Kazz

Dimensional Dominator

Joined 4 years ago

11450 Reputation

kazz's Sketchbook

  • Sharing the Knowledge
  • Dimensional Dominator
  • The Relentless
  • Basics Brawler
    5:34 PM, Sunday July 18th 2021

    Hello again! Let me take a look at your revision.

    Your ghosted lines turned out much better here. They are a lot smoother, and it appears you are starting to get used to drawing from your shoulder. Your table of ellipses also looks better, you kept the degree and angle consistent as instructed. Of course, the issue is still the present wobbling on them, so you don’t seem to let go of conscious control yet. What you have to remember is that you rely on your muscle memory with each mark and build it up by ghosting. Once you’re done ghosting, you let your arm draw by itself. Accuracy will be off, but will improve over time. In your tables, there are signs that you are slowly letting go of conscious control, in your last box for example, the ellipses are not very tight but are a lot smoother which is the correct way to do it. One advice I like to provide to all students to improve on their ellipse making is to begin and end at the minor axis to remove that tip of bend at the end and improve symmetry a bit.

    There is still room for improvement in my opinion, but I think you understood the purpose of each exercise and are ready to tackle the challenge ahead, so I will mark your work as complete. Don’t forget to do warm-ups for 10 - 15 minutes, and prioritize the exercise you are struggling with the most. With that said, congrats on completing lesson 1 and good luck in the 250 box challenge!

    Next Steps:

    250 box challenge.

    This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
    9:48 AM, Sunday July 18th 2021

    Thank you so much for the in depth review. I will read it many times to digest everything you said. One thing though, this part: If you take a look at this example, the link just takes me to the homework submission. Did you meant to show me something else?

    2 users agree
    1:17 AM, Saturday July 17th 2021

    Hello! I am Kazz and I will be taking a look at your summited work today. Before I begin, let me address your previous comment. Indeed, looking at your completed exercises I can see you struggle with marking down smooth, confident lines and instead focused on accuracy. And while it has improved on the organic perspective exercise, deviation from its original path is still present on the lines. All the course correction caused a lot of shaking in your lines and, as far as this course is concerned, it is a mistake. A wobbly line cannot be worked with, while a smooth, confident lines is correct, regardless of how off it may be from its intended stopping point. With that said, I will point out other mistakes that may be present in your work.

    Beginning with the lines. In your superimposed lines exercise, there appears to be fraying on both ends in many of your line, meaning you didn’t take the time to place down your pen. For both your ghosted lines and ghosted planes exercises, they were done as instructed with the primary issue being the wobbling, which was already addressed.

    Moving on to your ellipses, these also appear to suffer from lack of confidence. With an insistence on accuracy, there is a clear lack of symmetry and smoothness on each. For your table of ellipses exercise, on most of the boxes you kept the angles and degree of each ellipse consistent. The most common mistake I can find is drawing without a concrete goal, for example, the second row of your first page. The ellipses are all just shoved inside the box with no consistent angle. For your ellipses in planes exercise, nothing to say other than the issue with wobbling and prioritizing accuracy. The funnels exercise is mostly done well. The biggest issue is the misalignment of the minor axis and the “squishing” that is apparent, suggesting you were trying to avoid overlapping them. You also could have used a ruler for the funnel’s minor axis.

    For you plotted perspective, some back lines are not parallel with the rest. This is caused by the accumulation of human errors from the previous lines, say, the bottom lines were a bit off from the two vanishing points. Other than that, it is done well. Your rough perspective is also done well, you can see how off your intuitive guesses were from the vanishing point. This is normal in the beginning and will improve with the 250-box challenge. The rotated boxes turned out pretty well too. One thing to keep in mind is that the bottom planes are basically the top planes shifted down, so the lines from the top are a bit similar in a sense. The corners are, however, missing. The organic perspective is perhaps the best exercise you have done. Your lines are much better here than the rest, but some work is still needed. One thing to keep in mind here is the that the initial Y’s angles must be greater than 90 degrees to prevent the box from turning out distorted.

    To conclude, this lack of confidence is holding you back, and I am quite concerned about it. For this reason, I will ask for revisions. Both your lines and ellipses need some work to do, so I decided that you should return to the ghosted lines and table of ellipses exercises. I will only ask for one page of each.

    For the lines, you must remember to draw from your shoulder and avoid correcting course. Same with the ellipses, but I also suggest speeding up a bit to sacrifice some accuracy in favor of smoothness. Increase the speed until you find an optimal speed that suits you. I also suggest you begin from, and end at, the minor axis to help with symmetry and remove the bending present at the mayor axis. I will again stress the importance of confidence. The lines may miss the mark, the ellipses may overlap or go out of bounds, but this is something that can improve over time with practice. So, below, I will give you some instructions.

    Next Steps:

    As stated above, I will only ask for one page of the ghosted lines exercise, and one page of the table of ellipses. It is worth revisiting both the articles on these two assignments.

    When drawing through your ellipses, don’t be too concerned with the tightness of each and keep the stroke consistent without any deviation. Same with your ghosted lines.

    With the table of ellipses, avoid making the same mistake as last time and keep the ellipse’s angle and degree consistent. Take inspiration from the example homework here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/example and avoid doing this: https://imgur.com/a/Il4mxFN

    Take as much time as you need, don't worry if it takes multiple days, I can wait. Take care!

    When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
    8:06 PM, Thursday July 15th 2021

    Hi!

    It is understandable, but also important that you avoid rushing. If this is happening, stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing and take a small brake to come back with a clear mind. The lessons ahead aren’t as straight forward and will no doubt burn you out hard. So slowing down and taking your time is essential. And also, the 50% rule can help with this.

    I wanted to give it a second shot after I saw the result but the introduction guide says we should never under no circumstances redo an exercise so I left it like that.

    That is correct! It is up to the person reviewing to determine whether you should revisit your work or not. So if it comes out badly, leave it as it is.

    Good luck! And take care.

    2 users agree
    1:15 AM, Thursday July 15th 2021

    Hello! I am Kazz, and today I will take a look at your submitted work.

    Starting with your superimposed lines exercise, these are turning out well already. There is a starting point in each line, and fraying only at one end. There is some shakiness noticeable in the longer lines due to consciously correcting the line’s course. Remember to always prioritize smoothness over accuracy for every line you mark down. I also highly encourage you to draw some curved lines as well here, it is good practice. Your ghosted lines are also done well, I can see that you are getting used to drawing from your shoulder and getting more confident with your line making. The same can be said for your ghosted planes exercise. Good work here!

    Your table of ellipses is coming along nicely! You drew through your ellipses at least two time and kept both the angle and degree consistent through each box. Some issue I can spot, there is some subtle yet noticeable wobbling in some of them, and it does appear like you are slowing down near the major axis. Some advice I can provide, begin and end your ellipse at the minor axis instead to eliminate that bend at the end, and help with symmetry a little, ghosting more often to get better muscle memory, and finally speed up your ellipse making, if you think you’re going too slow, to sacrifice some accuracy and prioritize confidence instead. Don’t go too fast, though, find a speed that suits you better as you experiment. Most of the things I said before apply in the ellipses in planes exercise. Your funnels are done really well! Ellipses are snugged and within the bounds of each funnel. Not too much misalignment from the minor axis, either, so you are on the right track. You could have started with a narrower central ellipse, and there isn’t much growth in their degree as they move further away from the center, and although it is optional, I highly encourage you to try increasing the degree when you practice your funnels. Check out this example here. Worth mentioning, you did two pages, remember to stick to the number of pages assigned.

    Hmm… you forgot to post your plotted perspective and rough perspective exercises. Please submit them, so I can take a look at them before marking your work as complete. Splendid job on your rotated boxes! One thing that is worth keeping in mind is that the planes at the bottom are essentially the top planes shifted down. You seem to run into the issue of not rotating your boxes, noticeable on the vertical and horizontal boxes. Here is an example of what I mean. Finally, your organic perspective looks great. You had an issue with a lack of rotation on your boxes in the first page, but it seems you took note of it on the second page. To some of the wonkier boxes that appear occasionally, it is because of how you built the initial Y, its angles must be greater than 90 degrees.

    Overall, this was a solid submission. All I need is the exercises absent here before you can move on. I will await your response. Good day!

    Next Steps:

    Upload the plotted perspective and rough perspective exercises.

    When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
    9:44 PM, Monday July 12th 2021

    My bad, I forgot to finish that last sentence.

    2 users agree
    1:21 AM, Monday July 12th 2021

    Hello there! I am Kazz and I will take a look at your work today. With regard to your previous comment, if you want to help around and provide advice, I highly recommend you join the discord server (if you haven’t already) and head over to the #critique-exchange channel. There, you can ask for others to review your critique and point out flaws and potential advice you might have missed. People will be more than happy to help you there. If you are interested, please read the pinned message in the channel. I will now begin reviewing your work.

    Let’s begin with the superimposed lines exercise. These are off to a good start! Most of the lines have a clear starting point, with fraying only at one end. Sometimes, however, there does seem to be a bit of fraying in the beginning; your last line on page one for example and some of your longer lines in the second page. Do remember to take the time to place down your pen and not rush. Another thing I would like to point out is the bending on the second page. This could be happening for two reasons: you have a natural tendency, in which case just bending it in the opposite direction can solve that, or you are pivoting from the elbow instead. I suspect that you are still getting a feel with drawing from your shoulder, so sometime it can get difficult. So remember to always draw from it when drawing any line. Your ghosted lines look good too, there was a bit of wobbling on some of them, but they seem to be mostly smooth with a fair amount of accuracy as well, which gets better with practice. Your ghosted planes are good for the most part, but they have some problems. On your first page, there seems to be a lot of arcing lines, so remember what I said about the two possibilities here in the superimposed lines. And also, on your second page, you did seem to prioritize accuracy more than confidence, evident by how wobbly the lines turned out. Keep in mind that a wobbly line is a mistake, while a smooth line is correct regardless of how inaccurate it is. Also, you forgot to draw the vertical and horizontal lines for the planes here as well. I won’t make a fuss about it, but remember to follow the instructions thoroughly for each exercise.

    Moving on into your table of ellipses exercise, you did well. You kept most of your ellipses within the bounds of each box, not too much overlapping or space between most of them, and tried to keep the angle consistent. One thing I want to mention is the “floating” ellipses in some areas. For example, in the second page, 4th row, some of your ellipses are just drawn randomly. The purpose of this exercise is to get comfortable with ellipses and to get used to drawing them with purpose. Putting them like this isn’t helpful, so you should avoid it. In your ellipses in planes exercise, you did pretty well on your first page with smooth ellipses, but prioritized accuracy on your second page. We do strive to keep them tangent to the plane’s edges, but we want to see smooth and confident ellipses. In your funnels, there are a few problems. First, you did not draw through your ellipse at least 2 to 3 times. Let me direct you to this, this is how all Draw A Box ellipses should be drawn. You could have also done a better job at keeping the ellipses snugged against each other, and keep them aligned with the minor axis. I think you still understood the purpose of this exercise. Overall, good effort here.

    No opinion on the plotted perspective exercise, it looks good. Your rough perspective is done well for the most part. You could have drawn bigger here, which helps when dealing with spatial problems, and I suspect you rushed a bit here with some of your extended lines because they are missing from some boxes. Another thing I would like to point out is the unfinished boxes. I know that it came out badly, but you must simply work with it instead of marking it out. Now for your rotated boxes exercise. You finished both the vertical and horizontal ones, but did too much guessing and gave up on the rest. I understand that it is an immensely difficult exercise, but it is important that you tackle it because perspective is fundamental to the arts. So you should have pushed through and do it to the best of your ability. Because it is unfinished, I will have to unfortunately ask you to try it again. I will provide you with instructions below. Your organic perspective looks good. A few problems I have with it is that the depth seems a bit inconsistent. I think I get what you were trying to achieve, but it is best to just stick to how it is done in the example homework. Also, your initial Y’s angles need to be greater than 90 degrees. But it is well done still.

    To conclude, it does feel like after the ellipses you began to rush through most of your work. It is important that you take your time with each exercise and do them to the best of your ability. If something comes out poorly, stick with it; you should push through and finish it anyway. So, I want you to revisit your rotated boxes exercise and go at it on your own pace. I do not care if it takes you I do not care if it takes you multiple days to finish it, if anything, I encourage you to take as much time as you need.

    Next Steps:

    Redo the rotated boxes exercise, including the corners of the sphere. Before you start, I want you to come back to the rotated boxes article here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/rotatedboxes

    I recommend that you watch the video and read the article as many times as needed. I will also provide you with this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368870697742630912/715669112222908466/zfr3o7xneog31.png This is a lot of information to digest, so it is up to you if you want to revisit the article or use the image I provided instead, but I highly encourage you to visit both. Once again, you can take as much time as you need, there are no deadlines.

    I also highly encourage you to join the discord server if you haven’t already. There, you can request feedback on your rotated boxes in the #lesson1 channel to see if you are on the right track. Don’t work in a vacuum, we are here to help. I will await your future response with your finished work. Take care!

    When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
    7:39 PM, Saturday July 10th 2021

    No no, you actually are correct, or at least I agree with you. The shorter line doesn’t really work like that. I was just trying to explain why you shouldn’t tilt the ellipse because then, you just end up with a lot of empty space in the plane.

    Just out of curiosity, how long did it take for you to review my work? (If this is more appropriate to ask in the Discord server, please let me know.)

    Nearly two hours, I believe. I do take my time.

    5:33 PM, Saturday July 10th 2021

    Hello again! I’m really glad I was of great help. I’ll answer your questions.

    From my understanding, yes, the example you gave is the reason. But I think I am wrong about something, or I wasn’t clear enough. Let me try. The way I see it, the longest vertical line on the plane constitutes as the ellipse’s major axis, while the shorter line perpendicular to it, it’s minor axis. So what I could’ve said, is that using the vertical lines instead of the diagonal lines will be more appropriate because that way you’ll draw the ellipse tangent to the all sides of the planes edges. Again, your example is the reason why.

    For the rotated boxes, shoot. Yeah, really poor job on my part. A fellow in the discord server did a much better job in the discord server explaining it, so I’ll try to paraphrase a bit. Basically, the bottom faces of the box are the top faces, shifting down. That’s essentially what I was trying to convey, but my brain dumb there. Really sorry on my part, this is the hardest exercise to critique, so many things could go wrong and pointing out each is immensely challenging for me. But that is inexcusable, and I’ve should’ve done a better job or at the very least ask for help.

    Yes, they must be. Otherwise, they’ll come out wonky even with perfect convergence.

    I think it depends, really. A good question to ask is: “what am I struggling with most at the moment?” Ideally, you should revisit all of them, but you can focus on one specific exercise to improve on it. Just don’t forget that all of them are important. And no, for the 250 boxes, you just grab a blank page and do warm-ups there for a couple of minutes before starting or resuming the challenge. All you have to do is do it until the timer is done and begin your box drawing, there is not a specific number of page's you need to make.

    Anyway, you did a fantastic job in lesson 1, and I expect you to do really well in the box challenge, so good luck! I must apologize on my end for not being clear and concise on some exercises, it can be difficult, but that isn’t an excuse for me. So I hope I wasn’t a hindrance in the rotated boxes and the planes exercises.

    2 users agree
    9:47 AM, Friday July 9th 2021

    Hello, hello! I will take a look at your submission Inkredisaur, I’ll also read your notes and see if I can help with whatever is bugging you.

    Your superimposed lines exercise looks great! For your horizontal lines, at least, there is a clear starting point and fraying at the other end, meaning you took the time to place down your pen, and it is clear accuracy was not prioritized; focusing on smooth and continuous lines instead. Regarding this: "I didn't rotate the page for the straight lines. So the vertical ones are done vertically." This explains the wobbling on your vertical lines; the discomfort didn’t let you focus well on the superimposed line, throwing you off completely. This is a mistake, so remember to always rotate the page when making any line to prevent any shakiness. Your ghosted lines are turning out really well, you let out a confident stroke without concerning yourself with accuracy. Overshooting is normal early on, so don’t fret too much about it. To ameliorate it, you can try lifting your pen off the page. Your ghosted planes exercise turned out well too. The slight curl at the end of each line is probably due to your conscious intervening near the end to fix the line's path, so my guess is that you are probably slowing down when reaching the end point. The solution is to keep your speed consistent, so keep that in mind. As for the arcing, sometimes is because people have a natural tendency to bend their lines, in which case consciously bending it in the other direction fixes it. But in your case, I think it just that you are getting used to drawing from your shoulder; it takes a while to get your shoulder muscles in shape and can be a little unresponsive sometimes due to the soreness. So as you build endurance, I suspect the arcing will disappear.

    Your table of ellipses is turning out well for the most part. Of course, the wobbling is the primary issue here, and while it does improve over time, but there is still some shakiness. Regarding your notes, if the ghosting is throwing you off, it could be that you are slowing down your pace too much before the pen hits the page. I can not say with certainty that it will work for you, but, after ghosting as many times as needed, keep you pace consistent and draw at the same speed as you ghosted. Perhaps you won’t be thrown completely off when placing down your pen, but I can’t say for sure. Also, I suggest starting and ending at the minor axis instead. I’ve told many students that this will help with symmetry somewhat, but it also helps eliminate the tip or bend at the major axis. (Apparently it is also how you are supposed to do it, from what I’ve been told.) I say your ellipses in planes are coming along nicely. You did a good job keeping them tangent to the plane’s edges while focusing on keeping them smooth. Still a bit of shakiness, however. And also, you have a tendency to draw your ellipses diagonally like this, so they do not end up completely tangent to all the plane’s edges. My guess is that you rotated the page at an angle similar to that plane’s diagonal line. Something to keep in mind. Solid job on your funnels exercise! The majority of your ellipses are kept aligned with the minor axis, almost no overlapping, and are all fit in snugly inside the funnel. You could have made a few funnels with a narrow central ellipse, but that is not a big deal since you understood the purpose of the exercise. Your ellipses can still be worked on, so make sure you incorporate them into your 10 - 15 minute warm-ups.

    Your plotted perspective is good, nothing else to say here. The rough perspective exercise is looking good! Your vertical lines and horizontal lines are kept parallel, meaning you didn’t do any blind guesses. Keeping those lines parallel can induce a bit of anxiety, so it is understandable that your line didn’t turn out as good here. It is still worth mentioning that a wobbly line is a mistake, and a confident mark, even one that misses the mark or overshoots, is correct. And yes, you do not fix your mistakes and I highly discourage it, but don’t worry about revisions, you understood the purpose of the exercise, and you even took note of your mistake, so it is fine; I am not giving you extra work over something this minimal, I just have to point it out. Very good job on your rotated boxes exercise! One thing you struggle with is keeping the top plane consistent or congruent with the bottom plane of the same box. And at some points, there was a bit of guessing without intuition, noticeable in the top left corner of the sphere, the bottom of the box is not as close to the neighboring boxes. You were not expected to get this right, so no fuss, you did as instructed and that’s what matters here. Finally, the organic perspective exercise came out well. There is depth to the scene and your box construction is coming along nicely too. Occasionally, some boxes come out a little wonky due to the initial Y’s angles not being greeter than 90 degrees. There was no need to draw through your boxes, though, but this is not an issue; it was completely optional. Your boxes, while good, have a bit of room to improve, so the 250 box challenge is highly recommended.

    Overall, this was a solid submission! You followed the instructions closely and took note of possible mistakes to find ways to fix them. A job well done, and you put great effort into your work. Don’t forget to redo each exercise as a small warm-up for a couple of minutes, and draw for fun as well when doing the 50% rule (Very important that you do, the challenge ahead is really time-consuming and grindy, so you need to have time for your own drawings too. Drawing for fun is part of Draw a box, after all.) Congrats on completing lesson 1 and good luck on the 250-box challenge!

    Next Steps:

    Tackle the 250-box challenge.

    This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
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