Cornball

Discord is the proper place for these requests, specifically by following the full instructions on the pinned comment of the critique-exchange channel.

Truthfully, as a free-tier user, I wouldn't wait for agreements on your critique before moving on to the next lesson. Heck, I don't even wait for critiques at all on my lessons before starting the next ones - we are not paying-customers and feedback is not guaranteed. The best thing we can do is put in the proper work to get our submission critiqued by the community (again, see the pinned message), and hope for the best. Beyond that, just move on.

The community has no incentives to critique your work unless you go through the proper channels and give back to the community appropriately. I've gone ahead an given an agreement for your lesson 1 (I gave your submission a look and would agree with the critique provided), but in the future you'll need to go through the full critique-exchange process on the Discord.

Hope this helps, good luck and happy drawing!

Welcome back! As a fellow deserter who has returned after an extended absence, I can only offer you my experience and what worked for me. I'm gonna apologize in advanced for the lenghtly reply, but there's kind of a lot to say here.

TL;DR:

I think that (unfortunately) external circumstances in your life will be a far bigger determining factor than your internal dedication/interest with regards to whether you finish this course or not.

The truth of the matter is you can be the most interested and dedicated student, perfectly willing to dilligently go through the course work as intended no matter how long it takes - and yet no matter how willing you are, if you are not able, then you will struggle. Our ability to work through the material is a combination of our desire and our circumstances, and these two things are entirely separate from one another.

In my case, I discovered DrawABox over a summer break about halfway into my undergraduate degree (computer science, not art related). I spent the summer going through lesson 1 and almost halfway through the 250 box challenge, but when the semester started back up, I realized the time investment to properly work through this material (adequate time with warm ups, 50% rule, truly spending enough time to execute each line to the best of my current ability, etc.) was entirely incompatible with my studies, which were costly and important to me in other ways. I had to abandon this course, not because I was disinterested, simply because it wasn't the right time in my life.

Having finished my degree and found myself in a suitably stable position in my life with ample time to allocate to this work, I am working through the materials again with the same fervor as before, and am past lesson 5 and going strong. The primary difference this time is that I just happen to find myself in the fortunate position where my responsibilities, financial situation, and personal life have all aligned to allow me to do the work without adding an insane amout of pressure or stress on the rest of my life, which I know for most people is just not usually the case.

This course is demanding and difficult. You are asked to spend a truly siginficant portion of your time working on technical practice, not just on the lesson materials or the exercises, but on warmups and 50% rule work, which effectively doubles the time required to finish. As a concrete example, consider the difference between spending 30 minutes every day versus an hour every day doing something. I think you'll agree that 30 minutes a day is something most people can consistently carve out the time and attention for, and for an extended period of time (like every day for several months). But an hour? Now you're starting to have to make more significant sacrifices in order to spend that time. That hour can't just get tacked onto your normal routine - you have to give up a full hour of your free time (which is often severely limited) to work on something taxing and difficult (this course work is often not relaxing). On top of all of that, consider what the somewhat glacial pace of 30 minutes a day actually means in the full context of this particular course:

If you want to spend 30 minutes a day working on the exercises for this course, you have to spend 30 additional minutes on 50% rule work and an additional 10-15 minutes of warmups, for a total of 70 minutes conservatively. Now we're up to over an hour a day, which for many people is just too demanding. If we want to keep it at 30 minutes, we're spending 10 minutes on warm ups, 10 minutes on the exercises, and 10 minutes on 50% rule. I'm gonna go ahead and tell you right now, you will never finish this course at that pace. 10 minutes a day on the exercises is just entirely not enough time - some of these exercises, like a single row of the texture analysis, took me between 1-3 hours for a single row (depending on the complexity of the texture). If you want to spend enough time daily to make any significant progress on this course, you have to make sacrifices in your life. I got lucky, and find myself in a situation where I am able to sacrifice enough of my time and energy to work on this material without putting a high degree of stress on myself or others in my life (my current responsibilities are somewhat limited at this point in time). But for many people, the time/effort required to be sacrificed in the interest of finishing this course is simply too much at that point in their lives. It all comes down to circumstances.

I think the most important thing to consider is how much time are you willing/able to sacrifice without putting undo pressure on others/yourself, and if that time is less than an hour a day, then you probably aren't in a position to make significant progress on this course in a reasonable amount of time. That doesn't mean you can't ever finish, just that it's not the right time right now.

And remember,all of this feedback is specific to DrawABox. This course is not for everyone, but don't forget that this course is but one of many resources out there - in Uncomfortable's own words, this course is designed to help you "make sense of all the other resources and tutorials out there", of which there are so many that require significantly less of a time investment, and maybe those will be right for you. If you have the time, I think this course is a tremendous resource and fully worth while. If not, don't fret! Your art journey can continue, just not down this route. Thankfully you have many paths open to you.

Hopefully this helps, good luck on your journey!

Hello again Chieftang! Congrats on finishing lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission.

Organic Arrows

Your arrows look mostly good! There are a few places where the widths of your arrows seemed a little inconsistent, which undermined their solidity a bit. It looks like that might have been because you built up your curves in sections, rather than drawing a singular continuous curve. It's okay to do this, just keep in mind that in doing so, you're more likely to end up with wonky-looking sections if you don't match your trajectories for each section exactly, which is often difficult to accomplish. Drawing each side of the arrow in a continuous stroke makes for more solid arrows, but comes with its own challenges. You did a fairly good job of including your hatching lines on the correct side, and varying the widths of your arrows (broadly speaking) in a manner consistent with your hatching lines so as to reinforce the illusion of perspective. There were a few places where this faltered a bit, but that's to be expected at this stage.

I do want to expand on that point, though. Notice on this arrow here how your hatching lines in the back of the arrow establish the flow of the arrow, indicating that the section pointed out in the image is bowing outward, the middle bulging toward the viewer. Then, in the next set of hatching lines you've drawn, you contradict that established flow, indicating that the arrow is curving inward. This breaks the illusion of perspective by making your arrow flow in an unnatural manner.

I bring this up here because initially, it can seem somewhat arbitrary which side we draw the hatching lines on, like it's fully up to the artist to decide, but that's not quite the case here. By the time you're adding that last set of hatching lines, you've already established enough details defining how the arrow flows through space that the decision is no longer arbitrary. It becomes more important as you add more and more details to your drawing that you pay closer attention to the object as a whole, and make certain that you're adding your details in a manner consistent with the prior clues you've included in your drawing. When you're just looking at the one section in isolation, it can be temping to believe that either way works, but when you look at the arrow as a whole, it becomes clear that this set of hatching lines was drawn on the wrong side. If you wanted to indicate that the whole arrows was helixing (like a corkscrew), then your prior sets of hatching lines undermined that illusion. Just remember to step back and look holistically at your objects every once in a while, to make sure your details dont contradict one another.

Leaves

Your leaves turned out well! They flow nicely through the page and respect their established center-lines well enough. My only real criticism is that they lack variety, but this exercise had no hard requirement to be more bold with your leaf choices. This page establishes that you have a solid grasp on constructing simple leaf forms that flow believable and consistently through the page, so I would suggest in the future that you branch out more (pun intended)! Since you've demonstrated proficiency with simple constructions try some more complex constructions! Just remember not to skip constructional steps when doing so.

Branches

Your branches also look good. Your contour ellipses are largely aligned to the minor axis, and their degrees shift consistently throughout the branches, giving a sense of solidity to their forms. You've added a variety of shallow and dramatic curves, testing out how branches behave at a variety of bends and executing them well. I would have liked to see more knots and forks, but again, there is nothing wrong with using these exercises to demonstrate proficiency with the simple case before attempting the more complex ones. I would say you've shown a good ability to construct simple branches well, and similar to the leaves, would recommend trying more complex constructions in the future knowing that you can handle the simple cases.

Plant Constructions

I like these! You're clearly not skipping steps in the constructional process, and it looks like it's paying off. You've done a good job of respecting the constructional lines you've established for yourself, not going out-of-bounds very often. Your forms have a feeling of solidity and heft to them. I like how your marigold has multiple layers of petals that sit on top of each other, and you established their bounding curves early in the construction process. It gives a good sense of "stacking" layers that can be difficult to accomplish. You're also doing well to start with simple leaf shapes to establish bounding curves for the more complex clustering leaf structures. Honestly, I have very few notes here - you're following the instructions well and executing on your constructions adequately. My only real note is that in some places, like on the leaves of your hibiscus, you "cut into" your bounding curves rather that building out on top of them, which was specifically discouraged in the lesson instructions. This is a minor criticism, but something I thought I'd point out here. Otherwise, great work!

Closing Remarks

I think this is a very strong submission that demonstrates a good understanding of the lesson material, and a high degree of proficiency with using the constructional process to build up complex plant shapes out of simple forms. Well done!

Hello Ayaneiro, congrats on finishing lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission.

Organic Arrows

You've done a good job drawing your lines confidently, and making an attempt to vary the widths of your arrows as they move back into the page. My two major notes here both revolve around your hatching lines, which were placed inconsistently and often on the wrong side, indicating a fundamental misunderstanding of their purpose. I don't mean to sound derisive, allow me to elaborate:

While it can appear as though the side that we draw our hatching lines on (meaning the fold that is being obscured by the overlap) is arbitrary and up to the artist, this is not quite the case, as we are specifically drawing these arrows as ribbons that flow from back into the page out toward the viewer for the purpose of this exercise.

Take this arrow you've drawn as an example. Notice how the hatching lines you've drawn (the ones in black) incidate that the arrow is flowing into the page, away from the viewer. Take this in tandem with the fact that the tail of the arrow is more narrow than the tip of the arrow, which is wider. These two things taken together imply that the arrow, as a whole, is becoming larger as it gets further away from the viewer. This goes against the rules of perspective, which works in the following manner:

1. Things that are further away from the viewer will look smaller, and as they get closer to the viewer they'll look bigger.

2. The way this affects an object of consistent size and width (like our arrows) is that certain segments of this object will look bigger than other parts - the bigger parts of the arrow will always be the ones closest to the viewer, and the smaller parts further away.

We can fix this particular arrow simply by changing the side of the overlap where we place our hatching lines. Notice how the hatching lines drawn in red indicate that the arrow is flowing out of the page, toward the viewer. This small change, coupled with the change in width of the arrow, together imply that the arrow is only becoming wider because it is getting closer to the viewer (recall that the viewer's brain will automatically assume that the object is of consistent size and width by default, unless other context clues tell it otherwise). This respects the rules of perspective, and helps to sell the illusion of 3-dimensionality for our arrows.

I've marked here a few other places where your hatching lines were drawn inconsistently, were missing, or were placed on the wrong side. I won't belabor the point further than I already have, nor will I assign revisions, however I would strongly encourage you to take some time to review the "Thinking in 3D" section of lesson 2 and revisit this exercise in your warm ups.

Leaves

These look good! Your leaves have a good sense of flow, and you seem to have respected your center-lines and bounding curves with your constructions. Each edge detail looks intentionally and individually crafted. My only note here is that your maple leaves could have used an additional intermediate construction phase to delineate the bounds for the multiple leaves, as detailed in this section of the instructions for the Leaves exercise. Otherwise good work on this page.

Branches

I think you've made a good attempt here. Your branches exhibit a variety of knots and curves, and you definitely did not shy away from more complex branch shapes, which is excellent. I have two primary notes here:

1. Your ellipses seem to be misaligned to your minor axis fairly consistently. I've highlighted here how the true minor axis for many of your contour ellipses is dramatically misalinged to the center-line of your branches. You'll get plenty of more practice with this during the 250 cylinder challenge, so I won't harp on it too much here, but it's something to keep in mind as you continue to draw branches.

2. the degrees of your contour ellipses are a little inconsistent and lack variety - to convey a sense of appropriate perspective and solidity, it helps to have more narrow degrees at the cross-sections which are closer to the viewer, and wider degrees at those further away (refer to the image from this section of the instructions for the Branches exercise). I was not able to identify a consistent sense of flow through these branches, which undermined their solidity a bit and flattened them out. Keeping the degree-shifts consistent can help to sell the illusion of 3-dimensionality more.

Plant Constructions

For the most part, I think these look good! Your constructions feel solid and believable, your lines are drawn confidently, and you seem to be following the construction process appropriately. I also love how much you filled out these pages! You got a ton of mileage out of this lesson, very well done. You've done a good job of respecting the bounding curves you've laid out for your forms, however there were several places where you did not respect your center-line like here and here. On that second example with the mushrooms, it appears that you're using your center lines more like gestural lines, rather than as a constructional backbone. There is certainly a time and place for gesture, but for the purposes of this course and these exercises, we are supposed to be placing our lines intentionally as scaffolding and respecting the construction that we lay out for outselves as we move forward. I also think you could have drawn through your forms here, not doing so made this whole construction feel flattened out. One final note here (which I mostly only see on official critiques and is of little consequence for a community submission) is to stick to submitting only the homework assigned - no more, and no less. You have some random shapes included in one of your submission pages, which should be avoided in the future. Otherwise I think these turned out quite nicely. Your british fungi looks very cool.

Closing Remarks

Whooo boy sorry for the long winded response! Hopefully my notes made sense - let me know if I was unclear on anything. Overall, I think this was a strong submission that demonstrates a clear proficiency with building up complex plant shapes from simple forms. It also indicated a bit of a weak-point with drawing consistent, believable shapes in perspective that flow away from/toward the viewer in a realistic way. This is not something that comes naturally and you should not feel bad for struggling with it, but I would like to call attention to it here so that you can focus on it as you move forward on your art journey. I think you're doing a great job and was very impressed with your plants if it helps :). Great work!

Hello again Kort! Congrats on finishing Lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission today.

Organic Arrows

These look good! The page is filled up nicely with twisting ribbons that flow believably through the page. No real criticisms here, good work.

Leaves

I like this page too. You experimented with a variety of leaf shapes and sizes, all of which bend and flow nicely around their center-lines. The only critique I would add here would be to include some additional intermediate phases to delineate the bounds for stems with multiple leaves, as detailed in this section of the instructions for the Leaves exercise. Your leaves look great but some of the more complex structures lack the outer bounding curves that the constructional process for this exercise specifies to use. Otherwise great work here.

Branches

You’ve done a good job of filling the page and experimenting with a mix of shallow/dramatic curves here! I have two notes:

1. the degrees of your contour ellipses are a little inconsistent and lack variety - to convey a sense of appropriate perspective and solidity, it helps to have more narrow degrees at the cross-sections which are closer to the viewer, and wider degrees at those further away (refer to the image from this section of the instructions for the Branches exercise). I was not able to identify a consistent sense of flow through these branches, which undermined their solidity a bit and flattened them out. Keeping the degree-shifts consistent can help to sell the illusion of 3-dimensionality more.

2. Many of your strokes seemed to truncate earlier than halfway between the next two ellipses. While this is not exclusively true, there were enough sections of your branches that seemed to fall short of their intended mark that I would refer to this section of the instructions for the Branches exercise again – specifically where he talks about drawing past the next ellipse when constructing our compound strokes. I've highlighted one instance of this here. I can see an attempt being made to rectify this in many of your other branches, and I don’t think the mistakes are severe enough to warrant revisions, but I do still think it’s worth bringing up here; just keep this point in mind as you continue to practice drawing branches.

Plant Constructions

Good googly moogly! You really went above and beyond here – I’m immensely impressed with your initiative. Most submissions have one plant per page, maaybe two or three. I’ve never seen a submission this full! It’s clear these were not hastily done either – you certainly did not sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity.

On your branches, I would echo my notes above – if the branch bends to face the viewer, widen the degree as it curves, and remember to draw past your ellipses when making compound strokes. Otherwise, your branches feel solid and have a consistent width throughout. They are capped appropriately and there is a good mix of straight and curved branches. Your petals come in many shapes, sizes, and varieties – you’ve done an excellent job of trying lots of different shapes at lots of different perspectives. These all flow nicely around their center-lines and curve consistently away from their origin. Moreover, the general constructions feel believable and solid. I particularly like how your sunflower turned out – you paid respect to the forms on the back of the bud that you cannot see directly, and considered how their presence affects the forms that you can see. Your mushrooms and cactuses look great, as do your leafy ferns and bushes.

Closing thoughts

Overall, this is a very strong submission that clearly demonstrates an understanding of and proficiency with the lesson material. Any criticisms I’ve levied should be considered along with the understanding that you knocked this one out of the park. Well done!

Hello Culhwch, congrats on finishing lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission (albiet extremely late xD).

Organic Arrows

These look mostly good, your curves are drawn confidently and the hatching lines are drawn on the correct sides. My only critiques here would be firstly that the widths could have varied more as the arrows flowed further back into/out of the page (You definitely were varying the widths on some so it's clear you understood the assignment, I just think it was a bit too subtle). Secondly, I would try to vary the spacing between the folds of your ribbons a bit more, and don't be afraid to let the folds of a single arrow overlap with itself - this can really help to sell the illusion of 3-dimensionality. For instance, the folds closer to the viewer would likely be close together and overlap quite significatly, but become more spaced out and overlap less as the arrow flows further back into the page.

Leaves

I like this page. You drew a variety of different shapes, sizes, and groupings of leaves, and did a good job of sticking to the constructions laid out by your center-lines and bounding curves. The edge details are drawn individually and purposefully, and the leaves do not appear flat. Great work!

Branches

I think these turned out well enough - there are some errors with ellipses being misaligned to the minor axis or not being bisected by it, but these errors are to be expected and were not the norm in your branches. You did a good job of varying the degrees of your ellipses, and as such the branches flow nicely through the page and feel solid. I also like that you played with some dramatic curves here, testing out how branches flow at more extreme angles and dramatic bends. Good work here.

Plant Constructions

Overall your plant constructions feel solid and look recognizable! I love how your fern turned out - each individual leaf on its own is not particularly complicated, but I think this is an excellent example of how a density of simple forms can construct complex, convincing objects that stand out. I bet this one took a while! Your lotus looks well constructed, and the petals curve around the central bulb well. The other constructions are convincingly solid and well constructed for the most part.

My only real critique would be on the construction of the sunflower. It's a bit hard to tell what's going on here - you seem to have two central stems? It kind of looks like you started with a much wider stem, then decided to narrow it down quite a bit, which is fine, but then the more narrow stem doesn't seem to have any sort of transition to the bulb. The wider stem goes straight up, connecting to the bottom of the bulb in a flat and unconvincing way, and the narrow stem seems to have no connection to the bulb at all.

I can only assume this was done because you were copying what you could visually see in your reference image, and ignoring the parts you could not see. I would recommend using a second or third image as a reference to show you the part of the bulb you can't see in your primary reference, and go through the process of drawing through your flower to sketch out where those elements do sit in space relative to the parts you can see. For instance, using this as a reference image, we can extrapolate how the back of the bud would look even if we can't see it in our primary reference image. This is an approximation of how I might expect the stem to curve so that it naturally transitions into the bud, and this is how I would have approached the construction. I am aware that my example is closer to a 3/4 view of the flower, whereas yours is more of a front view (which would change how much of the curvature we would see) but I chose to draw it this way to illustrate a point - those sections in the back that we can't see directly are definitely worth constructing anyway, because those shapes do exist and have a real impact on how the rest of the shapes in our final construction that we actually can see relate to each other.

That being said, I think this is a good submission that definitely demonstrates an understanding of the lesson material. You seem to have a solid grasp on the constructional method for branches and leaves, and have demonstrated a proficiency with building up complex objects from simple forms. Well done!

Hello Jukesir, congrats on finishing lesson 3! I'll be critiquing your submission.

Organic Arrows

Your arrows are looking good! The page is a little sparse, I would have like to see more than six arrows, however the arrows you've drawn demonstrate an understanding of the exercise and appear to flow toward the viewer adequately. Good job!

Leaves

Same feedback here, still plenty of room on the page to fill. Additionally, these leaves lack the variety that one can see from nature - leaves come in all manner of shapes, sizes, and groupings, and these all seem to share in those qualities. That being said, you've followed the lesson instructions well! The leaves flow nicely, you've purposefully designed each detail and curve around the edges, and respected your construction as laid out by your center-line and bounding curves.

Branches

Now this page is much more full! I have two notes about your branches:

1. Your ellipses are well aligned to your minor axis, however your center lines are largely straight. I would have like to see some more curved branches here, as keeping your ellipses aligned to a curving minor axis is a bit more challenging, and can help to highlight how branches behave at sharper curves and more acute angles.

2. The degrees of your ellipses are a little inconsistent - to convey a sense of appropriate perspective and solidity, it helps to have more narrow degrees at the cross-sections which are closes to the viewer, and wider degrees at those further away. I was not able to identify a consistent sense of flow through these branches, which undermined their solidity a bit. Keeping the degree-shifts consistent can help to sell this illusion more.

Plant Constructions

These look solid and believable to me! I have some minor criticisms, however I believe these broadly demonstrate an understanding of the lesson material.

On the sunflower, the intersection point where the branch meets the back of the bud is unclear - I'm almost certain this is because you were copying what you could see from the reference image and ignoring the rest. In a case like this, I would reccomend using a second or third image as a reference for the parts that you can't see, and to at least sketch out roughly how those elements exist in space with respect to the rest of your reference image. Here, because you've ignored the elements on the back of the bud, the entire piece ended up flattening out. The stem should hook around and curve into the bud, in a more conical shape, transitioning from the stem into the base of the bud, but instead the stem just goes straight up with no curvature back as it approaches the bud. For example, using this as a reference, we can extrapolate how the back of the bud would look even if we can't see it in our primary reference image. This is closer to how I might expect the stem to curve so that it naturally transitions into the bud, and this is how I would have approached the construction. I am aware that my example is closer to a 3/4 view of the flower, whereas yours is more of a front view (which would change how much of the curvature we would see) but I chose to draw it this way to illustrate a point - those sections in the back that we can't see directly are definitely worth constructing anyway, because those shapes do exist and have a real impact on how the rest of the shapes in our final construction that we actually can see relate to each other.

Your other constructions turned out well though! The bulbs of the cactus curve nicely around eachother, and I especially like how your corn flower turned out - the ellipses of the branch are consistent in their degree-shifts and as a result the whole construction looks solid, and those petals at the top flow nicely. Great job drawing through the ground on the onions, establishing the shapes that we can't directly see. Your aloe is immediately recognizable and each detail was created intentionally and individually.

Overall, I think this was a solid submission that demonstrates an adequate understanding of the lesson material. I would continue to practice sketching out the unseen sections of our drawings to establish a more full understanding of how all the shapes relate to one another, but other than that you seem to have a good grasp on the constructional method for branches and leaves. Great work!

Thanks for the critique! I definitely agree with all of your notes - I'm confident adding line weight to straight lines, but the curves I still struggle with. My leaf construction method could have used more intermediate steps, for sure. Going forward I'll try to break objects down into even simpler forms early in the process.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Yeah even if you only ever practice drawing a confident line in one direction at one orientation, the truth is you only ever need to know how to draw just that one, same line; by rotating the page you can draw in any direction at any orientation, and by combining lines you can compose more complex shapes (the same goes for curves and ellipses).

I like to think of like "if you can draw a single confident line, you can compose literally anything." As long as you're comfortable and feel confident executing your line, nothing else matters. I'm left handed so I go from right to left, but ultimately nobody can tell in the finished product.

Looking good! Great work. Now comes the meat of the course! Have fun with the next few lessons, I think you'll enjoy them.