Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

7:24 AM, Thursday October 14th 2021

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Hey!!! So the first couple of images are in my note book, however after the lines and planes i migrated to the printer paper as I was told to in the instructions, the printer paper was stacked on top of each other when i drew and so some of the inc from my sharpie seeped through it. As for the sharpie, i used an ultra fine sharpie, which i recently learned was a .2mm size. I ordered the proper sized inc pens but they will be here some time next month... let me know any criticisms you may have. Thank you!

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6:53 PM, Saturday October 16th 2021

Overall you did the exercises pretty good, though I have some critique for the rotated boxes excercise. If you look at the horizontal and vertical rows of boxes, the converging lines on each seem to share a vanishing point, and the faces of the boxes don't seem to narrow. If you take a box in real life and rotate it to the left, it's left horizontal lines will converge, and its left face will become more narrow. It seems to me like you drew the first box too small, concerned with reaching the limits of the page for when you got to the last boxes. This meant you were working with very limited space and couldn't converge or shorten your lines as much as you needed to. Messing up the horizontal and vertical rows has a knock-on effect on the corner boxes, though they turned out pretty good. It also seems to me that the front panels (Closest to the viewer) are a lot better than the back panels, so I'm guessing you did those first. I would recommend doing the back panels first as doing a smaller panel lets you decide the minimum of space you'll work within, whereas doing the large panel first forces you to work within a space smaller than might be comfortable or clear when you get to the smaller panel.

If you redo the excercise, don't be afraid to make the initial box a fair bit larger, remembering that the later boxes will be significantly thinner. Then start each box with the back panel, making sure it gets thinner and it's lines converge more as a rotated plane would. You don't have to redo it as long as you keep these issues in mind (Basically, remember to account for how lines will converge and faces will shrink, practice more extreme angles where one face is extremely thin).

There also could've been a bit more scaling on the organic perspective, maybe do that excercise as a warmup in the future and try start with a fairly large box an or maybe even try starting with a small one and scaling up (Not sure if you're supposed to do that way). The common issues between them and the rotated boxes is that you need to be more confident about taking up space on the page and pay a bit more attention to how the boxes relate to eachother in space.

From now on make sure you don't redo lines, make each mark the final mark even if it misses the dot or the dot itself was placed in a bad position. I've given into this impulse a lot more than you but for the 250 box challenge you need to accept each mistake and commit to whatever you've done. Since you have 250 to do, accept the mistakes you make on each box and use them to improve the next one. It's ok to make hundreds of failed/mediocre boxes if it means you'll have a dozen good ones at the end.

Your boxes are definitely good enough to move on to the 250 box challenge, but you could redo the rotated boxes afteward just to show yourself what you've learnt and where you still have problems.

Last thing, your paper being folded makes it a bit difficult to see the perspective on some of the work, so in the future try avoid that as much as possible or flatten your paper out later. Keep it up!

Next Steps:

Move on the 250 boxes exercise

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
2:12 PM, Monday October 18th 2021

Thank you so much for the reply, ill definitely revisit the rotated boxes and organic perspective after the 250 box challenge, and see if i can apply some of your recommendations then.

12:41 PM, Thursday February 17th 2022

I saw that this reply has not gotten any "agree"s yet, and after looking at the photos, I would like to add to the criticism:

My biggest concern is with the lines. A lot of it is surely practice and when I peaked into the 250 boxes, I sure did see some improvement. Still I got the feeling that the lines might be rushed. Especially the superimposed lines show signs of rushing, since besides the unpreventable fraying at the farther end, the start points are also quite wide. Usually, if one really takes the time to hit the start of the original line, all lines should more or less start at the same point, making this side of the superimposed lines... well... pointy.

The overshooting in the ghosted lines and finally in a lot of boxes also seem to fit to a habit of rushing the marks.

I would therefore add to the above: Please revisit the videos and/or the text introductions to the mark-making ( https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/3 ). For future exercises, focus on planning the mark beforehand, be conscious about what you want to achieve there, then ghost the line several times until your arm does exactly what you want it to do with the pen touching the paper. THEN execute.

I think the ghosted planes is an exercise you could use as a warm-up to practice exactly this.

Since you already completed the 250 box challenge, I do not want to tell you to do the ghosted lines & planes again as homework, but I do recommend to focus more on the ghosting from now on.

With this addition, I would agree with TAIGFENIAN.

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