Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

3:21 PM, Wednesday August 18th 2021

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/TplWwb4.jpg

Post with 6 views.

The first pages of the lesson are blue because I was using a Sharpie pen until I had ordered fineliners

0 users agree
9:49 PM, Wednesday August 18th 2021

Hello Jam! You've done a good job overall, though there are a few important issues I want to comment on, let's go!:

Starting with your lines they're confident in general, good job! Though they do get a bit wobbly at times so try to keep an that. The first priority with lines is to make them confident and straight, so don't worry if you need to sacrifice accuracy make them straight.

Here's one example, top line is a level 1 line, and bottom line is a level 0 line. This is because a confident line will always be better than a wobbly line in these exercises.

Another thing is that your dots are a bit too big. Try to make them smaller so it's easier to assess the ghosted lines exercises.

Your lines also fray on both ends at times. Make sure you place your pen at the start of each line carefully before drawing them so it doesn't happen.

Moving onto your ellipses they're very confident overall, great work! They get a bit messy sometimes so try to stick to drawing through them 2 times if you can.

The only problem with the ellipses is that when you draw them smaller I think you have a tendency to make them a bit wobbly. Make sure you approach even the smaller ones ghosting and drawing with the shoulder if you aren't already.

Lastly on the funnels sometimes you aren't alligning the ellipses to the minor axis. Make sure you aim the minor axis to cut the ellipses in 2 identical halves even if you have to ignore the initial curves.

Finally in your boxes a few things:

-Lines get a bit wobblier on them, same thing that I said earlier applies here. Make sure you always draw your lines confidently so at least you get level 1 lines. And try to draw the dots on the lines smaller as well.

-You're also making a good attempt in the guesses on the perspective lines in rough perspective. An issue less important than line confidence you have is that sometimes you seem to have trouble keeping height lines perpendicular to the horizon line, and width lines parallel to it. I know it's hard, but make sure you always are aiming for it. You can check if the starting and ending dots are correct or not, and if you find that they aren't you can change them. You can put down as many dots as you want as long as it's before drawing the actual line.

-On rotated boxes you've made a good attempt managing to keep most of the boxes together and rotating most of them. But some of the boxes are bit too far away, specially on the corners. And some of the boxes that are farther away aren't rotating as well. So try to keep an eye on that in future attempts.

-On organic perspective you're having issues with the perspective but that's not a problem as you'll work on it on the box challenge. Main thing here and on rotated boxes is that you're repeating lines quite a few times. Whenever you draw a line, accept the result. Don't redo the line even if it goes wrong, keep going to the next line.

So before moving on, I want to make sure you know how to draw confident lines on boxes, so I want you to do 2 more frames of rough perspective and 1 more frame of organic perspective. Make sure you focus on getting all your lines to be at least level 1 and that you don't repeat any line. Good luck and keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

-2 frames of rough perspective and 1 frame of organic perspective (1 page total)

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:31 PM, Thursday August 19th 2021

Thanks for the critique! I'll get to doing the rough and organic perspective right now

10:45 PM, Friday August 20th 2021

Ok, heres the work https://imgur.com/a/hHJAlXA

1:44 PM, Sunday August 22nd 2021

Alright, that's much better! I can see you're now committing to your lines even if they're not gonna hit the ending dot which is great! Keep drawing like that and the accuracy will improve with time. The issues with repeating lines have gone away as well, great work!

Overall like I said on the earlier critique you've done a great job, and with this I think you can go to the box challenge. Don't forget to do warmups from now on and keep up the good work, good luck!

Next Steps:

250 box challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:06 PM, Sunday August 22nd 2021

Thanks, I'll begin with the 250 boxes!

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.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.

Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.

These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.

We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.

Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.

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