Well, master tonal studies went fine…then I tried my own still life (my amateur analogue photography set-up)….I thought the composition was ok, but end result in terms of lit forms was just UGLY in comparison with the master paintings! Depressing how masterful they were….the Native American on horseback painting blew me away 😭

Trying to create complex optical illusions is not easy, both craft (lot of planning, thinking, experimenting and iterating needed) and dare I say it, for me motivation - honestly, cool as they can be, I cannot shake the feeling that they are more novelty parlour tricks… I sensed from Marshall’s assignment video that perhaps these are not to be taken so seriously but, I take full responsibility for my own lazy, excuse-making cynicism. So, can anyone share examples of optical illusions used cleverly as part of a story (graphic novel or illustrated storybook) or to make a real expression of a meaning in a painting or illustration ? Would be great to see for inspiration! What I did learn and find very useful was use of lineweight to manipulate depth and form to trick the viewers eye. Kind of applied optical illusions with purpose. Second two images are a before and after translation of two cubes. Here is a nice link that explains: http://blah.ksteinfe.com/foundations_of_drawing/drawing_lineweight.html

11 tones with markers was difficult. Pencil tones looked more separated on paper than in photo…but you’ll just need to take my word for that. One weird thing for graphite, the brain does not seem to process the difference in adjacent tones (especially mid-tones) immediately. I have to stare before I can see one is lighter, one is darker…is that normal??

A beautiful image - definitely takes you to another world…looking forward to learning how to deal with circles and ellipses intuitively!

So 600 years….well that answers my question then! Thanks @Marshall Vandruff 👊

1. For masters of perspective examples the comments below cover more than I could come up with so I’d just be repeating. One thing that would be interesting and I think useful for me at least, is to understand how the illusion of perspective developed…the Ancient Egyptians drew completely flat images but even these contain a hint of perspective in terms of overlap. This example, about 3250 years old from Tomb of Seti I, Valley of the Kings, Luxor. I like the old Japanese paintings and these have more depth (relative to ancient Egypt) with scaling of objects and horizon lines, but still very rudimentary - example is from sometime in Heian period ~800-1100 AD. Then compare that with use of curvilinear perspective in the Jan Van Eyck portrait from 1434 which obviously shows a way more complex perspective understanding. Compare all of them with a modern master like Kim Jung Gi who seemed to effortlessly sketch the most complex perspectives plus bend and break the rules to add even more character. So, where did the knowledge come from, how did it evolve and how do we learn it? I know nothing about art history so these examples are just some quick research to illustrate the point. There is one other modern influence for me that I don’t think has been mentioned - Mattias Adolfsson - a Swedish artist who maybe is not a master of perspective as such, but is certainly a master of drawing intuitively from imagination….but he naturally incorporates a lot of perspective. Like Kim Jung Gi he is great to watch. 2. How to modify complex forms to put them into perspective (simple 1 point to curvilinear), convincingly, from any angle, from imagination? How to keep track of ‘infinite’ objects each with their own perspective orientation/vanishing points within the primary perspective of a complex picture? Can there be multiple ‘first-order’ perspectives or is this just 1-2-3-5-7-9 etc point perspectives? How to stop guessing? How to stop accidentally drawing complex forms and combinations of forms in a different perspective than visualized in the minds eye? How to bend and break the rules to add character without destroying the illusion of perspective?

Nice demo as always @Stan Prokopenko . Would there be any sense/value in this ‘re-draw pose at different angles from memory’ exercise for just gesture drawing? Wondering if that would be a good focus when snatching a few mins to sketch from the background noise of life! Cheers

IT SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK AT ALL :(( !!! So I decided to draw every item from reference: FAILED. As if my brain changes randomly any angle I'm trying to draw. Is there a LEVL Zero assignment? :D I don't know what my problem is because the previous perspective assignemtns went quite well. Any ideas what the challenge might be? Thank you a lot!

Sailing a bit close to the deadline for this one and hoped I’d get more completed but here are levels 1 and 2 snuck in a couple of hours before midnight. For level 1, it was quite revealing how much detail I missed after 2 min ‘contemplation’ of image then re-draw from memory. A quick check and writing the items I missed really seemed to clarify for second attempt from memory. For level 2, altering proportions based on original ref image went ok - drawing the pose from different angles was really tough…I mean, the pose can be argued as basically recreated but proportions, angles and quality of the figure drawing were just way poorer….i can see this is gonna need some intensive practice!

Thanks as ever for the critique @Stan Prokopenko! Yeah, after this course, Marshall’s perspective course, figure drawing fundamentals and the Marvel comics course, I will get on to that anatomy course….honestly, if it wasn’t for those pesky distractions (wife, kids, day job) I may have had a chance at becoming competent in the 10 year window oft quoted on Draftsmen Podcast 😂. Still, the kids appreciate my Pokémon drawing skills that have resulted from this drawing basics course…what other ambitions are more important than that !! ❤️