2 users agree
4:52 AM, Sunday September 6th 2020

Hi there. Ill go ahead and give what critique I can here.

First off is your lines. They wobble a fair bit, and a lot seem to arc just a little. Luckily we only have to work on one of those things at a time, and we should start with the wobble. My biggest piece of advice would be to try to make the mark faster. Ghost your lines quickly, and once you feel like you have the right angle to make the mark, put the pen down and make the line as fast as you can. With any luck youll have gone from your start point to your finish before your brain even has a chance to tell your arm what to do. Making lines this fast should help you lighten up on your pens too, which will make them last longer. Ultimately you want to feel like your not dragging the pen across the page, but quickly and lightly striking it with your pen. As for your slight arcing, first make sure youre drawing from your shoulder. If you still find your lines arc, youll have to make a consious effort to arc your lines in the opposite direction than what youre naturally producing. This will feel weird for a bit but after a bit youll naturally straighten right up. Of course priority goes to making smooth lines; a smooth arc is better than a straight but wobbly line.

Your elipses are pretty good. Theres a few in your tables that overlap and some in the planes go out of the bounds, so you should still try to practice them a bit, but theyre smooth, which is great.

Your rough perspective and rotated boxes all roughly go to the vanishing point without much issue, which is good. Id like to specifically call out that in just the two pages of rough perspective it looks like your accuracy improved a bit. Six scenes is a vey low sample size so there could have been other factors, but I like to call it as I see it. However on your organic perspective where you dont get a set vanishing point it seems you defaulted to trying to make each set of lines parallel. In reality when you have boxes in 3 point perspective every single line converges towards a vanishing point. It may be a slight convergence, but lines are never parallel and when you try to make them so line can even end up diverging towards a vanishing point instead of converging, which can make for some reeeally weird forms. You also seemed to default to trying to make all the boxes cubes, which might end up costing you some valuable experience if you dont watch out for it. Luckily, theres a simple way to help with both of these issues. First off when you go to do your 250 boxes youll find a link to a Y generator somewhere on the info page. Use that. I think its recommended to not use it past your first 100 boxes, but by then you should be more than comfortable making asymetrical Ys. More importantly, as soon as you have your Ys, plan your vanishing points, even put dots on the page if you need to. Experiment with VPs that are close to your box and others that are far away. This will help you see just how sharply or subtly your lines will converge.

The 250 box challenge is all about tackling the concept of form and depth head on, and thats definately your next step. Id also reccomend when you go to draw boxes for the challenge, you start with a 15 min warmup of ghosted lines and ghosted planes. Practicing making quick, confident lines is a great warmup and should help straighten your lines out. Best of luck with your next step!

Next Steps:

250 box challenge

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.
7:36 PM, Monday September 7th 2020

Hey PhallicLobotomy (great name lol),

Thanks for taking the time to write that up, it was very helpful and ill try applying those tips next time. Uncomfortable says not to grind the exercises and move on but Im still a little unsure when I finish a lesson, if I have to redo the exercises that need it after receiving advice from the community, or just apply the things I learn to future exercises? Also I noticed at the bottom of the page it says " This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete. In order for the student to receive their completion badge, this critique will need 2 agreements from other members of the community.".. so to move on, I need another critique? Im trying to do this all correctly and not half ass it.

I will try your advice for the faster mark making, I think Ive gotten the pivot motion of the shoulder mostly down (I hope) but I still have trouble with the placement of my hand and how it should rest/be supported while the pen hovers over the page. I use my pinky knuckle as a sort of anchor rest that softly glides over the page if that makes sense, but unsure if thats even the correct way, or if my whole arm should be hovering with no support.

Yeah, I see that too since you pointed out the rough perspective improvement, a few times I forgot to ghost to the vp so that helped alot with accuracy, I was confused with the Organic perspective exercise and was thinking it only had 2 vp, not a 3rd in the sky lol. It still gave me a mind fuck trying to invision the boxes rotated, so thats helpful to know about the Y generator thing.

Thanks again, will try your tips

12:15 AM, Wednesday September 9th 2020

Im glad you found the critique helpful :)

The little blurb you mentioned at the bottom of the page was me suggesting that youve finished this lesson. When other people come to check on this, they have the option to agree with me by clicking a little button. Once two people agree, youll get the credit for finishing this lesson. Dont get discouraged if this takes a while because it might, and in the meantime Id suggest just moving on. Youve done the excersize so having it "officially" recognized just serves as some validation. As for when you've "finished" a lesson, I believe its done as soon as you submit it. The excersizes are designed to be completed and forgotten about. The only exception is the excersizes here in lesson 1 and also lesson 2, which can be done again as a warm up like I suggested you do with the ghosted planes. You dont have to go crazy trying to "finish" these warmups or anything as you wont be submitting them anway, its just a way to get a little extra practice in where you may need it.

Hope that answered your questions

0 users agree
8:32 PM, Tuesday September 8th 2020

Try drawing your lines FASTER, so that your mind doesn't have enough time to make wabbly lines.

It's not about the ellipses themselves, but the lines you used to divide the table. It seems like your are not comfortable with controling your shoulder joint smoothely because the lines are bold and kinda stiff. Try putting/using less weight, it gonna help make the movement easier.

Ghost more.

Line weight again for organic boxes, increase the weight for the boxes that are in front of another.

Your boxes gonna be better as you do 250 box challenge, so good job for now :).

5:35 AM, Friday September 11th 2020

Hey,

Sorry for late reply, Oh I used a ruler for the ellipse table and with a number 1 fine tip, if thats what youre talking about. Are we supposed to do the tables free hand?. Either way, ill try applying those tips to my lines because I do tend to draw hard. I hope, really determined to finish this course and do it right. I checked out your sketchbook, impressed by your lines. Your rotated boxes are really good.

Thanks for the critique.

12:08 PM, Friday September 11th 2020

Nah, I meant this lines in between table sections:

|https://imgur.com/a/btyoVY1

Good luck for you :)

Thank you! I have been exercising to improve my dexterity as part of my daily routine by ghosting lines and drawing from shoulder coping Andrew Loomis' "Fun with a Pencil." The faces there are comic, so I don't have to worry about the beauty of the result. To make it harder, I used pen as drawabox advices. So even if when I draw with pencil, I don't have the habit of erasing every wrong line. Anyway, there were previous attempts not that my lines are that clean from the first time :3

11:10 PM, Friday September 11th 2020

Oh ha! I gotcha. Ill have to try that as i have that book as well. well keep it up thumbs up

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