Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
8:57 PM, Saturday March 7th 2020
I always enjoy the harsh and honest words, thanks for your time :)
Hi! I’ll be looking through this~
Starting off, the line section looks really solid. I’ll recommend being a tiny bit less conscious of your end point in the ghosted lines/planes exercises- you’ll occasionally arc to meet it. Also, try not to extend a line that stops short, if you can help it.
Nice job on your ellipses. The 2 rotations don’t always match each other, so I’ll recommend upping your ghosting time, if you can. Rather than seeing the second rotation as a chance to fix your mistakes, see it as a chance to reinforce what’s already there. Also, be careful not to flick your pen off the page at the end of the 2-3 rotations- it causes you to run off-course. Instead, try to lift it off, maintaining the ghosting motion until it is.
Finally, nice job on your boxes, too. In the plotted perspective exercise, some of the backlines are missing (from the entirety of the first frame, for example.) There’s also some empty space on the page, for some reason. Try to make good use of your space, please. The rough perspective exercise looks good, but, outside of what we already talked about (extending a line that stops short), you’ll sometimes redo a line, too. As you might expect, this is also discouraged. If a line is wrong, it’s wrong. Just leave it as-is, and spend more time ghosting the next one. Adding more ink to that general area just makes it scream its presence. The rotated boxes exercise is nicely done. The same goes for the organic perspective exercise, though the foreshortening of the boxes is a little inconsistent. We’ve got just the thing for that, though, coming up...
Congrats- I’m happy to mark this lesson as complete. GL on the challenge!
Next Steps:
250 Box Challenge
Thank you so much for this! What a fantasticly helpful review :) I will keep this all in mind as I move forward. I laughed, maybe somewhat nervously at, "We’ve got just the thing for that, though, coming up..." simply out of the size of that challenge. Anyways, here we go!!!
-Happy drawing :)
This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.
I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.
No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.
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