Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

5:18 AM, Tuesday September 28th 2021

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/XC7TGHg.jpg

Find, rate and share the best memes and images. Discover the magic of th...

Note: I'm restarting from lesson 1. Uncomfortable says he will review my work.

Currently working with a page size of 14x17. I don't have a scanner big enough for this page size so I'm using my phone to take pictures of it. I have it on a sort of stand specifically for aiming the camera straight down. It is suppose to make the cellphone into a makeshift overhead scanner.

Alright here is lesson 1 again. I feel that the super imposed lines are a bit sloppy and frayed.

Ghosted planes feel rushed even thought I ghosted them. Perhaps I'm not confident enough. They missed their marks several times and it doesn't look as good as it should.

Ellipses in planes are similar unfortunately.

Rough Perspective is really off in most cases. I'm surprised by how inaccurate it turned out.

Rotated boxes is still a difficult exercise for me. I was hoping I would be able to tackle it with a bit more accuracy but, unfortunately that did not happen.

The Organic perpsective boxes gave me lots of issues. I have trouble with proportioning things down so that they will actually be big enough to be visible at the end of the trail.

I really need to get these things down. My trouble with angles and accuracy seems to bleed over into other things as well.

0 users agree
6:59 PM, Wednesday September 29th 2021

Starting with your super imposed lines, your work here is coming along fairly well, although it definitely would have been better to start out with the shorter lines and work your way up to the longer ones (as shown in the video/instructions for this exercise) - this would have helped you ease into it.

As this exercise is all about getting into the flow of executing marks confidently and fluidly, the fraying on the far right is fairly normal and expected. It shows that you are more and more willing to commit to the trajectory of a given stroke, rather than trying to steer it during the execution (which would result in a wobblier line).

Continuing onto your ghosted lines and planes, while both exercises were completed quite well, I can see a greater tendency to hesitate in your planes. The ghosted lines themselves are almost completely straight and smooth, and while you do overshoot here and there, you're not holding yourself back out of fear of missing the mark. When you get into the ghosted planes, you do hesitate a little more, showing that you're prioritizing the accuracy of the marks over their fluidity. That is a priority you need to shift in your mind - always make sure that no matter what, when you reach the execution phase of the ghosting method, you push through and commit to the motion you've planned out and prepared.

As a side note, in the ghosted lines exercise you were definitely drawing the dots to be pretty enormous - they don't need to be quite so huge. In fact, they only need to be just big enough for you to see them. Making them smaller, and allowing the strokes to swallow them up, will be far more useful when it comes to employing this technique throughout the course.

Moving onto your ellipses, these are coming along well. You're achieving even, consistent shapes and committing with confidence to each ellipse upon executing it. While there certainly are some that come out a bit loose, that is something that will improve as you continue to practice these exercises in your warmups. They primarily loosen up when they get larger or when the degree of the given ellipse gets particularly wide - all of which are well known for being more difficult. Ultimately there's nothing wrong with your trajectory here - just be sure to keep practicing these exercises as you move forwards, and always remind yourself to employ the ghosting method/execute the ellipses from your shoulder using your whole arm, and you'll continue to smooth out any issues.

Jumping down to your rough perspective boxes, there are a few things that stand out here as issues:

  • While the video for this exercise and the example page provided on the written instructions have students drawing multiple frames for this exercise (each with their own distinct horizon line, vanishing points, sets of boxes, etc.) you appear to have only drawn one large one per page, with no frame. You appear to have done the same thing for the plotted perspective exercise as well. While this isn't a huge concern in the context of this exercise, any situation where a student opts to do something differently than shown in the instructions raises questions as to why - was it a conscious decision, or was the student not actually aware (perhaps they didn't go through the instructions as mindfully as they could have, in which case what else might have been missed?)

  • It seems to me that you're not employing the ghosting method for your lines here. I'm not seeing any points marked out for your start/end of each stroke, and I'm also seeing a greater tendency to go back over your marks multiple times instead of investing your time in the planning/preparation of one stroke per line. The ghosting method must be employed for every mark we do throughout this course (aside from textural marks). Furthermore, you should not be giving into the temptation to go back over linework you've already drawn - be it to correct a mistake, or reflexively reinforce a line. You get one shot at a given line.

  • When you go back to check the accuracy of your estimations, it seems that you apply the lines in red incorrectly. You seem to be drawing a line from the front-most point right back to the VP. That is not what was demonstrated in the instructions - instead, you should be taking each line as you've drawn it, and extend it back to find where it intersects with the horizon line. This allows us to see more clearly how far off we were with each estimate, given that we can see the distance between that intersection and the actual VP.

Now, as far as the rest of the exercise goes, you're doing fine. It is expected that students' estimates here will be off by a fair margin. The only real problems that come up here are whether or not you're following the instructions themselves, as they're provided. This continues to hold true for the remainder of your work through this lesson.

Moving onto your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes, it's not that they're done particularly badly (in terms of what is expected for this stage at the beginning of the course), but that you're not doing everything that's asked. Again, you haven't used the ghosting method here. Moreover, you neglected to complete the corner boxes in the rotated boxes exercise, leaving each quadrant unfinished.

These last two exercises are especially not ones I expect students to do amazingly with - they're very challenging, and demand a lot. My only expectation as part of Lesson 1 here is that students give the exercises their best shot. Not that they complete the exercises correctly and without mistakes, but that they do complete them, adhering to the instructions.

I'm going to assign a few additional pages of revisions below, so you can address the issues that I've called out above.

Next Steps:

Please submit:

  • 1 page of rough perspective boxes

  • 1 page of rotated boxes

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
4:35 AM, Wednesday October 13th 2021

https://imgur.com/a/8wSGr1h

Rotated Boxes

Rough Perspective.

a lot of the time when I attempt to ghost lines I will end up with marks I had no intention of making. I'm placing the pen too close to the page. That is part of the issues when it comes to wobbly lines.

In the future I will try to make my objectives (dots) a bit smaller. I made the lines longer because I wanted more practice with larger pages.

The funnels concern me because I see to be getting away from the center lines that I make very often. This happens in other things such as the rotated boxes exercise. I'm having a lot of trouble with symmertry.

I have the tendency to go back over my lines because it is very distracting to see messed up lines. It does influnece the other lines I make. So it one is wrong and I base something off that the second, third and fourth will be progressively worse.

students drawing multiple frames for this exercise (each with their own distinct horizon line, vanishing points, sets of boxes, etc.) you appear to have only drawn one large one per page, with no frame. You appear to have done the same thing for the plotted perspective exercise as well. While this isn't a huge concern in the context of this exercise, any situation where a student opts to do something differently than shown in the instructions raises questions as to why - was it a conscious decision, or was the student not actually aware (perhaps they didn't go through the instructions as mindfully as they could have, in which case what else might have been missed?)

It was on purpose. Measuring out each border on the page as well as the gutters and getting everything centered is time consuming and a little annoying when I'm trying to practice another skill. Aside from that I would prefer to draw as large as possible instead of limiting everything to such a small area.

I followed the rough perspective red line the wrong way last time. It should be correct this time. I might have been thinking of something else. I drew the boxes first, the took a break, then came back and forgot I was suppose to contiune them with the red line instead of correct them. That has been fixed this time.

5:39 PM, Wednesday October 13th 2021

Starting with the rotated boxes, it still appears to be unfinished. As shown here, you drew one face for one of the corner boxes, and left the others out. You also have a tendency to overcomplicate the basic squares we use in this step to define the extremities of each axis. Do not deviate from the instructions.

To your point about the framing/division of the page for the rough/organic perspective boxes, I get that the steps can be tedious, but you are not in a position to choose which instructions in this course to follow, and which to ignore. All you can do is your best to consciously follow those instructions to the letter. You're not wrong that drawing bigger certainly helps, but in the design of this exercise, I've found it to be more beneficial to have students tackle this exercise in this way despite that. Again - it comes down to following those instructions and not deviating from them, because you don't know where I've made conscious choices towards certain ends.

You are indeed applying the line extensions for the rough perspective boxes correctly now, so they're certainly looking better. I can see a slight tendency to have some lines fall short, but as a whole the execution of your marks is notably more confident here than the ghosted planes, which does still suggest a step in the right direction. Undershooting usually comes from a fear of overshooting, choosing one issue over the other. For now, I'd lean more towards overshooting, and gradually reel it back with continued practice.

So, from where I'm sitting, I'll call the rough perspective boxes complete, but since you haven't yet completed the rotated boxes in their entirety, I'm going to ask for another one of those. I can see that your execution of the exercise is actually pretty good towards the center (you're maintaining even spacing and using neighbouring edges as hints for new edges quite well), but this tends to fall apart more as you reach those corners. It's not uncommon for students to lose motivation when things start to fall apart, and in turn, to end up stopping prematurely as a result of that loss of motivation.

Ultimately you are not a creature who acts purely on motivation, however. You are human, and can choose to complete the task even if everything is falling apart around you. Make those conscious choices, and see it through, following those instructions as closely as you can and allowing the results to come out as they wish.

Next Steps:

One more page of rotated boxes.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
3:50 AM, Friday October 15th 2021

https://imgur.com/a/kW7zmim

This time I have tried to follow the directions as much as possible. The lines do got a bit past where they should go instead of falling short of where they should go.

Sadly things still aren't aligned with the Cross I had draw initally. I tried to keep things together towards the end but, things still looks 'wobbly'.

I think the boxes in general look slightly better this time.

I will follow through with the exercises more pricesily in the future.

View more comments in this thread
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.

Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.

These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.

We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.

Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.