Month: December 2024

This lesson is from this Draw A Box, Lesson 2.

This lesson is about stacking and intersecting organic shapes in the form of sausages. I did this lesson for the first time a few days ago and struggled with the concept. This time I got closer to understanding it! I did a 30 minute practice using different colors of ballpoint pens. I also worked on one intersection between two objects. This really helped understand how the forms could intersect. It also let me see the forms more clearly in my mind. One thing that helped was actually having one form grow out of another. Then I could see the depth and shape of the 3D form. This was very useful. I know the instructions say to pile things up, then figure it out and it’s ok to be wrong. But, for me, it’s easier to do practice on simple pairs of shapes using two different colors, then I could get the concept first.

This completes Lesson 2 of Draw A Box and I’ll turn my work in asap.

Fine liner on letter size copy paper.

I spent 30 minutes practice and then 30 minutes to complete this image.

This lesson is from this SVS – How to Draw Everything.

This focus of this lesson is muscle memory. We want to develop the basic technical skills of good lines, shapes, and perspective so that we don’t need to think about the basics when we are trying to work on a piece. We can focus on the what instead of the how. It’s a little boring to do these basic drills, but I can tell that my skill has improved over the years. When I took this class two years ago, even straight lines were a struggle. Now, I’m surprised at how much easier it is to get a good line onto a page. I think Draw A Box really helped with this too. I’ll add this to the Anki deck even though it’s more of a warm up. These are still good drills and I can see how I can improve over time. This time I did it on paper, but next time I want to try in Photoshop to work on my technical skill there too.

Blackwing pencil on letter size copy paper.

I spent 30 minutes practice and then 30 minute to complete these images.

This lesson is from Draw A Box, Lesson 2.

This lesson is about about seeing organic shapes in 3D even though we are drawing them on 2D. In the previous exercise, we looked at intersections with basic forms like a cube, cone, etc. This exercise looks at the same intersection concept, but with organic sausage shapes.

This is not supposed to be simple stacking of forms, but intersections of forms. Again, I’m not quite seeing the intersections. I have a few of them, but my sausage forms are mostly stacking. I did one sheet, then called it a practice and did it again. I think I could do better. I liked how one person mentioned that they think of them as water balloons instead of sausages to make them more squishy of a form, instead of a firm form that wouldn’t squish each other as much. I’ll try to think of that next time I approach this.

Mechanical pencil and fine liner on letter size copy paper.

I spent 30 minutes practice and then 30 minute to complete this image.

This lesson is from SVS How to Draw Anything.

This lesson is about finding the 3D shapes from 2D flat images. It’s also a baseline drawing project meant to show your current drawing ability on a large complicated shape. When I took this class before, they had you draw a house from imagination. It made for a simple little house. This lesson is more complicated and it’s a lot more difficult. But it’s meant to be difficult. It’s a baseline of where your skills are now so you can try again later and see if the task has gotten easier and you’re able to break down the image quicker.

I spent about 30 minutes just understanding the shape in 3D. There’s a lot of shapes and structures that you need to figure out. I had to do a sketch from above to figure out the footprint, then a 3/4 view tiny sketch just to see the shape. Then I did the full rough sketch. I took a break and came back to ink it.

I have some issues with proportions and perspective on this. The back should be wider and the side should be narrower. The back walls both lean back into the image, they are not straight. The ink brought it to life more, but there are details that are over-rendered like the steps. I need to learn to simplify more. There is a lot of character to the reference that is missing in my sketch. But it’s hard for me to define what it is. But overall, I do like how it turned out.

Mechanical pencil and fine liner on letter size copy paper

This took me 30 minutes to sketch and about 30 minutes to ink.

This exercise is from Draw A Box Lesson 2.

This lesson is about seeing forms in 3D shapes. The 3D forms should intersect in 3D space, creating a new hybrid form. I still am having trouble understanding this exercise. I have a hard time keeping the 3D-ness of the form in mind while making the intersection lines and hatching. Sometimes my hatching lines end up breaking the illusion of the forms and the intersection. I think it’s ok per the instructions that we aren’t meant to overthink it at this point and that we are going to make mistakes. I think?

I did try bringing this into Procreate to try to show the planes of the forms, but it still didn’t really help. I think what would help is to practice with individual pairs of forms and learn the ‘rules’ of how to combine two types of forms. But, that’s not the assignment. Maybe that’s something to ask about when I turn this assignment in for review.

Micron fine liner on letter size copy paper.

I didn’t track my time, but it took about 1 hour.