Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

6:57 PM, Friday September 11th 2020

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I've actually reached the end of the 250 boxes but wanted to start official feedback so I'm resubmitting lesson 1. Thank you very much!

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8:34 AM, Saturday September 12th 2020

Hey! Let’s take this one exercise at a time~

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re confident, all lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. The ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, too, for the most part, the one exception being their ends- they’ll usually arc a little as they approach the end point. Try to be a little less conscious of it, if you can. It’s perfectly fine to have your line stop short of it, overshoot it, or even miss it entirely, so long as it’s confident. The opposite, is incorrect.

The table of ellipses exercise is… not great. There’s a bit too much focus on accuracy, is the main issue, particularly apparent from the shape of the ellipses- most of them are fairly bumpy/pointy. Be especially mindful of your pivot, too- a pointy ellipse is usually an indication of a lesser pivot. More than that, recall that our goal here is for our ellipses to be confident, and circular, first and foremost. It’d be nice if they didn’t go over the frame, or each other, certainly, but not at the cost of it. This continues onto the ellipses in planes exercise, too, in which it seems like your goal was to touch all 4 sides of the plane, more so than to have the resulting ellipse be smooth, and rounded, but that’s having your priorities backwards. The funnels exercise is looking a little better, as far as the roundness of your ellipses is concerned, but confidence is still an issue there, too, so be careful in regards to that.

The plotted perspective exercise looks solid- nicely done. Though it broke my neck, the rough perspective exercise looks good, too. Not only have you been careful to keep 2 sets of lines at infinity, and have 1 set of lines converge, but your convergences improve by the end of the set, and your line-work is solid throughout. Nice job on the rotated boxes exercise. Though they’re a little too stretched at times, your boxes are big (!), snug, and rotate comfortably. There’s a smaaall issue in regards to line quality here, so I’ll quickly remind you that, regardless of the big picture, really, all you’re doing is drawing a line from point A to point B- no different from how it was in the basic line exercises. If your line-work can be confident there, it can be confident here, too, so try not to get overwhelmed. Finally, the organic perspective exercise looks fantastic. Your boxes flow nicely, as a result of a subtle increase in size (and some extreme scale, too!), and a consistent, shallow rate of foreshortening. The boxes themselves look quite good, too, save for the occasional diverging line, and even that’ll be taken care of soon. Before I let you move on to that, however, I’d like to see:

Next Steps:

1 more page of the table of ellipses exercise, in which you prioritize their smoothness and roundness first and foremost

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:53 AM, Saturday September 12th 2020

Hi Benj, thanks very much for the feedback!

I have done another table of ellipses, trying to take your advice on board if you wouldn't mind having a look :

More confident ellipses https://imgur.com/a/tdRP10k

I was drawing confidently but I'm having trouble getting both circles on top of each other.

I've actually done the 250 boxes as well, will I need to wait 2 weeks to submit these? I'm itching to know where I was going wrong!

Thanks very much!

8:23 PM, Saturday September 12th 2020

This is certainly an improvement, though you could stand to push them further in that direction, still. I’ll expect you to do so during your own time, though (warmups, etc.), so, instead of keeping you here, I’ll pass you onto the box challenge. As for your question, you’ll, unfortunately, have to wait the 2 weeks, yes. Feel free to use this time to draw for fun!

Next Steps:

250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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