Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
10:40 PM, Friday May 22nd 2020
Thanks!
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
2 users agree
12:33 AM, Saturday May 23rd 2020
Hey, Hawks0.
Good job finishing this lesson.
Your superimposed lines are not bad, although some arching is definitely noticeable. Remember to draw with a shoulder motion and, if needed, rotate the page to get a better drawing angle.
Your ghosted lines have some wobbling. Make sure you ghost your lines correctly and then draw a smooth and fast lines with confidence, in order to prevent this negative aspect. Your ghosted planes show some improvement, which is good.
I believe you need to ghost your ellipses better, as the second line that goes through them get somewhat misaligned with the first one. This is noticeable on the tables of ellipses and the ellipses in planes exercises. On the funnels exercises, your ellipses should be aligned with the minor axis (center line). In some cases it's not happening. There is also some wobbling here, which might have happened because you were drawing too slow, in order to make sure the ellipses would fit the reserved space. At this point it's more important to focus on smooth confident lines, because accuracy will naturally come if you keep practicing correctly.
The main goal of the rough perspective is overall achieved, as you kept most of your horizontal lines parallel to the horizon, while keeping the vertical lines perpendicular to it, except in a few cases. You also managed to make sure the perspective lines are mostly converging. But, on a negative note, your line work really starts to suffer here, as your lines seem very sloppy, as you draw over and over again many times. Don't forget you should be placing dots to plan your lines and ghost every one you make. You should draw your lines only once.
You did the same on your rotated box. Avoid drawing over the same lines. Also, when shading, refrain from doing it with that kind of messy scribble. Do it with clean consistent lines.
Again, this is happening (although less) on the organic perspective exercise. You managed to keep a good composition and flow from the smaller (farther away) to the larger (closer) boxes and did well overlapping them, but your line work needs a lot of improvement.
Next Steps:
I'm gonna ask you for 1 page of organic perspective, as I believe this will help you prepare better for the 250 boxes challenge.
Remember to place the dots in order to plan your lines, ghost them and draw only once.
I'm expecting a clean exercise without lines over lines.
Reply to this comment with the exercise when ready.
8:26 PM, Monday May 25th 2020
11:30 PM, Monday May 25th 2020
Hi again, Hawks0.
I'm glad you took the time to do the requested page, although I must say that I was hoping for a much cleaner work. You did seem to get the perspective better on your boxes, but your line work still needs a lot of improvement. Remember that each line should only be drawn once. You shouldn't go over the same lines, except when specifically requested, i.e. on the ellipses or to increase the line weight.
I've still marked this lesson as complete, but I'm hoping you take my advice in the further exercises, in order to improve your line work.
Next Steps:
250 boxes challenge.
5:28 PM, Tuesday May 26th 2020
Thanks for the advice... I really appreciate it.
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)
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.