Lunando

Hi there weijak! I'll do my best to contribute as much as I can! Let's go:

-Starting with the form intersections you're doing a great job at the main goal of the exercise, which is mantaining a consistent foreshortening throughout all the forms to make them feel like they share the same scene, just be careful in the cylinders, which have at times quite a bit of degree shift. If you choose your foreshortening to be generally shallow as I can see from your boxes you need to aim for your cylinders to be that degree of foreshortening as well, so the shift at degree should be minimal. If you struggle with it try to imagine how a box would fit that cylinder, it should help to visualize how much the degrees of the ellipses should shift.

About the intersections I think you've done a great job as they look super solid! Here's the only intersection I found that is a little bit weird and how I'd approach it.

For future times if you still want to practice this exercise, what you can do is to open paint 3d (comes free with windows 10) or blender or whatever 3d program, and snap the forms you had doubts with after finishing a page of a warmup. It has helped me a lot when practicing so I recommend it!

On cylinders on boxes you're doing a great job so I don't have much to say! One thing I'd recommend to do from now on if you want to go to the next level is to start learning to freehand full cubes in perspective and not just squares like you do in this exercise. One trick I found from an artist called krenz cushart is that you can visualize the cube inside a ball and it will fill the proportions of it. Like this Being able to draw these cubes and rotate them from imagination is super useful for doing what we did in these lessons but without having to measure nearly as much. You can then use them after studying proportions of an object to learn to draw them in any angle. Which is a great exercise to keep practicing spational reasoning skills.

Now onto the vehicle constructions!

Overall I think you've done a good job carefully subdividing every vehicle and drawing through your forms. The initial forms you draw are in general also pretty good, so great job on that!

The main thing I want to comment on that I see in your constructions is that I think you go a bit too fast towards the details, specially when there starts to be curvy forms. I think that even whenever you are approaching any vehicle, even if it's curvy stuff it's great to decide on a form simplification and commit to it. You can then draw the curves over them to make the forms curvier, but thanks to having drawn the blocky forms below you'll have a very good foundation to lay them on top.

Here are some examples on initial forms taken a little bit further.

Something similar happens as well when you approach some details that rely more on observation. Like on this part of the boat or in the front parts of your cars, in which you could try to cut into your constructions to simplify them in newer more specific forms.

Lastly I think that you sometimes freehand curves directly (curves in general, not just curvy forms). I recommend drawing first at least a simple straight line even if you don't want to divide it in several. It will make the curves much more accurate and easier to control. Here are some examples so it's a bit clearer to see

That said I think you've overall done a pretty good job and your vehicles are very solid. Congratulations on finishing lesson 7 and drawabox! I do think you've done an awesome work overall throughout the whole course even if you didn't take the official route, so I think you should be proud! Good luck on whatever you do next and keep up the amazing work!

If you are not waiting for official critique, nothing stops you from moving forward.

This is not a good idea though, since any step of the course builds on the understanding of the previous exercises.

If the wait gets too long, try asking on the Discord server. There you'll find a channel for critique exchanges.

Good luck!

Just as a clarification in case someone misunderstands: figure drawing studies are studies, so they don't count for the other 50%, they are part of the study part like drawabox.

Congratulations on finishing the box challenge! Overall you're doing a pretty good job, specially line confidence is really good; I can see you're not afraid of making mistakes which is great! But here are a few things to keep in mind so you can keep improving:

-Sometimes some sets of lines in your boxes are parallel or even start to diverge a little, this is something that should never happen in 3 point perspective; lines will always converge and get closer, even if it's just a little.

-Second is that you tend to extend your lines too short, and because of that's they are sometimes not enough to tell you where your mistakes are. So when extending your lines do it all the way through, don't be afraid of lines colliding with other boxes.

-I've also seen you having variation on the boxes you drew, which is great! But I think that sometimes you fall into a few patters, so take a look at this picture so it gives you more ideas about what orientations of boxes you can try.

-Other thing is the lineweight, as I mentioned is pretty confident and great, but there are a few instances where your superimposed lines get a bit wobbly, so I want to remind you that the boxes you draw in which you draw a superimposed line and the result is confident is what you want to keep doing, regardless of how accurate that superimposed line is the important thing is to trust your muscle memory and make a confident line regardless of accuracy, just like you've been doing on most of this.

-And last thing I wanted to talk about is the inner corner. It looks like it's still giving you trouble by the end of the challenge, and that's completely normal, most students still do. But here are a few things that made tackling it a bit easier to me. First one is trying this order for drawing boxes.

And second is related to it, and it's that thinking about the relationships of each line on a set instead of thinking on pairs will make you make better guesses. It's explained on this picture.

Overall like I said pretty good job! Once you get more comfortable with the inner corner I recommend looking into the adittional exercises. Good luck on lesson 2 and keep up the good work!

As polar didn't give adittional steps, I'll add to his critique:

Starting with the organic forms with contour curves, you're doing a pretty good job with them. Both the shapes and the curves are confident and neat. The main thing with them is that their points are a little bit too pointy. Keep in mind that the ends should be formed by a ball, so the ends should be affected by it.

There are also some places where your ellipses shift a little bit too quick which results on making the sausages look a bit flat, so watch out for that too.

Now onto the insect drawings. You're overall making a pretty good job on those, they're solid, but there are a few things I want to comment on that are very important, both on this lesson and on lesson 5, so I want to make them clear.

-Intersections between forms are part from the constructional drawing, and not detail. I want to make sure you know this so you don't skip it on the next constructional drawing that you do. Detail is basically textures as described in lesson 2, so other than that it's all part of construction.

About the intersections between forms as well, you sometimes skip them. Some examples are the connections between the body parts of the louse, the scorpion head and body connection, the fly, bees etc. One example where this is approached well is on your first beetle connection between the body and the horn (even though you're skipping constructional steps on the horn, which I'll comment later).

-Second thing I want to point out is to try to pay more attention on the demos, don't just follow them blindly. There are some demos that are outdated for example, and being critical is specially important on those. The example I'm talking about is the scorpion demo. On this demo, uncomfortable misjudges the size of the box of the scorpion and has to make a cut to make it fit, and you do it as well. Try to be more careful with those things. And about the outdated material, text will always be more important than the videos, so if there's something written on the text that is contradicted in a video, follow the text.

-Third thing is that you have a tendency to ignore your underlying construction at times.

Basically, when you put down a form on the page, it's there. You can't ignore it. It's a real 3d mass and you need to accept that. So build into it, don't treat it as if it's a 2d guideline. Here are a few examples where you do this, hopefuly it makes it a bit more clear: First, and second

-Fourth thing is that you sometimes add forms with flat shapes instead of actual forms. When you add a form to a drawing, draw first that form, and then the connection to the other forms on the drawing with an intersection.

First example is on the wasp, you add the forms with a simple shape instead of a form. When drawing bulking sausages you should approach them like this

Another is on the beetle here

-Next is pretty similar, and it's skipping constructional steps. There are some places where you're going too complex too fast when you could have broken those down in more steps. Some examples:

First, Second, This one is simpler, similar to how leaves should be approached in lesson 3, and Third

-Another thing is that you tend to overuse contour lines. Doing just the intersections between forms is enough if you do them well, so focus on those.

-I want to comment as well that you're drawing too small. Probably because you wanted to fit more drawings into the page. I would have liked to have seen some very big drawings, and I do think that drawing this small has hindered you a bit.

-And lastly, even though most of your lines are pretty confident, in some of them, specially on contour curves, you hesitate and make them wobbly. Don't forget to apply the ghosting method always, even to contour curves.

Like I said, you're doing a pretty good job, drawings are very solid and clean, but I want to make sure you understand some of the concepts of this lesson, so I want you to do 1 more drawing, give a shot at this crab

Good luck and keep up the good work!

Everything Drawabox teaches is at its core an exercise, and each exercise addresses an underlying concept or skill, developing it in the student. Applying the ghosting method, for example, teaches students to think and plan before they make a mark. Drawing from the shoulder teaches us to use our whole arm, for the situations where it is ultimately necessary to make the kind of mark we're wish to produce. Construction teaches us to think in 3D space, considering how the marks and forms we draw exist in three dimensions, rather than just as lines on a flat page.

How you draw on your own, and how any artist ultimately draws can only be considered correct or incorrect against the kinds of marks they're intending to draw. We refer to linework as chicken-scratch not just because it is made up of a lot of shorter segments, but because it is something a beginner will do precisely because they feel that they are incapable of drawing with a single smooth continuous stroke. If an artist is capable of doing it both ways, and chooses one, then there's nothing incorrect about it.

Drawabox ultimately forces you to learn how to do all the hard stuff, so you're able to draw with the freedom of choosing, rather than the restrictions of inability.

DaB insists on drawing from the shoulder because it's a good habit that brings consistent, good marks on the page. It also trains student to avoid the path of least resistance.

Masters have deep knowledge of basic techniques and that knowledge let them bend the "rules" or disregard them completely to achieve a desired result on the page.

Then it's not about right or wrong. It's about awareness. But we can always try to draw how we want during the 50% fun time. That is play time, so let's play! :)

By the way, that artist is great, I'll try to copy from him during the next session.

If you are sure that you didn't follow the instructions correctly and therefore your work won't show your current best, a redo could be a good idea.

Just don't get caught in the grinding spiral. Take your time, try your best and move on.

You can use copypaper and ballpoint pen, super cheap.

Yes