Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:53 AM, Friday September 18th 2020

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I know I warped the rotated boxes. I tried three more times. They're still warped. I've since done the 250 box challenge so I might be better at it now, but I wasn't when I completed Lesson 1.

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3:43 AM, Friday September 18th 2020

Hi and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Your superimposed lines are looking pretty good. You are keeping a defined starting point on these and while you are getting a fair amount of wavering on longer lines and curves that is perfectly acceptable. Your ghosted lines are having some slight issues with arcing on the longer lines that you might want to be aware of but look fine otherwise. The ghosted planes are looking pretty much the same a little bit of arcing here and there but nothing to be too concerned about. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/arc

Your tables of ellipses are coming along well. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and you are mostly shooting for smooth ellipse shapes most of the time over accuracy although I am seeing some deformed ellipses here and there and it's present in some of your ellipses in planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This typically happens when you start thinking about accuracy mid stroke. This is why we use the ghosting method to build the muscle memory of the stroke beforehand so we can make our mark without thinking. This tends to be highly inaccurate at first but get's better and better with practice. Your ellipses in funnels are having some slight issues with ellipses tilting off the minor axis that you should probably be aware of. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned Like your arcing lines this isn't a major issue but the minor axis is something you should always be considering when drawing an ellipse. Your ellipses are off to a good start but there is plenty of room for improvement so keep practicing them during your warmups.

Plotted perspective looks fine for the most part although I'm having some issues with your adding line weight that I'll discuss in the next few exercises. This is much bigger problem starting with your rough perspective boxes. Your added lines are adding a lot of feathering to the initial confident linework you put down with the ghosting method and it's make the overall image look much much sloppier. For the exercises for these lessons you will end up with much cleaner overall work if you just skip adding lineweight entirely and stick with the confident linework you put down with your initial stroke and it would be my recommendation moving forward. If you are going to try and add lineweight try doing it the same way you would draw your initial line. Ghost it multiple times and then draw it from the shoulder with confidence. The same goes for any hatching that you are going to add. Other than that you did a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were off but that will get better with practice.

I can see that you were having some trouble with the rotated box exercise and to be fair it's a very hard exercise. You did good with drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. Where this really fell apart for you though is that you aren't actually rotating your boxes but simply moving them back into perspective again. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating Like you said this is a good exercise to try after doing the 250 box challenge to see how much your spatial thinking has improved. Your added lineweight problem is still present here but I've given advice on that. Finally your organic box exercise is having more problems with that feathery added lineweight. Like I said earlier try doing the exercises with just the initial line you put down. Your box constructions have some problems here and there but as you've already done the 250 box challenge I'm sure they have improved a lot since you did these.

Overall this was a decent submission. My only real problem with it is the line weight you added in the last few exercises really obscures the initial confident linework you put down that appeared to be pretty good. Otherwise I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons were trying to convey pretty well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the next lesson.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
11:24 PM, Saturday September 19th 2020

Hey, I appreciate it Rob. I definitely ghosted before making each stroke, but I think what's happening is that I am subconsciously tensing my arm when I go in to make the actual lines and then things start getting off-track. I'm trying to get past that. It's the same when I try to add line weight. I think I got better about just putting a heavier line weight down the first time during the course of the 250 boxes so hopefully I'm a little better at that now.

I'm gonna try the rotating boxes again, it was definitely hard to conceptualize the first time around given that I already have issues with understanding objects in space, but I think I feel more confident in that area now.

I'll concentrate on not picking at the lines after I put them down for the next set of lessons. I have been practicing "The Automatic Drawing Technique" by Tim Gula to try and get past both tensing when I put lines down and trying to go back and fix or weight lines later on, so hopefully that helps in future excercises as well.

Thanks again for the detailed critique.

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