Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:26 AM, Wednesday March 11th 2020

Drawabox Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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

Post with 28 views. Drawabox Lesson 1

Submission of Lesson 1 exercises hoping for some feedback.

2 users agree
5:31 AM, Wednesday March 11th 2020
edited at 5:32 AM, Mar 11th 2020

Hey! Let’s see~

Starting off, your superimposed lines look good, though there is the occasional fraying. See if you can take an extra half a second to line up your pen to the correct starting point. Their trajectory is not always consistent, too, so be mindful of that. If a line runs off-course, continue on that course, rather than alter it. This extends to your ghosted lines, too. Try to not extend a line that stops short, by the way. Finally, see if you can plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes.

Moving on, your ellipses are smooth, but not always circular. I notice that they start off a little bumpy, and then, once you hit the second/third rotation, stabilize. Be sure to ghost until you’re ready, then commit. Be careful that they’re properly rounded, too. They’ll come out a little pointy sometimes- an indication that you might be letting a lesser pivot handle those sharp turns. Always check back to make sure you’re pivoting from your shoulder. For the ellipses in planes exercise, be careful that you’re not getting too caught up in priority #2: hitting all 4 sides of the plane, that you forget about priority#1: having the ellipse be smooth, and rounded. As we always say: confidence > accuracy. For the funnels, be a tiny bit more mindful of the degrees of your ellipses (they should remain consistent, or increase as they move away from the center.) There’s an extra page here, too, so be a little more attentive to the page requirements, please.

Finally, it seems like the plotted perspective exercise is missing. I’d like to see it before I mark this lesson as complete. The rough perspective exercise started off a little, well, rough, but it improves considerably by the second page. Still, be careful not to correct an incorrect line, and spend a little more time ghosting to the VP, if you can. Looking at some of your correction lines, I feel like you might be getting too caught up in what you think a box should look like, when in reality, they’re a little distorted-looking, because of the one point perspective. Try to trust in your ghosting. Nice attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. The back faces don’t rotate as much as they should, but that’s alright. I do notice that your line confidence dips a little here, though. It’s important to remember that despite what the exercise itself consists of, it’s still just a collection of lines. If they can be confident in your ghosted lines exercise, they can be confident here, too. Try not to get too caught up in the big picture. Also, there’s 8 boxes missing. I’d like to see these, too, before marking this lesson as complete. The organic perspective exercise looks good. Outside of what I’ve already mentioned (taking your time on each line, not correcting an incorrect line), I’ll mention that their foreshortening is a little inconsistent. This isn’t a problem, though, considering there’s 250 boxes coming up.

I had a lot to say, but this is a good submission- congrats!

Next Steps:

Before I mark this as complete, I'd like to see the missing plotted perspective exercise, and the complete rotated boxes exercise.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 5:32 AM, Mar 11th 2020
11:22 PM, Wednesday March 11th 2020

Hi Benj

Thankyou for thje very comprehensive feedback!

I do struggle with confidence in a lot of the exercises, and I was worried that came through.

The reminder to pivot from the shoulder is really helpful as I think towards the later exercises I feel back into using more wrist movement.

Sorry for the missing exercise. Imgur was sulking. The exersice in now in the album linked above, or directly here - https://imgur.com/Kglo9TO

Again thank you very much for the feedback, it's just what I needed!

5:03 AM, Thursday March 12th 2020

Looks good~ GL on the challenge!

Next Steps:

250 Box Challenge

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
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Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

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