tackling certain loomis demos?

[royaltea]

hey guys, i hope this is the right section. since i've been learning to draw i've tried go to through loomis books but i always get stuck somewhere when a certain page will seem either vague or too difficult for me to tackle and i'll end up abandoning it and not advancing beyond it because im not sure what to do. hopefully you guys can help me.

my question this time has to do with his "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth" book. for those of you who have the book or pdf (hopefully im allowed to talk about it that way) can any of you help me with the page titled "Outlines in Relation to Solid Form"? It's page 35 in my pdf and page 42 of the actual book. I can handle all the material up until this point, but I really struggle with setting up the boxes and outlines he has, let alone doing what he does to combine them into a solid at the center. and when i try this part it becomes so meticulous that it feels like a huge amount of effort for something at this point in the book, and also something so relatively simple as making a solid that i cant help but think i'm totally over thinking what im supposed to be doing or its assumed i know how to set it up but i dont actually have the knowledge i need to make this into a simple exercise. he also says it wont be easy and im wondering if im supposed to master it at this point or not

i hope you guys can help me because his first book, fun with a pencil, was really great and helpful and maybe if this works out i might find help with other parts of his books that i struggle with here.

[dpaint]

What he is trying to impress on the reader is the contour lines for each axis that make up a three dimensional form. In design and architecture it is called a plan view.
To draw the volume of objects you must understand which parts are pointing which way. When people first start to draw they de-emphasize the dimensional effects of what they are seeing. Exercises like this help you to understand the form better by forcing you to draw each axis separately.

[OmenSpirits]

It's much like drawing in three point perspective, being able to see the top.

copy how he does without the object first.

then break the walls, & floor down by grids, then use the grid points (where the squares intersect) to get the center-line for your object's height & width.

Hope that helps.

[royaltea]

i think i see what you guys and what he is saying but im still not sure how to practice



copy how he does without the object first.

then break the walls, & floor down by grids, then use the grid points (where the squares intersect) to get the center-line for your object's height & width.



are you saying to just draw what he has in the first picture and then to just draw the second picture without setting it up like its done in the first picture? cause what im trying to do is to set it up like in the first picture and then draw the object with the guidelines and grids i've set up but by that point its a big mess of lines that i cant tell which guidelines are which anymore.

[George Abraham]

It's a mental program he wasn't really good at explaning.

It's simply that you need to carry awareness of the whole and awareness of the center of dimentional objects while you draw them. A 3D volumised center feeling, not a 3d middle of outline shape feeling.

[royaltea]

A 3D volumised center feeling, not a 3d middle of outline shape feeling.

what do you mean by this? im not sure i understand

[OmenSpirits]

i think i see what you guys and what he is saying but im still not sure how to practice



are you saying to just draw what he has in the first picture and then to just draw the second picture without setting it up like its done in the first picture? cause what im trying to do is to set it up like in the first picture and then draw the object with the guidelines and grids I've set up but by that point its a big mess of lines that i cant tell which guidelines are which anymore.
See that corner he'd drawn in the first image?

We'll say it's 2 squares across/down, and two for length for the inner wall and the floor.

The line that intersects on the center of the wall (second line from the outer wall) would be your center. Now, we'll say that the ball is one square from the wall, making the center-line the second line on the floor and the second line on the wall to the right.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/7548/24064142.jpg

Your center line would be where they intersect. If you setup a grid and using the center line as your spine, the circumference of your object would be within the confines of the size and width of said object.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/3629/35495272.jpg

[JeffX99]

Yeah - you're just overthinking it a bit - he's talking about what we generally call "cross contour" lines today. Imagine a leg/thigh - you have the contour, the "edges" of it - if you drew lines "around" it perpendicular to the edges you have cross contour lines - basically like longitude and latitude of any form - the longitude being the contour of the leg, the latitude being the cross contour lines of the form.

In general, when you get stuck on something like that - just move on to some other excercise/example you find interesting - it's not like you go through Loomis, Bridgman, Carlson, etc. once and then you get it - you'll refer back to parts of these seminal works for many years to come.

[OmenSpirits]

Ah, my bad. :(

[JeffX99]

No, no - I didn't mean you Omen - that's a pretty good recreation of Loomis' diagram - except maybe to put the sphere in there where the axis lines intersect. The OP was asking if they were maybe overthinking it - so I was just sayin yeah, a little bit.

It's basically just him talking about 3D modeling before there was such a thing!

[OmenSpirits]

Ah, okay. :)

Figured it was self-explanatory where the orb would go for the OP.

It was just to clear up what I'd meant for him. Picked up the grid idea from a book on perspective. :)