Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
6:58 PM, Sunday February 14th 2021
Should I repeat any of these topics or move on to the 250-box challenge?
The thing I immediately notice is that you have completed your exercises digitally. This isn't necessarily a bad choice, some students do this to improve their skill with a tablet and stylus. But Drawabox is first and foremost a traditional art course. It is strongly recommended that you use physical materials to complete your homework. You'll find an explanation for this on the page for Lesson 0 and on Uncomfortable's blog, linked here: https://drawabox.com/article/ink.
Not only is it impossible to verify whether you have used the undo function to hide imperfections in your linework, but on many of the perspective exercises you appear to have used a line tool to render your boxes! This makes giving critique more difficult, since I don't know how much of the homework is down to your ability, and how much is down to the computer.
But I digress.
Superimposed Lines
Your work is very wobbly to begin with, but this seems to improve over time. Make sure to maintain a consistent speed and don't fret about the end result! I can just about tell where you have started each stroke, but there is a large amount of fraying on both ends of your superimposed lines. This indicates you weren't thinking straight and might have been rushing. The start of your line should be in the exact same place each time. A good mixture of attempts at straight lines and curves.
Ghosted Lines
Very good. You're overshooting by quite a lot, but it appears like you've maintained a level of confidence and flow from the previous exercise that this shouldn't be too hard to correct. The important thing is that you take time to line up your shot as it were.
Ghosted Planes with Ellipses
You have included a failed attempt in your Imgur gallery that really should have been removed. The attempt that does feature ellipses is OK, you have a good level of accuracy and flow, but the interior lines have been drawn with a ruler and you didn't follow through with your ellipses. You shouldn't be drawing perfect ellipses in a single pass right now. That comes later in your own time.
Table of Ellipses
There are a lot of ellipses here, so well done on making such a big effort, but at some point you stopped drawing through your ellipses and tried to perform them all in one pass. When you do get around to drawing your ellipses properly, they feel very loose and wobby. When you try to do it in one swift motion, the line doesn't connect smoothly.
Funnels
Again, you're not drawing through your ellipses and now have the additional issue of identical minor axes. The innermost ellipse should have the smallest minor axis (i.e. it's thinner than the others), which gradually expands as you draw further away from the centerline. Otherwise your accuracy is pretty on point.
Plotted Perspective
You understood this perfectly, but next time maybe put a bit less effort into presentation? Deciding unique colours for each box might be fun, but it doesn't make it any easier to mark. These exercises aren't supposed to be pretty to look at, they're supposed to teach you a lesson. Ideally, no-one else is going to see them and if you're really finding yourself drifting off during study time, either draw something more interesting or take a nap. Also, it's expected at some point during this exercise that you move the position of the vanishing points around so you get to play with distortion and fun things like that. Would have also liked to see a greater variety in box dimensions as well.
Rough Perspective
Not only did you use the line tool for extending your lines to the vanishing point so that you could display convergences, but you also used them to render the boxes, which defeats the point of the exercise!
Natural Perspective
The dimensions of your boxes aren't consistent, which makes it very difficult to determine the scale and distance of each box. They should all resemble a unit length cube, only with a different overall size and convergence depending on how close they are to the viewer. Also, they barely overlap half the time! It seems like you got better with this as you go on, but there's little indication that these boxes are in fact receeding into the distance.
Rotated Boxes
Pretty excellent! Pat yourself on the back for doing it at all.
Some students just run away in fear...
There's some good rotation in there, but some boxes aren't rotated enough and the spacing between them seems a little wide. They need to be very tightly packed. Also, make sure to use shading to clarify where the outer faces are!
Next Steps:
First, make sure you (re?)read both lesson 0 and the blog article I posted. Once you've done with that, repeat the following exercises using paper and ink:
Rough Perspective
Ellipses in Planes
That should be enough to prove your understanding. You only need to do a page of each. Upload them to a new Imgur collection, and send a link to that as a reply to this critique. Once you've done that, head over to the 250 box challenge. You can do it!
Thanks for the criticism, I forgot "it doesn't have to look nice" and sometimes I take it back. Traditionally I don't draw because I prefer digital and can't send pictures to critics. And using an eraser to erase extended lines is ok?and revise something else from lesson 1?https://imgur.com/a/hKX7aaw
Well done, you appear to have addressed some of my complaints, such as drawing through your ellipses and drawing your boxes freehand, but I specifically asked you to revise the exercises traditionally. When writing my critique, I was unsure of your situation, so left any mention of materials and camera equipment out of the conversation.
Now I could go on a rant saying "If you can afford a computer, you can afford a camera" or chastise you for laziness, but that would be totally antithetical to the spirit of this course and is the kind of talk that'd probably make you give up. And that's even before we begin to talk about how that kind of behaviour makes me look...
Hey. If you want to complete this course digitally, then I won't stop you. I've already said my piece on the matter. But using an eraser of any sort is completely out of the question.
Sure, in your day to day life, you're going to be making use of this tool extensively. It's really good at neatening up linework and such. But when you're doing technical exercises specifically designed to teach you a concept, it completely defeats the purpose if you can just... forget... you ever made a mistake to begin with.
There's a rather obscure Disney movie that I think you should watch. It's called Meet The Robinsons. It's about a young boy travelling forward in time to meet his future ancestors who coincidentally own a pet t-rex that gets possessed by a man in a bowler hat and--
Look the plot doesn't really matter.
Point is there's this one scene where the main character Lewis screws up. The family garden is in tatters after one of his inventions goes awry. Everyone rushes out to survey the damage, and Lewis braces for the worst as he tells them the truth. Instead of chastising him though, the family starts cheering; congratulating him even! Lewis is understandably confused, but after they explain to him how making mistakes is necessary for long-term success, he just smiles and joins in the celebration.
You should have the exact same attitude when it comes to your art.
Next Steps:
I'm going to cautiously move you on to the 250 box challenge; on the condition that you follow the directions carefully, and you don't erase or undo any marks you make from now on. Hide the user interface. Unbind the keyboard shortcuts. Get a friend to duct tape your non-dominant hand behind your back if that's what it takes. But never, ever bury your mistakes. That's what's going to hold you back not only in Drawabox lessons, but in your entire career as an artist.
Thank you very much from today I will not do it, I will try to correct mistakes in the next exercises
This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.
I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.
No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.
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