Thank you!
I actually wasn't sure if the head construction was actually just a general idea or a specific technique to use on each head. Will definitely try to apply it more strictly in the future.
Hi! If I'm reading your question correctly, the situation that you're having is that you put down points to draw a line as part of step 1 of the ghosting method, but upon actually making the mark, you weren't very accurate and therefore the line did not reach the endpoint you put down. The question is then, should you extend the line connecting the two points you put down, or the line that you actually ended up drawing.
In my opinion (so, not an official answer), I think that extending the intended points is better, since knowing where to put those points accurately is what you are trying to train when training your intuitive understanding of perspective. Trying to fix line accuracy as well by extending the actual lines you've drawn is too much to work on at once, so it probably makes training your sense of perspective less effective.
Thank you for the critique! Please see linked my revisions:
and the references used:
I promise I did take my time on these. I get half days off on Fridays, so I've spent most of the evening drawing, as well as some time yesterday as well.
I have two questions below, but they involve a bit of self critique, so feel free to come back to them after you have reviewed the work.
I think the biggest challenge I'm having regarding adding the additional masses is controlling their curvature. Many times I make the mass too thick or too thin, and I don't really notice until after I've drawn it. It may be because the underlying construction is curved, and that's throwing off my understanding of how to draw the mass to match what I observe. I assume that this is just a matter of practice, but if you have any particular insights it would be much appreciated.
Head construction is probably what I find the hardest in these exercises, and in particular how the muzzle is constructed. I just can't seem to get it to look the way it looks in the reference. I assume again this is a matter of practice, but if you see anything particularly wrong with how I've approached it, please let me know.
Thank you again!
Don't have too much time right now but I'll try to leave some helpful critique here:
Regarding the form intersections, it's perfectly normal to not understand them at this stage, the intersections are not really the point of the exercise (at least right now, they're more important when you do them as part of lesson 6). Just try to think about them, and not worry too much about getting them correct. The goal of this exercise is rather to get the forms to exist believably together, for the most part I think you do this pretty well, though watch your line work, it does get a bit wobbly at places.
For organic intersections, it does seem like you're having some trouble wrapping the forms around each other. Use the contour lines as guidelines to tell you where the bottom edge of the form on top should go, it should follow pretty closely to the contour line (until the bottom half anyways). Your cast shadows right now are too close to the form itself, it's almost as if they're extra thick line weight. Try to push them out more, make them a bit further away from the form itself. Putting the light source at the top left or top right can help with this.
Hope this helps!
Hi! I agree with Somethingx that your hatching lines look like they could be ghosted a bit better. I also want to add that you seem to be going over the lines of your box multiple times. While you should go over the silhouette of the box once, after you finish the whole box, to add line weight, I'm seeing 3 lines in some areas, and places you're going over the interior lines as well. This suggests to me that the extra lines are meant to be fixing your mistakes. Don't go over your lines to fix mistakes. Leave them the way they are and try to fix them in the next one.
Hi! I think you submitted your 250 boxes as a partial submission, so it's less likely to be seen and there's no way to suggest next steps (including giving you a completion badge). I would recommend you submit it as a full homework submission first.
That being said, community critique is not guaranteed, so it's probably best to move on after waiting a bit. I hear there are also critique exchanges on the discord (not sure, never been there myself) if you want more reliable community critique on your submissions.
Hi! Welcome to drawabox. So what you have here is a partial lesson 1 submission (Note that lesson 1 consists of 3 sections, each with their own homework), and for a partial submission this is in the correct place. However, only full lesson submissions are submitted into the general homework section for feedback, and while I can offer you some feedback on what you've done so far, I cannot officially suggest next steps, so I recommend you submit the full lesson for homework submission. If you check all of the homeworks in the lesson as complete when submitting, it should automatically submit it to the homework section.
Also, when taking pictures, I recommend you take the picture from directly above the paper. Taking it at an angle like this causes some of the angles to not be captured correctly, which becomes more important later on when studying perspective.
I can give you some feedback based on what you've submitted so far however:
Your superimposed lines look great. A pretty consistent starting point and a smooth trajectory were both captured in your work here for the exercise.
Over to your ghosted lines and planes, while the lines are fairly accurate, they are not very smooth, with plenty of wobbling. This suggests to me that you are definitely prioritizing accuracy over confidence, when the key to practicing lines is to do the reverse: make sure you can make confident lines, and then worry about accuracy. Your planes also seem to be pretty small, I do recommend drawing them around twice as large (twice the height and width, so 4x the area). At sizes this small you may be using your wrist to draw them instead of your whole arm, which may be also causing some of the arcing that I'm seeing in these lines.
So, reviewing a partial submission doesn't let me officially recommend next steps, so I will just say this here: I recommend you finish the rest of the lesson (don't worry about going back and fixing the issues I've pointed above, and instead just keep them in mind as you go on) and then submit the whole lesson for feedback.
So overall, very well done. I'm seeing a great deal of improvement in solving the issues I pointed out previously, especially about not adhering to previous steps of the construction. Just a few comments, then I will get on to answering your questions.
Leaves
I'm seeing a lot of fluidity in your leaves now, which is awesome. The only thing I would ask you to experiment on (aside from complex leaf structures), is wider leaves. You'll find them more difficult to get flowing, but more difficult also means more reason to practice them.
Regarding the edge detail, what you have done is pretty well done. One improvement I can suggest: where the edge detail runs along the previous simple edge, don't draw it again, instead, just leave the previous simple edge there.
Constructions
Very solid plant constructions. The only things I want to talk about are the last plant (Page 11 plant 2) and the plant you were having trouble with (Page 10 plant 2).
For the last plant, you seem to have omitted the central flow lines for the leaves. Looking at references I understand that these leaves are somewhat stiff in nature (though not entirely), but you should still draw the central flow line. I would also draw a larger, more traditionally shaped leaf for the simple edges, and then cut off the top part of the leaves (the part where the leaf starts to get narrower) to produce the triangular shape, but I'm not entirely sure if that's the right approach.
For Page 10 Plant 2, I've put together a small demo to show how I would approach it. I've drawn it in pencil because right now I'm still far more comfortable with that than anything else (though it should still work pretty well in fineliner), and I'm still very much learning myself, but hopefully this helps: https://imgur.com/a/3x3J6QI.
I think the major way to improve would have been to approach constructing the petal through the complex leaf construction method, while I see multiple flow lines, you didn't actually draw the simple curves around those flow lines, meaning that you lost the actual flow of those lines in the next construction step.
As for capturing the folds themselves, note that folds really aren't that different from any other edge detail. If you wanted, you could capture the actual folding on the surface through a few texture cast shadows, but for now just showing how the folds change the edge should be good enough.
Questions
Regarding texture, it's important to understand the goal of adding texture. The goal is not to decorate the drawing, or to make it look good. Instead, it is to capture the small forms running along the surface of the object, to give the viewer a sense of how it feels. To do this, you can only draw the cast shadows of the forms. However, there is no requirement to capture all of the forms you see, as you can guess, some textures can get incredibly complex, leading to a lot of cast shadows. The goal is to use the idea of texture gradients, like from lesson 2, to capture only enough texture to give the viewer the impression of how the surface feels (and since gradients require capturing cast shadows, this is why only drawing the cast shadows is important). Ultimately, it's up to you how much texture you want to capture, just remember that a lot of complexity tends to be a focal point, so avoid capture lots of texture in places that you don't want the viewer's eye to be attracted to.
I'm not entirely clear on what you mean when you say ellipses confuse you, but I will try to give a general explanation of how it works. So a lot of flowers have petals that, if you look at them from above, would form a circular shape. This is just a consequence of every petal being roughly the same shape and size, and coming from the same place, so naturally they all end at the same distance from the center. To capture this idea, you can draw a circle, this saves you from having to try to have all the flow lines ending the same distance from the center. Of course, in order for this to work, you need to later draw the flow lines to this circle, otherwise, your petals aren't going to end at the same distance anyways.
An ellipse is just a circle in 3d space, so with an ellipse, we can draw such a flower looking at it from any angle, not just directly from above.
Regarding cast shadows vs form shadows, the key difference is that cast shadows are always cast by another object onto the surface. Whenever you want to draw a shadow, think about what object is causing that shadow, if it's the same object, then it's a form shadow. If it's different, then it's a cast shadow. I understand the distinction can get difficult in certain situations, but that's just a matter of practice. As to how to capture cast shadows precisely, I believe that's just a matter of understanding form better. Understanding form is a goal of this entirely course, so naturally this will be improved as you work through the other lessons.
Anyways, there's plenty of good work here, so I believe you are more than ready to move on to the next lesson. Good luck!
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 4.
Yes, I do believe you will have to resubmit.
Hi! You appear to have submitted lesson 2 homework for lesson 3. I'm also not sure if you meant to submit this for community feedback or official critique. Even if this was meant for community feedback, I do recommend submitting it again for lesson 2 so that you can get the correct completion badge.
Have a good day!
Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.
The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.
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