Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:33 PM, Monday December 21st 2020

DrawABox: Lesson 1 (Iiiik) - Album on Imgur

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

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The first two exercices were made in a previous attempt at DrawABox that I eventually gave up after the table of ellipses exercices. A few months afterwards, I got more serious and started it all over again but I lost the two exercices from that second attempt (all the other pages are from that one though). I thought about remaking them, but I thought that it wouldn't be very representative of my progresses throughout the course if I did that.

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12:56 AM, Saturday January 30th 2021

Superimposed Lines: Solid. We have two full pages. Be sure to experiment with a greater variety of lines in the future. Add longer straights and "S", and "C" shaped curves.

Ghosted Lines: Solid. We got some waviness to your lines. Be sure to rotate that page and to find the optimal position for your shoulder. Also take special care when setting down your pen. We shoudl never miss our mark when starting our lines.

Ghosted Planes: Good. We have some nice straight lines and every single line has been plotted. I'm noticing some line correcting, be sure to commit to: one line, one stroke. When revisiting these exercises be sure to play with a greater size differential with your planes. Go big, go small, we want to get that shoulder accustomed to draw any length of line.

Table of Ellipses: Solid. We have plenty of Ellipses fitted neatly in their bonds and mostly touching with minimal overlapping. Continue to ghost your Ellipses and focus on getting that even and smooth shape. I feel that too many of your Ellipses are facing straight on. When you revisit the exercise be sure to add more that tilt to the left and right.

Ellipses in Planes: Good. Their a couple of instances when your not drawing through your Ellipses completely. But overall the Ellipses are drawn through, fitted into their plane. As with the previous Ellipse exercise focus on smoothness.

Funnels: Good. The funnels are properly constructed, the ellipses are all touching with minimal overlap and the minor axis cuts many of your Ellipses in half. Make sure you draw through every single ellipse and continue to work on creating that even smooth shape. Remember to keep ghosting and use that shoulder.

Plotted Perspective: Very good. Everything seems in order. Keep in mind when adding line weight we only go over the silhouette with one additional stroke.

Rough Perspective: Solid. The boxes are drawn through, you used a straight edge to create guidelines back towards the V.P and you added hatching to the front face of your boxes, all good stuff. I'm seeing some line correcting which we want to avoid. Take your time when plotting your points and draw those lines with confidence. Keep in mind that every single horizontal line will be parallel to the horizon line and that every single vertical line will be perpendicular to the horizon line. Those sets of lines should never tilt.

Rotated Perspective: Solid. All the boxes have been drawn through and you attempted to draw every box. Again be sure to plot your points and make lines with confidence. No correcting! It's fine to make mistakes. We have a mix of boxes that are and are not rotating. Be sure to re-read the common mistakes portion of the lesson plan (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/rotatedboxes) when you revisit this exercise in the future.

Organic Perspective: Missing?

Next Steps:

Complete Organic Perspective. Keep in mind that, much like the rotated boxes exercise we're not meant to succeed at it on our first attempt. We'll learn more about the "Y" method of constructing boxes and working with 3 point perspective in the 250 box challenge. Just be sure to go back to the basics of: Plotting your points, Rotating your page, Ghosting your strokes, and in one clean motion from your shoulder put down your line.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
6:48 PM, Sunday January 31st 2021

Thanks you for your reply!

About the missing page, I have no idea why it "disappeared" from the album but I added it again.

It's been a while since I've completed this exercise and so I've had the occasion to work on several of the issues that you've been noticing, but I've got to admit that your accuracy is on point on the issues I've been training to avoid the most since then.

Again, thank you for taking the time of reviewing this lesson!

8:27 PM, Sunday January 31st 2021

Looking Good I marked the work as complete.

  • Continue to work on these exercises as a regular 10 to 20 minute warmup

  • Complete the 250 box challenge

  • Consider writing critiques for others students. Here's a helpful guide. (https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ)

  • Also you may want to join the DrawABox discord to share your thoughts and concerns about your work.

That's all from me. Cheers and happy drawing!

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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6:07 AM, Sunday December 27th 2020

Hi, Ik. Really nice work, but just noticed two things missing:

  1. On the surperimosed lines, you should have done half the page the length once you were confident about the little ones, and then the full wighth of the page. I don't know excatly why we have to do this, but the instructions say so. I guess we have to do it to get more confident of doing large lines.

  2. On the superimposed lines, you should have done arcing lines and some waves as in this image: https://imgur.com/a/7KbK5ix.

Other than that, I see everything else good.

That's it! Keep it going!

Ps: If you want to critique my homework, you are welcome to do so. Have a nice day.

4:38 PM, Tuesday December 29th 2020

Thanks a lot for the constructive answer!

About that, as I said in a note linked to my submission, I redid those exercices at some point, and during the second run, I did wavy and arcing lines, but sadly lost the sheets. And while I thought about re-doing these, I thought it wouldn't be very representative of my progress on the long-run.

But this is a perfectly understandable and normal remark so thank you for noticing that.

PS: Sure, this is the slighest I can do in return.

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Sakura Pigma Microns

A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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