Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

11:50 AM, Friday February 5th 2021

Drawabox Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/uszc5eJ.jpg

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

Any Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

2 users agree
7:26 PM, Saturday February 6th 2021

Hi! Welcome to Dab! Let's get started

Superimposed Lines:

These are very good, well done. Virtually no fraying at the start of your superimposed lines, which is good. Lots of your lines are looking confident, though there are a couple of wobbles here and there and you seem to have had a little bit more difficulty on the curved lines. Absolutely not a problem at this stage, you did well. Keep up the good work here.

Ghosted Lines:

These lines aren't bad, there are a couple of straight ones, and none of them are curving which is good. That suggests to me that you're using your shoulder pivot, which I'm very happy to see. Quite a few of the lines have subtle wobbles to them though, so do watch out for that. See how some of the lines have a slight waviness to them? It's a small mistake, but an important one to note. I suspect it's probably just because you haven't build up sufficient muscle memory in your shoulder to get them perfectly straight just yet, which is perfectly normal and expected at this stage. You did very well overall, just keep in mind the importance of keeping your lines straight and confident; bear in mind those small, subtle little waves and bumps so that you can tease them out over your practise sessions.

Ghosted Planes:

These are looking quite good. Same comments as before on your ghosted lines. One small note though is that I see you only have one page without ellipses submitted here. What you should have done is uploaded two pictures of each page without ellipses and then when you draw them in for the ellipses in planes exercise take two more pictures. This will be important to note when you come to Lesson 2, as previous pages are re-used for additional exercises. Please bear this in mind, it's important for people like me critiquing your work.

Tables of Ellipses:

These are looking quite good! Well done! You seem to have understood the requirements of this homework, and you've done quite a good job at completing it. Your ellipses are mostly okay, but there are some small issues with the tightness of the ellipse. This is expected at this stage, but I point it out to you for the sake of your practise. You will want to keep practising these of course, get your confidence, accuracy, and consistency up. Whilst I want you to keep practising ellipses of all shapes and sizes, I will mention that you seem to have more difficulty with circles and especially large ellipses, rather than the smaller slanted ones. When you come to practise this in your warmups, I recommend you focus a little more on those shapes.

Ellipses in Planes:

You made a good attempt here. Ellipses are wobbling a little bit, and some of them have a tendency to overshoot the boundaries of the plane. It's not expected that your work will be perfect at this stage, so don't worry too much, just keep it in mind for your practise sessions. As you practise you'll be able to get your ellipses tighter and neater when you draw through them, and you'll also be able to make them more accurate. Make sure to prioritise the confidence of the ellipses first, that's very important.. Confidence >>> Accuracy. Every time.

Small note: You only have one page of these submitted. Like as I explained in the ghosted plains section, what you should have done is taken two pictures of all your ghosted planes and then taken two pictures of those pages with ellipses filled in. People will be less inclined to give you feedback on your work for things like this.

Funnels:

This exercise is quite a tricky one to be sure, but you gave it a pretty good attempt. You kept the ellipses in each funnel angled the same way, which is good, and they're mostly all being cut in half by the centre line which is good also. Occasionally I notice that it doesn't the ellipse through the centre, shooting above or below. Do your best to keep every ellipse aligned to that central line. Ellipses are looking a bit shaky here, which suggests to me you just need a bit more practise working on them. No issue there, just make sure you give them their due time in your warm-up sessions

Plotted Perspective:

All fine. Nothing to say here.

Rough Perspective:

You did really well on this exercise, well done! This is quite a difficult exercise for many beginners, and you did a pretty good job! Don't worry too much about the perspective here, you'll get plenty of practise when you move on to the 250 box challenge.

Rotated Boxes:

Tricky, Tricky boxes. Lots of students have great difficulty doing this, I was barely able to complete the full picture myself and it took me two tries. Honestly this attempt is really solid, and I'm pretty impressed with how you've done here. No glaring mistakes to think of. Pat yourself on the back for this, you did great!

Organic Perspective:

Another tricky homework exercise in Lesson 1. You gave this a good crack, very well done. You'll get plenty of practise with perspective and boxes in the 250 box challenge, so no big issues here. The one small note I'll make is that the foreshortening on your boxes isn't consistent. As foreshortening dictates whether an object is small or far away/ large or close, having inconsistent foreshortening when you're making objects go back in perspective breaks the illusion. See these notes https://drawabox.com/lesson/G3SI84C/7/foreshortening for more information. If it doesn't quite make sense to you yet, don't worry about it. After you do the 250 box challenge maybe come back, read these notes and compare to your exercise and it should make more sense to you.

Next Steps:

I would like to mark your lesson as complete, but you haven't actually submitted the required number of homework assignments.

  1. Do one more page of ellipses in planes and I'll mark your lesson as complete and you can move on the 250 box challenge.
When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
7:49 PM, Monday February 8th 2021

Hi, thank you so much for your in depth feedback I really appreciate it. It's massively helpful to gain some outside critique and perspective on my work. I am going to continue to work on executing more confident lines (no wobbles), as well as tightening up my ellipses and keeping them consistent to a minor axis. I have completed the additional page of 'ellipses in planes' which I have added to my imgur submission here: https://imgur.com/a/uszc5eJ . I must have read the instructions incorrectly when it came to the number of pages to submit. Thanks so much again for all your help!

8:03 PM, Monday February 8th 2021

Ehm, sorry but I can't actually see your additional page on your imgur album.

I'll mark your lesson as complete as I don't think it's vitally important in this case, and I'm sure you want to get on to those pesky.. pesky boxes.

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.
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 Brom

The Art of Brom

Here we're getting into the subjective - Gerald Brom is one of my favourite artists (and a pretty fantastic novelist!). That said, if I recommended art books just for the beautiful images contained therein, my list of recommendations would be miles long.

The reason this book is close to my heart is because of its introduction, where Brom goes explains in detail just how he went from being an army brat to one of the most highly respected dark fantasy artists in the world today. I believe that one's work is flavoured by their life's experiences, and discovering the roots from which other artists hail can help give one perspective on their own beginnings, and perhaps their eventual destination as well.

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