Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

5:21 AM, Tuesday May 3rd 2022

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I did this work on my 11x17 marker pad. Should have stuck to 11x7 I think, particularly since I wanted to scan and I thought I had access at home to a tabloid sized scanner (I learned this evening it is actually only a printer!)

Otherwise the Funnels, Rough Perspective, and Organic Perspective were all quite hard, not in a bad way though. The rest were challenging but I felt more 'steady'. Rotated Boxes was really fun and turned out better than I thought it would. I love patterns and geometry and graphic style so I kinda loved drawing this weird thing~

A little more patience, and a little less speed was within reach and is something I think I should work on with ghosting.

My background is that I have been making art for a long time (my life) but have really just minimal 'rendering' / technical drawing skills. I always thought I just couldn't (longtime battle with depression, much much better now. It was nice to see it addressed here on the site), and now I know I can do it with some work and its worth it to start now. Ultimately its more color, composition, technique using mediums and tools such as paint and block printing, batik one summer, and knowledge about materials. Not really creating any '3D' forms with intention or accuracy. And that's not even my goal/aesthetic but you gotta know the rules to know how to break them. I just struggle to create subject matter for my paintings and block printing etc. I lack the foundation to place all these other skills on top of, at least in the way I want (I do want something figurative in my work generally). I have ideas, I cannot execute them, and then I don't allow myself to really consider anything I can't execute so then the ideas get limited.

I went to Proko, realized "yeah, I'm not here yet" and found you via them. This course seems perfect as my next step and I look forward to the long and fun road ahead!

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6:36 PM, Wednesday May 4th 2022

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. My name is Rob and I'm a teaching assistant for Drawabox who will be handling your lesson one critique. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes turned out well. You are using the ghosting method to good effect to get confident linework with a pretty decent deal of accuracy that will get better and better with practice.

Your tables of ellipses are coming along pretty good. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. Some of your ellipses in funnels are having some slight issues with tilting off the minor axis. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/notaligned Not a big problem but this is something you should always start considering when drawing your ellipses. Your ellipses are off to a great start but there's still room for improvement when it comes to accuracy so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with a slight bit of wobble creeping back into some of your lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced. The other possibility is that you have reverted back to drawing from your wrist for some of these lines. Just something to keep an eye on. You should be drawing from your shoulder for basically every line you draw, even shorter ones. The wrist should be reserved for detail work only. You are doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps fairly consistent. The rotations you have here are a bit slight overall and could definitely be pushed a bit more which is perfectly fine given the difficulty of this exercise and this was a good attempt overall. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are looking pretty good. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. Your box constructions are fairly solid for the most part and you already seem to have a decent grasp on how box lines need to converge to vp's. The 250 box challenge will be a great way to develop that understanding even further.

Overall this was a really solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along nicely. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:46 PM, Wednesday May 4th 2022

Thank you very much for your feedback. I did occasionally draw from the wrist out of habit without meaning to, frankly I'm surprised how quickly I've accepted doing it from the shoulder XD. I think I slowed down as I went in for the stroke, yeah, will continue focusing on confidence.

Will do the table of ellipses and funnels in my 10 to 15 minute warmups. Excited for the 250 box challenge!

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