Jukesir

Hello Prakashdraws, I'll be the teaching assistant handling your lesson 4 critique.

Starting with your organic forms you’re doing pretty well at sticking to the characteristics of simple sausages that are introduced here, just remember to keep the ends evenly sized, there are a couple with one end much larger than the other.

Your contour curves are looking good, you’re usually successful at fitting them snugly against the edges of your forms and I can see that you’re shifting their degree as we slide along the length of the form.

To get a bit more out of this exercise you could experiment with using the contour curves to assert the forms in a greater variety of orientations, as illustrated in this diagram showing the different ways in which our contour lines can change the way in which the sausage is perceived.

Moving on to your insect constructions you’ve honestly done a very good job with these, and there isn’t a whole lot to criticise. I’m happy to see that you’re keeping your linework smooth, confident and purposeful throughout, and that you’re abiding by the principles of construction by starting with simple solid forms and building up complexity gradually, piece by piece. It is clear that your spatial reasoning skills are developing nicely, as you’re demonstrating a good grasp of how your forms sit in 3D space, and you often connect them together with specific 3D relationships that help reinforce the solidity of the construction as a whole, and that’s fantastic. So- you’re doing well, and I have just a couple of pieces of advice for you to keep in mind, to help keep you on the right track as you move forward.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose, but many of those marks would contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction.

For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

Fortunately I didn’t see this happen in your constructions very much at all, and the few cases I did spot were probably accidental. I've marked on your weevil in red some areas where it looks like you cut back inside the silhouette of forms you had already drawn. This came down to the fact that your ellipses would come out a little loose (which is totally normal), and then you'd pick one of the inner edges to serve as the silhouette of the ball form you were constructing. This unfortunately would leave some stray marks outside of its silhouette, which does create some visual issues. Generally it is best to treat the outermost perimeter of the ellipse as the edge of the silhouette, so everything else remains contained within it. This diagram shows which lines to use on a loose ellipse.

It is also possible to alter the silhouette of an existing form by extending off it with one off lines or flat partial shapes, not quite providing enough information for us to understand how they actually connect to the existing structure in 3D space. I’ve marked a couple of examples of this with blue on your weevil’s leg. In this case this wasn’t your fault, as I know Uncomfortable uses this strategy to refine the legs in the wasp demo. I’ll show you a better alternative a little further on in this critique. While this approach worked fine for adding edge detail to leaves in the previous lesson, this is because leaves are paper-thin structures, so essentially they are already flat and altering their silhouette won’t flatten them further. When we want to build on forms that aren’t already flat we need to use another strategy.

Instead, when we want to build on our construction or alter something we add new 3D forms to the existing structure. Forms with their own complete silhouettes - and by establishing how those forms either connect or relate to what's already present in our 3D scene. We can do this either by defining the intersection between them with contour lines (like in lesson 2's form intersections exercise), or by wrapping the silhouette of the new form around the existing structure as shown here.

This is all part of understanding that everything we draw is 3D, and therefore needs to be treated as such in order for both you and the viewer to believe in that lie.

Here is how we might use complete 3D forms to flesh out the leg of your weevil. I’m happy to see that you’re already using this strategy quite a lot throughout the set, for example with the large spikes on the back of this weevil. It looks like you understand the concept pretty well, though I’ll go ahead and share some examples which you may find useful. You can see this in practice in this beetle horn demo, as well as in this ant head demo. You can also see some good examples of this in the lobster and shrimp demos on the informal demos page. As Uncomfortable has been pushing this concept more recently, it hasn't been fully integrated into the lesson material yet (it will be when the overhaul reaches Lesson 4). Until then, those submitting for official critiques basically get a preview of what is to come.

The next thing I wanted to talk about is leg construction. It looks like you’ve stuck with the sausage method and you’re doing very well at laying down chains of simple sausage forms and applying a contour line at each joint to show how the forms intersect.

I’m happy to see that you’ve taken a swing at building onto your sausage armatures on many of your pages, adding the sorts of lumps, bumps and complexity that you observe in these structures, arriving at a more characteristic representation of the leg in question than what can be achieved with the sausages alone. I have some diagrams to share with you that I hope will help you to build onto your leg structures “in 3D” as you move forwards.

• These diagrams show how we can add to the construction with complete 3D forms instead of flat shapes and one-off lines.

• This diagram shows how instead of fully engulfing an existing form within a new one, we can establish a clearer relationship between the existing form and the new addition by breaking it into two pieces.

• This ant leg demo shows how we can take the sausage method and push it further, adding all kinds of lumps bumps and spikes to the sausage armature.

• I’d also like to share this dog leg demo with you, which shows how the sausage method can be applied to animal legs. This is important, as we’d like you to continue to stick with the sausage method of leg construction when tackling your animals in the next lesson.

All right, I’ll go ahead and mark this as complete so you can move onto lesson 5. Keep up the good work.

Everyone's got different goals and a different path to follow, so that's a difficult question to answer. What I do find useful in helping to answer it though is the 50% rule. As we indulge in drawing as play, we highlight areas of weakness we may wish to reinforce, allowing us to seek out ways to address them. In a sense it serves as a compass pointing to our next stop.

Hello AXYZLPQR, Congrats on completing the 250 Box Challenge! Here's my critique:

• Sometimes you overshoot your lines in hatching and when doing the outer lines but its nothing to worry about

• I would like to see more line weight especially because the other markers you use get on top of the lines and makes it harder to understand the box you are doing

• The inner corner is sometimes off making the lines not always converge to a single point but its a common mistake and if you carefully plan each line and where they converge you'll see this problem disappear in the future.

• Your boxes differ greatly in rotation and size so that's very good!

I've marked this as complete and good luck on Lesson 2!

hello! I'll be critiquing your 250 box challenge today!

first of all- congratulations! this is a major accomplishment. many have failed where you persevered and succeeded.

now, for some pointers:

in the earlier stages, one thing I noticed was that a lot of the boxes lines converged in pairs instead of converging to a single point. you actually seemed to struggle with this throughout (especially when converging the back corner to the front of the initial 'y')

next, i noticed you didn't add line weight. while this isn't strictly necessary, it's a good practice.

it's also a bit hard to understand the passage of time as you didn't number your boxes. however, on the assumption that you posted everything in order, you have shown some serious improvement!

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn.

• It's good to see that you're taking the time to plan and evenly space your hatching lines. This helps keep your boxes tidy and makes them look more solid.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.

• At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 31, 106, 131, 159 are examples of this). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. If you need some more examples you can find them here and a simplified guide below.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.

I'll be asking you to draw 20 more boxes please. Focus on extending your lines consistently in the correct direction and reducing the amount of diverging lines you have occurring from keeping your lines overly parallel.

Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.

I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• Good work drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling.

• When hatching you're taking the time to space each line evenly which shows that care and thought is being put into each line. This helps your boxes appear solid and tidy rather than rushed.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

Overall while you did make a few mistakes your boxes are improving so far and with more mileage you'll continue to become more consistent. That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Hi, I'll be taking a look at your work today. But before that, congrats on completing this lesson. The difficulty of constructing a box and doing it 250 times is definitely noteworthy.

Things that were done well

• Clear improvement was seen in your boxes. Starting around box 100, the issue with diverging lines is largely corrected.

• Hatching lines were applied correctly. This is great and shows your understanding of which plane faces the viewer, and demonstrates understanding of 3D space.

• A good variety of boxes was shown. Just like the previous item, having different boxes with different convergences shows the spatial reasoning.

Things that could be improved

• An issue that shows up every so often is that a box will have a parallel set of lines. The best way to fix this is to take your time ghosting and being aware of the angles between lines, since this helps in recognizing the VP the line is converging to.

• The extra line weight is sometimes wobbly, detracting from the intention. This is usually a result of trying to match the original line and then not executing confidently, sort of a cart-before-the-horse situation. Thus, make sure that the extra line is confident, and that should help in making the lines match better.

• The boxes with more rapid convergence (i.e. the VP is closer) tend to be done better than the ones with shallow convergence. It may help to start with boxes that have rapid convergence, and slowly make them shallower as you draw more boxes.

• The hatching lines are generally well-done, but once in a while seem rushed (i.e. fraying, not parallel, overshooting). Just remember that they should be done with a level of execution expected of all lines in this course.

I think you are ready for the lesson 2. Just remember to keep your line execution confident, and to review some of the fundamentals. Good luck!

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

• You're doing a good job of drawing the lines constructing your boxes smoothly and confidently.

• It's nice to see that you're taking the time to plan each of your hatching lines and space them evenly. This helps keep your boxes looking tidy rather than looking like they were rushed on to the page.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.

• There are a number of boxes without their lines extended, these boxes are all technically incomplete, in the future please follow all of the instructions.

• Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge but I do recommend practicing it in your future attempts. It's an incredibly useful tool but one that people often require a fair bit of mileage before they feel comfortable applying it. The sooner you start to build up that mileage the sooner you'll see better results.

• I'd like you to experiment with proportions and rates of foreshortening more. Mix in some longer/thinner/wider boxes to see how your lines behave in different scenarios. As for rates of foreshortening you tend to keep your vanishing points quite close to your boxes the majority of the time which results in your lines converging dramatically or you shift to different styles of perspective (1 or 2 point) rather than dealing with all 3 vanishing points. Try pushing your vanishing points further back so that your lines become closer to parallel.

• At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 114, 121, 122, and 145 are examples of this). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. If you need some more examples you can find them here and a simplified guide below.

• There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.

I'd like you to draw 30 more boxes please. Focus on extending your lines consistently in the correct direction as well as experimenting with rates of foreshortening more.

Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.

I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.

You should be turning the assignment in with whatever mistakes arose from the approach you employed when completing the work. Some mistakes will incur revisions, others may simply be noted without revisions (or if the issue isn't as significant as you may think, or is clearly addressed in later instances of the exercise, it may not be given any attention at all). The key point here is that you don't make that choice yourself, and moreover, that having our mistakes reach that critique phase is going to have a more lasting impact on whether or not we are likely to repeat them. When we're able to simply redo the work in secret, it's a lot easier for the brain to disregard that it ever happened. Whereas, if they're called out by someone else, we are forced to face them more directly.

It's similar to why we ask students not to self critique when submitting their work. We learn best from our mistakes when they are pointed out to us.

You can start at Lesson 0, which you'll find here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/0.