Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
3:23 PM, Tuesday September 27th 2022
I'd really appreciate if you would like to check my lesson 1 homework! Thank you for your time! :)
Hi Mikael, good job with getting done with lesson 1! This is your first milestone in this learning journey, so give yourself a little pat on the back. I will handle this critique, which will be divided in sections for each exercise.
Superimposed lines
Here I don't have much to say, you did good! Your lines fray only on one end (sometimes even on neither!) and go mostly in the same general direction as they should. You've also experimented a bit with curved lines and that's good, because curved lines will become very important later on.
Ghosted lines
Some of the lines look a little wobbly, most likely coming from initial uncertainty, but you quickly corrected your path and most of the lines look rather confident, all of them ending up close to the second fixed point with little to no deviation and little over/undershooting too. Overall, I'd say you've done quite well here.
Ghosted planes
Not much to say here that I've not already said in the previous section: the lines look for the most part confident and quite precise at same time, except for some occasional wobbling here and there (mostly in smaller planes, which is not unsurprising since using your shoulder as the pivot makes it easier to draw bigger objects but harder to draw smaller ones). All in all, you seem to have applied well what you've learned in the previous exercise to this slightly more complicated case.
Tables of ellipses
The ellipses are mostly good. You correctly draw 2 times through each one and each ellipse fits snugly between the bounds of the table and each other. For the most part they look fairly symmetrical and confident, the more elongated ones more than the more circular ones, probably because they deviate less from straight lines, which so far had been the focus of previous exercises.
Ellipses in planes
Here the confidence of the previous exercise seems to waver a bit. Your ellipses look noticeably more wobbly and less confident and often quite asymmetrical. This is probably because you are trying to prioritize accuracy over confidence in trying to hit all the four sides of each plane. While that is certainly one of the goals here, our first priority in this course should always be confidence over accuracy: a confident line paced in the wrong way will always be better for our purposes than a correct but not confident one.
Funnels
The same critiques about wobbly ellipses of the previous section apply here too. The ellipses look for the most part roughly symmetrical, with their major axis aligning with the minor axis of the funnel. The major axis of a couple of funnels doesn't precisely cut in half the ellipses, but since they are mostly shaped correctly this is probably due to the funnel's axis being placed too close to one of the curves or simply being misaligned, so I wouldn't count this as a mistake.
Plotted perspective
Not much to say here, since this is more of a trial exercise to let the student get familiar with perspective. You have applied correctly the principles of 2 point perspective. As a note, I just would have done a couple of more boxes, but otherwise you didn't do anything really wrong.
Rough perspective
Here you did well. Each box has 2 sets of perpendicular lines and one of lines going towards the VP, meaning that you understood and applied correctly one point perspective. Most of the line going towards the horizon are fairly accurate and land in the proximity of the VP.
Rotated boxes
This exercise usually gives much trouble to beginners of the course, but I think you did quite well here! The boxes are mostly closely packed and rotate rather well in space, forming a nice spherical-ish shape. Some of the boxes in the corners of the ball look a bit funky, but you shouldn't worry about this too much since in this exercise we are doing mostly guesswork to decide how to place each side, and also you will have plenty of time to learn about eyeballing perspective in the 250 boxes challenge.
Organic perspective
Some boxes look quite wonky, but as said above at this stage nailing perspective isn't our main goal here. For the rest, the exercise is done according to instructions, with the boxes getting progressively bigger going along the curve towards the viewer. My only critique here is that boxes could have been a little bit less sparse and superimposed more and that there's marginally more wobbling compared to previous sections.
Final remarks
Here are some conclusive thoughts. I think overall you did very well in this first lesson! You showed for the most part confidence in your mark making and good capacity of applying the concepts described in the lesson. The only part where I feel you should work a bit more is in the ellipses and for this reason I will assign you a bit of additional homework before moving on. Remember to always draw from your shoulder, ghost as long as you feel you should and then place the mark with confidence. Take all the time you need and when you are done, reply to me with your exercises.
Next Steps:
1 page of ellipses in planes
1 page of funnels
Hi! Thanks a ton for reviewing my homework! I really appreciate it! :D
Also I definitely agree, now that I looked back at my ellipses they definitely weren't that great. This time, now that I redid my homework, I tried my best to prioritize confidence over accuracy, and hopefully that shows in my results as well. I'm not sure if it does, though, as I'm a beginner and I can't really see those important nuances yet. :) But I think the exercises turned better than last time, at least! But I would really appreciate if you looked into my new versions of the homework you assigned me, the link's here: https://imgur.com/a/05TKg5P
Thanks in advance! And thank you for your time! I really appreciate your feedback and will take it close to heart and mind when drawing in the future! :D
Hi! I checked your additional homework, and while I'd say there's still a certain degree of uncertainty in you mark making, I definitely see some improvement, more so in the planes than in the funnels, most likely because the planes give you more possibilities to get loose with your ellipse compared to the quite rigid boundary of the funnels, where you have to both draw inside and keep the correct orientation with respect to the funnel's axis. Since you seem to be going in the right direction with your ellipses, I will mark you lesson as complete. The last advice I will give you here is to keep practicing a bit on your ellipses, for instance by giving ellipse related exercises priority in your future warmup routine. Remember to draw from your shoulder, ghost as long as you need and after that place the mark without a second thought.
If you want to get your lesson badge, you could post your submission on the official discord and ask if some users agree with my review (or want to write another review if they feel mine is inadequate). Stay motivated and keep up the good work!
Next Steps:
Getting your lesson badge
250 boxes challenge
Thank you so much!! I'll definitely continue to work on the ellipses! And move on to the 250 box challenge!
Thank you again! :D
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