Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

8:50 AM, Saturday September 3rd 2022

Andounuts Lesson 1: Lines, Elilpses and Boxes - Album on Imgur

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Post with 7 views. Andounuts Lesson 1: Lines, Elilpses and Boxes

After many months of procrastonating, and serveral times I started the whole course again I can finally present an attempt for offical critique! Hopefully it'll be worth it.

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3:14 AM, Monday September 5th 2022

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. 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. I'm noticing that you are getting quite a bit of wobble in your ghosted lines and planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing improvement with your final exercise but I still want to mention this advice here so you can understand what the problem likely is.

This is the important part we need to be focusing on and the real problem I'm seeing:

You're hesitating as you execute the line, rather than drawing with a confident motion. Finally committing to a mark can definitely be quite daunting, but it's integral that you get used to accepting that mistakes do happen. Things go wrong - you can prepare as much as possible (and you should) but the moment your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid a mistake has already passed. Now you must commit yourself, push through with confidence, and execute your line. It's also worth remembering: we can still work with a line that is smooth and even, but there's not much that can be done with a wobbly one.

What's most likely happening is that you are worrying about accuracy too much while making your mark and it's causing you to slow down your stroke to compensate which is giving you quite a bit of wobble in your lines. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced.

Your ellipses are suffering from the exact same issue which really just goes to show that once you fix this problem it will improve every aspect of your drawing and that improvement is very evident with your organic perspective boxes and the line confidence I see there. Your tables of ellipses is coming along okay. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses for the most part and while you seem to be focused on consistent ellipse shape you are getting quite a bit of line wobble trying to be accurate. This is carried over into your ellipses in planes and you are still deforming your ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues and you are also tilting your ellipses off the minor axis at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always consider when drawing your ellipses. I've noticed in a few places you didn't draw through your ellipses. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/drawingthrough So this is just a reminder that you need to draw through EVERY single ellipse you draw for all of these lessons. Even if you think you got it right the first time. There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape and accuracy so make sure you keep practicing these in your warmups as they can take a while to get used to.

The plotted perspective looks great although your added hatching definitely feels a bit rushed. If you want to add hatching to the front plane of a box that's fine but make sure you treat it the same as any other line you would draw for these lessons and ghost it multiple times and then draw from your shoulder with confidence. Your rough perspective exercises turned out decently but it's unfinished. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some wobble creeping back into some of your lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. I am noticing that you are redrawing lines on occasion and this is a habit you should try and get out of. Try and stick with the initial line you put down even if it's a bit off. Adding more lines just makes things messier and harder to read. The big issue here though is that you didn't extend the depth lines on your boxes back to the horizon line to check your work. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/step6 So since you line confidence still needs some work and you didn't finish these correctly as a revision I'd like you to do one more page of this exercise. Focus on confident linework and no redrawing lines. Make sure you extend your depth lines back to the horizon line to check your work. 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. One thing that would have helped you here would have been to just draw this a bit bigger. Drawing bigger 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. You are running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes in some cases but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/notrotating Obvioulsy you are struggling pretty heavily with the rotations for this exercise which is perfectly fine given the difficulty of this exercise. The more you draw and develop your spatial thinking ability the easier these rotations are to handle.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 more comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. You are still getting line wobble here and there so keep in mind what I said about being overly concerned with accuracy. Remember your main goal is a confident line so really commit to your mark. Your box constructions are pretty wonky through. The 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you to develop a better understanding of how box lines converge to vps.

Overall this was a pretty good submission that showed some good growth when it came to line confidence but it definitely still needs work so I'd like you to do that extra page of the rough perspective boxes as a revision. If everything looks good I'll mark this as complete and you can move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page of the rough perspective exercise - Focus on confident linework and no redrawing lines. Make sure you extend your depth lines back to the horizon line to check your work.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
7:39 AM, Monday September 5th 2022
edited at 8:46 AM, Sep 5th 2022

Well firstly, thank you and hello there Rob.

For rough perspective I do not have a different coloured pen and so I was hoping that the teaching assistant would take the burdern of checking my accuracy. But sure, I actually have a blank set of frames ready to go if you want me to do another sheet. (Suppose I started an execerise one night and never finished it heheheheh.)

And yes, the quality of my work admittedly does faulter towards the end because by that point its 11 o'clock at night and I'm just forcing myself to stop procrastinating and get it done.

I could have sworn I wasn't hesitating so much though. And there were a few times that looked like I did mutiple attempts but really I was ghosting and my pen brushed the page a little. (Not saying that was always the case.)

edited at 8:46 AM, Sep 5th 2022
2:13 PM, Tuesday September 6th 2022

Right, here you go! https://imgur.com/a/cWUIv1R

9:42 PM, Tuesday September 6th 2022

Okay so you are still getting a mix of confident lines and wobbly linework through this exercise. You really need to work on gettin consistently confident linework during your warmups and the 250 box challenge. The other thing you are still doing a lot that you need to work on is redrawing lines. Try and stick with the initial line you put down even if it's slightly off. You extensions look fine and hopefully that shows you how off you were with some of your box constructions. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:44 PM, Wednesday September 7th 2022

Would you say that the sticking with your initial drawing poloicy should be applied to 50% work?

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