Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

7:57 PM, Friday May 29th 2020

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Hello,

I'm learning to draw from scratch, so I appreciate any critique. At first I couldn't find a black fine-liner so the first half is in green/red, sorry about that..Also I'm drawing on a flat surface and I find it somewhat comfortable, but if there are serious benefits from drawing on an elevated surface I might reconsider..One day I might buy myself a drawing table, so maybe I should already get used to the angle?

Thank you!

2 users agree
9:54 PM, Friday May 29th 2020

Superimposed Lines - Fraying on the endpoint, natural but correctable with practice. Good accuracy on start points. Longer lines are arcing, make sure to draw from the shoulder and try not to rush. A LOT of line weight variations. Either from speed or pressure, try to stay consistent and slow down.

Ghosted Lines - many endpoints overshot, but good accuracy overall. Very nice and straight.

Ghosted Planes - Wow. Very accurate and straight. Having trouble finding something to criticize. Obv there are some inaccuracies, but overall excellent.

Ellipses in Planes - inconsistent. Some ellipses were done perfectly, touching edges, overlapping well, no wobble, some others really missed on all counts. This may be a ghosting problem, or maybe you’re getting tired and losing focus. Take breaks, and pay attention to doing a good few ghosts before touching the paper.

Tables of Ellipses - some symmetry problems, some mistakes with edge accuracy. More attention to ghosts.

Funnels - very nice. Good symmetry. Your ellipses are improving. Keep working on slow, steady, accurate ghosts.

Plotted Perspective - no problems.

Rough Perspective - some very bad guesses on the vanishing point. It’s okay to use your pen to guesstimate your VP before placing your line. Also, many lines are wobbly. Dont forget the basics when moving to more complex shapes. Rotate the page, draw from shoulder, make confident strokes. Page 2 is better. Time to start increasing line weight on silhouettes.

Rotated Boxes - nice work. Corners need more extreme rotation, but you’ve obviously understood the exercise.

Organic Perspective - some distorted boxes but again you’ve understood the exercise. You’ll notice that when boxes overlap it becomes difficult to differentiate one from another. This is where line weight on silhouette becomes much more important.

Next Steps:

keep practicing ellipses and ghosting.

Move on to 250 box challenge, making sure to add line weight to silhouette. Post a partial sketchbook at 50 boxes to get some feedback.

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.
10:09 PM, Friday May 29th 2020
edited at 10:11 PM, May 29th 2020

Thanks a lot.

I'll keep practicing ellipses and ghosting (circles are the worst for me).

I'll remember to keep an eye on line weight, so far I wasn't paying any attention to it.

edited at 10:11 PM, May 29th 2020
1 users agree
10:03 PM, Friday May 29th 2020

Hey, BlankCanvas. Good job on finishing this lesson.

Regarding your question about drawing on a tilted surface, I feel thre are definitely benefits from it. Not only is better for your back, because it might prevent you from hunching your back, it also gives you a clearer view of your art work. When you work on a desk, for you to see your paper sheet straight, you must curve your back and neck in such a way that your eyes are looking straight down. When this happens you'll end up tiring your back and neck. Most of the times, I feel people don't really put themselves in this position, which, on the one hand, it's good for your body, but on the other hand, you end up not having a straight angle of vision towards your drawing. In simple drawings one might not notice much difference, but in more complex drawings, they might end up distorted. Having said that, many people draw on desks and have good results. Personally I use a clipboard and support it on some books other objects. I don't know if this answers you question, but I hope it does.

Now, about your work...

Your lines are nice and while there's some arching, specially on the longer ones, they are drawn with confidence, resulting in a smooth stroke.

This goes on to your ghosted lines and planes. Well done on this first part.

Your tables of ellipses are also very good. In some occasions you could have packed them more closer together, but they are all very well drawn with virtually no signs of wobbling. Your good work continues through your ellipses in planes, although in some cases they can be very slightly deformed, probably as you tried to force them to fit withing the planes bounds. Your funnels are what's expected of them. You did well in drawing through your ellipse,s but it seems that on some occasions you went a bit too further with this. Remember to draw each ellipses two or three times at most.

Although your rough perspective boxes have good line work, you could definitely have done a better job with the perspective, specially on the boxes that are far away from the vanishing point. When you have your initial front plane, you ghost lines to the VP and then place the dot where you think the line should then you should ghost again, in order to verify that the dot is well placed. If it isn't, place another one where you think it should be. Your exercise is not particularly bad, but with better planning, I believe you could have ended with a much better result.

Your rotating boxes seem to be rotating very very slightly, so you should have definitely pushed the rotation further. You did well in keeping everything packed together with clean line work. Good job in these two aspects.

On the organic perspective exercises, it's good to see that you improved over the last pages. Although in some of the boxes the perspective is not quite correct, you took a big risk on overlapping many boxes. It seems you are going over the same lines in many occasions here. This is something you should avoid. If the goal was to increase the line weight, this should have been done only on the overlapping boxes and in the lines that actually overlap, not on all the boxes.

Overall you did a good job here and are ready for the boxes challenge.

Next Steps:

250 boxes challenge.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete. In order for the student to receive their completion badge, this critique will need 2 agreements from other members of the community.
10:19 PM, Friday May 29th 2020

Thank you.

Regarding my question about the surface, you've certainly answered it. I will try tilting my surface and see how it feels.

Thanks again for the feedback. it's very insightful.

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