Ellipse practice

[kysg]

I was practicing plotting of ellipses.

I was using the 12pt method is this on point or am I way off??

[Kamber Parrk]

They look like ellipses, but have you put your trust in a "higher power" and sought out the forgiveness of those you have wronged?

[JeffX99]

They look like ellipses, but have you put your trust in a "higher power" and sought out the forgiveness of those you have wronged?

See? Now that's funny right there it is.

Do they look right to you? They look fine to me...and that method seems sound...though an absolute pita.

[kysg]

Well I used the 4pt method previously, and I guess I was way off on the curvature of the ellipse. I hope there is a shorcut method for picking up what seems to be the outer thirds.

The only other thing I understand is that minor axis should always go toward VP, unless I jacked that up.

[Kamber Parrk]

You do realize that the diameter of the circle and the long axis of the ellipse are NOT the same?

[kysg]

I am assuming they aren't the same so I would have made a mistake.

My understanding is minor axis always goes to VP.
I know major axis which is long end always hits at 90 degrees so if you folded the ellipse it would fold over it self, but I don't exactly know how to go about that.

anything beyond that I really don't know...

[JesseM]

I don't know what you do or don't know, but I can tell we learned very different approaches.. o.o I put together a quick run-through of the method I learned.

I think what you're curious about is in the second step, finding the minor axis. This does indeed go to a vanishing point, and I'm fairly certain its intersection with the major axis is at the center of the ellipse.
(Which isn't the center of the square, but that's what I did used here. So there's one mistake already. But I don't think it should make a huge difference.)

By the way, I'm not really qualified to teach this, as my crappy ellipse should demonstrate. If there's any errors in what I've written, please tell me so I can correct it! Otherwise, making this acted as good review for me...

I'm curious about this 12-point method. Can you briefly explain to me, or point me towards a website or book that can?

[kysg]

I just read this over good point.

yep no footballing the corners of ellipse. My problem was the major axis, the long end, but I see now yea

Minor axis always goes towards vp,

for curvature I've mostly relied on 12pt method I might keep using that untill I master freehanding the ellipse.

The 12 pt method is explained in David Chelsea's book drawing for comic book artists. It does seem to get curvature pretty well.

actually you can see in the drawing that I used it. its 2 extra points along the outer thirds.