Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

8:46 PM, Wednesday September 1st 2021

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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

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

Here's my submission. Started about three months ago. I've been doing it once a week, working on exercises in sessions that last about 3 hours. Definitely had some focusing issues which slowed me down a bit too, but i tried to make sure it wasn't keeping me from putting in my best effort. With my mark making I do feel like I have gotten a better grasp of how to make straighter lines as the exercises went on, but i also feel that I have issues doing it consistently. Not too sure if I got any improvement with my ellipses. With the boxes I feel that the organic was my weakest, with the other too freehand ones coming out sloppy looking but seeming as if i was a bit on the right track.

Thanks For the help,

                                Billy
0 users agree
5:57 PM, Friday September 3rd 2021

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. My name is Rob and I'm a teaching assistant for Drawabox who will be handling your lesson one critique. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes turned out well. You are using the ghosting method to good effect to get confident linework with a pretty decent deal of accuracy that will get better and better with practice.

Your tables of ellipses are coming along pretty good. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. Some of your ellipses in funnels are having some slight issues with tilting off the minor axis. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always start considering when drawing your ellipses. Your ellipses are off to a great start but there's still room for improvement when it comes to accuracy so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. It's great that you are keeping up with the confident linework on these. You are also doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be perpendicular(straight up and down in this case) to the horizon line. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise was obviously a bit of a struggle. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent for the most part. You're struggling with handling the rotations required for this exercise which is perfectly fine given the difficulty of it. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are looking pretty good. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. Your box constructions were pretty wonky for the most part and could definitely use some improvement so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a really solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along nicely. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
3:59 PM, Wednesday September 8th 2021

Thanks for the help. Ill be sure to review the advice you have given during my warm ups. :)

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 we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike

Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike

This is one of my favourite books. It's a fantasy-comedy romp, and the world that J. Zachary Pike has created honestly takes my breath away. There are laughs at every turn, but the story is not without its heart wrenching moments - some for which I have yet to fully forgive the author.

If you're at all curious about the kinds of nonsense I read, or just need something new to sink your teeth into, this is one I can highly recommend. On top of that, being self-published by an indie author, it's the kind of thing where your individual support can go a long way.

P.S: The audiobook, with narration from Doug Tisdale, is especially good, and elevates the story in ways I can't rightly describe.

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