NotchDaMc

2018-01-13 00:33

Hi, where should I continue to focus & am I good to move on, thank you.

https://imgur.com/gallery/Ei2BD

Uncomfortable

2018-01-19 00:42

You've done quite well. I definitely noticed that you struggled somewhat with the cylinders in boxes, as you'd mentioned. One thing that may help (and this counts for the other cylinders as well) is to draw your minor axis line a little longer so it'll penetrate all the way through both ellipses once they're drawn. Since the ellipses are meant to align to this guideline, having it stretch only between their center points makes it a little trickier to line things up correctly. When it comes to the boxes, extending it further can also make it easier to tell which line is the important one.

That said, you are doing a pretty good job when it comes to the alignment of your ellipses, and while you had some that were a little weak, generally it was because of issues that you were able to learn and recover from.

Keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-01-24 00:21

Pretty good work! I'm glad to see that you drew your minor axes all the way through your cylinders consistently (a lot of people for some reason draw them between the midpoints of the different ellipses for some reason). About the cylinders in boxes though - it would have been better if you had explored them for at least a couple pages. The challenge is about drawing cylinders, but the concept was presented to you so you could practice it - in the future, you shouldn't be concerned with whether or not something is mandatory. Consider whether you stand to gain from practicing it (the answer is always yes).

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure to practice them in boxes on your own in the future, as it's a very valuable skill to have - especially as you get closer to lesson 6, where lining up cylinders in specific ways in 3D space relative to other forms becomes very important. That is where boxes really shine.

Uncomfortable

2018-01-24 21:19

Excellent work. I'm really pleased to see how much of your time you spent constructing those cylinders in boxes, as this becomes a very useful technique when you need to place cylinders in a specific location in space.

The only recommendation I have is that in the future, you may benefit from giving yourself a little more space for each cylinder, so you can draw them each a little larger. I don't see any significant issues with the size you've drawn them at, but usually our brains perform better when dealing with spatial problems when given more room to think. While your constructions are looking totally fine here, the drawings are a little small so it certainly wouldn't hurt to go a little larger.

Anyway, fantastic work. Keep it up, and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-01-30 22:15

Great work! You start off on a pretty stable footing there, but things get more solid and confident as you push through. I'm glad to see that you're pushing that minor axis all the way through your ellipses on each end (for some reason people have a tendency to draw their ellipses centered on either end of the minor axis), and I'm also pleased to see that you've practiced building them in boxes a fair bit.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-02-05 22:06

Nice work completing the challenge. I do have one major concern though that I'd like to address - while your cylinders are coming along fine, a bigger issue that I'm seeing is how you approach adding line weight to them. The result is usually that you draw far more carefully, because you're focusing too much on trying to match your line to the original one, causing you to wobble and draw ellipses that are fiercely uneven.

I actually touch upon this in some of the newer videos I've made for the earlier lessons - specifically the form intersections. Give it a watch. In it I describe how line weight should only be applied to local areas of a given line, never to "clean" up a mark and replace the underlying linework, but to emphasize overlaps and clarify certain localities. If you're not worrying about applying weight to an entire ellipse, you can do so with far more confidence - and therefore less wobbling.

Regardless, never let the risk of being less accurate cause you to give in and accept a wobblier line. Drawing with a confident pace and a consistent trajectory is always the highest priority.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work, and keep the points I've raised here in mind as you continue to move onto lesson 6.

Uncomfortable

2018-02-16 01:55

Admittedly I got very confused. I'd read your comment about the album being off, but didn't really register it until I saw your cylinders go from so-so to pretty damn good to shitty again. Thankfully it was just the order!

You've done great work here, and the improvement is noticeable. Your confidence with your linework also took a bit of a leap as you moved past the first hundred. I've got to say - you went above and beyond, in drawing them all in boxes, and it seems to have been well worth it.

As long as you leverage what you've learned here, I don't think you'll have too much trouble with lesson 6. There aren't any feet there, after all...

Unless you dutch have weird toasters or something. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2018-02-16 18:44

It doesn't look like I have you in my records as being currently eligible for private critiques. If you are a patreon supporter, be sure to check your messages as you'll have received a message from me getting extra info such as your reddit username. Otherwise, you'll want to post directly to the subreddit for a critique from the community (which I see you already did, so that's perfect).

Uncomfortable

2018-02-19 23:55

You definitely show some improvement over the set. There are a few points I want to draw your attention to.

• You don't draw through your ellipses until closer to the end - while you corrected this yourself, I really want to stress this. You should be drawing through each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons, without exception. That means drawing around the elliptical shape two full times before lifting your pen.

• Where you do start drawing through your ellipses, you also start going over them afterwards to replace the lines with "cleaner" marks. That clean-up pass involves you drawing somewhat slower, resulting in lines that stiffen up. I want you to watch the form intersections video from lesson 2. In it I explain that one should not use line weight to replace existing linework, but rather to emphasize what is already there. Furthermore, you should always add line weight with the same confident stroke that you would use when having drawn the original mark. In this case, you are distinctly attempting to do away with your rougher mark. You also make obvious attempts to draw initial lines more faintly, so you can hide them afterwards. Don't do this - every mark you draw in your initial construction should be executed without regard for making it extra faint or extra heavy. You then reorganize this hierarchy of weight by going back in and adding thickness to key places, not to entire lengths of line but to local areas. Again, I go over this in that form intersections video.

Your ellipse constructions are definitely coming along well, but these are key points in your approach that you'll want to iron out as you move forwards. Don't get caught up in the desire to end up with a clean result. All of the drawings we do for these lessons have one goal, and it's not a pretty drawing at the end. It's to learn about construction, the forms that make up complex objects, and how they relate to one another in 3D space.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-02-23 02:02

You certainly made up for the poor quality of your camera (the camera was actually mostly fine) with the quality of your work! Very well done. You took a lot of care and demonstrated great patience across the set, and I see a good deal of improvement in the confidence with which you constructed these cylinders, and the illusion of solidity you were able to capture by the end. I'm also very pleased to see that you balanced both constructing them purely around an arbitrary minor axis as well as starting off within a box. Aside from those points, I look for the alignment of the ellipses and the relationship of the degrees of the ellipses in either end of each cylinder, and you were mindful of both.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-02-25 20:35

Nice work pushing through the challenge! You definitely show a good deal of progress over the set, especially in tightening up your ellipses. The cylinders build around an arbitrary minor axis tend to come out quite well. I did notice however that when you were constructing them inside of boxes, you got caught up in placing your ellipse inside of the plane a bit too much, and ended up with a lot of ellipses that weren't properly aligned to your minor axis line.

Placing an ellipse inside of a plane is admittedly quite difficult, and having all these different criteria to match can be a bit overwhelming. Above all else, try and focus on aligning to that minor axis, as it is the most important property of the construction. Once you've got the hang of that, then you play with expanding the degree of your ellipse so it fits roughly within the plane.

Overall you're making great progress, so keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-03-01 21:54

Nice work! You're showing a lot of clear improvement here - I think that last row of pages, so from cylinder 193 onwards is where it really starts to solidify, in terms of consistent ellipses and straighter lines.

I do want to stress the importance of always including that minor axis line though - you seem to have been leaving it out when constructing the cylinders in boxes on that last page. The minor axis is still going to be a factor for that, the box largely serves to help you figure out how to place the minor axis (between the centers of the two opposing planes of the box). The minor axis is still going to play a major role in aligning those ellipses.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2018-03-03 02:41

Very nice work! I'm loving the confidence behind each ellipse - they're very smooth and evenly shaped. Your lines are as well, you're doing a great job of maintaining straight, smooth lines and together they go a long way to convey the illusion of solid, cohesive form. I'm also glad that you have a good balance here of both methods of construction - around an arbitrary minor axis as well as using a box as a starting point.

I did notice one thing however - it seems that when you're drawing your cylinders inside of boxes, you're neglecting to then use a minor axis for the alignment of your ellipses. The minor axis is still very important. Rather than seeing the box as a replacement for the minor axis, it is simply a way to position your minor axis in space, in relation to other objects (since it's easier to do that with a box than an arbitrary line). You still then go on to rely on that minor axis.

Keep that in mind as you continue to move forwards through these lessons. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2018-03-17 01:26

So there are a couple things that jump out at me, and they're somewhat related. When drawing your lines, are you applying the ghosting method? If you recall from lesson 1, it involves laying out points where you want a line to start and end, ghosting through the motion several times to build up muscle memory, and finally executing that mark with a confident, persistent pace so as to keep it smooth, and maintain a consistent trajectory. Wobbling is almost always a sign that you're drawing your lines too slowly, and in comparison to your work from lesson 1, your lines are drastically less confident here.

For your ellipses, you're similarly neglecting to apply the methodology covered in lesson 1 - you're not drawing through your ellipses. You are expected to apply this technique to every single ellipse you draw, largely to help you maintain a confident pace as you do so.

These two points definitely weaken your constructions considerably. Aside from that, you appear to be hitting the points of alignment to your minor axis and such as well as you could be. The only other thing I want to point out is that you should try and keep the shift in degree from the near end to the far more subtle. In many cases you appear to be exaggerating it excessively.

I'll mark this challenge as complete, but you must absolutely be more mindful of techniques covered in previous lessons.

Uncomfortable

2018-03-21 22:50

Overall fairly well done, but I have a few things to point out.

Firstly, your ellipses here seem to get a little stiff and wobbly at times. It's not to a great extent - and frankly, I believe it is actually coming from you attempting to add line weight to those ellipses more carefully, and in doing so draw more slowly. It's important that regardless of what you're drawing, you do so with marks that are drawn with confidence in order to maintain the smoothness of your stroke. If you allow yourself to hesitate, your line will wobble, and it will undermine the solidity of your forms.

In the video for the form intersections in lesson 2, I actually talk about this. I mention that when it comes to line weight, one should not expect to have to apply weight to the entirety of a shape, or even the entirety of a line. Line weight is to be applied to sections of lines, and will taper from being light to heavy, and back to being light.

Secondly, always ensure that you're placing your ellipses so they straddle the minor axis line completely. You seem to be drawing them partially on and partially off - perhaps with the intent of centering them around the endpoints of your minor axis. Remember that the goal here is to use the minor axis for aligning those ellipses, and ensuring that they are cut all the way through by it is the best way to judge whether or not your alignment is correct, and effectively assess whether or not you need to adjust your approach.

Lastly, you'll want a healthier balance between cylinders constructed around an arbitrary minor axis, and those constructed starting from a box (which in turn helps you determine the minor axis for a specific orientation in space). The latter is quite useful when using cylinders as specific parts of a larger construction, as you'll see a great deal in lessons 6 and 7.

Anyway, keep those three points in mind. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Again, you should be good to move onto those lesson 2 form intersections.

Uncomfortable

2018-04-09 01:11

Really, really lovely work. Your line weights are wonderfully confident, and your constructions feel solid and convincing. You're even managing to maintain that sort of confidence when adding additional weight to sections of your ellipses, which is rather impressive. Most people stiffen up and slow down on those curves, which results in wobbling and wavering, but you push on through.

I'm also pleased to see that you've struck a pretty good balance between cylinders constructed in boxes, and those around an arbitrary minor axis. The only thing I want to point out is that you should try and extend your minor axes so they're going to cut through both ellipses completely, at both ends. Right now you've got a lot of cases where the ellipses are positioned on either endpoint, so the minor axis only cuts through halfway. This makes it a little trickier to gauge alignment.

That said, it's not that big of a deal, since you're clearly going beyond that with that green pen to do some error-checking.

... so that kind of becomes a moot point. In which case, EVERYTHING IS FINE, KEEP DOING WHAT YOU'RE DOING. Consider this challenge thoroughly complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-04-09 23:56

Good stuff! Your confidence and your use of line weight improves a great deal over the course of the set. I can see you pushing yourself early on to go beyond the natural urge to stiffen up and be overly careful, but you seem to force your way through, and to great effect.

Your cylinders are also coming out quite nicely. The shift of degree between the two ends of your ellipses are subtle but present, your alignment seems to be pretty solid, and your cylinders in boxes are coming out well too - even though as you noticed yourself, constructing ellipses in planes is notoriously challenging. With those, always go for the fluidity and shape of your ellipses over having them fit snugly. There is some unevenness to those ellipses in planes, so try and remedy that before you fuss over having them fit perfectly.

Aside from that, fantastic stuff. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable

2018-04-14 18:38

Overall you're doing pretty well. Your cylinders built around arbitrary minor axis are pretty well done. The ellipse alignment is pretty close (though avoid constructing them around the ends of the minor axis - make sure they're sitting so the minor axis penetrates all the way through them, as this makes it easier for us to gauge their alignment aftewards).

Your cylinders in boxes definitely do bring some extra challenges to the table, and some struggles with them as you mentioned in your video. The most important thing that I'm catching here is that you're allowing the plane itself to govern the angle of the ellipse, and it often ends up misaligned from the minor axis line shared by both ends of the cylinder. It's that minor axis line that should always be followed, and as long as it is, you can be guaranteed that the relationship between the two ellipses will be correct.

This doesn't mean that the cylinder is going to be composed of two perfect circles in 3D space, however. Any single ellipse alone in a scene can be said to represent a perfect circle - but as soon as you end up with two (as in the case of a cylinder), or other objects against which to compare them, this assertion grows a little weaker. It is entirely possible that our cylinders actually end up being squashed, with ovular faces on either end.

As I mentioned when commenting on your video, I definitely am going to create a new "how to draw a cylinder" video that uses the criteria presented in my perfect circles/squares in 3D space video as a way to error-check our cylinders once they've been drawn, as we do in the 250 box challenge. Since that video doesn't yet exist, and it's probably going to be a little while yet before I can get around to that, I've written out a demonstration of the process right onto one of your pages: https://i.imgur.com/Xdm1bNz.png

I've written out the process on the left side, and applied it to some of your cylinders-in-boxes, and drawn one of my own on the far right. Just like the box-checking methods, it's all about margins of error. If mistakes are egregious enough, they'll be way out of whack. If they're close enough, we can more or less say that they're correct.

Anyway, I hope that helps clarify at least some of your confusion. You've done some pretty solid work here, so I'm going to go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Oh, actually there is one last thing worth mentioning, though it might make something worse. Once you rotate a circle on two axes in 3D space, it's not actually going to be an ellipse anymore. We still use an ellipse, because it's still our best approximation, but in truth the ellipse ends up getting distorted in this situation, with two opposing corners being pulled out more than the others. While it can be useful to keep this in mind, I wouldn't recommend attempting to be more accurate than a normal ellipse allows you to be, because it's going to mean sacrificing the evenness and smoothness of your stroke, which are things the viewer is more likely to pick up on.

Uncomfortable

2018-04-27 20:30

When I read the word "quickly", I immediately felt a little worried that you may have rushed. Overall it doesn't seem that you did, although there were a couple minor things that could have been the result of trying to get through these faster than you ought to have. In general, try not to let yourself fall into the trap of wanting to get things over with. Though they certainly are tedious, you're doing them for a reason!

Anyway, overall you did really well. Early on the alignment of your ellipses are often off (relative to that central minor axis), but over the course of this set of cylinders you correct it quite well.

I did notice in a handful of places that your minor axis lines tend to have two issues:

• They're not usually long enough - rather than being an issue with the minor axis line, it's more that you're placing the ellipses incorrectly. You should be aiming to have the minor axis cut through both ellipses completely, as this allows you to judge its alignment more easily.

• A lot of your minor axis lines get a little bent or wobbly at the ends. Possibly because of rushing? Be sure to apply the ghosting method everywhere to avoid this kind of issue.

One other thing - in the video, I discuss the mechanics of using a box as a starting point. It's definitely a good idea to practice this, as it'll help you place a cylinder in a very specific orientation. The cylinder's orientation is largely determined by its minor axis, and it's kind of difficult to orient a simple line in 3D space on its own. Because of this, getting used to leveraging boxes (which can be placed and oriented in space more easily) and determining our minor axis from them, is a very useful tool.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable

2018-05-15 16:14

Doesn't seem I have you down in my notes as being eligible for private critiques. If you are a patreon supporter, be sure to check your patreon inbox as I reach out to new folks to get their reddit username. Otherwise you're welcome to submit your work directly to the subreddit for a community critique.

Uncomfortable

2018-05-26 18:02

You've done a lot of great work here. You've explored a good variety of cylinders, in many different positions and orientations, and you've stuck quite stringently to the minor axes. I have two suggestions as you continue to move forwards:

• You seem to be jumping between drawing your ellipses so they sit completely on your minor axis line, and being more centered towards the minor axis' endpoints. I strongly encourage you to do the former. When you allow the line to cut through the whole ellipse, it's easier to keep track of whether or not the ellipse is aligned correctly (and as a result, the cylinders you've drawn that do that tend to come out better).

• You don't seem to have tried constructing any cylinders from a box as a starting point as shown in the video. I highly recommend that you practice this and get used to it before hitting lesson 6. It's a ways away, but when you actually need to position cylinders in specific orientations relative to other objects, starting with a box becomes extremely useful - though it is a bit tricky at first and requires some practice.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-05-27 18:02

It's kind of surprising to see someone from way back when critiques were free. It's definitely nice to see that you've returned, and that your skills haven't gotten too rusty from the break.

Your cylinder constructions are pretty good at the moment. There are some that seem a bit squished (which is totally fine for now, as we don't actually get into the complicated mechanics of drawing an ellipse that is guaranteed to represent a circle in 3D space, so it's expected that we'll have some that feel more ovular as the faces for our cylinders here). What's important is that you're drawing with confident lines, and are conscious of aligning your ellipses to your minor axes. Moreover you're experimenting with a good deal of variety, and are playing with both constructing around an arbitrary minor axis as well as by starting from a box.

On the topic of how you make your outlines bolder, one thing I noticed was that when you do this, sometimes your lines get a little stiff. This is because you're trying to match the underlying stroke accurately, which causes you to slow down (and in turn, wobble). In general, I try to discourage people from adding line weight to whole lines or ellipses at once. Often times it makes things look very heavy-handed and lacks nuance, while also risking this issue of stiffening up.

So there's two things to keep in mind with that. Firstly, remember that every mark you put down should be drawn with the same kind of confident, persistent pace (whether it's an initial construction line - of which yours were very smooth and confident) or if it's an attempt to add line weight). Secondly, Try to add weight to SECTIONS of lines and ellipses, rather than the whole thing. This will keep things more subtle, and will allow you to focus on using that weight to gently pull your form out from its surrounding area where necessary. This is especially the case with ellipses, where it often looks better to have a line that transitions from being lighter to heavier and back. It adds a sense of dynamism.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2!

Uncomfortable

2018-06-21 21:37

Nice work! It's definitely been a while, but it's good to see that the passage of time hasn't caused your linework to rust. You've definitely got a great sense of confidence and smoothness to your work, maintaining crisp, straight lines and evenly shaped ellipses with no signs of stiffness or wobbling.

You're doing a great job of aligning those ellipses to your minor axes, and maintaining that slight shift towards a wider degree on the far end without being too overt and obvious. That said, there are two things I can see that I'd you should probably have done more of:

• There's a lot of great variety in terms of rotation of your ellipses, but one thing I didn't see much of was turning the cylinders to face the viewer head-on, like looking down the barrel of a gun. This is going to require you to play with foreshortening, which can be tricky while you try to balance your intended sense of scale.

• I saw a couple boxes that were built into boxes, but you will probably want to practice more of these. Constructing cylinders around an arbitrary minor axis is great, but there's always going to be situations where you're not exactly sure how the minor axis for a given cylinder would exist relative to other forms already in a scene. This is where boxes come in very handy, as a box is a lot easier to just drop into a scene relative to other objects. You can then use the box to derive your minor axis and go from there.

Anyway, overall you're doing a great job. Keep it up and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-06-22 21:18

Nice work! You definitely show a good deal of progress over the set. Early on you've got a lot of places with some pretty significant shifts in the degree of your ellipses from one end to the other. Obviously as the notes mention the far end should be of a wider degree than the near end, but the extent of that shift is a lot like how we deal with the shift in size when dealing with perspective. If something gets small really quickly, that kind of dramatic foreshortening suggests a really large scale. Similarly, a really rapid shift in degree will suggest the same thing. So, it's good to see that you seemed to make those changes a lot more subtle as you continued through the set.

By the end, the vast majority of your cylinders are very well done. There's the odd one (like 204) where the alignment of your ellipses drifts relative to the minor axis, but for the most part you're doing great.

Keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-07-01 19:39

Nice work! I'm seeing a good deal of variation in the cylinders' orientations, as well as a pretty good balance between those constructed around an arbitrary minor axis and those constructed with a box as a starting point.

One thing that catches my eye throughout is that you may be rushing a little bit with your linework - there's some signs that you could probably have slowed down and taken a little more time ghosting your marks and ensuring that your lines ended where you meant them to. There's a lot of little gaps and such, as well as areas where your ellipses aren't properly aligned to your minor axis, but as a whole it seems like you would have nailed them more consistently had you given yourself the time to work through the process (as opposed to it being a lack of skill).

This is probably something that is something you'll want to work on in general - impatience can be a real killer. I can see why one might allow themselves to get sloppy when faced with drawing 250 of the same form, but ultimately you want to build up the patience and discipline to focus on each individual thing you draw, as you're drawing it, rather than looking ahead many steps down the road. Focus on the form you're drawing, focus on the mark you're making, and don't worry so much about where you are relative to the finish line.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2018-07-01 20:00

Yeah, imgur can be pretty annoying when it comes to ordering uploaded images. It's totally fine - it makes life a lot easier for me in a lot of other ways, so I've pretty much accepted that homework submissions won't always be provided in the intended order.

...That said it looks like you reorganized them anyway, 'cause as I go through them, they're in the right order! So thanks for that.

You've got a lot of good variety with your cylinders, having drawn many in different orientations, as well as with different levels of foreshortening. That's definitely great to see. Over the course of the set, I can see you improving a fair bit when it comes to getting your ellipses to line up to the minor axes (though there's still areas where you'll want to continue working on this - for example, 245, 242, 235, etc.). I think it comes down more to the amount of time you've invested into each cylinder, and ultimately each ellipse. The ones where things tend to go a bit awry also show signs of having received a lower investment of time (perhaps due to impatience).

At the end of the day, patience and discipline is key - whether what you're drawing is one of a thousand of the same kind of thing, or if it's unique, you should be focusing only on what you're drawing at that moment. We often have a tendency to approach things by looking too far ahead, which causes us to lose focus on the mark we're currently putting down.

On the bright side, this means that many of the areas where things are a little off seem to be more from this, rather than an actual lack of skill. I believe that given a greater investment of time and effort on each individual cylinder, you'd do a much better job with each.

One other thing I feel was a little lacking was that you only did a couple cylinders that started from boxes. Drawing cylinders around an arbitrary minor axis is an important skill to develop, but I do think it's important to balance it with the box method, as this will help when you need to align your cylinder to other objects within a scene or within a construction. Ultimately the box is what you use to construct a specific minor axis, and then you go on to follow the same process.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2018-07-09 00:21

Congrats on completing the challenge. I'm glad to see that you focused quite well on utilizing the minor axis when constructing your cylinders. You definitely pushed through and developed a fair bit of confidence with working in 3D space by the end. There are a few things I want to mention however:

• It seems like towards the last page there, you started leaving the minor axis out. You really shouldn't - it's an important guideline to remind you how your ellipses should be aligned, and the point of including it when doing these exercises is to make it second nature, so ultimately you are able to visualize that minor axis line without actually drawing it. We get to that point by drilling it in over and over - the awareness of that minor axis and what it represents should always be there.

• You seem to have neglected to draw through a lot of your ellipses. I know you've been away from these exercises for quite a while, so it's an important thing to mention - you should be drawing through each and every ellipse you draw for these lessons, ideally two full times around the shape before lifting your pen.

• It appears to me that you may not be applying the ghosting method to your linework here - be sure to review it from lesson 1 and make it a regular habit, to be applying that multi-step process to how you make each and every mark in order to ensure that you maintain both confidence and control without falling back to scratchier linework.

• One thing that was covered in the cylinder video was starting with a box and using that to derive the minor axis line. It's a great way to handle situations where you need your cylinder to fit into a specific location, so it's definitely something you should practice.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so be sure to keep the points I've raised here in mind.

Uncomfortable

2018-07-11 00:13

Nice work! I can definitely see the confidence and control of your linework and especially your ellipses improve by leaps and bounds over the course of this set. By the end, your constructions feel considerably more solid and cohesive.

One area where I think you'll want to focus on as you continue to move forwards is constructing your cylinders in boxes - specifically the matter of building ellipses in planes. You may or may not have seen the video included on the challenge page that go into these matters specifically (perfect circles and cubes in 3D space) but it's definitely worth watching. It goes into some of the more technical considerations when it comes to whether or not an ellipse you've drawn actually represents a circle.

All in all though, great work. I'm really loving the keen eye you have for keeping your ellipses aligned. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.