Auster

Hey Harschac!

Congratulations at completing lesson 1! Nice job!

Your lines overall are looking pretty good. Maybe you could take a little more time on ghosting so they feel more confident, because a few of them feels just a little bit wobbly.

You can also take your time at the start so you fray them in both ends. You just have to place your pen carefully at the beggining of each line so that doesn't happen.

ABout your elipses, a great deal of them are looking good, but I feel a little less confidence in them than with your lines. Some of them are a little bumby. You can also ghost a little more and put them down confidently, even if the firts results seem a little off, they get better with practice.

Your boxes are great too. Just apply the same line feedback!

=]

Cheers!

Hi Abhijitdebnath,

Congratulations on finishing the first lesson, i know it requires a lot of effort and patience to go through the exercise, you did a great job.

Overall impression and action points:

line: You have a very nice confident line, it is smooth and already show a sense of depth, less pressure for lines further away

ellipses: they are smooth, the main improvement i see here is for the bigger ellipses.

• the bigger ellipses are sometimes floating

• try to draw more from the shoulder or move your page to draw from a more comfortable position

• try to limit maybe to 2 times drawing through the ellipse otherwise it gets a bit messy

boxes: line work on boxes are good, be aware when you sense that you are rushing

• main improvement is to review your ghosted dots before committing to the plane, to make sure lines that need to be perpendicular to the horizon are correct.

• review the boxes that are further away from the vanishing point and compare them to the one that are closer.

• review the box from the bottom, there is a tendency to draw a triangle at the bottom.

Overall excellent job and keep up the good work in the next challenge!

Below you can find my notes, hopefully you find this critique useful.

Stefan

Notes:

• funnels

  • nicely drawn through ellipses, maybe limit to twice as it otherwise gets a bit messy.

  • nicely touching the top, bottom and side

  • with more practice they will get more packed

  • on some of the funnels the last ellipse falls short (try to ghost a bit bigger)

  • also in the middle funnel there is some floating ellipses

Table of ellipses

- the bigger the circles get the more floating there appears to be.

- (not sure) maybe try to draw more from the shoulder

- (or) rotate or move the page in order to have a more comfortable position to work from

Plotted perspective

- i like your line work, the lines further back have a lesser weight which gives a nice 3d feel. Watch out not to make the Y in the middle to thick and only emphasize the outer lines of the box.

- some of your lines are not perpendicular to the horizon, maybe you could have reviewed your dots before committing to the line.

Rough perspective

- the farther away from the vanishing point, i see similar convergence used as the boxes closer to the vanishing point.

- try to review your dots, ghost your dot and put another dot if you feel you need to refine your accuracy.

- line work is good, confident lines

- most of the time you keep the horizontal lines in line with the horizon.

line - ghosting

- very smooth confident lines

Organic perspective

- line work is confident, however i also sense some lines are more rushed than in your previous exercises

- i noticed when you draw a box from the bottom you tend to go for almost a triangle, where you are giving one of the two angles to much convergence.

- for the boxes that are off, review similar boxes on your plotted perspective, in the exercise extend your lines on the box to see where you went wrong.

Rotated boxes

- great job, again line work looks appealing nice confident, not much overshooting, also shadow gives a nice effect.

- You have a nice rotation on the first boxes, afterwards however moving up / down you draw maybe to close in the same vanishing point. left right, the movement of the rotation is good, however if the width of the plane is smaller the rotation would come out better.

Again great job!

Lines

Lines are pretty good and confident in general, keep practicing like that and you'll nail the accuracy. Only issue I see is that you got fraying on both ends in some of your lines. Don't forget to place your pen carefully at the start of each line before drawing them.

Ellipses

Ellipses are p good too. Remember that on table of ellipses, the ellipses should touch top and bottom lines, and touch the ellipses at their sides. It's hard to do it, but be sure you're aiming for it.

On funnels, remember that the minor axis should cut the ellipses in 2 even halves, same thing, be sure you're aiming for it.

Boxes

P good job overall too.

You're repeating some lines, so remember that no matter how off a line is, you shouldn't repeat it.

I also think you aren't plotting some of your lines, so if this is correct, don't forget to place starting and ending dots before drawing each line. Be careful with that, as it's pretty important to apply the ghosting method.

On organic perspective I recommend doing more overlaps. You can clarify after the overlaps by adding a confident, drawn with the shoulder superimposed line on the part of the silhouette of the boxes that overlap. Perspective on them has issues but you'll work on it on the box challenge, so don't worry about it!

Nice work men! Your work is really amazing (i struggled a lot doing boxes), your work is far better than mine.

Good luck!

Hi Timchih, hope things are well with you.

This is my first critique, just to let you know, I'm currently working through Lesson 4.

Super Imposed Lines

A good effort here, you're definitely drawing from your shoulder (which feels very unnatural for a long time by the way), just keep practicing drawing from your shoulder and your line quality will improve. One thing that helped me a lot with super imposed lines, is to fill a page of single ghosted lines between 2 points, and then go back at the end and superimpose them all.

Ghosted Planes

Planes can be tricky to begin with, especially when your're bisecting them with lines. When you're drawing the parallel lines (not the diagonals to the find the center) you need to think of those lines converging back to the same vanishing point as the parallel sides of the plane. Always be thinking of the plane as a 3D object in space, rather than a flat shape. Try to draw all of your lines without the ruler, it's not that important that all of them meet in the center, at-least to begin with, just try to freehand in those diagonals from one corner to the other.

Ghosted Lines

Your accuracy is very good here. Try practicing a variety of line lengths, very long lines, very short lines and at different angles (just rotate your drawing board for a comfortable angle of approach, which is essential equipment I feel) Also, try practicing lighter lines as well as heavier lines, being able to control the pressure of your lines takes a lot of practice, but I think it's the key to good line quality.

Elipses in Planes

Good work on the eclipses here, most of them are fixed on the plane and you're clearly drawing from the shoulder. Keep practicing.

Table of Ellipses

Good work here also, you've got the right shape for the most part, always curving, never sharp at the outer edges, symmetrical in all four quarters. Try practicing more circles as well as eclipses.

Elipses in Funels

These are very good also, you've kept the ellipses touching and on the sides of the funnels which isn't easy, well done. What works for me is thinking of how rotated each circle is from your point of view before you draw it, some are rotated away from you and so they appear as ellipses, and others are parallel to your view and appear like circles.

Rough Perspective

Your converging lines look good here, obviously you've checked them with a ruler afterwards. Watch your lines though, make sure you're always drawing each line from the shoulder.

Plotted Perspective

Good work. Try to do your cross hatch shading freehand though, it takes a lot of practice, but every bit of practice will improve your overall ability to freehand.

Rotated Boxes

I think you did really well here, especially in the actual rotation. (This one drove me crazy first time) The boxes definitely feel like they're rotated, but I think what happened was that you rotated the first set of boxes (first set out from the center box) too much, which resulted in your 3rd set flowing behind the most rotated outer boxes instead of in-front of them. I've done this exercise twice now and one thing that helped me a lot was referring back to Uncomfortable's original drawings from the lesson.

Organic Perspective

Good work here for the most part. The boxes feel like they're flowing through space, you've good a good eye for scaling the boxes correctly to give that sense of depth. Your second page is more successful when you started using plotted points to run each of your lines to.

Overall, good work! I've been doing these exercises for almost a year now myself. Two things that really helped me (which I wasn't doing during the first few lessons) I do the suggested 15 minutes of lesson 1 exercises every day as a warm up before the new exercises from the lesson. Also, Uncomfortable's advice to split your drawing time 50-50 is very important. Work on some other drawing project the other 50% of your time. For me, it's sketching outdoors or working on characters or environments from imagination, whatever you choose, make it something you want to draw. Keep up the good work!

Hi, Timchih. Good job on finishing this lesson. Just took a look at your work and there's some aspect you should be paying attention in order to improve.

You seem to somewhat struggle on longer lines, as there is some evident arching in some of them. Be sure to remember that your drawing motion should come from your shoulder. If you mix some elbow motion into it, they might end up arching. You can rotate your page if you need to find some better angle to draw them.

Your ghosted planes look good, but in some cases you are drawing over the same lines more than once. Refrain from doing that. Ghost your lines well and draw them only once.

Your ellipses look pretty good and you show that you draw them with confidence, as they are generally very smooth looking. Some (on the tables of ellipses and funnels) are overlapping each other, when they should just slightly touch each other borders.

On your rough perspective work you are extending your lines back to the vanishing point. This is incorrect. You should have extended the boxes perspective lines in order to check how far they are form the vanishing point. Check this section to see what I mean. Other than that, you did a decent job keeping the boxes horizontal lines parallel to the horizon and the vertical lines perpendicular to it in most cases. The perspective seems overall good, but because you've extended the lines incorrectly there's no way to see that clearly.

You did a good attempt on the rotated boxes exercise, although you are repeating the same lines many times.

On the organic perspective exercise, you did a good job keeping the flow from the smaller (farther away) boxes to the larger (closer) ones, but you could have exaggerated this by drawing even larger boxes in the front. You took the risk in placing some overlapping boxes, but there are some mistakes in your approach. In some cases you didn't completely draw the box that was behind. You should always draw all the boxes lines even if they are behind another box. You can then play with the line weight in order to highlight which box is in front.

In your first panel of the first page, you have a large box behind two smaller ones. If you read this section of the instructions, you'll understand that the boxes that are in front should be draw larger to convery the depth of the scene. You've made the exact opposite. Again, in this exercise you are drawing over the same lines in order to try to correct a misplaced one. Avoid this. Place the dots when you're planning your lines, use the ghosting method and do one line only. The only time you should draw over the same line is to increase the line weight and this should be done carefully so the second lines sits exactly over the first one.

Overall you did a good job in this lessons. Congratulations and good luck for the next lessons.

Hey!

Overall, this is some great work. However ther are some things to look out for.

The lines in the ghosting exercise are smooth and confident. The elipses you put in the plane exercise are generally well shaped and confident. However, some of them are not drawn through at all, while others seem to be drawn through far more then 2. Remember, draw throuhg your elipses 2-3 times max. No more, no less.

The tables of elipses are actually really good. There are some areas where it seems extremly loose, maybe because of the speed at which you drew them. With the funnels, the outside elipsis should be far wider then the ones more near the center. They should be almost like a circle, rather than just a scaled up verson of the center elipsis.

With the freehand perspective exercise, the lines seem sctatchy. Use the ghosting method for each line, for a clean and confident stroke. Also, the red lines, should not be going back to the vanishing point. The point of the exercise was to see how good you are at freehand perspective, so you should of followed the direction each line was going, and extended it to the horizon. That way, you can see how close you were to the vanishing point. Like the blue lines.

Kudos on completing the rotated boxes! The boxes aren't quite rotating, so you are left with more of a diamond shape rather then a sphere. But don't worry! This is just the first step.

With the organic perspective, the boxes are very sctratchy, like the boxes in the free hand perspective. Use the ghosting method to get a nice clean stroke. And if you made a mistake, don't reinforce it with more lines! It tends to make it more noticable. The boxes almost always follow the line and get smaller. But sometimes they start to get smaller and then halfway through they might stay the same size. The boxes are moving away from the camera and should be getting smaller!

The next thing you should do is the 250 box challenge. This should help you gain a better understanding of objects in 3D space. I'll mark this as complete :)

Hi there, you seem to have missed the point of this challenge as none of your boxes are checked for mistakes. If you want to see improvement you need to follow the format as directed. Please re-do and resubmit this challenge, following the rules set up here watch the video and read the entire lesson carefully.

Hey, Pencilshy. Your work is not atrocious as you believe it to be. There's definitely some areas you can improve and if you keep practicing correctly you will get better for sure.

The main problem with your superimposed lines is the arching, which makes me think you're not drawing with a motion from the shoulder. If you have trouble with this aspect, check this video Uncomfortable made about this issue. Your lines are fraying quite a bit at the end, but this is somewhat normal at this stage and with practice your accuracy will get better.

Another issue I notice is in your ghosted planes, where in some cases your lines miss both of the placed dots. Maybe ghosting with the pen closer to the paper might at least help you hitting that initial dot correctily. It also seems that in some cases you're not placing the dots for the inner lines, which is something you should do for all the lines you draw.

Your ellipses look good. Not major concerns here, except that some times you don't draw over the same ellipse. You should always draw through your ellipses.

On your funnels, you should have made outer arches more curved, so your ellipses woudln't end all in similar sizes as you made them to be.

Now, the boxes exercise is where you seem to be struggling the most.

The rough perspective is not bad, you managed to keep the horizontal lines aligned with the horizon and the vertical lines perpendicular to it. Again, your lines are slightly arching here, which is something you should pay attention to.

The rotated boxes was definitely a challenge to you, as it is a very hard exercise. I advice to reread the exercise page, specially the section about rotation as this will help you in the boxes challenge in the future. The thing I'm most concerned here is the fact that you go over the same line many time, which ends in a very messy drawing, as I suspect you will agree. Avoid doing this. There's no point in doing it, as it won't make anything better and will probably hide your mistakes, preventing you from identifying them correctly.

Now, on your organic perspective exercise, you did a good job in drawing the flow of the smaller boxes (farther away) to the larger ones (closer). You could have placed some more overlapping boxes and played with the line weight in order to highlight which is in front and which is in the back. The perspective could also be better and I think this happened because you might have rushed a bit and didn't took your time to prepare thinking about each box before drawing them. Your line work suffers from the same aspects as before. Another thing I'd like to mention is that when drawing the flowing line there's no need for it to be super thick in the closer end. I'd rather seem a smooth line with less thickness difference than to see the scratchy lines as you made.

Please don't be discouraged by this. You went through all the exercises in this lesson, which is a good thing. There are areas you have to improve, but I am positive that if you apply yourself, you'll definitely get better.

Hey Popl, congrats on finishing this lesson.

Your lines seem good, with no major problems, except for some wobbling that you should be aware of. Remember to draw fast with a shoulder motion in order to keep a smooth line. This happens on your superimposed and ghosted lines.

Your ghosted planes seem slightly better, although it seems you didn't place the dots before drawing the inner lines. You should place dots for all your lines, so they act as a goal to where you're drawing the line.

Overall your ellipses are good, a couple of them show some wobbling, specially in the funnels, maybe because you were trying to force them to find in the within of the exterior lines. Keep in mind that right now you should focus more in keeping the lines and ellipses smooth, as accuracy will later come naturally, if you keep practicing correctly.

Your boxes exercises are also decent, although in some cases, specially on the organic perspective, you don't seem to be placing the dots before the lines. Remember to do this for all your lines. Also, in this exercise, you could also have overlapped some more boxes and played with the line weight, in order to highlight which one is in fron and which is in the back.