Shazad’s 100 Day Challenge: Russian Drawing Course

[Shazad Madon]

Hi there. I started this thread as I want to set myself a challenge of working on one assignment of the Russian drawing course for a few minutes/hours, everyday alongside the myriad of other creative tasks I have set myself. My goal is to continue my other creative projects, alongside a consistent practice of learning the technical aspects of drawing. Looking forward!

DAY 1:

I am still at a relatively early stage in the course. Today I completed the assignment to draw 10 ellipses with and without horizon lines, 20 ellipses with four square divisions and freehand ellipses. Below is the example picture for Day1.

• This topic was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Joshua Jacobo.

[PaulDidier]

I’m going to enjoy following your progress. I haven’t checked out the Russian drawing videos yet. This will be cool.

Awesome, doing the ellipses. They look good. I’m amazed at how few artists know perspective these days. It’s not just about doing buildings and such. It’s important in doing most art. Drawing the face and figure are much easier if a person knows perspective. Good job.

[Shazad Madon]

Thank you Paul! Yes I did not fully understand an ellipse until I started these exercises.. Still trying to slowly grasp it.

[Josseline Jeria]

Hi Shazad and welcome 🙂

I think you’ve set yourself a real good goal. Consistent daily practice for coursework is so important, and learning to juggle that along with your own other work and studies is important. The more we can do, the better. I’m up to the geometric form section of the Russian course too! I am digging into that lesson today. I am terrible at drawing ellipses freehand. I’m sure learning from Iliya on the conceptual understanding of them will help.

Good luck and looking foward to your posts.

[Shazad Madon]

Hi Josseline, thanks very much! I I look forward to hearing about your progress with it too. I tried posting my day 2 assignment with pictures in the afternoon twice but it still hasn’t come. I read on the forum that it can take a few hours as they may manually post it, so I’ll wait and see.

[Shazad Madon]

Thanks Josseline and good luck with the section. Would like to hear your progress. I now reached the assignment to construct the cylinder from observation.

DAY 2: 

In this particular assignment I came across the problem of finding the size of the ellipse on top of the cylinder in relation to the height of the cylinder. In Iliya’s demonstration it measured 8 equal parts but at times when the measurement is in fraction eg. ellipse is  4 1/2 times the height I found it tricky. I found a way around this by comparing instead the height of the ellipse to the width of my cylinder (which I had already established), and found this to be considerably easier considering the smaller fraction.

 

After my 6th cylinder I wanted to change things around and took a low angle perspective. Since my cylinder was a glass jar, I measured the lower ellipse first. Then I found the top ellipse which was above the horizon line and made it a bit flat as it was very close to the horizon line. I darken the top part of the ellipse you actually see and the part that is construction. I know my cylinders are a bit wonky sometimes like no 8. :):

After that I completed the free hand cylinder drawing exercise.  Next I will move onto the construction of a cylinder lying horizontally.

 

 

[Joshua Jacobo]

Nice work! Try to make sure your ellipses are not pinched at the ends like American footballs but that they are round and consistent. Try to use your whole arm and “feel” your way around in an imagined 3d-space.

[Shazad Madon]

Thanks for the tip Joshua. Will keep that in mind for the next one.

[Shazad Madon]

DAY 3 :

The second part of the cylinder assignment was more challenging than I thought.

 

I realized at times I was messing up proportions as in size of ellipse : length, when I put the cylinder at angles different from the one in the video lesson. As I progressed I tried measuring in a different way. In the second page I feel at times I exagerrated the perspective a bit too much. On the 6th one I realized halfway through, that the basic angle was completely wrong so I started all over and counted it as 7. 🙂

A question occurred to me which is quite possibly rather silly. Should my constant be parallel only to my paper when I measure the object or parallel to the angle of the object?

Here’s examples of the two ways to get a better idea:

1.

Above the constant is parallel to my paper as I measure.

2.

In image 2. above the constant is parallel to the direction of the object and then I turn to my paper again to put the mark.

So far I always applied method in image 2. I guess its more to do with what perspective you want?

…And I thought drawing a cylinder would be straightforward. Well clearly not for me! 🙂

[Joshua Jacobo]

Keep working. I know these assignments are very difficult but you will take these lessons with you for the rest of your career. Remember that a cylinder seen end on with have an end that looks like a circle. So if the cylinder is angles we will probably not be seeing a more circular shaped end.

[Shazad Madon]

Thanks Joshua. I’ll keep at it.

[Shazad Madon]

DAY 4: Freehand cylinders

[Josseline Jeria]

Your geometric forms are really coming along! Can see you are really getting the hang of those free hand cylinders. How are you feeling after all that section of the course? I’m up to the cylinder, cone and truncated assignments. The cubes and ellipses, oooffff. after drawing the 50 cubes and the 4 A2 pages of ellipses, I dreamt about them all night having them on my mind all day! haha. I found doing the observational measurements really made me see how perceptive our eye is the even to the most smallest differences in angles. It did improve my ability to see angles better, and understand cubes and ellipses more conceptually. I had fun trying to move the cubes in all different orientations and space. I found working with your eye line below the horizon line most challenging to have it read right with tilted cubes. Guess might be because I’m so use to looking immediately below and ahead, but much less so above.

[Shazad Madon]

@Josseline Jeria Haha. Yes taking these measurements and constantly drawing geometric forms does affect your brain in a strange way. It is fun though when you get into the rhythm and begin to understand how it works. I agree, with the horizon line below the cubes were a bit more challenging. I think one of the key things is that, I feel like after these excersises I now understand perspective or at least an aspect of it much better and more intuitively, having dealt with it with construction as well as observation. Good luck with the next part of it!!

 

[Joshua Jacobo]

Keep going! Go until you draw cylinders in your sleep! 👍🏼

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