Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
2:24 PM, Saturday February 13th 2021
adhkgsfdj exercise 9 in particular looks awful ngl
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8:59 AM, Thursday February 18th 2021
Hello Koalala1031!
Congratulations on finishing Lesson 1! Hopefully my critique can be of some help to you. I'll focus on lines, ellipses and boxes. If I'm not mentioning any one specific exercise it means I think you did it according to instructions and whatever general comments I've made on lines/ellipses/boxes may apply. Let's get to it!
Lines
Your ghosted lines do need some work, but not to worry since we're gonna keep doing this for the remainder of the course so there will be plenty of time to practice! Just keep in mind, every line has three stages:
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Planning: This is where you decide where the line should go. Place your dots and try to visualize the line where you want it.
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Preparing: Ghosting the motion, preparing physically to make the mark. This is the only chance you have in affecting whether the line will be accurate or not.
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Putting it down: Let it go and just push trough the motion, one more time. If you have ghosted enough, this will not be a problem.
If you separate these three concerns, one step at a time, and remind yourself that confidence > accuracy (missing the mark is'nt that big of a deal), you're gonna make great ghosted lines! In future warm-ups be sure to include some even longer lines, accuracy will suffer but doing those motions will really drive home the point of drawing from your shoulder.
Ellipses
Generally, good job, but needs practice. It's always a bit hard to tell how many times you've drawn through an ellipse but make sure it's no more than three and no less than two. The ellipses in planes seem to have been drawn through a few times too many.
Another problem is the alignment, for example in the funnels. Mid line (or minor axis) is supposed to cut through the ellipses in two equal halves and the major axis (longest crossing-line in the ellipse) should be exactly perpendicular to the minor axis.
I recommend doing a table of ellipses as warm-up (maybe not even a whole page) where you practice keeping the same angle and degree, or change the degree gradually smaller or bigger.
Boxes
You're stating that the Rotating boxes "look awful". That's beside the point friend!
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Did you follow the instructions to the point?
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Can you infer from the image what mistakes you're making?
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Can you from these mistakes infer what you need to do to improve?
Then it is a success!
The way I see it, the only problem is that you don't "dare to foreshorten". Really look at the demo, see how dramatically the angles of the boxes silhouette change? Try to make some really for shortened boxes looking at this gif.
The box-exercises are well executed. I'd recommend in the future to do a more dramatic change in size, big to small for the organic perspective as the boxes travel back into space. Boxes closer to us = bigger, farther away = even smaller than now, just as you're starting to do in the second page of this exercise.
Generally, good job! You made all the exercises and you followed instructions. It seems you know what you're aiming for!
Onwards and upwards
Next Steps:
Conquer the 250 boxes! Will make you keep practicing ghosting lines and do those "dramatic" boxes! You've got this.
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A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.