Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

5:53 AM, Saturday October 30th 2021

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/XJeURb9.jpg

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Well after a year of not practicing I've become terrible at it again

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3:21 PM, Sunday October 31st 2021

Haha it's okay, after a year most people would be pretty rusty but don't worry we'll get you right as rain!

First of all - make sure to take your pictures in a better light! :P

Your superimposed lines are hit or miss - your straight lines are looking pretty good and confident, but your wavy lines not as much. That’s just a matter of mileage though so it’s ok. With your ghosted lines, you did a pretty good job on them, but you could have drawn a lot more on the page so don’t cheat yourself out of free practice.

Moving on to your ellipses, I see you are trying to draw through them an appropriate number of times, but things are a little wild still so keep practicing in your warm ups to try and get your draw through passes to tighten up. Your ellipses in planes are sometimes hitting the proper points of the plane edges properly anchoring them in space, and sometimes they aren’t. You did do a good job keeping everything packed tightly in your tables exercises leaving no room for ambiguity. I also am seeing a marked improvement in your ellipses quality in the smaller ones, but the big ones are still pretty messy so keep practicing! :) Your second page in the album is quite a bit messier, so I’m not sure if you started rushing on the second page or they were posted out of order so you were more warmed up on the second page, but if you do feel yourself rushing remember to get up and take a breather at the very least. Rushing is the last thing we want to do. You definitely skimped out on your ellipses in funnels. While drawing large is important, this does feel more on the side of rushing so I’ll be having you redo this portion.

Your rough perspective is on the right track - your verticals are perpendicular to the horizon and horizontals parallel to it. As comfy already told you on discord - try to keep the notations on your page to minimum (preferably none). Your line quality is pretty decent here, but try to make your dots smaller as that gets pretty distracting. Your converging lines are where we expect them to be, and as you continue on with CONSISTENT practice, your accuracy will improve.

Now let's move on to everyone's favorite rotated boxes. The biggest thing in noticing right off the bat is that things are very messy here. This is due to a combination of being heavy-handed and those heavy dots that I referred to in the last exercise. That being said, you know the drill: this exercise is hard and you are expected to have a hard time with it (even if you've done it before!)

So with that in mind, here is my list of important concepts that I run through to make sure you are understanding all the key principles.

Adjacency - Your adjacent lines are nice and close so you can properly utilize them as perspective guides. Good job here!

Rotation - Your boxes are not rotating, but rather skewing and shifting over, so give this gif some more attention and try to internalize how the rotation is driven by the vanishing points moving along the horizon.

Scale - You have some more room on the page you could have utilized. A good rule of thumb is to draw as large as you can so that your brain has the most room to work through these spatial problems. It sounds kind of odd, but it really does work.

Finally, let’s look at your organic perspective. There are some definite signs of rushing here, but I can understand that as you’ve done this several times now. That is not an excuse though, as you should be doing everything to your best efforts. That means ghosting all your lines appropriately and using your shoulder (you are having a lot of arcing going on). Your perspective is pretty good, but hard to tell because of all that arcing! Your compositions are pretty static because you have little to no overlapping and scale difference, meaning that instead of having boxes flowing through space, they are more just a series of forms sitting there. Remember that a big part of selling the illusion of 3d space is to overlap your forms so the brain perceives them as occupying a single physical space, and scaling your boxes up and down to have a distinct fore, mid, and background.

I want to make sure you are in the right mindset before jumping into the 250 box challenge so I want you to do one more page of funnels (try and recreate uncomfortable’s example on the page) and one more page of organic perspective where you slow down and apply what I talked about. Reply to this comment with your work and we will go from there.

Next Steps:

1 page funnel exercise

1 page organic perspective

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
3:11 PM, Wednesday November 17th 2021

http://imgur.com/a/nyswO1r

hi this is my redo! sorry for the gap couldn't draw sitting and didn't realize i had a dresser high enough to draw standing. i tried to keep all your points in mind while drawing! thank you very much

10:58 PM, Wednesday November 17th 2021

no apologies necessary my sore back dude 8)

These are looking better, and I think as you progress you'll begin to feel less pressure on yourself. Take care of yourself both physically and mentally! As you move on to the box challenge I really want you to make sure to only do a few in a day, both for your back and for your mind. It's ok that you are taking a long time, and that you've done it before. By the time you finish dab you'll still be years younger than old man Sven!

So go ahead to your 50 boxes that we're talking about on discord right now and I don't want to hear of you doing over 5 a day! Draw for fun!

Next Steps:

FIFTY BOXES

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
11:11 PM, Wednesday November 17th 2021

thank you sven!

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