Ponpokopi

Oh wow! Thanks for putting in the effort in to do these extra exercises!! Yeah they look good! Only thing I'd point out is that in some of your ghosted plains I can't see some of the dots at the corners. I'm fairly certain though that you put them there, it maybe just that they're too small to see + the resolution of the image. Just in case though that you didn't, always remember to plot out your lines (placing a start and end point dot).

Anyway yeah, I really enjoyed this exchange. I learned a bunch! Like I didn't know Ctrl+Paint's free library wasn't very in-depth *sweats in embarrassment***. I wish you luck!!!! Move on to the 250 box challenge if you haven't already and don't forget to do your daily warm-ups!!

Hello! It's is not at all necessary for you to do DaB in ink just highly recommended. It's only necessary for patreons who get official critiques. Ballpens are also pretty good btw, if in case you want to use them. In fact for lesson 6 onwards their use is actually encouraged. Also you don't need anything fancy for paper. I've used the back of old test papers, old letters, school print-outs, and the back of the papers from my calender for the exercises.

The main reason I encouraged you to switch to ink is that when you go to discord, I thought that people won't be willing to critique your work in the lesson channels. Since I saw someone a while a back who did one of the lessons in digital get told off by some people in the lesson channels to post their work on #art-share instead. I was worried that you might not get any critique even if you posted your work on Discord. And feedback/critique is really important. Once you get it you can practice on your warm-ups knowing you aren't repeating mistakes. Checked again though and yeah you can definitely still get feedback again just with a lower chance though.

Regarding pen pressure. Fineliners or felt tips pens, which are the pens recommended for Lesson 1-5, can give you a variety of line weights depending on how slow or fast you draw, and with how much pressure you put into it. I recommended you use a pen with pen pressure as this is what I saw people in the Discord who did DaB digitally do to better mimic a fineliner pen. Here's an example. Additionally you can see in the video demos that Uncomfortable uses a brush that mimics a fineliner pen. The line thickness isn't even all throughout. It's very subtle but it's there.

Join the Discord btw! The community is nice! I only joined around 4 weeks ago and I've learned so much just by.. existing there hehe

I didn't mark your lesson off as complete because I initially intended for my comment to be taken more of us general feedback rather than an actual critique. I'm sorry, now that I think about it, it is silly that I didn't mark your lesson as complete, seeing as to how you did your best to follow the instructions, and since I approached your submission much like an actual critique. I'm not a teaching assistant btw or anything just a regular dude who's also doing DaB.

Anyway goodluck!!! If your only choice is to do digital then do it!! YOU HAVE MY 100% FULL SUPPORT!!!!!!! Coz in the end what matters most when it comes to leveling up your art skills is the amount of time and effort, and focused practice and study you put in, rather than the medium that you're using. I did some digging and found that there's a few people who did DaB digitally. In the subreddit if you search up the user CrapDepot, he did DaB and he's doing amazing work right now.

Oh yeah one last thing, since you're doing digital I recommend you check out Ctrl+Paint.

If you can you should really switch to ink as explained here: https://drawabox.com/article/ink

Plus if you continue in digital, there's a very high chance your future posts won't get critiqued. I'll give you some feedback but I won't mark your lesson as complete, since I'm not sure if I should because there may be digital mistakes here that I'm not seeing since I'm unfamiliar with the medium.

I looked through your work and I it's a little hard to judge your actual skill level since the lines are all of the same width. Line weight can reveal quite a bit as to what mistakes you're making so I would recommend that if you're going to continue to use digital consider drawing with a little pressure sensitivity. Also since that you said you sometimes did Ctrl+Z out of habit

P.S. I have no experience with digital media btw

Anyway here are some stuff I noticed:

Line work:

Your lines are pretty nice. They're smooth and confident, though you're lacking in accuracy that's perfectly normal. With more mileage you'll get much better at it.

Elipses

Your ellipses are also pretty good. They're drawn with confidence and I can see you made a good effort to keep your ellipses centered around the minor axis in the funnels exercise. When drawing ellipses though only do 2-3 passes (2 times preferably). In your submission you go over them 3 or more times.

Boxes

The boxes themselves look good, but it looks like you aren't plotting your lines (placing a start and end point), especially for the organic perspective exercise. Don't forget to do this as plotting out your lines is important for applying the ghosting method. Also if you are to continue to use digital for Drawabox, never do Ctrl+Z. If you do Ctrl+Z then do Ctrl+Y hehe.. This way you're able to better mimic the preferred medium to be used for this course (ink), and thus get closer to the same benefits that you would have gotten if you used ink. Also it's only a very minor issue as it seems for your case but don't try to correct a wrong line. Don't repeat lines. No matter how off a line is keep it as if it were correct and move on.

Anyway good luck! I still recommend you do the exercises in ink though. Draw a Box has 50/50 rule anyway where you're supposed to spend the other 50% of your time drawing for fun. I recommend that you spend the 50% of your fun time drawing by doing it digitally and the other 50% by doing DaB with ink. Rather than doing 100% digital.

If you're really dead set on doing only digital though then.. ok. move on to the 250 box challenge, and don't forget to keep doing the previous exercises as 15-20 minute daily warm-ups. Don't neglect your warm-ups! If you're consistent with your daily warm-ups you'll be surprised by how much you'd have improved in the future.

Congratulations for completing the 250 box challenge!! Really nice work! I can see you put a lot of effort in this and it shows in how much you’ve improved. You’ve improved a bunch, and you’ll only continue to improve with more mileage, with that said here are some things that I noticed:

Convergences:

To start, from the start your convergences are already pretty good, though I can see that you had some trouble with your inner corner convergences. They got better though towards the end. Elodin made this demo which might help. Here you draw the inner corner first before completing the outline. Personally I found this method useful as it helped me to better picture and think of the relationships that one of the of the 3 sets of 4 parallel lines will have, instead of fusing over each line individually trying to make them conform to their set (to the other lines they’re parallel to). There’s no one correct method btw, at the end of the day just do what works best for you.

Line work:

In some of your boxes I noticed that you sometimes do 3 passes for your lines. The first line being the “original” line and the second for line weight. Now because you only occasionally added that 3rd line I’ll assume that it isn’t for line weight (plus you’re only supposed to go through it once for line weight) and it could be that you sometimes try to correct a wrong line. I’ve also looked through your Lesson 1 and saw that you had this bad habit as pointed out by Elodin, so I’ll assume that this is the case.

To combat this make sure that you ghost through your marks, thinking and planning them out before each and every stroke. Forcing yourself to think in this manner is necessary as it helps you draw with a greater sense of purpose and intent. Your first 10 boxes for example only two of them have those extra “correction lines” (4 and 8), which tells me that you are doing this, but do it more consistently.

Be patient, ghost as much as you need to. If you feel that you’re starting to lose focus take a quick breather, just pause for a minute then resume again. Don’t try to finish more than you can handle in a session such that your line work begins to suffer as a result of it.

Line weight:

Line weight is optional for this challenge and it’s cool that you decided to experiment with it. Compared to how you started out, again I can see some clear improvement. You’ll definitely do better with more practice. Some stuff that I noticed though:

Your accuracy in putting in line weight has definitely improved but they still have that slight wobble.

• When adding line weight especially, make sure that you are rotating the page to an angle that is most natural and comfortable to you.

• Make sure to be patient and ghost as much as you need to. The lines you add for line weight should be drawn with the same amount of effort and forethought that you gave to your first ones.

Another thing when drawing your lines I feel like you tend to slow down at the end, which may be part of the reason for the wobbliness at times. Instead lift your pen at the end. Especially when you do hatching there a those little stop marks at the end of your lines. And even if you put down a wrong line, draw it with as much confidence as if it were correct and finish it. You sometimes don’t continue some of your lines.

Another another thing.. When you do boxes for your warm-ups, vary the angles more. Here's a diagram and here's a 3D model which will help you get a better idea of the various angles a box can have. I also recommend looking into advanced exercises, so you can keep challenging yourself.

Yeah that’s it oh yeah! Nice work, plus I can see anyway that you more or less already have a good grasp of what your mistakes are and are working to correct them. This is the first time I critiqued someone btw hehe.

Good luck with lesson 2!

Thank you for the critique!!!!

About the demo you mentioned though. I think you accidentally gave the wrong link. I looked through your past critiques and I think this was the link you were referring to: https://imgur.com/FGdtVwm

Really helpful though! I didn't really think about angle relationships when I was drawing my boxes.

I'll be sure to remember your advice moving forward! And I'll also consider doing lesson 1 critiques!

thank you for the kind words!!

In the future though please refrain from giving compliments without critique. I think commenting on a post removes it from the queue so it will be less likely to receive critique from the community.

Luckily in my case I wasn't really affected since I got critique on reddit. anyway yeah take care!

Thank you for critique and the kind words! I'll be sure to keep your advice in mind moving forward!!

Woah thank you for the quick feedback!!!!!

Yeah even now I have a tendency to do clean up passes, so having it explicitly pointed out really helps me to remember better to really avoid this bad habit.

anyway here's my work and thank you again!:

https://imgur.com/a/T7Z1XbZ

HELLO! AND THANK YOU FOR THE QUICK REPLY!!!

I don't know if have time to do everything again, so I just did a little bit of everything here in my warm-up:

https://imgur.com/a/IxEAsrq

HOLY CRAP THANK YOU FOR THE QUICK REVIEW!!!!! HOLY HECK I LOVE DRAWABOX!!!!!!! CRITIQUES ARE DAMN AMAZING!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

...ok i'm done being weird

Just did a warm-up on some Lesson 1 exercises and now I know what to include more of in my future warm-ups, which are super-imposed lines, thin ellipses, and elipses in plains. I've mostly done just ellipses for my warm-ups so this is a good wake-up call, I definitely need to work on my super-imposed lines as I have trouble with adding lineweight.

Also wow yeah in my warm-up just now I realized that I'm a little lacking on patience I sometimes just ghost once or twice then move on. I'll definitely keep this in mind! I'll be more patient as you've advised, and avoid automatic reinforcing!

Here are more of my stuff for you to decide whether my Lesson 1 can be marked off as complete:

https://imgur.com/a/IxEAsrq

https://imgur.com/a/8OxcMUH

https://imgur.com/a/CTVLlHk