Check Out NMA    Learn More About our Partnership
Close and Enjoy Drawabox Ad-free
View Full Submission View Parent Comment
3:11 PM, Thursday May 27th 2021

So much better. Your constructions are noticeably more comprehensive in how you've approached building them out, and it results in a far greater overall sense of solidity. This one in particular shows considerable patience and care with every thing, from the biggest overall form, to the smallest of constructed details. As a whole I am very pleased with the shift in your approach, and the results it has helped you produce.

Just a couple things to keep in mind:

  • The bounding box that encloses this construction ended up kind of wonky. Mistakes certainly happen, and you made the right call of just moving forward with it instead of trying to correct it. Still, keep in mind that a ruler gives us far greater capacity to eyeball our convergences (since the ruler is generally longer and lets us see where the line is going to extend towards), so take the time to take advantage of that. I think with this box you may have just been rushing a little, though the rest of the construction demonstrated appropriate patience and care.

  • For this car, filling in the front section around the headlights with solid black ended up flattening it out quite a bit. This is okay with the interior of the car, because purposely flattening out that section actually makes the rest of the construction stand out as being more solid, since they are separate elements layered together. When dealing with actual constructed elements that you don't want to flatten out however, it is important that you stick to the principle that any area of filled black is reserved only for defining cast shadows and nothing else.

So! You're doing much better now, and I am happy and proud to mark this lesson as complete - and with it, the entire course. Congratulations, and best of luck on whatever it is you pursue next.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
4:46 PM, Thursday May 27th 2021

And thank you for being such a great mentor!

However, I don't think my stint in DrawABox is over just yet. I saw you proko video on how to approach forms and I think it really clicked for me how to go about drawing animals (my personal weakness).

I will be repeating that lesson under you stern tutelage. I still need the extra practice. Other than that I appreciate how you've recontextualized how I should approach this little passion of mine and will recommend your course to anyone looking to improve their drawing.

4:47 PM, Thursday May 27th 2021

Well you're certainly welcome to do that! I often find that when students go through the more geometric portion of the course (lessons 6 and 7), it opens their eyes further to how forms can be wedged together and how the relationships between them can be defined in 3D space to achieve even more effective results.

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.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.

Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.

These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.

We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.

Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.

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