Assignment - Melted Pancakes with Philip Dimitriadis
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LESSON NOTES
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Philip Dimitriadis teaches how to draw organic shapes using the Melted Pancakes technique. In this lesson, you'll learn:
- Two Methods for Drawing Melted Pancakes:
- Method 1: Using center lines and wrapping to create three-dimensional lumps.
- Method 2: Drawing walls and mimicking curves for solid forms.
- Understanding the Horizon Line: Learn how the position relative to the horizon line affects the appearance of shapes.
- Creating Depth: Stack shapes and use overlap to convey depth in your drawings.
- Slicing Shapes at Angles: Add complexity by cutting shapes to reveal new surfaces.
- Composition Techniques: Use scale, connect shapes, and guide the viewer's eye through your artwork.
- Drawing Through Shapes: Enhance spatial awareness by visualizing and sketching hidden edges.
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
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![Christopher G]()
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![Gloria Wickman]()
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![Alison Shelton]()
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![Rachel Dawn Owens]()
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![@partyy]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![@kotka]()
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![Melanie Scearce]()
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![Daniele Olevano]()
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Drawing Organic Shapes with Depth and Perspective
- Objective: Learn to draw organic shapes with depth and perspective.
- Steps:
- Draw the First Type of Pancake:
- Place a horizon line in the middle of the page.
- Start by drawing an organic shape split by a middle line.
- Freehand two isometric lines, intersect them, and create a rounded top like a roller coaster.
- Draw the contours over the top to give the shape depth, using dotted lines for additional effect.
- Draw the Second Type of Shape:
- Mimic the line from the first shape both above and below the horizon line.
- Pay attention to the thinness of the ellipses as they approach the horizon.
- Divide the shape with a line to see through it for better understanding.
- Practice Stacking Shapes:
- Draw some shapes under and some over the horizon line.
- Stack different shapes on top of each other to see how the perspective changes.
- Always draw through the shape, which helps in understanding and visualizing the 3D aspect.
- Draw the First Type of Pancake:
- Timing:
- Spend 20 to 30 minutes per page, or more if you are a beginner.
- Try different speeds: set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes on some pages to challenge your pace.
Deadline - submit by Mar 05, 2025 for a chance to be in the critique video!
First attempt - maybe this is the “wad” paper he was talking about.
I feel like I can make an individual stack fine, but cohesion and composition don’t seem to gel.
I don’t know - maybe that’s just something that takes time?
I will do this practice regularly, I know I need more repetition to improve and I'm not as quick and deliberate as I would like. In those 30 min I still don't have the mental capacity to be thinking about the composition. Consistency of the ellipses getting thinner as they come closer to the horizon line should be better
But I guess it's fine as it was my first time attempting this practice and I do naturally think in this direction when working
This is my favorite assignment so far :) I wanna do a lot of these! I attempted this once on paper, then digital, and then while I was at work the next day I got my sketchbook out and did two 15-minute pages. I really like experimenting with different horizon lines and groups of pancakes, but I feel like mine all look like a very similar shape? Like they're mostly neat cylinders. I'm gonna watch the critique and look at everyone else's before I do more.
Here is my first pancake cave landscape.
I love the frame tips. I felt it really helps to stay focus on what I was drawing.
Here is my attempt. I tried to make weird shapes to challenge myself. Looking at it back I think it looks okay maybe I'll go back and do more. Need to work on cleaner lines though.
I don't think this came together well as a composition but I learned a lot more about thinking in terms of 3d forms. I also realized my gut instinct is to always show the top plane even when it shouldn't be visible because its above the horizon line, so I found myself having to correct that a lot.
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6mo
Nice drawing! Thanks for sharing.
There is a great balance of large, medium, and small shapes across the drawing. You’ve got the right idea placing all of the smaller shapes around the horizon line.
You could push this idea even further to show more depth. It’s ok if the shapes are so large the run off the page, while other shapes may only be slivers.
I hope this draw-over helps:
Im having a hard time understanding sizes i think. More specifically about the size differences of parallel planes.
What I mean is for example, due to change in angle as we move further away from the horizon line, the "plane of a pancake that is further away from us is actually drawn larger than the plane that is closer to us." Imagine a floating pancake beneath the horizon line, the top side is closer to us but we draw the bottom side larger. I just can't intuitively understand the reason behind this.
However when it comes to height lines, the ones closer to us are longer. Intuitively i always thought if something is "closer to us, bigger it is", but I realize due to angles and the area we see of a plane the size of the plane could change. Could someone explain this more clearly to me? I feel like I'm missing something crucial or approaching this the wrong way.
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7mo
Don't stress too much, there are lessons coming up that cover this subject, so stick with it! Here is a visual that hopefully helps clarify a bit. The practical reasons why will be covered in future videos.
If the x axis is the width, the z axis is the depth, and the y axis is the height, you're correct in thinking that if something is closer it's bigger, but more specifically that occurs on the z axis. the horizontal planes of an object moving upwards in space become more compressed as they become eye level. You can experience this physically by holding a book at eye-level so you can't see the top or bottom plane, and then slowly moving it downwards.
Something about this exercise made me feel super uncomfortable in the beginning. I had to wind back several times in the video to make sure I got everything correctly understood. This is not how I usually think or draw, but after sitting a while with this, it felt somewhat easier. Great way of drawing rocks!
I was unsure whether contour lines was part of the assignment, but I saw a lot of students added them so I did it afterwards, too. Probably missed some places.
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8mo
Glad you had fun and figured something out with this project! It looks like you got it. You followed the rules of diminution overall, just these two structure stick out to me. Being so close to the horizon line, they might be a bit more foreshortened.
Im as new as you are so dont think this is the only thing that you could improve, its just what I noticed, the really long stretch coming towards us seems a bit off, as in, it doesnt seem to diminish as much as it should as it comes forward, one way to fix that is to augment the sefction closer to us, which is what I did here, but, you could also make the part closer to the horizon smaller
Gonna be honest, this is the first exercise that I really didn't feel interested in. The perspective ilusions were hard and it took me time to even start because I couldn't get it. But with this one I just felt like there was something I cant connect with.
I made myself do it for the technical knowledge, but unlike with the water, with which I couldn't stop, I was just bored here. I kind of feel bad about it but not as bad as I would feel bored if I spent more time on it :/.
Is there anything I got wrong that im not noticing? Thinking about it, this is basically what I did for the water one before doing the flow over it
Gave it a second try and created an insultingly inaccurate version of a maybe kinda Machu Picchu thing sorta
