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9:15 AM, Friday July 2nd 2021
Hey hey; welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing lesson 1. Let’s take a look at it, shall we?
Your superimposed lines look a lot better in their second page – being smooth, and properly lined up at the start – but the change in trajectory occurring so early in them suggest to me that you might be drawing a little fast. Rather than assuming that speed = confidence (which is often the case at first, but not always), and putting yourself in the position where you have to come up with an arbitrary ‘fast’ speed to draw at, simply experiment with a number of them, and pick the one that’s best suited to you based on the resulting lines. The ghosted lines look mostly good, though you should make their points smaller (dots, that disappear under a perfect line), and try out a bunch of different length, similarly to the superimposed lines exercise, rather than sticking to the same few ones. Save for this issue, the planes are well done, though I notice an overshooting issue here, that doesn’t seem to have been fixed even by the last exercise of this lesson, and that you’ve not plotted any start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of the planes; both are a problem.
The table of ellipses exercise is not great. Your ellipses are poorly spaced, indicating a lack of ghosting, not particularly smooth, or rounded, usually indicative of a misunderstanding of our priorities. Rather than them fitting within their frames, what’s most important is that they’re smooth, and rounded. This does not mean that we’re unconcerned with their accuracy, however – just that we deal with it in a previous step (the ghosting step). Give this section, in particular, another read, but perhaps the whole page, too. The ellipses in planes are looking a little better, but still show a similar misunderstanding. Stiffness is a common, but unnecessary problem – how the ellipse turns out is irrelevant, so long as its confident. If you don’t feel like you can achieve both confidence and accuracy, only focus on confidence. The funnels are mixed. You’ve got some decent ones, but also others where your ellipses misaligned (the bottom one), and where they’re poorly spaced, not even making an attempt to touch the frame (top left). It’s important to do your best on every single ellipse. In rushing, not only do you not learn what we’re trying to teach you; you learn bad habits. Worst of all, I’ll be forced to ask you to redo this exercise, anyway, so why give it the time it needs and deserves from the start?
The plotted perspective exercise looks decent, though the linework should’ve been drawn using a ruler, and there’s no excuse for the scratchy lines in the bottom, considering nothing is done freehand.
Save for previously mentioned issues (size of points, overshooting, scratchy lines), the rough perspective exercise shows some considerable improvement throughout the set. It’s, actually, in a fairly good place near the end – keep this up.
The rotated boxes exercise feels, particularly when looking at the quality of the hatching lines, a little rushed. I’ll redirect you to this note, which might make more sense now that it can be put in proper perspective. The boxes themselves do a decent job of rotating, most of the time, though they’re not particularly snug.
For the organic perspective exercise, am I correct in interpreting those many points in the page as vanishing points? If so, that is incorrect. Firstly, because we want to get into the habit of estimating convergences, rather than plotting them outright. Secondly, because this exercise requires boxes of shallow foreshortening, instead. Their current foreshortening, as well as how spread out they are, and the not very obvious differences in size hurt the illusion they’re trying to convey, but this is a good start.
Next Steps:
There’s a lot of good in this submission, but a lot of impatience, too. I recommend keeping a close eye on what you’re feeling during the exercises. If you find yourself becoming restless, it’s a better call to take a break, than to push through. Also, be sure to warm up every day, to properly solidify the concepts, and re-read the text before attempting each exercise, to not forget what they are to begin with. I will, however, give you the benefit of the doubt, for now, and move you to the box challenge. Good luck.
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