j0tun

2018-12-26 00:02

Thank you so much! I just finished lesson 7 and was having a little trouble with wheels, so I started doing them by themselves. This is perfect!

Any plans for lessons 8 and beyond? I know you had mentioned that you may re-do those as well eventually.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-27 21:45

I think the drive shaft stuff is going to be largely dependent on constructing two boxes that are running parallel to one another (sharing the same vanishing points), and then constructing the cylinders inside of them (as explained in the updated cylinder challenge notes). It may be a good fit for that challenge, though I don't necessarily want it to distract from the basic form construction and character elements of that challenge. I'll have to give it some more thought.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-15 03:13

Hot damn, great work! You've really done an excellent job of developing both the construction of each wheel as well as minding the various design characteristics of each one. I can see a few little hiccups here and there (4 and 6 have far ends of the cylinder that have a narrower degree than the closer ends), but by and large you demonstrate an excellent understanding of cylinders and a keen eye for detail and its organization.

That last page is definitely an interesting one as well - freehanding them was a worthwhile experiment. We can see that they're definitely not nearly as good as the others either in terms of construction (the ellipses do wobble - drawing through them would have been useful here to keep them evenly shaped) or in terms of design (the more overwhelming challenge definitely demanded a lot more thought and focus from you, leaving less for the processes of putting in the spokes in the hubs, the tire treads, etc. to the same kind of fidelity.

That said, as far as being able to jot down their essence without the mental drag of reaching for different tools, you are noting down the core elements of each wheel - a skill that is definitely important in design. We may not always be in a position to create a perfect drawing for whatever our idea is, but we do need to be able to communicate them all the same, even if only to have material to work from when we can sit down and do a "proper drawing".

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete! Unfortunately there's no badge for this, but I'll add a flair of some sort anyway to track your completion of it. Keep up the fantastic work!

Uncomfortable

2019-01-30 00:12

You've got a lot of good stuff here! There are a couple things I want to call out though that should help as you continue to move forwards:

*One thing that stands out is that at times, your cylinder construction isn't entirely correct. For example, if we look at #6 and #14, you can see that for these, the farther end of the cylinder actually has a narrower degree than the closer end. As explained here, the farther end of the cylinder is always going to have a slightly wider degree, due to the difference in the angle at which we see it.

Now you've got a lot of tire treads here that I really like - 5, 12, 13, 15 and so on, but there is a trend especially with those that have very large, discrete protruding forms (like 21, 14) where the approach at that surface texture starts to feel very clunky. The reason for this is that you're attempting to enclose and define each protrusion with total specificity. This is great when it comes to regular construction, but when applied to a texture where these forms are multitudinous (i mainly felt like that should be a word and decided to use it to see if it'd highlight it as a spelling mistake, turns out it was a word!) this very quickly becomes overbearing and cluttered.

The solution is instead what is discussed on the new texture section of lesson 2. Basically, instead of drawing each and every form that exists on the surface of an object that gives it that sense of texture, we draw the impact those little forms have on their surroundings. Specifically, we draw the shadows they cast. That's essentially what lines are, but the difference is that these shadows can grow larger the further they are from the object that casts them, and they can meld together with other shadows to create large swathes of black where the information they contain within them are implied only by the way the large shadow shape's edge is carved. There's also more information on this in the texture analysis exercise.

So, long story short, when it comes to these little forms, don't try to draw each one and enclose it completely. Think instead about the shadows they cast upon their surrounding surfaces and draw those instead.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. There's no actual badge for it, but I'm going to note it down anyway so when the day comes that we leave reddit in our drawabox space ship (and start using a dedicated community platform on the website itself), you'll have all your well earned badges and achievements.

You may feel free to move onto lesson 7.

Uncomfortable

2019-02-06 21:35

Very, very nice work! You've clearly struggled balancing your ellipse guide's limitations with what you were aiming to achieve, and I'm very pleased to see that you didn't reduce your expectations to the tools you had on hand, but rather found a way to fit your tools where they could help. It's critical across the board, in drawing, design, managing projects, and really life itself to learn to pick the right tools for the job, rather than letting the tools decide what it is we create.

I see a number of really successful constructions, with great, solid 3D forms - not just in the wheels and tires themselves, but even in those spokes. You really go to great lengths to be mindful of all the planes of each form, even when you struggled to deal with things like the odd-numbered spokes. Often when we get caught up in a particular challenge, we'll tend to put less effort in other areas, but you've been extremely conscientious across the board here.

One thing that I would recommend trying when it comes to leveraging your ellipse guide is to see if your ellipse guides can help you to construct the basic ends on either side of the wheel (the near ellipse and the far one), and then try to freehand the other ellipses in between them. Or if the ellipse guide's too small, try constructing a basic cylinder and then building right around it. This can help keep yourself mindful of the degrees on either end, giving yourself a framework to work within. You don't by any means have to force yourself to use the ellipse guide, or work without it entirely - there are various ways to find a middle ground where it can still help without limiting what you draw.

Throughout this challenge you've demonstrated an excellent eye for the character of the wheels, in their tire treads, their spokes and hub cap designs, and so on. I did catch a tendency to make the wheels a little wide (at least, that's my perception - I'm not sure if they were actually that wide or not), but proportion may be something to keep an eye on. Overall however you've done a great job of really analyzing what makes a wheel unique, and pinning that down. I expect this will carry over quite nicely to your vehicle drawings in lesson 7.

So, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete (there's no reddit flair badge unfortunately but I will mark it down so when we incorporate those, or more likely when we create a separate community platform on the drawabox website, you will receive whatever achievement badges we create there). Feel free to move onto lesson 7.

One last thing to mention though - with the recent changes to Drawabox (I made some adjustments to the lower tiers, incorporated some teaching assistants for the early material), the only thing that will actually impact you is the limitation of one submission every 2 weeks (not including revision work). I've done this critique a little earlier (by just a few days), but basically this'll keep everyone in line with their pledges. So make sure you don't submit your next one until two weeks have passed. (And don't get me wrong - you're not overstepping any bounds or anything here, I'm just finally formalizing that new rule :D)

Uncomfortable

2019-02-13 22:30

Great work! You've hit all the major points I was looking for here - your cylindrical bases are extremely solid (and you're making excellent use of those ellipse guides, despite their limitations), and you're demonstration an excellent eye for detail and for the most part, the patience to carry it over into your drawing with specific, planned marks.

Admittedly, there were a few places where you may have gotten a little sloppy (like 15, where you put down some rather unplanned hatchy lines along tire), but for the most part you were more conscientious. One suggestion that I do have however is that when you've texture that is made up of bulkier forms - for example, 13 and 17's tread, rather than trying to construct each one (and therefore enclosing each one completely), I'd recommend leaning on silhouette and cast shadow.

That is to say, instead of enclosing each of these forms, try to imply their presence by drawing the shadows they cast on the surfaces around them. I talk about this a fair bit with the texture stuff from lesson 2. Where the forms punch past the silhouette, you definitely want to capture that, but as far as all the internal lines go, cast shadows tend to be much more versatile and a lot less stiffening to the overall drawing.

Also worth mentioning, 22 was definitely a pretty crazy experiment, but I did notice that your alignment for each of these protrusions was a little arbitrary. Minor axes can be applied there too, at least to give yourself some idea of how you want each one to relate to the surface of the wheel.

Aside from that, fantastic work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to get back to lesson 7. I believe I assigned five more drawings (3 non-cars and 2 cars), and I'm excited to see the material you've learned here being applied!

Uncomfortable

2019-03-23 16:19

Pretty good work overall. I admit that your ellipse guide wheels were vastly superior, but your freehand ones did improve a great deal over the set. One thing I did notice on them in particular however was the tendency to have the inset section (the hub cap, spokes, etc) especially when they were set a bit deeper into the wheel tended to be aligned incorrectly - or more likely, simply given the wrong degree. Because these aren't really that far (in terms of depth) from the outer ellipse on that side of the wheel, generally you're going to find these things to be roughly the same degree. You demonstrated a grasp of this with the ellipse guides, but I imagine it comes down to being able to control that degree.

I do think that for your own sanity, you may benefit from practicing your ellipses a lot more (like, focusing on them in particular in your warmups). That said, they are expected to be very difficult, and your use of the ellipse guide suggests that it's a technical problem that can only improve with practice, rather than an issue of what you do or don't understand.

The only other thing I want to mention is that when you're drawing with the ellipse guide, you should still be defining the back wall in its entirety - draw both ellipses completely, as this will further build out your understanding of the form and the space it occupies. This is, after all, just like everything else an exercise in spatial reasoning.

Oh, and don't think you just have to work with an ellipse guide, or that you have to work purely freehand. You can absolutely mix them up within the same wheel, especially in cases where an ellipse guide may not give you the full range of degrees that you may need.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 7.

Uncomfortable

2019-04-14 18:13

Really excellent work! You've nailed the primary forms of the wheels, and have achieved a strong illusion of solidity, especially after your first page. You also approached the variety of tread textures with a keen eye and careful assessment of what kind of marks would best capture the appearance you were striving for.

I noticed only one thing that I'd like to offer advice on, and it has to do with the tire treads that involve larger, chunkier parts that protrude more considerably than the others from the tire itself. Specifically we're looking at 19, 23 and 24, but this also applies to any kinds of tread protrusions.

In these particular ones, you treated these elements as independent forms - you drew their outlines, enclosing them entirely, then from there, applied further shadows that they might cast. That is in a lot of ways moving in the right direction, but that first step of enclosing them entirely with a clearly defined outline is not a great idea. Remember that these elements are still essentially texture - they punch through the silhouette more than most textures do, but in their nature (that they wrap along another form, being subject to how it flows through space), we still want to treat them as texture and avoid drawing more of each element than is necessary - simply because all the additional clutter tends to look bad.

So the first point is that you only want to focus on the shadows they cast. Try and visualize the forms themselves, but don't draw and construct them in their entirety. Secondly, make sure you do pay more mind to how those elements actually wrap around their parent form - with these rounded tires it can be quite tricky, especially when the forms curve as they do in 24. I can see that you did attempt to adjust those curvatures as we dealt with different parts of the tire, but there is definitely room for growth on that front.

All in all, these particular kinds of challenges are quite difficult, so I'm glad you tried your hand at them. All the others are definitely coming along very well, and your underling forms are superb. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 7.

Uncomfortable

2019-04-22 18:43

Really great work! You've definitely demonstrated a great deal of care when observing and studying your reference, and have a great eye for both the nuance of the forms of each wheel and tire, as well as the detail in the tread, rims, spokes, etc. I'm also quite pleased with the boldness with which you push into the realm of using these solid black shapes - you're not afraid to put that ink down, and it really helps to convey both texture as well as the solidity and believability of the forms you're playing with here.

I do have one small observation however about how you're using those solid blacks that I want to point out that should help as you continue to move forwards.

One tendency I noticed (specifically in wheels 5 and 9) is that you're using the heavy blacks to differentiate the various faces of a given textural form. I can certainly understand why you'd approach it in that manner, but I've found that it is considerably more effective to reserve those solid blacks instead for the shadows those forms would cast on their surroundings, rather than on the form itself. Here's an example of what I mean (the one on the right is the approach I'd recommend when dealing specifically with texture.

That's really the only piece of critique I have to offer - your wheel constructions here are fantastic, and I'm glad that you were able to go out and find a full set of ellipse guides. Having that degree of control over ellipses without having to worry about freehanding them really emphasized your fundamental understanding of how they should be used, and how they work.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 7.