Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:26 AM, Saturday February 19th 2022

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Any critiques you can give is appreciated! Let me know if you think I should move onto the 250 boxes challenge.

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2:52 PM, Saturday February 19th 2022

Hello, I will be giving you some critique today for lesson 1

Lines

Your line exercises are off to a good start. Most of your lines in the superimposed lines and ghosted lines exercises are drawn confidently with a clear trajectory. I do notice that you have a bit of a wobble and some arching lines in the ghosted planes. This could be due to difficulty with the shorter lines in that exercise. Remember that a confident line is what we are striving for here so it's better to miss your mark and get a cleaner more confident line. My advice would be to play around with the speed of your stroke. If you are worried about going too far over the mark on shorter lines some people find it useful to just lift the pen off the page when they reach the mark or when they're about to reach it.

Ellipses

To your ellipses. You're drawing through them which is great and you have done a fairly good job of placing them in all of the exercises so that they're touching and not overlapping. You've lined them up fairly well with the minor axis in the funnel exercise. Well done. Your main issue here is that the lines are wobbly. Ellipses are difficult and conquering them will come down to mileage. Along with the things I mentioned in the previous paragraph about wobbly lines there's also a few other things I think you can try with ellipses. What helped me was that I ghost the line more times, and I draw faster than I do with straight lines. Maybe also worth experimenting with the direction of your stroke (clockwise or counterclockwise). As always, we're aiming for confidence over accuracy. Try to stay within the bounds of the plane or the table but don't prioritize that over a confident stroke.

Boxes

Your boxes exercises are really well done. Great job. I don't really have much to say about these. Your rotated boxes are well spaced and you've rotated them well. Your organic perspective looks consistent and all part of the same scene. You will gain a much more intuitive understanding of boxes as you make your way through the 250 box challenge, but this is a fantastic start.

Great job on finishing the lesson. Add stuff from this lesson into your regular warm up. Ghosted planes with ellipses is a great warm up exercise as it will give you practice with lines and ellipses. I will mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the 250 Box Challenge.

Next Steps:

250 Box Challenge

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.
9:29 PM, Sunday February 20th 2022

Thank you so much! I will keep you advice about overcoming wobbliness in mind. I definitely found that warming up with ghosted planes helped a lot in keeping steadiness for the later exercises, so I will continue to do that in the future (as you've suggested)!

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Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

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