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10:07 AM, Tuesday February 16th 2021
Hello, good job completing lesson 1! I know it's been a while since but I hope you've kept practicing or moving on to the 250 boxes.
Some belated critique:
Lines
The superimposed lines look confident, but make sure you line up your starting point so you don't get "fraying at both ends".
Good mix of straights and curves. Your ghosted lines have a bit of a wobble/arch to them. I think this is because you think too much about hitting the mark once you've put pen to paper. (Because I do the exact same thing!) My tip would be this: ghost even more and let every thought of "good/bad" "success/failure" go out the window once you put pen to paper. It's only when you're preparing the stroke you can have any influence on whether it will be a good/bad line. When you execute, just execute. Feel free to re-read the instructions on ghosting, and remember there are three steps to every line: Planning, ghosting, executing. Each step has a job to fill so make sure you're focusing on the one task at hand for each step. Recipe for confident lines: shoulder pivot and preparation.
On a side note, in the ghosted planes it seems like you've made the horizontal and vertical division before the diagonals? Example: upper right here. It's supposed to be the other way around. The diagonals let you find the mid-point to cross with your horizontals/verticals.
Ellipses
Your ellipses suffer a bit more from wobble than your lines, which is perfectly normal! Just make sure you're taking your time ghosting them and drawing through them 2-3 times. Confidence is always more important than accuracy. Last panel och the first table is looking very good, I think thats a size and degree that's easier for many to draw, which means it's just a matter of practice, so keep it up!
Your funnels are looking good, keep practicing making those ellipses with confidence!
Boxes
The rough perspective is a tough one. One way to improve here would be to just extend the "checking lines" to the horizon line and stop there. It makes it a bit easier to see where you're off and by how much. This means never making these lines cross the horizon.
Rotated boxes: good job! The only real problems here are at the most extreme corners, which makes sense.
You're doing a good job with the organic perspective as well, but there's some more evidence to your lines not being confident here. Remember to plot your lines, it helps you plan out the box, line by line and lets you "see" it before drawing it.
All the best.
Next Steps:
Keep practicing ghosting lines. Preferably by doing the ellipses in planes exercise as warm-up, to get som ellipses in there as well. Move on to 250 boxes if you haven't already.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.