Sparrowsky

Hi! I'm here to critique your lesson 6. I see you put a lot of hard work into it but there are some things that are undermining your work and holding you back. Here is a link to some images in which I add corrections and explanations which I mention in the text below.

Since there's a lot covered below, if there's anything unclear or I made a mistake, please let me know or ask, I will reply.

Let's begin:

Form Intersections

I can see that your form intersections improved over time, but there are some issues that I’d like to point out just in case, and maybe make the process easier.

And before I start, this is a fairly difficult exercise, one of the most difficult at Drawabox in my opinion. And it’s also possible I “misread” some overlaps as well because they can change drastically depending on which object is in the front or back. So with that out of the way, naturally we are all kind of led to guessing or drawing these intersections roughly and that is often close to the correct solution, but not quite the solution.

One thing I find particularly helpful is “surface extensions.”

Let’s show it on your box and sphere intersection (planes 3 and 4 in the imgur link above). You drew a smooth curved line which is very close to the correct intersection but is actually incorrect. To see why we will take plane 3, make it much bigger so it cuts the sphere (green plane). Then we will see a green intersection. Another way to think of this is taking plane 3 as a patch representing the water surface and now we just extended it to the entire “sea” in which the sphere is partially submerged. This border between air and water on the sphere is our desired intersection (green circle), but only for plane 3. And the red part is that which is visible on our smaller plane. And this is what we need to draw.

Now since planes 3 and 4 are different we can do the same for plane 4 with the “sea” being “vertical” now. The green intersection curve (circle) is now upright and we can see the red section in the smaller patch that we’re going to draw.

The two red curve snippets connect where the sphere and the two planes meet, creating a kind of sharp point, a kink. And that’s our desired intersection!

The same applies to planes 1 and 2 with the pyramid and sphere. That’s why I wanted you to show the kink.

Now the same logic can be applied to any other combo of planes and spheres (two planes will just create a line) etc. One of the tricky ones is a sphere with the curved part of a cylinder. But we can make that easy as well - unwrap the cylinder. You are already doing this right as I can see from your second image. Now you have an ordinary plane and a sphere as above. You get your intersection which is a circle (which you drew). But now the final trick is to wrap the plane back to the cylinder. And with it you will wrap the circle around the cylinder. That’s what I meant by “show wrapping.”

I hope this makes sense. If something is unclear, don’t hesitate to ask. I will try to answer it ASAP.

Laser Spray

The perspective you’ve chosen is a bit extreme, and the lower part of the spray, the lower ellipse, should be smaller if you observe the reference. That’s the main reason it looks distorted.

You should also align the surfaces to the bounding box - a plane inside the bounding box which is aligned with it should have its sides parallel with all of its sides (see red).

The little cylinder for the opening is hopefully facing away, i.e. we wouldn’t be able to see it if you rendered this? Just mentioning it, the line thickness is probably due to a double pass.

Your use of subdivision seems alright but the top part doesn’t seem to align with the reference.

Pencil Sharpener

You are not aligning your lines, they are not truly parallel / converging to the same vanishing point.

The little handle could have been drawn with a cylinder.

You did a good job showing the volume and the concave surface of the central ellipse.

It would be good to have the 3rd (front) view instead of just the top and side views as the front view holds many important features of this object. For example, the curved “bulging” sides like the object is “squished,” as well as the correct degrees and placements of the ellipse and hole. You could have used bounding boxes for this, but it looks like after doing all the hard work with subdivisions you just eyeballed it. Are you rushing this?

Pot (?)

The bottom ellipse seems to be floating. It’s not bounded by anything. Similarly to the Laser Spray, the lines on the sides of the box are diverging. You did not even try to measure the proportions. I think they would be very useful here in particular, as orthographic plans. You did measure out the front white plastic part (I don’t know how to call it). There seem to be some additional things that are not in the reference so I won’t mention these. You could have used ellipses to construct the top part. The curves used give it a sharper look that’s not visible in the reference.

Shovel

This is a very unusual pick for a bounding box. It does sort of work in this particular case but this is not the goal of lesson 6 or the point of these exercises. This is closer to observational drawing now.

In this lesson the goal is to bound your object with a box of your desired dimensions so you can draw it in any kind of perspective and keep it true to the original, not merely copying it. For example if you have a particular shovel and it is 1/3 metal, 1/3 wood, 1/3 handle, you can draw this box in perspective and then subdivide it directly in that perspective into thirds, and construct your shovel using that. Maybe it’s a bad example because you can look at a shovel and draw it observationally, but what if it’s a spaceship or your favorite original character? Do you see the problem with the big box now?

Also since the plane and box do not belong to the shovel itself, I can’t give you any particularly useful pointers as I’m not certain what the subdivisions mean.

Blender

Here you did a much better job at construction and applying the orthographic plan to 3D. You also used bounding rectangles for the ellipses and cones which I’m glad to see. This is much better than the previous constructions.

There is still room for improvement with measuring. The orthographic view should be much longer, and since it’s shorter than the reference, the 3D is also distorted. Other than that it’s good.

Glass Teapot

The orthographic views are good, but are you really applying them in 3D? The base view subdivision into quarters along both sides should be visible on one of the planes in 3D, top or bottom. But what I see is a subdivision into 5 parts only along the long side, 3 quarters, 2 eights. I assume this is because of the inner part of the handle, and distortion. The approach is correct but that perspective distortion is holding you back.

Regarding the side view, the lines you drew there are planes in 3D. The top, inner container, and bottom ellipses live on those planes. But it seems you used this merely to roughly inform you where to put them, i.e. eyeball it more efficiently. But that’s not the goal of construction. You clearly understand this object, otherwise your orthographic views wouldn’t be as good as they are.

Mouse and Controller

This is similar to the glass teapot. Your orthographic views are very good again, with all the major info for 3D construction. But again you used them more as hints rather than key geometrical points / landmarks.

Because of this the key details of your objects are misaligned like the planes of the thumbsticks on the controller and the curvature of the scroll wheel line on the mouse. You could also use the shape of the bottom side of the mouse to help you lay in the bottom part of the 3D construction.

There is very little keeping you from making excellent constructions. Perhaps the problem is a misunderstanding of sorts. This is not just drawing. This is more like architecture - the core part of this is measuring, drawing and subdividing the planes and constructing, as in mathematically, geometrically constructing, the bounding boxes, rectangles, spheres, and other forms like fillets and polygons and ellipses. Yes, it’s an absolute pain. Yes, it takes an eternity.

But it’s worth the time. I did what you did here in my lesson 7. Not gonna lie, I was just wasting my own time. But someone pointed it out and I also encountered it later on in other books and courses. Now it’s one of the most satisfying parts of drawing, if you can believe that.

A good thing to ask yourself when doing these is - if this were the final blueprint for some building - would I want to walk into it?

If not, then perhaps there is still something you could improve.

Thanks! Glad you like it :D

Hi! These are good revisions.

I still see some subtractive construction on the tails (esp. Donald's fan-like tail, it's inside a cut "bounding triangle") but other than that it looks pretty good! You also drew the textures and little spikes really well! They contribute to that 3D illusion.

So yes, keep these points, especially subtractive construction, in mind for future lessons.

You are doing great :)

Hey, Chieftang! Thank you so much for your critique, I really appreciate it!

You pointed out some stuff I didn't even realize I missed like the treasure chest open lid construction and missed subdivision opportunities.

While I was waiting, I did go on to study some more perspective and construction, so I know how to subdivide circles and circular things in perspective now, here is a snippet from the book Perspective Made Easy by Norling as it's really simple and I think you'll like it :)

https://imgur.com/a/RLg6wAI

This is better now. I will let you go - I believe you overthink your lines or start thinking about the final outcome and that makes your lines wobbly.

Adding clean lineweight requires a still hand (practice) and a lot of patience.

If your end goal is to draw animals and characters I would recommend more practice of this type (with references and volumes). Also do not forget the 50% rule.

Regarding line quality, this will be a big thing in the cylinder challenge and further lessons.

Okay - this is incredible. You really were rushing it.

I see you got the hang of constructions now. This is it.

In some constructions, old problems reappeared - you reverted to subtractive construction* for some detail and the thickened lines are still a bit messy. It would also be good that you tapered the textures a bit more like here https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/notransition.

You also seem to have ignored a lot of other instructions for organic intersections (except the shadows, which are much better now): can you try to draw the sausage outline in one or two lines? Because what I see is this "chicken scratching": https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/3/continuous

You already drew these better before in lesson 4. You have to break this habit.

Approach the Organic Intersections exercise just like those forms with contours. Your own image below is a good example of how to draw them.

link from lesson 4 with additive construction and sausage form remarks: https://imgur.com/a/KYLzQNA *

Hi, H_R7, here is my critique! Overall I can see improvement, but I can also see this was rushed as you noted yourself. Organizing this is not so helpful for me as it is for you – you forgot to submit the second bird, elephant, 2 random animals of your choice, and the hybrid.

Organic Intersections

• I see you are switching the degrees more this time, this is good, a some things you should keep in mind: degrees are higher for forms farther away, you can check this out for a more detailed explanation: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/degree (this applies to everything, not just boxes) Contour axis alignment is mostly good – even when there was no contour axis or it was wrong, you tried to align the ellipses to the correct one, which is great!

• shadow wrapping - you have to wrap the shadows around the forms below: don’t let them stick to the forms above! By wrapping them properly you reinforce 3D forms

• take your time – fill the shadows properly, there is no rush with Drawabox. You can also use a brush pen or a regular marker for these so you don’t have to fill them with a .5 fineliner for ages.

Birds

• the bird construction is actually fairly good and clean. This is how you should approach all your constructions. I suggest you add a bit more to this, like the tail, and enlarge the feet a bit so you can construct them as well. You could have used the branches exercise from lesson 3 for the branch.

• there is no 2nd bird

Hooved Quadrupeds

• elephant: You started this just like with the bird, I’m happy to see that you used the branches exercise on the trunk – it makes it pop out and feel like a 3D form. You even changed the degrees slightly – well done! Also great job on using tapered cylinders for the “hooves.” You can improve this construction by showing the joints of the leg and drawing through forms. You could also work on confident lines as I see some wobbles on the legs and additional forms on the back.

• you posted the same elephant twice

• horses: the first horse could also use some extra leg anatomy, as well as ears. The way you approached the construction is great, but I think you should pay a bit more attention to the references. The goal is not to reproduce them perfectly, but it would be good if you tried to stay true to them – try to draw the leg muscles and joints, and don’t forget detail like ears, see this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/5/1/limbs

Also do not go over old lines – ellipses should be drawn through twice, you mostly did this, but I see three passes at times.

If you construct boxes for the muzzle, you can and probably should apply the principles from the 250 boxes challenge. Draw through the boxes, think of perspective. It will make them more solid and correct (mostly applies to hooves).

There are a lot of wobbly lines in your 2nd horse head drawing – this muzzle was very good (the underlying box), I am not sure why these wobbles happened – did you attempt to thicken lines? If so try to do it elsewhere as well (thicker lines bring forms forward, do not use this on contours and auxiliary construction elements). Be careful - think about what it is you want to do, and then do it. Do not go over old lines just to go over old lines.

The 3rd horse has much better leg anatomy but there is still room for improvement. Other than that, the construction looks pretty solid.

• you repeated the 3 images below

Non-Hooved Quadrupeds

• cats: your first cat’s underlying construction is good. Even though you made a mistake with the muzzle, it was approached correctly. You are still adding some extra lines the purpose of which is not clear (they make the drawing messy), e.g. the small lines near the main contour of the head above the muzzle, and also in the muzzle. You can also work on using the 250 box challenge for the legs. The 2nd cat was better than the 1st but I still see wobbly lines in the head constructions like with the horses.

• bears: these are some of your better constructions. There are fewer repeated lines and almost all of them are confident. The boxes for the paws also look better. I suggest you use ellipsoids here, and add on smaller sausage forms for the fingers. Truly boxy shapes like these are rarely found in nature. I see you broke up some contour lines for the head – don’t! Draw through everything. Also, do add the other legs – it’s extra practice, and try to X-ray these: draw even what you don’t see. It will help you immensely.

Summary

Your constructions improved significantly, it is good to see that you are really trying to see how these forms interact, and use additive construction to your advantage. Actually, very little is holding you back – mostly lines (going over old lines, broken up lines, lack of confidence in some) and missing elements in the drawings – probably because you rushed it.

Take your time, look at the reference. I am certain you can do great.

Also, some parts of the drawings (elephant, cat) look partially erased – are you using pencils? You should use a fineliner only (except for filling shadows). Not even for “preliminary construction.”

Images with examples: https://imgur.com/a/s5R9rGA

Hi Abeanberry! These are amazing constructions you got! You demonstrate incredible spatial awareness; however, I see you go often over old lines, use subtractive constructions, hatching, and use some 2D detail for your constructional drawings, which makes you lose some possible use and reinforcement of 3D forms.

Organic Forms with Contour Lines

• simplicity: your forms are mostly simple with very confident lines, which is good

• contour curves: I see you try to change your degrees but at times you forget – try to be more intentional with the contour curve degrees in the future, also pay attention to making them fit in the form, rather than letting them “dangle” (see https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/floating)

• contour axis alignment: mostly good, I see that you are trying to follow this axis, but you sometimes use misaligned contour curves (be careful!) https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/alignment (the contours are just the visible part of these ellipses)

4 Pages: Pure Constructions

Your constructions are very good, I see you really know how to use a various amount of 3D forms as well as the sausage forms from the previous exercise.

You can still benefit from using line weight to bring forms forward – occasionally you thicken some indents and outlines, but leave the legs with thinner lines, which flattens your image slightly (e.g. the drawing of Carter).

• I see you tried to reuse the branches exercise for the antennae(?) and legs but have a lot of dangling and very shallow ellipses/contour curves (see previous exercise for floating ellipses and https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/shallow).

• You also tend to go over your old lines a lot - the goal here is not to “search for” a good line as is in many non-Drawabox drawing constructions, but to use what you already drew for your final construction. Because you’re not doing this, you show a lot of subtractive constructions which should be avoided in Drawabox as well as highly frayed and messy lines. In general, this is a personal choice, some drawing styles explicitly require this, but not on Drawabox. Jarvis is a bit closer to what we are trying to do here than other constructions. The issue is, if ypu use multiple lines, the viewer will somehow average these lines and see something which isn’t there - and if you ever do very fine lineart where precision is crucial, you will never be able to find that right line (it’s a very interesting exercise). The idea is to practice deciding on only one line so you can tell why it’s wrong, which is more important than a pretty picture. Over time, you will see that this line becomes more and more accurate, and as a result you will speed up, and make them more fun. If you go over your lines you will in a sense ruin this feedback loop. Leave just one line just as you did in Organic Forms with Contours for Drawabox constructions.

• you also seem to approach some detail as 2D shapes and outlines. Try to focus on the detail as 3D objects as well, e.g. the spikes on Elphius could be little cones instead of “V”s (which as 2D shapes flatten the image).

6 Pages: Detailed

In general you use excessive hatching here, except for Chadifier from Chesapcake – here you used hatching in a way which is a bit more consistent with Drawabox – it represents cast shadows (but in general hatching is not used here, as most of yours was used for form shadows https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/formshading, and cast shadows are drawn as pure black).

Your contour curves are also better on Chadifier and Larry. This is the kind of thing you should be aiming for.

Again, I see a lot of subtractive construction especially with the claws (Larry and Jenna, Nalinya’s body). Similar issues persist from the pure constructions.

You also thickened some forms and left the others with Azipan – ypu could have used this thickness to reinforce perspective here, thicker in the foreground, thinner in the background. You also thickened contours, which you should avoid (they are constructional things, not actual stripes or objects in real life, so they are omitted to make the outlines, and form shapes more prominent).

Likewise, where you used hatching, you actually missed a great opportunity to use cast shadows and additional forms (Jenna) or texture shading (Larry) – this texture shading is a lot like those dissections from exercise 2 (https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/dissections) – replace the hatching by a texture. This will make your drawing even more believable.

Summary

Overall these drawings are very good – it seems you are already quite proficient, or even an art student, but you did not follow the rules of Drawabox. I know, because I did things like this myself, and later, after I mostly ignored this kind of advice, I realized why it is so important to follow these seemingly arbitrary rules – they make the drawing as true and as precise as possible. Mistakes and shortcomings are immediately obvious, which can be uncomfortable, but which is the best way to see where and how you can improve, which I believe is your main goal as a Drawabox student.

Focus on following the “Drawabox style” with cast shadows, perspective influenced line weight, and texture “form shading”. Do not go over old lines, and use additive constructions.

Images with examples: https://imgur.com/a/oohJlFl

This is much much better!

Just don’t go over old lines. Great work!

I am glad you found my critique helpful!

The shadow link was the images with examples (3rd image with the scorpion shadows), here’s that link again: https://imgur.com/a/7MpbrfP

You mostly picked the blue shadow, from a light source directly above. This means you have to stay consistent with it, and draw only the shadows directly below, but you drew some on the right side and up, implying that there is a light source on the left.

This causes a contradiction and makes the shadow shape confusing and/or read as something other than a shadow.

P.S. try to take a picture head-on or post-process the photo in the future so perspective doesn’t distort your drawings (the paper looks slanted)

Hi! Here I am for the critique. Overall, your lesson 4 is very good, and the progress is evident within the images you posted.

There are some problems with the contour lines exercise and related principles of form wrapping.

Organic Forms with Contour Lines

• simplicity: your forms are all simple with very confident lines, just as they should be

• contour curves: I see you are changing your degrees but sometimes you do it incorrectly* (see https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/ellipses and https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/degree). The thing is, as objecs recede, more of their cross section is visible so the ellipse / box / [insert your shape] degree will be higher. A lot of these curves are also “hanging in the air” (see https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/floating), particularly on the 2nd page – perhaps you got tired and rushed it?

• contour axis alignment: mostly good, I see that you are trying to follow this axis, but you sometimes use misaligned contour curves (be careful!) https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/alignment (the contours are just the visible part of these ellipses)

4 Pages: Pure Constructions

An interesting observation here is that you use the contour curves for the big constructions perfectly – you make them fit in the form, use the correct degrees, and also align them to the halves of your objects. It makes me wonder what happened to the sausage forms above.

• spider and ladybug: you mostly use sausage forms for the legs which is good, but sometimes draw shapes and circles which seem out of place. Your legs are constructed better on the later pages, so keep doing what you did there. The shadows work here, and the texture on the abdomen is good as well. It’s good that you used shapes for the dots of the ladybug, people often color things like this with black which should be avoided – good job!

• wasp and louse: I see you had some trouble with the forms wrapping around the abdomen for both. The contour curves you used before these should be your guides. In fact, this is one of the main reasons you have to draw them for Drawabox. They help you orient these wrapping forms. Also, when you draw them, draw through other forms. If you don’t you will get discontinuities* which flatten the image or send wrong messages. The underlying constructions, as well as the head, antenna and leg constructions are good.

• scorpion: here you actually followed the implied contour (it might be of help to draw it) with additional forms, which is the cross section of the abdominal box. Try to do this more intentionally, it will help you with constructions like the wasp and louse above.

There is a problem with the shadow: in general, shadows will fall in a specific direction, away from the light source(s). When you pick one direction, you have to stay consistent. Here it seems you picked the shadow to fall directly below the scorpion. Because of this choice you shouldn’t draw any shadows above or on the side. See the link below.

• fly and spider: here you made the shadows much better. It is great to see improvements between just consecutive pages :D You also followed the contours with your forms on the fly. Great job!

6 Pages: Detailed

You seem to have taken all the good stuff from the pure constructions and applied it here. Nice.

The leg constructions are good, but the ones for the grasshopper are excellent. It’s really good to see how these forms interact and it gives it an extra 3D feel. I wish you used a similar technique with tour black widow as well. I can see you defaulted to 2D shapes here and sometimes went over your lines which should be avoided.

• ladybugs and beetle: now you colored them. With these constructions, it’s better to keep that pure black for shadows and textures. Color like this can easily distract and flatten the image, e.g. the patterns on the leaf. Was that supposed to be some kind of texture?

The usage on the beetle is how you should approach this. The black implies an indent here, and it transitions from a texture, which gives you 2 things at once: texture and form reinforcement.

• grasshopper: as I said earlier, it might not be 100% as the reference, but the constructions are excellent. I would go a little easier on the thick lines but other than that, great!

• planthopper: overall good, but beware of using lines this thick on the wings. It makes them look too stiff and solid, like they are a part of the form. Try to outline these so they look like veins, see the wasp’s wing above this step: https://drawabox.com/lesson/4/2/step6

• for the crab orb weaver I’d taper the texture more slowly. You also seem to have used outlines instead of form shadows (https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/notransition) Also leg construction – try to make it more like the shrimp or ideally grashopper (you don’t have to be so detailed, but the way you used the ellipses and sausage forms is really good).

• the last scorpion is excellent. You did the texture right, and the shadows, and the legs. Keep doing constructions like this! Also – are you using a fineliner here? The lines on the legs look much thicker than those on the abdomen and shadow outlines. There is no need to change the thickness / medium like this.

Summary

Your constructions show a significant improvement. For some reason, you tend to revert to 2D shapes and odd constructions for the legs occasionally. You definitely improved the form wrapping and shadows.

Images with examples: https://imgur.com/a/7MpbrfP