Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:35 AM, Friday November 15th 2024

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Hi. Completed the first Drawabox class and did all the exercises digitally, trying to follow all the course guidelines. I know that the traditional method is welcome here, but digital art is my priority, so I need to develop my hand. Really keen to get feedback on the exercises - particularly interested in whether you think the digital approach affects line quality and control of the instrument?

If anyone has experience with both traditional and digital, it would be cool to hear about the difference in progress! Thanks in advance for any tips and comments!

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4:00 PM, Saturday November 16th 2024

Hello! Congratulations on completing your first Drawabox class. I'll now critique your work.

I'll first tackle your question on doing the exercise digitally. If you want more details on this, read https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/4. Overall, I personally think that next exercises, you should switch to traditional methods. To quote the guide:

Of course it's possible to learn using digital tools, but it's more of an uphill climb. While you may make a point of forcing yourself to take your time, there will always be those moments where you lose focus and slip back into following the nature of the tool.

I work with both traditional and digital. I have found that traditional vastly improves my digital skill, while the opposite does not happen. The way one holds a pen also affects how they hold their stylus. I understand that your concerns are about familiarising yourself with the digital tools, but traditional is more or less the same, yet more suited for learning. It forces you to make thoughtful decision more, and in a natural way, cus you don't need to artificially engineer yourself to actually follow the steps traditionally. The spatial reasoning ability will always transfer to digital, so you can always take advantage of what you learned.

So I suggest for any Drawabox exercise, you should use traditional tools instead of digital. You can obviously use the latter for the 50% rule, but for the exercises specifically, the former is a preferred option. I'll still deliver my critique, just remember to switch to traditional as soon as you can!

Superimposed Lines

You did a good job for this one. You took your time with starting the line so there is no fraying on both side. You also tried to vary the length. The lines do wobber a bit but it is no problem

Ghosted line

There is relatively few wobblings and the lines don't curve. Some of them don't hit the mark, but that's ok. You have comfortably reached level 1 of ghosting line. Remember to practice it more to perfect the technique.

Ghosted planes

This one is a bit tricky because your lines are very light, making it challenging to gauge some of them. Nevertheless, There's no recurring problems and you have improved from the previous exercise, so good job.

Table of ellipses

The opacity of your lines on the first two rows is pretty concerning, but at least you increased it. One big notice is that you should always remember to only draw through your ellipses twice. I see that you occassionally try to circle on ellipse once too many, especially on the first three rows. This became less prevalent on the other layers, however. The gap between the ellipses are also present, but they also became less prominent after you improved on page 2. I can see the conscious effort to improve on your work, so great job.

Ellipses in planes

The work is nicely done. The ellipses are placed well, only drawn through twice, and only some of them don't hit four corners.

Funnel

In my opinion, the funnels feel quite rushed. Some of them are missing lines, and the ellipses you drew don't seem like they are attempting to align with the central axis (bottom right, and the one above it). I believe you should have spent a bit more time on thinking about how to both fit your circle, touch the two borders, while following the center line.

Plotted perspective

You used a ruler, and remembered to plot your lines back to the horizon. The backlines only minorly deviate so nicely done.

Rough perspective

This is an interesting one. You ghosted your lines, and also made the front and back sides rectangular without much struggle. The extension of the lines are also done correctly. Obviously, some of the lines don't converge at the horizon line, which showed that you might have issue with gauging them (I like the little frowing face where you extended your line a little too far). This is rough perspective, afterall, so what's important is what you received from doing this exercise. The final frame suggested you have tried to estimate the place where your lines will reach the horizon point (they are actually close to it, unlike the previous frames' extension), so that was worth the struggle. You probably learned something in the experience, which is what matters the most.

Rotated boxes

So you have followed the steps needed and executed the exercise to the best of your ability. One (or four) problem I noticed is that you are missing theboxes in the very absolute corners, which you are actually encouraged to add. Don't worry about it being difficult to measure and your ruining the page. this is an exercise where you should finish to the absolute, afterall.

Organic perspective

For this one, always remember that the convergence for the boxes is where it points away from the viewer. Many of your boxes converge at the point that goes straight to the viewer, which is not correct. Keep that in mind when you progress to the 250 box challenge, as it'll be a really useful reminder. You should also do less drastic convergence. The dramatic foreshortening technique will be introduced later during the 250 box challenge, so for this exercise, try to keep your convergence milder. This doesn't mean that they should be parallel which each other, however.

Next Steps:

I'd request that you redo the funnel exercise and spend a bit more time on it. You should also add the missing boxes in the four corners from the Rotated Boxes exercise. The other ones are sufficiently done in my opinion. Keep up the good work!

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
3:52 PM, Sunday January 26th 2025

Thank you so much for your detailed critique and feedback! I really appreciate the time and effort you took to go through my work and provide such insightful comments.

I understand your suggestion to switch to traditional tools for these exercises and see the value in it. However, I’m deeply drawn to digital art—it’s something that excites me and keeps me motivated to improve. I’ll make sure to apply the same discipline and focus while working digitally to make the most out of these exercises, even if it’s a bit of an uphill climb

Your feedback has been incredibly helpful, and I’ll do my best to incorporate it into my revisions and future work.

Thank you again for your support and encouragement! I hope you’ll continue to critique my work as I progress—your input has been invaluable!

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