Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:59 AM, Tuesday July 21st 2020

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/fPJPubz.jpg

Post with 34 views.

I finished Lesson 1, and I think while my confidence has gone up drawing straight line. It's hard to do so with small lines (especially focusing on shoulders). I have an issue too where I overshoot the lines more than I should, it contributes to the cluttery and disorganized paper.

I also noticed how I was rushing when I felt anxious or impatient. That mental state needs to be worked on.

For ellipses I sort of failed at the funnel part, I think I need more criticism there. But I think I drew the individual ellipses bigger than I should've, it's difficult to move your shoulders when you are drawing smaller things.

And when drawing boxes, I always made them a bit stretchy and disproportional. Maybe because it's really hard to rotate the paper all the time (to get good strokes) and it cleared my memory of what I am aiming for the box.

Like I would know I want to draw this kind of box, and then after I rotated it I became confused what it should been. And sometimes my lines are much off than what I would like it to be like (off 20 degrees form what I aimed) after I rotated it to the normal rotation.

Any feedbacks would be appreciated, especially if there's anything that I'd missed myself to get better. I think I might probably do 250 Challanges for Boxes and Cylinders after this.

2 users agree
1:10 AM, Wednesday August 5th 2020

Hello Gashif, I've checked your submission!

First of all, good job on completing the lesson and specially all the enthusiasm that you put into it! it really shows.

Now, let's start with your lines: They look good, sometimes they look really confident and sometimes they look woobly and not that confident, and thats okay. It happens to everyone that starts DaB. Though remember this; confidence>accuracy. Drill this into your brain because it's one of the most important thing to take into account while doing this course, if you practice you accuracy will get better over time, but it's more important that you strive to make your lines confidently. It's okay to evershoot or just missing the dot, with practice and time you will get better at it!

I'm gonna agree with you about rushing things. You might started to realize that DaB it's something you should take your time with, you will learn more in this manner, we all feel anxious and impatience some times, but it's important that you take a step back and try to remember why are you doing this and what we want to take from this. And remember, patience it's something you work on, you will get better at this the more you practice it!

Seeing your ellipses I think you are missing a little the point. Yes, it's important that you do them the right size, but what really matters about them is... you guessed it: confidence. Confidence over accuracy, apply the ghosting method and go through your ellipses only two times, though you are doing this last part correctly, I can't help to see woobly and not confidence ellipses. Again, this is normal. It's normal to not draw ellipses perfectly, but remember that with practice and hard work, you will get better!

Your boxes exercise look really good, I especially love what you did on your organic boxes and all the enthusiasm put into the plotted perspective exercise! However, here are some ways you can improve your boxes!!

1- Scratchy lines: this is the result of making one mistakes in a line, and because we are impacient we just try to make it   better whit another attempt without really preparing for it. Guess what happens, we fail again and the cycle repeats until we realize what are we doing. How can you improve this? Take some times to make lines, just relax, no one is rushing you about you doing DaB (i hope xd) and remember what I said, the more time you take for yourself, the more you will learn! And your speed will get faster the more you practice (surprise!)

2- Woobly and not confident lines: I know that doing just a line and applying a line to make a box it's sooo different, I've been there. But, you gotta remember  to strive for confidence over anything else (we have already discussed this topic) Though one tip for the problem about rotating to much your page, do it every time, it's really helpful, and don't stop doing it because you wanna sve time, you are investing that time on making better lines!

What you talked about getting confused with boxes it's super normal, especially if it's your first time meeting perspective. Some of this thing you will practice and get better in the 250 box challenge! And (sorry for being so damn repetitive) they will get better over time!

Overall, just take you time man, you will so how much juice you will be able to take from every exercise, every lesson!

I'm gonna mark this lesson as complete, Keep it up and relax!

Next Steps:

Now, you will go onto the 250 box challenge, this one it's tough, but you will get over it and learn a lot!

Take into account that this challenge it's all about determination and constancy, you will want to finish them the faster way possible, and sometimes you will even want to quit. But that's when this two things come into play, think about the long run, do them regularly while taking your time. I started doing 10 boxes every day (Please do 5 boxes per page, it's just the bst amount) and after some days getting better at it, I did 15 a day. And that's it, I didn't try to make it 20 a day or 30 or 40, just 15, slow and steady, trying to get the most of every box I draw.

You don't have to do them daily if you don't have the time, I used to have a lot of free time when I was doing them, just do them regularly.

Also, remember to warm up before doing boxes and to apply the 50/50 rule and give yourself some time to enjoy drawing what you like, this challenge can be very consuming so it's important for you to not burn out.

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.
5:14 PM, Monday August 10th 2020

Thanks, Weijak for the critiques!

I resonate with all of your points, and you also re-clarify my self-critiques. Looking at it I may not have gone too off-road and going at the right direction aside few newbie mistakes that I needed to work on.

Overall, not much I can say other than my appreciation for your helpful critique.

Right now I'm doing the 250 Box Challange as you say, wish me luck!

7:05 PM, Monday August 10th 2020

Glad to hear that! keep it up.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.

Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.

These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.

We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.

Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.