Had some long overdue home DIY before I could start this project. Fixing a leaky bathroom tap led to a cosmic resignation that the replacement valve cartridge was as good as anything to draw. Pretty dry subject matter (sorry). Studied it for a few minutes then copied Peter Han process in demo of steam train and started with an ortho to eyeball up the proportions of different sections. Then simplified to 4 forms, then a blob. Next, drew a load of blobs in different orientations. Cross contours were used as markers for the tops of each different form as a rough proportion guide. Thought about different degrees of foreshortening whilst blobbing these out. Converted to boxes with a messy pencil phase, then stuck some tracing paper over and inked with some line weight variation. Finished with some ellipses in boxes practice from the Drawing Basics course to create the lowermost form (1). Learned a few things… i) Overlapping forms create an appearance of offset from centre. Saw Peter Han do this with the cow guard of the steam train, I understood why, but only once I saw him do it. I’d never have done that if I’d been drawing cos I would not have known to. Constructing forces it to happen. ii) After drawing the ortho and simplifying to four boxes, there was zero need to revert back to the object itself - which was both revelatory and practical…cos it’s round and does not sit still on my sloping desk. Again, constructing means you just needed to draw some boxes. iii) I used a fat, blunt, soft lead mechanical pencil for the messy blob to boxes part. At first I thought I should switch to a hard, fine point pencil due to the smudgey mess…but actually the blunt soft lead meant I felt much looser and the lines were more forgiving so it was way easier to construct. iv) some viewing angles produce boring drawings! v) Hard to be perfectly consistent with proportions for all orientations done free hand but guess that is not the point here. After I finished the blobs, I could not be sure that they were gonna be at all useful but they actually were. Trust the blobs! (But ignore the bits that don’t perfectly match the subject)

Took an experimental approach to this assignment. Accepting the challenge, I went for total freehand - ink, freehand circles and of course, freehand lines pulled with no paper rotation - picture one. Feeling quietly confident, I then did a red pen, compass and protractor analysis of a random but representative sample - picture two. Results: - on average lines are out by 2.27 deg - maximum error was up to 5 deg - largest errors seemed to be over the NW to SE axis which happens to be normal to my most comfortable SW to NE line pull orientation - the proportion of +ve vs -ve error is 44% vs 56% respectively - my ‘perfect’ zero angle error was a lackluster 14% - my ‘perfect’ straight line (same error/no error on exact opposite) proportion was a dismal 12.5% I now have a quantitative baseline for analysis of future improvement….however, feeling a little disappointed at my performance and the need for a more rapid improvement to bring back that misplaced confidence, I suddenly remembered university days, shooting pool in the student bar on a Friday evening. As we all know, an optimal intake of alcohol, just enough, but not too much, places one in the ‘beer window’ where you become pretty much unstoppable. Purely for research purposes, I decided to try getting into the beer window for this assignment. With lucky red pen in hand, 6 cans of moderate strength lager downed and feeling invincible, I set pen to paper and what a result! Nailed it! Freehand circle division mastery - picture 3. I defy any and all to find even 1/10th of a degree error… N.B. I definitely did not go back a few videos, pick up 📐 and 📏 and pair of compasses and cheat…though my recollection is a little hazy.

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??

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?