Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

8:44 AM, Monday June 20th 2022

Draw a Box. Lesson 1. - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/22sn7y5.jpg

Post with 10 views. Draw a Box. Lesson 1.

Getting back into art after about fifteen plus years. This time it's for me, not anyone else. I think that's where I went wrong in 2018. And, the best way to restart anything is to go back to the basics.

Found your site by pure chance, I'm glad I did because it was exactly what I was looking for.

This may, or may not, be an issue. I sit cross legged on the floor all the time, probably not the best way to do these kinds of exercises. I have a kitchen table if needed, not sure my back would like it after a few hours, but it's there. Am looking at getting a small coffee table for crafting, or even making one. One step at a time though.

Hopefully the Imgur link works, I've never used it before. Some of the photos seem a bit blurry to me, happy to retake pics as needed too.

You said not to self-critique, trying hard not to. I'm more than happy to do any exercises over.

Thank you. :)

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11:19 PM, Monday June 20th 2022

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. Your ellipses in funnels are having some issues with tilting off the minor axis. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/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. 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. 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. You are 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 turned out pretty well. 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. You are running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes in some cases(mainly the top and bottom you are getting rotation on the left and right sides) but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/notrotating You are actually doing a weird thing with your outer row of boxes here where you are rotating some of the boxes in the wrong direction so more of the box face is showing towards the viewer. Overall though you aren't expected to get these rotations right given the difficulty of this exercise but this was a good effort overall. 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. That said there is still the occasional wobbly line here and there so keep in mind what I said earlier about focusing too much on accuracy. Your box constructions are decent for the most part but there are some wonky ones here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you in developing a better sense of box lines need to converge to vps.

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! I would definitely avoid working cross legged on the floor. Working at a table is a good option but once of the best things you could do for posture is get a board to draw on that you can angle on the edge of the table and balance on your lap.

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
1:42 AM, Tuesday June 21st 2022

Hi Rob,

First, thank you for critiquing my work so quickly. And sorry I jumped on you guys so fast, I saw you were having a break in a few days, and while I'm focusing on the 50% rule, I'm trying to get into a routine. DaB said not to move on to anything new until your last lesson has been critiqued.

And two, I didn't expect a pass. Thank you. Most importantly, thank you pointing out where I'm going wrong. (That's why I liked the idea of your site so much. If you don't have other more experienced people around you to point out those mistakes, you're never going to really learn. "That's good" means nothing if you can see the mistakes glaring at you but don't know how to fix them.)

The ellipses in funnels was one that I was having issues with, which is why I did an extra page. I can see what I need to do in my head, but I couldn't seem to get it down on the paper. As you said, with practice one will get better. Slowly but surely. Shall use as a warm up exercise in the future, thank you.

Wasn't sure about the rotated box, all the lines ended up confusing me in the end. I was doing them in perspective, then half way through I clicked it was wrong. Decided not to shade it because I wanted the mistakes easy to see.

After finishing that particular exercise, I watched a few other videos on Youtube. I found one particular person that that explained in detail what he was doing as he went, I understand the exercise better now. (In the future, other than just reading the lesson material and watching the videos on the site, I'll look through other people's attempts as well. Someone else might say the same thing in a slightly different way that just makes it "click".)

I'll attempt the "brain box" after a few more lessons. The 250 box challenge should hopefully help. (I haven't been so excited to start something "boring" since I was in school!)

The table I'm thinking of is a low coffee table that sits at waist height while I'm cross legged, with a surface that can be tilted as needed. Finding one the exact size has been difficult, been looking on and off for years. Hmm Maybe even an easel that is "child size" may even do the trick temporarily. I'll give the kitchen table a try for half of the 250 boxes, see if it makes a difference.

OKies, I'll be quiet now, I have a tendency to ramble.

Thank you again for you taking the time to go through my lesson and point out where I'm going wrong. I'll read through your reply a few more times, read up on what you pointed out and try to "relax" a bit more - not over think the lines I'm putting down.

Have a great day, oh and a great holiday! :)

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