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3:53 PM, Wednesday August 5th 2020
Congratulations on completing lesson 1!
Starting with your super-imposed lines, I can see that you struggled with creating smooth, straight lines. This is usually caused by students hesitating instead of pushing through to create the smooth, consistent lines. Remember, hesitation serves no purpose. Mistakes happen, but a smooth, confident mark is still useful even if it's a little off. I would also recommend that you read this comment by Uncomfortable where he talks more about hesitation. You still have quite a bit of hesitation showing through in your ghosted lines homework. Keep in mind what I said before about hesitation and make sure you are drawing your marks from the shoulder. If you are still unsure of how to do that I recommend that you reread this section of lesson 1. You can also try watching this video by Uncomfortable if you need a little extra help understanding how to do that. You can and should also refer back to the instructions if you are ever uncertain of what you should be doing next. Remember to take your time, as much time as you need, to plan and execute your marks confidently so that you can begin to create smoother and straighter lines. You do show some improvement in the planes homework though. When I look at your planes exercise and compare it to your ghosted lines I do see that your are working to reduce your hesitation overall and your lines to begin to appear straighter and a bit more confident looking.
With your ellipses in planes homework I can see that you put in a lot of effort and tried to place your ellipses so that they would fit neatly inside the alloted spaces, you also did a good job of drawing through your ellipses correctly. I see that here, you still struggled with pushing through and creating smooth, confident ellipses. Try to keep in mind what I said before and make sure that you read the links that I gave you and that you are drawing your ellipses and every mark you make using the ghosting method. I can see that you took your time and by the second page of your ellipses you do show some improvement in making your ellipses smoother and more confident looking overall. I can see a bit more improvement in your ellipses in planes as well. You put in a good effort with trying to keep your ellipses round and evenly shaped. Lastly for this section is your funnels. When I compare your funnels to your first page of ellipses in planes I can see that you continue to consistently improve as you practice more, which is great to see. Your ellipses here have a more even shape to them and your wobbling and hesitation continues to diminish over time. Great job!
In your rough perspective homework you did a good job of placing your boxes correctly on the page. I can see you kept yoru horizontal lines fairly parallel to the horizon and your vertical lines perpendicular. You also got your boxes to converge on or near the plotted vanishing point! I do see that the quality of your mark making dipped a little here. Keep in mind as you progress through Drawabox and begin to construct more complex forms that it is important to put in the time and focus required to execute each line correctly and to apply the ghosting method to every step of the process, as explained here. I also noticed that you have a few lines that look like you tried to correct some mistakes in your work. This is something that you should not do while working through Drawabox. If the line is wrong, you should leave it and move on.
The rotated boxes exercise is a complex and challenging assignment. You did pretty well for your first try! Your boxes are looking better constructed than before and your lines are slowly beginning to look straight and more confident overall. You also got a good amount of rotation in your boxes along the major axes. I can see that you had a bit of trouble keeping your gaps narrow and consistent but overall you did really well!
Finally with your organic perspective boxes I can see some room for improvement with getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points. That is something you will work on more in the next steps.
I would like for your to do one additional page of ellipses in planes before moving onto the 250 Box Challenge. What I will be looking for is an overall improvement in your mark making. That means, smoother, more confident looking lines and ellipses. Make sure that you review all the links I sent you before you begin your revisions and that you take your time at every step of your construction.
Next Steps:
One additional page of ellipses in plane.
2:50 AM, Thursday August 6th 2020
Hi!
Thank you so much for your critique! I have noticed that I tend to have more issues with smaller lines than longer lines - it's harder for me to focus on moving my shoulder for them and I think that contributed to the decrease in quality during the rough perspective. There were definitely times when I was trying to go quickly for sure, and I noticed that I was making mistakes and messy lines as a consequence. I still have trouble with slowing myself down (and I'm still trying to figure out the most comfortable stroke speed for making lines), but it's something I will definitely give more attention!
I was having trouble with the organic perspective in figuring out how vanishing points and such worked, which lead to me trying to experiment with the boxes and mentally figure out what went wrong. I had started doing the 250 Box challenge already (it was a couple of days before I submitted this homework) and after a number of pages I realized that the initial Y determines the three faces shown to the viewer, and thus also where the vanishing points should be, so I think I'll be doing a better job with that. It just took a while and some rereading to sink in.
I did a new planes + ellipses page, here and tried to take my time. I could definitely tell when my focus waned, and starting out there were some... pretty rough lines.
Thank you again!
12:20 AM, Friday August 7th 2020
"Taking your time" does not mean that you execute your lines slowly. It means that you spend as much time as needed on the planning and preparation phases of the ghosting method, before executing with confidence. Executing with confidence makes it impossible for your lines to wobble.
This comic page by Uncomfortable will hopefully help you understand what I mean and if you haven't make sure that you read/reread this comment by Uncomfortable where he talks more in depth about hesitation.
Remember that accuracy is not your main goal here and it is acceptable and expected that you will make mistakes and that some of your marks will not end up where you intended. What matters more is that you are using the ghosting method correctly and executing your marks with confidence.
Next Steps:
One page of ellipses in planes.
7:25 PM, Sunday August 9th 2020
Hiya, I did another few pages of the ellipses in planes until I felt more comfortable. Here is the most recent page:
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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.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.