Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
11:00 PM, Friday November 11th 2022
I don't know why I did what I did on the rotated boxes...
Hello! I'm Keisari42, and I'm here to critique your work today. Before anything, great job on finishing Lesson 1! This journey is a tough one, but simply by taking the first step you've already gone further than many.
Lines
Your lines mostly look fine. They look pretty smooth, and you're doing good in not repeating any lines. However, it looks like you'd benefit from further internalizing the idea that confidence is a higher priority over accuracy by further mentally separating the stages of the ghosting method and perhaps experiment with laying down your marks with greater speed -- the moment your pen touches the paper to draw a line, you are to forget all about hitting any ending points, as that job was exclusively of the ghosting part of the process; you simply go on and do it without any hesitation, its path already having been determined. That point being made, your other biggest technical mishap is that quite a bit of arching is present, and for that I'd suggest further emphasizing the use of your shoulder as the main pivot of your arm, and if even then your lines continue to arch a lot, you may try consciously arching in the other direction.
Ellipses
Your ellipses look pretty good and you're doing a great job in prioritizing confidence over accuracy and keeping them smooth rather than deformed. That being said, you're not-so-infrequently drawing through them way more than 2-3 times which can make them lose a lot of solidity, as well as obscuring your mistakes, so keep in mind that doing so is a crucial part of the process and should not be taken lightly; going for drawing through them 3 times is also rather dangerous as you can easily bypass the range accidentally, so I'd recommend you make drawing through your ellipses 2 times only a main goal in your warmups, even if that makes them look worse for some time. Additionally, you seem to have misunderstood the Funnels exercise a bit -- the shorter line you initially do represents a 0° ellipse, facing away from the viewer, and as such the first ellipses you do should be placed against it, rather than through it.
Boxes
Your boxes look pretty good, and for the most part you seem to have gotten a grasp of all the information that's presented in this section. Your line quality suffered a bit, and for that I'd like to note that every single mark on Drawabox should be made as carefully as you did them on the first sections of this lesson, but that's a common mistake. Rotated Boxes looking weird is very much so an universal issue and as such you did a fine job. One thing I'd suggest is try thinking harder about the spacing and size of your boxes relative to the viewer in the Organic Boxes exercise; their placement in space.
All that having been said, you did a good enough job and you'll have plenty of time to work on all of that with your future warmups, as well as your next step in Drawabox -- the 250 Box Challenge. Good luck!
Next Steps:
The 250 Box Challenge!
This is a remarkable little pen. I'm especially fond of this one for sketching and playing around with, and it's what I used for the notorious "Mr. Monkey Business" video from Lesson 0. It's incredibly difficult to draw with (especially at first) due to how much your stroke varies based on how much pressure you apply, and how you use it - but at the same time despite this frustration, it's also incredibly fun.
Moreover, due to the challenge of its use, it teaches you a lot about the nuances of one's stroke. These are the kinds of skills that one can carry over to standard felt tip pens, as well as to digital media. Really great for doodling and just enjoying yourself.
I would not recommend this for Drawabox - we use brush pens for filling in shadow shapes, and you do not need a pen this fancy for that. If you do purchase it, save it for drawing outside of the course.
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