MagneticScrolls Sketchbook - Starting from the beginning again

[Amit Dutta]

I suggest you use a ruler for the majority of those HTD exercises or at the least for your guidelines or bounding boxes. Nobody expects you to be able to do those freehand, and neither you, nor anyone else will be able to accurately troubleshoot whether you did it correctly if you do everything freehand and everything is wonky. It was only on drawabox where basic sketching is drilled, that he suggests freehand. For HTD technical exercises, and understanding the concepts it's pointless.

[MagneticScrolls]

I suggest you use a ruler for the majority of those HTD exercises or at the least for your guidelines or bounding boxes. Nobody expects you to be able to do those freehand, and neither you, nor anyone else will be able to accurately troubleshoot whether you did it correctly if you do everything freehand and everything is wonky. It was only on drawabox where basic sketching is drilled, that he suggests freehand. For HTD technical exercises, and understanding the concepts it's pointless.

Alright I used a ruler for most of these. Unfortunately I'm progressing slowly (if at all). I spent most of the time trying to understand basic grid construction and use of it.
I was hoping to set a goal for myself to finish this book before 2018 but, I'm moving too slowly for that and it seems to be getting harder

Rotation
Couldn't seem to understand how to do this one properly. I assume the elipse is suppose to reprenet where the potential edges of the cube are suppose to be. It does not help that I still have no idea on how to draw an ellipse properly.




2 Point Grid with Vanishing Points off Page
It took me a while to understand how to construct the grid itself. Even after words I made huge mistakes. I even tried this with the horizon line on the page which seems to work OK...
I assume in 3 point the vertciles distort towards the 3rd point.








Square Grid
I made of mess of things. At first I tried to rush through it assuming that knowing how to construct the grid would help me. I was wrong. I am still unable to free hand perspective. Even using the grid I find myself unable to accurately draw these things. It looks like I will need to contiune practicing this until I can learn to properly draw a cube and ellipse in 2 point perspective.











I hope I can do better than this in the future.

[darktiste]

Nice progress so far i would encourage you to change the ball point to the felt tip pen if you manage to destroy a pen it mean that you pressing to hard on the tool.So practice pen pressure by doing line but pay careful attention to how tight you grip the tool.There are many way to grip the pen in a way that allow free loose gesture.I would encourage you to keep doing the dot exercise to improve you eye and hand coordination.

[MagneticScrolls]

Ellipse Pratice
Attempting to draw the ellipses with in planes here. I'm drawing each line to a dot I have placed down in order to form a plane. Sadly it really doesn't look like I've gained much here. The ellipses still don't look like they've been drawn properly.













Ellipse subdivision
With this one I needed to learn how to use a protracter the right way.



Ellipse in boxes
Attempting to take the previous exercise one step further. It's actually really difficult though. I know I can't simply do this by drawing in pen alone. I ended up needing to erase far too much to rely on a permanent medium for this one.




[u]Spiral Staircase/[u]
This one took up the bulk of my time. I needed to read and reread the exercise again and again.
Still attempting to draw the spiral staircase but, I still failed to understand how to do it properly. I'm not happy with this at all. It is proving to be far more difficult than I imagined.

Nice progress so far i would encourage you to change the ball point to the felt tip pen if you manage to destroy a pen it mean that you pressing to hard on the tool.So practice pen pressure by doing line but pay careful attention to how tight you grip the tool.There are many way to grip the pen in a way that allow free loose gesture.I would encourage you to keep doing the dot exercise to improve you eye and hand coordination.

I switched over to a felt tip for now. As for the pressure I tend to press harder when I get frustrated. It is something I need to work on.
For the line exercise I'm working them into drawing planes and drawing the ellipses within those planes.

[Amit Dutta]

I've said this before, but I suggest you use a straight edge for these technical perspective exercises. You're making it way harder for yourself by trying to eyeball it I think. Eyeballing defeats the purpose anyway, since this is about accurate perspective training and understanding :)

[darktiste]

I've said this before, but I suggest you use a straight edge for these technical perspective exercises. You're making it way harder for yourself by trying to eyeball it I think. Eyeballing defeats the purpose anyway, since this is about accurate perspective training and understanding :)

I have to agree on that but i would have to add that i think he is suffering for impatience that normal when you begin you not aware that repetition is key to have once you have consistant result you can start to move on. If you do exercise that are too complex before you have a strong consistancy you will have trouble .I recommend that you keep doing the box exercise but you should use a ruler focusing on putting done cube that have the right angle because what i see is a sense of rushing to make quantity over quality.

For me it important that someone who want to start learning perspective do it first with a ruler it like the training wheel on a bike some need it some don't personally if you have problem with the theory of perspective (1 and 2 point in specific) i advise you use the ruler once you get the hang of the theory you can start to try to eye ball and correct the angle with a ruler so that you can correct the eye balling.

The ellipse exercise you doing on the cube is using some principle of perspective you might not be aware of it why those ellipse are not yet showing they follow some perspective rule.

I also encourage you to do the 1 point perspective exercise i shown you before i have tried to simply my example by editing it.Here how i would approch doing a box in 2 point perspective.Note that i keep writing cube but i meant to write box.

[MagneticScrolls]

I've said this before, but I suggest you use a straight edge for these technical perspective exercises. You're making it way harder for yourself by trying to eyeball it I think. Eyeballing defeats the purpose anyway, since this is about accurate perspective training and understanding :)

I have to agree on that but i would have to add that i think he is suffering for impatience that normal when you begin you not aware that repetition is key to have once you have consistant result you can start to move on. If you do exercise that are too complex before you have a strong consistancy you will have trouble .I recommend that you keep doing the box exercise but you should use a ruler focusing on putting done cube that have the right angle because what i see is a sense of rushing to make quantity over quality.

For me it important that someone who want to start learning perspective do it first with a ruler it like the training wheel on a bike some need it some don't personally if you have problem with the theory of perspective (1 and 2 point in specific) i advise you use the ruler once you get the hang of the theory you can start to try to eye ball and correct the angle with a ruler so that you can correct the eye balling.

The ellipse exercise you doing on the cube is using some principle of perspective you might not be aware of it why those ellipse are not yet showing they follow some perspective rule.

I also encourage you to do the 1 point perspective exercise i shown you before i have tried to simply my example by editing it.Here how i would approch doing a box in 2 point perspective.Note that i keep writing cube but i meant to write box.

Alright. I went back and did more practice on 1 and 2 point perspective with a ruler this time. It is difficult for me to tell when I should move on from one exercise to another. I'm not at all confident with any of my work so I have a lot of trouble deciding on going forward or just continuing to work on something over and over again.



One Point Perspective Practice















Two Point Perspective Practice

[darktiste]

The result are pretty good you seem more confident than previously.It ok to be uncertain about moving on to something else but i don't think you can get wrong when you work on perspective because the eye is naturally good at telling if something look 3d or not.The next exercise is to 4 box that are equal in size but that do not touch each other.Let see if you know how to do that.

[MagneticScrolls]

The result are pretty good you seem more confident than previously.It ok to be uncertain about moving on to something else but i don't think you can get wrong when you work on perspective because the eye is naturally good at telling if something look 3d or not.The next exercise is to 4 box that are equal in size but that do not touch each other.Let see if you know how to do that.

I actually found this one to be very difficult. I had to refer back to Chapter 3 several times and even then I managed to screw this up in a lot of ways. I'm having trouble keeping proportion
I had to draw boxes infront of (or in back of) one another in order to get them to move forward or back in space. This may have broken the rules set forth.
Measuring the boxes allows me to move them but they're still on the same plane (IE they don't move back or forward in space).
It took me far too long to actually do something like this.

[MagneticScrolls]

I spent a lot of time (far too much) on these but, I'm still stuck on this exercise. I'm having trouble drawing a lot of it even though it seems like it should be easy. Attempting to project middle of the ground plane forward can lead to trouble if I don't make enough space on the left hand side for the projected box to be seen. 
I also ran into trouble making the right side of the spiral. Once the peices come towards the viewer it's a little difficult. I also have trouble seeing where I'm placing things once there are too many lines on the page.

[darktiste]

It not a really essential exercise to be learned straight away just because you see it in a book. You would gain more from learning to do ellipse correctly and learn how to do perspective relying less on vanishing line.But i salute you effort for trying.Also avoid being stubborn on a specific exercise it can burn you out pretty fast it best to come back to previous exercise just to check again a few notion and than come back if necessary.What is essential is that you evaluate the priority you have is drawing perfect stair you priority???Or is it being able to draw complex object in perspective?

[Amit Dutta]

I hope you are also taking some time to sketch things for fun. Too much of mindlessly grinding on technical fundamentals is a good way to burn out and or make little progress for so much effort. I see it too often in this forum. Endless repetition of study with less effective actual learning. If you are struggling at a study, allow yourself to have some fun too, and sketch for the pure enjoyment of it as well. isn't that why you want to draw anyway? you will learn better if you allow yourself to enjoy the process. This is more important than you might think. :)

[dawckward]

youve chosen a hard but rwarding path, remember your perspective tools for problem solving this i nice improvement and grind on understandingwhich i think is very good draftmanshit takes a bit to get there but the eye and the mind get better faster, sadly the hand goes slower so you might feel discouraged but thats normal!

and when you feel like you want to get better lines i recommend peter han excercises do them a couple of weeks and then use them as wwarmups daily i swear by them to get better lines and line control!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaif0PpNMas&t=1s

[darktiste]

Ill have to second what Amit said about doing some personal drawing.It best to have an alternance of draftmanship and some time to apply a few of the concept you learn into something you wish to draw.I personnaly recommend doing study of master if you feel tired of the same thing over and over.

[MagneticScrolls]

I had an extremely hard time with this lesson. I didn't manage to translate everything to 3d. Even copying to a distorted grid was out of my reach on this one. I really need to understand this before moving any further forward in this book.

It not a really essential exercise to be learned straight away just because you see it in a book. You would gain more from learning to do ellipse correctly and learn how to do perspective relying less on vanishing line.But i salute you effort for trying.Also avoid being stubborn on a specific exercise it can burn you out pretty fast it best to come back to previous exercise just to check again a few notion and than come back if necessary.What is essential is that you evaluate the priority you have is drawing perfect stair you priority???Or is it being able to draw complex object in perspective?

I was just afraid I wouldn't be able to contiune unless I fully understood the lesson. I apologize if I'm spending too long on these.

I hope you are also taking some time to sketch things for fun. Too much of mindlessly grinding on technical fundamentals is a good way to burn out and or make little progress for so much effort. I see it too often in this forum. Endless repetition of study with less effective actual learning. If you are struggling at a study, allow yourself to have some fun too, and sketch for the pure enjoyment of it as well. isn't that why you want to draw anyway? you will learn better if you allow yourself to enjoy the process. This is more important than you might think. :)

Unfortunately I have not been doing that. I find myself getting very frustrated when I try to draw things I want to and getting in this strange loop of "That wasn't what I wanted to draw" then attempting to correct it only to have made it worse. Then I attempt to correct that and this repeats over and over again. It's hard for me to really have fun when I have little control over the outcome of my drawings.

youve chosen a hard but rwarding path, remember your perspective tools for problem solving this i nice improvement and grind on understandingwhich i think is very good draftmanshit takes a bit to get there but the eye and the mind get better faster, sadly the hand goes slower so you might feel discouraged but thats normal!

and when you feel like you want to get better lines i recommend peter han excercises do them a couple of weeks and then use them as wwarmups daily i swear by them to get better lines and line control!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaif0PpNMas&t=1s

Alright, I suppose more of Peter Han couldn't hurt. I really do need better line control.

Ill have to second what Amit said about doing some personal drawing.It best to have an alternance of draftmanship and some time to apply a few of the concept you learn into something you wish to draw.I personnaly recommend doing study of master if you feel tired of the same thing over and over.

I could give a master study a try. I have a few illustrators I look up to, like the Brothers Hildebrandt and MC Escher.

[Amit Dutta]

Truth talk now. Forget the 'grind' for a moment.

I suspect you are impatient to improve, stressed about doing so and think you must rush in order to beat some clock and meet some imaginary success in the future. The only problem with this is, everything. The act of creativity happens now, not in some future.. If you cannot even enjoy the simple process of sketching for fun, without obsessing over how it turns out, you're heading fast towards burnout and quitting the whole thing, or years of inefficient grinding.

Stop rushing everything. Rushing only makes you inefficient and less able to hold onto learning.

Stop grinding studies , purely for the sake of it alone. Even one careful, slow, considered patient study is better than 50 stressed rushed ones. I have seen people do thousands of studies of the same thing year in and out with little improvement. it's quite common. volume is no substitute if quality of study isn't there.

Practice drawing and sketching for FUN every day for a short time with NO judgements. Watch your thoughts. If they start trying to be harshly critical, acknowledge them but then just ignore them. When a drawing is done, let it alone. It's done, it's not perfect, it's finished. Repeat this daily until you loosen up and start enjoying the ACTUAL process. If you give importance and focus on the frustration everytime, you are actually training yourself to feel frustrated with art! It's natural to be frustrated with not producing what you envisioned, and this will diminish as you get better, but if you don't address this attitude and mental grinder loop you are in now, it will become abigger issue in the future guaranteed. I have seen too many people esp on this forum locked for many many years in this cycle of desperation driven practice and it doesn't always end well as the habit gets harder and harder to break the more you let it be in control.

[ThereIsNoJustice]

The process of art is very important, but it's overlooked because everyone including artists gets so focused on the outcome. Take time to slow down and do your studies well. Amit is right. You're in a very common place for artists, and it'll be good to check some of your tendencies now rather than later.

[Tygerson]

So "How to Draw" wasn't the first perspective book I've looked at, but I still hit a brick wall where it really got into ellipses. I beat my head over it so hard, not letting myself do much else until I got through it, and was so miserable that I gave up drawing for a while!

I wouldn't recommend that approach!

Sometimes if something is a brick wall, try changing tack. This is what I did when I came back to art.
Try the free lessons on drawabox for a while (more perspective), or ctrlpaint (the traditional drawing lessons are awesome), or proko (for figure or anatomy), or loomis, or whatever.

Once you've had some space and different practice, come back to the thing that was vexing you. A lot of the perspective stuff from How to Draw actually started making more sense to me when I took a break from it and started studying anatomy and drawing still lifes!

On using a ruler: I would use a ruler if a perspective exercise was giving me problems. Once I understood the exercise, I'd switch back to freehand.

In any case, keep it up. It does get easier. Or rather, you will get better!

[Tygerson]

Also, don't stress if you don't progress up the learning curve in a nice efficient manner. It's not a smooth progression.

Learning to learn art is also a skill.

It's okay if you "spent to much time on this" at the beginning, or "too little time on that," or "tried way to hard to do stuff that was beyond your skills," or whatever. We've all done it.

[MagneticScrolls]

Truth talk now. Forget the 'grind' for a moment.

I suspect you are impatient to improve, stressed about doing so and think you must rush in order to beat some clock and meet some imaginary success in the future. The only problem with this is, everything. The act of creativity happens now, not in some future.. If you cannot even enjoy the simple process of sketching for fun, without obsessing over how it turns out, you're heading fast towards burnout and quitting the whole thing, or years of inefficient grinding.

Stop rushing everything. Rushing only makes you inefficient and less able to hold onto learning.

Stop grinding studies , purely for the sake of it alone. Even one careful, slow, considered patient study is better than 50 stressed  rushed ones. I have seen people do thousands of studies of the same thing year in and out with little improvement. it's quite common. volume is no substitute if quality of study isn't there.

Practice drawing and sketching for FUN every day for a short time with NO judgements. Watch your thoughts. If they start trying to be harshly critical, acknowledge them but then just ignore them. When a drawing is done, let it alone. It's done, it's not perfect, it's finished. Repeat this daily until you loosen up and start enjoying the ACTUAL process. If you give importance and focus on the frustration everytime, you are actually training yourself to feel frustrated with art! It's natural to be frustrated with not producing what you envisioned, and this will diminish as you get better, but if you don't address this attitude and mental grinder loop you are in now, it will become abigger issue in the future guaranteed. I have seen too many people esp on this forum locked for many many years in this cycle of desperation driven practice and it doesn't always end well as the habit gets harder and harder to break the more you let it be in control.

There are multiple reasons why I want to get better at this faster. One of the biggest is the fact that I've been at this for so long and it still feels as if I have very, very little control over the outcome of my drawings.
I'm going to try to make it a habit to have fun with this at least once a day.

The process of art is very important, but it's overlooked because everyone including artists gets so focused on the outcome. Take time to slow down and do your studies well. Amit is right. You're in a very common place for artists, and it'll be good to check some of your tendencies now rather than later.

So "How to Draw" wasn't the first perspective book I've looked at, but I still hit a brick wall where it really got into ellipses.  I beat my head over it so hard, not letting myself do much else until I got through it, and was so miserable that I gave up drawing for a while!  

I wouldn't recommend that approach!

Sometimes if something is a brick wall, try changing tack.  This is what I did when I came back to art.
Try the free lessons on drawabox for a while (more perspective), or ctrlpaint (the traditional drawing lessons are awesome), or proko (for figure or anatomy), or loomis, or whatever.

Once you've had some space and different practice, come back to the thing that was vexing you.  A lot of the perspective stuff from How to Draw actually started making more sense to me when I took a break from it and started studying anatomy and drawing still lifes!  

On using a ruler: I would use a ruler if a perspective exercise was giving me problems. Once I understood the exercise, I'd switch back to freehand.

In any case, keep it up.  It does get easier.  Or rather, you will get better!

Fair enough, I have seem to have hit a brick wall with perspective. I obsess over it because I have heard perspective is the key to everything in drawing; if you can draw boxes properly, it is much easier to draw everything else properly.

Well I was using a ruler to draw out the grids. Not sure where else to use it. The organic shapes seem to be giving me trouble when I need to distort them to the 3 dimensional portion.

Also, don't stress if you don't progress up the learning curve in a nice efficient manner.  It's not a smooth progression.  

Learning to learn art is also a skill.  

It's okay if you "spent to much time on this" at the beginning, or "too little time on that," or "tried way to hard to do stuff that was beyond your skills," or whatever.  We've all done it.

Well sometimes I feel like it takes me significantly longer to do things than it does for other people (even those of my skill level). I just wonder if I'm not pushing myself hard enough or if I'm going in the right direction.



Attempted some more of Peter Han's exercises.









Using 1000 frames of Hitchcock as my source for these images.

I've tried using thumbnails as a general guide for how to draw the portrait. However it takes a ton of time just to do one even remotely recognizable. A lot of the portraits I'm drawing really don't look 3 dimesional no matter how much time I pour into them. They're flat and inaccurate. I often fail to capture the look of the person or the emotion they're expressing.