I had a few questions:
To make lines darker, is it better to go over a line 2-3 times, or just try to make it darker in 1 pass?
While all these exercises need to go in the "warm up bin," are there any I should work on extra?
Is it easier to evaluate work arranged in a single large collage image, or a dozen or so smaller ones? (I've never tried imgur before, so hopefully that worked!)
Hello Tygerson, congratulations on completing the lesson one.
Before answering your questions, lets have a look at your attempt first.
Lines:
Your superimposed lines seems confident and there is little to no fraying at the beginning of the lines, so a great work there. And the fraying at the end seems not too scattered as well, but do not worry about that for now, it will improve with deliberate warmups in future.
Your ghosted lines and planes have a good confident stroke as well and you have plotted the points for lines for most part as well which is good, but in some instances, we can see that the middle lines in Ghosted planes are done without plotting the starting and end point, maybe the dot is too tiny to notice by me or its not there to begin with, but do not worry, its a common mistake, and the reason for mentioning it is, that by putting starting and ending points, you can effectively ghost it multiple time to get more accurate and confident stroke, otherwise your attempt is done really well.
As for undershooting/overshooting and missing the mark goes, do not worry about it for now as well, regular deliberate warmups will help you greatly in that regards.
Ellipses:
Most of your ellipses are drawn with confident strokes and been drawn through twice which is good, and the funnel exercise is done with confident strokes as well along with smooth ellipses but we can also see few ellipses not been drawn through more than once, and some have been deformed, especially the large ones, also they are missing the bounds especially in table of ellipses where we can see some not touching their adjacent sides as well as ellipses.
But do not worry about them as, for now getting a well shaped confident ellipse is our primary target and regular warmups and using shoulders while carefully ghosting them will be able to help you in these regards in long run.
Boxes:
Boxes are a tough ones to start with, so congratulation for attempting them with confidence. But there are few things I should mention:
In Plotted perspective, you did a great job!
In Rough perspective exercises, I saw some arching of lines but do not worry, as mentioned earlier, regular warmups will tend to that, and as stated in your remark, the width lines should be parallel to horizon and height lines perpendicular to horizon, this can be hard for some students, but you were able take care of it mostly so kudos to that.
In Rotated boxes, it turned out pretty well. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. While the rotations here aren't perfect this was a good effort overall. The more you draw and develop your spatial thinking ability the easier these rotations are to handle. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons or the boxes challenge to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved.
In Organic Perspective, try not to correct your lines by going through it again(as seen in one box only, which is great ofcourse as it was not repeated), do not worry about accuracy for now.
Further in Organic perspective, you could add line weights to the silhouette by going over them once with proper ghosting method. But overall it was a good attempt.
Now as for your questions:
Q: To make lines darker, is it better to go over a line 2-3 times, or just try to make it darker in 1 pass?
A: To add a line weight, try going over it just once and with proper ghosting technique.
Q: While all these exercises need to go in the "warm up bin," are there any I should work on extra?
A: To be honest, it depends upon you, you can select any exercises(up to three max at a time) from the lesson and try going over them for fifteen minute max overall. But in my opinion, do focus on ellipses more, especially the ones which are more open and are larger in size.
Q: Is it easier to evaluate work arranged in a single large collage image, or a dozen or so smaller ones? (I've never tried imgur before, so hopefully that worked!)
A: Haha, to be honest, it will be better to upload all your images on imgur without making a collage, as it will be better in visibility as in collage we have to zoom in to get a proper view which is quite difficult to do without downloading images, but if all the images are uploaded separately on a single imgur link then it will be easier for members to analyse them.
Next Steps:
You can move on to the infamous(crucible) 250 boxes challenge, remember take it slow, and do the warm-ups they really do wonders, more than you can imagine if done properly. My best wishes and good luck for the upcoming challenge.
Have a great time ahead!
Wow, thank you, that was very thorough and helpful! I'll work on those things in the warmups, especially ellipses. It looks like they become pretty critical later. And on to the infamous boxes!
(I've been drawing a few cars, animals, and plants in my off time so that hopefully I can see some visible improvement after going through those units.)
Oh that is great to know! My best wishes for you, and do make sure to hop onto discord if you have not already as it is helpful to get feedback too while doing hefty challenges like 250 boxes. That can be easily done by posting a pic of your current page on discord.
Further keep up with the fifty percent rule as well!
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.
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