Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:48 PM, Friday July 10th 2020

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My submission of the pages from lesson 1.

In the first few exercises, I drew on both sides of the sheet, which led to suboptimal results when scanning. I also doodled a bit on some of the pages as a warm-up. Looking back, I considered redoing these pages, but in the end I felt it wouldn't be true to the spirit of the exercise. So, unfiltered it is.

Thanks in advance for any and all critique!

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9:56 PM, Saturday July 11th 2020

Congratulations on completing lesson 1!

Before we begin I just want to mention that in the future, when you go to scan your homework submissions, it would be better to scan your homework using the "photo" setting instead of the "drawing" setting. The drawing setting tends to up the contrast on an image and can cause you to lose some of the subtlety in your line work.

For your super-imposed lines you were a showing some hesitation at first. But I can see as you finished the exercise you did a much better job of creating straight, confident looking lines. This carries over into your ghosted lines, which have no real noticeable wobble or arcing. You can see how this comes together in your planes homework. The planes you constructed show a good deal of care and patience. You did a good job of creating smooth, straight and confident looking lines.

In your tables of ellipses you did a good job of drawing through most of your ellipses correctly and giving them a fairly confident and even shape. I can see a few areas where you drew through your ellipses too many times, so I recommend in the future that you stick to drawing through them two times only to help with that. Your ellipses in planes homework shows a bit more confidence in your ellipses. They are smoother and fit well inside the planes.

Lastly for this section we have your funnels. For the most part you did fine like before. There are a couple spots where I can't tell what happened. Maybe you drew through those ellipses way too much or maybe it's an out right scribble. Either way, try to avoid that in the future and if you are uncertain about what to do, go back and reread the instructions as they will have your next steps there. If you are still uncertain you can always ask for help here or in the Drawabox Discord server.

With your rough perspective boxes, you do a pretty good job of placing them correctly .Your horizontal lines stay pretty parallel to the horizon and your vertical lines are fairly perpendicular. I do notice that your mark making quality dips here and there are more signs of hesitation in your lines. Keep in mind as you progress through Drawabox and begin to construct more complex forms that it is important to put in the time and focus required to execute each line correctly and to apply the ghosting method to every step of the process, as explained here. You should also frequently refer back to the instructions to ensure you are doing everything correctly and to the best of your current ability.

The rotated boxes exercise is a difficult and challenging assignment. You did a pretty good job for your first attempt. Your boxes are a little better constructed than in your rough perspective homework and you drew through all of your boxes correctly. I can see that you struggled a bit with adding weight to your lines. When you go to add weight to a line it is important that you treat the added weight the same way you would a brand new line. That means taking your time to plan and ghost through your mark so that when you go to execute it the mark blends seamlessly with your previous mark. This will allow you to build and create more subtle and clean looking weight to your lines. Along the vertical axes of your boxes you did a pretty good job of rotating them. You could have pushed it a bit more but it is enough. However, along the horizontal axes you did not actually rotate your boxes, as shown here. Overall, it's still a good first attempt.

Finally with your organic perspective boxes I can see some room for improvement with getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points. That is something you will work on more in the next steps. Just keep in mind what I said about taking your time at each step and you should continue to see improvement!

Next Steps:

Continue to the 250 Box Challenge!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:23 PM, Tuesday July 14th 2020

Hi Scylla!

Thanks for the comprehensive review. It's much appreciated, and I'll take your pointers into account going forward with the box challenge. :)

I found it really hard to get the vanishing points to line up in the organic perspective exercise - with the Y method, I start with drawing the front-facing planes of the box, and when I've worked my way around to the back, inevitably at least one line will be way off. Is this just a matter of practice in estimating VPs?

Thanks again,

A

6:24 PM, Tuesday July 14th 2020

It is mainly a matter of practice. That is why we have you do 250 boxes. You will learn as you go but I do have a video that I made showing you how I approach drawing boxes. You can watch it here.

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