Ledvi21

Yeah, you want to start as soon as possible, this is not really like a concept only for Drawabox but really a change in mentality that will help you through your art journey (at least thats how i see it, because you will never stop doing bad drawings, there will always be something we can improve at, so you need to accept your drawings and drawing for fun).

Draw all the things you are interested in, if you want to draw characters, draw characters, in you want to draw environments, draw environments, etc.

I know that is hard to start drawing for the sake of it because we have expectations about the outcome, unfortunately we are very aware of our skill level and because of that, we know what a "good" drawing is and what a "bad" one looks like, this basically makes us afraid of even trying to draw anything because we know that the result is not going to be good, and thus we come back to the good ol' saying "i dont know of to draw that".

Children are a good example of just simply drawing for the sake of fun without having any expectations, most children drawings suck, but they don't care, they enjoy the process and they keep drawing because for them is fun, most of them have no concept of a "bad" drawing (at least not fully) and so they are not very critical about their drawings, they just draw.

So basically, we want to achieve that "children level" with the 50% rule, we want to just simply draw the things that we want, without any single care about what the outcome is.

Now i know that this concept is incredibly hard because, again, we know what a good and a bad drawing is, but from my personal experience, once you start pushing yourself to just draw for the sake of it, without any expectations about the outcome, you will start to enjoy the process and your drawings a lot more, but you got to be patient, once you reach a certain level of conformity you will start to accept your drawings a lot more, and eventually you will start to unconsciously incorporate the concepts from drawabox and other art resources into your drawings.

So basically, if you want to draw humans and environments, you should absolutely try drawing them, even if the result is bad, try to play with it, experiment, don't let the outcome discourage you, just try to draw the things that you would draw if you had the level that you want to achieve.

Lastly, when it comes to ideas, try drawing things out of your imagination or from simple ideas at first, maybe things that you like but with a twist, you can also try drawing prompts and see how you can interpret that into a character, an environment, or a combination of both.

Yes they do count, but they should constitute less than half of your plant drawings.

This is actually written in the lesson's page under "Homework and exercises".

You are just over-thinking it, yes watching the lessons and videos counts towards the "work" part of the 50/50 rule, because you are getting filled with a lot of concepts, ideas and theory that it takes time to let it sink in, not to mention that sometimes these concepts can be very stressfull.

To put it simply, the work part in the 50% should include your study time and your practice time both, and your other 50% time should be all about just playing and drawing for fun.

This also applies to any other art course or class outside of drawabox.

On the ellipse guides it depends on how much are you willing to pay, one thing that i can say its to make sure they have markings for the minor axis and that they have a good range of ellipses degrees, the rest is up to you so you may wanna shop around.

There's complete ellipse sets (very expensive) or there is also an ellipse guide thats called pickett master that's called "master ellipse" i think that one is relatively cheap and its on amazon (its the one that Dab recommends, but there's also different options of the same brand).

One "warning" that i will say is that if you go with a "master ellipse" you will be limited in size and range of ellipses, so some things may or may not align, and depending on how big your ellipse guide is, it will obviously limit the size of your construction.

You may want to try Lesson 6 without an ellipse guide, some people succeed without one, some people don't, based on your work try to analyze what's best for you.

For the french curves im going to be honest with you, i don't think they are worth buying, because you will draw curves as straight lines, once you have a set of straight lines to define your curve you will then draw said curve (refer to lesson 6 page), so in my opinion you never really use a french curve because you already have good defined points to base your curve.

The major problem comes in under the understanding of the form of the particular subject that causes our brain to just wing it off

Yeah i can understand this, but in my opinion we can still wing it while maintaining a sense of volume or 3D, which may not be what we want but definitely far better than drawing lines or doing symbol drawing.

If you don't mind , can you provide some exercises to reinforce the process of clearly understand the structure present below the reference.

Drawabox in fact focuses a lot on this, so i can't really give you a better exercise from the ones that already exist in Dab, i mean if we go back to Lesson 4 and 5, Insects and Animals, its really all about understanding how those particular subjects are composed and then picking the most suitable forms to reproduce that particular subject, that's what in my opinion is understanding the structure of a subject (and like i said, this is literally what Drawabox lessons are about from Lesson 1 to 7).

Once you have a good understanding of the structure of that object you can then start to draw it out of your imagination, for example, how is a spider composed? I know theres 3 shapes, a circle, an 2 ellipses for the body, and sausages/cylinder like forms for the legs, once i understand that, i can then draw those shapes and transform them into forms (by either wrapping around, giving sense of the different planes of the object, etc) or drawing direct forms (things that have a strong sense of 3D, like a cylinder or a box) and then have a drawing of a spider, the same applies to an animal, i know that animals have a cranium, a ribcage and a pelvis, i can create an animal of some sort by knowing the components and how to simplify them (A ball, and 2 ellipses), and then draw those shapes, transform them into forms and then have an animal of some kind.

Will this drawings be perfect? Maybe not, but its the foundation towards understanding how those subjects are composed, then is only a matter of repetition, time and mileage that i will be able to hopefully create a better representation of the subject matter (and of course if we want to get deeper and more accurate, maybe at some point studying the anatomy).

Now, will this approach work every single time? I don't think so, i mean i particularly don't consider myself a good draftsman, i still have trouble understanding particular subjects, for example i absolutely have no idea how to draw a mantis, i know how to do the head, but the bodies are incredibly annoying, at that point i think its best to experiment with different techniques, either the ones provided by drawabox or different ones and see which one fits the structure better, but the key idea is to always try to visualize simple shapes and forms to be able to simplify the complex structure of the subject.

Outside of drawabox however, i don't think there is a definitive answer for this, i mean there may be a lot of exercises to focus on understanding the structure of a particular subject but ultimately it comes down to how you understand the particular object and how you decide to break it down, because there is a lot of techniques to draw a specific subject while still focusing on Structure.

Much better if you can point out some methods and techniques that drawabox teaches that comes under the topic of understanding the below structure of the subject

Well like i mentioned earlier, Drawabox from lesson 1 to 7 focuses of different techniques to approach understanding the structure below the subject, that is what construction is.

But if I had to choose, i would say the concepts from Lesson 2 to 5 are key to understand a good chunk of how we could use forms as opposed to lines or symbol drawing, because they teach concepts that are incredibly vital such as:

• Wrapping around objects.

• Adding Masses to forms.

• Lines and Things that flow in 3D space.

• A general sense to draw in 3D as opposed to flat.

tbh I don't really know the meaning of "Sit in 3d space"

I personally understand the concept of "Sit in 3d space" as how that objects exist in perspective or in real life, because when we are drawing we draw on a flat piece of paper and that sometimes makes us forget that the subject that we are drawing as depth and volume to it, and thats something we need to keep in mind when drawing, so for me "keeping in mind how that object sits in 3D space" means how we can convey that the object has depth and/or volume to it, to make it really feel 3D and not flat.

To wrap things up, like i mentioned to OP, the biggest problem with Symbol drawing is drawing flat lines as opposed to believable 3D forms, like for example, an eyeball is a sphere not just lines.

Well part of the problem of why we draw at the beginning with "symbol drawing" is because we really don't know how the subject that we are drawing is structured, and so our brain tries to draw the major things that he sees or thinks that composes that particular object so we end up with a kinda goofy cartoony representation of what it believes is that particular object. This problem comes from two things in my opinion:

• Structure

• Form

Which i guess ....they are kinda the same thing(?) but anyways, the thing is, and in my particular opinion, when you are drawing from reference you should not copy the lines that you see but rather understand its structure and how it sits in 3D space, and based on that, create forms that reinforce that solidity and believability, once you understand enough of that particular object is when you will be able to create it from the imagination without a reference, but for this you'll have to analyze the object carefully and repeat it for a long time before you develop a natural sense of how its composed.

Besides that however, i noticed that you are right now at Lesson 1, so getting things to be believable and with a strong sense of 3D space is going to be hard for you at this moment, i wouldn't worry too much about it since all of the things that i mentioned you are going to learn them in later lessons so its something you'll have plenty of opportunities to work and improve at.

One last thing that i want to say however, is that just because we are bad at constructing things in 3D or at drawing things without reference, it doesn't mean we shouldn't draw, remember that one of the most important points in Lesson 0 its doing the 50% rule; dedicating a time to study art and a time to drawing just for the sake of having fun and not because you expect to improve at something, this is, in my opinion, one of the most important rules in Drawabox, because it will "free" you from the mentality of always trying to draw something that its good or presentable, and this is good because it allows us to experiment and to always remember that besides all the grinding and theory, we need to be able to enjoy our art, to enjoy the process. Sure, its not going to look good at all, but from my personal experience, once you break the barrier of not wanting to draw bad things you will start to enjoy the process of just simply drawing for the sake of fun again.

Once you subscribe through patreon the credits will be given to your account inmediately (or with a little bit of delay), after that you can cancel your subscription (In patreon) right afterwards.

The credit system works independently of patreon, which means once you recieve the credits, they will not be revoked if you cancel your subscription in patreon (Tho keep in mind that they will expire after 2 months).

So yeah, you don't need to subscribe every month, you can just subscribe when you want to get homework critiqued, get the credits, then cancel your membership inmediately after, just make sure that you do get the credits before canceling the membership.

Not trying to change your opinion as you said you are decided to take this course with pencil, but, In my opinion, Fineliners for this course are very imporant to gain as much confidence and ability to draw the marks that you want to draw. First of all because it doesn't let you erase or create soft/light lines, and most importantly, because every mistake is going to show, this is going to make you think more carefully about the lines that you put and why are you putting them, essencially making you think before you draw.

Now of course, like you said, there's going to be people that understand the reasoning behind fineliners and say "well it doesn't matter, i'll just simply accept my mistakes and thats it", and thats ok, but not everyone is the same, there could be people that indeed are afraid of their lines, and so restricting the materials is the best option so that everyone is on the same page and gets the most out of this course, i can safely say that i improved a lot in my line confidence by using fineliners, and that got reflected also on my pencil drawings, i also think that going outside of your conformt zone is going to make you improve.

Also for the 50% rule fear is not the only factor, is also what you mentioned, not wanting to draw because you know it'll suck, you need to try and experiment with things, it doesn't matter if the result sucks or not.

Drawabox as a point in saying that the 50/50 rule is the hardest concept to follow in this course because it goes agaisnt our ego, we know what "good" is, so we don't to try things until we get good, but this is a bad mentality imo and you are going to get burn out if you keep waiting for the moment that you'll have the "skill" to produce the things that you want, also just like drawabox said, part of the lessons concepts will slowly develop into your "free drawing time" once you understand how to use them and why, so with time you will eventually start using some of the course concepts into your drawings, but you have to be patient, for example, i personally go back to see my old drawings and wonder how i could draw such abominations and think it was ok, but thats the thing, i didn't care if it was good or bad, i just had fun drawing, and the same thing is going to happen once i improve even further, i'll look back at my old drawings and say that they were crap, thats part of the process of just letting go and having fun drawing not worrying about whether it will be a good drawing or not.

Thank you for the feedback!

I just have a few minor questions.

In the cable cuff when you say i could have drawn the curves, i assume you mean in the actual construction/drawing of the object and not the planes right?

Now this one requires a bit of context, but, do you think is a good idea to do orthographic plans for each separate form if the object has multiple complex parts, then combining it? For example, if i want to draw this old telephone can i do separate plans for each form and then combining them in the construction? this would be the breakdown of the forms, each with an orthographic plan (kinda like an amalgamation between your stacking boxes method while combining orthographic plans).