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12:48 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023
edited at 1:05 PM, Oct 11th 2023

Hello Scopov, no problem, I'd much rather you ask for clarification than walk away from the lesson confused.

I totally get where you're coming from. Having done some studies of human skulls, I'd agree that the eye sockets are fairly rectangular (for humans, at least, I can't speak for all the variety of animal skulls). Keep in mind that the construction methods we teach at Drawabox aren't necessarily anatomically correct, but are tools to help students develop their spatial reasoning skills.

The pentagonal eye sockets used in the informal head demo method aren't perhaps going to be something directly observed, but that pentagonal shape is really useful for wedging the base of the muzzle and forehead plane against. This is considerably more awkward with rectangular eye sockets as shown here. This is all part of the exercise Uncomfortable wants students to go through when constructing heads- transforming the round cranial ball into a series of planes. I hope that shows why the pentagonal shape is helpful, even though it may not be anatomically accurate.

As for your other question. I don't know if your attempts at redoing your constructions were objectively worse, but I can tell you from my own experiences that I often find redrawing the same reference frustrating as I feel like I should be able to learn from the first attempt and do better, which doesn't always happen. So I would say that your experiences are normal, though I'd encourage you to ask about it over on Discord to hear a wider variety of other students' experiences, and open up a discussion on why people think it happens.

edited at 1:05 PM, Oct 11th 2023
7:00 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023

Ahh yes, this explanation does actually make sense. Looking at my less successful constructions with rectangular eye sockets, there was an awkward gap because of the shape of the muzzle and trying to fill it messed up a lot. That diagram is great, thanks! :D.

8:24 PM, Wednesday October 11th 2023

No problem at all, happy to hear that it makes sense now.

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Printer Paper

Printer Paper

Where the rest of my recommendations tend to be for specific products, this one is a little more general. It's about printer paper.

As discussed in Lesson 0, printer paper (A4 or 8.5"x11") is what we recommend. It's well suited to the kind of tools we're using, and the nature of the work we're doing (in terms of size). But a lot of students still feel driven to sketchbooks, either by a desire to feel more like an artist, or to be able to compile their work as they go through the course.

Neither is a good enough reason to use something that is going to more expensive, more complex in terms of finding the right kind for the tools we're using, more stress-inducing (in terms of not wanting to "ruin" a sketchbook - we make a lot of mistakes throughout the work in this course), and more likely to keep you from developing the habits we try to instill in our students (like rotating the page to find a comfortable angle of approach).

Whether you grab the ream of printer paper linked here, a different brand, or pick one up from a store near you - do yourself a favour and don't make things even more difficult for you. And if you want to compile your work, you can always keep it in a folder, and even have it bound into a book when you're done.

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