Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:44 PM, Monday October 7th 2024

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Thank you Drawabox Team,

enclosed please find my homework for lesson 1.

I have been quite late to learning to draw being now 31 years old. I have previously started drawabox a couple of years ago but made all the mistakes Comfy (did not stick to starting with lessen 0 etc.) and stopped before finishing lesson 1.

I still have some questions:

  • I am a leftie. I noticed that in Uncomfortables demos on lines they make a mark wen pushing their hand away from them. And many other videos show people marking lines in that same manner. I myself have however found it to be more comfortable to make marks in pulling the pen towards me. Is this a technique that will hold me back in the long run or is it fine to do so? The advantage it has for me is that I can see the end of my mark clearly.

  • A next question i have concerns development of art skills in general. Specifically I am asking myself in which beadth versus depth to pursue my journey. At this point I enjoy and would like to emulate many aspects of art including portraiture, figure drawing/character design, concept art in different mediums including digital art as well as more traditional media (such as oil and goache). There are so many books and resources for everything and I am quite frankly a bit overwhelmed. My approach at this moment is to focus on one aspect (for my 50% rule drawings within drawabox) which is drawing faces. Still I wonder, how can one structure their approach in face of so many options and so much frankly overwhelming possibilities?

I am looking forward to your cirtique

Thank you.

Marius

12:29 AM, Tuesday October 8th 2024

Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.

Let's get your questions out of the way first. Being a leftie doesn't really matter as you should ghost in the direction that you find the most comfortable. So it's fine to go left-right, up-down, or any direction you want; as long as you can maintain that confidence in your lines.

Secondly, this is a very understandable question that every beginner in every field will start with. The simplest answer is to prioritize the most important ones: start with the fundamentals, while studying the stuff that you want to draw in the future. There are a ton of resources for this, including the course you're in now, that might leave you paralyzed on which one you should take. You can google and ask around for some reviews (like in our discord, if you haven't joined already), but ultimately, you will have to take a few paths and see where it takes you. Personally, I'd juggle 2 courses at a time (one for fundamentals, one for my preferred stuff like figure drawing or environment) while doing 50% on the side. Of course, if you get an itch to learn something else then go for it! This is just a very dumbed down guideline to learning after all; you might be surprised where you end up to be when you let yourself experiment.

Anyways let's get started on your critique for real, shall we? Overall you did an excellent job here, but I do have a bit to mention so let's break them down one by one.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. Ghosted lines look correctly ghosted and confident too, and there are barely any arching. You've also demonstrated the same confidence in your ghosted planes with a great accuracy. Nothing much to say except keep up the good work!

Ellipses

Now with the tables of ellipses, you've demonstrated a great understanding of the concept in executing confident ellipses. The ellipses in planes are nice, you drew it confidently and snugly in their respective planes.

The funnels are also looking great; you've managed to fit them snugly and aligned to the minor axis and carried the same confidence as in previous exercises. I have no complaints here as your ellipses will tighten as you get more practice.

Boxes

The plotted perspective has no problems, you've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective.

You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. You also drew the front/back faces rectangular, which is correct for 1 point perspective.

As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a great job at doing the rotated boxes. You've rotated them pretty well (while making sure to move the converging lines) and used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, which is the whole purpose of this exercise.

Finally, organic perspective looks great as well. They look like they belong in the same page and the lines converge as they move farther away from the viewer. There are a few hiccups here and there where there are divergences that results in skewed boxes, but overall they're minor and they look pretty solid.

One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.

Anyway, I think you've grasped the concepts of the whole lesson and ready to put them into practice in warmups. Again, congratulations and keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

Move onto the 250 box challenge.

Do the lesson 1 exercises as your regular warmup and don't forget your 50% rule art.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:05 AM, Tuesday October 8th 2024

Hi Mada,

Thank you for your critique and advice.

It is very much appreciated.

Best

Marius

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