joxmarf

Hi,

I have recently finished this lesson myself and I did notice some things that you hopefully might find useful.

I noticed that your leg construction is pretty great. You are laying out the base pretty good and adding forms on top of the base makes the legs look really believable. The contour lines where leg sausage forms overlap help a lot there. Looking at your leg construction even helped me understand what I did wrong in my own homework.

While looking at your Citheronia Phoronea and Lobster heads, I did notice that you cut into head forms. I think that the course pushes us to try and add forms as much as possible because that way, even if the drawing doesn't look 100% accurate, we will learn more by doing so.

When drawing texture, try to darken the areas that are representing cast shadows and not to "color" the texture with black ink where the insect is dark colored.

It's my first time giving feedback and I felt like some of this information might sound useful to you.

Cheers :)

Hi Aki, I'm ageth and I'll try give you some feedback today. I hope it helps :D .

Arrows

• Line: Your arrows have a nice flow but there are some lines that doesn't follow the rhythm as they should, remenber ghosting using all your arm practicing the duplicate line before executing it, bucause these are big and complex lines.

• Foreshortening: Your foreshortening is correctly more dramatic than shallow, but I suggest you to experiment more with transitions exagerating; making the arrow head enormous with a really tiny tail or reverse so you can relate more with the espace.

• Line Weight: Your arrows are lack of line weight, Line weight is not just a detail, but a tool that can contribute making some of our 3D forms look closer and others look farther in contrast. so I really suggest you to start using it and since it's a useful tool that we'll be employing frequently in the course. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=treOc3Pp-aE

Organic Forms

• Form: Some of your sausages aren't following the correct form of 2 identical balls connected by a tube of consistent width:so you can try plot with a few dots the general sausage shape, so when you ghost you'll have a few guidelines that can help you not to lose track of the ghosting.

• Ellipses: Your ellipses are nicely done, you drawn through 2-3 times and you're making good attempts for them to fit correctly. Now you could try vary the degrees more as the angle of the sausage faces the viewer. https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/degree

• Contours: Your contour lines are not accelerating as they aproach the edge, executing it this way is important so we can define the surface correctly. When you're drawing contuor lines try ghosting an ellipse and just executing it where the visible part is. https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/shallow

Texture Analysis

• Paper: Well executed with the sahdows and the trnasition keeps gradual.

• Wood: This one looks a little like hatching due to the amount of lines instead of just cast shadows and the transition happens too quick. Remenber we have just two colours black and white which we'll be employing to make a transition with cast shadows.

• Fish Scales: This texture is well executed too especially the black part, but the transition to white is also to quick. Remember you're getting pure white just when you are almost finishing the panel and in the middle part you are gradually losing the gradient.

Dissections

• Terture: Your texture is wrapping correctly around the form but again the transition happens too quick. So keep in mind that you need to reduce the gradient gradually as you get closer to the middle of the form.

• Silhouette: There are some cases when you correctly break the silhouette but most of the it keeos flat or it shows up too shy. You can try exagerate the ellements of the texture so it can be more visible and manifest its particular appearance. https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4dd5336a.jpg

Form intersections

• Forms: Your forms are great as they keep shallow and equilateral but I insist with the lack of line weight.

• instersections: This is a secondary issue so it's not a big deal, Most of your intersections are well done, but just for some boxes i suggest you to consider the space that is ocupied by the form when you're intersecting.

Organic intersections

• Forms: I like how you execute the contour lines here overshooing the curves, well done. As for the forms, most of them are decent sausages but others have weird forms. So maybe this is something we need to reinforce.

• Shadows: Your shadows should follow the contour on the form they are being reflected you can use the contuar lines you drew previously as a guide to draw you cast shadows, and always draw a clean space for the shadow so it doesn't look scribbled.

• Stability: Stability is important bucause it gives us the sensation that the object has weight and it is solid. Always when you draw a sausage make shure it is supported by another, don't make it look like it is about to fall, sticked or floating. I tell you this specially for one sausage on the second image on the right side.

Hi there! I saw your submission in the queue, so I thought I'd take a look. As you know, Camscanner tends to cut out some of the finer lines the work that I've seen that have been treated by it. Lines over-treated by camscanner bring a sketchy feel to the overall work. It can be difficult to judge what a line is supposed to be when it’s broken up or nearly invisible. That said, I tried my best, though I had to compile my notes of your work over several days, so some of my notes may make mention of areas that I couldn't quite make out. Moving on, lets get to the review:

Organic Form Intersections.

Let me start by saying you did a great job laying forms over each other without cutting into them. That's a surprisingly common error as students get used to the nature of forms overlapping, but you skirted that issue here. Make sure to keep an eye on contour transitions. Contours widen as form recedes behind the form its laid over. I have a diagram that I used in another critique that demonstrates that idea here.

Animal Constructions.

This lesson is fascinating to me in how it presents everything we've learned up to this point. Everything in the plant and insect constructions can be applied in this lesson, and what we're ultimately looking at is a toolkit that helps us understand the form of the thing we're trying to draw. It may not help us perfectly recreate the things we want to make, but as the goal of DAB is spacial reasoning, we're well-equipped at this point to tackle the challenge.

To that end, I believe you did quite admirably with your work here. You make good effort to make use of organic additions that roll onto each other without that dreaded “saddle” effect. Sausage armatures are relied on here for the limbs, and that creates a very solid foundation on which to build the lumps and bumps that create our critters. Organic forms tend to follow the form they lie on. It can be challenging to determine just how an organic form is supposed to fall over its base form, but for the most part, those forms will roll softly unless laid over an edge.

Since the complexity of these forms occur where they meet other forms, we can use those lines in place of contour curves to imply the roundness of our animal. Generally speaking, it’s more advisable to rely on our organic additions and the way they fall across the form to create that information otherwise created by contour lines.

One of the key tenets of DAB up to this point is starting with a base and building outward. This is repeated often in all those exercises we end up doing (point-to-point lines, funnels, form intersections, etc.). Very rarely do we see examples of constructions that cut into the form itself to complete the structure of the thing. There are a few older demos to be sure, though I understand that Comfy is in the process of revisions. So in the meantime, make sure to avoid cutting into the forms we’re building. Subtractive construction can be complex when used in tandem with additive forms. Just as a reminder, here’s a friendly diagram that I’ve picked up from… somewhere…

The last thing I want to touch on is your reliance on texture. Just keep in mind that we’re not creating art, but rather applying a rigorous method to gain a better understanding of how objects exist in space through translating them to a 2d medium. Texture in this case is applied to tell the viewer that it’s there, but we don’t need to see all of it. Refresh yourself with this bit in Lesson 2 about implicit vs. explicit details and how it impacts the work at hand. Incidentally, I'm not the best at capturing textures, but hair is one of those things that I've been slowly trying to improve my understanding on, so I put together a quick graphic that I hope will be of some help.

Other that those observations, I think your work here is satisfactory, and I'll mark this as complete.

I uploaded my review and now I notice that you were already working with someone, my bad

Hello Chieftang,

I saw boxbot's post in #lesson-6 and wanted to give you a prompt response. You've certainly gotten plenty of feedback over on discord as well as given plenty of valuable feedback yourself. Therefore, there's no doubt in my mind that you've expertly understood what this lesson is getting at (spoilers). So instead of a lengthy breakdown of each specific object, we'll be focusing on what you've done well for this lesson and how you can apply these concepts to your drawings going forward. Accordingly, I'll try to keep this brief! (EDIT: I was not, in fact, brief)

Starting with your form intersections, there's nothing about your decisions that strike me here as wrong, or at least wrong enough to warrant a draw-over. This is something you can expect to continuously improve on as you keep doing this exercise for your warmups. The feedback you've given others on this exercise is similarly great, so it's safe to say you understand this concept. One note on the readability of the image is lineweight. You've used very thick lines for the intersections, but did you know you can also use these for form edges that overlap? Like the arrows in lesson2, if an edge goes over another edge, you can draw over that edge once of twice to give it more weight and signify that it is in front of the other edge. There are some cases, usually for the circles or cylinders, where you've gone over those forms a few more times than the boxes covering them. Because of this, the thicker edge of the circle or cylinder (specifically the ellipse) look like it should be in front of the thinner edge of the box.

This technique is really handy for those especially cluttered bits of your form intersections where you have a lot of forms overlapping. I find this technique helpful for understanding where everything sits in relation to one another, but it's not a strict requirement. In fact, you've done a good job of giving your constructed objects a stronger outline over the background detail which really reinforces its solidity. Applying this technique to form intersections can aid in that solidity too. Overall this could also be interpreted as an aesthetic consideration as the purpose of this exercise is primarily to decide where the forms intersect. Adding lineweight outside of that is part, yes, but not where the meat of this exercise is.

tldr; line weight cool, not required.

Now for the real part of the lesson, the objects! Breaking down the intent of this lesson (as I understand it at least), what we focus on here is organizing, planing, and understanding. It is in these three areas that your efforts really shine through, so let's zero in on what you've done so well.

Organizing is, admittedly, not an official part of lesson 6. However, I give out so much pointers about organizing that I might as well indulge this topic. Organizational skills are important here because of the nature of the lesson's subject. Man made objects nowadays are often manufactured by machines, thus they have very precise proportions and features that need to be accounted for when constructing. If you don't keep these features in order, you'll veer into the uncanny valley for objects. This is something that comes up in lesson 7 moreso than in lesson 6 because the design language of cars is much less varied (to an extent), and so it's beneficial to start acquiring these skills here in lesson 6. Furthermore, organizational skill, I find, help us be more conscious about the lines we put down by making us think about them in context with everything else in the drawing beforehand. You end up thinking not just about what you're doing but why you're doing it.

Ultimately, this leads to a lot of subdividing which can very quickly turn into line salad with a line vinaigrette dressing. You've done a good job of using labels and different pen colors in your later constructions to keep track of everything, especially for your radio and iron constructions. Going forward, using these techniques in an explicit manner will help ingrain them into your thought processes. Eventually, you'll be able to keep track of things more easily and the speed at which you construct will increase. It's kind of like the extension lines for the box challenge when you think about it: making a deliberate correction choice in order to internalize a concept over time.

Moving on, planning and understanding are the two most important aspects of this lesson, and perhaps drawabox as a whole. Starting with planning, you've done an excellent job of utilizing your orthographic studies. Not only do you use your orthos to decide how the object is constructed, but you also do great acting on your orthos. Orthos are like a more complicated form of the two dots you place on the page for the ghosted lines exercise. They are a statement of your intention before you act and function to spread out the drawing process over as many steps as possible. Essentially, you offload all the hard thinking and measuring to your orthos, freeing up your brain to tackle the construction later. It's very tempting to want to adjust after observing your reference and believe me, I'm guilty of this too. However, acting on the plan we set out beforehand and seeing it through to completion will yield more for our confidence, rather than second guessing ourselves at every step of the process.

This is something I have no doubt you understand well. You don't get it perfectly all the time (for example, you missed the indent on top of you fabreeze plug-in that was in your orthos), but you've shown a good commitment to your decisions that should be spotlighted here. For the cars, I would definitely recommend putting the orthos on a separate page. I know you had some trouble keeping everything on one page, so spreading the orthos out onto a second page will give you more room to breathe.

Finally, we arrive at understanding. This boils down to our knowledge of how the objects exists in 3d space and how much this sense has developed over the course of drawabox. Your work here shows a strong understanding of how your objects exist in 3d space. By drawing through the objects, even for the parts we can't see, we craft a more complete picture of the object in our head and more thoroughly develop our sense of spatial reasoning. I'm especially pleased to see you drawing through your forms in the bluetooth speaker, coffee machine, chair, and oil diffuser! I think the iron, as messy as you think it might be, demonstrates a great understanding of how a curvy object is constructed. There's no doubt that you understand how these objects sit in 3d space, and it shows. Honestly, there's not much more I can say on this topic that you don't already know, so I guess I'll wrap it up here.

Overall, the work you've shown here and the feedback you've given for this lesson over on discord show an outstanding grasp of this lesson and its contents. I look forward to seeing what you come up with for the cars. But first, you must tackle the rubber cylinders upon which they stand. If you need me, I'll be in the corner looking up the definition of "brief." Congratulations!

Hello, great work getting the first lesson done!

Lines

• Lines all start on target, and it is clear you are using your whole arm, nice work.

• The lines wobble/curve slightly upon the end none none of them overshoot; while accuracy is good, it is best to get the confident lines down first before working on accuracy, don't be afraid to do a smooth controlled stroke from point to point and aim to overshoot the line slightly.

• Another tip is to lift the pen off the page just before you finish the line, this will reduce the amount of curling slightly and give you cleaner lines.

Ellipses

• Planes exhibiting some distorted proportions, try not to rush them too much as they better they are, the more solid your ellipses will be.

• Your ellipses show some slight wobbliness in shape, ensure you are ghosting enough times to get an idea of the shape before committing to it.

• Funnels look good,main thing that sticks out is that most of them are slightly offset from the minor axis.

• I'd also work on getting your passes on the ellipses to be more accurate to the initial shape, this is just another line confidence thing.

• Be careful to do controlled ellipses as these ones have a habit of overshooting the funnel slightly;

• Remember to vary the degree of the ellipse as you do additional ones from the central point, this will be get you used to doing more varied angles later.

Boxes

• Spacing between the boxes is good, but make sure you are not trying to overcorrect and drawing extra lines, if one is wrong, or misses, don't worry, just move onto the next one.

• Make sure to vary the height of the horizon line in the frame to give you some variation in your practice.

• Ensure you are drawing lines to the VP after the boxes are done, you missed one panel out (or perhaps it didn't scan properly?)

• Line confidence is the main thing, make sure to ghost the lines enough, a wonky box that has lines that intersect fully is better than one which has lines that stop short.

• When placing the other corners, ensure you ghost to the vanishing point enough to get a sense of where the point should be.

Good progression size-wise for depth, don't be afraid to do some larger boxes, being able to draw longer lines is trickier but will serve you well when you need to do short ones.

Keep in mind a rough idea of the vanishing points for each box, so you can maintain the shape. You'll be doing plenty of boxes anyway so this isn't too big of a deal at the moment.

Hello G4rinuun, my name is Canoe and I'll be looking at your cylinders. Hopefully you won't be waiting too much longer for your completion badge here.

Starting off with the first 150 cylinders, you're doing a good job of marking where the actual minor axis of your ellipse, even when it's only slightly off. This shows a good attention to detail and will be important for later lessons that deal with man-made objects. There are, however, some instances where your estimated minor axis is incorrect. What I mean by this is that you've marked your ellipses in such a way that your mark splits them into equal areas, but not symmetrical areas. You should be able to fold the ellipse over the minor axis and each half would perfectly cover the other half. Some examples of this issue can be found in the top left and right cylinders on page 19-24, the bottom cylinder on page 73-78, the top left cylinder on page 84-90, and the top center cylinder on page 144-150. You improve your estimated minor axes as you progress through the challenge, but it's still something to keep an eye on. Have a look at how Uncomfy splits his ellipses here if you need a visual for what I'm referring to.

Moving on to some smaller points that don't really matter too much in the grand scheme of things, some of your minor axes show a noticeable arc with results in your cylinders "bending" for lack of a better word (take a look at the topmost cylinder on page 73-78 for an example). You also tend to draw through your ellipses more times than necessary. Try to keep it to 2-3 passes if you can. The bottom left cylinder on page 25-30 and the top left cylinder on page 31-36, among others, show what I find to be strangely dramatic degree shifts (how open or closed the ellipse is depending on how far it is from the viewer) compared to their rate of foreshortening. This is something that I'm sure you'll improve/be able to pick up on as you add this exercise to your warmup pool and explore cylinder in boxes.

Overall, you've done a fine job varrying the rate of degree shifts and the degrees you employ in the first 150. Like the 250 box challenge, having a wide variety of degrees from extremely open to extremely closed will give you more mileage with different types of cylinders. Curiously, you've placed hatching on the far end of your cylinder; that is, the ellipse that is slightly smaller and slightly more open. This was initially confusing to me as the viewer since hatching is normally placed on the closer end of the cylinder like Uncomfy recommends here. However, you've done this so consistently that it might have come down to a misunderstanding on which side to hatch on your part. Either way, do remember that hatching should go on the side that faces the viewer.

Moving on to the fun part of the challenge, I've noticed was that many of your ellipses end up being just ellipses and not circles. What I mean by that is that when a box encloses a perfect circle tilted in space, that box will represent a perfect square tilted in 3d space (this'll come up again in lesson 7, but it's worth mentioning it briefly here). However, a lot of your boxes - at least the ones containing the ellipses - are rectangles instead of squares. This leads to the ellipse not opening its degree up as expected even when dramatically foreshortened. This is most evident in the bottom middle cylinder on page 151-156, all of the cylinder on page 175-180, the top cylinder on page 181-186, the bottom right cylinder on page 199-204, the top cylinder on page 217-222, and all the cylinder on page 246-250. I'd like you to keep in mind moving forward and maye keep as an explanation for why you might feel "wonky" about these particular cylinders, especially as they relate to the minor axis constructed within the box (that you should be checking for during your corrections!).

One things you may have missed on was enclosing your two ellipses into a cylinder. What I mean by this is that you don't seem to be closing the cylinder from the outermost visible edge of the ellipse, rather from a point in the middle. Looking the the example cylinder here, you'll see that the cylinder is enclosed from the outermost visible edges of the two ellipses (and at an admittedly difficult angle to see). You've done this correctly on some cylinders, like the top middle cylinder on page 169-174, but for most others you seem to have gone with the middle approach which lends your cylinder a sense of frailty.

Overall, I think your work here demonstrates a good enough understanding of the concepts of this challenge. However, some of your choices lead to your forms here lacking a feeling of solidity in their execution. So, I'm going to assign you some very minor revisions. These shouldn't take you too long. You're already at 95% and I really think a few extra cylinder can help you clinch that last 5%. Still, you should be proud that you've made it this far. Not everyone does. The cylinder challenge is certainly no joke! Anyway, have fun drawing and I'll see you for your revisions.

Hello! So i'll be reviewing your 250 Boxes challenge! First of all congrats, this is one of the biggest stepping stone in the course and the next lessons will be a smoother ride compared to this!

I'll first be going over general points and then will add some thoughts on each section:

First of all good job on always extending your lines in the right direction!

For many boxes though you forgot to extend the back corners side. We aren't focusing on the back corner for now but make sure to always extend it as it can give a good indication for the success of the rest of your box.

Secondly I haven't seen any of your extended lines diverge from the other sets of lines, (other than for the back corner which is normal) but sometimes the line you drew is diverging, but as you draw your extension through the dots (or your intended line) it ends up not diverging. That means that you understand how to do your boxes, but that on some you end up failing to draw the line, that could be for different reason, you got distracted or stopped focusing for a few seconds which happens and is completely fine, or you did your boxes in autofocus or while listening or watching videos which doesn't help stay focused or maybe you didn't do warm ups before, if you didn't I encourage you do in the future but as this isn't a thing I've seen a lot just keep an eye on it for a bit and that'll do.

Some lines seem to be parallel for the 50-100 boxes like n°81 the 2 leftmost sides are parallel and not converging, that's fine just keep practicing those shallow forshortening boxes, it's something I struggled a lot with too, to find a balance between a faraway vanishing point and lines that are not parallel, for many of those shallow boxes 50-100 you end up having not so shallow foreshortening very often, so I encourage during your warmups you try to strive for those very shallow foreshortening and little by little you'll manage fine!

Good you practiced hatching lines keep doing it!

For your next boxes warmups you can try to tackle line weight for your boxes as seen here https://mark-gerarts.github.io/draw-a-card/# (on this tool I shared with you last lesson, you can see the line weight explained when the boxes exercice is shown)

Your lines are confident, only sometimes you seem unsatisfied with the result and draw over it again, you should not do that. If you are unsatisfied with a line, take a breath, slow down your work speed and make sure your next lines are good, that line you missed is not a problem and it will only push you to succeed more in the future.

You varied your orientations (and shapes!) of boxes a lot so good job on that!

I hope that you've seen the average inner corner of your boxes as gotten better through your 250 boxes showing that you have improved ! I'd like to link you that post, I find the answer of Umcomfortable was what I was missing to get that back corner better on the boxes I failed all the time, https://drawabox.com/community/submission/X4JQK70H it's maybe not the clearest answer ever but I recommend you put it on a note or post it and go read it again before you do your warmup boxes next time!

I've also seen that diagram recommended a lot https://imgur.com/8PqQLE0 even though it helped me less it can still be useful!

Overall great job! Good luck moving onto to Lesson 2

I recommend you write the following on a little post it for your next few warmups you can practice boxes again (if you're too tired of seeing them that's completely understandable and you can take a break and then do those warmups in a few weeks)

Just based on a few observation of the sections 1-50 / 50-100

Do a few boxes with a big foreshortening making sure to have them look solid.

And then a few pages (1-5 AT MOST i'm not asking for 20uh) with shallower foreshortening trying to achieve that range between parallel lines and a very far awar vanishing point!

And once again don't hesitate to message me on any thread when yo'ure finished with lesson 2 if you wish me to review it obviously

Good luck and have fun drawing! (and don't forget the 50 percent rule!)

Hello there pepsiman! Today I will be critiquing your homework,

1) Contour forms : It seems your forms are stuck in one size and angle. if you look at the lesson demo, you can see it's done in various sizes and shapes. Try to make different sizes and angles of each form and then put the contour lines. Also instead of using the contour circles as textures that you have hammered on the forms, try to think of its angles and how it changes.

2) Organic forms : Same problem as above, but your ellipses are changing in angles properly this time. Try different sizes and angles of this form.

3) Arrows : Your arrows have little to no twist and turn on it. This exercise is about exploring 3D depth. By twisting it, you are selling the illusion of depth. If you are having difficulties, cut out an arrow from paper and try to twist and turn it and observe carefully. You can take pictures of it and use it as a guide, then do it without reference.

4) Dissections : You are outlining the textures instead of copying shadows. Your forms are way too small to have textures on them, also you have scribbled a lot. Your forms are not long enough. Some of the textures are not even warping around properly.

5) Organic Interactions : Good job on organic interactions. Try to place more sausages on top of it. Also the shadows are inconsistent. Try to imagine a light coming from the top. And then imagine the shadows.

6) Form Interactions : You have outlined the interactions, but not all of them! Try to observe carefully, you will see a lot of forms interacting. One trick I did was to pick one form at a time, and observe it top to bottom. And outlined them properly.

7) Texture : Missing. You have completely missed the homework : https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/textureanalysis

Hey GPPWALTON!

Thanks for taking the time to post your work!

I've just begun to do the same and it's really helpful to see how others are tackling the homework.

The first few things that jump out at me is that your follow through with your lines seems perfect! Even if the accuracy is off, I don't see any chicken scratching, which means you're committing to your lines which is perfect.

Speaking on your accuracy, it's clear that you just need to practice more ghosted lines. Maybe you could do more pages of those for warm-ups? Just to work on your accuracy.

Your ellipses and circles seem to be coming along too but your accuracy could use some sharpening up here as well.

Don't forget to circle your pen around your ellipse for 2-3 full rotations before lifting the pen. It will help dial in your accuracy.

By posting your work and recognizing you need to work on your fundamentals I have no doubt you'll see improvements in no time!

Thanks again for posting!