Check Out NMA    Learn More About our Partnership
Close and Enjoy Drawabox Ad-free

Can I still get feedback if I work in pencil?

2:06 AM, Monday April 26th 2021

My girlfriend noticed that I had become incredibly stressed about the idea of drawing since I'd started using just pen. I realized that she is right. I noticed I'm much more likely to draw at all (and therefore complete assignments) if I do so in pencil. I know that fineliners have great benefits for teaching you to respect all of the marks you make, but I also noticed it was getting in the way of understanding 3d space because if I can fix the odd line I mess up every now and then, I can see me work as I intended the perspective to actually be, not just what my hand would allow. For this reason, and more importantly, for my own self-care, I'm going to stick with pencil for my exercises for the time being. Not to mention that it's better for me to complete the assignments sub-optimally than to not complete them. I still practice my linework separately every day.

TL;DR: as a matter of self-care, I'm going with pencils. Can I still get feedback or will I have to work in isolation as a result?

P.S. If you want to be supportive PLEASE do NOT tell me I'm being too sensitive about making bad marks or that I need to just deal with being stressed out. Neither are helpful for me building confidence.

Report
5 users agree
11:01 AM, Monday April 26th 2021

First to answer your question:

I think if you want official feedback you unfortunately can't use pencils - but if you want community feedback or have questions that should work. I'm sure people on the discord for example would be willing to help you no matter what medium you use

And I totally understand where you are coming from! I'm currently just at the 250 box challenge and finished 100 boxes but I get so stressed out when I mess things up but now after 100 boxes I feel like I finally understand what this is all about. It's exactly about the fact that yes, things will turn out differently than we picture them because our hands just don't seem to be doing what we want them to. And yes, it's totally frustrating but the more you fail the more you will tolerate that you fail. So if you want to reduce the stress that this is causing you I would recommend you push through it - even if it's tough.

My own experience with this is that my tolerance of my own mistakes got better because I can see how horrible my lines are sometimes. And not only do I tolerate it when I mess up, I expect it to happen - so I'm now less frustrated when it happens but rather excited when it doesn't happen.

But that's just my experience so far. I can't speak for you so you have to decide whether it's too stressful for you to do everything with fineliners or not.

TL;DR

For official feedback you can't use pencils

I would recommend giving it a try if you want to change that mindset and try to learn to care less about those mistakes but it's really up to you

1 users agree
5:30 PM, Monday April 26th 2021
edited at 5:38 PM, Apr 26th 2021

Hey dgscott922, great question!

Are you balancing your drawabox studies with the 50% rule in lesson 0? If so, what medium are you using for your own 50%, as it's totally up to you what you use! Now assuming that you're using whatever medium you want in the 50%, would you be willing to use a fineliner pen for the drawabox lessons?

Also, looking through your previous posts it seems, to me at least, that you might be putting too much pressure on yourself to get every line as straight as possible. The lines you drew were in all honesty "good enough", and even if they weren't, that's good too! It's perfectly fine to draw bad lines. Drawabox is supposed to show you mistakes as blatantly as possible, making it easy to identify mistakes and recommend the next steps forward. This is partially done through using fineliner, as it reveals all of your marks and decisions to us, remove that grey area that pencil and other mediums may bring. I also agree with some of the points FLOTSCHOS made, this will get better with mileage!

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions!

edited at 5:38 PM, Apr 26th 2021
6:16 PM, Monday April 26th 2021
edited at 6:20 PM, Apr 26th 2021

I'm doing the 50% rule with digital.

Here's an example of why the complete inability to erase is very stressful to me: if you're drawing a cube and you make one wrong line, the entire cube is going to be wrong, and any time you spend on the rest of the cube is wasted because you're not learning to understand it in perspective because the perspective is already wrong.

Another example is how I was doing the form intersection exercise, and I was trying to draw a circle, and it ended up being horribly deformed because sometimes that's how elipses turn out even if you're generally good at them. That giant deformed circle isn't going to make a 3d shape that's conducive to the exercise, let alone the sphere, and now, the entire page is obscured by this useless shape, which makes the rest of the exercise more difficult, not because you're learning more, but because you can't see properly.

Making these mistakes that inhibit my learning doesn't make me feel more confident. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It makes me feel like I'm a failure incapable of creating anything decent and I'm wasting my time even trying because all doing is just adding to a drawing that's already wrong and therefore isn't helping me learn perspective.

Doing the 250 box challenge, after 150 boxes, I felt like I wasn't learning objects in space any better. It became just an exercise in making straight lines because the moment you didn't, you're just reinforcing work on an incorrect perspective.

I don't feel like the value of always respecting every mark right away is worth sacrificing the increased learning or perspective, let alone my mental health or stressing out my partner. Especially when you consider that you can practice deliberate mark-making in other ways that won't ruin an exercise when you fail.

edited at 6:20 PM, Apr 26th 2021
7:40 PM, Monday April 26th 2021

I get where you are coming from and I feel like if you really believe being able to erase your marks is better for you then go for it. And I don't mean that condescending in any way at all (sorry if my comment before made you feel like that)

As far as I understand it is part of what this website tries to teach - being okay with making mistakes because they will be there, they will mess up an entire page and there is nothing you can do about it. Mistakes are inevitable and that's fine.

but for now I believe that thing that did improve most since I started this course was my ability to embrace the suck. I suck, some of my lines are wobbly, not accurate, I miss about 90% of my superimposed lines and don't even get me started on some of my cubes where I put a dot where the line would have converged but I messed it up and the whole cube now is ruined...

...but I learned to accept that and for that I'm kind of glad

So the way I see it the 250 box challenge is not just there to get better at perspective. It's to improve at perspective, line making and being okay with ruining pages and boxes by stupid mistakes

(I'm not as far as you in the course so I could be wrong and maybe after 50 more boxes I'll give up as well though ;) )

However, if your mental health (or your partner's) is suffering just stop doing it! It's clearly not worth that and I don't think any person here judges you for that at all! Also I'm absolutely sure that if you want feedback on your work you can ask people on the discord server even if you draw with a pencil

PS: if you haven't already I would recommend reading the article on this page about using ink: https://drawabox.com/article/ink

7:49 PM, Monday April 26th 2021
edited at 7:50 PM, Apr 26th 2021

Yeah, I've looked at that and I definitely see the value in fineliners. I'm just not sure seeing myself fail and making horrible lines is worth sacrificing learning perspective more efficiently. Like, if the perspective is already wrong, it's not going to teach you how to do it properly by finishing it, so isn't it just a waste of time?

edited at 7:50 PM, Apr 26th 2021
8:55 AM, Friday April 30th 2021

If you haven't already, read this short article on the topic written by drawabox: https://drawabox.com/article/ink/notpencil. If this doesn't help I'd suggest continuing in pencil or getting in contact with the drawabox team. The rest of this reply will be my own opinion.

With incorrectly placed lines or ellipses, if it's slightly off I'll estimate where the proper line/ellipse would have been and place the rest of the lines accordingly. If way off then I just draw the correct plcement of the line/ellipse in its place.

If you did this course perfectly without fail, you didn't need to take this course. We can't learn if we're right, as we've already learnt it. we learn by correction of mistake. If your making mistakes AND correcting them properly your doing it right. Now this can be done in pencil, though if you rub it out you've 1. wasted time rubbing it out (if the objective is only to learn, not to make it look good) as the time spent literally using the eraser isn't spent learning, 2. removed the ability to see where you've most commonly went wrong in previous studies. Again, this is only my opinion on the topic, so I'd suggest do what suits you best!

0 users agree
8:16 PM, Monday April 26th 2021

How long have you been doing Drawabox? What have you been doing for previous exercises? Your questions suggest you might be rushing too fast through things without really letting enough time for new skills to embed.

The old joke about you can't create a baby in a month by getting 9 woman to work on it applies. Some things take time to inculcate and form. This is one of the reasons why, for the official feedback route at least, you have to wait for feedback before starting the next exercise and you cannot submit new homework until two weeks have passed from your last. The muscle movements for good pen control will take months of disciplined practice to become second nature.

The bottom line is that this is a structured course with rules. Ultimately you can do what you want with the exercises and homework and it will help you but for proper feedback, especially official feedback, the rules need to be followed. Otherwise it's not Drawabox.

8:49 PM, Monday April 26th 2021

I'm almost finished with lesson 2. Took me a few weeks to get though both. I know I'm not going to get good lines right away. My main point is that the exercise starts to feel like a waste of time if I've already messed up the perspective-- continuing to work on that doesn't help me understand perspective any better.

I understand and respect the structure of drawabox. My original point is basically just inquiring if there is any flexibility for people who have mental health concerns or who aren't learning efficiently within that system. If there's zero flexibility in that regard, maybe the system is flawed, because not everyone is the same.

9:18 PM, Monday April 26th 2021

It's actually the opposite to what you say although I can understand why you might think that. By not allowing corrections it brings your drawing problems to the fore so that you can review and address them. If you are constantly erasing them it hides them. That is my view anyway. If you submit perfected and corrected homework it negates the learning goals and does not allow for rigorous feedback.

The system is not flawed. It is what it is. A tough approach that is maybe not for everyone. In this respect, it may not be the right approach for you at the moment. There are many alternative ways of learning that you may find more suitable.

I can empathise with the anxiety issue as a recovered agoraphobic, but compromising the course is not the solution.

9:36 PM, Monday April 26th 2021

That's a good point about better feedback if you can't erase, but honestly, if you're messing up your lines all the time, the feedback is going to be, "your lines aren't accurate, draw from your shoulder." Well duh, I already knew that I sucked at lines. At worst, it could confuse feedback because an incorrect line could give the impression that someone doesn't understand perspective when in fact, they just slipped with their hand.

My point about the system wasn't that it's hard. I'm not averse to hard work. My point is that, if something is meant to teach people, and 100% inflexibility when dealing thousands of humans, many of whom learn differently, might not always be ideal.

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.
The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

While I have a massive library of non-instructional art books I've collected over the years, there's only a handful that are actually important to me. This is one of them - so much so that I jammed my copy into my overstuffed backpack when flying back from my parents' house just so I could have it at my apartment. My back's been sore for a week.

The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.

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