Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:04 AM, Wednesday March 3rd 2021

Drawabox Lesson One by @Domidii#5997 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/4iUh1lg.jpg

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Hello! I go by Domidii (based off my discord name). Hopefully this all goes to plan in terms of submitting. In hindsight, I probably could have worked more in the beginning pages (i.e. filling up more space) as well as later with ghosting lines, understanding rotation without distortion, etc. It's late here, so I got to sleep. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated and I'll read critiques later this morning!

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2:46 PM, Wednesday March 3rd 2021

On the 'Rough Perspective' exercise make sure in future to draw lines with confidence and following the horizon line, as sone of the lines are a bit wonky. Also on the 'Rotated boxes' exercise the boxes drawn should turn in perspective around the center box (which they do not here), so make sure they are turning in perspective by paying attentio to the convergences of each box and to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines.

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8:08 PM, Wednesday March 3rd 2021

Thank you for the reply, Candlelight! I admit that I found it quite difficult to actually have the boxes rotate (you could probably tell by all of my stray plotting points). I guess I have a few more questions, if you don't mind answering (anybody else feel free to chime in):

  • Should I work on this separate of my current homework/studies (I am currently working on the '250 Box Challenge') or incorporate into my homework?

  • Did I not add enough space for things to rotate and/or was it more based off of line scaling from rotation?

  • Would it help to imagine the final product as circular with the boxes' outward-most lines?

Thanks again!

11:47 PM, Friday March 5th 2021

You can leave these exercises for now, but if you want to you can add some of them to your warm ups before you start homework.

The boxes is more about scaling and orientation than lack of space. The overall shape of all the rotated boxes should be more circular.

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2:15 AM, Wednesday June 23rd 2021

Superimposed lines: good

Ghosted lines: Good but some slight wobbling. Don't try to correct their course or they will end up wobbly.

Ghosted planes/Planes in ellipses: Lines are not quite confident enough, do them during warm ups. Dots don't have to be that big, you just need to see them.

Ellipses: You don't draw them confident enough at all. Definitely incorporate them into your warm ups. Confident linework is something you have to learn now. Accuracy will come later. There are some improvements on the second page though so that's good. Ghosting can help you with making more confident lines. While ghosting, you are thinking about how you want your line to look like. When you place your pen down, you should already be done with the thinking part. Now it's only about executing the line you visualized with the ghosting method confidently and smoothly. As long as you believe that you can draw accurate lines, it's fine. If they actually are accurate doesn't matter.

Funnels: Your ellipses are mostly aligned with the minor axis and they fit into the funnels well.

Plotted perspective: Good except don't shade multiple sides of a box. Only shade one that is facing the viewer, everything else is unnecessary and will just clutter the paper.

Rough perspective: Wobbly lines (not enough confidence). Also, try to use a colored fineliner for the extended lines, that would provide some more visual clarity. Plus, the width lines should be parallel to the horizon line and the height lines should be perpendicular to the horizon line.

Rotated boxes: You didn't rotate the boxes enough. You have something like a sphere in the middle and you are stacking boxes to it's surface to make something that is also shaped similar to a sphere but out of boxes. The box in the middle, we're looking directly at it, so we can only see its top. The further you go outward, the more of a box's sides we can see but also the top and bottom will look smaller to us because of foreshortening. Try to think of it like the degree on ellipses. You are essentially on the right way, you have a slight turn but you need to push that rotation to the extreme. Give it another shot some time, even though you are at lesson 3 lol.

Organic perspective: Too many small boxes, too much distance between them. The same distance would look smaller on boxes that are further away from the viewer.

I think you basically understood the exercises so good job. I mean, this is kinda useless since you're on lesson 3 but still, might help. Maybe you can revisit these exercises to sharpen your fundamental skills some more.

Next Steps:

lesson 3 lol

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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.

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