Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

8:37 AM, Saturday July 31st 2021

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Lesson 1. completely new to drawing so this took me way longer then I expected

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9:34 AM, Saturday July 31st 2021

Hi Moshbree, welcome aboard.

Before I start, I want to say that you're not doing badly for someone who is so new to this, and everything I'm about to say is to help you improve, so even if it mostly reads like a list of flaws, don't get discouraged.

With that said, let's start with your lines. My overall assessment is that they're inconsistent. A lot of them (across all the exercises) are very confident and manage to avoid any major flaws, but others (especially on your Ghosted Planes) show visible curvature and wobbling. Since we know you can draw confident lines, I'd say all you need to do in the future is remember to take your time ghosting lines, remember to draw from your shoulder, and don't be afraid to rotate your page if you need to in order to get an angle that's easier to draw. I also noticed some fraying at both ends of the Superimposed Lines. It's not severe, but again it speaks to a need to take your time. I'm also seeing splodges at the ends of some lines. This is a minor point, but try lifting the pen off the page while it's still in motion rather than stopping and the lifting to avoid this effect.

Your ellipses are looking alright; you're drawing through the right number of times (though two is better than three where you can) and the linework on them is decently confident. Again, I'd say more careful ghosting would help you to keep them fitting snugly on the table and in the places, but still pretty good overall. I would say that more visible change in width to show the angle of the ellipses in your funnels would be good, along with a little more attention to making sure the minor axis cuts your ellipses in half evenly.

Your boxes are mostly okay too, but there are a few little things to point out. First, at least once on your Plotted Perspective you've plotted a line back to the horiszon but not one of the vanishing points, so be careful about this. Your linework suffered on your Rough Perspective exercise, introducing a lot of wobble and scratchiness. Remember to ghost out every line you draw freehand; you should be taking the same care over the edge of a box as you did a single line back in the first part of the lesson. Also, it would be easier for you or others to see how your perspective is if you had cut off your red lines at the horizon line as instructed (this isn't a massive error so I won't ask you to redo this task, but pay close attention to instructions and examples in the future). There's a lot of the same lack of confidence in your Organic Perspective, as well as some redrawn lines. Confidence and the ability to commit to lines is key here, so it's better to draw one line that goes wrong and work through that mistake than to end up with lines that are feathery or doubled up. I can see the same effect on your Rotated Boxes, so again, just take your time over each and every line. Also, some of the outer boxes on your Rotated Boxes also weren't really rotated relative to the boxes next to them (here's an example of what I'm talking about https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/d73eea49.jpg).

While you've got a few things to work on, this is still a good start and you should have no trouble as long as you take care over applying the ghosting method introduced in this lesson.

Next Steps:

Move on to the 250 Box Challenge.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
11:39 PM, Saturday July 31st 2021

Hey Mechacatfish

thanks for taking the time, I appreciate the feedback!

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