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Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:30 PM, Wednesday December 30th 2020

Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses, and Boxes - Google Drive

Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses, and Boxes - Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nobYLdQ9vfYxyzY_bwCyEP6Pwbfymr0p?usp=sharing

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Hi! I finally completed Lesson 1 and I wanted to submit my work for critiques.

I started on October 20th and finished on December 29th. Keeping with the 50% rule, I'd basically spend a week on lessons, drawing when I had time, and take a week off to draw for fun.

I think my biggest struggle was ghosting effectively. I'd get so caught up in going through the repeated motion of ghosting that I wouldn't really focus on the precision of having a definite start and stop point. I think that's evident with some of my lines and ellipses and how out of bounds they are. Of course, it also carried over to the Boxes exercises. I've continued to do some of the exercises as warm ups, but in the spirit of Draw a Box, these images are the only times I've completely gone through the lessons.

I hope linking the images through Google Drive is acceptable. Please let me know if there's any issues with that and I will be sure to fix it. I'd be very grateful for any feedback the community can provide. Thanks so much for your time!

  • Francis
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12:11 AM, Thursday December 31st 2020

Hello! Welcome to Drawabox and congratulations on completing Lesson 1. This is my first time grading someone else's assignment and I am a novice as well, so feel free to search for to search for other sources of feedback if you'd like.

To start off, your superimposed lines look pretty good. There is some wobbling, but that will go away with time. The bigger issue is that there is some fraying on both ends, but I noticed that going away with time. Your ghosted lines also look pretty good, and while I do notice some wobbling and arcing lines in some of your earlier lines, that seems to have gone away with time. Good job on prioritizing confidence over accuracy. In terms of your ghosted planes, for the record, I think you're suppoed to submit a picture of the planes before you place the ellipses. I'm noticing quite a lot of arcing/curving lines in thes ghosted planes, so I would recommend redoing at least one page while focusing on making sure that the lines are straight and not curved.

Your tables of ellipses look good - I notice that you are having a little bit of trouble fitting them in snugly, but what's most important is that you are drawing smooth, confident ellipses. The same thing goes for your ellipses in planes - while the ellipses aren't necessarily fitting into the planes perfectly, they look really confident and smooth and you are drawing through them smoothly. The same issue appears in the funnels exercise (fitting them in snuggly), but it's a little bit more pronounced over there. I'd recommend doing that exercise over again while focusing on fitting them in snugly.

Your plotted perspective looks great, I have no critiques. The rough perpsective looks pretty good - you're a little bit off from vanishing point, but that's to be expected, and you did it pretty well anyway. I noticed some curving/arcing lines, which you should try to avoid in the future. For the rotated boxes, while it's not expected to be perfect, you do need to go all the way to the corners. You also need to show more line weight to show where things overlap, and you need to do hatching. In your organic persective, I was really impressed by how you showed depth and boxes getting farther and farther away - it was great. However, you'll notice that some of the boxes look a little bit off. Try to make sure that when you are drawing those lines, they are directly parallel to that initial "y".

Overall, it appears to me that you did pretty well in these exercises, but I'd recommend doing a few of them over again before moving on to the 250 boxes. In order to obtain more lineage and fix some of the issues that I mentioned, I'd recommend you to do 2-3 of these for 10-15 minutes per day in order to further develop your skills.

Next Steps:

1 page of ghosted planes

1 page of funnels

1 page of rotated boxes

1 page of organic perspecitve

2-3 pages of lesson 1 exercises for 10-15 mins per day (as a warmup)

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:41 AM, Thursday December 31st 2020
edited at 11:20 AM, Jan 30th 2021

I appreciate you giving me such a thorough review of my work. Thank you!

I really focused on confident strokes when going through the lessons, and while that's good, I think it caused me to not focus as much in other areas, such as the accuracy and curving of my lines, which became really noticeable issues in my Boxes exercises. I had a similar issue with ellipses, particularly because ghosting them caused me to sort of go into autopilot and I ended up not being mindful about how my ellipses should fit. I took all these pictures after completing Lesson 1, so I missed the opportunity to get an image of my Ghosted Planes exercise before doing Ellipses in Planes. My bad!

When it comes to drawing boxes, I definitely struggled with estimating the angle for parallel lines, as you observed in the Organic Perspective exercise. Also, I did not focus on line weight at all, so I'm sorry about that and I hope it didn't make the overlapping boxes too difficult to decipher. I'll work on that.

I will redo the exercises you recommended with your suggestions in mind and post them here when I finish. It'll probably be over the next few weeks, as I just work on Drawabox when I have time, and of course I don't expect you to continue following up with me. I'm grateful for your help in starting me off!

edited at 11:20 AM, Jan 30th 2021
2:28 PM, Thursday December 31st 2020

No problem! I look forward to seeing your exercises redone.

While I'm here, I'd like to ask a favor. I submitted lesson 1 a while ago, but it never got reviewed and it's pretty far back at this point, so it's unlikely that it will get reviewed. Would you be able to look over it? Any advice and critiques would be appreciated!

10:43 PM, Thursday December 31st 2020
edited at 10:44 PM, Dec 31st 2020

Sure, I'd be happy to review your Lesson 1 submission. To be honest, I don't really feel confident in my ability to discern what is done well and what isn't, seeing as how I just completed these exercises myself, but I'll do my best. Hopefully it'll be helpful for you just to have another pair of eyes looking over your work.

edited at 10:44 PM, Dec 31st 2020
11:20 AM, Saturday January 30th 2021
edited at 11:29 AM, Jan 30th 2021

Hi! I've completed my revisions of the recommended exercises. Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YDj06Gm0NH2roO7VkCtwkcqYryXsCkUr?usp=sharing

I still notice a lot of curving and overshooting in my Revised Ghosted Planes, but I've also been doing this exercise to warm up since then and I think I'm beginning to improve.

I feel that the ellipses in my Revised Funnels are a little shakier this time around because I focused more on trying to fit them in the funnels.

For the Revised Rotated Boxes, I added line weight and hatching. To add line weight, I'd go over the strokes multiple times, but sometimes I'd struggle to keep it consistent, so there's some visible fraying. I also used a greater angle of rotation for the outer boxes. I think it turned out much better this time!

Finally, for the Revised Organic Perspective, I don't think I showed much improvement. You can see that I still struggle with keeping opposite sides of the boxes parallel. I am conscious of how they should be; it's just that my estimates when I plot them are off. Hopefully I'll get better at it as I tackle the 250 Box Challenge. Since this was the last exercise I completed, I feel that you can see the improvement I made in drawing straight, confident individual lines, compared to my Revised Ghosted Planes assignment.

Please don't feel obligated to critique these revisions, but if you want to give any input, I always appreciate it!

edited at 11:29 AM, Jan 30th 2021
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