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7:34 PM, Friday July 17th 2020

Starting with the first few pages of additional forms on sausage structures, I outlined your main issues here. Basically, the specific positioning of your additional forms matters a lot. That little sharp corner we get right where we get the mass to wrap around the underlying structure has to fall right at the edge of the underlying structure, because that's what gives the impression that the form continues along behind the form. What you're doing right now is very similar to drawing a contour curve that doesn't actually stretch all the way across from one edge of the form to the other. It ends up reading as complex flat shapes that are just stamped on top of one another.

I'm also noticing a continued tendency to draw your ribcages way too small - this is something I pointed out in my last critique. Again, read through this section. It states that the ribcage should occupy about 1/2 the length of the torso. You're not drawing equally sized masses for the ribcage and pelvis - the pelvis is FAR smaller.

Overall, looking through these sausage structures I can't help but get the sense that you're drawing more than thinking. It's normal to be frustrated, but I don't see a lot of patient consideration of what you're doing. Instead, as you push through you make more common mistakes, like the prevalence of drawing ellipses rather than sausage forms in your last two pages of this exercise. You also frequently don't draw through your ellipses, as you're meant to do for each and every ellipse you draw through these lessons.

To that point, your animal constructions seem to follow the same kind of pattern. Most students end up having to put a lot of time into each and every mark they draw, into observing their references not only carefully but constantly, regularly looking back at their reference to identify where the next major form in their structure has to go, ensuring that they're not working from their memory.

Looking at a number of factors - the amount of time between submissions, for example - I genuinely think you just go in with far higher expectations of how quickly you should be able to draw these things. Your Lesson 4 work was marked as complete on June 17th, and your initial Lesson 5 submission was on July 6th - not quite three weeks. While that's not an unreasonable amount of time, it's not unusual for students to take a full month or more to get through this lesson.

Then, we can look at your latest revisions, which were submitted about two and a half days after being assigned. That's more than a third of the original work assigned with the lesson, done in less than a seventh of the time. Combine things like the 50% rule assigned back in Lesson 0, and that is by no means enough time to complete the work as it is intended.

Long story short, yes - you do struggle with this work quite a bit, but I can also see progress. While half the time you forget to draw sausages instead of ellipses, when you do draw proper sausage chains, they've improved greatly over how they were drawn in lesson 4. The issue appears to be that you do not invest as much time as is needed to every single mark you draw, to observing your reference constantly instead of relying on memory, and to follow the instructions as they are written.

You may have certain disadvantages - for example, forgetfulness when it comes to the many issues frequently raised - but none of those are inherently stopping you from learning to draw, it just makes the process more difficult. What is hindering you most is that these difficulties are causing you to become frustrated, and that frustration is no doubt causing you to expect far more of yourself than you should.

I am going to ask you to do this lesson over, as a new submission - but before that, I'd like to see examples of you actually adhering to the 50% rule from Lesson 0 (which is explained here). Show me what you draw outside of Drawabox, show me your attempts at drawing the things that ultimately spur you to learn how to improve.

Next Steps:

Do the full lesson over, and post it as a new submission rather than as a revision. Prior to doing this, show me some of the drawing you do outside of Drawabox, outside of following courses, as set out back in Lesson 0 as something that should receive at least 50% of the time you spend drawing.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:51 AM, Tuesday August 4th 2020
edited at 8:47 AM, Aug 4th 2020

Alright I have a lot of work I've been doing outside the course.

Here are my attempts at some of the work that inspires me along with the sources:

https://imgur.com/a/6WPzHPn

These were done after I read your critique.

It's mostly video game box art, movie posters and, album art work.

Scifi and Fantasy. Most of the artwork I like is usually from the 1970s to the mid 90s.

As much as i want to work in color it's kind of pointless when I don't know how to get my line work in even vaugely correct and my shading is pretty bad.

Other work I've been doing before my last submission include:

80s; Fashion/Hair style:

https://imgur.com/a/Jj7ehRz

I've been doing rather poorly at both poraits and figure in spite of practicing specifically for them. I started Loomis's Fun with a Pencil around october last year because a lot of people have been telling me that book would teach the very basics of drawing. I recently finished it but, I feel as though I didn't really gain anything from doing it:

https://imgur.com/a/7SJ2tkC

Pages 80 through 90.

I was actually focusing on portraits for quiet a while this yet but, I failed to really improve.

https://imgur.com/a/URRrQX2

These were done late 2019 / early 2020.

most of these are from movies and television but, I have lost the original images.

There is so much I want to do but I feel I lack the foundation to actually move on to more complex things.

edited at 8:47 AM, Aug 4th 2020
1:52 PM, Tuesday August 4th 2020

I am thrilled to see this - it's great that you're exploring more than just Drawabox, and that you're indulging in your interests. It is important however for me to mention that there is a distinction between drawing studies (which are learning exercises involving reproducing images or things you see in life precisely as they are), and the "drawing for the sake of drawing" prescribed in Lesson 0's 50% rule. The idea here is that you are given two different groupings of tasks, each occupying 50% of the time you spend drawing. In one bucket goes all the exercises, all the lessons, everything that is designed to improve your skills. In the other bucket goes all the things that, by your own admission, you feel you "lack the foundation to actually move on to".

That feeling is totally normal, and I talk about it in this section about feeling "Ready". And it's the scariest thing to push one's self to draw the things you just don't even know how to approach, because of the fear of starting wrong, of things coming out badly, and of perhaps wasting your time. But I know you a little bit at this point, and I can say that you're not afraid of drawing something badly. You are incredibly tenacious, and I'm certain nothing will stop you.

There is nothing to be lost from attempting to draw the scenes from your own mind, the things that you would draw were you the most skilled artist in the world. And that doesn't mean you can't use reference to help you along - just that what you draw should not strive to be a complete reproduction of a single reference image. Instead, your composition, your setting, your narrative, everything there should be your own, and you can use pieces of reference as tools to help you to draw individual portions of it.

The goal there is not to make you more skilled - that's what the lessons and exercises are for. It's to give you a sense of direction and purpose, to remind you why you're pouring so much time into this endeavor, and what specifically you want to get out of it. Honestly, I think it's fair to say that most students, though they respect the 50% rule as something necessary, they don't really indulge in it themselves. As a result I get lots of students who, as they reach the end of Lesson 7, get struck with a sense of fear and uncertainty, unsure of what to do next. They've spent the entire time learning these technical skills, as applied in specific ways, but have never really learned how to apply them to their own interests, or how to explore those interests without it always having to be an exercise. Having plenty of technical skill is not enough to open the path to producing your own work. You need to start on that path well beforehand, little step by little step.

Anyway, I hope that helps give you some context to how I hope students will approach their development. I genuinely am pleased to see the studies you'd shared, as they show a lot of motivation and eagerness, and they clearly establish areas of interest that you'd like to pursue. Some also show a fair bit of observational skill that I think you tend to leave by the wayside when tackling your Drawabox lessons, likely because in applying construction, you're forgetting about some of the things you already know how to do.

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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.

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