Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

2:59 PM, Thursday July 9th 2020

Lesson 1 drawabox - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/zmPQg0l.jpg

Post with 19 views. Lesson 1 drawabox

Hi drawabox community!

I'm nervous about sharing work for the first time. I've never used imgur before, and my camera is pretty terrible so hope this works out!

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to look at these. I'm working on the 250 box challenge now, and finally my ghosting lines are getting better around box 70...

Looking forward to gaining more skill and giving critiques on other homework submissions in the future.

Kyla.

2 users agree
12:27 AM, Wednesday July 15th 2020

Hello! Here is my critique. Let me know if I say anything wrong or unclear!

  • Lines Section

For the Superimposed Lines exercise, you seem to have somewhat confident strokes; however there are instances of wobbliness and fraying on both ends of a line. Wobbliness stems from aiming for accurate lines rather than prioritizing confidence and fluidity. Fraying on both ends suggests that not enough time was taken to place your pen at the starting point of a line before drawing it. I suggest that you stop and slow down right after drawing a line and carefully place your pen on the starting point before moving on. If you find that you are going too fast when drawing multiple times over each line, try relaxing your arm a bit after each line. This may also help with building up confidence for the next line.

Your lines also arc in some places—particularly in the lines closer to the length of the page—but not by much. This can come from not using the shoulder pivot to draw, however it can still occur even when doing so. You can correct arcing lines by consciously arcing in the opposite direction. Eventually you may associate that particular motion with drawing a straight line.

For the Ghosted Lines exercise, your lines are a small bit wobbly, similarly to the superimposed lines. Additionally, your lines tended to overshoot their end points to some degree. While overshooting is not considered a huge issue at this point in the course, the written content in the Ghosted Lines page recommends "lifting your pen off the page the second you hit that end point" if you have trouble with it. Overshooting may also improve with time and practice as you get better with applying fluid, confident strokes. Your accuracy will also improve over time, but confidence should still be heavily prioritized.

  • Ellipses Section

For the Ghosted Planes and Ellipses in Planes, the wobbliness of your lines seemed to have improved a bit. I would recommend practicing more with the ghosting method by getting nicely familiar with the stroke you want to make before drawing each line. You do mention however that your ghosted lines are getting better while doing the 250 Box Challenge, so well done there! For the ellipses inside the planes, you seem to be mostly applying confident lines. Some of them are a bit wobbly though, and you seem to draw through some of them on the first page quite a bit (I may be incorrect here). The written content for the Table of Ellipses exercise suggests only drawing through them two or three times to ensure a confident and consistent ellipse without overdoing it (this is explained in more detail in the written content: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/drawingthrough).

For the Table of Ellipses exercise, you did a great job of keeping the ellipses within the boundaries of the table, and of drawing various types of ellipses! Like in the Ellipses in Planes exercise, however, the ellipses do tend to look a bit wobbly in some places— for which I suggest practicing ghosting a few (if not many) times through an ellipse before putting it down on paper. This is so that your arm gets familiar with the motion and in doing so you gain confidence in the coming strokes.

In the Funnels exercise, your ellipses appear mostly aligned to the minor axis (the line going through the horizontal middle of the funnel) pretty well. Some of them, however, seem to resemble a rectangle with rounded corners rather than an ellipse, so I would suggest working on making them more smooth in the future. Similarly to correcting wobbliness, try ghosting through your ellipses until you have a good feel for drawing them smoothly and confidently.

  • Boxes Section

You did a great job on the boxes for the Plotted Perspective exercise! They are neat and converge correctly towards the vanishing points. Overall, I can't seem to locate any clear mistakes there.

In the Rough Perspective exercise, your lines begin wobbly, but you improve considerably as you went forward, so well done there! Additionally, it's worth mentioning that although it may be difficult to do, the width lines of the boxes should ideally be parallel to the horizon while the length lines perpendicular to the horizon. Remember that for this particular exercise, since it is in 1 point perspective, two of the vanishing points are so far off the page that the corressponding lines or convergences for one vanishing point effectively become parallel to one another. However, you seem to have done a fairly good job of conveying this as well! While the convergences themselves are quite off, mistakes regarding perspective are normal and estimating it will become easier as you continue to tackle the 250 Box Challenge.

For the Rotated Boxes exercise, most of the boxes near the outer edges appear to have larger gaps than the boxes towards the middle. Try keeping the gaps between the boxes fairly consistent as they rotate, so that you can infer their place in 3D space more efficiently using the neighboring boxes (this is also explained briefly in the written content for this exercise: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/guessing). Additionally, when doing this exercise, don't be afraid to extend the boxes out towards the squares drawn on each end of the axes, if you can. The squares are meant to represent a full 180° rotation on each axis to remind you what you're trying to acheive. However, the written content also mentions that it's fine if you place them too far out from the rest of your work (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/step3).

Finally, for the Organic Perspective exercise, I suggest applying slightly less dramatic foreshortening to your boxes. The reason why is explained in good detail here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/G3SI84C/7/foreshortening. Additionally, try amplifying the size of each box a bit more in order to better convey the illusion of depth (particularly with the ones near the front of the viewer). I would also suggest drawing more boxes for each frame in general so that the flow of the line guide is followed more clearly— but that may simply be a personal preference.

Next Steps:

Well done!

I recommend completing one extra page of the Table of Ellipses exercise with the goal of creating smooth, confident, and rounded ellipses in mind. You don't have to do as many frames or ellipses as before; I suggest doing just enough to where you feel comfortable with drawing these types of ellipses.

Any suggestions I make for improving your work (for example, ghosting several times through an ellipse drawing it) can be implemented into any warmups, if you so choose. Aside from that, congratulations on completing Lesson 1, and I wish you luck on the 250 Box Challenge!

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:09 PM, Tuesday July 21st 2020

Thank you for this thorough critique!

I found it extremely clear, and I believe it will be helpful. I myself kept being frustrated by the wobbly lines I was making, so your suggestions on how to gain confidence are much appreciated.

1:25 AM, Wednesday July 22nd 2020

No problem! I'm glad you found it helpful.

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