Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

5:59 AM, Friday October 2nd 2020

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My line work is definitely not the best. Very shaky at first even when trying to draw 100% from the shoulder. Still a lot of room to go, but it has improved a lot since I began the first assignment. It still starts to get shaky when my arm gets tired. Now I usually do a sheet of superimposed lines and a sheet of ellipses as warm-ups before any drawing session. Short lines are actually the hardest for me now as I have a tough time engaging the arm for very short lines like were used in the small boxes in the organic perspectives exercise.

In the boxes assignments, I sometimes grew into my understanding while doing the assignments. In the rotated boxes exercise I saw after the first rotated box that I was rotating too quickly to meet the side squares (which were also incorrectly sized). But once I had drawn one box, they all had to rotate the same amount... With the organic perspectives exercise, I started to draw each box as a 'Y' and learned that each angle had to be at least 90 degrees after making a couple of early mistakes with this. It wasn't until I had finished 4 panels of the boxes that I understood fully the convergence. I knew each parallel set had to converge to one side but didn't grasp that they had to converge always to the FAR side until then. In retrospect, it's obvious...

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7:07 PM, Friday October 2nd 2020

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Your superimposed lines are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your tapering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes are definitely a bit wobbly which I would normally bring up as a problem but looking at your later exercises, particularly your organic perspective exercises, I see a lot of improvement in this regard. The more you keep using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder you should end up with much straighter and confident lines along with being more accurate.

Your table of ellipses is looking pretty decent. You are doing a great job drawing through all of your ellipses. Your ellipses in planes is having some issues with deformed ellipses. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This is likely happening because you are slowing down your stroke and starting to think about accuracy. While accuracy is the ultimate goal your first priority is to get a smooth ellipse shape. This is why we use the ghosting method. This way you build up the muscle memory of your stroke beforehand so when you actually make your mark you do it almost without thinking. It will be less accurate at first but you should end up with smoother and confident ellipse shapes that will get more accurate the more you practice this. Your ellipses in funnels are looking okay. Still having some slight deforming issues. You can also start with a narrower degree ellipse on these and then widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel like in the example. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/step3 There's still plenty of room for improvement with your ellipses so keep practicing them during your warmups.

Plotted perspective looks great nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective boxes turned out pretty good although your lines are definitely a bit wobbly here. You said your arm is tired and might be causing it but also make sure you aren't reverting back to using your wrist for these shorter lines. I find that a lot of students tend to do that especially for this exercise because it's the first one that requires you to do some spatial thinking. Otherwise, I think you did a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check you work. Some of your perspective estimations were pretty off but that will get better with practice.

Your rotated box exercise was a decent attempt. Your line quality here feels much improved and you did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. This feel apart on you a bit because you ran into a pretty common student problem of not actually rotating your but instead drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating This is a good exercise to come back to after the 250 box challenge to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. I would also recommend drawing a little bit bigger for this exercise. Drawing bigger helps you think through spatial problems much more easily. Finally, your organic perspective exercise turned out very well. Your line quality feels much improved over you previous exercises which is great to see. Your box constructions are pretty decent but I'm seeing some wonky ones in there so you will be getting a lot of practice with this during the 250 box challenge.

This was a pretty good submission overall. Your ellipses could definitely use some work but I'm seeing big improvement with line quality particularly on your organic perspective boxes. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to teach pretty well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
2:30 AM, Wednesday October 7th 2020

Hi, thank you very much for taking time for such a detailed and thorough critique. You nailed it on many issues. Some of these I noticed myself while doing the exercises and others I will work on.

I had a few questions regarding line quality. First of all, I found that I wobbled a lot if I watched the entire line as I tended to subconciously correct. I had the straightest lines when I look at where my lines are ending up and just "trust" that I will take a straight path to get there. Is this a good approach?

Secondly, I have the hardest time for some reason with short lines. It is tough to engage the whole arm on these and they continue to be a problem. Do you have any suggestions for these, or just more practice?

Thank you again for all the help and I am working on the 250 box challenge.

5:53 PM, Wednesday October 7th 2020

Yeah, one of the reasons the ghosting method is so effective is you basically want to rely on muscle memory when you are making your mark instead thinking about your line while drawing it. Eventually you will develop more control so this won't be as much of an issue.

With shorter lines keep trying to use your shoulder or elbow as the pivot point. It will be uncomfortable at first and less accurate but you will get used to it and it will get better. You really want to reserve your wrist for details only.

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