Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

5:09 PM, Friday September 18th 2020

CG-Tespy Lesson 1 DrawABox Homework - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/HE1EEx1.jpg

Find, rate and share the best memes and images. Discover the magic of th...

After I've become able to set aside 30 mins per day on DaB exercises, I decided to start from Lesson 1 all over again. Since the website said I should finish all the homework in a whole lesson before asking for feedback on it... Well, here I am!

Don't hold back with your criticism; if I did that badly, I'm more than willing to start over from Lesson 1 again.

1 users agree
7:07 PM, Friday September 18th 2020

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. I'll start by saying I appreciate your enthusiam and the amount of work you put into this submission. Start your imposed lines are looking pretty good. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point on these and while you are having more significant wavering on longer lines and curves this is pretty much the norm and something you will improve at. Your ghosted lines and planes are a tad wobbly but I'm seeing a lot of improvement in your line quality in general by the time you get to your last few exercises like the organic perspective one. The wobble is probably happening because you are still thinking about accuracy while making your mark. This is one of the reasons we use the ghosting method. So we handle all of our thinking and planning before we actually draw and when we do go to make our mark we rely on the muscle memory we built up. Also try and make sure you are always drawing from your shoulder even on shorter lines. Using the wrist for anything besides details tends to give a bit of a wobbly result until you have much better hand dexterity.

Your table of ellipses is looking good. You are doing a nice job drawing through all of your ellipses. I appreciate the enthusiasm of trying to pack ellipses in everywhere but it probably isn't necessary and is making judging this a tad harder than it normally would be. You are probably better off just sticking with one size ellipse per sections for this exercise. You are having some issues with deformed ellipses here and there that you should probably be aware of. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed Like I was saying previously this typically happens because you start worrying about accuracy mid stroke. So just make sure you are ghosting everything before hand and trying to rely on the muscle memory of the motion that you have built up previously. Your ellipses in planes are much improved in this regard. You are doing a great job here of going for a overall smooth ellipse over accuracy. Accuracy is the ultimate goal but being able to nail a consistent smooth ellipse shape is your first priority and these are a step in the right direction. The ellipses in funnels look fine besides a few slight issues with deformed ellipses. One thing you can do with this exercise is keep narrower degree ellipses in the center and widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/step3 Your ellipses are off to a good start but there is plenty of room for improvement here so keep practicing them during your warmups.

Plotted perspective looks great nothing to mention here. The linework for your rough perspective boxes is a bit scratchy and wobbly. This might be happening for a few different reasons. One is that you have reverted back to drawing from your wrist. Always try and draw from your shoulder with confidence even on shorter lines like these. The wrist should be reserved for detail work only. Another is that you are either skipping the ghosting method or just not ghosting enough. Otherwise this looks pretty good and you did a nice job extending the lines back on your boxes. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were a bit off but that will get better with practice.

Nice job on the rotated box exercise. This is a tough one and while you didn't nail it you did a few things really well. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps consistent between your boxes. Your spatial thinking still isn't quite there yet and you didn't quite nail the rotations you needed to make. This is a good exercise to come back to after you finish the 250 box challenge to see how much your spatial thinking has improved. In some cases you weren't rotating your boxes at all and that's something you can look out for. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating Finally, your organic perspective exercise look decent. Your line quality is improving and it shows here. Keep using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder. Your accuracy and line quality will keep getting better and better the more you do that. Your box constructions can still use some work though and you will get a lot of practice with that during the 250 box challenge.

This was a good submission with a lot of work put into it. I think you are showing some nice improvements as well and you are understaning most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:48 PM, Thursday September 24th 2020

Thank you very much for your critique! :> You were correct with your guesses as to why my lines sometimes look scratchy and such; while I'm better with ghosting consistency now, I sometimes unconsciously went back to non-ghosting.

I'll be sure to keep up with the warmups as you suggested. In fact, for a couple weeks now, I've had a regimen where every other day is a drill day, where I split my daily 30-40 mins between 3 exercises. If I really have done well enough on Lesson 1, then I'll alter the drill days so they spare at least 10 mins for the 250-Box Challenge.

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.
Sakura Pigma Microns

Sakura Pigma Microns

A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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