jbroshek

Thanks for taking the time to review, DIO! And thanks so much for doing the antler demo. This helps a lot. I also really like the idea of the additional masses that don't influence the silhouette. I had started thinking something seemed a little off by only doing masses that are more obvious, and your explanation really helped clarify things.

Thanks again!

kaneda

Okay, another question: I just started watching the first Lesson 5 video. There's the "Breaking Rules" section starting at 11:53 that describes specifically avoiding use of sausages and instead using 2D shapes. I'm guessing this is something that's going to be changed in the overhaul?

Got it. Thanks!

Took a little break from DaB work, so I didn't read this all the way through until today. Thanks for the critique! It all makes sense and I'll work on implementing these things going forward.

One question, what is the reasoning for building on top of a simple sausage rather than just using a more complex sausage if you can get the same forms you want out of it?

Thanks so much for the critique, Mushroom!

I'll work on the faint construction lines. When it comes to ellipses though, I'm honestly not making them faint on purpose, I think the angle I hold my pen at while I draw an ellipse ends up making all of my ellipses faint. I'll try to work on that, though.

For the places where you said I was missing a minor axis line or not doing the branch technique, my thinking was one of two things:

• For bigger constructions like the mushroom, I was thinking of it more of an organic form sausage than as a "branch"... but I guess I should include a minor axis line for organic forms, too, right?

• For tiny branches, I wasn't confident that I could get 3 lines so close together to line up and look good, so I left out the minor axis line. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with tiny branches?

For the Ceropegia stapeliiformis, I didn't use the branch construction on the appendages on the left portion like you said--I was attempting to use the leaf construction technique in a way similar to what Uncomfortable talked about with succulent "leaves" where you're still expressing the flow, but the form is no longer flat, it has some volume to it. Do you think there's any merit to this approach, or would you still stick to the branch technique? I would like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks again!

Thanks, Tofu!

As far as the line weight (https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb), do you have any tips for practicing this? I feel like no matter what I end up trying, my line weight application ends up like one of the 3 examples of what not to do haha.

Thanks Tofu!

Congratulations on finishing lesson 1! My name is John and I decided I'd reach out and do a community critique.

• Superimposed lines: These look good. Fraying is sticking to one end, which is what we're looking for.

• Ghosted lines: There is still some wobbling in some of your lines. I suspect it is because you are slowing down in an effort to more accurately connect the dots (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/10/wobbling). Remember at this point, accuracy is a lower priority than drawing from the shoulder with clean, confident strokes.

• Ghosted planes: Again, remember that at this point, we are prioritizing straight confident lines over accuracy. Overall, your accuracy is very good, so when you have a line that is off, you feel the urge to redraw it. Try to control that urge and leave it to one line, even if it is pretty far off the mark from where you want it to be.

• Tables of Ellipses: Most of these look pretty good. You're doing a good job of touching the edges you want to touch and maintaining a confident stroke--with some notable exceptions. There are a couple places where it is looking like you are slowing down, and in an effort to get the ellipse to fit where you want it to, you end up with some wobbly shapes with multiple rounded corners rather than an ellipse (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/deformed). Most of the ellipses look quite good, though, so just stick to trusting the faster movement, and over time it will improve in accuracy.

• Ellipses in Planes: These look good and you're doing a good job of fitting the ellipses to the planes. In a lot of cases, you are drawing through more than 2-3 times. If you draw an incorrect ellipse and try to correct it by drawing over and over, you end up with a mess that has a correct ellipse somewhere inside, but it's still a mess that looks worse than if you had just gone with the initial, slightly incorrect ellipse.

• Funnels: You're doing a good job of touching the edges that you want to touch. Some of your ellipses (especially towards the ends of the funnels) are coming in at the wrong angle and have their minor axis tilted slightly away from the center line (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/notaligned).

• Plotted Perspective: Not much to say here. Looks good. You have a good understanding of what we're going for here.

• Rough Perspective: These are looking pretty good. There is a tiny amount of wobble creeping into some of your lines, and occasionally you are still redrawing lines. Just remember to tamp down on this impulse and realize that it's okay if you don't always hit the mark you're trying to hit, you don't need to redraw. Aside from that, the first of the three pages you drew for this exercise looks good as far as sticking to one point perspective. All boxes are aiming towards the same vanishing point. On the second page, it seems like each box is aiming towards a different vanishing point. Remember that we are sticking to one-point perspective for this exercise, which means that there will be one shared vanishing point for all of your boxes (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/not1point). There is also a third page (you only needed two), but this one looks a little better as far as the one point perspective, except this time it looks like in one frame, 2-3 boxes will be receding to one VP and 2-3 boxes will be receding to a second VP. So just remember that in 1-point perspective, everything goes back to the same VP.

• Rotated Boxes: This looks really good! Some of the rotations were off a little bit, but that's what we expect at this stage. Most are pretty on point, and it is clear that you are understanding how the boxes change as they rotate. Good job on drawing through the boxes and keeping the lines of adjacent boxes close to each other to help guide you.

• Organic Perspective: Your boxes are looking good and they look like you are mostly doing a good job of having the lines coverge to VPs. The 250 box challenge will help you take this to the next level. It also looks like you are redrawing a few lines here and there (even aside from drawing over them to emphasize line weight).

Makes sense. Thanks!

Hey Rob,

Quick question for you: When I draw ellipses, I feel like they come out better when I don't draw through them. Here's an example from some warmups I was doing today: https://imgur.com/a/VzqqAKI

For whatever reason, I feel like when I try to draw through, it always throws me off. I start off with ghosting, and then the initial ellipse feels pretty close to what I was ghosting, but then maybe because I'm trying hard to make the "draw through" match the initial ellipse, it just goes way off.

Any thoughts or advice?

Thanks,

John