1:15 PM, Saturday September 11th 2021
Thank you, you too.
Good luck on your art journey
Thank you, you too.
Good luck on your art journey
No, you don't have to submit organic perspective or rotated boxes.
It's not a requirement of the course.
It's just my personal recommendation for you to do, because I think it might be beneficial to your learning.
Hi Ruinone! Welcome to DAB, I'll be reviewing your homework today;
On Linework:
Linework is looking really quite good for a beginner. You're hitting all of the main points, so I don't feel much of a need to re-iterate anything in the lesson. You're doing really well here, keep it up.
Ellipses are looking really good too; you're keeping them very tight in your draw-throughs which is impressive.
Really not much to critique here, you're doing great.
On perspective:
On the rough perspective exercise you show the ability to find convergences with a reasonable level of accuracy, though the more advanced exercises pose a little more challenge for you (as expected). All in all though, you do really quite well at these exercises.
One error I notice on your rotated boxes is that some of your boxes don't actually rotate, notably on the outermost ring https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/notrotating. I've marked the boxes on which you do that, though you're generally good at avoiding this mistake. https://imgur.com/a/lUUbjME
On the Organic perspective exercise, you're making two mistakes.
First mistake is that you don't always find the right convergences on your boxes. This is a pretty normal mistake, and one you'll invariably solve as you have more practise grappling with perspective. I point it out just for clarity as to what's going on.
The second mistake is that the foreshortening of your boxes (see notes: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/7/foreshortening) is not kept consistent, which breaks the illusion of perspective in how the boxes are placed relative to eachother.
Overall, really good work here. You've done well.
Next Steps:
Doing really well so far. Move on to the 250 box challenge now.
See you there!
Hi Chiran!
Just wow, honestly, these plants look incredible, really not much to critique here, you've done really well.
You're applying constructional techniques correctly, you're applying cast shadows correctly, you're maintaining a solid sense of perspective and 3D space in your drawings. All of the main points are being hit.
One point of critique I could give is that sometimes you fail to have your branch lines conform to the ellipses you've drawn out to mark its passage. On your branches page you also don't draw enough ellipses on all of your branches, and so you have to draw out a relatively large chunk of space without any 3 dimensional grounding for what form you're actually constructed. This may be why your lines have a tendency to warp and bend on the branches where they typically remain confident everywhere else. I think this is also why some of your branches tend to bend unnaturally. Mark out your branches more thoroughly before drawing them and you should do fine here.
Overall, really good work.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 4 now, good job
Hi there! I'll be critiquing your DAB homework today.
On Linework:
I think your primary issue here is simply a lack of muscle memory, as displayed by your tendency to curve or bend when you draw a line, which implies to me that you're consciously trying to push through with confidence mentally. That's the main point of importance, and as long as you focus on that the line quality will invariably improve. To be safe, however, I'd like to reiterate one or two points in the lesson just to make sure you're keeping them in mind.
I notice that on your ghosted planes exercise you tend to have very good accuracy, but often at the cost of your line quality. This effect is significantly more pronounced on your boxes exercises towards the end of the lesson, as you grapple with the additional requirements of "oh I must draw this 3 dimensional box in correct perspective", which causes you to compromise your line quality as you focus on "getting the box right". I think you make this mistake in your ghosted planes as well, as you try to focus on "drawing the plane right". This isn't an uncommon issue, I see it with nearly every student I critique (and is a mistake I made myself). However it's worth pointing out because this can build extremely bad habits;
"oh I need to get this line/square/box/animal/person/drawing correct" -> and so you forgo the quality of your lines in favour of "getting them right". This will hurt your drawing abilities longterm, as well as perpetually hamper your confidence as you lack the mileage to feel comfortable simply drawing a line from A to B. Whilst it might be difficult and frustrating to feel unable to draw the lines you want, if you can focus on building up your confidence now it'll save you a lot of pain later on in your art journey.
https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/10/levels Have a look back at this section to really solidify where you should be focusing your efforts.
Your ellipses look good overall, not too much to comment here in the way of mistakes. Additional practise will help you refine your skill here. One point, however, is that you seem to gravitate heavily towards more elliptical, pointy shapes, to the point that I can barely see any circles in your work. When you're practising ellipses, be it in any of the exercises in the lesson, try to push a focus onto drawing circles to make sure you don't neglect them in favour of your pre-existing comfort zone.
On perspective:
Overall you've done quite well on this section. You seem to have a basic understanding of the principles of perspective, vanishing points and so on, but you struggle on the more advanced exercises of Rotated Boxes and Organic Perspective (as is expected of students at this stage.) In the organic perspective exercise you struggle to find the correct convergences, drawing the boxes totally free-form. The 250 box challenge will be especially beneficial to you I think, as it'll give you good mileage in training your brain to think in 3D and understand how things should sit in space. Like your linework, this is purely an issue of muscle memory, though in this case it involves the brain rather than your shoulders. For your interest, it may be of value to revisit Rotated Boxes and Organic Perspective after finishing the 250 box exercise to see how you're able to grapple with these advanced concepts later on.
Overall though, good work here, don't worry too much about it for now.
Next Steps:
Overall good work here! Move on to the 250 box challenge now.
See you there!
Hi there!
Overall these look pretty good;
Some of your leaves seem to suffer from the mistake of not folding naturally https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/folding, though overall you're actually pretty good at getting them to fold through space and feel 3D and conform to perspective.
I've circled some of the ones I think fold unnaturally in red, and circled some of the ones I think are especially good in blue
You seem to be quite good at getting your leaves to conform to perspective and feel like they're moving through real, 3D space, so well done there.
You're making a valiant attempt to apply the branch technique properly in your earlier plants and in the branches exercise, but I see your lines get a little wobbly and shaky on the smaller branches. Watch for that, focus on your confidence first and foremost.
You seem to be working constructively and additively throughout your exercises, which is very good to see. Well done there, keep that up.
I think you've got a pretty solid understanding of the fundamentals of construction presented throughout the lesson.
Well done
Next Steps:
All looks good, Move on to Lesson 4 now
Hi Illo! Welcome to DAB. I'll be reviewing your homework today. I'll go over what you've produced here and give you some pointers as to what things you're doing well, as well as point out which things you're having difficulty with and some of the technical and conceptual ideas we can implement to improve on them.
On Linework:
Overall you're doing well on your straight lines. On the superimposed lines exercise you've done a good job at pushing through the lines with confidence. You've also taken the time to place your pen down carefully and not rush into the execution, as noted by your ability to keep fraying at the start point to a minimum. Across your ghosted lines and ghosted planes exercise you're making a good attempt at utilising the ghosting technique to keep your lines straight and confident.
I can see that you're consciously trying to apply the concepts taught in the lesson, but as you're new you're not experienced in applying it yet. A mistake I see (which is common amongst new students) is that you tend to wobble just at the start and end points of the line. At the start when your brain gets jolted "oh! Im actually drawing the line now- uh oh", and at the end "Oh I need to stop somewhere around here soon uhhhh". This is a common mistake, and won't be too hard to rectify. Just keep prioritising confidence and you'll ween this out as you get more mileage down drawing. The occassional wonky or curvy line will also smooth out and become straight as you develop more muscle memory. The key thing is practise and getting the mileage of drawing many, many lines. Make sure to keep in mind your objectives and the concepts taught in the markmaking section when drawing and you'll do just fine.
A very common mistake I notice amongst students is that, whilst they tend to produce admirable work on the first set of linework exercises, when they reach the boxes and perspective sections they throw everything they learnt straight out of the window. Students tend to get overwhelmed with the additional information and requirements of the exercise; "I have to draw this whole 3D box in perspective and think about how it converges to the horizon line and vanishing point.." leaving them caught up in the more complex requirements of the homework, forgetting the basics of linework as they strive to "get the box right". Understandably this can be a hard thing for students to keep track of at first, but it's of great importance to note because this can bleed into later lessons (and indeed your art practise as a whole). We should be striving for confident, smooth lines in everything we do. If we make exceptions because "Oh I need to get this box right", it's very easy to fall down a rabbit hole of "oh i need to get this piece of proportion right, I need to get this face right, I need to get this figure to have this line to go from A to B"... and as such we end up never implementing our linework techniques because we're too scared of "getting the line wrong". Push through with your linework techniques regardless, even if you end up missing. Whether that's an exercise in DrawAbox or your own artwork.
One issue I've noticed on your ellipses, which is notably more present on your tables of ellipses exercise, is that you seem to lack confidence with your draw-throughs. They seem to hesitantly cut off, or lie quite loose around the main ellipse as to not "mess it up". It is better to push through with your draw-throughs, even if it makes the ellipse look worse because it'll help you in the long run. You'll develop more confidence drawing ellipses, as well as give you more control over what kind of ellipse you want to draw. (Additionally this can be useful when we want to use ellipses to create solid, three dimensional forms in animals and the like, but that's a concept for a much later lesson.)
You do seem to have rectified this issue somewhat in your ellipses in planes, but I feel it's of value to point it out regardless just in case. As with the mark making exercises, you'll refine and hone your skills here through practise, so don't feel discouraged if they're not as clean as you'd like them to be now. You're doing just fine, keep it up and you'll reap the rewards.
On Perspective:
Perspective is often difficult for new students, as they have to grapple with conceptualising 3D space in a way their brain has never had to consider before. Nevertheless, you've made a good attempt across this section. It's not expected for students to produce the most outstanding work here, indeed, most students struggle as expected. I'd like you to not beat yourself up over this section as it's perfectly normal to struggle here. You'll get plenty of practise in the 250 box challenge to accustom your brain to working with perspective and 3D space. (as well as future lessons.)
I won't critique you too heavily here as there's already a lot of information to take in, and I think that at this stage it won't be of much use to you. For studying perspective, you'll find the 250 box challenge to be extremely helpful in developing your spatial awareness skills. After completion of that exercise, alongside your study of Lesson 2, you may wish to re-read the perspective notes in Lesson 1 (as well as the additional notes.) and re-attempt the organic perspective and rotated boxes exercise.
Overall, you've done pretty well on Lesson 1. Good job!
Next Steps:
Overall you've done pretty well here. Points for you to keep in mind;
Prioritise confidence in your linework, especially when tackling bigger tasks that have additional requirements. Endeavour to not compromise your linework to fit requirements of accuracy
Push through with your draw-throughs on ellipses
Move on to the 250 box challenge now, see you there!
Hello Koigic,
Many thanks for the critique;
I would like to ask, though, where do you see the constructional mistake on the horses? I've checked back on them looking at the diagram you draw on the 6th drawing as an example and I can't see where the mistake is.
In any case, here are my revisions of the running rat and the donkey demo's
Thanks again,
Zak
No worries;
On perspective;
I primarily recommend going back to the rotated boxes and organic perspective exercises AFTER you complete the 250 box challenge as an extension exercise.
Don't worry too hard about getting these things down right now, just move on to the 250 box challenge as you'll get the mileage you're looking for there.
Lesson 1 is "on the house", if you will. If you don't receive a critique within a week someone will review your homework for you. After lesson one you'll have to complete 5 critique's yourself to request a critique for one of your lessons.
I've marked your lesson 1 as complete, so you should be fine to critique the work of other students. Check Elodin's guide under the pinned messages if you're unsure and would like further guidance on how to critique lesson 1 homeworks
This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.
When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.
Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.
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