ccarrot in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-02-21 11:24
I must admit, I'm developing a fear of submitting. To be frank - I don't know why I'm struggling so much to internalize your instructions. It is probably frustrating me more than it's frustrating you. Anyway, I did it again, trying to keep all the instructions in mind and checking back when I wasn't sure if I was doing it right. I also tried to keep it simple. If I've done it wrong again, then... I don't know. I probably just won't bother you again.
There are a few errors in the drawing (the orange slice in particular), but I don't think I got any instructions wrong (except for a few overly long cylinders and cones in the form intersections - I knew not to do that, but it happened a few times. Sorry). Also, the intersections are bad. I find them really hard and felt kind of dizzy by the end of it.
ccarrot in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-02-18 10:11
Well, here it is. A few comments:
First, I'm really tired right now. These comments are a little unclear as a result. Hopefully you understand what I'm saying.
The arrows were done a few weeks ago. Some of them look a bit weird to me. Should I redo them?
I'm still not super comfortable with just creating shapes with contours. It's a little less confusing than it was before, but as you can see, some of the shapes I put there don't really work. When I contour with ellipses, I find I can't really make anything complicated at all.
(Also - the image used in the menu on the site is no longer actually part of the lesson. This is inconsequential but I thought I'd point it out anyway.)
2.2 was easily the hardest part of the lesson. Making the jump from basic forms to drawing specific things, in perspective, on a curved surface seems pretty drastic to me. As a result, I got it wrong a lot. I've submitted three pages instead of the requested two for this reason (and I've done a ton more in the past). I started drawing fairly strange things because I was finding it hard to really think of things to put there. I was using references for most of them, but sometimes my mind wandered.
2.3 was fun. The intersections were a good challenge. I'm not sure if I did it entirely correctly, though. I've noticed my work isn't quite as dense as other peoples' work. I tended to get caught up thinking about the intersections, which you said was not as important, and perhaps didn't put down as many shapes as I could. Also, the actual perspective of the scene gets inconsistent. I tended to focus on the intersections one by one, which might have caused some problems for the overall composition. I'm not quite able to think in the big picture like that yet.
As for the organic intersections, I had to switch to a ballpoint for this. The ultra fine Sharpies I have are simply too thick for this exercise. I'll try to get some Staedtlers soon because I suspect it's only going to get worse from here in this respect. As for the exercise itself - it was tricky. I tried to respect gravity and perspective with these, but some of them don't quite work out that way.
ccarrot in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"
2016-01-28 09:41
I'm not sure what to say. I did read the instructions (and watched the video - twice) - but I guess my ability to really absorb and internalize important bits has just vanished on me. Well, okay. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. The third last page has a pretty significant dip in quality (don't know why - maybe not using a dying marker changed things), but I do clean it up a little bit near the end. I tried the major axis as well for one page (I saw you used it in your examples, but it wasn't in the instructions), but didn't really like using it much.
ccarrot in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"
2016-01-26 06:53
I hit the wall that is 2.2, so I went and did the 250 cylinder challenge. Here it is. The first few pages are a struggle, as I forgot all the details, but once I went back and figured it out, they became a lot better. My main issues are getting the angle of the ellipses right and making sure the ellipses are actually aligned properly.
Also, the last two pages are a little weaker because I wasn't as warmed up as I should have been.
ccarrot in the post "250 Box Challenge (#3)"
2016-01-18 04:58
Oh boy. My ability to draw good boxes seems to fluctuate by the hour. Here they are.
Various thoughts:
A lot of the missed lines on here are not biomechanical errors but me not trusting my eye enough and trying to correct an error that isn't there, leading to a bad line. (Of course, I still do sometimes just mess the line up).
Boxes like 51, 194, 221, 245, 246, and 247 are weird. (245 and 246 I was trying something out with drawing through to understand it better, which is why they look so horribly wrong). I do that angle a lot, but it never seems to look right.
I didn't do a great job of circling mistakes. Looking back at the pictures, I honestly see more faulty boxes than good ones.
All in all... not sure what to think.
ccarrot in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 3)"
2016-02-23 09:00
What I really want to do is creature and character design, so I spend a bunch of time practicing figure drawing. As I was working last night, I had an epiphany about what, exactly, the contours and ellipses in the forms were doing (I had an good idea, but it wasn't entirely clear). I later read your comment and it more or less confirms what I realized.
Here's the page. I've got some pretty big confidence issues, but I'm quite confident right now that I've "got it." That's not to say the actual execution was right - it certainly wasn't (the curves I drew were often quite flat and sometimes the angle was a bit wrong) - but that I've got the foundation in place and now it's just a matter of building on it. Hopefully I'm right about that.
(Also, I wasn't quite used to building the whole form around a minor axis, which also made it a little difficult to make the contours as I wanted them.)