Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
8:19 AM, Thursday December 10th 2020
I'm doing 250 boxes next because I struggled with the last 2 exercises in the boxes segment.
Hi.
The first thing which is noticeable are underplanned lines. It seems that you are drawing your lines way too fast and without enough ghosting leading to curvy lines. I'll provide a guide on how to fix this at the bottom of this critique. Ghosting is extremely important to build muscle memory.
Now i'll give an exercise wise critique pointing out what is right and what needs to be worked upon. Also make sure you are drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist. While drawing long lines wrist has a limited range and as soon as the length of the line becomes more than the range of your wrist and you shift to drawing with your elbow or shoulder the line will curve.
Lines
1) Superimposed lines: Your lines seem a bit underconfident and hence wobbly. But dont worry there is always room for improvement. I feel that drawing from shoulder combined with ghosting will surely fix your lines
2) Ghosted planes + Ellipses : The same issue persists here as well. The line quality in ghosted planes is much better as compared to previous exercises
Ellipses
Again the issue seems to be not enough ghosting and drawing from the wrist. I know this problem as im currently doing 250 cylinder challenge where you have to draw like 500 ellipses and drawing from the wrist was the first mistake i saw in my method of drawing. When you draw an ellipse using your wrist, the ellipse becomes distortedat turns. This is because its hard to wrote your wrist that quickly.
Funnels
Maybe increase the size of funnels. Draw less of them but bigger. This will improve your range as you draw more varied ellipses.
Boxes
The line issue can be noticed here as well. Try to plan the trajectory of lines before anything else so that you dont have to think about anything else when you get ready to draw the lines.
Final thoughts
The perfect order to make a mark in lesson 1 is as follows:
Step 1) Plan out how you want to draw your line. This is the thinking phase.
Step 2) Place the dots for the starting and the end points for the line to fix the trajectory. Now you dont have to think about the direction of the line.
Step 3) Begin ghosting between the two lines. Take as long as you like till you feel ready.
Step 4) Put the pen to the paper and follow the ghosted motion to draw a line without thinking about anything.
Use this above guide to draw confident, ghosted lines from your shoulder. I always say this in the critiques and i'll say it again. Do not think this critique is harsh, its important to build correct habits from the start as they will be hard to fix in future lessons. Please keep these things in mind while doing the revisions and feel free to ask any questions or doubts here or on discord @VS, i'll be happy to help. Reply to this post with the corrections and i hope you improve upon your mistakes.
Good luck !
Next Steps:
Since there are some concerning issues with your exercises i'd recommend you to do 1 page of superimposed lines , 1 page of ellipses in planes and 1 page of table of ellipses.
Remember to draw from shoulder, keep lines confident and commit to them and take your time to do ghosting until you feel you are ready to commit to the line. Keep in mind all the important stuff stated above and read the lesson 1 related information on this website again if you have to. Reply to this post with your revisions.Looking forward to see you improve.
Good luck!
Sorry it took long for me to finish this, I got a bit busy. I practiced the ghosting method allot and got more consistent lines this time, but I struggled to draw the ellipses while trying to apply the ghosting method. https://imgur.com/gallery/w1KzakK
Hi. Sorry for replying so late. I discussed your submission with others who do critiques and the collective response was that it feels like you are drawing too fast. Though fraying of lines is not a problem, generally speaking but in this case the lines are fraying because you are moving too fast. Try to slow down a little. If you need help you can always ask. Its not the best but you can take a look at my lesson 1. 1 trick to help you with ellipses is as follows:
1) Draw the plane as you normally would.
2) Next imagine 4 points on each side of plane where you feel the ellipse would touch the plane.
3) Start to ghost around those points and try to touch those points while ghosting.
4) When you feel confident put the pen to paper. First thing that will happen is the sudden friction between pen and paper. Now it is easy to overshoot your lines as you put more effort into drawing the ellipse so keep that in check. Apart from theory only practice will help so make sure to do some of these exercises as your warmup.
Good luck!
Next Steps:
I feel 1 more page of ellipses in planes would help you.
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