Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

3:18 AM, Sunday June 19th 2022

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Hi,

This is my recently completed work for Lesson 1. Feedback on any of the exercises would be greatly appreciated before i move onto the 250 Box Challenge. I struggled most on the rotated boxes exercise it took me a few days to get a piece of work i thought was good enough to include.

Thanks, Wires.

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4:54 AM, Monday June 20th 2022

Hey Wires, Congrats on finishing lesson 1. I'll do my best to give you useful feedback.

Before I begin with individual exercises, I notice that you tend to 'X' out a lot on the page and while it's good that you are noticing your mistakes it isn't beneficial to just write critique on the page. Accept that you will make mistakes all the time and try not to be too critical of your own work because if you can't appreciate your work who will? Not critiquing your work will also allow you to remain vulnerable so that you can learn the most from the critique. Also you should only do every exercise once until you're done with the lesson and then you should go back and do them for warmups (You wouldn't want to draw 250 boxes for practice and then 250 'actual' boxes would you?). From what I understand you kept attempting rotated boxes until it was "good enough" and it seems evident in the some other exercises as well. Don't do this going forward. You will spend too much time getting it "good enough" that your learning will be hindered. Drawabox isn't about drawing exercises that look "good enough". I feel like you would benefit from watching this video made by uncomfortable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBjTGvpd-q8. But with that being said, let's move on to...

Lines

Superimposed lines: Good, you keep your fraying on one end and you are clearly starting from the same point each time with straight lines. Keep it up.

Ghosted lines: Good, I'm starting to notice wobbling here https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/10/wobbling also you have a tendency to draw over your lines which you should try to stop doing immediately, all it does is draw more attention to the mistake and make it harder to read. In order to get rid of wobbling you should only draw fast and from the muscle memory of ghosting. Doing both will ensure your brain does not take control and try to correct the line. If you want to have better accuracy that will come with more ghosting practice so don't worry. Make sure you work on getting the line confident first before worrying about accuracy. Here's a comic that uncomfortable made that helped me understand how to draw more confident lines https://drawabox.com/comic/1.

Ghosted planes: Same problems as ghosted lines. Also noticing an increased amount of drawing over lines to 'correct' them. The reason we use fineliner is so that we have to carefully think about each mark we make on the page and even if you don't use it, it's still useful to think like this. Remember that you can't take back what you put on the page and really take the time to prepare and plan so that you can be happy about the mark you put down on the page. It's all about building a mindset that will make you draw to the best of your ability.

Elipses

Table of elipses: Good, I like that you used the space well and experimented with different types of elipses. Your elipses will get tighter and more accurate the more you practice ghosting.

Elipses in planes: Good, although I'm starting to see some deformed elipses https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/deformed. The advice is the same as what I wrote in ghosted lines. Make sure you are drawing them confidently first (which you are for the most part) and then worry about accuracy.

Funnels: Good, you are keeping the elipses aligned to the minor axis for the most part, I like that you experimented with different sizes just like in the table of elispes. Keep it up.

Boxes

Plotted perspective: Good, just make sure you keep the lines going across the face of the box the same for every box.

Rough perspective: Good, I'm starting to see wobbling again which has already been discussed as well as re-drawing. As you can see most of your perspective estimations were a bit off but this is fine as they will get better as you continue to develop your understanding of 3D space.

Rotated boxes: Good job. I like that you kept your gaps narrow and consistent and you also drew through your boxes which is good for learning more. When you do this exercise next time for your warmups you should draw it bigger as that can help when dealing with complex 3D problems. As you can see most of your rotations are a bit off but just like with rough perspective they will get better as you develop your understanding of 3D space.

Organic perspective: Good, most of your boxes are looking good so you already have an understanding of how to construct boxes. There are some wonky convergences here and there and the re-drawing problem is most pronounced here as well as wobbling lines.

Summary

Overall a pretty good submission but there are some major problems that need addressing such as the confident lines and redrawing. I think that because you made so many iterations of each exercise that you got used to rushing and to the mindset of "I can just redraw the line if its a bit wonky". Other then that I feel like you understood the exercises well. Before moving on to the box challenge I'll ask you to re-do the ghosted planes exercise. You may already have many pages of this exercise but this is so that you start taking your time when you draw and to really think about each mark you make. This is also so that you can build on your confident line making. It's clear that you still need to work on it a bit more as if your lines were confidently made you wouldn't have to re-draw them. I think you will be ready for the box challenge once you start to understand these 2 lessons.

Next Steps:

1 Page of ghosted planes. Take your time :)

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:38 AM, Monday June 20th 2022

Hey Rabuuhs, I greatly appreciate the in-depth critique sorry if my reply is vague.

I’m going to stop re-drawing immediately as it’s a terrible habit, I think I knew sub consciously, but I needed to hear it thanks. I’m also going to try and better use the resources and not to stress on the result as much as I have been. Also, you are correct that I’ve done a lot of these exercise and in doing so lost the point of them. Ill be going over your critique of my work before I do these exercises again and make a list of what I should be thinking about and striving for.

Below I have attached the 1 page of ghosted planes revision trying my best to apply what you brought up in the critique. I had to stop myself from doing it again. Moving forward I’m going to work on what you’ve listed and apply it to my work. Once again I greatly appreciate any current and future feedback.

https://imgur.com/a/bh7bOjN

Thanks, Wires.

11:31 AM, Monday June 20th 2022

Very well done. I'm glad my advice was useful and I'm very glad that you decided to apply it to your work. Your new ghosted planes while not accurate, showed a lot of improvement in confident line making from what it was before and is much neater so that makes it much better then your previous attempts already! Always remember what these lessons are trying to teach and eventually they will become second nature. Keep on doing 15 minute warmups everyday and you will see a great amount of improvement!

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete as your willingness to improve and understand has shown to me that you are ready for the next challenge. This would be the 250 box challenge. I recommend watching uncomfortable's video on the box challenge and to go on to the 'basic-challenges' discord channel to see how other people do their boxes and to ask questions about areas you're not sure of.

Good luck!

Next Steps:

250 Box challenge

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.
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These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

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