pranavjitvirdi in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"
2019-07-03 16:19
here's a bright idea, how about you release a "Art of" book which is a collection of all the best works ever submitted for each lesson, which would also have some before/after draw-aobx images of some of the students work, sortoff like a community souvenir. if you do decide to make it make it a limited edition hardcover.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"
2019-03-13 08:52
Yeah i agree with everything you said,
Since the Treasure chest challenge i had this unhealthy addiction to using a ruler, that is probably why my freehand boxes are wonky(aside from the fact that i did indeed approach them lazily)
I am guilty of willfully breaking the "stick to one kind of pen for linework" rule, in hindsight i should have just started the early linework using the .005 fineliner, during execution it just seemed like a good idea to use ballpoint pen since that is capable of grey and not using it for final linework for the same reason. (besides ballpoint pen sucks since it blotches when you least want it to).
The great thing about this challenge is that 80% of the work is actually a good research on the subject and the other 20% is putting the pen to the page. I used everything i had at my disposal. The-Blueprints.com for ortho views, 3dwarehouse.sketchup.com for a 3d model, and sometimes the wireframe renders of the subject on turbosquid.com (specifically for the bike, on which i had a lot of fun understanding how the parts fit together). i believe that this played an integral role in how the drawings turned out, if i didn't have these resources the end result would have been alot different.
The Audi r8 was a revelation for me, after finishing the thing it felt a bit anticlimactic as to how it turned out. Then it hit me that there is only a limited set of camera angles and degree of convergence from which a car looks pleasing to the eye, if you get a good camera angle but a shallow convergence it will look dull, but if you get the RIGHT camera angle and the Right convergence the same car will look 10 times better, so you can't infact use an arbitrary 3/4th view and an arbitrary convergence and then say "This looks dull".
Now the trouble is to figure out which exact camera angle and which exact convergence to start with, trying out all of them through drawing isn't an option, but this is exactly the type of questions a professional photographer asks himself, so if you google whichever car you want to draw and one of the pictures looks outstandingly appealing then you have something to work off of. For the SLS Amg i tried to immitate this image, and for the lamborghini i used this one. and each car has a different set of both, the angle which looks good on the SLS amg will not look good on the aventador and vice versa.
Final thoughts about the entire course
Before taking this course i had no concept of targeted practice or deliberate practice, it was all mindless grinding on whichever little exercise i came across, i had come across ghosted lines exercise in some form or other from 10 different resources before this, be it a comment in a facebook group or a youtube video or even H2DR.
None of those times i recall being explained why you should do this exercise and what to look forward to while doing them and how to think about them in general... should i make a herculean effort to do an entire ream of ghosted lines exercise in one go or do i need to do these once on a single sheet then i'm done for life? which one is it? Same thing with gestural drawings of figures, and same for freehand ellipses. so there was a lot of wastege of effort and paper happening.
THE FIRST TWO lessons are the most important of the entire course, to me they hit the nail on the head and left no doubts as how to think everytime you come across any exercise. "oh this exercise is aimed at better eye-hand coordination, and this one is aimed at observational skills, and this one for getting a good grip on convergence, this one is for getting mileage" So many things started making sense.
The best thing that this course taught me is to how to practice, and how dangerous mindless grinding is, you go into great depths explaining everything about the exercises in those first two lessons (and those same exercises keep re-occurring in the course, which is good!)
The dynamic sketching curriculum tackles the more practical aspect of drawing the things themselves, it is all about "telling a convincing lie!", and for me it really took a while to get a good grip on that, drawing something accurately vs drawing something good looking vs drawing in a manner that everything is consistent with each other to the point that you said
It doesn't look like you, the artist, have made a mistake - but rather that whoever built the vehicle did so incorrectly, and you were simply recording what was there.
That is a huge Achievement, one which makes me immensely happy!
The challenges are really the most fun of all, there's a brute force element to them which i really enjoy, similar to a hammer, while the lessons are like precise surgical knifes.
All in all this course is well worth the efforts and your paid critiques are obviously a steal compared to the value one gets in return. Will recommend this to everyone regardless of skill level.
Thats all from me.. Thanks a ton!
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"
2019-03-12 11:42
This is it! part of the journey is the end. i'll write my final thoughts later
pranavjitvirdi in the post "25 Wheel Challenge"
2019-02-07 08:18
I was definitely aware of the general width of the tyres i was drawing, i really scratched my head everytime i had to place the farther ellipse, a little to the left seemed too slim and a little to the right seemed over wide, unable to think ahead i just saw it safe to make them a bit wider than risk running out of space. although the last wheel (the widest one) is a f1 tyre, and they usually now-a-days don't even have tread patterns, just flat smooth surface.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "25 Wheel Challenge"
2019-02-06 12:17
HEre they are,
not having a full set of ellipse guides is really a problem yo.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects"
2019-01-27 09:55
Heres it
um and a gentle reminder that this is my second submission in this month because i didn't submit anything in December, otherwise i would've held this off till 1st of feb.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "100 Treasure Chest Challenge"
2019-01-16 06:28
Yeah i do have a hard time studying references, maybe it's a mileage thing. My design "approach" basically is the same one that Neil Blevins explains... Large elements, medium elements, small elements. I'll be going through his articles again now that i have some work behind me. All in all this challenge is my first serious (baby?) step into designing, so thank you, i don't know what i'll do next but i think i have a faint idea.
Anyway, since i didn't submit anything for the month of december i'll be making one extra homework submission this month, lets see that lesson 6 now.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "100 Treasure Chest Challenge"
2019-01-15 14:27
Here ya go! i have so many things to say, some of my designs really really suck ass. my mom said my designs were really good in the beginning and not so much after, anyway, really looking forward to hearing your ...uhhhh... critiques?
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2018-11-25 08:08
and generally work more in shape rather than form
i think i sortoff understand what you mean here but i feel like i don't.
also i'm going to take your advice, i needed some excuse to catch up on something else so..
And thants for all the draw-overs! especially the head of the cow one.
see you in....... uhmmmm.... like a month i guess. :/
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"
2018-11-03 17:30
Man textures have been a pain in the ass for a while now, i might as well start the 25 texture challenge. and maybe i'll re-do a couple of insects full page spread. Thanks!
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"
2018-11-01 12:05
Would've posted this yesterday but here it is
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2018-10-19 18:33
YAAAY!, see you next month, hopefully twice.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2018-10-16 15:06
yeah, i was deliberately not drawing through because i wanted at least somewhat of a readable drawing, along with construction lines i was worried it would end up being a huge unreadable mess of lines, but that's the challenge i guess. i think i am just going to re-do the ones that suck rather than searching for new plants.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2018-10-15 10:13
Ohh man, i have really mixed feelings about this one.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"
2018-10-09 02:42
Yeah, i could foresee the the starting from the boxes point on other critiques in this post, by that time i was already halfway through the challenge, so thought of finishing it in the same manner as before. I do plan on doing this again.
BTW not blaming or anythin but ya said that the videos are supplement material to the actual course, since the box demo is only in the video and on the challenge page only the minor axis demo is shown i thought to treat that as the main focus. Just saying it might be the reason since many people have missed it. So maybe you can explicitly state on the challenge page (along with a box demo) to do a fraction of cylinders(half/quarter) with a box.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"
2018-10-07 12:12
Here it is, i might do like 250 more soon, the biggest challenge is to align my elipse with the minor axis while ghosting, second is executing properly what i just ghosted (just like lines, it comes of wrong more times than i like), third is drawing small degree elipses on a large size.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"
2018-10-02 06:49
yeah man i agree... even i felt like i was missing out on some challenge by doing it with the ball point pen, the 25 texture challenge i will totally do with a felt tip pen.
i am really liking this course, community and all of it man... oh and i realized patreon bills me on every 2nd rather than every 1st... weird, must've been a time difference issue, will switch to 7$ tier soon enough, lets see if ican do both 250 cylinders and lesson 3 in a month.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"
2018-10-01 06:57
hey man i was going to post this yesterday but i thought of waiting one day (last day of the month patreon and all)
about the textures exercise... i know you wanted us to not cover up the entire surface, i tried doing that but i just wasn't happy with it so i did the entire surface, also the way it ended up is not very similar to the (ideal submission) as those have sharp divides between black and white and mine i utilized more grey.
pranavjitvirdi in the post "Partial lesson submissions and single exercises will no longer be accepted on this subreddit, but you can get feedback on individual exercises on the Discord Chat Server. More information in this post."
2020-05-07 04:23
Finally, thank god, as someone who seeks to help this is a great change, too many posters posting too frequently and the same couple of exercises annoyed the hell out of me.