Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
11:07 AM, Sunday January 24th 2021
i'm enjoying draw a box, and it was a lot of work but i think it worths it
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9:55 PM, Monday January 25th 2021
Hi! I'll go through your submission for lesson 1.
Starting with superimposed lines, you mostly did a good job of lining up your pen before making each line. Some of the curves on page 1 have fraying at both ends, which shows that you didn't line up the pen each time before starting the line. However, I don't see that issue as much on page 2, so as long as you're aware of it, you should be fine.
Ghosted lines look good as well. There's a few that have a bit of a wobble to them, but they're fine overall. Ghosted planes as well are good. I will mention that you seem to have extra marks around the lines on the page occasionally. Not sure what they are, but as you get into later lessons with more complicated drawings, it's probably best to avoid unnecessary marks to keep things neat. It's not a huge problem, just something to keep in mind. If those are accidental marks from ghosting, just make sure to keep the pen just a bit higher off the page!
Table of ellipses is looking good too. It's a bit messy, but you're drawing through each ellipse, and your line confidence is great. Your accuracy will improve with practice, so keep it up! For ellipses in planes, this is again where the small paper marks are confusing me. If they're the result of ghosting, try to ghost without making marks on the paper. Or if you edited the photo by turning up contrast/exposure, it'd be better to leave them unedited so we can see exactly what you put down on the page. Your goal in these exercises isn't perfection, so don't stress out if your lines were off or something- it's more helpful to you if we can get a better assessment of your skill levels so we can help. Besides that, a few ellipses don't touch all sides of the planes, so when returning to the exercise in warmups, just keep that in mind. Funnels is looking pretty good as well.
Plotted perspective and rough perspective are fine, though for rough perspective, try to avoid putting down multiple marks for a single line. You don't have to go over the line, as you want to practice putting down a single confident line whenever possible.
For rotated boxes, your spacing is inconsistent. You want the boxes to be pretty close together so you can use the angle of the lines on one box to figure out what the angle of the lines on the boxes near it are. You can compare the difference in this image: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/9a16c189.jpg
to this image: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/9a2db6a0.jpg
Notice how the gaps are much smaller, which means that it's easier to figure out what the angle of each line is going to be! Additionally, once again, only 1 mark for each line on the box. These exercises are not meant to be art on their own, they are for learning, so embrace bad lines and let them be. Remember to ghost each line, and not go over them once you put them down.
Finally, organic perspective is a tad rushed. There's not many boxes on each exercise, and the size could be pushed a bit more. I encourage you to compare yours to the homework example and notice how much less empty space there is. You'll get more practice on rotating boxes in the 250 box challenge, but first I'd like to recommend some revisions. I hope this helps!
Next Steps:
Rotated Boxes: I'd like to see you redo the rotated boxes exercise and try to keep the boxes closer to each other. Refer to the exercise example to see how the boxes line up with each other, and do your best to copy that. It won't turn out perfect as it's a difficult exercise on purpose, but you should start to get an idea of how you can get the angle of one line based on the surrounding lines. Also, even if the line is thin or doesn't look as good, stick to 1 attempt per line. Ghost the line out as long as you need to feel comfortable before you draw it, but don't be tempted to draw over the line you already made.
Organic Perspective: I would recommend you do another panel of the rotated boxes with a few more boxes in that panel. You don't have to do a whole page, just one panel, and try to avoid large gaps of empty space. That could mean making the closer boxes bigger, or making the curve you're following reach both sides of the paper, that's up to you.
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Staedtler Pigment Liners
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).