View Full Submission View Parent Comment
8:10 PM, Tuesday November 29th 2022

Hello Colord44, apologies for the delay , i'll give a look to your revisions until Elodin does..


Starting with the angus bull, it's great to see that you've used the sausage method on its legs , wrapping forms on it afterwards, just be careful not to cut off any forms as you've done here on its' back leg, but otherwise your sausages are looking good.

Most of the forms also wrap around pretty well, however there seem to be a few that don't seem to interact with each other quite as much as they should , or end up being cut off, the biggest example of this being the sagging forms on the front , which get cut off by the head.

Don't be afraid to be bold and draw through your forms, it won't look pretty , but as these are just exercises it is a great way to improve your spatial reasoning.

There's also a couple of cases where lines were drawn as if on 2d space like this one on the front leg.

To explain this , we have to make a distinction between actions in 2d and 3d space, i'll try to explain in a similar way as what uncomfortable usually would in official critiques.

Actions in 2d space , where you put down marks down without considering the relationships between the forms they're meant to represent and the forms that are already present in the scene.

Actions in 3d space, where we're relating everything we draw to what is already on the page , drawing it as if there's actually a three dimensional object already there in the scene.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we want, but plenty of those marks can can contradict the illusion of solidity that we're trying to achieve and remind the viewer that they're looking at a series of lines on a piece of paper.

To avoid this ,we can adhere to specific rules in our constructions, rules which respect the solidity of our constructions.

One of said rules is , once you've put something down on the page, don't try to alter its sillhouette.

Its' sillhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but it's connection to it is based on that shape. If you change that, you won't change the form it represents , you will just break the illusion of 3D and get a flat shape. We can see this best in this diagram of what happens when we cut back in the sillhouette of a form, although admittedly most of the lines i'm referring to in your case are extending a form instead, but both cases are marks in 2d space.

This is not much of an issue here, as i can only see it on a couple of places and it's very minor on the bull, but it can be seen a little more prominently in your cow , especially its underside, where you added a few lines instead of building forms on top of each other.

I do think you're doing pretty good, it's just a matter of building things up slowly , take care to draw through everything and make forms interact more with each other.

I'd like you to do one more animal construction , take as much time as you need with it.

Good luck , i'm sure you can do this, as most mistakes you did aren't happening consistently it's probably just a matter of absorbing the information.

So i just updated the page before sending this and saw elodin's review, it's probably far easier to understand as it's a video, Either way i hope this i helpful to you.

Next Steps:

1 Animal Constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:37 PM, Monday December 5th 2022

Here is the animal construciton rivision: https://imgur.com/a/iOW1lRr

7:27 PM, Tuesday December 13th 2022
edited at 6:41 AM, Dec 18th 2022

Hello colord , while your work is looking good , there's some points you might have misunderstood a little bit, so i'll try to point them out and link the timestamps to elodin's video as well, along with a few demonstrations of my own.

I'll start off by specifying that it's quite common at this point in the course to get revisions, so rest assured that you're doing pretty well,it's enough to go look at official critiques to see that this is by far the lesson that gets the most revisions; the reason is that this is the last of the "organic" part of drawabox , as anything after this focuses mostly on precision and inorganic objects, so it's best to resolve any misunderstandings before moving on.

The points i'm about to outline here don't necessarily critique your ability to draw or your spatial reasoning skills , as those are developing quite well from what i can see on your fox, the problem here is that there's a few things that could likely undermine your efforts in the future as you practice these, so i'll be focusing on those specifically.

1.(1:20 of Elodin's video) You did not draw through some of your forms, what i mean is , your forms should not stop abruptly like they do here.

Be sure to always draw through them as if you had an x-ray vision , i drew that as an example and using a single form , which isn't quite right as the form is far too complicated and has two bumps (in elodin's own words at 2:50).

Instead, be sure to simplify your forms (3:50 in the video , elodin has a demonstration of this), as drawing the entirety of it at once isn't only difficult, but can stop you from drawing confidently when doing this kind of work on your own in the future.

I was thinking about it , and noticed that the specific form that i highlighted could also be connecting to the arm , instead of wrapping around the torso, but i can't tell as i don't know what your intent was.

In that case it would be correct, but you should still make it wrap around the armso that it interacts with it as you'll see on point 4.

2. (5:15 and 7:00 and 9:40 of elodin's video) Your beginning forms are a bit off , that is to say, you made them a little too complicated.

For example , for your construction's ribcage , you've started with a "sausage" which is already sagging down , and then connected it to the pelvis.

What Elodin meant, was to create two simple forms and then make them sag by connecting them as explained here (https://drawabox.com/lesson/5/1/masses and at 7:05 of elodin's video) using a curved line that bends down a little.

Any additional complexity you need can be made using additional forms.

Don't use the sausages to make the ribcage, use it to construct the legs.

Making an example on your own construction, i've highlighted here how i think you've drawn and connected those forms , and here is what i mean by making them sag, keep in mind that i drew the ribcage too small as it's supposed to be roughly half the torso's lenght as seen here.

These next two point are fairly minor , and you may have done these without realizing , but i thought i'd mention them so you can refer to them if needed.

3. (0:40 of Elodin's video) The sausage method : This is specifically about your legs ,although it's not a major problem, your forms are far too complex: they tend to have their ends at different sizes,this one being the most prominent, be careful around this in the future.

As shown here , it's best to make your sausages simple, and add more complexity using additional forms later on.

4. You've taken some actions in 2d space, there was just a small instance of this so i'll be brief.

To put it into simpler terms, you drew some lines that didn't actually turn into a form, like [this one] (https://imgur.com/a/B4QDDwF) on its' front leg; although it's easy to tell that it's meant to be a form, it doesn't interact much with the surrounding ones, which leads to it looking a little flat.

That "interaction" between the forms is what makes a form look 3d to the viewer, also in [this] (https://imgur.com/a/py68Fxq) case the forms seem to stop "just" as they're touching another one; do not be afraid to push them a [little further] (https://imgur.com/a/T5yJYpO) and make them overlap.

Pushing your forms can also be useful in instances like [these] (https://imgur.com/a/GzyqsTO) , where instead of focusing on just changing the sillhouette ,it interacts more with the forms underneath.

Now ,that being said, as painful as that may seem currently , i'd like to assign one other animal construction but i do recommend to wait for elodin's critique on your constructions as he's far more experienced than me on this. see last paragraph.

And as i've said before, i'm positive you can handle this very well, just be careful about the instructions (especially in the video) as this is possibly the hardest drawabox lesson, with maybe lesson 7 as the only one holding a candle to this; even if it has completely different objectives.

Good luck!

A small edit: you probably already know this , but try to take it slow, as i still think it is all just a matter of absorbing all the info, that is no small feat.

Another edit: My apologies for the broken links,it was an issue n my side i've gone ahead and fixed them , i also saw your new revision, which makes said links redundant since you've already addressed that issue , great job!

I'd also like to update the revisions to match elodin's critique, so as to not cause confusion like i did last time (which i can't do at this point, so it's still going to say "1 animal construction").

Next Steps:

1 Animal construction

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 6:41 AM, Dec 18th 2022
2:28 AM, Wednesday December 14th 2022

First thanks for those encouraging words and that fact that many others had to go through the pain of revision after revision like me, especially this lesson. Also I am encouraged that I can do this as you are saying that I have the ability to do this it's just forgetting some things is making it harder and not showing what I truely know and understand.

I will add some of your links don't work. In point 2 for the heres that are highlited, I get safari (Browser I'm using), can't open the pages. But luckily I know where I went wrong as that was covered and reviewed by Elodin and another where I saw what went wrong.

That said although I am waiting for Elodin's critiuqe, I have already done a second revision per his request. I have to say I was a total nervous wreck doing it and it looks ugly in terms of trying to show what i know: https://imgur.com/a/h9nBDgC

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
How to Draw by Scott Robertson

How to Draw by Scott Robertson

When it comes to technical drawing, there's no one better than Scott Robertson. I regularly use this book as a reference when eyeballing my perspective just won't cut it anymore. Need to figure out exactly how to rotate an object in 3D space? How to project a shape in perspective? Look no further.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.