Hey,
Thanks for building the drawabox site - what a waelth of information. And you have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about how best to help people learn. The homework can be a stretch but this is the idea I gather.
Would love to read your comments if you have time. Appreciate it.
Thanks again.
Congrats on finishing lesson 1!
Your superimposed lines are mostly straight, though there are a few wobbles. Remember, confidence always matters more than accuracy - if your line is smooth, it is a good line even if it doesn't perfectly overlap the other line. There is also some fraying on both ends. You should be making confident lines, but not unplanned ones. This means you should be taking the time to position your pen so it touches the paper right where the line begins before making your mark. This is also explained here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/8/fraying
On your ghosted lines and planes you should also be placing your pen where the line will begin (at one of the points you made) before making the mark, and confidence is again the priority. I notice you've done better when it comes to planning your strokes, but on your planes especially there is a lot more wobbling.
There are quite a few wobbles in your ellipses in planes, and the round shape of your ellipse is sometimes compromised. I suspect this might be because you're too worried about making an ellipse that isn't fitting perfectly in the space you're aiming for. When drawing ellipses, confidence is again more important than accuracy, so make sure you prioritize having a smooth, round ellipse over one that fits perfectly into the space.
Your ellipses in tables are mostly smooth, but I see a bit of wobbling in your second pass, which I suspect is again due to worrying about accuracy.
In your funnels, a lot of your ellipses are drawn with more than three passes, which is the maximum number of passes you're allowed to make. Some ellipses sacrifice their round shape to conform to the funnel, especially in the funnel in the corner. There are also a few cases where the ellipses are aligned as well as they can be but the minor axis doesn’t go through the center because of how the funnel is made. It can help to draw the curves first, and then use a ruler to draw the minor axis exactly halfway between them so you can align your ellipses to it properly. For the funnel in the corner, remember to draw your minor axis line in the middle of the funnel. Also remember the degree of your ellipses should be increasing as they move away from the center.
On your perspective exercises, there are a few instances where you draw a line more than once, which I suspect is in order to correct it. Never draw a line more than once, even if it makes your box look wrong. It's no big deal if you made a mistake.
On your rough perspective, your lines are much more wobbly, which I suspect is again due to worrying too much about accuracy. Some boxes are not drawn in one-point perspective, which I believe you noticed. To solve this, if you aren't already doing so, it can help to ghost your lines to the horizon to make sure they do converge somewhere. Some of your width lines aren’t parallel to the horizon and some of your height lines aren’t perpendicular to it, which they should be in one-point perspective. Some lines are also missing extension lines.
On your rotated boxes, a lot of boxes aren't rotating back into space as much as they should. The vanishing point should be crawling down the horizon line, which will lead to boxes being placed at angles to each other rather than being side by side. Remember, as a box tips back, you won't be able to see as much of the top face and you'll end up seeing much more of the two side faces. This is also explained here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating.
Your organic perspective has a lot of convergence errors, but those will be ironed out with practice. Do not try to correct your boxes!
One thing I noticed while looking through your work is that you sometimes did more than the required number of pages for each exercise. Do not do this! Just do the required number of pages to the best of your ability, submit them for critique and then do the revisions that are asked of you, if there are any. There's no point grinding these exercises out, especially since you'll be revisiting them in your warm ups.
Next Steps:
Well done! Before moving on I will request:
1 page of ellipses in planes. Focus on confidence here
1 page of rough perspective
1 page of organic perspective. Do not try to correct your boxes, you will have lots of opportunities to improve them in your warm ups and in the 250 box challenge
I suggest re-reading the exercise page for and watching the linked videos for these exercises before attempting them again.
Hi There,
Thanks so much for taking the time to review my exercises. I have worked on the repeat exercises you suggested. Focusing on making confident marks & trying not to be too concerned about making mistakes. I was tempted to correct many times but I resisted the urge. And I will try to stop the grinding of exercises. This is hard to resist too but will continue to try.
Thanks for your time reviewing my repeat work.
You're welcome!
It seems like you've gotten much more confident with your ellipses, and while there is a bit of deformation to make them fit in the plane they're looking much smoother.
Your rough perspective is also looking much better. The lines are smoother and the boxes are mostly on the right track, though you still need to watch out for the width and height lines of your boxes. There are still a few cases where they aren't at the right angle to the horizon (width lines should be parallel to horizon and height lines should be perpendicular).
Your organic perspective also looks much better. One thing to remember is that your boxes will never converge toward the viewer (left face of the box will always converge to a vanishing point on the left, right face of the box will always converge to a vanishing point on the right, and if you can see the top plane of the box then it will converge to a vanishing point below the box).
Next Steps:
Your confidence has improved a lot, and I'm glad to see you aren't trying to re-do your lines. I'm also glad you're trying not to grind these exercises (remember, the point is not to do them perfectly). Keep doing these exercises as warm ups and move on to the 250 box challenge.
You are also now qualified to critique other lesson 1 submissions. I highly suggest you do give it a shot, as it will help the community and yourself as well. The creator of Drawabox has this to say on the subject of critiques:
'Once you've completed a lesson, one of the best ways to refine your understanding of that material is to help others by critiquing their work. After having done thousands of critiques and having improved immensely over the last few years, I can attest to that myself.'
In addition, if you critique lesson one submissions, your submissions for later lessons will get critique faster as the people qualified to do those will not be busy doing lesson 1 critiques (and doing lesson 1 critiques is pretty important since after just a few days the queue will fill up a lot - lesson 1 submissions are really common).
If you don't feel confident in giving a good critique, then I recommend looking at this guide for a start: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ
Of course you don't have to, but it would be very helpful. Good luck on the box challenge!
Thanks man. I get myself confused then it all seems to go to pot. So pleased when it seems I get one right but there is a ton of wrong along the way.
Anyway, thants for your really helpful comments.
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.
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