Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
7:56 PM, Thursday May 13th 2021
My war on boxes has begun!
Hi Stikerdx, Welcome to Draw a Box!
Starting out by your lines, your super imposed lines are looking pretty good, it seems like you are taking your time ghosting them and that you are prioritizing confidence over accuracy, though one thing that happened in some of your group of lines is that they fray on both ends, remember to always consciously position where your marks start after ghosting them and just as you are about to go for a mark, since this is the last part of the marking process where you have actual control over where the line is going! Ghosted lines are also pretty good, some of them are falling short, while this is not a big deal at this stage, dont be afraid of also overshooting your lines, just remember to focus on making confident strokes, also whenever you need to put down dots, do them subtly.
Moving on to your ellipses, it seems like you got a little lost focusing too much on accuracy, dont worry too much about it, this is pretty common at this stage and we are here to learn!
What I mean here is that in a majority of your ellipses you are prioritizing accuracy over confidence, by trying so carefully to fit them wherever they need to, you are opting for a more slow and wobbly line quality that leads to some unconfident ellipses. There is such an emphasis on confident lines because the point of this course is to draw solid and believable looking constructions, and the way to do this is by making solid and confident lines; To get a confident looking box, you need confident looking lines! One thing that happened in your ellipses on planes is that your ellipses are deforming to fit on their planes, this happened a little on your table of ellipses and your funnels, though in those last two, it seems like youve picked on your mistake and started doing some really smooth ellipses! Talking about your funnels, remember that a part of this exercise was to try to make the degrees of your ellipses wider as they got away from the middle, just remember to read everything carefully on the future! Also, whenever your are doing an ellipses, just go through it twice, more than this and it will just look messy.
On to your boxes, you started off pretty good with your rough perspective, though your lines were a little wobbly, it seems like youve picked up on this and improved it on your rotated boxes- Talking of which, they are pretty solid! It is a hard exercise and you did great, you could´ve added those extra corner boxes, though to help you out with getting a little confused with too many lines, remember that you can always subtly add line weight and hatching lines to clarify everything up (once you are finished of course). You organic perspective looks pretty good, I´m seeing that you are going back and repeating some of your lines in order to correct them, try to fight this urge since not only it will make everything look more messy, you also need to start feeling more comfortable with your mistakes. Another thing, Im seeing that some of your lines are curving a little, this may be a sign that you are using more of your elbow rather than your shoulder to make your lines, so keep an eye on it. Also, whenever you are taking pictures of your work, do one picture for page so its easier for the one critiquing!
You did pretty solid on this lesson, so Im gonna go ahead and mark it as completed! Keep up the good work.
Next Steps:
As you said, your war on boxes has begun, have fun with it!
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
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