Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes turned out well. You are using the ghosting method to good effect to get confident linework with a pretty decent deal of accuracy that will get better and better with practice.
Your tables of ellipses is coming along okay. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and I'm seeing that you are focusing on smooth consistent ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes although you are still deforming your ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are looking fine. I'm not seeing any real issues here. One thing you could have done with these is start with a narrower degree ellipse in the center and then widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel. Please check the example here. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/step3 Your ellipses showed nice progress as you worked through these pages but there's still room for improvement so keep practicing these during your warmups.
The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspectives turned out pretty good. It's great that you are keeping up with the confident linework on these. You are also doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be straight up and down. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.
The rotated box exercise was clearly a bit of a struggle. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps fairly consistent although that started to fall apart at the corners which began causing your problems. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/guessing You're still having a hard time grasping the spatial thinking required for this exercise which is perfectly fine given the difficulty and the important thing is that you gave it your best shot. This is a great one to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises came out pretty well. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. I am noticing that you are redrawing lines on occasion and this is a habit you should try and get out of. Try and stick with the initial line you put down even if it's a bit off. Adding more lines just makes things messier and harder to read. Your box constructions are pretty solid and you seem well prepared for the 250 box challenge.
Overall this was a really solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along nicely. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!
Next Steps:
The 250 Box Challenge
Hello and thank you for the critique and review. I am glad I am making progress. It has definitely not been easy, haha. I have a few questions and concerns. It would be great to hear your thoughts.
I notice I draw my lines straighter and more accurate in the planes when going diagonally, from vertex to vertex. I have more difficulty drawing the other lines, such as the initial ones constructing the plane. I have consistently noticed this - even to this day when I am doing warmups. What do you think the cause is?
Yes, I need to work more on my ellipses. Do you have any tips regarding how to 'calm down' the mind when drawing? I become quite anxious when ghosting an ellipse, especially thinking about when drawing through the two ellipses must overlap perfectly. However, like you said, a lot of this comes with consistent practice because the ellipses I draw in my current warmps do look better, smoother.
Additionally, I notice some of my best ellipses are done 'blindly'. As in when I commit my line after ghosting, I literally close my eyes and just let my muscles take over. I do this sometimes with lines in planes and boxes as well, especially if the line is long. The lines turn out surprisingly well most of the time. Is this something I should be doing, this 'blind' method? I do not want to get into any bad habits.
And yes, the rotated box exercise was brutal. The horizontal and vertical ones were not too difficult, but I do not think I understood exactly what I was going. This was evident in the corners. I will come back to this later and try again. Honestly, I found this exercise much more difficult than the subsequent organic box one.
And in general, more regarding my anxiety, often my lines look better in my warmups than the homework. I know nobody is going to see or review my warmups, so I am more relaxed. I do feel anxiety and nervousness when working on the homework and that cause my lines to be more inconsistent. This inconsistency then feeds back and causes me to feel even more anxious than before. It is a vicious cycle, haha.
Anyway, thank you for your time! I will move on to the 250 box challenge.
Hi,
Almost everyone has certain angles they draw straighter lines at and this is pretty normal. It's the reason we are constantly rotating our page for the best angle.
The easy and obvious answer here that you might not want to hear is simply "draw more." The more you draw the more comfortable you will become.
There's no real downside to the "blind" method other than the fact that you aren't training your hand eye coordination while you do that.
I hope these answers help.
Rob
Yes, thank you for clarifying some things up.
This is a remarkable little pen. Technically speaking, any brush pen of reasonable quality will do, but I'm especially fond of this one. 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.
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