Here, I focused more on the arm of the digger. It’s fascinating to study how it functions!

Week 2 - Friday Rotating a Kitchen Object

@Anthony DeGennaro First of all, your boxes look good Wso far! One small adjustment I noticed is some inconsistency in determining which side of the box is closer and which is further away from you. You can think about the three main directions in which the cube points, represented by its sides. For small objects like a dice or a toaster, we can simplify and assume the lines in the same direction are parallel. However, this isn’t entirely true—when dealing with larger objects, those lines will eventually converge at vanishing points. To make the concept of these three directions more apparent, I came up with an overly detailed way to visualize it. Imagine a sphere inside the cube with three arrows extending in different directions. These arrows can act as guiding lines to help you draw parallel lines in the same direction. That said, I wouldn’t recommend constructing a cube this way every time you draw. Once you get comfortable with thinking in these three directions, you’ll be able to eyeball it more confidently. Still, it might be helpful to color-code the sides of a cube once or twice to reinforce this mental exercise. I know how frustrating it can feel to be stuck on a learning plateau and not see the progress you’re aiming for. Hopefully, this explanation was helpful in some way! Keep going—you’re on the right track!

I think the challenging part of the knife is capturing the curved section. Your side view at the top looks great! I gave it a try myself and started by oversimplifying it into an elongated cube and a rectangular plane as a first step. For the curve, it might help to identify a few key points in perspective to map out the knife’s shape. I used the “X trick” to divide the plane into four equal parts and then estimated additional points to guide the curve when it’s distorted in perspective. If this approach was helpful, let me know! Practice is key, and I hope you don’t feel discouraged. We’re all learning together and figuring things out along the way. Keep going—you’re doing great!

I think you've got a solid study of the rhino—it’s definitely a challenging subject to draw. For me, adding 3D contours really helped to start thinking more in 3D. It makes it easier to visualize where the form bends and twists. If you search for simple organic forms (e.g. Pinterest), you’ll find something like a blob—similar to the image I added below. Something clicked for me when I started drawing similar blobs. It felt like I was transitioning from creating flat 2D shapes with outlines to something that felt more like believable, three-dimensional volumes. Maybe Sketchfab or other 3D model websites could serve as a middle ground between real-life drawing and studying from photos. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rhino-2892f1c1f6e84fde919aa2d73c6595c9 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- X TRICK: For me, it was helpful to think about it without distortion, just as a simple rectangle. If you connect all the corners, it becomes obvious that the "X" lies in the middle of the rectangle. This way, you can find the center of the shape by drawing the horizontal and vertical lines. I use the "X" trick to draw things that are equally spaced, like streetlamps in a long straight row or windows. I start with a square and draw the same "X" as before. If you want to expand the spacing to the sides, you can imagine a larger "X" to find the extended corners. Where the bigger diagonals intersect with the top and bottom, the same unit is reached in perspective. Maybe this helps?