kittensmittens

Hey there!

Welcome back! I've had a look through your submission and I'd like to first give overall feedback. It seems you have rushed in parts and would like to remind that breaks and internalisation are as important as doing the work. Go slow to go fast -- first get your body to remember the mechanics, then the speed and precision will come in time.

My other concern is, do you have anything underneath your pages when you're drawing? I would suggest at least having 10-15 pages of copy paper under your work. If you already do, then don't worry about this.

Ghosting lines: Make sure you lift your pen before reaching your destination or starting a new line. If you don't lift it in time you get unsightly marks at the destination or if you don't lift it before starting a line you'll get hooks.

Hatching: Whenever you hatch, try to go from line to line (or edge to edge). Treat hatching as you would any ghosted line.

Ellipses: Good effort on the ellipses. However try to avoid making the minor axis sides straight. They should still have a curve to them throughout. Otherwise you will end up with sausages and will have problems with some shapes and forms down the line.

I will be requesting revisions for your submission.

Going forward I suggest doing ghosted lines and ellipses as your warmup until you feel you've got a handle on them.

EDIT: I forgot to mention your rotated boxes exercise. It's a difficult exercise. I had a lot of problems with it as well. I suggest trying it again after you have completed the 250 box challenge!

Hey there!

Well done on completing lesson 1! I can see you've been mindful with the exercises, and done extra work for the ghosted planes, even tho it was totally okay to reuse the initial planes for the ellipses. Keep practicing the ellipses for warmups. No major critique to them, but rather this is probably the thing you can most gain from practicing.

My main critique will be for the ghosted lines. Make sure you prioritise a confident line, rather than connecting the dots. The latter will come over time and with enough warmups they'll be no issue at all. Make sure you take your time with ghosting. Perhaps it would help to try and find if there's a different angle you could draw the lines? For me the easiest is to go from left to right in a ~45 degree angle, so I am able to partially see my destination. For this reason, I'd like to see a revision on your ghosted lines.

Hey Ted,

Thank you for the in-depth feedback! I will try to build in breaks for my studying. Sometimes being in the flow works against me.

I've added in the revisions to the initial folder and moved the previous exercise to "old". For the first plant revision, I tried to figure out how the leaf curls around the stem of the flower, but you can see that didn't quite work out. I also was unable to read how the edge of the leaf looks on the reference but I am unsure what flower it is.

For the second plant revision, I've marked ellipses where there are petals of the flower. These were for the flow line of the petals and not the whole petal.

I saw you mentioned the organic arrows too, but didn't add them as revision. I did some for warmup and will probably try and incorporate them in future warmups as well.

Please let me know what you think, and if I should work on something else. I'm especially interested on anything I should continue working on either during warmups or in general.

Thank you again!

Hey!

Well done on all the boxes and the progress!

I can see you've had some trouble with the vanishing points and placing the back corner. Make sure you stay conscious of those whenever you move along with practicing boxes. You have quite a variety of boxes too, good going!

My main critique will be about the placement of the objects. You have drawn too many boxes on one page. I think the maximum that you should squeeze on a page is 5, and making sure they're all big enough and not too close to the edge. It's easier to analyse what you need to work on if you draw a bit bigger and if there's less on a page, when there's not a mess of lines going over eachother and other boxes.

You should try practicing a couple of more pages of boxes during lesson 2, but I will not give this as something you need to revise. Please do post any spare pages you make for critique on the Discord server or let others know if you're still having trouble with figuring out any aspect!

Hey there!

Very well done and one can see that you have gone through the challenge with intention and analysing the boxes as you went along.

I can see you've had trouble with the back corner (if you ask me it's the most difficult part of boxes), and a bit of trouble figuring one of the 3 vanishing points. I think this will come along with the same practice and intention you have used in this challenge.

It's okay to write down your own analysis, but try to either write it on the other side of the paper or on post-it notes to leave other box-enthusiasts a chance to give you their feedback!

Hey there!

My main critique will be about taking a breather. You've sacrificed quality for speed. Make sure you tick your mental checklist whenever starting an exercise. Are you drawing with your shoulder? Are you taking time to ghost your lines? Are you making each line with intention?

Speed and tempo will come with time, these initial exercises help establish your muscle memory. The more you do it with intention now, the faster the confident line will appear.

Whenever you gear up to draw, start with like half a page of superimposed lines and then do some planes and ellipses. It's okay if those pages are messy, but do each line with intention. Do this every time for warmup until you're feeling more confident.

I'd like to see another page of ghosted lines, where you're taking your time with ghosting the lines. It's okay if you don't hit the dots, but I'd like to see straight lines that end somewhere close to where you place the dots.

Hey!

Extending the critique a bit. Please don't doodle on your homework.

Some of your planes with ellipses are wrong. And one is missing the lines that halve the square. Keep doing planes and ellipses in your warmups.

Hey!

Lets see. You have a slight bend in your lines. Try to consciously curve your lines slightly the other way to try and get them straight. It's of course more difficult the longer the line is, but keep trying to use your shoulder for them.

Make sure you lift your pen at the end of the stroke so you don't create hooks.

Keep trying to fiddle a bit with the speed you're drawing your lines. See if there is a different kind of speed (maybe slower) that would make your lines be straight but also confident. In the dots exercise it is more important to make a straight line, rather than connecting the dots. The dot connection will come over time when you get the muscle memory.

Keep practicing planes and ellipses. Here again I think tinkering with the speed at which you draw is beneficial.

Here's another tip: don't rush the exercises! Try to find a tempo where your line quality doesn't suffer. After each page have a look at the marks you've made and how you could improve on the next page. Faster tempo will come as you move along these exercises.

I suggest keeping doing lines and ellipses as your warm up, but be extra conscious of the speed, your posture and your tempo.

Thank you for the feedback!

For the line weight: I applied it to some boxes but hardly any, and marked the pages where I did so. I'm not confident in line weight and that's why I stopped adding it on. I've been doing that for warmups tho.

For the wrong convergence lines/front plane: I did so in the beginning for a few of the boxes because I started from the initial Y as the convergence starting point for all of them. Do you have any examples for that mistake past box 100 or so?

Also more for convergence lines: I marked ones that I considered wrong with a cross-out (except for a handful of early boxes that were diverging towards the viewer for whatever reason). Here also, do you have any examples from the later boxes?

I'll have to retract some of my earlier comment. I had a second look and I think what confused me is the first few pages and then later on that most convergence lines are just not drawn out long/far enough for analysis. I'll slap an agree on your initial comment, sorry about that. On that note, the learner is welcome to extend the convergence lines over other boxes, even if it gets a bit messy.

Another thing I did notice with the second look-through is that there's very little variation in boxes: most being long, with one close vanishing point and 2 far vanishing points.