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Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

10:35 PM, Sunday May 17th 2020

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My first attempt at Drawabox and Lesson 1 (Drawn with a Sakura 05 0.4mm fineliner)

Started on Mar10 - Completed on May 16

Just going to jot down some general takeaways and thoughts on all the exercises so far.

Super Imposed lines: At the start, lines were pretty much all off but as I continued doing them throughout with daily warmups, the lines got a bit more accurate. The first two pages are without ghosting. Looking at the end point helped a lot after.

Ghosted Lines: Same as super imposed lines now with ghosting.

Ghosted Planes: More ghosting practice.

Table of Ellipses: Drawing ellipses are hard, I still have to tighten them up more and draw within borders.

Ellipses in Planes: Same as table of ellipses. A method I have been using is looking at each side edge and ghosting an ellipse to them making it a point to hit each edge of the plane in succession.

Funnels: I found a bit easier when drawing to the minor axis.

Plotted Perspective: I did not find much trouble except when the boxes started to collide within each other.

"Rough" Perspective: Had a lot of trouble with this one especially with the further away boxes.

I found while doing warmups after, the method of ghosting the points of the box while using/drawing an imaginary line towards the vp as reference seemed to work for me...

Rotated Boxes: Took me a long time to complete. The edges were the most difficult, of how the sets of parallel lines rotating affect them and the amount of tapering that occurs...? Might come back to this in the future.

Organic Perspective: I think I could of used a bit more rotation in my boxes, better spacing of them and more variance in sizes. The method I used is drawing out the line in the air in front of me moving away and estimating how the boxes would rotate in the air along the line...

My daily warmup routine is a couple of super imposed lines, three to four ellipses in planes, a couple of funnels and a box of rough perpective.

Feel free to correct any mistakes I have made on both the exercises and notes.

I'll take any advice and criticism... I can take it!

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2 users agree
11:02 PM, Sunday May 17th 2020

A thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn't do warmups of a lesson until you complete a lesson and get it critiqued. The reason you need to get feedback is because, after knowing you understand the concepts, you can practice them on your own on your warmups. As you could be practicing bad habits on your exercises without realizing. So be sure you don't introduce exercises to your warmups unless you've gotten critique on them. Into the critique!

Lines

Lines are pretty good overall, though they get a bit wobbly at times:

In these exercises, you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy.

A wobbly line will always be worse than a confident line, no matter how off the confident line is.

If you take a look over the ghosted lines notes you'll see the levels of lines:

Level 1: Line is smooth and consistent without any visible wobbling, but doesn't quite pass through A or B, due to not following the right trajectory. It's a straight shot, but misses the mark a bit.

Level 2: Line is straight, smooth and consistent without any wobbling and maintains the correct trajectory. It does however either fall short or overshoot one or both points.

Level 3: Line is straight, smooth, consistent without any wobbling. It also starts right at one point and ends exactly at the other.

As you can see, wobbly lines aren't mentioned, which means that they would be worse than level 1.

You got some fraying in both ends on some lines, careful with that, when starting a line, you should carefully place your pen on the start of each line, so only a maximum of 1 end can fray. Plan each stroke you make carefully.

I can also see a bit of arching in some of your lines. This can happen because you might not be using your shoulder as your main pivot, check you're doing it. Another thing that can help to fix this is to try to arch consciously to the the opposite side when drawing the lines.

Ellipses

Ellipses look pretty confident and good overall, good job!

Boxes

In your boxes, I can see a pretty consistent overshooting on your lines. Be sure you are ghosting enough each line, and try to slow your speed as much as you can without making your lines wobbly. A thing that can help is to try to stop suddenly in the end point, or if you are doing it already, to lift it directly when reaching the dot without reducing the speed, try both, it might improve this issue.

You're also repeating and crossing some lines. No matter how off a line is, don't repeat it, keep going as if it was correct.

Next Steps:

First of all, congratulations on finishing lesson 1! Your next step is the box challenge.

As I marked this as complete, you are now qualified to critique lesson 1 submissions.

-Doing critiques is a way of learning and solidifying concepts. I can atest to that after having done hundreds of critiques. There are a lot of concepts that I did not understand, and thanks to critiquing I started understanding them. Which made me learn a lot more through the course.

-Another thing is that as the number of current submissions is super high, if you critique some critiques, those would be less critiques I'd have to critique before reaching your next submissions, so you'd get your critiques faster.

It's totally optional of course, I won't force anyone to give critiques. But me and the other people who are critiquing would be super grateful if you gave it a shot.

Good luck on the box challenge, and keep up the good work!

NOTE: here's a quick guide on critiquing lesson 1 submissions.

There are a few people that feel hesitant to critique because they feel they aren't ready to it so hopefully it'll help you in case you are one of those people.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
11:35 PM, Sunday May 17th 2020
edited at 11:40 PM, May 17th 2020

Thanks for such a fast response and critique!

I did not know that I was supposed to do the warm ups after the lesson completion, will be doing that for the future.

I'll also make sure to work on my lines and boxes in the box challenge and beyond.

Might also attempt to do a critique on lesson 1 submissions..

edited at 11:40 PM, May 17th 2020
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