Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:04 AM, Sunday June 26th 2022

Drawabox Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Hi, I was just wondering if people usually still struggle a lot with drawing from the shoulder and ghosted lines by this point? I can't seem to get it right at all so I'm not sure if I should just continue onto the 250 box challenge and lesson 2 or spend some more time trying to improve solely on these.

Thanks

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10:20 PM, Friday July 1st 2022

Hello Herbicidal and welcome to drawabox! Struggling from drawing from the shoulder at this point is completely normal. So don't worry about ita nd keep practicing. Now let's get into the critique!:

Starting with your lines like you said you were struggling, but I think that by the end of the ghosted planes you were doing a good job drawing your lines mostly confidently, main issue is on planning and on accuracy.

Sometimes I can see a bit of fraying at both ends of the lines, make sure that whenever you draw a line you carefully place the pen at the starting dot so the lines can fray on maximum one end. This is one of the reasons why I think you are rushing a bit, so try to plan your lines more and ghosting them more times. Ghosting a line 5-10 times isn't an exaggeration, ghost as much as you need until you're confident!

Another thing is that you are drawing the starting and ending dots too big. Make sure you draw them the same size as the lines you draw so you can assess the results of the ghosting line exercises properly.

Moving onto your ellipses you're doing a good job drawing them confidently as well! Main thing on the tables of ellipses is that sometimes you miss several ellipses in a row, so just like with lines make sure you spend as much as you need on every ellipse until it's confident, and make sure you aim for the ellipses to touch the top and bottom lines as well as the ellipses on their sides.

Another thing is that your ellipses get a bit deformed at times. This applies as well to the ellipses on ghosted planes, which I think they're a bit more deformed than the others. You might be thinking that the centre of the ellipses is the same as the centre of the planes or that you should modify the elliptical ellipse shape so it touches the contact points, but this is not the case. Ellipses have to be symmetrical and have the same shape regardless of where they are, so the only things you can change is how wide the ellipse is, which position it is in and their size.

Lastly on your funnels sometimes you aren't aligning the ellipses to the minor axis. Make sure you always aim for the ellipses to be cut symmetrically by the middle line even if that means you need to ignore the initial curves. Pay also attention to the angle of the ellipses as well. They have to be cut symmetrically by the line, so they can't be tilted.

Finally in your boxes

-Your lines start to get a bit wobbly consistently unlike previously, your first priority with lines is to make them confident and straight just like in the lines section, so focus on that first and don't worry if you need to sacrifice accuracy to achieve it.

Here's one example, top line is a level 1 line, and bottom line is a level 0 line. This is because a confident line will always be better than a wobbly line in these exercises. In general try to approach them just like an individual ghosted lines exercise. Remember that these boxes don't have to look good, they're just practice for yourself. So if they help you get better it doesn't matter how they look!

-On plotted perspective you did a good job following the instructions of the exercise, nothing to say here!

-Sometimes you're repeating lines that were off but no matter how off a line is, don't repeat it. Keep going as if it was correct as drawing them will make the drawing messier and can encourage bad habits like automatically redrawing your lines after you miss.

-On rough perspective you are already doing some good attempts at guessing the perspective, but you still seem to have trouble at times keeping height lines perpendicular to the horizon line, and width lines parallel to it. I know it's hard, but make sure you always are aiming for it. You can check if the starting and ending dots are correct or not, and if you find that they aren't you can change them. You can put down as many dots as you want as long as it's before drawing the actual line, so give it a shot!

-On rotated boxes you've done a good attempt apart from the line issues I mentioned. Most boxes are rotated and all are kept close together, good job! The main thing is that some of the boxes on the outer ends are missing, so keep an eye on that in future attempts at the exercise.

-Lastly on organic perspective you've done a good attempt as well applying the ghosting method on every line, but you still have the line issues I mentioned about repeating lines and drawing them wobbly.

Remember also that you can add lineweight to the parts of outer lines that overlap with other boxes to clarify which ones are on top and which behind, so give it a try next attempts you have at the exercise!

Overall like I said you've done a good job, but I want to make sure you can approach lines carefully in general, and that you can draw lines confidently without repeating them on boxes. So next I want to ask you to do one more page of rough perspective. Good luck and keep it up!

Next Steps:

1 page of rough perspective

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
4:39 PM, Monday July 4th 2022

https://imgur.com/a/E2jrrwb

Thanks so much for all the feedback! I ended up doing 2 pages of rough perspective because I felt I hadn't improved much at all after just 1. A lot of the lines are still very wobbly but I think thats more to do with ghosting than plotting the points because I spent a long time planning them out. Also I did try my best to make the dots smaller like you said but a lot of the time I had to keep re-plotting them because they were slightly off so they ended up looking quite large again. It seems like there could have been some slight improvements overall since last time to me? I'm not fully sure though.

Thanks again!

6:04 PM, Monday July 4th 2022

Hello! First of all try to always stick to what you are asked to do, if I say to do one more page just do one more page. Doing more won't change much as what we ask is about understanding, not about execution.

Now into the exercises you are drawing a bit more confidently, but in general you're still afraid of drawing lines confidently. Just like I said earlier it doesn't matter if the line misses the ending dot. Your first priority is to make the line straight and confident. Don't worry about accuracy until you can get that done.

Secondly you are repeating some lines again, make sure you don't repeat any line even if they go off. Like I said missing a line is a normal result and there's nothing wrong with it, so do your best not to repeat them.

So you're making good progress, but I want you to try to loosen up until you can get consistent confident lines regardless of accuracy so I'll ask you to do one more page of rough perspective. Try to draw faster as well as that helps with drawing lines more confidently. Good luck and keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

1 page of rough perspective

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:12 PM, Thursday July 7th 2022
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