peppermagic_

What exactly do you mean by "hands seem to not follow"?

If you mean that the lines aren't as accurate as you would like them to be, that's really expected at the beginning stage. It'll improve significantly after hunderds' of pages of warm ups, but for now, don't fret too much. It would be great if you posted a picture, so the community can guide you if you are doing anything incorrectly.

And how did you draw digitally? Did you use a graphic tablet or drew on a display monitor? And did you use tools like rulers and built in guides?

Solicit for a critique on the Discord group. Wait for a critique. You don't necessarily have to wait for the lesson to be marked complete.

Also use this time to fill in the 50% rule. Look around you and break down objects into boxes and just draw the boxes. Or attempt to draw what you would want to draw after you finish the course. May be save those papers even and compare the drawings you did now with something you drew after you are completely done with the course.

You can even try starting another course alongside. Figure drawing, Perspective, Digital drawing. Anything you enjoy. Have fun :))

This surely has helped me. When I switch to just drawing for fun, I see just how much DaB has helped me improve the way I draw. That's a huge motivation to get back.

Also breaks are important. Take breaks from both drawing for fun and the assignments. Come back stronger.

I'm very happy to help. When you finish your future lessons, you can ping me in to have a look at them as well.

My discord ID is peppermagic#3491

If you don't use discord, you can just simply reply to this thread mentioning your new assignment link. I'll have a look and give you my critique.

Do continue with the lessons. They are a great skillset to have, but they get very very difficult as you move forward. Don't lose motivation and try your best to draw something everyday. And don't forget the 50% rule.

Happy learning

Hey, congratulations on completing your first lesson.

Let me start by saying that you have done a fantastic job with all the exercises. You have understood the purpose of the exercise and you have given your best in them.

Starting off with your Superimposed Lines, your lines are bold and confident. There is very little wobbling in the first page on some lines, but you have completely fixed that in the second page. There is no fraying at all at the beginning of the line and very little fraying in the end. Just keep practicing and surely the minimum fraying that you see right now will also be reduced. I see a bit of overshooting for the longer lines, but again, doing these exercises as warmups once in a while will surely help with that.

Your Ghosted Lines exercise is fantastic. Your lines are bold and confident. Even the few longer lines you have drawn look great. So you are definitely getting the hang of this. You have undershot or overshot a very few lines, but that is normal at this stage. Within a few more pages of warmup, you'll reach level three of ghosting lines, that is to say: your lines will be straight, smooth, consistent without any wobbling. It will also start right at one point and end exactly at the other.

Talking about your Ghosted Planes, you have shown significant improvement in your line quality. There is almost no visible wobbling and you are hitting the end point almost every time. You have drawn a variety of planes in different angles and sizes as well. Kudos to you

You have done a great job with the Table of Ellipses exercise as well. I see a bit of wobbling in the first page, but this is soon redeemed in your second page of exercise. All your ellipses are fit snuggly and it clearly shows that you have understood the purpose of the assignment. One thing that's standing out are your smaller ellipses that you have drawn to fill out the empty spaces. They don't look as confident as the bigger ones. Remember that no matter how small the ellipse is, you still have to ghost it and use your shoulders to draw the ellipse. If you did follow this, then nothing to worry about. Just practice the smaller ellipse a bit more and you'll be good to go.

Your Ellipses in Planes exercise looks great. Most of the ellipses are touching the four sides of the plane. Although, some of them don't look very symmetrical across their minor axis. Remember symmetry is prioritized over the ellipse touching the sides, so focus on that. If you need practice, and you don't have a lot of time to draw the planes to practice on, you can also place four dots and try your best to have the ellipse pass over all four dots. Draw the minor axis with a different colored pen and compare the symmetry of the ellipse. Work on this until you feel confident. And for some ellipses, it seems to me like you have forced them to pass through the end points of the subdivision lines of the plane. Note that that's not a necessary condition. The ellipse just needs to touch the sides, not necessarily pass through the same points as the subdivision lines do, since those subdivision lines are roughly estimated and not entirely accurate divisions.

Your Funnels exercise is wonderful. Most ellipses are drawn on the same minor axis and they fit very snuggly with one another. In your warmups though, try to vary the degree of the ellipses to create the illusion of 3D, as explained here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/step3. Since that was an optional step for the exercise, you have nothing to worry about as of now.

And now coming to your Plotted Perspective, you have drawn boxes of varying sizes and that's really great. Although I notice that some of the boxes are overlapping with one another. This is okay at this stage, but do try to be more conscious of your box's presence in the actual 3D world. And in your warm ups for this exercise try not to overlap one box with another.

I think you have done a brilliant job with your Rough Perspective exercise. Some of your vertical lines are wobbly, but this is very common, so don't fret too much. Note that you are free and encouraged to rotate your page to a comfortable angle to draw any lines. If you didn't do that, implement that in your warmups. Your ghosting is mostly accurate as all of your points are converging in a small area. It's harder to draw boxes farther away from the VP, so it's normal to have the lines of those boxes converge farther from the actual VP, so don't worry too much. I don't see any overlapping boxes here, so good job on that.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. If it helps you, try drawing bigger boxes, as that usually really helps a lot of people when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. Some of your lines look wobbly here. Remember to rotate your page to a comfortable angle everytime you draw a line. Sometimes having so many lines next to the line you are drawing also affects the line quality. This will go away the more you practice. If this is causing your trouble, intentionally practice drawing lines close to one another at small angles. Try your best not to let the other lines influence the quality of the line you are about to draw. You are also running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes enough in some cases, mainly the boxes adjacent to the main middle box. Note that if you had to draw one more rotated box it should have been identical to the guide boxes you have drawn at the sides. So keeping that in mind, try to rotate the box evenly next time when you are drawing this. Along with this, note that the farther planes that are on the other side of the boxes should also be rotating as the boxes rotate. If you look at the farther planes of the boxes adjacent to the main box, you notice that it's not as rotated as the front planes of the boxes are. Try to fix this in your warm ups next time.

I've nothing much to say about your Organic Boxes. You have done a splendid job. Your boxes are well rotated and the overlapping really sells the idea of the depth. I notice that some of the boxes are overlapping, you can easily avoid this problem by being a bit more careful while drawing.

Again, congratulations on completing the first lesson. It's no easy task, really. I am confident you'll do very well in the rest of the lessons and challenges as well. Just be sure to impletent the 50% rule to your best.

It's time for you to climb the next mountain. Move on to the 250 boxes challenge now and slay it the way you have slayed the Lesson 1.

I really hope this review was helpful to you! Cheers :)

This is from the FAQ section of the article

Do I have to use ink, or apply the concepts from Drawabox?

Nope - just like the rest of the 50% rule, you can work in whatever medium you please, and totally ignore the principles of Drawabox if you like. Just focus on exploring, playing, and pushing your boundaries.

First of all, your lines are very bold and confident. So congratulations on getting that part done. Coming to the box, try extending the lines of your box and you'll see that the convergence is very off. Take a little more time with your lines and try to aim for proper convergence. It's impractical to expect all the inner lines to converge perfectly, but if you ghost your lines properly and aim for a proper convergence, then you can reduce the gap for the inner lines convergence points.

I use the last convergence point to judge how well my box turned out. If it's close to perfection, then all my previous lines are also close to perfect. If the point of intersection is too far off, then one or more lines are may be going off the grid. When I do the error check, I can find out which lines are off the grid and try not to repeat the same mistake in my next set of boxes.

If you are finding this very difficult I recommend doing the rough perspective exercise once more. That exercise is all about aiming for convergence, so it might help you here as well.