There's certainly room for improvement, but I think you're grasping the overall concepts and are having some noticeable successes. In particular, I think where you stick more to treating the objects as a collection of rudimentary forms (rather than trying too hard to replace exactly what you see with all of its little curves and whatnot), you tend to do better. For example, this one is looking pretty decent because you're considering each individual component as something simple. You can maintain the solidity of each simple component, and once you stick them together, that solidity remains. This is also a good example which while simple, is definitely moving in the direction we're interested in heading.
On the flipside, for this drawing you effectively went from box directly to the exact form of the alarm clock. You didn't break that box into simpler forms (even smaller boxes to block out the space), you just kind of went for it. The thing about curves like this is that the bigger the curve, the more dangerous it is. They need scaffolding to ensure that they maintain solidity, otherwise the resulting drawing will be quite flimsy.
For the same drawing, I also noticed that you tacked certain details on in a way that treated them quite a bit like stickers. Understandable in some cases, like the LED 7:33, but in general when tackling this kind of subject matter, I'd highly encourage you to simply leave that stuff out. Decorative details aren't really important here - if you find some component you want to add but really cannot think of it in terms of construction and form, and like it's effectively just a sticker sitting flat on the surface of the object, then ignore it. If, however, this detail is integral to the object, you're more than likely not dealing with something that's just a sticker, and should push yourself to build it in as a part of a three dimensional construction. For example, the markings across the top - it feels to me like those are depressions of some sort, but you didn't communicate that well because there's no apparent thickness or lip to them.
Aside from that, be sure to continue practicing your boxes, cylinders, and generally those lesson 1 and 2 exercises as they're the bedrock for this kind of thing. I definitely see areas where your boxes do need work like here - and if a box is off, anything that relies upon that box will be too.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You're demonstrating a budding understanding of the material, and while you absolutely should continue practicing this stuff, I think you should be good to move onto the next one. Make sure you take advantage of the fact that I let students use rulers in the next lesson (and ellipse guides if you can get your hands on one), as vehicles can be quite challenging.
Sorry for the delay, I've had a long two weeks at work and haven't been able to respond to homework submissions as quickly as I usually do.
So your constructions are definitely going in the right direction, and you're clearly mindful of how the objects you are drawing are composed of an assortment of rudimentary forms. You're also not getting distracted by the details, as some students do leading to them drawing them on like flat stickers rather than considering the fact that they occupy three dimensional space.
I do think that the scale at which you're drawing is perhaps holding you back a little bit, but despite this you're doing reasonably well. The speaker at the beginning is quite tiny (as you noted yourself), but you're not letting this distract you from establishing all of your major solid forms.
I did notice however that in some areas you're perhaps getting a little sloppy in the execution of your lines. Perhaps at times you're getting tired, and aren't quite pushing yourself to apply the ghosting method as stringently as you do at other times. Understandable, but definitely something you should push yourself to improve upon.
I think in some cases proportion is definitely an area that could use some work. The monitor for instance, while being a good example of the sloppiness I mentioned earlier, also ends up feeling really small due to the proportional relationship between the base and the screen, as well as the thickness of the base and the bevel in relation to the whole object.
All that said, you've got more than enough significant successes here for me to consider this lesson complete. The lamp was especially well executed, considering all of the ellipses involved. I also quite like this knife - smaller objects can often be quite challenging because we have a tendency to downplay the significance of their rudimentary forms. You definitely pushed past that and captured it with a strong illusion of solidity.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.
The more lines there are, the harder it is to focus oh the points you're drawing between. It's something you'll have to cope with. Practice will help, so long as you're mindful of that weakness.
Nice work! I can definitely see a lot of clear signs that you're internalizing the lessons, and understanding the objects you study as collections of basic forms rather than getting caught up in their unimportant details. There is definitely room for growth, in terms of really solidifying what you're already getting your head around, but you've got a lot of great examples here already. The headphones are an interesting case especially - the drawing itself shows a great grasp of form and construction, although the encompassing box was more or less ignored. To be fair, the box probably wasn't the best choice for this considerably more curve-based construction, and to a degree I think you understood that and didn't entirely chain yourself down. either way, the drawing was still marvelously successful.
I also liked this one quite a bit, though I'm not sure what it is - a pencil sharpener perhaps? You handled the curves very nicely, pushing them off until the boxier construction was taken to its furthest extent. As a result, the object came out looking quite sturdy and solid.
Overall, one pattern I noticed is that your ellipses do need work - it's understandable that you'd be somewhat more timid and hesitant when drawing these complex objects, where each drawing requires a considerable amount of work and setup. It's certainly difficult to draw your ellipses with more confidence, and to draw through them as you're supposed to, given that the impact of a mistake seems large. Ultimately though, while each drawing takes a lot of time and investment, you need to force yourself to accept that each one is just another exercise, or a drill. One of many. The resulting drawing doesn't matter, what does is what you learned from it - and drawing those ellipses hesitantly will not teach you much about how to approach them correctly. Prepare all you need, but you will come to the point where your pen touches the page, and you need to trust in your muscle memory, and accept that if something may go wrong - and that's perfectly okay.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I noticed that you haven't yet completed the cylinder challenge (as recommended at the beginning of this lesson), so you should probably tackle that and use it as an opportunity to get some more practice with your ellipses before moving onto lesson 7.
http://imgur.com/a/NsuEm Here's my homework. Self-criticism: I think I mostly had trouble making the encapsulating box and I don't think I utilised subdividing the planes of my boxes enough.
Since I only have a couple lessons left I was wondering if you had any advice of what to check out after I've done them. No courses I've found online are as clear when it comes to exercises as this one is, the lessons have simple, useful techniques (like the encapsulating box in this lesson) but more importantly they make me feel like I've "grasped the basics" of drawing the subject, as vague as that is. Other courses I've found online provide a lot of the former but don't help at all with the latter. Figure drawing is probably the thing I'm struggling the most with.
Maybe lesson 8 will help me grasp figure drawing as well, but still, If you have any advice for what to get into/daily exercises to after I finish my first go-through of this course, I'd really appreciate it.
I definitely agree that you're generally not subdividing your boxes enough. The important thing to keep in mind is that you should not be relying on guessing - if you cannot geometrically prove that something should be in a particular location, you haven't subdivided enough. That said, despite that you have had some success.
Another issue you're coming up against is that you're a little too loose with your linework. This lesson, as well as the next one, really demand a strict use of the ghosting method, and of patience. Any kind of sketchy or loose behaviour can risk resulting in a bit of a mess. You've got a lot of drawings here where you're just too relaxed with your use of lines. You correct often (which is a bad habit), you reflexively reinforce your lines immediately after drawing them, etc.
Lastly, cylinders and ellipses appear to be your biggest weakness here. I'm glad that you're still drawing through your ellipses, but you definitely need to work on tightening them up, and keeping them aligned with your minor axes. I think this flashlight was fairly well done, but they do get quite sloppy elsewhere.
Overall you are moving in the right direction, but you need to exhibit a little more self-restraint. Don't let your marks get away from you - it's always better to think and plan than to draw without a specific mark in mind.
I'd like you to do another four pages of these drawings.
As for your other question, all of drawabox is about things to do for daily practice. The exercises from the first two lessons and the challenges are obviously especially important, but in general the lessons are about learning how to practice. They're marked as complete when I think you're ready to explore the application of the same principles on the next topic, but there is always going to be plenty of room for improvement.
Admittedly, were I you, I wouldn't bother with lesson 8. As far as I'm concerned, drawabox ends at lesson 7. I'm just not that great at teaching figure drawing. You may instead want to look into Stan Prokopenko's YouTube Channel for that.
Thanks for the quick response! I'll get on those 4 extra drawings, I'll admit I wasn't happy either about most of those drawings.
About my questions about figure drawing and such, I'll check out the proko figure drawing videos. One thing I've been confused with is whether I should limit my time when drawing the figure or not. My assumption is that I should do gesture drawings where I limit my time and construction/proportion practice where I take my time. Also, when it comes to construction, do you recommend constructing figures from reference or creating poses from scratch with proportion in mind?
Gesture with a time limit (5 minutes works well) and construction without is a good plan. Draw from reference. You don't yet have the visual library to draw from scratch yet, you'll develop that by studying reference images.
In general your constructions are actually fairly well done. There are just a few things that you're rushing through, and as a result are skipping some steps. Firstly, make sure that you're constructing anything elliptical first as a plane (as they're easier to align to an existing surface). In the cylinder challenge, there's a link to a video on constructing circles in 3D space, and how to fit an ellipse into a plane.
Also make sure you subdivide and apply those methods for mirroring details across the center of a box more stringently. You seem to be relying more on guesswork in certain cases, resulting in lines that don't sit where they should. It may help to review some of my demos, as I stress this quite a bit.
Lastly, your line quality is rather wobbly, as you're drawing quite slowly and stressing accuracy over the flow of your lines. I understand why you'd be doing that, but you must remember to apply the ghosting method to every single line you draw, planning beforehand before executing confidently. This will open you up to lines that miss their mark, but it is entirely necessary for you to be able to produce smooth linework.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
Well, 3 months is still too long to complete a lesson, but here it is: HW6. These are less polished - pre-submission work was 3-4 drawings instead of 10. I swear that I am ghosting lines and ellipses, but sometimes I still miss badly. As always, many thanks. ~S.
Very, very nice work. Your constructions are very solid, and despite the struggles you mentioned with ghosting, as far as I'm concerned you're executing those lines very well in the vast majority of cases. Slip-ups and mistakes are normal, they happen. What's important from there is how we deal with them, in order to downplay them, and that's working out well for you.
The primary mistakes I'm seeing relate more to the alignment of ellipses to their enclosing planes, maintaining ellipses that represent circles in 3D space (as opposed to being too squished or what have you, there are a couple of extra videos in the next lesson that will help solidify this for you). What's important though is that your actual approach to construction, with lots of subdivision and the minimizing of any guesswork means that you're absolutely moving in the right direction. The rest - which itself is coming along great - will improve with practice and time.
Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
I just can't seem to get my head wrapped around this lesson.. The problems start with trying to get the box right on the paper and only get worse from there on out.
You're making more progress than you likely think, and I definitely see things coming along at a decent pace. That said, I definitely agree - you're struggling most at the base level of constructing boxes (which itself is not an easy task). If your initial box has issues with its near/far planes, or its angles, this will trickle down into your constructions as they rely upon these cues to determine their own angles and relationships.
I noticed that you haven't yet submitted anything for the 250 cylinder challenge, as recommended at the beginning of this lesson. I'd definitely recommend giving that a shot, and to kill two birds with one stone, try focusing more on constructing cylinders within boxes.
Once you've done that, try another three pages of everyday objects. And as a last point, I've noticed in several areas that you're not entirely following the principle of one-mark-per-line. I see several cases where you've corrected or reinforced lines immediately after drawing them, resulting in a messier drawing. Make sure you're applying the ghosting method as stringently as you can, as it forces you to plan and prepare before every individual stroke.
These are certainly looking much better structured and more organized. There's a much greater emphasis on those primitives, and they're coming out far more consistently than before. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Keep up the good work!
Hello there, here is lesson 6 for your review. Have learned a lot this lesson and will continue to practice from here on out. Just a matter of practice and not losing concentration, I feel like I skip over steps when I lose focus but later I see what I did wrong. I know the answer is to just practice more but I'm curious to know what stands out as my biggest weakness. What I have noticed is that my ellipses of course need a lot of work and that I make too many marks, self correcting in progress. Let me know what you think, thanks.
In general I think you've done a lot of great work here. The computer mouse is quite well done, as are the air fresheners. I also like the fact that even when things go somewhat wrong with your initial enclosing box (which seems to happen quite frequently - definitely want to work on your boxes), you adhere to the construction that's in front of you, and work within the bounds you've set out for yourself.
I certainly agree that it is largely going to be a matter of practice. Your approach is correct, it's merely a matter of continuing to acquaint yourself with boxes and cylinders. As such, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. The next lesson is definitely more of the same, so make sure you do more box/cylinder warmups before, and while you attempt lesson 7.
Hi, Uncomfortable, here is my lesson 6. Life(tm) caught me recently and it looks like I almost forgot how to draw a box. I drew a lot of them before I tried to take lesson 6 tho.
Besides other issues, I noticed that I have trouble capturing curvy 3D shapes like this handle. My brain explodes while trying to imagine it in 3D space. Same with the piggy example where every line is curved and every corner is rounded. Any tips on this?
While there certainly is room for improvement, I think you're pushing quite enthusiastically in the right direction. That teapot actually looks quite impressive, and I imagine with all of its ellipses it would be extremely challenging to pull off. There are a couple additional ellipses I would have blocked in for that (like for the knob on its lid) to add structure, but overall you did a pretty great job with it.
After all of the previous lessons being fairly focused on looser, more organic constructions, this one is often a bit of a rude awakening for most students, as they're really forced to come to terms with boxes in a way that stress-tests their ability to construct them. Like you, most find that they're not as well versed in that basic concept than they once thought. It's totally normal to feel that way, and it is definitely a strong truth - we all need to practice our boxes more. It's why I named the site after that one thing that matters most.
When it comes to curvy forms, the best thing you can do is to ignore their curves for as long as you possibly can. You can look at a curvy line as being representative of a wide variety of possibilities. In that sense, a curving line on its own can be very vague. It's not great for building with, especially not for our purposes. Alternatively, a straight line is clear - it captures a single possibility, and does so with conviction. Because of this, it feels solid and forms made with straight lines can often feel much sturdier and more reliable.
When you jump too early to curved lines, you sacrifice that sturdiness. Instead, I always strive to flesh out my construction to a high degree with straight lines, so that when I finally round off my corners, the 'range' of possibilities is already so limited and well defined that the curves maintain the same sense of solidity.
Another major issue in the same vein can be seen looking at your router drawings. Notice how your router's edges aren't snug against the enclosing box? They're arbitrarily floating in space. The enclosing forms that we construct are not merely an exploration of space - they define the bounds of what we build, and allow us to avoid guesswork down the line.
To end on a happy note, while I feel you could have stuck to straight lines and box-like forms much longer, the camera came out quite well. Since you're moving in the right direction, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I do think there's a lot of room for growth however, so you should definitely keep up with practicing this sort of material.
For the iron and some other stuff I caught myself constructing stuff using some symetry and curves much like Scott Robertson uses in its books. , but I don't know if you would have some sugestion to decompose that in simpler shapes (some polygonal shape maybe?? ). I don't know, doing it with curves felt natural, but its something hard since immediatly you have the page filled with construction stuff and it's hard to tell things appart. I don't know, maybe this kind of object was beside the point for this lesson. And for the other bottle/can (I don't know what to call it)... I started drawing some curves, same as with the iron, to base myself upon but in the end I found the easiest way for me was just to visualize some sections and then join them much like with branches, is there another way to do something like that type (ie, a rounded cube becoming a cylinder) without going crazy?
Very nice work as always! I'm glad that your usual patience, care, and general grasp of 3D space carried over quite nicely into geometric construction from the organic stuff we were tackling previously. Since overall you're demonstrating a fantastic use of construction, I'll focus instead on the point you raised about the iron.
Before that though, just a quick tip - ease up a little on your line weights. You are definitely being a little heavy handed with them (or at least, are picking another particularly thick pen). Line weights generally benefit from being more subtle, as going overboard can easily flatten out a form. Because your constructions are solid on their own, there isn't much flattening going on here, but in general I think it's important to tone it down, and get used to using the same pen you used for the drawing when adding your line weights. This will make it considerably more difficult to add too much. You'd be surprised how little additional weight is necessary to help organize the mess of construction lines you're usually left with.
Anyway, about the iron - ultimately what works, works. Your approach did the trick, and resulted in a solid, believable representation of a fairly complex form. Overall what you did was pretty similar to the approach conveyed in the computer mouse demo (relying heavily on cross-sections and then connecting them all together), and so it definitely fell into the kind of subject matter we were looking to cover in this lesson.
The only thing I might tackle a little differently, is to start that handle off as a box, and immediately cut out another box out from inside of it. From there you can construct your cross-sections within the resulting planes, and connect them all together. This is by no means the 'right' way of doing it, and yours certainly is far from the 'wrong' way. It's just a different way to think about approaching the construction of these forms. Here's a demonstration of what I mean, though with a more generic loop rather than the iron's particularly complex handle.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one and keep up the great work.
I have a super heavy hand, I think I have seen some improvement on that thanks to struggling to not to kill the fineliners too soon. I'll do my best to control lineweight better and use the same pen for everything.
Thanks for the demo, I was thinking of the same aproach but I jumped straight to the sections... Using that polygonal shape as scafolding sure helps a lot.
Thanks for the feedback.
I really like the course, I mean, there's some more techniques that you could emphasize some more (ie, mirroring curves, how to construct bevels, curve combos, etc) But I don't know, maybe if you put that information it might be too early... or send people down rabbit holes to get lost...
It would be cool to have another lesson on the advanced topics about this kind of techniques, but I feel that you still can do a lot without them.
For example for planes (sky sausages), being able to mirror the wings is very important and it's easy to screw up and have it looking weird because wings are also long and they can end up entering in the zone where perspective starts to distort.
Sorry for going on a tangent. My point is, it is nice that the course doesn't go super deep, since people normally rush to the end, its good to leave out some shit that is not so useful normally (until you really know what you are doing). It would be nice in the end of the dynamic sketch you said something like "you can do almost everything with this plus visualizing, but now, here are some other more, extended, advanced lessons and challenges, the road still goes on". I don't know, maybe such advanced topics could go even after lesson 15, so you've have time to let the previous more fundamental techniques sink in.
Anyway, there some room for improvement, but good job with the lessons.
I'll definitely keep those points in mind - although specifically in terms of mirroring across perspective, that is something I actually talk about in this lesson's intro video (from about 10:30 to 12:15).
Hahaha, glad to see that you're getting lots of love on imgur! And rightly so, because this set of homework is really quite well done. You're very clearly paying careful attention to the construction of each form, and demonstrating a strong understanding of how these objects occupy 3D space. I'm also seeing a lot of experimentation in terms of how to explore that space, and how to break down different objects - experimentation is important, so keep it up.
The only thing I noticed that I would change in your approach is that you have a tendency to treat certain incidental details as not being worth taking the time to properly be drawn from observation. It's certainly true that there are details that would fall into this category, but I think it's important simply not to draw them if that's the case. Anything that goes on the page should be the result of forethought and consideration. Not everything needs to end up in your drawing, and part of what makes it your drawing is what you choose to include and what to leave out. A lot of those extra little scribbled details really take away from the well planned construction of the forms themselves.
On that same note, I'd recommend not relying quite so much on hatching lines. They're a pretty common fallback for filling in space (especially when it comes to shadows), but they have a few important weaknesses. Firstly, we tend to overuse them (instead of taking the time to carefully identify what kind of textures are present on an object). Secondly, they can produce a lot of visual noise - the dense areas of black and white created by hatching will very quickly draw the eye, even if it was entirely unintentional. Consider instead filling in areas you want to have represented as being dark - a brush pen can be quite useful for this. This will give you that sense of darkness without the unnecessary visual noise. It'll also give your drawing a bit more of a bold, confident appearance, where hatching tends to give the impression of being uncertain and unwilling to make a decision.
Anyway, overall your work is fantastic. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
You're demonstrating an exceptional grasp of the techniques and principles covered in this lesson. You're extremely patient and careful when it comes to building up your measurements and constructions - the only area where you're demonstrating weakness is really in the more rudimentary and fundamental areas - primarily the construction of your initial boxes, at times the straightness of some of your initial lines, and some of your ellipses.
That said, I'm actually very pleased at how you handle those issues. The fact that you hold true to the forms you established in those steps (even if they're somewhat off) is important. Yes it impacts the resulting drawing, but what's most important is that you're keeping to the principles of construction. You're breaking the approach into bite-sized steps, tackling problems one at a time, and once a problem has been "handled", you're not muddying up your process by going back to revisit it.
Ultimately once your boxes, lines and ellipses are solid - which is frankly just a matter of practice and focus, and is absolutely something you will achieve - you'll already have established a strong grasp of the process that follows.
I'm confident in marking this lesson as complete. The next one does offer a little more leniency (you're allowed to use a ruler, and even an ellipse guide if you have one) since the complexity of the constructions gets quite rough, and I encourage you to take advantage of that. I also encourage you to continue practicing your box and cylinder constructions on the side.
To be honest, I actually think that the weakness in your boxes and cylinders was primarily due to the fact that it's been 3 months since your last submission. I don't know how much you've done in the interim, but looking over this set, it's clear that by the last page those elements are coming out stronger than they did at the beginning. Your ellipses are smoother and more even, your boxes are better, etc. So - keep up the good work.
Uncomfortable
2017-04-07 02:59
Old thread got locked, those eligible to have their work reviewed by me can submit it here.
traceurl
2017-04-07 12:03
Is it just me or is drawabox down? Been that way since yesterday. On mobile.
Uncomfortable
2017-04-07 12:29
It's just you. Try accessing the site at http://drawabox.com:3000 and see if that works.
traceurl
2017-04-07 15:27
It does! Thank you so much, I appreciate it.
adamzhang
2017-04-08 01:13
Here's my lesson 6. Thanks in advance!
Uncomfortable
2017-04-10 18:36
There's certainly room for improvement, but I think you're grasping the overall concepts and are having some noticeable successes. In particular, I think where you stick more to treating the objects as a collection of rudimentary forms (rather than trying too hard to replace exactly what you see with all of its little curves and whatnot), you tend to do better. For example, this one is looking pretty decent because you're considering each individual component as something simple. You can maintain the solidity of each simple component, and once you stick them together, that solidity remains. This is also a good example which while simple, is definitely moving in the direction we're interested in heading.
On the flipside, for this drawing you effectively went from box directly to the exact form of the alarm clock. You didn't break that box into simpler forms (even smaller boxes to block out the space), you just kind of went for it. The thing about curves like this is that the bigger the curve, the more dangerous it is. They need scaffolding to ensure that they maintain solidity, otherwise the resulting drawing will be quite flimsy.
For the same drawing, I also noticed that you tacked certain details on in a way that treated them quite a bit like stickers. Understandable in some cases, like the LED 7:33, but in general when tackling this kind of subject matter, I'd highly encourage you to simply leave that stuff out. Decorative details aren't really important here - if you find some component you want to add but really cannot think of it in terms of construction and form, and like it's effectively just a sticker sitting flat on the surface of the object, then ignore it. If, however, this detail is integral to the object, you're more than likely not dealing with something that's just a sticker, and should push yourself to build it in as a part of a three dimensional construction. For example, the markings across the top - it feels to me like those are depressions of some sort, but you didn't communicate that well because there's no apparent thickness or lip to them.
Aside from that, be sure to continue practicing your boxes, cylinders, and generally those lesson 1 and 2 exercises as they're the bedrock for this kind of thing. I definitely see areas where your boxes do need work like here - and if a box is off, anything that relies upon that box will be too.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You're demonstrating a budding understanding of the material, and while you absolutely should continue practicing this stuff, I think you should be good to move onto the next one. Make sure you take advantage of the fact that I let students use rulers in the next lesson (and ellipse guides if you can get your hands on one), as vehicles can be quite challenging.
adamzhang
2017-04-10 20:23
Thanks! Hope everything worked out with your work craziness.
pruffins
2017-04-08 17:24
Here it is.
http://imgur.com/a/ttZmE
Thanks again
Uncomfortable
2017-04-10 18:50
Sorry for the delay, I've had a long two weeks at work and haven't been able to respond to homework submissions as quickly as I usually do.
So your constructions are definitely going in the right direction, and you're clearly mindful of how the objects you are drawing are composed of an assortment of rudimentary forms. You're also not getting distracted by the details, as some students do leading to them drawing them on like flat stickers rather than considering the fact that they occupy three dimensional space.
I do think that the scale at which you're drawing is perhaps holding you back a little bit, but despite this you're doing reasonably well. The speaker at the beginning is quite tiny (as you noted yourself), but you're not letting this distract you from establishing all of your major solid forms.
I did notice however that in some areas you're perhaps getting a little sloppy in the execution of your lines. Perhaps at times you're getting tired, and aren't quite pushing yourself to apply the ghosting method as stringently as you do at other times. Understandable, but definitely something you should push yourself to improve upon.
I think in some cases proportion is definitely an area that could use some work. The monitor for instance, while being a good example of the sloppiness I mentioned earlier, also ends up feeling really small due to the proportional relationship between the base and the screen, as well as the thickness of the base and the bevel in relation to the whole object.
All that said, you've got more than enough significant successes here for me to consider this lesson complete. The lamp was especially well executed, considering all of the ellipses involved. I also quite like this knife - smaller objects can often be quite challenging because we have a tendency to downplay the significance of their rudimentary forms. You definitely pushed past that and captured it with a strong illusion of solidity.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.
pruffins
2017-04-10 22:20
I find that, ghosting gets much harder the more lines that kind of obscure my view of the 2 points. Don't know how else to explain it.
Uncomfortable
2017-04-10 23:05
The more lines there are, the harder it is to focus oh the points you're drawing between. It's something you'll have to cope with. Practice will help, so long as you're mindful of that weakness.
curlosm
2017-04-23 17:19
Here's my homework: http://imgur.com/a/ydH0Y
Uncomfortable
2017-04-23 22:23
Nice work! I can definitely see a lot of clear signs that you're internalizing the lessons, and understanding the objects you study as collections of basic forms rather than getting caught up in their unimportant details. There is definitely room for growth, in terms of really solidifying what you're already getting your head around, but you've got a lot of great examples here already. The headphones are an interesting case especially - the drawing itself shows a great grasp of form and construction, although the encompassing box was more or less ignored. To be fair, the box probably wasn't the best choice for this considerably more curve-based construction, and to a degree I think you understood that and didn't entirely chain yourself down. either way, the drawing was still marvelously successful.
I also liked this one quite a bit, though I'm not sure what it is - a pencil sharpener perhaps? You handled the curves very nicely, pushing them off until the boxier construction was taken to its furthest extent. As a result, the object came out looking quite sturdy and solid.
Overall, one pattern I noticed is that your ellipses do need work - it's understandable that you'd be somewhat more timid and hesitant when drawing these complex objects, where each drawing requires a considerable amount of work and setup. It's certainly difficult to draw your ellipses with more confidence, and to draw through them as you're supposed to, given that the impact of a mistake seems large. Ultimately though, while each drawing takes a lot of time and investment, you need to force yourself to accept that each one is just another exercise, or a drill. One of many. The resulting drawing doesn't matter, what does is what you learned from it - and drawing those ellipses hesitantly will not teach you much about how to approach them correctly. Prepare all you need, but you will come to the point where your pen touches the page, and you need to trust in your muscle memory, and accept that if something may go wrong - and that's perfectly okay.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I noticed that you haven't yet completed the cylinder challenge (as recommended at the beginning of this lesson), so you should probably tackle that and use it as an opportunity to get some more practice with your ellipses before moving onto lesson 7.
Slabang
2017-06-11 23:12
http://imgur.com/a/NsuEm Here's my homework. Self-criticism: I think I mostly had trouble making the encapsulating box and I don't think I utilised subdividing the planes of my boxes enough.
Since I only have a couple lessons left I was wondering if you had any advice of what to check out after I've done them. No courses I've found online are as clear when it comes to exercises as this one is, the lessons have simple, useful techniques (like the encapsulating box in this lesson) but more importantly they make me feel like I've "grasped the basics" of drawing the subject, as vague as that is. Other courses I've found online provide a lot of the former but don't help at all with the latter. Figure drawing is probably the thing I'm struggling the most with.
Maybe lesson 8 will help me grasp figure drawing as well, but still, If you have any advice for what to get into/daily exercises to after I finish my first go-through of this course, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!
Uncomfortable
2017-06-12 00:15
I definitely agree that you're generally not subdividing your boxes enough. The important thing to keep in mind is that you should not be relying on guessing - if you cannot geometrically prove that something should be in a particular location, you haven't subdivided enough. That said, despite that you have had some success.
I especially liked this lamp, as it conveys a good sense of solidity and form.
Another issue you're coming up against is that you're a little too loose with your linework. This lesson, as well as the next one, really demand a strict use of the ghosting method, and of patience. Any kind of sketchy or loose behaviour can risk resulting in a bit of a mess. You've got a lot of drawings here where you're just too relaxed with your use of lines. You correct often (which is a bad habit), you reflexively reinforce your lines immediately after drawing them, etc.
Lastly, cylinders and ellipses appear to be your biggest weakness here. I'm glad that you're still drawing through your ellipses, but you definitely need to work on tightening them up, and keeping them aligned with your minor axes. I think this flashlight was fairly well done, but they do get quite sloppy elsewhere.
Overall you are moving in the right direction, but you need to exhibit a little more self-restraint. Don't let your marks get away from you - it's always better to think and plan than to draw without a specific mark in mind.
I'd like you to do another four pages of these drawings.
As for your other question, all of drawabox is about things to do for daily practice. The exercises from the first two lessons and the challenges are obviously especially important, but in general the lessons are about learning how to practice. They're marked as complete when I think you're ready to explore the application of the same principles on the next topic, but there is always going to be plenty of room for improvement.
Admittedly, were I you, I wouldn't bother with lesson 8. As far as I'm concerned, drawabox ends at lesson 7. I'm just not that great at teaching figure drawing. You may instead want to look into Stan Prokopenko's YouTube Channel for that.
Slabang
2017-06-12 01:51
Thanks for the quick response! I'll get on those 4 extra drawings, I'll admit I wasn't happy either about most of those drawings.
About my questions about figure drawing and such, I'll check out the proko figure drawing videos. One thing I've been confused with is whether I should limit my time when drawing the figure or not. My assumption is that I should do gesture drawings where I limit my time and construction/proportion practice where I take my time. Also, when it comes to construction, do you recommend constructing figures from reference or creating poses from scratch with proportion in mind?
Uncomfortable
2017-06-12 01:53
Gesture with a time limit (5 minutes works well) and construction without is a good plan. Draw from reference. You don't yet have the visual library to draw from scratch yet, you'll develop that by studying reference images.
CaptainKong
2017-06-17 01:35
http://imgur.com/a/VsMon
I am struggling very hard with this lesson, but I won't give up. Thanks for making all this knowledge accessible to us.
I included my orthographics even though those don't "count" towards the quantity criteria.
Will draw more if needed.
Uncomfortable
2017-06-18 17:20
In general your constructions are actually fairly well done. There are just a few things that you're rushing through, and as a result are skipping some steps. Firstly, make sure that you're constructing anything elliptical first as a plane (as they're easier to align to an existing surface). In the cylinder challenge, there's a link to a video on constructing circles in 3D space, and how to fit an ellipse into a plane.
Also make sure you subdivide and apply those methods for mirroring details across the center of a box more stringently. You seem to be relying more on guesswork in certain cases, resulting in lines that don't sit where they should. It may help to review some of my demos, as I stress this quite a bit.
Lastly, your line quality is rather wobbly, as you're drawing quite slowly and stressing accuracy over the flow of your lines. I understand why you'd be doing that, but you must remember to apply the ghosting method to every single line you draw, planning beforehand before executing confidently. This will open you up to lines that miss their mark, but it is entirely necessary for you to be able to produce smooth linework.
I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
sperezmiller
2017-06-21 03:16
Well, 3 months is still too long to complete a lesson, but here it is: HW6. These are less polished - pre-submission work was 3-4 drawings instead of 10. I swear that I am ghosting lines and ellipses, but sometimes I still miss badly. As always, many thanks. ~S.
Uncomfortable
2017-06-22 13:31
Very, very nice work. Your constructions are very solid, and despite the struggles you mentioned with ghosting, as far as I'm concerned you're executing those lines very well in the vast majority of cases. Slip-ups and mistakes are normal, they happen. What's important from there is how we deal with them, in order to downplay them, and that's working out well for you.
The primary mistakes I'm seeing relate more to the alignment of ellipses to their enclosing planes, maintaining ellipses that represent circles in 3D space (as opposed to being too squished or what have you, there are a couple of extra videos in the next lesson that will help solidify this for you). What's important though is that your actual approach to construction, with lots of subdivision and the minimizing of any guesswork means that you're absolutely moving in the right direction. The rest - which itself is coming along great - will improve with practice and time.
Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
CorenSV
2017-07-02 17:46
Lesson 6
I just can't seem to get my head wrapped around this lesson.. The problems start with trying to get the box right on the paper and only get worse from there on out.
Uncomfortable
2017-07-03 00:03
You're making more progress than you likely think, and I definitely see things coming along at a decent pace. That said, I definitely agree - you're struggling most at the base level of constructing boxes (which itself is not an easy task). If your initial box has issues with its near/far planes, or its angles, this will trickle down into your constructions as they rely upon these cues to determine their own angles and relationships.
I noticed that you haven't yet submitted anything for the 250 cylinder challenge, as recommended at the beginning of this lesson. I'd definitely recommend giving that a shot, and to kill two birds with one stone, try focusing more on constructing cylinders within boxes.
Once you've done that, try another three pages of everyday objects. And as a last point, I've noticed in several areas that you're not entirely following the principle of one-mark-per-line. I see several cases where you've corrected or reinforced lines immediately after drawing them, resulting in a messier drawing. Make sure you're applying the ghosting method as stringently as you can, as it forces you to plan and prepare before every individual stroke.
CorenSV
2017-07-11 17:50
and here they are
Uncomfortable
2017-07-12 15:05
These are certainly looking much better structured and more organized. There's a much greater emphasis on those primitives, and they're coming out far more consistently than before. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Keep up the good work!
Abel2TheMoon
2017-07-18 05:04
Hello there, here is lesson 6 for your review. Have learned a lot this lesson and will continue to practice from here on out. Just a matter of practice and not losing concentration, I feel like I skip over steps when I lose focus but later I see what I did wrong. I know the answer is to just practice more but I'm curious to know what stands out as my biggest weakness. What I have noticed is that my ellipses of course need a lot of work and that I make too many marks, self correcting in progress. Let me know what you think, thanks.
http://imgur.com/a/FtHFr
Uncomfortable
2017-07-18 19:53
In general I think you've done a lot of great work here. The computer mouse is quite well done, as are the air fresheners. I also like the fact that even when things go somewhat wrong with your initial enclosing box (which seems to happen quite frequently - definitely want to work on your boxes), you adhere to the construction that's in front of you, and work within the bounds you've set out for yourself.
I certainly agree that it is largely going to be a matter of practice. Your approach is correct, it's merely a matter of continuing to acquaint yourself with boxes and cylinders. As such, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. The next lesson is definitely more of the same, so make sure you do more box/cylinder warmups before, and while you attempt lesson 7.
raincole
2017-07-26 17:13
Hi, Uncomfortable, here is my lesson 6. Life(tm) caught me recently and it looks like I almost forgot how to draw a box. I drew a lot of them before I tried to take lesson 6 tho.
Besides other issues, I noticed that I have trouble capturing curvy 3D shapes like this handle. My brain explodes while trying to imagine it in 3D space. Same with the piggy example where every line is curved and every corner is rounded. Any tips on this?
Uncomfortable
2017-07-27 06:03
While there certainly is room for improvement, I think you're pushing quite enthusiastically in the right direction. That teapot actually looks quite impressive, and I imagine with all of its ellipses it would be extremely challenging to pull off. There are a couple additional ellipses I would have blocked in for that (like for the knob on its lid) to add structure, but overall you did a pretty great job with it.
After all of the previous lessons being fairly focused on looser, more organic constructions, this one is often a bit of a rude awakening for most students, as they're really forced to come to terms with boxes in a way that stress-tests their ability to construct them. Like you, most find that they're not as well versed in that basic concept than they once thought. It's totally normal to feel that way, and it is definitely a strong truth - we all need to practice our boxes more. It's why I named the site after that one thing that matters most.
When it comes to curvy forms, the best thing you can do is to ignore their curves for as long as you possibly can. You can look at a curvy line as being representative of a wide variety of possibilities. In that sense, a curving line on its own can be very vague. It's not great for building with, especially not for our purposes. Alternatively, a straight line is clear - it captures a single possibility, and does so with conviction. Because of this, it feels solid and forms made with straight lines can often feel much sturdier and more reliable.
When you jump too early to curved lines, you sacrifice that sturdiness. Instead, I always strive to flesh out my construction to a high degree with straight lines, so that when I finally round off my corners, the 'range' of possibilities is already so limited and well defined that the curves maintain the same sense of solidity.
If that seems a bit confusing, try to focus on the idea that there is one correct curve for whatever it is you're drawing. Others may approximate the correct line, but they'll feel less solid and real. This demo I did a long time ago for another student may help a little.
Another major issue in the same vein can be seen looking at your router drawings. Notice how your router's edges aren't snug against the enclosing box? They're arbitrarily floating in space. The enclosing forms that we construct are not merely an exploration of space - they define the bounds of what we build, and allow us to avoid guesswork down the line.
To end on a happy note, while I feel you could have stuck to straight lines and box-like forms much longer, the camera came out quite well. Since you're moving in the right direction, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I do think there's a lot of room for growth however, so you should definitely keep up with practicing this sort of material.
Juanmilon
2017-08-08 14:06
Hi Uncomfortable, this are the drawings I made for this lesson: http://imgur.com/a/M7DDo. I found particularly difficult to draw the objects that had smoother non obvious shapes like this iron : http://imgur.com/PTlhbLs and this bottle/can http://imgur.com/IIc9dLW.
For the iron and some other stuff I caught myself constructing stuff using some symetry and curves much like Scott Robertson uses in its books. , but I don't know if you would have some sugestion to decompose that in simpler shapes (some polygonal shape maybe?? ). I don't know, doing it with curves felt natural, but its something hard since immediatly you have the page filled with construction stuff and it's hard to tell things appart. I don't know, maybe this kind of object was beside the point for this lesson. And for the other bottle/can (I don't know what to call it)... I started drawing some curves, same as with the iron, to base myself upon but in the end I found the easiest way for me was just to visualize some sections and then join them much like with branches, is there another way to do something like that type (ie, a rounded cube becoming a cylinder) without going crazy?
Thanks for your feedback.
Uncomfortable
2017-08-09 22:48
Very nice work as always! I'm glad that your usual patience, care, and general grasp of 3D space carried over quite nicely into geometric construction from the organic stuff we were tackling previously. Since overall you're demonstrating a fantastic use of construction, I'll focus instead on the point you raised about the iron.
Before that though, just a quick tip - ease up a little on your line weights. You are definitely being a little heavy handed with them (or at least, are picking another particularly thick pen). Line weights generally benefit from being more subtle, as going overboard can easily flatten out a form. Because your constructions are solid on their own, there isn't much flattening going on here, but in general I think it's important to tone it down, and get used to using the same pen you used for the drawing when adding your line weights. This will make it considerably more difficult to add too much. You'd be surprised how little additional weight is necessary to help organize the mess of construction lines you're usually left with.
Anyway, about the iron - ultimately what works, works. Your approach did the trick, and resulted in a solid, believable representation of a fairly complex form. Overall what you did was pretty similar to the approach conveyed in the computer mouse demo (relying heavily on cross-sections and then connecting them all together), and so it definitely fell into the kind of subject matter we were looking to cover in this lesson.
The only thing I might tackle a little differently, is to start that handle off as a box, and immediately cut out another box out from inside of it. From there you can construct your cross-sections within the resulting planes, and connect them all together. This is by no means the 'right' way of doing it, and yours certainly is far from the 'wrong' way. It's just a different way to think about approaching the construction of these forms. Here's a demonstration of what I mean, though with a more generic loop rather than the iron's particularly complex handle.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one and keep up the great work.
Juanmilon
2017-08-10 05:20
I have a super heavy hand, I think I have seen some improvement on that thanks to struggling to not to kill the fineliners too soon. I'll do my best to control lineweight better and use the same pen for everything.
Thanks for the demo, I was thinking of the same aproach but I jumped straight to the sections... Using that polygonal shape as scafolding sure helps a lot.
Thanks for the feedback.
I really like the course, I mean, there's some more techniques that you could emphasize some more (ie, mirroring curves, how to construct bevels, curve combos, etc) But I don't know, maybe if you put that information it might be too early... or send people down rabbit holes to get lost...
It would be cool to have another lesson on the advanced topics about this kind of techniques, but I feel that you still can do a lot without them.
For example for planes (sky sausages), being able to mirror the wings is very important and it's easy to screw up and have it looking weird because wings are also long and they can end up entering in the zone where perspective starts to distort.
Sorry for going on a tangent. My point is, it is nice that the course doesn't go super deep, since people normally rush to the end, its good to leave out some shit that is not so useful normally (until you really know what you are doing). It would be nice in the end of the dynamic sketch you said something like "you can do almost everything with this plus visualizing, but now, here are some other more, extended, advanced lessons and challenges, the road still goes on". I don't know, maybe such advanced topics could go even after lesson 15, so you've have time to let the previous more fundamental techniques sink in.
Anyway, there some room for improvement, but good job with the lessons.
Uncomfortable
2017-08-10 15:32
I'll definitely keep those points in mind - although specifically in terms of mirroring across perspective, that is something I actually talk about in this lesson's intro video (from about 10:30 to 12:15).
em_rowan
2017-08-11 03:47
(; `ยด)
http://imgur.com/a/Fumcz
Uncomfortable
2017-08-11 20:29
Hahaha, glad to see that you're getting lots of love on imgur! And rightly so, because this set of homework is really quite well done. You're very clearly paying careful attention to the construction of each form, and demonstrating a strong understanding of how these objects occupy 3D space. I'm also seeing a lot of experimentation in terms of how to explore that space, and how to break down different objects - experimentation is important, so keep it up.
The only thing I noticed that I would change in your approach is that you have a tendency to treat certain incidental details as not being worth taking the time to properly be drawn from observation. It's certainly true that there are details that would fall into this category, but I think it's important simply not to draw them if that's the case. Anything that goes on the page should be the result of forethought and consideration. Not everything needs to end up in your drawing, and part of what makes it your drawing is what you choose to include and what to leave out. A lot of those extra little scribbled details really take away from the well planned construction of the forms themselves.
On that same note, I'd recommend not relying quite so much on hatching lines. They're a pretty common fallback for filling in space (especially when it comes to shadows), but they have a few important weaknesses. Firstly, we tend to overuse them (instead of taking the time to carefully identify what kind of textures are present on an object). Secondly, they can produce a lot of visual noise - the dense areas of black and white created by hatching will very quickly draw the eye, even if it was entirely unintentional. Consider instead filling in areas you want to have represented as being dark - a brush pen can be quite useful for this. This will give you that sense of darkness without the unnecessary visual noise. It'll also give your drawing a bit more of a bold, confident appearance, where hatching tends to give the impression of being uncertain and unwilling to make a decision.
Anyway, overall your work is fantastic. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
em_rowan
2017-08-11 20:57
haha so many imgur opinions! thanks as always for the review. guess i can't put off drawing cars any longer D:
Jackson622
2017-09-13 02:39
Lesson 6 for your consideration: https://imgur.com/a/ykwRM
Thanks as always.
Uncomfortable
2017-09-13 18:39
You're demonstrating an exceptional grasp of the techniques and principles covered in this lesson. You're extremely patient and careful when it comes to building up your measurements and constructions - the only area where you're demonstrating weakness is really in the more rudimentary and fundamental areas - primarily the construction of your initial boxes, at times the straightness of some of your initial lines, and some of your ellipses.
That said, I'm actually very pleased at how you handle those issues. The fact that you hold true to the forms you established in those steps (even if they're somewhat off) is important. Yes it impacts the resulting drawing, but what's most important is that you're keeping to the principles of construction. You're breaking the approach into bite-sized steps, tackling problems one at a time, and once a problem has been "handled", you're not muddying up your process by going back to revisit it.
Ultimately once your boxes, lines and ellipses are solid - which is frankly just a matter of practice and focus, and is absolutely something you will achieve - you'll already have established a strong grasp of the process that follows.
I'm confident in marking this lesson as complete. The next one does offer a little more leniency (you're allowed to use a ruler, and even an ellipse guide if you have one) since the complexity of the constructions gets quite rough, and I encourage you to take advantage of that. I also encourage you to continue practicing your box and cylinder constructions on the side.
To be honest, I actually think that the weakness in your boxes and cylinders was primarily due to the fact that it's been 3 months since your last submission. I don't know how much you've done in the interim, but looking over this set, it's clear that by the last page those elements are coming out stronger than they did at the beginning. Your ellipses are smoother and more even, your boxes are better, etc. So - keep up the good work.