tami

Hello Kittensmittens, I am going to be critiquing your submission.

Organic Forms With Contour Curves: These look pretty good and smooth. The problem is that you did not keep both ends of the sausage the same size. Imagen the sausage as if it were two identical balls connected by a tube. Sometimes, they swell up or become thinner in the tube part as well, which we don’t want. This picture might help: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/7f789bfa.jpg

Insect drawings:

These are pretty clean and well made!

The problems come on on the legs, where the lines tend to be a bit unconfident and wobbly and sometimes they have the same problems that your sausages did where they swell or contract. It also looks like in some spots you drew a line you weren't happy with, and then went over it again. Avoid doing this no matter how bad the initial line turns out. If what you were trying to do was add line weight to the legs, then remember that you only add line weight when the forms are overlapping and not on the outline. This goes for the entire bug, not just the legs.

They're are some times when you undermine the construction of your drawings. Take the head of the fire ant, for example. You cut through the initial form (the circle you drew) in order to make the pointed head of the ant. It is very difficult to cut through a 3d form and to have it still look 3d, as explained in this image.

https://i.imgur.com/VdwbRuU.png

You also have this issue in Hammonds lined june beetle, where you cut into the spheres that made up the thorax and abdomen of the beetle. With this drawing specifically, you also have a bit of trouble keeping all of you lines confident and not wobbly so look out for that too.

Always mass onto a form instead of cutting into it for the animals and insects you will draw. A very good example of how to construct an ants head this constructively way would be like this:

https://i.imgur.com/X4tx6KB.png

Your overall construction is pretty sparse, too. There are times you could have added more mass to objects to make it closer to the reference images, kind of like this:

https://imgur.com/U6GtTwh

These are things you can definitely still practice in lesson 5 though, so go ahead and move on!

Hello Kittensmitens,

My name is Ted and I am going to give you some feedback on your work in lesson 3.

I first looked through the entire body of work you produced to get an overall impression. Perhaps you are trying to do the drawings too quickly, which is a very easy thing to do, especially when working on something that you are comfortable with, or are faced with some tedious detail. I can see the hurriedness in some of your line work and in some small mistakes in the plant constructions. I will be more specific for each of the places I see it clearly.

Arrows... I beleive that you understand the concept of drawing the flowing arrows in 3D space, but some of the arrows are not as 3-dimensional as others. I suspect that you were drawing them very quickly. There are some places where the lines are constricted unnaturally. The lines should look parallel and taper ever so slightly. Every aspect of the ribbon should reflect passage through 3D space: the space between the lines, the space between the curves in the ribbon, and the relative width of a meander should all decrease as the ribbon flows away from the viewer. A few of your ribbons have one or more of those attributes remain close to the same as the move through the space. One trick I used to help myself get better at the ribbons is to make the vanishing point for all of the ribbons the top of the page and concentrate on having all the attributes look the same at different levels of the paper. I even practiced a set by drawing faint lines across the page at 1/3 and 2/3, then practiced making sure that the attributes in the top third were close, second third were close and bottom third would close. The result is a set of arrows that may not be as dynamic or interesting as some you have drawn, but 'interesting' is not the goal in this exercise. The objective is to show a flat plane flowing through 3D space to that the same concepts can be applied to leaves.

Leaf construction... Several of these look rushed and it is difficult to see the basic steps in leaf construction as described here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/videoleaves . The edge detail shows 'zig-zagging' instead of careful consideration of each mark. Observation of the reference is key for the detail. If you were not using references for the leaves, you should, and concentrate on what the details actually look like. The result of rushing the details and adding them more as a pattern is that the drawings look flat and cartoonish.

Branches... These look particularly rushed, and it is an easy exercise to want to hurry through. Ellipses... for this exercise the ellipses should all be the same length around the initial line that acts as the minor axis. For the most part your ellipses are the same length, but more than a few fall off the line as the axis, which is another indication of rushing. The ellipses also need to show degree shift, with the ends of the branches having round ellipses and the center ellipses being narrower. There is a specific way to draw the outside lines which is described here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/videobranches . Some of your lines have a lot of visible tails, and a couple look as though the pen was never lifted off of the paper. Some bisect an ellipse and others miss the edge of an ellipse entirely. As a result your branches are a bit too sketchy.

Plant constructions... For the most part I can see the use of construction technique in your drawings. There are a few that look rushed and have some incomplete construction. For example, there are a couple places where a stem/branch or two were not completed with the ellipses and connecting lines, so the result is a stem that is just two parallel lines. There are several places where the lines that should meet at a leaf tip do not, which is a sign of rushing and drawing without a careful study of the reference. The last drwing of the fan palm is a good example. The stems were not constructed at all. The leaves have origination circles, but the line work inside for the fronds is very hurried.

I am going to suggest some revisions for you to work on.

Hey. It seems you understand all the exercises with the exception of one. I'll go through the exercises one by one, try to give you an idea of something to keep in mind for the future, and then go more in-depth for the one I believe you misunderstood.

Lines

For superimposed lines it looks mostly fine. There are some expected mistakes, but overall I think you tried to keep your lines smooth. Try to remember not to correct yourself while you're drawing a line. Some of the lines start out the same place, then branch out, then come back to the place you intended it to end at, which is a sign of correcting yourself.

For ghosted lines it looks fine. There's a bit of wobble and stuff, but again, that's to be expected.

For ghosted planes I like that you tried different perspectives.

Ellipses

For tables of ellipses I think you did mostly fine. There's some inconsistency, which is to be expected. Maybe try to be more conscious of your ghosting.

For ellipses in planes it's pretty much the same. I think you stayed within the lines pretty well, but remember that you're to focus on smoothness over accuracy.

For funnels I think they look pretty good. For some of them it looks like you maybe drew the ellipse too many times?

Boxes

For plotted perspective I'm not sure if you used a ruler like you're supposed to, and there's a line or two you didn't extend.

For rough perspective, this is the one I believe you misunderstood. You're supposed to extend your lines to where they're going, not to the VP. Your vertical lines are also not perpendicular to the horizon.

For rotated boxes this is a tough one, but I think you did fine. Your boxes are bunched up nice and close to each other, but they're not rotated properly, which is to be expected. This really is a rough exercise, so don't worry about it.

For organic perspective I think your lines are starting to look more wobbly. Remember to focus on smoothness over accuracy. It doesn't matter if you miss the mark you made, or if you overshoot or undershoot, just focus on making the line smooth and confident.

I'm gonna request a revision for you to do rough perspective again. Reread the assignment page, and watch the video. Again, what I think you did wrong here was the extension of your lines, where instead of extending your lines in the direction they're going and ending them when they get to the horizon line, you just started at the front point of your box and then extended them to the vanishing point, regardless of whether your lines went in that direction or not. Read the instructions thoroughly and ask if you have any questions!

Hello, I'll be reviewing your work today and hopefully provide some useful critiques!

Starting off with Lines:

• Good job with maintaining the smoothness and continuity in both superimposed lines and ghosted lines section! I did notice you seem to have a tendency to arch your lines a bit, especially the longer ones. However, that in itself is not that big of a problem since the primary targets are smoothness and continuity which you achieved.

• In ghosted lines, you again did great! Most lines meet their marks and lines themselves are smooth and confident.But again, there is that subtle arching, both here and in ghosted planes.I'm not sure if it's because you were trying to reach the set marks or if you have a natural tendency to do that. If it's the former, don't overthink the markmaking itself and focus on acheiving consistent trajectory but if it's the latter, try arching the lines inwards until your natural tendency is fixed(hope that made sense).

Next up are the Ellipses:

• Pretty good work here! Throughout the exercises, you maintained confidence and smoothness while drawing the ellipses so that's great. In the table of ellipses exercise, I liked the ellipses themselves but I would have liked to see more variety in the degree of ellipses(width of minor axis), since you seem to have struggled to have maintained form in the rounder ellipses and more practice in that could've helped.Don't worry though, there will be more practice in the future lessons.

• Talking about the Ghosted planes with ellipses exercise , I really liked your work here! I wish I had more to say but I honestly think there isn't really much room for improvement here.

• Good job in the funnels exercise too, but I can see you drew through some ellipses 3 or more times, I think? Remember, while drawing through, 3 is ok but 2 is ideal. Also, in a few funnels, the minor axis doesn't seem to bisect the ellipse into 2 equal halves. Basically, there is little bit of tilt to the ellipses, instead of being exactly vertical to the centreline.So yeah, keep that in mind for future lessons.

Finally, we have the Boxes!:

• In plotted perspective, you did great while making the horizontal lines but the vertical lines are a bit wobbly here and there. That is a common error, remember to always ghost your lines before making the mark.Another thing is the lack of lineweight to the outer edges(in all the exercises regarding boxes). Giving lineweight is a good way to differentiate which the edges on the nearer side and the far side are, so remember to do that especially in the 250 boxes challenge, since there you'll be asked to extend the lines .

• In the rotated boxes, you seem to have missed to do the hatching. Hatching also makes it easier to view the boxes in the appropriate way. Also, some of the boxes are not really rotating, but as you said it is a hard task! Not a big thing to worry about because this exercise is supposed to be challenging anyways.

• Lastly, with the the organic perspective, great job with the varieties in sizes! You have clearly taken the challenge head on with the overlapping of the boxes! However, there seems to be a lack of rotations and different angles in the boxes per frame(except for the some in which you did splendid). Not a big deal, it just makes the composition more interesting. Side note- you can use the random y generator (https://tasty-tangy-meeting.glitch.me/) for the inital 50 so boxes in the 250 boxes challenge to help come up with variations.

  All in all, this was a very solid submission, although i do think that there's still room for some improvement, you've done well

  in sticking with the instructions and nailed it most of the time. Anyways, I'll mark the lesson complete and good luck with the 250 boxes challenge!

hi, good work. i think you did a good job doing most of the homework, i can see you had a bit of trouble (same with me) with the rough perspective, some of the vanishing points aren't landing on the horizon line. the rest of it is good!

Hello Cughes!. I’m Chiran and I’m here for your submission to review.thanks for submitting your assignment to the community. Now I’m gonna go over your submission and try my best to help you out.

This feedback will consists of three parts.

Alright! lets jump in and explore these three parts.

PART 1: THE PRAISES ( The job you did well)

• Starting from your lines; first thing I noticed in your work was that there was no fraying on the starting point and even on the end point so that means that you did take time to position the pen exactly at the starting point.so that’s good!

• The job of ghosting is done very well here, meaning you did take time to plan where your lines starts and ends by plotting out the points. I get the sense that you are using shoulder and ghosting method to draw lines.good job on prioritizing confidence over perfection.

• Moving on to ellipses: your ellipses are confident , drawn through 2-3 times and are fit within the bounds. so these jobs are well done!

• Boxes; your boxes are off to great start and they are drawn through ( like having X- ray vision) so thats perfect!.

PART 2: WHERE IT WENT SLIGHTLY OFF? ( Where you should keep an eye on) ( No worries!)

• since line exercise is the first exercise where you begin to use shoulder to draw, its quite normal to have the lines that arch a bit and frays on the end point. subtle S curves are slightly visible in ghosted exercise but thats okay. through practice ( warm ups) they will get better gradually. Arching can also happen when you course correct your lines when they went off,so its advisable to not to course correct your lines and trust the muscle memory instead.

• Sometimes you did seem to prioritize accuracy over confidence resulting in a lines that are wobbly, uneven and darker.so this may hinder your progress so watch out for that.

• Coming to the ellipse section: you did seem to hesitate while executing your ellipses resulting in a wobbly and uneven ellipses.In the ellipses in planes exercises again you did prioritize perfection ( or accuracy) resulting in a darker, wobbly and uneven ellipses.

• you did strive to align your ellipses to the minor axis ( in ellipses in funnel exercise) but some of they are lightly off. But no worries there will be plenty of time in the future to improve upon.

• Now boxes: in plotted perspective, it would have been better to include boxes that are above and below the horizon in order to get the sense of perspective going in your mind.

• Just a question to ask; actually there is no need to do an extra page of plotted perspective,

  In the page 2 of rough point perspective exercise ( 2nd scene of boxes) are missing, Is this scene is transfered to the plotted perspective extra page?

• In rough point perspective exercise, good job on checking your boxes convergence and again sometimes you did seem to prioritize accuracy therefore some lines came out wobbly. in the page 2 of rough point perspective exercise ( 3rd scene of boxes). You did seem to make a guessing and therefore you put a question mark in there. Well actually there is no guesswork in this exercise.

• Splendid work on your rotated boxes exercise. Just a reminder here is that while hatching your lines, you should not fill completely with black ink instead you can draw lines with confidence from your shoulder.

• perspective is slightly off in organic perspective exercise. I'm not fussing over it. I'm pretty confident that these will improve largely after completing the 250 box challenge. feel free to revisit these exercises after completing the 250 boxes.

In this part I'm not fussing over it and I'm not even expecting perfectionism but I'm just pointing out where it went slightly off so that you can next incorporate these points to improve your work.

now part 3

PART 3 : WHAT ARE THE KEY THINGS TO REMEMBER IN ORDER TO IMPROVE:

• First thing first, Always continue to mention your conscious mind that to always use shoulder and ghosting method to draw lines, ellipses and even boxes. ghosting method will really help to hon both flow and accuracy.

• And then will be the Speed of execution: when to increase the speed of drawing the lines and when to slow down?

If the lines came out dark, wobbly, contains subtle S curve and undershooted then increasing the speed of drawing your lines can reduce these issues. however if the lines are overshooting more and the flow of ink in your pen is inconsistent then its advisable to reduce the speed and try to lift the pen off the page when reaching the end dot.

feel free to experiment with different speed of drawing your lines from point A to point B during your warm up session and opt for the smooth and consistent ones. Increasing the speed of execution can really help in reducing wobbly lines. And it can also help in reducing the course correction of your lines.

• arching might happen because not using the shoulder pivot to draw the lines. If arching persists even after using shoulder to draw the lines then they can be reduced by arching consciously in opp direction to compensate the error. through practice they will get better.

• WHY SOME ELLIPSE CAME WOBBLY AND UNEVEN?

1. the answer is quite simple tho, that is mainly due to thinking about accuracy rather than confidence.Even though when you care about confidence,sometimes it is also a result of not using shoulder and ghosting method to draw the Ellipse.

2. Yes I agree, it’s pretty hard at the beginning to use shoulder to draw Ellipses, but you should persist to draw from your shoulder even though they are off.

   you should definitely continue to use ghosting method, drawing from your shoulder and make sure that you are always use your arm to get the best flow as possible. while ghosting ( hovering in a motion over the page not touching the page) make sure to plan where the ellipses will sit, that means where will the top and bottom edge will go and start and end an ellipse at the minor axis ( the narrow width ). you are free to rotate the page to find the comfortable angle of approach.

   Here is a video where Irshad explains what are the points to be kept in mind and why are they important. Its definitely worth to re watch both the videos : links are provided at the end of this feedback.

• one thing to worth mentioning while doing rough one point perspective during warm ups is that, to keep the face of the box parallel to the page, what I meant to say is that in one point perspective all the horizontal lines of the box are parallel to the horizon and all the vertical lines are perpendicular to horizon and the thickness or depth lines of the box will converge to a vanishing point.this point should be kept in mind during warm ups. It requires no additional guesswork in this exercise.

for the box construction in organic perspective exercise is that after you plotted out the Initial Y of a box think about how you want each set to converge and try and think about (in rough terms) where the vanishing point is going to be for each set.I's is just a reminder tho.

• Even while adding line weight to the boxes, make sure to plan and ghost your lines and execute it with confidence.

• last but not the least, continue to incorporate these exercises in your regular warm up routines. pick any 1 or 2 exercise and try to do it for 10 -15 min with striving towards the goal. because these warm ups are the hard requirements for any artists at any skill level !

Now coming to the important point of this feedback:

At this stage, its a little bit trickier to complete these exercise and yet you did a solid job completing the recommended amount of pages.I just want to bring you to the right track so unfortunately I’m asking revision for 1 page.

The REVISION: WHAT ARE YOUR REVISIONS ?

1. Half filled page of table of ellipses exercise.( only half)

2. And another half should be a scene containing a rough point perspective box. thats all

HOW TO TACKLE THE REVISION?

First thing first, always make a conscious effort to prioritize confidence over accuracy.

2. Ellipses should be drawn through 2 or 3 times ( preferably 2) and they should be executed with confidence .make a conscious effort to use ghosting method and your shoulder to draw them.

3. No need to rush this, take all time you want. read the instructions carefully both in the lesson materials and videos, understand It and execute it to your best of your ability.

overall only 1 page I'm asking for.

here are the some useful links to tackle the revision, I need you to come back here before starting:

1. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/4/reminder

2. https://youtu.be/CKgeIA2PqY8 ( for ellipses in lines)

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5Pes5fy-Eo ( for lines)

4. , I need you to come back here before starting the revision .watch and understand as many times as you want and follow the instructions and execute to your best.

The point of this revision is not to expect perfection of exercise but to help you to remind what you should be aiming for throughout this course. and also to help you develop some confidence and patience throughout. because these are the preliminary requirements in the coming exercises;

The exercises should not be grinded, as grinding is definitely a waste of your time. your mark making will gradually improve through consistent and daily practice not drastically through grinding.

So I hope I tried to help you out.

I'm awaiting response from your side.

Thank you.

I can see some wobbling with your lines. I can see you make an arch with longer lines, too.

It seem to me you have a problem with making the elippses touch their boundaries, particularly in the tables exercise. With smaller ellipses I see some wobbling and deformation, too.

In the planes exercise, I can see they touch the borders mostly well, but they sometimes deform.

With your rough perspective - I see you draw the sides that are supposed to converge parallel, or make them not converge enough.

In the rotated boxes exercise, this box could follow the other one's side more - https://i.imgur.com/0svkIB1.png. I believe the uppermost and lowermost boxes shouldn't have this side seen https://i.imgur.com/68Vx7Vy.png. I think it should look something like this: https://i.imgur.com/xBIiG36.png, such a box was also in this exercise's example.

As for the organic perspective, be careful with diverging lines (by making the silhouette with diverging lines, you're essentially drawing the inside of a box and not its outside: https://i.imgur.com/VXi6qA2.png) and tangents (https://i.imgur.com/xCQZ0U4.png).

Hey, Kisanto! Good work all around! There are a few things you can improve upon, and one thing I would request from you, but I'm really impressed with the work you put in.

Lines: Your superimposed lines look great. There are a few instances of fraying on both ends, but most of the time, you get it right. The ghosted lines and ghosted planes are also pretty good. I can see that you are confident in executing the lines, even if they miss the dot. Continue to do that as you move on to future lessons.

Ellipses: The table of ellipses look pretty good. I think you did an excellent job making sure you only go over the ellipses two or three times. In some instances, you give the ellipses a pointed end. I only see this in the tables, so I'm not too concerned about it. That being said, as you incorporate ellipses into your warmup, make sure to make all ends rounded. The other thing I would suggest if you decide to do table of ellipses as a warmup in the future, practice varying the width a little more. It seems that most ellipses have the same degree or width. You can vary it by making skinnier ellipses, fatter ellipses, or circles. Don't worry about doing revisions of this exercise, but just make sure you practice varying the sizes more during warmups. The funnels look amazing to me. You did a good job making sure the line bisects them as best as possible. One thing you are missing though is the ellipses in ghosted planes. I can't pass you yet until this is included, so make sure to get that in at your earlier convenience.

Boxes: Plotted perspective looks fine to me. In the future, for warmups, I wouldn't be afraid to incorporate 4-6 boxes per panel. On rough perspective, I think you understood the exercise mostly well. You aimed to get to the vanishing point. And while you did overshoot and wobble a little bit, I can tell that you were doing your best to be confident. When you are doing this for warmups, I want you to focus on different sizes of boxes, specifically length. Most of the boxes you drew were close to the vanishing point length-wise. There is no problem with that, but as you go into the 250 box challenge, you are going to be dealing with boxes that are further away from their vanishing points. For warmups, make sure to vary the lengths of boxes: some can be long, but also practice making them short. That way, you can better understand if you grasp the concept of getting at or near the vanishing point. Rotated boxes look remarkable to me. I know you mentioned messing up on it, but I think it looks pretty great. Organic perspective looks fine, too. I could tell that you grew while practicing this, as you got more comfortable allowing the boxes to overlap each other. And, I agree, organic perspective is less of a nightmare than rotated boxes. Overall, solid work on boxes. Just make sure to vary lengths, especially during the 250 box challenge.

All-in-all, great work on lesson one. Before I pass you to do the 250 box challenge, make sure you get the ellipses in planes turned in. As far as warmups, feel free to practice a panel of ellipses, a panel of rough perspective, and/or a panel of plotted perspective. The latter two are very important when you move forward to the 250 box challenge

The exercises that you have done are pretty good.

The only critic that I have is that you should not have decided to make the the boxes transparent organic boxes drawing exersize

Beside that I find it pretty complete

Your Imgur URL seems to be broken.

Please fix it so others can take a look at your work.

Edit:

Wow, just noticed that this was posted almost half a year ago.

I feel bad that no-one's replied until me.