Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
10:45 AM, Saturday September 5th 2020
thank you for takeing the time to review my homework
Hey, and welcome to drawabox! Before we start, I’d like to request that, if at all possible, you crop your images in the future (or perhaps have the camera be a little closer to your page?). Now, let’s see~
Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. Your ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, as well, though I notice they have a habit of overshooting. Though this isn’t a problem for now, skipping ahead to your organic perspective exercise, I notice that this is an issue there, as well, though this is likely for other reasons (more than that later.) For now, however, I’ll mention that this’ll be pointed out as a mistake in the box challenge, so you should make fixing it your next priority.
Moving on to the table of ellipses exercise, your ellipses look great, in the sense that they’re (really!) confident, and rounded, and they do a good job of fitting in their respective frames, too, but their rotations are a little inconsistent. Sometimes you’ll not quite hit the minimum 2 times, others you’ll go around them more than the maximum 3. Be a little more mindful of this, please. It makes no difference whether it comes out good, or bad, it needs to be rotated around 2-3 times. This applies to the other ellipse exercises, too, but, thankfully, outside of that, they’re looking good. Your ellipses in planes do a good job of maintaining their roundness, despite the added difficulty of having to touch all 4 sides of the plane, and your ellipses in funnels are properly cut into two equal, symmetrical halves by the minor axis- nicely done.
Starting off the box section, the plotted perspective exercise looks good. In the rough perspective exercise, you’ve been careful that the 2 sets of lines that are at infinity are, and that the 1 set that should converge does, and the lines themselves are quite confident, too. I do notice some automatic reinforcing here, however, so I’ll quickly remind you that each line is drawn once, and only once, regardless of how it comes out. Also, to push your convergences even further, spend longer planning them. Ghost a line to its end point, and beyond, to the horizon line, to see where it intersects it. If you’re not satisfied with it, simply re-draw it. Solid attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. It’s a little small (it’s highly recommended to draw big, as, in doing so, you give your brain the space it needs to think through these kinds of problems), and you haven’t been able to make use of their shared vanishing points, but that’s alright. The next time you attempt it, however, draw bigger, and take it one line at a time, making use of its neighboring edges, and asking yourself why certain lines behave the way they do. Immediately, there’s a bit of an issue with your organic perspective exercise. I don’t see any points, and the lines overshoot far more than they need to, indicating to me that you did not use the ghosting method to construct these lines, instead opting to extend them arbitrarily, to meet up with later. This is, of course, incorrect. The ghosting method is to be used on every single mark you draw (for this course), so try to be a little more careful in regards to that. Outside of that, however (and a slight issue with foreshortening, your boxes look good.
Solid work on this submission. Feel free to move on to the 250 box challenge.
Next Steps:
250 Box Challenge
This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.
When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.
Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.