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Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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project-wheels-on-vehicles.mp4
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project-wheels-on-vehicles-transcript-spanish.txt
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project-wheels-on-vehicles-captions-english.srt
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ASSIGNMENTS![]()
![Hayden Cremer]()
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![Vanessa White]()
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![Hayden Cremer]()
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![Vanessa White]()
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![Chuck Ludwig Reina]()
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![Ilan Jones]()
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![K. Williams]()
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Drawing wheels on vehicles is an excellent way to practice cylinders and reinforce what we've already learned.
Level 1
Draw a simple car, bus, RV, or truck focusing on the wheels.
- Add a spare tire on the front or back to practice cylinders in different orientations.
- Use photos for inspiration, not for direct copying.
- Draw your vehicle from a slightly different angle than your reference to practice perspective construction.
- Make vehicles toy-like, simplifying details and focusing on perspective.
- Start with the side view silhouette in 3-point perspective, then extrude it.
- Construct wheels by approximating square planes and drawing ellipses within. Give them thickness!
- Experiment with the same vehicle from multiple angles or different types of vehicles.
Level 2
Include at least one tank in your drawings to practice cylinders along all three axes.
- Tanks should primarily be constructed out of boxes and cylinders.
- Add simple details like headlights, a window, or more guns for enhancement.
- Use the X method to ensure consistent wheel sizes.
General Tips
- Keep lines light and clean in early stages to avoid messiness.
- Apply "X-ray vision goggles" to visualize and construct internal parts.
- Remember the techniques for constructing cylinders inside boxes.
- Review previous lessons if necessary to refresh on the concepts.
Deadline: Submit by 03/28/2024 for a chance to be in the critique video!
I struggled a lot with this project. I started by attempting the full car with wheels and I found it way harder than I expected and just couldn't get the perspective right, so I went back and did a page of practice ellipses before having another go at the car and it helped a lot! I ended up doing multiple cars because I felt like to really grasp this assignment I needed a few attempts.
After doing a few cars I felt confident enough to try the level 2 assignment, which i don't normally do, i consider myself a level 1 guy. It was definitely a lot more challening and i can tell that my tank wheels are not perfect but i'm glad I gave it a go!
Sorry team, I’m stuck and need help again, please. 🥲
Can anyone check my lines and let me know if I got them correctly? I can’t seem to get the ellipse right using these points, so I’m wondering if I plotted the points wrongly.
Also, can you please let me know if my understanding is correct?
1. The minor and major axes will cross/pass through the middle point of the plane, as that midpoint is also the midpoint of the ellipse.
2. The minor axis direction is toward the vanishing point (of the depth).
3. The major axis is perpendicular to the minor axis (meaning the angle between the major and minor axes will be 90 degrees.
Additionally, are there any tips when it comes to drawing the ellipse that touch all these 8 points? I have tried many times but I just can’t seem to connect them to draw a nice ellipse.
Really appreciate your kind guidance and advice here. Thank you so much! 🙏🏻🙏🏻
Hi Vanessa! I also struggled a lot with this project, it took a lot of failed attempts before I felt like my ellipses were looking correct.
I think all the points you listed are indeed correct, the only thing which I belive you might be misunderstanding is that the ellipse does need need to touch all 8 points on the plane, only the 4 created by the vertical and horizontal lines. The other 2 created by the major and minor axis define where the widest parts of the ellipse should be, but they do not need to touch the edges on those 4 points. I hope that makes sense!
If you're still struggling what helped me was just doing the box ellipse inside a box many times before I moved on to wheels because it gets very hard very quickly when trying to do the wheels on a car. I tried once and failed so then I went back and did a page of practice ones before going back to the car and it helped a lot.
Had to use procreate drawing perspective assist to draw the boxes. But I still find my cylinders weird but I’m to sure what went wrong.
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14d
Nice job Vanessa. Cylinders in perspective is one of the trickiest things, and often feels "off" especially when they are floating in space. I think drawing in some of the construction lines, even if using the perspective tool would really help give us some ... perspective! (Sorry bad joke!). But I do think that might help make them feel less off in your eye. To me, they look pretty good! Nice work.
Just to confirm. The minor axis here is in blue, and the major in red. Is the major perpendicular in 2D to the minor axis? As in, its like an X shape?
(when someone says perpendicular, my brain goes, what axis? xyz? or is it in 2D?)
And then the circle is stretched towards the major axis, and squished along the minor?
At first, drawing the major axis and trying to place it correctly was really throwing me off, and so my ellipses felt more right when I was not drawing it. After watching the demos, I drew some more ellipses and understood better the use case for it. Since I'm very much eyeballing the placement of it from the center of my ellipse, I think it's more useful in getting the right angle for the ellipse than anything else.
I know these are not perfect, but I think that with my renowned understanding the next ones will be better.
After struggling with the level 1 but really wanting to draw a tank, I gave it a shot. So pleased I did!
Far from 'good' - My ellipses are still very wobbly (but finally getting a little more intuitive) and I realised my turret was off center far too late... But overall definitely pleased finally after the last few days of hair tearing!
Trying to get myself alway from the safety net a ruler provides for checking convergence, so I've made more mistakes but hopefully building more intuition.
Would have fixed the wobbly top but it was near midnight! Could already see mistakes in the ellipses as soon as morning hit.
I mean... I found the perspective exercises to date all just clicked. For whatever reasons here though I just kept making mistakes. And it's amazing how a tiny error can compound so bad.
I really want to draw a tank too... May give that a go next but feeling defeated so far!
Ended up leaning more into 2 point perspective and maintaining (fairly) parallel verticals to simplify but still was tricky (although I can still see some off in the sketch from the underside - probably explains a lot)
Its odd, I do lots of circle drills and things go ok there.
But here my ellipses are wobbly and just don't look right. I think my brain is going into overdrive so I have to slowly draw each section, overthinking Vs a nice smooth ghosted ellipse.
Here is my assignment,
I feel like I progressed between each drawing. I made a lot of mistake but I think I understand them. I will try this exercise again later : )
HELP!
Ok so I'm playing with the initial 'how to draw ellipses' tutorial.
I seem to be able to get all of the prep done fine. Major/minor axes etc.
But when it comes to DRAW the ellipse.. I see I have 4 points plus the 2 axes. But.. my brain is falling over working out WHERE the ellipse is supposed to cross them. I understand it's where the 'peak' of the extent will be, and suspect that's supposed to be enough for my brain to then see 'the only ellipse that can fit'. But they end up looking misshapen, stretched, or sharp as they cross the axes.
I've tried drawing the whole ellipse in one smooth curve, or section at a time.
Can anyone offer tips/tricks/advice? I've read a few other responses in here but nothing seems to be sticking...
I'm sure I'll get it, just one of those days!
Poorly scribbled example - forgive the chicken scratch ellipse! Only had few mins.
No cylinder, just a cube to practice laying down the ellipse. VPs are close. Axis labelled.
While I can certainly make it smooth with single confident curves, I'm not convinced the dimensions are right at all wrt the curvature of the ellipse at all, particularly understanding how to translate earlier construction into where I'd expect to.cross the minor / major.
Should I just be expecting to hit some relative offset (e.g. 70% between center to edge wherever the axes ended up?)
Or - a sneaking suspicion - that this just needs to be done intuitively and I'll have to suck it up until I 'git gud'
Will give the proper exercise a go tonight
Here's one before I watch the demo - okay, I was happy that I remembered some tricks but also had to look some up from earlier in this course, but wew, I was desperately aware of how I was struggling with some parts hahaha.
I've never thought so hard about an ellipse in my life, lol. I started this on Sunday evening (the drawings gone over with pen) and it wasn't a fun experience. It was one of those days where i felt like my hand just wouldn't cooperate and my lines came out shaky and not where i wanted them. Oh well, i came back the next day and tried a couple cars for a warm up and they turned out much better, imo. The tank i did last night and am pretty pleased with it. I skipped reference for the last three drawings, maybe it helped? I don't know, but i was for sure having fun by the end of it all.
Nice work! You did a great job.
I'm currently very much in the 'brain and hand not working with ellipses' early part of this particular project!
Mini-attempt with wheelchair and sharing some testing... Wheelchair has nice transparency that the other wheel is also well visible. In a perfect world, i would have drawn the 2 more circles for pushing forward, but i discarded those as it would have become too crowded.
I struggled a bit with drawing ellipse and major axis. Measuring the 4 points and drawing ellipse was bit insufficient for my level, so i tried to mirror the 4 points to the other side of the minor axis, so there would be 8 points to draw the ellipse from. But it seems that it does not work in the end. At least when the vanishing points are nearby, then the mirrored points will be outside of the original box the ellipse supposed to fit into. Could be sloppy drawing or inability to draw the projected square where the circle could fit (quick check, that when projecting ellipse, it will not remain as ellipse?).
My First Attempt. Took a hell lotta time and still I see a lot of mistakes.
Request a review and suggestions to improve please.
Back at this course after a long break... The back ellipse on the truck didn't look right, it made the cylinder look like it was angled at the back. So I tried it again by eye balling it. Also the wheels came out a bit too thick.
Fourth one is following along with the demo. My truck ended up on a different angle looking up with it with the horizon line below the whole truck. Struggled with the wheels on the far side of the truck
Just realised my truck body was not really a square and so I was trying to fit an ellipse into a rectangle which is probably why it came out funny
Posting a few pages in case it is helpful to others. I have to remind myself that it's ok to take a while to practice before trying a "final" version of the project and/or it's ok to try the assignment multiple times. I hope others know that it's ok too - you're doing great just by showing up and putting in the work!
This and the portrait project, will be a exercise that will need many repetitions from this chapter.
I found this project quite tricky but overall enjoyable. I think I need to plan ahead with guidelines more as I found myself going back often to re do curtain bits especially the ovals.
This was quite difficult! I wanted to do it free hand, I can see the perspective is not correct, it will take me practice to intuitively correct it.
I struggled a lot with this one so I'll have to give it another go. I am still trying to understand how perspective is affecting the cylinders, and getting destroyed in line quality and boxes. Either way, it is still good and shows me where I can improve. Hopefully trying it again will improve my ability to hold the forms in my mind and let me have cleaner lines.
