of perspective?
Uncomfortable
2017-01-02 19:57
Technically speaking, sure, but it definitely wasn't the most effective approach.
dencontrol
2017-01-02 20:59
Alright, thanks a lot for taking the time for the help! :)
dencontrol
2017-01-07 15:41
Hey Uncomfortable. Passing by asking something related to the earlier question again.. Sorry for asking so much, been trying to figure this out, but after over 5 hours of drawing over and over, I just don't seem to understand this and don't seem to progress with this at all.
So for the earlier question, I seem to generally understand where and how the other side ends, but I'm tiny bit confused with it. I drew a little example of it. Example picture. I highlighted the green area I was confused of. If the tires (boxes in this case) are on the same position, shouldn't they be in the same position on those side planes?
One thing I could come up with was that the tires aren't attached to the main bigger box, leaving gap between it, which is why it looks different on the opposite side plane. If that is the case, how do I draw a tire that leaves a quite big gap between the ground and the main structure of the vehicle (A tractor for example.)
Hopefully the explanation was good enough, thanks again and sorry for the extra questions. I've tried over 20 pages trying different things without quite coming up with a conclusion for this, so I decided to seek for help as I got a quite headache over few days because of this not knowing how to advance..
Uncomfortable
2017-01-07 17:37
You done goofed. You didn't find the correct center point to mirror across, so your wheel boxes are offset from the center, shifted more towards the right. Hence there being no space between your left wheel and the main box, but lots of space between the right wheel and the main box.
dencontrol
2017-01-08 12:31
Camera angle sure did some tricks on that. On paper the verticals don't seem that bad, but certainly learned from that and will be using the ruler to help in the future. Just seem to have a little trouble with ruler and ballpoint pen and end up drawing things on different places where I want (Like the arbitrary point mirroring which wasn't my intention at all..)
this certainly helped me a lot and some stuff clicked from me after this, so thanks a lot!
I got a little question to add. How should I draw the side wheels if I want them to be attached to the main box with no space between the wheel and main box? This is what I feel like I'm struggling with and just can't get it right at all. I want the tire to be on a lower level than the main box, but I seem like I just keep putting space between them instead of making it lower. I'm sorry for all these extra stuff, but I just can't seem to continue these stuff as this has been bothering my head all week lol.
I feel like these stuff are slowly starting to click on my head though, thanks a lot for taking the time to answer my extra questions. I'll make sure to donate extra next time I'll finish a lesson. You have been REALLY HUGE help ever since I picked up the pen approx 1 year ago after seeing your site. I feel like I definitely need to show some appreciation! :)
Uncomfortable
2017-01-08 17:58
I'm a bit confused, because it seems like you're asking two different questions.
How do I draw wheels that are right up against the box rather than some amount of space away? The answer to this one is very straight-forward, you just draw your first wheel's box right up against your main box. Mirroring across will result in the other wheel being positioned correctly.
How do I place the wheels lower than the main box of the vehicle? There's a few ways you can approach this, but I would probably just do what you've been doing (keep them level with each other), then cut away a section from the bottom of the main box. In the diagram I drew for the last question, you can see how the big red plane I drew is some distance into the initial box, so it would line up with the front of the wheels. You can do the same thing for the underside by picking an arbitrary height level, drawing a line at that level across the front plane of the box, and then continuing it all the way around the rest of the box. Alternatively you could just start out by constructing two boxes stacked on top of each other - one representing the negative space under the vehicle, and one representing the main box.
dencontrol
2017-01-20 10:45
Here's my submission for this lesson.
Generally stayed on the safe side of 2 point perspective, but came out from the comfort zone here and there to try out the 3 point one.
Also, I've found when searching for references of vehicles, searching for their blueprints proved to be really useful to get clear side/front view of the specific vehicles. Used this site a lot during the lesson.
That aside, really looking forward for the reply! Been waiting to finish this up to continue other goals for quite awhile now! :)
Uncomfortable
2017-01-20 21:01
You're definitely moving in the right direction with these. There's a lot of good going on, though I do have a couple recommendations I'll get into in a bit.
Firstly, I think that when you're focusing more on blocking out larger forms (without getting into a lot of the little bits), you're demonstrating some really good grasp of form and construction. The steam roller, the cab-over truck, the pontoon boat, etc. all show solid box forms, and I really like the way you approach dealing with their rounded corners. That is, leaving them aside until the very end. As such, they end up feeling very solid.
You're also quite diligent with your measuring, your mirroring, and your subdivisions. Though you certainly did struggle before asking me those questions you'd had, it seems that you're starting to grasp the use of these different techniques more firmly.
As I mentioned, there are a few ways you can modify your approach that will likely help improve your work on some fronts:
A simple one - try to keep your foreshortening shallower. There were a few that stood out as being particularly extreme, like the steam roller. On the other hand, the pontoon boat was better. overly dramatic perspective distortion can be very difficult to work with, and it also throws off the sense of scale, as it tends to be reserved for things the size of buildings, rather than vehicles.
You've got some very thick, heavy pens being used, or at least, you're laying the weight on quite thickly, and this should be avoided. Thick lines in general tend to make things look too graphic and flat, and when you have those thick lines existing on the inside of an object (like how you've handled some of your wheels later in the homework set), it starts to break up the cohesion of the forms. Even when trying to separate some lines from the heavy mess of construction, you need only be quite subtle with it for them to read.
When doing your proportion studies, focus on both side and front/back views, and apply the measurement techniques described in this video when drawing in three dimensions. Your vehicles have a tendency of being quite stretched along the front (this is a common issue, it happens to me too when I get too lax in regards to studying the proportions in both dimensions). Though you did do proportion studies for the front in that last car, and in the bike/two-wheeled-car-thing, I don't see any sign of you actually carrying your unit measurement over into that dimension as it is described in the video. The main sign is that you have an ellipse to establish your unit plane along the side of the construction, but you don't have one to establish it in the front.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, just be sure to continue to practice this material and keep what I've mentioned above in mind. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching curriculum!
dataguard
2017-02-22 09:18
Well, here it is. I've made tons of mistakes, but I feel like I've became better at spotting them too. Line quality is still rubbish, made even worse how I've had to add a lot of line weight to separate stuff from the construction lines. Trying the curvy boat was a mistake, but I had to challenge myself. Wheels are hard too, I hate wheels.
Also, using a fineliner and a ruler makes for a terrible mess, ink stains everywhere.
http://imgur.com/a/pvrOW
Uncomfortable
2017-02-22 21:30
Your constructions are definitely looking pretty solid. The only area where you need a hell of a lot of work is your ellipses. It's completely understandable and honestly fairly normal, but you're visibly afraid of them. Whenever you attempt to draw an ellipse, especially one that needs to fall into a specific plane or to a specific alignment, you hesitate and choke. The only way around this is to practice them a lot, more or less as you've been doing. Do them in isolation, but also do them as part of larger drawings - you're definitely doing a good job of pushing through each drawing even when the ellipses end up a little uneven or awkward, and that's great. Keep at it.
By the way, I'm especially fond of this car. The front's a little lopsided, but it's adorable, and the solidity of your forms and the patience with which you've planned out every detail really pushes it that extra mile.
Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Congratulations on finishing the dynamic sketching material.
dataguard
2017-02-22 21:49
Thank you! It was really a fun and rewarding experience to go through your lessons, I've learned so much. I plan to make the switch to digital and focus on figure drawing from this point on, hopefully going through your revised lessons on that material later on, once you have the time to finish them.
I'm definitely going to keep up the daily practice, my ellipses really need it, but my lines are far from perfect too. Already burned through a lot of pens and this stack of papers, it's not a habit that I can easily drop now. Might even give that scary texture challenge a go once I'm more confident.
Occultist-Narath
2017-02-25 17:48
here is my homework:
http://imgur.com/a/2uAuG
Uncomfortable
2017-02-26 01:52
Nice work! I think you've got a lot of strong examples of construction here. I do think you definitely need to continue working on your ellipses (and frankly, we all do, they're ridiculously difficult to master) but your vehicle constructions are coming along great. There's just a couple things I noted that are worth mentioning:
There's a few cases - like the pickup truck - where doing a proportion study of the front and applying the constructing to scale method would definitely have helped avoid some of the strangeness you've encountered.
The curvature of your rivet-contour lines for the submarine didn't really convey the intended volume, and there wasn't really much else to help describe how that surface curves through space, so the result was a form that felt like it came down to an edge. I generally am not too fond of using 'dashed' lines because they're tricksy. Continuous lines are confident and reliable, while broken lines lie to us. Every time that path is broken, the trajectory shifts a little, resulting in a line that does not quite follow the path we intended for it. In this case using regular continuous contour lines would have been best, because the primary priority is to convey the appropriate volumes and forms, rather than worrying about details. Still, experimentation is always good, even if they lead us down the wrong path, so we'll file this away under learning what not to do.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Congratulations on completing lesson 7, and with it the entirety of the dynamic sketching lesson plan.
[deleted]
2017-03-03 21:08
Here's the homework
I really shouldn't freehand things when I'm allowed to use stuff :< Ended up in ellipse hell since the guide didn't have big enough ellipses for my drawings lol
Uncomfortable
2017-03-03 21:46
There's a lot of good here, and also some definite things that you should avoid or shift your attention towards. More or less what I'd expect to see at this point.
The first thing that jumps out at me is with your bulldozer - specifically, its treads. This is a really specific thing I'm nitpicking on rather than an overarching problem, but I figure it's worth mentioning. The tread itself exists in three dimensions - it's not paper thin, it's got thickness to it. In some parts of the tread (like the bottom length) you're aware of this thickness, but in others you aren't. How the various cylinders around there sit against the tread, and how you've communicated its form has a lot of inconsistencies, where towards the top section it's reading as having no thickness at all.
That said, I think the way you started out this construction, and the way you handled a lot of the explicitly boxy forms is coming along quite well. Your understanding of how to place boxes in 3D space seems to be well developed.
The biggest problem I see across this entire set however is that you're not taking enough advantage of this strength. You have a tendency to construct really nicely, laying in all those boxes, doing your subdivisions and measurements, and then for some reason you kind of let them go. You go over all of your forms and linework with a darker stroke, replacing those lines and rounding off corners in a way that really does not maintain the solidity that existed there initially.
Rounding off a corner slightly is normal, and perfectly fine as a finishing touch. If however you need to round that corner off beyond a certain point, it starts to become less structurally solid without having laid in the correct groundwork to support it. Basically you end up jumping across too wide a chasm, and the solidity you previously had won't quite stretch far enough to support what you're trying to create. It needs more specific scaffolding.
The other aspect of what I mentioned was the fact that you're going over your linework, replacing it with a thicker line. Usually I catch this in peoples' drawings earlier, and I'm not sure if I've mentioned it to you before - but adding line weight is very different from straight up replacing lines.
The latter is what a lot of beginners tend to do, sketching something in quickly to get a feel for something, then being very slow and careful and precise (and consequently, stiff) to "clean up". Now this isn't necessarily what you're doing, but it is similar. Ultimately you need to treat your initial lines - those drawn confidently and solidly - as being more or less final. All we can do to help organize those lines is to pull and push them with line weight. This means adding additional thickness to key areas to accentuate overlaps and draw attention to certain places. We do this to specific places, not all of our linework.
Basically, since you have a tendency to do this replacement thing, you're really tossing aside a lot of the strengths in your boxes - you build them up so nicely, and then set them aside. Now while you've got some really strong boxes, your cylinders aren't quite so great, and definitely need a lot of work. Note that in the intro video, I definitely state that by this point you should have completed the 250 cylinder challenge by now, though it looks like you haven't tackled it yet - or at least haven't submitted it.
This page is a good example of a problematic cylinder. The end of that front cylinder that is closest to us is totally misaligned. I can't tell if there's a minor axis present there, but if there is, it's definitely not cutting that ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves.
In general, but especially for you, it's best to construct those cylinders by starting them off as boxes. I say that it's particularly good in your case because, again, you're really good at constructing boxes. By doing so, we don't have to worry quite so much about the overall alignment of a given cylinder. The main problem we're left with is building our ellipses properly within the planes of our boxes, as discussed in this video from the lesson.
There's just two more points I want to raise, and I'll make them quick. First, don't just focus on the side when doing proportion studies. Especially with cars, the front is very important. Breaking down the proportions in both dimensions allows us to construct them more accurately to scale, as discussed here.
The other point is about detail. You're thinking about it far too much, and it's distracting you. I strongly recommend that you leave detail completely out of the equation for the time being and try getting each vehicle drawing as far as you can with construction alone. When we know we have detailing as a next step, we have an inherent tendency to start stamping things on as arbitrary details (thinking more about how they sit on the flat page than as part of 3D space), when we really should be constructing them as solid forms.
I'd like you to first complete the 250 cylinder challenge. Then submit four more pages of vehicle drawings and we'll see how you've progressed.
[deleted]
2017-03-04 07:11
Thanks for the feedback. I did have a lot of trouble with this lesson so it's super helpful. I do have a really bad habit of replacing stuff, I think because I don't 100% finish the construction as I should. I lose confidence halfway through and don't think I can do it and so jump ahead of myself. I fall back on just drawing what I see when I can't wrap my head around a form in 3D.
I can do the cylinder challenge again, but I have actually done it (it was quite a few months ago now though)... it's here. To be honest, the cylinders back then weren't great either. :P Should I do the whole thing again?
Uncomfortable
2017-03-04 19:32
Ah, I must have forgotten to give you the flair badge for it then. Still, yeah - looking at your cylinders in that lesson 7 work, you would benefit considerably from doing it again, especially since you weren't making use of any minor axes.