Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
11:09 AM, Saturday April 3rd 2021
It was pleasantly frustrating haha.
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8:33 PM, Sunday April 4th 2021
Sounds about right! Hello and welcome. I’m Benj, one of the TAs here, and I’ll be looking over your lesson 1 submission. Let’s start.
Your superimposed lines are a little frayed on the left. Confidence is good, but confidence without its preparation is of no use to us, so take a little longer lining up your pen, next time. The ghosted lines/planes look solid, save for some adjustments at the end (you’ll stop short of the point, and limp to the finish, sometimes), and I’m pleased to see that the overshooting issue is fixed by the end. This seems to have come in exchange for confidence, however, though we’ll talk about that in a second.
The table of ellipses exercise looks great. Small nitpick, draw the whole frame on the page, rather than using its edges as a frame. As for the ellipses themselves, they look good, though ghosting them a little more will solve some of your spacing issues, and lifting your pen off the page at the end of their rotations will get rid of those tails at their ends. The ellipses in planes demonstrate a nice level of confidence, but please draw through them a full 2 times. The funnels are not great. They’re a little stiff, and, looking at some of these pointy ellipses, I’d say your wrist got involved from time to time. This is not uncommon when one draws this small, which is exactly why we recommend drawing big.
The plotted perspective exercise looks good, though you should’ve used a ruler for the hatching, and estimated the location of the back lines.
The rough perspective exercise has a number of issues. For one, your frames are too big. Two, your linework is wobbly, though there’s no reason for it to be. Next, the hatching is not ghosted, and too messy, in general. Finally, not much effort seems to have been made to have the lines converge. This, of course, goes for all of our exercises, but this one in particular needs to you take your time on each line, using ghosting to consider its direction, placing points to act as guidelines, checking those points, and altering them as needed, and so on.
The rotated boxes exercise seems to have been repeated a number of times, though we’re fairly clear about things like that in lesson 0. Also, it’s fairly tiny, though, as mentioned, we recommend drawing big, something that has caused your lines to become quite insecure. Looking at the leftmost one, it seems fine, save for some issues with its rotation.
Save for the aforementioned issues in line quality, which is not only insecure, but also quite scratchy, the organic perspective exercise looks good. The increase in size, and shallow foreshortening of your boxes does a good job to convey the intended illusion, as does the correct, if a little overt, lineweight.
EDIT: Before I have you move on to the box challenge, I’d like to see 1 more page of the rough perspective exercise. Feel free to post it as a reply to this comment.
9:27 PM, Thursday April 8th 2021
Hello Benj!
Some comments on your comments:
Recommend drawing big - for some reason, drawing big has always been tricky vs tiny with lots of mini details added. Is this down to confidence?
Rotated boxes exercise repeated - Since I found the exercise actually quite fun in it's own way, I decided to give it another shot cause I saw myself that I'm absolutely missing my given target size. As expected, I absolutely failed at it :)
For the rough perspective exercise. It's posted here -> https://imgur.com/a/JILdCmU
Now I know what you're going to say and I'm already expecting you to tell me to do it again and I wouldn't blame you! What I can see I'm doing wrong myself are the following:
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Overshooting lines
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Lines are inconsistent
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Most lines look wobbly as if I've used the wrist vs the shoulder
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The way the dots are placed look illogical at times (hence some lines going absolutely bonkers as I make the line from dot to dot)
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I can't even make a proper straight line with a ruler (pathetic ain't it?)
As a side note, I'd like to mention that I'm not rotating the page to do my ghosted lines because mentally it makes me feel weak for some silly reason as I want to get used to the difficult things that will eventually await me now vs later on when I'm used to easier ways.
Yes, I know, I'm actually doing drawing from the shoulder (at least I think I am) and doing ghosted lines and getting such horrid results.
Yes, I can't even sometimes place dots right let alone connect from dot to dot that are in close proximity to each other.
And yes, I'm ACTUALLY putting in effort in all of this yet I'm getting results that make it look like no effort has been put in.
As another side note, I did the warm-ups before doing this exercise and they looked OK. When I go onto this exercise, I actually feel pressure, which is reaaaaallly funny. Not like I'm in a competition or anything :)
Know myself it's all down to confidence and ultimately, belief, which unfortunately goes out the window when I start doing this exercise. At least I'm getting the sweet taste of reality of "No, you don't know how to draw nor ever will potentially" doing these Drawbox exercises which is what I signed up for :)
PS - Sorry if this is TMI and the life story you never asked for haha!
4:38 PM, Friday April 9th 2021
Drawing big:
Correct! Students lacking in confidence tend to draw small, as they feel like that gives them more control, but that’s not really the case. More often than note, it just messes up their line quality.
Regarding your further comments, I have 2 things to say.
First, not rotating the page is highly discouraged. If you’re putting enough faith in this course to follow it, then go the extra step and follow it to the letter. Later, once you’ve mastered these concepts, feel free to discard what isn’t of use to you, but picking and choosing right now will only make your life, and the life of those critiquing your work, much harder.
Second, though I don’t mind the life story, I do mind the excessive self-deprecation. I’m going to assume that this isn’t meant to lower my expectations in hopes of a better assessment, nor to call out the mistakes as a way of saying ‘I know that this is wrong, so don’t call it as such’, but rather just your honest thoughts, to which I’ll say: that’s not particularly healthy. Getting used to failure is important – you’ll be seeing quite a bit of it throughout your art career – but all this will result in is burnout. It’s fine to feel as you do, of course – many artists do – but when given the opportunity, it’s much better to reflect on what you’re doing right, while giving some slight thought to what you’re doing wrong, as a way to fix it, as opposed to the latter exclusively. You’ll be that much more eager to try again, as a result.
In regards to the submission, it’s perfectly fine. The exercise feels a little rushed, partly because of the linework, partly because you’re going with a lot of your first guesses, as far as the points are concerned, but the convergences show some thought behind them, which is what I was after.
Next Steps:
I’ll be marking this lesson as complete, so head on over to the box challenge.
9:39 PM, Monday April 12th 2021
Hello,
Apologies as I was thinking of replying sooner but forgot.
I'd like to say thank you for criticizing my work constructively and giving me good advice!
In terms of the TMI response part then yeah you're right.
Looking at the 250 boxes exercise I reckon that this is not something to send to critique but more for my own doing as there'll be 4 boxes per page to begin with?
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