Not going to lie, I really struggled with this assignment. part 1) sketch the models - This was very difficult for me. After looking at some of the other videos and critiques I am beginning to understand the steps. 1) draw a box 2) fill it in using construction. HOWEVER. I was working from a view of each model, and I could NEVER draw the right box for my view and then would have to rely on observation so end up doing 2 so that I could do 1, so I’m really just working backward. Was I supposed to draw the box and then adapt the model to match? Is that better/right? part 2) label the axes - I think i figured that bit out, but my brain was a bit frazzled by then… Whenever I tried to construct these logically it just looked so different to what I was seeing, so I ended up drawing what I was seeing instead. Even working backwards I can’t figure out the right constructions to get the initial box! How do you get that first box?? My initial marks are always SO wrong.

I'm finally understanding how people do those boxes around the sphere thing and the arrows were pretty fun to draw aswell!(also added a warmup page toom ust for funsies)

It might sound silly but I have always wanted to be able to draw arrows like this and have seen it as a key weakness of my drawing that I can’t do something so deceptively simple! 1000 arrows later, and I have put something together… Granted I haven’t watched the extra video on it yet, so when I do I will probably see everything I did wrong, but I have battled this arrow to death for the time being. I have done and redone and redone the assignment, and I can now kind of visualise what I want to draw before I draw it, which was not possible at the beginning. I still put it down wrong to begin with but after about 3 redraws I finally get an arrow that works… kind of. I tried not to draw boxes and fill them in for this - that may sound dumb but I wanted to try and think logically about whether something was close (and therefore bigger) or further away (and therefore smaller or not so visible). Unfortunately my instinct with converging lines (already made more difficult by all these diagonal lines) always seems to be wrong and converge in the wrong direction.

The two untimed ones I have no idea how long they took, but probably not that long because my 25 minute one, I felt was ‘done’ after about 18 minutes. I continued fiddling and cleaning up and I’ve probably made it look better but I now realise I’m probably quite slapdash in my approach and I need to just chill and go with the rendering process. It definitely feels like I’m ‘done’ and then trying to fix what I should have just taken more care over in the first place. I felt very frustrated with my scratchy cast shadows in particular. Another thing i noticed was the moment I had only 10 then 5 minutes I felt such a need to rush I suddenly couldn’t even draw a circle anymore, so will definitely be practising more of these timed ones and trying to stay calm.. I also spent too much time in the shadows I think, and my half tones were probably too light and sloppy.

This assignment makes me feel so ridiculously excited I feel like an idiot! I can't wait to get started. Interestingly I felt frustrated by one of the first assignments where we had to simplify a blocky object and draw it in lots of different angles from imagination because all my drawings came out kind of the same just rotated. It looks like that was basically the idea! Although to be fair I did choose a very simple object.

Ooh I'm excited. I never really understood the core shadow and why it's darker and only in some places and this really cleared things up for me! Thanks

Attempted Ortho no.2. I made a loose grid and then made all my 3d views (is that the term?) from 1 ortho that I popped into my grid. I did end up colouring otherwise all my lines got very confusing and it was hard to spot errors. In the pancakes video they mentioned ‘tangencies’ where lines meet - I have found that where lines meet in the picture where they wouldn’t in 3d a real throw off for errors! In my next one I’m going to try and make more lines that won’t connect with others. Made a slide to show my process. I’m pretty sure in hindsight my original ortho in perspective was off, which didn’t help, so I will try and be more exact in the early stages next time.

I found these very challenging, my brain has been broken 😆

Are you trying to kill us Marshall?? The video made these look fun. I ran into a lot of problems, so submitting part 1 early to seek help from the community! I tried to do it without using vanishing points - big mistake no.1. I retried the worst one with vanishing points, but none of my bits look like cubes! Is there an easy solution to this, or is it back to… draw 9999 boxes and they’ll start to look better? I might do my next one using isometric angles just to try and make it look understandable, but feel like maybe that is just cheating..? Maybe I should try and do both.