Korosal

Hellooo!

Seems like you had a tough time. You did good though! Judging by the results so far, I'd say you're good to move on to the next lesson, while keeping in mind a few things:

Leaves and Branches are well executed. If you're having any trouble with drawing contours on the leaf's/petal's surface, look up reference and study those. Make sure you're giving yourself enough room and have the page in a comfortable position when drawing branches as a few tend to go in and out very slightly. Arrows are great, dont be afraid to make em a bit bigger as theyre coming toward you and overlap more. (if you need examples, check the arrow page again)

There's not as many mistakes on the plants as you may think. Give yourself time to experiment and find out how to tackle each part of the plant, some of the more complex plants may take more thought but its better to have a plan than no plan. You can always refer to the demos and lesson pages for some ideas too.

Cast shadows are tricky on cacti and mushrooms, try and focus on shapes and dark places, not using lines to draw the light parts. The mushroom demo is a great example of this. Speaking of those, make sure to put a cap on your plants as well, you dont want them floating above ground.

As mentioned before with the plans, don't skip construction, on leaves or extra mushroom cap bits, and so on. Draw your leaf, and add onto it, just like the complex leaf example, pitcher plant, or this review https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/8/plantconstruction You want to first follow your flow line, and then add the extra parts.

Work on some more plants when you can, especially complex leaves/petals, or any that deviate from the normal to use additive methods, use dots or something like that to measure the propotion of them if they end up too short or big, and you'd be good to go! If you want to challenge yourself a bit after thats all done, you can try adding some detail too, but thats up to you.

Good luck on lesson 4, always try to seek some assistance if youre confused, and keep at it! It was a lot of work but in the end it got you past the hill, you're ready to climb the next.

Thank you for the feedback, i have been adding ellipses and some more ghosting to my practice, and its going well so far.

As for the 250 box challenge, here you go https://drawabox.com/community/submission/6I65J5AF

Definitely have been looking into helping others, im a bit more comfortable on discord than here but ill slowly make the transition, thank you for the suggestion o>

You're quick on your feet ;p Good job on working through each!

You'll see imperfections in any drawing at any level, some are harder to tell apart because you just didnt reach that level yet. What's important is you make sure you can overcome one problem at a time, no matter how bad it makes your drawings look like.

For your extra work:

Arrows - Definitely better, the only two tiny mistakes i see is a wrong spot of shadows and a little trouble trying to make the arrow bigger the longer it goes https://cdn.foxybots.xyz/4l5pfn but great improvement overall!

Textures - I see improvement. Granted its been some time so its tough to get back into it again. You mentioned "how one is supposed to make cast shadows WITHOUT drawing the contour of whatever the texture is". Just like a computer does it, if you lower all the hues to black, white and gray, you'll see spots of the image be lighter than others, and some darker, and your focus should be on the dark spots. Its observation and its going to improve over time. There still are a bit too many lines for my liking, you'll see that a lot of shadows arent quite as straight as you like, rather curvy and with thin stripes of light that get bigger the more light there is. But i do see shapes being used more than previously. You'll have plenty more practice on this later (esp 25 texture challenge), you dont need to nail it down perfectly right now. Good work.

Organic Intersections: Yes, there are key differences in this one compared to the last. Shadows are much more visible, Forms have their weight, and they look more solid too. However that isnt to say its perfect and thats something you'll have to work on. Don't overdo the shadows either, you can reduce the "pool" of black to half its thickness on most, and remember the light is cast onto other forms, so unless your form on the left, behind the two big ones, was a lot taller, its too short to cast anything, its on the same level as the other. For gravity, im just a little worried the two top forms may fall as i dont see the form theyre standing on to be large enough to support the two, so that's something to keep in mind. When you put two sausages oriented in the same direction on top of each other, they may very well fall as they roll on each other. And space, not really any problem, other than the bottom middle form may be a little squished.

As for some extra notes:

"had no idea what i was doing at ANY point" - Im glad you didn't, because you weren't supposed to either. To put it in Uncomfy's words directly, read herehttps://drawabox.com/faq/notpretty from "Additionally, it is important to realize..." A little bit of info will be explained more and more when you progress, through lessons, videos, others' critique and your own work. You're not supposed to do it any other way, so you're doing it right.

Contour ellipses - Do more of them, ghost as many times as you feel like before you feel like its too many. Then put the strokes down and loop once. The only way you ghost faster and you do them faster, and better, is by practice. No shortcuts there.

My textures - I can ask the same "Why's yours better" to other people, but quite frankly, i think we'd both have a hard time explaining. Ultimately, id say you're better off finding answers to things you will be able to use, so getting reviews on your work, as the other question may never really have 1 exact answer that will benefit you in any way.

Form intersection - You didn't know yet it still eneded up just fine, so there's nothing to worry about. Add it to your practice session if anything.

All that being said, id say youre done with this one, and ready to tackle lesson 3 in all its glory. Good luck, and don't work in a bubble, better to have 8 pages of bad drawings than none so you cant get the advice you need.

Hey Greeny o/

I can see you started to use pen for other work, which is great. Now, onto the review:

Arrows

What pops up the most here is the shadows, sometimes they are not on the right places and its probably due to the fact you lose track of which line is which, especially in the first page, most bottom arrow, since it crosses like an 'x'. I suggest you add a few arrows to your practice pages, be mindful of: the shadow, which lines are on top of which, and also try to bend them mroe than twice, try and do a really long line that bends more. Otherwise, width is consistently changing, lines are confident, and you've done a good job overall.

Contour Ellipses/Curves

You've done a great job at maintaining consistent widths and making confident strokes, both in the outlines and the contours. Some curves wobble a bit, make sure youre ghosting and doing them in one line, better to miss but be confident than accurate but messy.

Textures

In the analysis, i can see two issues: One is the transition between light-dark, There is not that much of a difference from the very black to the other side. And also, you may be focusing too much on lines rather than shapes.

To fix those, i recommend you focus on making a transition, you can start from the middle with a texture similar to the one in your picture, and accentuate it the more you get to the dark, and less when you get to the white. Kinda like the second texture, herehttps://i.imgur.com/WltEEOw.jpg . And also, be mindful on something like crumpled paper, the edges are not always straight, nor on wood, so watch out for all the bumps and curves that might be in your texture.

Dissections now: they're good, you're wrapping them around the form, and it shows your knowledge of 3d. Same as above, on some there may be too many lines. On these ones, you can focus on the cast shadows, and, for example, the shadows each of the corn bits cast on the one below it.

Form Intersections

These ones look great actually, you seem to have understood them really well. Especially on the intersections on the forms that are behind others, very nice. The only little things i can see is some lines drawn when the shapes arent intersecting, keep in mind, the area in which two shapes are sharing space is where the intersection happens, so where you draw your lines, not outside of it. Dont worry about there being too many on the page.https://cdn.foxybots.xyz/tvA1Rw .

Organic Intersections

Gravity, Shadows and Space.

Make sure all of the shapes aren't floating, and they have gravity applied to them. This i mean on the very top shape on the first page, and the second page, the small shape in the middle, it looks like its floating rather than staying on the big shape below. The contour of the shapes is not their shadow, the shadow you should be drawing is what's being cast on the ones below it, if you want to reinforce the shape, ghost lines on its outline to show its in front. Give all your shapes some space. Middle bottom on the first one, it looks like the flat shape is squished together, and on the second page, the 3 popping up are squished by the two staying on the bottom. You can fix this by drawing your whole shape, and your contours of it. If the space is occupied by a shape, try and intersect the shapes about as much as you did in the exercise above. Dont make it so a shape is within a shape basically.

Your actual shapes are good though, none are too big or complex, and those mistakes^ didn't happen at every corner, you can improve them quickly.

As for the chicken scratches, the more you progress with the lessons and do practice of shapes and other exercises on the side, the less you'll have to worry about it. The textures exercise takes a lot of time and in that time you get used to using your wrist instead of your shoulder again, which tends to make that happen. It wont be like that forever.

Wish you luck on the next lessons!

Heyo, thank you for this reply too, i just got pointed that out today by a friend as well, i may have misread the challenge's tips. I'm definitely down to draw more boxes, and i may end up doing the whole thing again after the first 50. Cheers o>

Hey hey, thank you so much for the reply, didn't expect to receive one so soon "^-^, i'd say it puts a lot of things i didnt notice into perspective, so i appreciate it a lot. I'll try to get some pens to use asap, im excited to figure them out. As for the review, i do tend to draw a bit too small hence why the boxes getting crowded, though i am working on it and this course is the n.1 source of help with it. The rotated ones i didnt quite understand at first and yes, i wanted to practice a few but i realized only one (bigger) was needed a bit too late so i might end up re-doing it. Thanks again for your input! Ill do my best.