7:14 AM, Monday January 2nd 2023
Sorry for the ultra late response. Yeah, your work looks good now.
Sorry for the ultra late response. Yeah, your work looks good now.
Hi MECHA_KITTY, I'm Nobody and I'll be handling your submission today. As a side note, my criteria is as follows: I'll be using Elodin's notes as a checklist for mistakes. I'll consider the Lesson complete if all the sections have been completed without mistakes, and a mistake is considered to have been made if, in that section, more than a third of the mistakes in the post have been made randomly across a quarter of the assignment (half if the assignment is a one pager).
Let's get started, then.
Lines
Overall, I'd say your lines section are fairly decently done. There's some fraying on both ends in the first page of Superimposed Lines, but it fades away as your assignment continues, so I don't think it's a problem. Your Ghosted Lines and Ghosted Planes are also pretty good, as they're drawn smoothly and confidently and without any arching. I also appreciate you haven't made the mistakes of not putting down the start and end points or repeating your lines, which are insidious, sneaky mistakes that often goes unnoticed until the end.
Your Lines section is cleared.
Ellipses
Ellipses is also pretty well done. I'd like for you to try to reduce the number of times you go over your ellipses as you go on. Right now you're going over your ellipses three times—which isn't a bad thing at all. Better to have erred on the side of caution than carelessness, and all that. But you've also probably noticed that this creates ellipses that look kind of messy. As you're doing your warmups from now onwards, I'd like for you to try to go for only two repetitions over the ellipse. This isn't a mistake, however, and I'm not going to mark you down for it.
One thing that is a mistake, however, is the persistent wobble in your ellipses. Remember that an ellipse ought to be drawn with the same level of confidence and flow as your ghosted lines. Normally, this wobble comes about as a result of drawing too slowly, and thus the correction is to draw faster.
Other than that, it all looks good. Your Ellipses are complete.
Boxes
Your Boxes are overall pretty good. There's no real outstanding mistake here, and I appreciate that your Rotated Boxes actually, well, rotate. That's honestly a pretty hard thing to do, and probably the thing that trips the most people. There's some wobble in your boxes, but that's honestly not something that's correctable in one easy package, and not something major enough to call for a redo. All I can do is to say that you should focus on the lines in your warmups from her onwards.
All in all, I'd tentatively say that Boxes is complete.
Your Lesson 1 is complete, and you can move on to the 250 Boxes exercise now. Fare thee well, fellow traveler on this long journey.
Next Steps:
Move on 250 Boxes
In your warmups, focus on drawing with confidence. Draw faster if you have to, but your lines should be confident.
Hi, I'm Nobody, and I'll be handling your critique today. A word on my criteria, I use Elodin's pastebin post as a checklist. I'll consider this Lesson complete if all Sections have been completed throughout. A section is completed if you have made no less than a third of the mistakes outlined in the post. A mistake is considered to be made if it appears persistently, or occurred more than a quarter of the times (of course, this is done with the assumption of two pages for that exercise. If the exercise is only a single submission, then the criteria is a third or less). If the mistake is minor, or I feel that it'll be worked out with practice, I'll note it but won't count it.
That said, let's get started.
Lines
Overall, your lines look good. There's no fraying on both ends, you're not prioritizing accuracy over a smooth and confident stroke, and at least in this section you haven't gone over the lines again to correct your mistakes. One thing I'd like to point out is that some of your Ghosted Planes have signs of arching in them. Because it doesn't appear in your other submissions, I'll assume it to be the result of struggling with the exercise a bit.
Overall, I'd call Lines done.
Ellipses
Your ellipses need some work. There's some deformation in some of the ellipses, however, and I'd ask that you redo the Ellipses in Planes exercise with a focus not on trying to force your ellipse to fit into the plane, but instead on make a smooth, consistent ellipse. Other than that, your Ellipses section is fairly good.
After redoing Ellipses in Planes, Ellipses will be done.
Boxes
Overall, Boxes is almost cleared. I'd ask you to redo the Rotated Boxes exercise, as you have made the mistake that not all of your Boxes were properly rotated and instead just sliding along the point. Remember, when a box rotates, the vanishing points slide along the horizon line. This means that the farthest corner moves closer to the inside corner, resulting in greater deformation of the shape (as a reference, the box on the 3 o'clock position would look more like a triangle than a proper box). Some other points to note:
Your Plotted Perspective, while overall done very well, has some problems in some of the boxes where you've accidentally deformed the back edge or missed it. This wasn't significant enough to impact your overall performance, but I felt it noteworthy enough to point out;
Your Rough Perspective shows that you may or may not have been feeling frustrated or weren't fully paying attention during the exercise, as some of your lines are incredibly sloppy.
Your Organic Perspective exercise is extremely sloppy, and you've not properly shaded in the side. Your hatching should be done on one of the front faces of the boxes, but the second page's last two panel has clear examples where you've hatched in the back face of the boxes instead. Additionally, your hatching is extremely sloppy as well. Hatching should be done with clean, straight lines that were drawn from the shoulder. After every line, lift your pen, reset, ghost out a new trajectory, and draw in a parallel line.
After redoing the Rotated Boxes exercise, you'll be able to move on to the 250 Boxes exercise.
EDIT: WAIT! BELAY THE ORDERS! I didn't realize this submission already had a critique, ignore the requirements on this one. I'd like it if you keep the advice in mind, and that it's helpful for you, though.
Next Steps:
Redo the Ellipses in Planes
Redo the Rotated Boxes
Hello Wymann, I'm Nobody, and I'll be hosting your critique today. A few notes beforehand for the criteria I'm using: I'll be using Elodin's Pastebin post on how to critique Lesson 1 (find here) as a checklist. A Lesson is incomplete if any one of your sections has not been satisfactorily completed, and a section has not been completed satisfactorily if you've made more than a third of the mistakes (roughly, more than a quarter of the submission randomly chosen shows the mistake). That said, some mistakes are ones that either will or can only be ironed out through repeated practice.
Lines
Superimposed Lines
Superimposed Lines looks good, no fraying on both ends and no prominent arching, and your lines seem to have been drawn confidently, so that's a clear from me.
Ghosted Lines
Ghosted Lines are also pretty good. No arching, a smooth and confidently drawn line, and you're clearly prioritizing confidence over accuracy, but you also gradually improve your accuracy as well. This gets a pass from me as well.
Ghosted Planes
Ghosted Planes are essentially an extension of the Ghosted Lines exercise, and a lot of the same critique applies here as well. There's a very slight bit of a wobble in some of the lines, but those are incredibly few and seem to be isolated to the edges and corners, so I think it's fine.
All-in-all, Lines is complete.
Ellipses
Table of Ellipses
Okay, this is very good. I'm glad to see that you're drawing through the ellipses at least twice, this is the most common mistake that happens and is something that I myself am guilty of. Other than that, your tables are good, no unnecessary gaps and you've filled out the space well.
The same goes for the Ellipses in Planes and Ellipses in Funnels.
All-in-all, Ellipses are complete.
Boxes
Boxes is complete. No noteworthy mistakes here.
All-in-all, Boxes are complete.
Next Steps:
Head on to 250 Boxes
Let me make a correction, you only need to redo the Ellipses section. No need to redo the entire Plotted Perspective exercise.
Also, the reason why I'm asking you to draw through the ellipses is because your first pass is always terrible. As per Uncomfortable, your arm hasn't had the opportunity to fully understand the task it's been assigned on the first pass, resulting in a wonky and deformed ellipse. Its only in the second and third pass that your arm gets fully into the swing of things and can get to meet its full potential. Essentially, your first pass is maybe 60% of your actual capability, your second pass pushes it up to 85%, and the third one lets you get all the way to 97%. You could probably squeeze out maybe one or two more percent of ability by repeatedly going over the ellipse, but by that point you've made a mess. It's best to stop after two passes, because that both preserves the initial elliptical shape while allowing you to realize the majority of your potential.
Next Steps:
Hi, I'm Nobody, and I'll be covering your submission critique. Note that I'll be using Elodin's notes on marking Lesson 1 submissions as a checklist. My criteria for rejecting a submission is when a section has not been satisfactorily completed, which I consider to be when a third or more of the mistakes in Elodin's notes have been made across more than a quarter of that assignment, or when the mistake appears consistently throughout the submission.
With that said, let's get started.
Lines
Superimposed Lines
Your superimposed lines look good. I can't see any signs of fraying at both ends, and there's only one line with any wobble at all. One thing that does concern me is that there's some arching here, though it appears not to be the sort that's indicative of drawing from the wrist. Given that your Ghosted Lines and Planes don't show any signs of arching, I'll take that to be indicative of lack of practice and something that'll straighten itself out over time.
Ghosted Lines
Not much to say here, other than they're good. The lines themselves are smoothly and confidently drawn without arching, and you don't seem to have attempted to repeated lines that you've erred on, which is good.
Ghosted Planes
Again, not much to say here, these are also good. But something that I thought I should point out is that in your first page of the exercise, you've attempted to construct the planes by connecting where some of your lines terminate instead of the laid out endpoint. This is less than ideal, because your targets are not to "construct a closed plane", but rather to "draw four ghosted lines that end up enclosing a plane". You're not trying to construct a plane, you're drawing four lines that just happen to enclose a plane, and by aiming to connect the lines instead of targeting the points you undermine the importance of those points and the planning stage. It's better to have a plane that isn't perfect than to have undermined the process. That said, this is just an observation and not a mistake, so I'll consider this exercise completed.
All in all, Lines is cleared.
Ellipses
Taking a step out to talk about a persistent mistake, you don't draw through the Ellipses. This is a critical part of this section, and regardless of your skill level, skipping out on it can be harmful to your getting everything out of this part of the lesson. Additionally, this results in you also performing some other mistakes in this section.
Table of Ellipses
Your ellipses, while drawn confidently, suffer from deformation and occasionally fail to touch the sides of the box/neighboring ellipse, or go over their bounds. The remedy for both is the same, draw over the ellipse two to three times (that is, draw the ellipse, and then continue the motion twice or thrice through the ellipse before lifting your pen).
Ellipses in Planes
While you've drawn confidently, because you haven't drawn through the ellipses, your ellipses end up deformed where you try to correct the ellipse.
Ellipses in Funnels
While you've aligned your ellipses to the center line about half the times, your ellipses tend to go out of bounds fairly often, and it's hard to tell if it's because of an unintentional jerk or because it's a failure of planning. Again, this is a mistake born of not drawing through your ellipses.
All in all, Ellipses needs to be redone.
Boxes
Plotted Perspective
First of all, you've done fairly well here, but the one mistake you've made consistently is the failure to fully draw through the rear side of the box—remember, boxes in this exercise should have four lines perpendicular to the horizon line, and you've mostly drawn through the three that are visible from the front, but not the last one that's often hidden from sight. You should probably redo this exercise as well, as drawing the far side of the box is important in understanding the box in three-dimensional space.
Rough Perspective
This one is good. Your lines occasionally fail to align to the horizon line properly (as in, your height lines are occasionally not perpendicular to the horizon line, and your width lines occasionally aren't parallel to the horizon), but as this was not only unintentional, this mistake is practically unavoidable in the start and will fade out as you continue to warmup using the exercise, I'll consider it minor. Also, I'm glad to see that you're doing the ghosting methodology, it's practically intrinsic to the exercise.
Rotated Boxes
Ah yes, the rotated boxes exercise. If the 250 Boxes exercise is the crucible, then this is the Wakeup Boss of Lesson 1. Your goal isn't perfection, but to minimize your mistakes, and in that you've done a good job. You've kept your edges close, and at least tried to rotate your boxes. Some of your boxes aren't fully rotated, but on the whole you've done a good job, and I'll call this part done.
Organic Perspective
I'm not comfortable being overly critical here, because the big mistakes here are all about perspective and that's something you'll automatically correct by the end of 250 Boxes. That said, I will comment that you've consistently made the mistake of making the closer end of the box smaller than the farther end, which results in deformed looking boxes. Remember, lines converge away from the front face when foreshortened.
All in all, Boxes is mostly cleared.
Next Steps:
Redo the Ellipses section, this time while drawing through your ellipses two to three times (again, this means that after drawing your ellipse, while keeping your pen on the paper, you continue the motion of drawing your ellipse at least two times more, and not more than three times more, before lifting the pen from the paper)
Redo Plotted Perspective while also drawing in the fourth vertical edge (optional)
Thank you so much for providing this critique. Regardless of whether or not a critique was already made, you put in a considerable amount of effort in this analysis, and I feel grateful for the considerate advice that you've put forwards. I will most certainly be keeping yours and the aforementioned critiques in mind as I progress.
Thanks so much for the much awaited review! Hope that my own reviews can be as helpful as yours!
No problem. This is a community, and if we don't help one another, then none of us will be able to get anywhere far.
First critique, so I hope this is helpful. This is pretty much on the basis of the instructions guideline up on pastebin, put up by our own member. The criteria I'm using is that you shouldn't be making more than a third of the mistakes mentioned in that post, and I'll consider you to have made that mistake if either 1) you've consistently made the same mistake throughout the assignment with no signs of improvement, or 2) you've made the mistake randomly more than a quarter of the time. If you've completed the section without mistakes, it gets a pass from me, and if there's a mistake that I think won't be cleared up through practice, I won't mark it as complete. If the mistakes are showing signs of clearing up, or I think that it's simply because of a lack of practice, then you'll get a pass for that section.
Starting with the lines section, your initial lines in the superimposed lines section showed some fraying on both ends in the first few lines, but you'd quickly cleaned up your linework by the end, so I'll say that you're free from that mistake. You had some degree of wobble, but you started bringing that into control by the end, and your other lines in the other sections showed that you were drawing your strokes confidently and without overly focusing on the accuracy, so that's a pass. Finally, your lines in this section showed no indication of arching, so you're clear for that section. Overall, I'd say your superimposed lines section is complete.
Because ghosted lines and ghosted planes are so similar—with the ghosted planes being arguable just a more advanced version of the ghosted lines exercise, I'll tackle them simultaneously. Starting with the same points as the superimposed lines exercise, I don't pick up fraying on both ends, so I'll mark that as complete. There's some wobble in some lines, but you're keeping it in check, and overall I think that the wobble will clear out with practice, so you've cleared that criteria. A couple of your lines are arched, but the arch is minor and the level of arching is negligible, so that's clear. On the ones specific to ghosting, you've made the mistake of not putting down all your points in the ghosted planes exercise, as some of the diagonals have been drawn without the starting and/or end points. As this mistake has been made consistently for both pages, and has occurred more than a quarter of the times, I'll mark that mistake as having been made. Additionally, you've drawn over some of the lines in these exercises multiple times, but as that is not a consistent mistake, I won't consider it as having been made, instead just mentioning it so that you're aware of it.
On the whole, I'd say that you've completed the lines section.
Moving onto the ellipses section, I can immediately see that you've not drawn through the ellipses two complete times, instead only drawing through them once on both the Table of Ellipses exercise and Ellipses in Planes exercise. You're clear for the funnels exercise. Additionally, your ellipses show a lack of confidence and, in certain cases, deformation, in the Table of Ellipses exercise, but I rule it to lack of practice as you show remarkable improvement in the overall confidence with which you draw by the Ellipses in Planes exercise. Overall, that mistake is negligible.
Table of Ellipses is clear in my opinion, as your ellipses are gradually fitting into the assigned space, and same goes for Funnel of Ellipses, as your ellipses align to the center axis.
Overall, Ellipses is clear.
Similarly, your Boxes section is clear, because you've drawn through the boxes for all exercises except organic perspective (which is acceptable), you've performed the line correction in rough perspective, and your boxes in the rotated boxes exercise show rotation.
Overall, Boxes are clear.
On the whole, I'd mark this assignment as complete.
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.
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