How to Bend and Twist an Arrow
How to Bend and Twist an Arrow
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How to Bend and Twist an Arrow
courseThe Perspective CourseSelected 2 parts (108 lessons)
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Dedee Anderson Ganda
Thought that twisting arrow would be easy since Drawabox teached the same thing, but apparently doing it "accurately" is a whole another business! Wanted to try the twisting without the bottom part touching the ground, so that it forms a helix like DNA, but I forgot to add another vertical block before bending, now its a semi-DNA.. Hopefully it's telomer's length stays healthy xD
LESSON NOTES

What's in Premium?

In this premium lesson, we tackle the challenge of drawing a twisted arrow in perspective. Starting with a block lying flat using the X, Y, and Z lines, we bend the arrow by introducing curves and using an ellipse to represent the bend.

Next, we twist the arrow by rotating it around the Z-axis, tracking how the corners move, and understanding how right angles change orientation in space. We use color coding and tracing paper to visualize the twists and maintain clarity.

Key principles include starting with block forms, using color coding to track points, and recognizing that twisting requires the form to stretch. This lesson provides a step-by-step approach to mastering complex twisting and bending forms in perspective.

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COMMENTS
Marshall Vandruff
Learn how to draw a twisting and bending arrow in perspective by tracking movement around the X, Y, and Z axes using blocks, ellipses, and curved cross-contours.
Newest
Debbie Dawson
Absolutely loved having a play with these!
Melanie Scearce
Excellent work, @Debbie Dawson!
Chloe Kmita
Desperate Tryhard
Despite my belief that I've always had a pretty good natural sense of 3d form, I've been pretty terrible at this thus far. I've drawn my own guidelines (basically the original example in reverse) for these attempts. Probably unwise to do it without a grid but I think I've been just consistent enough. I'm struggling to intuit where the form should "puff out" or "push in". I think my 3rd attempt is the closest to being correct but I feel like I'm still far off. Any help is appreciated. I'm pulling my hair out over this.
Rachel Dawn Owens
This one was hard. I think what made it extra tricky was that the starting rectangles are so close together, and then trying to twist it so much. It looks like you almost got it. Just keep pushing it and maybe try stretching it out more until it makes sense. I hope this helps. Thanks for sharing!
Thieum
3mo
Rachel Dawn Owens
Just seeing this. These arrow look so good! Perfection 💫
Sandra Süsser
Arrows / forms bend & twist.
Lane Campbell
starting with bending the arrow, about to start rolling and twisting it around
Lane Campbell
i think i did this one wrong
Guadalupe Belgrano
Just trying XD
Alexander Bösch
Rachel Dawn Owens
This is an amazing arrow study. Nailed it!
Ayesha Mahgul
Iman
4mo
At first I followed along to the demo and then I tried to really wrap my head around how it worked… The colors might be a bit hard to see, but take the red/purple in the left-most drawing for example. The way I understood it was: curving lines attach from the end points of the side plane of a box to the top plane of another box and then back to a side plane of another box on the opposite side. It’s a repeating pattern. If there were three more boxes after that, eventually the red/purple would become the blue/green. However when Marshall divided the boxes in half and used those half-way-points to “grace the curves”, I did struggle to understand why (for example, the purple) was drawn more convexly. Well, I guess it’s to “grace the curve”. But… I still can’t wrap my head around that entirely. For example, on the upper-most drawing where I drew the lines quite darkly, I didn’t curve them as convexly. I tried to follow more of an S-rhythm. It doesn’t look that wrong to me…? I don’t know, I guess I do understand what Marshall was demonstrating, but it’s the type of thing where I understand it for a moment and then it disappears… and then I understand it again and so on and so forth. I also drew a shape with lines moving along XYZ to relate to the previous lessons because it felt really similar. Well, I’m also attaching some very messy pen scribbles where I tried to figure it out whilst watching TV.
Li Ming Lin
I decided to push myself further to go beyond the examples in the video and invent more arrows - and I must say, it was way more fun than expected! Although perhaps I went overboard with the top-right arrow haha because it looks a bit weird - either I've drawn it incorrectly, or it's just a really weird point of view.
Ethyn
5mo
Twisting forms is so much fun! In the twisting arrow demo, Marshall placed the three boxes far enough apart so that they don't overlap. I wanted to see what would happen if you foreshorten a similar setup so that they do overlap. I started ideating for this but then went a bit overboard! Still, it seems like a fun puzzle to return to some time.
Rachel Dawn Owens
Suoer clean! And nice work shooting for the extra challenge of foreshortening!
Angelica
5mo
This took a while to get but it is starting to make more sense. Logically I understand that there is a lot of foreshortening going on when we are going from seeing one side to the other when the twist happens but still, when I just look at it... it's really hard to wrap my head around what's going on and draw the intermediate line.
Rachel Dawn Owens
It’s like a math problem you gotta work out! I like that I can see you working it out through the sketch. Good stuff!
Rógvi í stórustovu
@odinnot
5mo
Here is my arrow design. I put them in box. I use a ellipse or half a ellipse in box, to do the bend. I also use perspective.
Kassjan (Kass) Smyczek
Very good explanation. I like the overall scientific approach with a dash of intuition. Quickly done. Twist and shout!
Kai Ju
6mo
You explain everything so well Marshall, that I feel like I understood it right away. I was expecting to struggle a lot more then I did after all your warnings so was surprised to find out that it made immediate sense when I sat down to do it myself.
@vange
6mo
Amani Noor
6mo
Blondie the good
Excuse the messiness here,was trying a new pen and marker! will try some harder bend and twists to challenge myself later!
Dave Sakamoto
These are awesome!
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