Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

2:15 PM, Sunday January 26th 2025

Drawabox Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Hello! Thanks for taking the time to review my homework :D

This is just a rant about my context, unrelated to the homework itself:

I did not have any experience with art before drawabox. I picked up the course because I would absolutely love to learn to draw everything that I imagine, but so far it's been a hard journey - I am always afraid to draw anything because it would look bad, and I've had this fear since I was a kid. So I never doodle anything, even though I love spending hours on pinterest looking at other people's art. I was hoping this course would help me build some confidence, but I still haven't really applied the 50/50 rule, because I don't know how to. What should I draw? My dream would be to draw some of the original characters I imagined, but I have no clue how to draw humans, so it's bound to look bad. Should I just start to draw by reference? I'm afraid that if I don't get the fundamentals right, I will just waste time on childish doodles (I tried to get over my fear and draw pikachu from a reference the other day, but after 5 minutes I gave up because I thought even a 5 yo could draw it better).

  • Is the 250 boxes challenge optional? I would maybe do about 50 of them, but I am sure I will get lost and give up on my goal if I spend 3 months drawing boxes (because they look rather boring to me, and I really do not have time to draw more than an hour a day).
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3:41 PM, Sunday January 26th 2025

Welcome to drawabox! There’s good news and bad news. What you’re feeling is completely normal. Art is a visual medium, and we’re all of us attracted to pretty things. Furthermore, as adults, it’s common to think that if we’re not immediately good at something, then it’s not for us. But this is incorrect. Art, like most everything else, is a skill, and the more you do it, the better you get at it. Unfortunately, the time that you’re waiting for – the time when you’ll have done so many exercises that you’ll be able to draw the things you want – will never come. Spending all your time on exercises will make you better at doing exercises, and nothing else. It’s for this reason that we have the 50% rule. A student that never fails is a student that never ventures beyond their comfort zone. And if your comfort zone, currently, is not drawing, then what hope is there for the future? As I said, though, everyone goes through this. My recommendation for you is to do what Uncomfortable did (mentioned in this video, that you might’ve seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgl6Ll3K3gw): don’t let yourself sleep until you’ve filled up your pages. It doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t even have to be thoughtful, or careful, or patient, it just needs to happen. I promise you that if you keep that up for a month, you will have formed a habit, and will not feel the way you do anymore. Ultimately, we don’t get to control what our students do, and I’m sure that there are plenty of them that ignore the 50/50 rule, and don’t even rely on the Promptathons that we host every few months. I won’t go as far as to say that these students won’t make it, but this is a very very very inefficient way to learn how to draw. And if you’re putting in the work anyway, if you’re putting up with the frustrations that come from learning anything new, wouldn’t you rather the rewards come as soon as possible? That’s just how I think of it, anyway. And, for the record, what you draw should be what you want be able to draw when you’ve ‘made it as an artist’. Draw that same thing now. If nothing else, it’ll be a ‘before’ that’ll make you feel proud of your ‘after’. (By the way, further bad news: the box challenge is not optional! An hour a day is significant, though. I’m sure you can get 5-6 boxes done in that time, and be done with the challenge in under 2 (assuming the other 50% is made up for in the weekends!)) Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, and see how you did here.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are nicely done. They’re for the most part smooth and properly lined up at the start, but you’ll sometimes alter their trajectory. Be careful that this remains consistent, even if it’s off! The arcing lines, too, are at times a little insecure, but this is normal given how small they are. As you’re starting out, it’s important to stick to simple, large curves, only increasing the complexity as you get more comfortable. Your ghosted lines are well done, as are your planes. It’s a little hard to tell, but I think you’ve forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes? If this is indeed the case, please don’t forget about them, moving forward. All marks need start/end points. Also, regardless of whether they’re there, try to be a little less conscious of them! Some of your lines have a habit of wobbling, as they approach their ends, and it’s likely because you’re trying extra hard not to stop short of your points, or overshoot them. This is irrelevant, however. What we’re interested in is not accuracy, but rather confident. A confident line that misses its mark is correct. A wobbly one that doesn’t, is not. (Just like a confident for fun drawing, even if it looks worse than what a child might’ve done, is correct!) Keep that in mind, please. This course – and by this I mean either 50% of it – is a means to an end. Don’t think of anything you’re working on right now as precious. It’s just stepping stones.

The table of ellipses exercise shows a good start. Here, too, however, you’re a bit too focused on accuracy. You’re trying so hard to keep your ellipses within their frames (or, matching their first rotations) that they’re becoming insecure. A wobbly mark, however accurate, will never be able to convey an illusion of solidity, though. A confident mark will, and any issues of accuracy we can easily ignore or make up for. Still, this is a good start. See if you can’t try some thinner ellipses next time too, okay? The ellipses in planes show some good improvement. There’s still the odd wobbly ellipse, but many of them are quite confident, and given how ambitious some of your frames are, this is quite the accomplishment. Your funnels are similar. Some of your ellipses here are a little misaligned, so I think you could’ve spent another second or two ghosting them, but you’re in a good place, either way. For your issues of confidence, I’ll recommend a number of things (that I’d like you to attempt in this order!): #1 is to not care about the result. I promise you this: no TA will ever complain about a confident ellipse being completely off. #2 is to draw faster. The faster you draw, the more you’re forced to rely on muscle memory, rather than letting your brain have a say on what becomes of your lines. It’s the easy way out, however, hence it being #2. #3 is to close your eyes when you draw (but not when you ghost!) If all else fails, then remove the variable that is causing you trouble (you) and see how it goes.

The plotted perspective exercise starts the box section off well. Your back lines improve nicely throughout the set, and though a little wobbly, your hatching lines are well done, also. The rough perspective exercise, too, shows some nice improvement throughout the set. Save for the last frame (by which I assume you were a little over the exercise? Or perhaps it was the last day…), your convergences improve considerably with every iteration, and by the second last frame, they’re in a good place. Linework, however, is a little lacking. Try not to let the big picture – what this lines are adding up to – overwhelm you, if you can. Yes, they’re coming together to form something quite complex, but all they are, really, is single lines, like the ones in the ghosted lines exercise. You draw them one at a time, by ghosting them from point A to point B, and then executing. If they could be confident there, they can be confident here, too! The rotated boxes exercise is missing 4 boxes (the diagonal ones), but what’s here is well done. Your boxes are snug, and they rotate nicely up front. This isn’t necessarily the case in the back, but that’s entirely expected this early in the course, so no stress. It’s one of the many things we’ll discuss in the box challenge (and it’s essential to do all 250 boxes to begin to develop and intuitive understanding of how each plane behaves). Still, looking at your organic perspective exercise, you’re not doing too bad when it comes to boxes. All of these are well constructed, and they flow well as a result of their increase in size, and consistent, shallow foreshortening.

Next Steps:

Good work on this submission! I want you to take a second to look at some of the things you’ve done: rotated boxes, organic perspective boxes, and ask yourself if, when you looked at them the first time, they felt ‘achievable’ or not. Not everything you’ve done has come out right, but you only found out that it didn’t, and more importantly, why it didn’t through doing it. It’s easy to say ‘my Pikachu looks bad’, but without knowing what specifically is wrong with it, how will you know what to work on, so that it eventually looks less than bad? I hope you continue to take good steps forward, as you’ve done with this one lesson. The next one is the 250 box challenge, and yet another is some drawing for fun. Good luck!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:12 PM, Sunday January 26th 2025

Thanks a lot for the feedback and the reality check - you're right, if I only do the exercises, I will only learn how to do the exercises. I love the way you said it, and I will try to keep it in mind as I move on. Regarding drawing with confidence, it's true that I might just care too much about everything comes out, and I also realized that my linework is sometimes really wobbly, and pretty inconsistent at that. Sometimes I'm surprised when a quick line turns out almost perfect, other times I focus hard and draw them too slowly. I'm working on that.

A fun fact about this is that I started the course with a friend, and the superimposed lines homework that I sent were actually my 3rd and 4th attempts. I was so pissed off at how the 1st and 2nd attempts turned out, that I threw the pages away. When my friend noticed I was still working on the first exercise, he laughed and said that it doesn't matter how they turn out and insisted that I stop caring so much. Ever since then, thankfully, I managed to convince myself to only do each exercise once, and if it fails it fails. So when I was doing the rough perspective exercise, it was a pleasant surprise that I could actually see such improvement from one panel to the next.

I gotta admit I was feeling a bit lost earlier when I sent the homework, but your reply is super encouraging and considerate. You're a huge help, thank you! ^^

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The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"

It's not magic. We're made to think that when someone just whips off interesting things to draw, that they're gifted in a way that we are not. The problem isn't that we don't have ideas - it's that the ideas we have are so vague, they feel like nothing at all. In this course, we're going to look at how we can explore, pursue, and develop those fuzzy notions into something more concrete.

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