Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

7:12 PM, Saturday April 27th 2024

Lesson 1 - Google Drive

Lesson 1 - Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14iLCbuW0om2iaAjunYl3htSquIrBjotJ?usp=drive_link

Ellipses in Planes is combined with Ghosted Planes

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11:57 PM, Sunday April 28th 2024

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 looking fine. I'm not seeing any real issues here. Your ellipses are off to a great start but there's still room for improvement so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks good although a few of the vertical legs on your boxes are slanting a bit. It's important to realize in a two point perspective drawing that all of your vertical box legs should be perpendicular(straight up and down) to the horizon line. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty well. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some wobble creeping back into some of your lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/wobblinglines 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. I do have some notes regarding added line weight I'd like to share. If you want to add line weight make sure you don't revert back to using your wrist and are drawing from your shoulder with confidence. Also added line weight should be subtle so try and only go over a line one additional time instead of multiple times. 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 is a good start but it's unfinished. 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. The problem is that you gave up about halfway through on this exercise didn't finish the outer rows and corners. A big part of learning how to draw is getting comfortable working outside of your comfort zone and getting more used to failing and learning from your mistakes. Unfortunately in cases like this we can't analyze your mistakes because you didn't finish the exercise. So as a revision I'd like you to either finish this exercise to the best of your ability or try another and finish the whole thing. I'm not expecting it to be done well or even correctly but the attempt must be made in order to learn. I would recommend reviewing the lesson materials regarding the rotated box exercise before trying again. 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. Your box constructions are fairly solid for the most part and I can see you are developing a sense for how box lines converge to vps. There are still some wonky convergences here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a really solid submission that showed a good 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. Once you get that revision submitted and I take a look you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page of the rotated box exercise - Either finish the outer rows and corners of your current exercise or try a new on but make sure to finish the entire thing

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:46 AM, Tuesday April 30th 2024

Thank you for the review.

I finished the outer rows and corners of the rotated box exercise:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p6PLawOHzMtSYcmJ2NhAHaa7nmnK6Cv0/view?usp=sharing

10:39 PM, Tuesday April 30th 2024

Okay, this looks fine. You are struggling quite a bit with proportions which is perfectly normal. 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.
8:25 PM, Wednesday May 1st 2024

Thank you!!! Have a good day!

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The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"

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