AS Level Final Piece WIP - FINALLY FINISHED!

[Spikings]

***UPDATE:*** *falls over* I'm finally finished. There are parts that aren't perfect, plenty of places to improve upon, but its been nearly 3 whole months since I started this - anyone woth common sense who had the choice would have stopped this before now, but heck...after showing my teacher the piece, they said I'd get the top grade for sure, which at the end of the, um...90 days is what's the most important.

What. A. Learning. Curve. Perspective, rendering, colour, landscape, focal points, lighting, detail...I've just grown in confidence while doing this, and comparing it to last year's work...well, it just isn't worth comparing.
Without overbaking the cake, I just want to thank everyone here on CA for all their helpful critique, especially in the early stages when I needed it the most. I've appreciated it so much, and it just goes to show how far critique can get an artist.

The final version is below.

Bit of a read here, but you might need to know this. :/

The thing is, landscapes and architecture aren't my strong points, so thats exactly why I decided to do this for my art unit.
No matter what happens this piece will be finished, I can't dump it unless I want to lose a good third of my marks.
I decided to play this slowly and safely, and used Rahll's (DeviantArt) advice on how to properly develop a piece. At the moment I'm just doing lines so that the perspective can be lined up and correct before I get anywhere near rendering.

Which leads me onto the fact that perspective is pretty much my weakest point in general all-round art. I've tried studying it a bit, but found it too complicated or difficult to get my head round. I really need some ear-bashing, critiquing and if you can, some red lines to point me in the right direction because I know the perspective is wrong in some places in this picture, but I can't for the life of me correct them as I haven't enough experience or time to study perspective effectively. I know the very basics, nothing more.

So I'm in a pickle. I have a piece that contains architecture (which I've never drawn), general landscapes (which I'm not good at) and some insane perspective (which I've never learnt properly) and above all this MUST be finished.
I can't start over with a different angle either as my research development coursework says that I picked this angle and must stick with it, neither can I change the building or surroundings itself, as it's a real building. If you've ever been to Istanbul, you may know it - the Blue Mosque. You might want to Google it if you don't know it.


So all in all, any help (ANY) will be appreciated. I can't do this on my own, and unless my perspective is corrected I know that the finished piece won't look right at all.

P.S.This thread will be updated regularly

UPDATE 21.4.10:

[jesaisrien]

Let's keep on keeping it simple.

First, keep all your verticals vertical. I drew a couple of red lines in the one pic just to show.

Second, define your vanishing point and your horizon, as in the second pic. All your "horizontals" will radiate from the vanishing point.

That should get you started. You probably have some rework to do.

[Spikings]

Jesaisrien, you are a star. I can't thank you enough, really. I've already sorted out the vertical errors of the picture now, but the vanishing point is going to take quite a while to edit around, so I'll have to update tomorrow. Again, thank you.

Edit: Just finished placing in the perspective lines - I now have 2 vanishing points on my page. My drawing is severely out of proportion with the correct perspective, it's unbelievable. It may take more than a day to fix up...

[Spikings]

Ok, I've been at this for five hours today, mostly because I suck at perspective and had to do and re-do many parts of the picture. I'm sticking to the courtyard at the moment and will work on the main mosque tomorrow. I'm not sure how to start that though as the domes confuse me in terms of perspective :/

I'm pretty pleased with the improvements, but there's something fishy going on with the corners. You say make vertical lines all...vertical, but now that I've done that they don't seem to add up when the two sides of the courtyard piece together.

I've put in the perspective lines to show you...the red vanishing point is way off the page, hope that's not a bad thing.

[Lhune]

The red vanishing point is not on your horizon though, that's your problem.

[Spikings]

...Does it have to be to work?

[Avvatar]

The reason why it looks so messed up is because your red vanishing point is not on the horizon line.

[Avvatar]

Oops looks like someone got to it first. Anyways, yes it does have to be on the horizon line to work, that's the entire point of it.

P.S. You mentioned domes confuse you, the trick is to think of them at first as boxes. Construct a box in proper perspective where they will go and you can pretty much just eye it from that point.

[Lhune]

Yes, everything that vanishes in whatever perspective will vanish towards the horizon line. If you put vanishing points all over the place it will look horribly off.

[Spikings]

Ok, cheers guys. I've done a bit of rotating and tweaking, I just need to adjust all the vertical lines now which will take an hour at least. Should be able to post an update tonight.

Thanks again for all of this, you have no idea how much you're helping.

[Avvatar]

One other little thing is your ellipses on the towers. The ones that are above the horizon line will pretty much flip the other way, so instead of dipping down, they dip up. The closer they are to the horizon line, the more subtle this will be, and vice versa as they move away from it.

[Nezumi Works]

The thing about doing layouts that aren't natural settings (forests and the like you can be a bit looser and get away with it), you need a really good foundation in perspective to make it work. Fortunately, the basics of perspective are really pretty straightforward, and work the same all the time. There's an excellent tutorial on the basics here. It requires a lot of planning before you get to the fun parts of adding detail, but it's worth it.

Things to remember here are (1) there can only ever be one horizon line per piece, (2) do everything as simple boxes first, and refine later (you can leave those simple shapes on a separate layer to refer back to as you go), (3) in one-point perspective, put the vanishing point on the "page", but in two-point perspective put them well off the "page", (4) remember that arcs flatten as they get closer to the horizon line, and (5) the further an object is from the horizon line, the more you can see the top or bottom of it depending on if it's above or below.

A trick you might like as well for things like door placement, you can always find the centre of an area in perspective by drawing a box around it, then draw a line from each corner to make an X. The point where the lines cross is the middle. You can then draw a vertical there, and subdivide further (i.e., it's now two boxes). Make those verticals the apex of each door, and they're guaranteed to be evenly spaced.

Hopefully all that helps.

[Spikings]

Thank you for all the tips people, I'm gonna try that cube thing with the domes. Cheers for the link in particular Nezumi, I'll have a look at that now before I go to bed.
Done about six hours on this thing today, and although I haven't got round to doing the domes yet, I'll give them a shot tomorrow. Hopefully by then the courtyard will be all correct.
Until then, this is my latest update, and by heck it's looking better than the original.



Something funny going on with the corner...

[JJ~]

Looks great after correction, I'm working on GCSE final piece.

[Spikings]

Here comes another update. I think I have the courtyard completely sussed out now and redid the corner a little so it looks more normal. It shouldn't be such a big deal as there will be round pillars there anyways. I've left perspective lines on incase you want to refer to them for incorrections...I might have the rejig the percpectives on the two minarets, I'll have to figure that one out today.
Nezumi, I used your suggestions on the domes, and it worked a treat. However the row of domes on the right don't look very...domey. Is that perspective error or just not putting in curvy enough lines?

Next comes the mosque itself...

[Nezumi Works]

Part of the problem with domes is that, let's face it, domes are hard. The best way to do them accurately is mark out the base of each dome separately as a square and use the X-method I mentioned above to find the centre. Use your perspective lines to find the middle of each side (line through vanishing point and centre of square, hitting both sides) and use those as the points where the base circle touches the sides. Run a vertical up to whatever height you're looking at (another guide line from the vanishing point would be good here to make certain they're all the same height) and draw an arc from one side of the circle to the other, going through that point. That should keep everything lined up and in perspective. Takes a lot of time to do it for every dome, but it's worth the time invested. Don't rush it, take your time.

[Spikings]

Many thanks again Nezumi. I'll try out that idea tomorrow, my head's killing me at the moment so I'm gonna need an early night. :/ I'll update this post once I've fixed the domes and minarets. Hope to have the whole outline done by the end of the weekend.

[Avvatar]

I'd still try the box method first to figure out the space each dome will occupy. Right now the domes are too big for the space they occupy so they overlap. Also, you didn't show the circular form of the base so they don't look like domes.

So my advice is to first draw a box at each interval that accurately represents the size of the dome. Then you can use the x method on the base to figure out what the ellipse will look like, and then it's just a matter of creating the arc.

If I may say so though, I think you are being too technical too soon. Through my own experiences I find it much more efficient to sketch out the piece to get the composition, scaling, and general perspective correct before I go all technical. This way if I don't like where it's headed I can start over easily without wasting much time, rather than worrying about setting up my horizon lines and vanishing points from the get go. For me this works the best but I guess it's personal preference.

[Raffix]

you really think that asking the internet for help with A Level work is a good idea? examiners would not be impressed if they somehow found out

[Avvatar]

What are you talking about Raffix. First off I don't see any reason what so ever why a teacher would not like a student trying to get help from different sources. This site has amazing artists who try to help, or simply people with more experience and different opinions, so why not use them?

Don't refer to this as simply "the internet," it's much more than that. It's probably the best type of forum for so many people around the world, of all skill levels, to collaborate and share their thoughts and works with others.

I find it a lot more impressive when someone steps up and asks for help then when someone thinks they can do it all on their own. She has all ready fixed quite a few major issues with her piece thus far, and it will only get better when she is more comfortable with perspective. So if you think examiners or whatever would be more impressed with a flawed piece done all by yourself rather than having an accurate piece done with the guidance of others, you are solely mistaken.

[Spikings]

Oh the joy of perspective. I redid the domes and my, they looked better and it only took an hour. Then I realised the right hand side looked extremely wonky, so I had to redo 3 layers of perspective lines and do a quick overhaul on basic measurements. Re-doing the right hand side has now taken me an extra 2 and a half hours.
Again, the joy of perspective. But at least I learn

Anyways, I think I'm about as done as I can be with the courtyard. I tried altering the perspective of the minarets, but it was very...difficult. It came up with lines that were extreme compared to the originals - I didn't know whether the perspective was wrong or I was wrong, so in the end I took the easy way out and left them as they were. If you think the minarets look bad to you, tell me and I'll have another go.

I shall try out the rest of the mosque tomorrow. Any major errors you can see, please point them out thank you very much, all of you.

Avvatar: I can understand where you are coming from when you say I might be going too technical too soon. Proble is I don't have enough experience under my belt to do anything otherwise nearly every piece of art I've done has been done in a different way to the last, there are no consecutive steps. On one hand, this helps me discover different styles with a little more ease, but at the same time there is no consistency. I guess with time, there will be a consistent way of doing things

[Raffix]

okay look i didn't mean any offense, it's just that i finished my art GCSE last year, and we had to sign a piece of paper saying that we hadn't had any help with our projects aside from our teachers and general art/drawing classes.

having people from around the world help with specific modifications to any individual piece of coursework (let alone a Final Piece) seems to break this rule imo.

it's not as though it's just a hobby piece or even a professional commission, this is actually going towards an A-Level mark that will make or break the applicant's chances of getting into uni. You can;t ask people on the internet for help with an English Literature essay, could you, so why should a piece of artwork be any different.

[Spikings]

None taken, Raffix.

I suppose that it depends on what they mean by help. If they mean getting someone outside of your teachers/drawing classes to draw and do the work partially for you, then I will be avoiding that at all costs. While jesaisrien above didgive me more visual advice, they didn't actually draw very accurately onto my piece what it should look like. A couple of straight lines and a rough perspective example is pretty similar to what you would find on the internet anyways, only this one was more personal.
At the moment, all I'm being given is advice on how to refine my piece. My parents could do much the same, yet they aren't included in who can give me help...but you can't exactly stop them from trying to help you out if I showed it to a friend via email and they commented saying something wasn't quite right, it would be impossible to ignore their reply and therefore be noted as to the error.

I wouldn't allow anyone to draw accurately over my piece, and even if they did I wouldn't use those same lines as that would directly break the rules - that's like physical help in improving my drawing. Advice on the other hand can be taken and interpreted as you like. Websites like thestudentroom.co.uk let students from the other side of the country talk about their projects and give advice to each other. Not to mention there are some related threads below which point to other GCSE projects, one of which asked for opinions.

I will double-check on Monday with my teachers as to whether this is definitely allowed, but common sense makes me think it shouldn't be a problem. I do appreciate your concern though - at least now I'm aware of what the rules state.

[Avvatar]

There is a difference between taking advice and having someone do parts or all of the work for you. Quite frankly I think it is stupid for any academic institute to say you aren't allowed any outside help, it's one of the best ways to learn as long as you are the one doing the work in the end. I might sound a bit angry, but I feel like all the art they taught us in pre-college grades was utterly useless.

I am attempting to get into a very competitive animation program, and I learned wayyyyyyyy more in the two months working on my portfolio than I did in the cumulative art classes I have taken since I was born. It seems everyone thinks learning art history and doing random crafts assignment is far more important than actually teaching me to draw. The reason why I learned so much more than I did when i had all those teachers is because everyone that helped me didn't waste time with random art stuff, they told me exactly where I needed to improve and some really good ways to do it. These are just random students too, some in the program all ready, and a lot of them just friends in my course. Odd that they had a way bigger influence on me then any teacher has.

And yeah you could ask someone for an opinion on your essay, again it's just a matter of getting a second mind looking at it and making it better, rather than having someone go ahead and rewrite parts of it.

Anyways /rant off. It's hard to help in certain areas without actually showing the person what to do. I could try explaining perspective in words but it would be hard to understand what to do without visuals to accompany them.

Let's just stick to making this piece come out as awesome as possible hmm?!?!

P.S. There is a lot of variance going on in terms of size and shape with your domes. I have a feeling you are using some type of line tool to do this whole thing? Unless it's a requirement, I would suggest hand drawing as much as possible to nail the shapes and whatnot down, and then go back over them more technically and accurately if you have to. You can add the inside line to the archs and pillars to show they aren't constructed of paper. I am guessing the Minarets are those towers things. I don't think for now they look too bad, but as I mentioned before the top rings need to be flipped since they sit above your horizon line and we'd see the bottom rather than the top. For now just try and get all the basics down, that's the annoying boring part. I find detailing architecture to be one of my favorite times of drawing, and it will make your piece look 2913918391 times better!

[Tony Wallace]

There is a difference between taking advice and having someone do parts or all of the work for you. Quite frankly I think it is stupid for any academic institute to say you aren't allowed any outside help, it's one of the best ways to learn as long as you are the one doing the work in the end. I might sound a bit angry, but I feel like all the art they taught us in pre-college grades was utterly useless.

I am attempting to get into a very competitive animation program, and I learned wayyyyyyyy more in the two months working on my portfolio than I did in the cumulative art classes I have taken since I was born. It seems everyone thinks learning art history and doing random crafts assignment is far more important than actually teaching me to draw. The reason why I learned so much more than I did when i had all those teachers is because everyone that helped me didn't waste time with random art stuff, they told me exactly where I needed to improve and some really good ways to do it. These are just random students too, some in the program all ready, and a lot of them just friends in my course. Odd that they had a way bigger influence on me then any teacher has.

And yeah you could ask someone for an opinion on your essay, again it's just a matter of getting a second mind looking at it and making it better, rather than having someone go ahead and rewrite parts of it.

Anyways /rant off. It's hard to help in certain areas without actually showing the person what to do. I could try explaining perspective in words but it would be hard to understand what to do without visuals to accompany them.

Let's just stick to making this piece come out as awesome as possible hmm?!?!

P.S. There is a lot of variance going on in terms of size and shape with your domes. I have a feeling you are using some type of line tool to do this whole thing? Unless it's a requirement, I would suggest hand drawing as much as possible to nail the shapes and whatnot down, and then go back over them more technically and accurately if you have to. You can add the inside line to the archs and pillars to show they aren't constructed of paper. I am guessing the Minarets are those towers things. I don't think for now they look too bad, but as I mentioned before the top rings need to be flipped since they sit above your horizon line and we'd see the bottom rather than the top. For now just try and get all the basics down, that's the annoying boring part. I find detailing architecture to be one of my favorite times of drawing, and it will make your piece look 2913918391 times better!

One thing I learned coming up through the ranks as a martial artist, and then becoming an instructor with my own school, is that sometimes the person you can learn the most from is the person just above you in the hierarchy. The reason being is, they just went through what you're currently working on, and so all the struggles and work arounds are still fresh in their mind. As well, the fellow student may have had to make a leap between what the teacher has explained and what the teacher wants. Bridging that gap (especially important for people with different learning styles) is a vital part of the process that often only other students can offer.

I understand why they'd make someone sign a paper like that, but I think it's counterproductive. As long as someone else isn't doing the work for you, I don't see a problem with getting advice. In the commercial art world, it's pretty much anything goes to turn over that image to get to the next one (without plagiarizing of course).

[Spikings]

Anyways, let's get back to the main plotbuster

Courtyard is now finished for this section of development, now onto the main mosque. It's not a clean lineart, because I would get so fustrated otherwise, and I admit I didn't stick to the vanishing point on the right very well, but I'm having difficulties again. The shapes for the rooves and walls are just poking fun at me. Again if you spot anything that sticks out in the wrong way at you, please tell me. I'll enclose a couple of references if you want to look at those compared to mine.



References:
http://i49.tinypic.com/23sfxpv.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/1zxb9mb.jpg

[Craz]

VAST improvement. Remember where your horizon line is and make sure that we can't see the top of anything that is above the horizon line. (The horizon line is your eye level.)

[Nezumi Works]

Biggest thing I can see at the moment is the large structure at the back could probably go to the right a hair, it doesn't seem quite lined up. You also want to reduce the height of some of the arches on the structure, since they're causing tangents with the tier above. Tangents are drawing errors where one shape shares a line with another, causing the image to look flattened. In this case, it looks like you've got a bunch of blocks just stacked on each other. Pulling the top of the arc down a little (which I see is right based on a reference photo) should fix the problem and make it look a lot better.

[Spikings]

Ok, took in Craz's and Nezumi's info...Nezumi, you may have to rephrase what you said - I think I've got the idea of what you meant with the tiers and curves, but because there were so many curves in the main infrastructure, I had to guess a little if I've corrected the issue, please tell me.

Sooo...I think this could be my final lineart and the conclusion to my journey of...wonderful...perspective. Any last pointers before I go onto the greyscale values?

[Avvatar]

Big improvement! Nezumi is right, the large mosque part doesn't quite line up with the doorway from the courtyard. I looked up some reference and notice that your domes aren't consistent with the actual mosque. The real ones are two tiered and are more compressed vertically. I am not entirely sure how accurate you want or are supposed to be though so keep in mind some comments are comparing the actual structure to yours.

It looks like you are missing some of the sloping roofs that are present on the lower tier of the main structure, right above the line of domes from the courtyard. You need to figure out how the different tiers are positioned in correlation to each other too, in your image they are basically sitting right on top of each other while in the reference they recede into the back a bit to allow for the domed roofings. I think you used the wrong vanishing point for that little sloped roof structure on the top tier.

Are you planning on addint a lot more structural detail in the painting phase? If so I would suggest getting as much of that out of the way now. For instance you can add the courtyard floor, and add all the little architectural details that will make it pop.