Mike Sibley
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Posted Mar.15th, 2018, viewed 23 times
EXERCISE 3
<< Sorry that this is so badly beat up. Lots of erasure on the lower portion (flat surface of cabinet) that beat up my copy paper pretty badly. :) >>
That's perfectly OK - and one of the benefits of putting together a composition this way. You drawing paper doesn't suffer any damage. Get everything the way you want it at this stage, and then transfer it to your drawing paper so you have the perfect set of guidelines to work with.
I now compose in Photoshop instead of gridding, but the final printout is equivalent to your gridded sheet. It's exactly the way I want it before it's transferred to my drawing paper. That, in case you're wondering, is done with a graphics projector - Artograph DB300 - so I can enlarge it to suit my drawing and then trace it.
This is a very good result, and ruled lines were a good idea in this case. It's acceptable to use them in your drawing too as long as you draw over them by hand. If you have to rule a line (marking the perspective of brickwork, for example), lightly rule it on your drawing paper and then draw by hand over the top. That prevents a ruled line looking out of place by being too mechanical when compared to the rest of the drawing.
You had no trouble with the more complex curves, which many people do. Gridding is a good system for plotting positions and angles, but sometimes you have to rely more on your knowledge of what it should look like. Just mark the points where a curve crosses the sides of a box, and then connect them with one fluid line.
As I mentioned, this is one of the benefits of gridding, or of always composing away from your drawing surface, because you can fix errors without damaging your drawing. It will save you a lot of time and hassle during the drawing if you can get potentially troublesome elements right now, such as curves and ellipses. It's always best to sort these things out before you begin drawing. Erasing on your grid won't cause any problems, and perfectly drawn curves, ellipses and circles means you won't be trying to fix them on your drawing paper.
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