Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
4:26 PM, Monday July 3rd 2023
Thank you for looking at my work.
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11:46 AM, Wednesday July 12th 2023
hello, fist and foremost, congrats on finishing L1.
before we start, i see that some of your images are taken from a fair distance, in the future, please be sure to take more close up pictures so that the critiquer and anyone else seeing it can get a better a look at the work.
without further a do let's get into it
Lines:
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Super imposed lines
these are not great. i see that they have fraying on both ends, and most of your lines seem to be a lot of arching (as in bent lines) where as this is completely acceptable for this stage of the lesson, however i do not see that these lines have much intent nor purpose with them, i apologise if that came off a little rude.
i cannot quite tell from the picture, but it is not reccomended that you a pencil for these exercises as is explained here.
please be mindful of the strokes you make, fraying on one end is acceptable, however at least one end is within the control of the student. however your lines are confident, arching, but still confident, which is the primary focus of this part of the lesson. these are not great, i advise that you revisit the page for these exercises again.
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ghosted lines
good job on this. confident strokes, brave and overlapping lines, at least hitting one point and drawn with a pen, good job! however i see that there is a lot of arching lines present in the page, i suggest that you try and give a counter force on your hand arching to the opposite direction to straighten the line out, so if your lines are arching to the left, give a force out that arcs to the right to straighten the line out, but overall, good job!
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Ghosted planes
okay job here, all the lines are drawn confidently, which is the main focus of this exercise, so great! however i do see some common issues here, in remember to plot out all your lines, even the + line the middle, every line should be drawn with intent. secondly some of the lines overshoot so much that it doubles the original length, please practice lifting up your pen as it reaches the point, overshooting is still acceptable within this stage, but please be mindful of the point. your planes are also rather scattered around the place, try and make them fit into the page nicely to get the most out of the page, and exercise. but overall good job!
lines conclusion:
i can see that you slowly develop understanding as you progress, however a lot of these lines are arched and overshoot, this is nothing that you cannot improve in the future, but i do suggest that you keep it in mind and slowly chip away at it on future warm ups! that being said, your lines are confident, which is great! despite how bent they are, none show any wobbliness, well done!
Elipses:
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Panels:
good job, look somewhat wobbly here compared to the lines, but it's nothing you can't work on in the future, the shape of your elipses also seem a little off in shape, again this is to be expected. you also draw through your elipses more than 3 times for some of these, it is mandatory for the lesson that ellipses are drawn through twice.
as a reminder please remember that when drawing elipses the main priority first and foremost is confidence, followed by shape and solidity and then accuracy.
this rule applies to future lessons as well, it is important that confidence is prioritized out of all else.
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planes
these are not great, please remember that the elipses within the panels hit all 4 sides, the ellipses are somewhat wobbly and mishaped. as a reminder again, confidence is the main priority above all else, followed by shape and then accuracy. a lot of students fall into a trap of thinking that they have to draw within the plane, it is completely okay to draw out of the plane, where as ideally we'd want them to fit in, your priority first and foremost should be confidence.
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funnels
good job here, your elipses are drawn within the bounds some of them are wobbly most of them are drawn through twice, and with a bit more confidence, and despite your lines being off center it does seem like you mind your elipses minor axis in relation to it. overall good job!
conclusion:
your ellipses are somewhat wobbly but you can work in the future, just with the lines remember that confidence is prioritized over accuracy, accuracy in the sense of ellipses meaning fitting in the boundaries that were set, like the lines of a plane.Boxes:
okay, i do not think that this work done with much thought, practically every mistake that is mentioned within the site is done, the plotted prespective exercise looks messy, the rough prespective exercise are done completely wrong, so are the rotated boxes.
i understand that these are not easy exercises per say, however i can pretty confidently say that these are done with very little patience and mindfulness. i understand that it is very tempting to just get it done and be finished with the lesson to move on to the next part of the lesson, in these moment i beg that you remind yourself the reason that you took this lesson. by rushing through it and giving little attention to the work you are completely missing the lesson entirely. please be patient and take your time.
you also write attempt 3 in your rotated boxes exercise, i understand that the results of the rotated boxes is very often frustrating and unpleasing to look at, worry not this is to be expected and is understandable. please remember that the point of the exercise is to understand the relation between boxes and how they rotate. but please, go with the first attempt and finsih it, no matter how bad it looks, if you ever feel burnt out, be sure to take a break. none of these exercises are expected to be done within a days work, some may very well span across a week's time or even more.
finishing the lesson will not instantly make you better at art, doing it mindfully, and taking your time will. please be patient and take your time.
Next Steps:
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a page of ghosted planes with elipses. (please make sure your elipses are fitting the planes fully as is shown in this example
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a revision of the entirity of the boxes exercises (1 page of plotted prespective, 2 pages of rough prespective, 1 page of rotated boxes, and 2 pages (with 6 panels) of organic boxes)
please take your time and go through to read boxes part of the lesson and watch the videos. i understand that this may be frustrating, but without having properly done the exercises you cannot expect to proceed forward to the 25o box challenge.
1:20 PM, Saturday July 29th 2023
1:48 PM, Saturday July 29th 2023
Hello and thank you for the critique I hope that revions I have made our an improvement from last time. However I must admit that the rough prespective and the rostated boxes are messy. Also thank you for looking at my work on discord sorry I did not reply to you and to answer your question English is my first language and I must admit I did rush the boxes excerise and I must learn patience but this my first time drawing and learing how yo draw not that should effect how you critique my work.
Sorry for the long reply and thank you for looking at my revisions and have a great day
2:46 PM, Tuesday August 1st 2023
okay, first and foremost forgive my latency. i haven't checked on the site for quite a bit.
unfotunately i don't believe that i can confidently give you the pass for this, as unfortunate as it is i will be asking for more revisions as i do not feel like you understand the concepts nor have executed them quite properly yet. i will reason this out in the final paragraphs but before that i will list out the mistakes you make to hopefully provide a better understanding and avoid making these mistakes in the future, i apologize again, for not having provided this before hand as it would have been highly valuable:
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paneling, i understand that it may seem minor and trivial, or even pointless. and yes, it is a anything but a hard rule to panel out your exercises. however it does help in setting the page up properly and keeping sure that the exercises have solid boundaries to them, i do hope that, in the future revisions, all the exercises are panelled out properly, ideally 1 cm on from the page edge and 1 cm in between panels. the size of the panel itself is up to you, but to further demonstrate this i will provide you with a demo here
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plotted prespective:
a. minimal boxes, the amount of boxes are not mentioned in the course however they are essential to the exercise itself. it is good to have a healthy amount of boxes, try and have somewhere between 5-8 boxes in each panel,
b. lack of variance
the boxes that are present in the revision are very similar to each other, try and add variance to width and height of the boxes, you can do so by playing around with the dimensions. here is an example . try and vary up the size of the boxes, how much space it takes up on the panel, how long the starting line is, how far the second and third vertical lines are from that original line, if the original line passes the horizon line or not, where the original line is in relative to the vanishing points and so on.
try and create a variation of boxes that have differing dimensions, like take a pizza box, a sky scraper, or a shampoo bottle and a pencil sharpener, all of these shapes have differing dimensions so one might be 2x5x1 in lengthxheightxwidth the other might be 1x1x1. play around with it.
- rough prespective
a. incorrect correction lines, the lines are extention of the lines on the boxes, to show how far off the line is from the vanishing points. the goal is to try and make it so that the lines all converge towards the vanishing point to the best of your ability.
b. missing lines and not dotting out
some of the lines in the work are missing. please make sure the lines are all drawn and all plotted out.
c. not paralel lines
make sure that the vertical and horizontal lines are paralel to the page.
i recommend to go visit the site for the exercise again, and seeing the step by step on how to do so.
- rotated boxes.
a. missing boxes
there should be a total of 25 boxes,
b. incorrect rotations
where as i would usually forgive a student for this mistake as it is understandable for beginers to struggle with this. the purpose of this exercise spesifically is to understand how to rotate boxes, by way of moving their vanishing points in relation to one another. (all explained in exercise video)
c. incorrect back boxes
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1118407891133681684/1125345429354205204/image-8.png
d. missing lines, and not dotting out lines, again.
this exercise is the second to last because the previous exercises served to teach how to draw boxes converging to a point. make sure that the neighbouring boxes are used here is a step by step on how to do so. first dot and draw out the pink and red lines, then dot out the orange dots. and then finish off the box by lining everything out together, you feel the need to move any of the orange dots after a stroke, don't be afraid to do so. what matters most is the first step to that.
- organic prespective
a. lack of variance in boxes.
this is again, not a hard rule, but the rotation of boxes is to be considered when drawing them out.
b. just, straight up wrong boxesasdasdad
as i have high lighted here
c. no change in size.
as the box progresses towards the line the size of it is to increase, the boxes here are very much all of the same size. make sure that the inital y gets longer and bigger as it follows down the line
d. not dotting out boxes.
however the planes exercise is okay, ideally there would also be more variation and the planes would take up the whole page as opposed to only part of it. the elipses are also okay, not confident, and mishapes, but with practice that work out. please try and get the most out of the exercise by filling out the page as is shown here.
my reasoning:
I extreme apologise for this decision. as much as i hate to do this i cannot confidently or even honestly give you a pass on this lesson yet, as the exercises submitted are more than just a little incorrectly done.
the lesson is progressive. it is ill advised and you will almost definetly not gain much or even anything if you just powered through the lesson. you you achieve and gain very very little by only FINISHING, instead you get better by doing the exercises, there's no magic brain level up you get by finishing a lesson and now suddenly you're just better at art than you were before, you have to actually sit down, and spend energy and attention reading through, listening to, working and doing these exercise to develop execution and understanding, which takes time and energy, and is definetly is anything but easy.
you cannot, or at least i would personally highly doubt, gain or even be able to properly understand anything from the next phases of this lesson if the previous ones are not done as is asked.
i understand that is your first proper "art course" and i apologise if it is exhaustive and perhaps demanding. this course is anything but easy, perhaps even more so if you have minimal experience in illustrating as a whole.
however i do hope that you prevail and work through this, if you however do choose that this is perhaps not for you, i am no judge to tell you what to do. the last thing i want is to discourage people by giving rough and tough revisions. i hope that you can understand why i ask for these before having you move on.
i have given you a pace for this, to hopefully, ensure that you do take your time to process and take in, and hopefully, understand the lesson.
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