Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
12:05 AM, Monday May 9th 2022
I'm a total newbie to drawing, and I'm really nervous, but looking forward to hearing what I can do to improve!
Hello tibbytau! Overall you've done a great job so you don't have anything to worry about. There are a few important things I want to comment on though, so let's go over everything section by section:
Starting with your lines they start off getting mostly confident but a bit wobbly from time to time. By the end of the ghosted planes though they are mostly fully confident which is what we're looking for! In general I see that you aren't afraid of drawing lines straight and confident regardless of confidence which is great.
I also see that some of the longer ones are a bit wobblier than the others, so make sure you always are drawing mainly with your shoulder and not with your elbow.
Other than that oyu're doing a great job planning and drawing cleanly every line. Only thing I'd mention is that on the superimposed lines you haven't tried curved ones (so make sure you do it on your warmups) but other that you have pretty good variety of sizes.
Moving onto your ellipses they're confident just like your lines on the lines section, which is exactly what you're meant to do!
Your accuracy is pretty good in general as well, there are a few cases in which you don't get the ellipses to touch the sides of the adjacent ellipses or them to touch the top or bottom lines, but in general I think you're aiming for them. Keep practicing and accuracy will improve with time!
Another thing is that your ellipses get a bit deformed at times. This applies as well to the ellipses on ghosted planes, which I think they're a bit more deformed than the others. You might be thinking that the centre of the ellipses is the same as the centre of the planes or that you should modify the elliptical ellipse shape so it touches the contact points, but this is not the case. Ellipses have to be symmetrical and have the same shape regardless of where they are, so the only things you can change is how wide the ellipse is, which position it is in and their size.
Lastly on your funnels sometimes you aren't aligning the ellipses to the minor axis. Make sure you always aim for the ellipses to be cut symmetrically by the middle line even if that means you need to ignore the initial curves. Pay also attention to the angle of the ellipses as well since sometimes, like in this one, it's a bit off,. They have to be cut symmetrically by the line, so they can't be tilted.
Finally in your boxes a few things:
-Your lines in general are still pretty confident, though there are a few cases like these on which your lines get a bit wobbly. Your first priority with lines is to make them confident and straight just like in the lines section, so focus on that first and don't worry if you need to sacrifice accuracy to achieve it.
Here's one example, top line is a level 1 line, and bottom line is a level 0 line. This is because a confident line will always be better than a wobbly line in these exercises. In general try to approach them just like an individual ghosted lines exercise. Remember that these boxes don't have to look good, they're just practice for yourself. So if they help you get better it doesn't matter how they look!
-Sometimes you're repeating lines that were off (on the organic perspective) but no matter how off a line is, don't repeat it. Keep going as if it was correct as drawing them will make the drawing messier and can encourage bad habits like automatically redrawing your lines after you miss.
-On plotted perspective you did a good job following the instructions of the exercise, nothing to say here!
-On rough perspective you are already doing some good attempts at guessing the perspective and you're doing a good job with the line extensions, but you still seem to have trouble at times keeping height lines perpendicular to the horizon line, and width lines parallel to it. I know it's hard, but make sure you always are aiming for it. You can check if the starting and ending dots are correct or not, and if you find that they aren't you can change them. You can put down as many dots as you want as long as it's before drawing the actual line, so give it a shot!
-On rotated boxes you've done a great attempt! Most boxes are rotated and all are kept close together, good job! The only thing is that some of the boxes have a few divergences, but that's nothing important as you'll learn more about that on the box challenge.
-On organic perspective you've done a great attempt apart from the line issues I mentioned!
Remember also that you can add lineweight to the parts of outer lines that overlap with other boxes to clarify which ones are on top and which behind, so give it a try next attempts you have at the exercise!
One important thing is that I think you might not be drawing starting and ending points for all of your lines. If this is the case make sure you do it because it's super important for applying the ghosting method properly.
Lastly you are already doing some good attempts at the perspective of the boxes. Good job! They still have issues but that isn't a problem as you'll work on them on the box challenge.
Overall like I said you've done a great job, but as you were repeating some lines and some of the confidence of your lines got a bit off I want you to do one last page of rough perspective just to make sure you got it. Good luck and keep up the good work!
Next Steps:
1 page of rough perspective
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
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