How to Draw (Robertson's book) study thread

[Adam Lina]

I started with mirroring objects since I understand the basics of duplicating rectangles in space. I need to go back and study cone of vision more since I kinda skimmed through that part. I Did a couple two curve combos too. Also I made a Brewer method grid template. Its not too accurate I think.

[Heliux]

I'm down to hop in on this. I've been hitting perspective more recently as well. I have the Scott Robertson book, but have been going through the Marshall Vandruff course atm. :P

[Adam Lina]

Thats cool Heluix. Hows the Marshall Vandruff course?

[Heliux]

Thats cool Heluix. Hows the Marshall Vandruff course?

Oh man. Its killer; I'd definitely recommend it! Its only $12 too. (that's a meal) ;D

http://www.marshallart.com/other/shop/videos/index.php

As a visual person too its nice to see a lecture to clarify some of the questions I've been sitting on from reading. I went through the ctrl-paint dl as well.

http://ctrlpaint.myshopify.com/

Its nice for the application, the 2nd part of the series shows how to apply the principles demonstrated in part I. Marshal's goes a bit more in depth. I felt like it was a nice progression. After I get through that, I'd like to contrast it with Scott Robertson's. Either way, I need to do more of the exercises as oppose to just watching and reading, so I figure this and the daily study group I'm a part of is a good outlet.

Simultaneous, I'm trying to contrast Michael Hampton's book with Proko studies. Perspective had been something I've been "getting around to doing" for a while, so having a partner to go through things with would kick-ass!
What chapter are you on? O_o

[Adam Lina]

I'll have to check out Marshal's videos then. I'd seen him talk about it on prokos videos but never looked any further into it. And thanks for the crtlpaint link. I hadnt heard about those before. Im focusing mainly on portraits at the moment and building visual library. This is a side thing for me to keep perspective in mind with everything I do.

I skimmed through the first 2 chapters and worked mainly on the stuff in chapter 3. For the Brewer method I skipped ahead to page 54 because I wanted to have a solid template to practice mirroring basic objects on. Have you looked at the videos he included in the book? I usually need to supplement my reading with watching since Im very visual as well. I also watched this video on the Brewer method on youtube which helped further understand it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG7slOl2_RE

[Adam Lina]

Heres some ellipse practice from page 19. Its a nice practice for straight lines as well. I tried to not spin the sketch pad around and try drawing lines in different more awkward angles. I think thats a good practice to help improve draftsmenship. As you can see my ellipses need a lot of work XD

[gchong]

Man Elipses are hard! These studies look pretty good though :) Did you try folding the page to find the minor axis?

I'm disciplining myself to finish 100 pages of drawing pad strictly to draw freehand straight lines, curves and elipses before going any further.

Kudos for starting this thread!

[Adam Lina]

I was drawing the minor axis first and trying to draw the ellipse to fit in the blue lines that I laid out. For straight lines, I think he mentions this in the video but dont look at where your pen is. Look at the destination point you're going to, use your shoulder and forearm and keep your wrist straight.

Are you doing the exercise where you place dots on the page and draw lines through them? Look at the dot you're aiming for and make the line without looking at where your hand is. Think of it like you're arming a gun. Always keep your eye on the target. Peter Han's video on dynamic sketching also has great explanations and tips on practicing draftsmanship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgDNDOKnArk

[Adam Lina]

Heres some junk

[Hobitt]

Some of the highlights of the recent stuff i did.

[Adam Lina]

I've been neglecting my perspective. Heres some stuff I've done in the last week or so.

[SamPeterson]

I'm a bit stuck with one of the concepts if anyone can help me. On page 74 how are you supposed to know where to correctly place the minor axis without knowing where the perfect center of the ellipse or square is ahead of time? It doesn't seem like there is enough information to correctly plant the minor axis. It's possible to find the center vertically by making any size rectangle and finding the center of that, but that doesn't show you the horizontal placement. If the minor axis is placed incorrectly it'd make a warped circle that isn't proportioned correctly, and wouldn't result in a proper cube. And without knowing where to plant the minor axis I can't do the exercise or the following ones that require you to know how to create a cube using ellipses. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks.

[Adam Lina]

I found that part confusing too, Sam. The best I can come up with after rewatching the video from page 72 and rereading the exercises on 73 and 74 is that you kinda just guess where the horizontal will be. Maybe its something that comes with more practice? He talks about the question of "what came first the square or the circle?" and how they're going by the idea that the circle came first. As to say in order to find a square in perspective you should draw an ellipse. But I dont see how thats any less valid than drawing the square first to determine the ellipse. Im going with just ignoring that part for now and defining the square first in hopes that it will make sense to me later :)

[SamPeterson]

Thanks! I appreciate the reply. Maybe it'll become more clear as I get further along in the book.

[Hobitt]

Yeah also had a problem with that one keep doing it until it becomes natural + i guess it is meant to be cleaned up with an ellipse guide.

[Jorch]

I'm a bit stuck with one of the concepts if anyone can help me. On page 74 how are you supposed to know where to correctly place the minor axis without knowing where the perfect center of the ellipse or square is ahead of time? It doesn't seem like there is enough information to correctly plant the minor axis. It's possible to find the center vertically by making any size rectangle and finding the center of that, but that doesn't show you the horizontal placement. If the minor axis is placed incorrectly it'd make a warped circle that isn't proportioned correctly, and wouldn't result in a proper cube. And without knowing where to plant the minor axis I can't do the exercise or the following ones that require you to know how to create a cube using ellipses. I hope that makes sense.

Thanks.

Hi Sam,

I'm also learning from this and the way I think about placing the minor axis is that it would be pointing to the opposite vanishing point. With this in mind you place guides/lines to the correct VP and use those as a guide to place the ellipse constraining to it's minor axis direction.

I made this images kind of a tut of how I go about it. Hope it's helpful :")

[Adam Lina]

Oh wow man, that makes so much sense now. I wish he had explained it that way in the book or videos. Thanks a lot for the tut. Im sure this will help a lot of people including me.

[Jorch]

Oh wow man, that makes so much sense now. I wish he had explained it that way in the book or videos. Thanks a lot for the tut. Im sure this will help a lot of people including me.

Sure man, glad it helps! Actually the images may make it seem simple but in fact I had to do some ellipses a few times before they met the conditions correctly. This is normal I guess until more practice gets done.

I'm new to this forum, will be posting more as I go.

-Sorry for any mistakes English is not my native language :")

[iReddog]

Oh wow man, that makes so much sense now. I wish he had explained it that way in the book or videos. Thanks a lot for the tut. Im sure this will help a lot of people including me.

Sure man, glad it helps! Actually the images may make it seem simple but in fact I had to do some ellipses a few times before they met the conditions correctly. This is normal I guess until more practice gets done.

I'm new to this forum, will be posting more as I go.

-Sorry for any mistakes English is not my native language :")

Awesome work! I actually just made a new account myself... could anybody maybe help me with a question?

I recently picked this up (deciding to go with a more traditional drawing learning path before diving into modeling), and so far, I absolutely love the book.

However, he mentions something that puzzles me. When drawing an orthographic side view of, lets say just a basic curve, he places a bounding box with equal sized squares into it.

Then, in order to get that into perspective, he uses an ellipse guide to draw the square into perspective, and then uses a rectangle multiplication technique to multiply the same distance as the ortho view.

As someone who has recently just blown >$200 on supplies for drawing (parallel glider, copic markers, pens, books, etc), I'm a bit tapped out, and would rather not buy $150 ellipse templates (holy crap, why are they so expensive!?).

But more than that, I'm very curious as to why the ellipse would be needed at all. I realize that a circle in an orthographic view is bounded by a perfect square, so doing an ellipse (which is a circle, in perspective) makes a perfect square, again in perspective, but I don't see why you couldn't just make two horizontal lines running to one of your VPs, and then just make your first box with any verticals, and just multiply.

Sorry if this is sort of rambling on, it just had me really curious, and it was the first part of the book that didn't directly have an explanation.

Thanks!

[JyonnyNovice]

Reddog I hope I understood your question right - you're asking why not draw arbitrary guidelines to a VP, then drop in a vertical and multiple that to get the ortho grid in perspective?

I think in reality you can do that no problem. If you do it the ellipse way though, you can be certain it is definitely, absolutely, 100% a square and not a rectangle. Depends how accurate you want / need to be and how good you are at estimating squares. (I hope I got the right question).

As to buying ellipse guides - you can train yourself to do them freehand. It takes a lot of consistent effort (I've been training nearly daily since xmas and still struggle), but mastering that will help you in sooo many ways as an artist - so many objects you might want to draw are cylindrical and you don't want to have to bust out an ellipse guide every time you want to draw one.

I think mostly Scott Robertson does them freehand, then uses the ellipse guide to clean them up (which you could also do in photoshop with the ellipse tool). Some of those videos he uses an ellipse guide so it's precise for educational reasons (like he also uses a ruler in some vids which I'm sure he doesn't do much in real life). The exercises in the front of the book are great and youtube has some more fun / interesting exercises for when those get boring.