Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

10:41 AM, Wednesday February 24th 2021

DrawABox Lesson 1 Homework - Album on Imgur

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

Post with 27 views. DrawABox Lesson 1 Homework

Hi, submitting my Lesson 1 exercises for official critique. Thanks :)

0 users agree
1:20 PM, Wednesday February 24th 2021

Hello, and welcome to drawabox. Let’s take this one exercise at a time, shall we?

Starting with your superimposed lines, these look fantastic. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. I do notice, however, that they, especially the longer ones, tend to fray a little too soon into their path, so consider taking another look at your speed, as you might be drawing too fast. The ghosted lines/planes look quite solid, too, though they tend to arc a little, as they approach their end points. Be sure to maintain a consistent speed throughout, if you can, rather than slowing down at the end, in an effort to not stop short of, or overshoot the end point. The resulting line being smooth, and straight, is far more important than it being accurate.

The table of ellipses exercise shows improvement over its 2 pages, but there’s some issues with it, still. First, your ellipses will sometimes start off a little stiff, only to stabilize in a further rotation. This is not correct. It’s important for our ellipses to be confident from the start; it is, in fact, for that purpose that we ghost. Be sure to do so until confident in the built-up motion, then commit, otherwise, any insecurity you feel will also be reflected in your linework. Second, remember to draw through them no more than 3 times. Ideally, you’d stick to 2. The ellipses in planes exercise improves on the first issue, so that’s good. Your ellipses here do a good job of being smooth, and rounded, despite the more complicated frame they have to fit in. The ellipses in the funnels exercise revert back to it, unfortunately. Likely, it’s because of their size, and degree. It’s important to practice all kinds of ellipses in the relatively safe environment of the table of ellipses exercise, to be able to execute them confidently in these more complicated ones, too.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean.

The rough perspective exercise is really nicely done. Your linework is confident, and, from the number of unused points on your page, I can see that you’ve taken your time planning out the many convergences. As a result, your boxes are mostly correct. To push them even further, of course, spend even longer planning them, though, really, this level is more than satisfactory.

The rotated boxes exercise looks fantastic. It’s big, clean, and you’ve even taken some time to apply some hatching to it. It seems to have been applied with your wrist, however, which is not recommended. As for the boxes themselves, they’re snug, properly drawn through (if a little stretched), and they do a solid job of rotating.

Judging by the amount of overshooting, as compared to previous exercise, and the lack of points on the page, I’d say that the organic perspective exercise hasn’t been drawn using the ghosting method (plot start/end points, ghost, execute.) As mentioned, that method is to be used on every single mark that you make. Outside of that, however, it looks good. The boxes properly increase in size, and you’ve even been mindful of their foreshortening. Nice flow, on this one.

Next Steps:

Solid work, overall. Feel free to head on over to the box challenge!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:09 AM, Thursday February 25th 2021

Thank you! I've done a fair amount of drawing from the wrist without ever knowing I could draw from the shoulder (self taught), so it's a struggle to not revert to bad habits. I think I'll need to practice these exercises a lot on my own until this sort of mark making becomes natural to me.

Thanks for the detailed critique!

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.
How to Draw by Scott Robertson

How to Draw by Scott Robertson

When it comes to technical drawing, there's no one better than Scott Robertson. I regularly use this book as a reference when eyeballing my perspective just won't cut it anymore. Need to figure out exactly how to rotate an object in 3D space? How to project a shape in perspective? Look no further.

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