7:22 AM, Thursday January 18th 2024
Hiya Indecisive Lad!
Haha the ability to see the repeated lines is why this specific pen is required to be used for most of the course. Much easier to see it than if you used pencil or digital tools. :)
Anyways, regarding your question about the way you hold your pen. It's recommended that you hold it in a more comfortable/natural manner. Seems like before you were holding it quite tight which may have also meant you were pressing down on the paper quite hard which may be why ghosting and actually drawing on the paper felt so different. It's fine that your lines are a little curvy now. You have noticed that's the case and can work to improve upon it. Like I mentioned in the critique before, we mainly focus on confidence in your line more than the accuracy. Try holding your pen in the more comfortable way and practise, you might find it easier in the end even to get more accurate lines. It's basically all muscle memory after all.
About drawing smaller boxes, this is normal. It is harder to draw smaller shapes with your shoulder and is why the wrist helps with doing the smaller details. Don't worry or focus on it too much. The main take from this lesson is the confidence so even if you use your wrist more than your shoulder for much smaller objects, it will inevitably happen since the drawing area is so small. But this is not an excuse to use your wrist all the time! It's more about how much surface area are you drawing over. Use your shoulder as much as possible and only if it seems like you're drawing really small, then you may find that you're using your wrist more. That's okay. :)
Don't worry about the angle of the boxes, you will have TONS of practise for this when you do the 250 Box Challenge. Figuring out how to draw different angled boxes is part of that challenge.
About the 'rushiness', I think this is something you may find that taking the time with your lessons can help. I had the same problem but I just forced myself to not get distracted by making sure I had a 'reward' to look forward to if I finished it properly (some tv or youtube to watch or maybe a nice meal even). If I didn't, well no reward for me AND I have rework to do because clearly I didn't pay enough attention to the lesson. That was punishment enough lol. The lessons do say not to rework but I could tell when I'd been paying attention and when I rushed and there's no point doing a lesson if I had rushed it without taking in what I was learning. Almost like cramming for an exam. You always forget a few days later lol.
I'd suggest maybe concentrating on each stroke a little more as well. Almost like a meditation of sorts. Really think about how you're going to mark the paper. Easier said than done I know specially when the brain is like 'omg let's finish this quick!'. Maybe set aside like an hour or 2 a day to just work on DaB work. Don't think about how you want to finish something but rather think along the lines of 'I'll get what I can done within this timeframe and I'll do it properly'. Maybe not having an 'end goal' may help so you aren't really looking forward to finishing it. Or maybe its a opposite; choose only a small part to finish but give yourself 2 hours to do it. You can't do anything else within those two hours. No distractions. I'd say experiment and see. It's hard to give you advice here on this as I feel its a very individual thing. If you're on discord, you can maybe even join the DaB discord and ask around. I'm sure you're not the only individual who's struggled with this issue too. I feel it's very common.
For your warm ups, lesson one doesn't really have warm ups as it's still the basics. But from lesson 2 onwards, you can randomly select exercises from lesson 1. These will be your warm up exercises. So spend about 15mins doing them before you start on any future lesson work.
Sorry for the long essay but I hope I covered your questions. I'm happy with your revisions and I think you're definitely ready to move on to the 250 Box Challenge. Good luck! And remember, perseverance is key with this challenge and don't forget your warm ups. I'm sure you'll do well! :)