Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
12:57 AM, Saturday March 26th 2022
Thank you in advance to anyone who will critique my homework!
Hey Dr_Scrapjack! I am paperhat and I will be doing your lesson 1 critique.
My critique will be divided into three sections:
Lines
Super-imposed lines: You can really see your progress in this exercise alone already. In the beginning you have fraying on both ends, by the end you only have little fraying on on end (with more practice time this will also go away, but is totally fine and to be expected right now). You also started out with way more arching than you ended with. Arching might happen, if you do not mostly use your shoulder pivot, try to closely pay attention which pivot you are using. However, it might also happen if you use your shoulder pivot. In this case try to consciously arch to the opposite direction.Your lines seem to wobble a little bit, but are overall pretty confident. Remember: We value confidence over accuracy. Accuracy will come over time, however a wobbly line (not matter how accurate) is always a mistake.
Ghosted Lines: Here you can see your lines wobble a bit more than before. You do not have to hit every dot precisly, as said before: Confidence over accuracy!
Ghosted Planes: Once again, there are some wobbly lines, but overall it is okay (especially the second page seems much more confident than the first one)! You have also taken great advantage off the space given. You could have tried to include a bit more variety in terms of the size and angles of the planes. All in all: Great work!
Ellipses
Tables Of Ellipses: Your ellipses stay pretty much inside of the bounds (sometimes they are not touching it or are a little overshooting, but that is fine). You draw 2 to 3 times through every ellipse, which is great! The also touch each other nicely and do not have great gaps between them or are overlapping, good job! Like with the lines, your first ellipses do not really seem confident. However, the later ones do look more confident! For ellipses their roundness/smoothness is preferred over their accuracy.
Ellipses in Planes: Again your ellipses stay inside of the bounds (here: the planes). You again follow the instructions of drawing through them 2 to 3 times very well. Sometimes you seem to prefer accuracy (i.e. staying within the bounds and touching the corners/sides of the planes) over confidence (smoothness of the ellipses). But overall you have done a great job!
The Funnels: You placed the minor axis correctly, cutting the ellipses in two halves! Like with a lot of the other exercises: Confidence over accuracy!
Boxes
Plotted Perspective: Very good work! You draw through all your boxes and also use hatching to show which planes are facing the viewer. You even go as far as taking overlaps into account. Well done!
Rough Perspective: Lines are quite wobbly again. You draw through all your boxes and use the line correction method.
Rotated Boxes: You keep the corners between boxes close and rotate the boxes quite well. Very well done (especially for how hard the task is at this point)!
Organic Perspective: Very good! You have a great variety of box sizes and angles.
Overall you have done very well and can be prod of yourself for making it through all the tasks! However, I will ask for one more page of Ellipses in Planes. Make sure to draw your lines with a lot of confidence, they do not have to be perfectly accurate.
Next Steps:
1 page of Ellipses in Planes
Thank you for your time and patience! I'll try to put additional work in the ellipses. Will reply with the assigned homework as soon as I can!
Here I am, back with the assigned work! https://imgur.com/a/QvR6HBl
I've tried to focus more on line confidence and less on accuracy as you suggested. I think the ellipses do indeed look a bit less wobbly than the ones in my homework. I guess that I still have to do much work on them tho, since lines seems very loose and some of the ellipses don't seem quite symmetrical.
This looks way better and more confident! You did really well!
I have just noticed that Beckerito has also given you critique. The redone tasks there look much better as well! Your confidence has definitely improved. Accuracy will follow with more practice (e.g. during the warm-ups).
I think you are ready to go to the next challenge! Good luck!
Next Steps:
250 Box challenge
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Thank you again for taking the time to review my work, I really appreciate that!
Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 1 homework
Lines
-The superimposed lines are off to a great start as you are always starting from a clearly defined point and keeping all of the wavering on one side only, they are also drawn with a good deal of confidence and while we have the expected fraying at the ends, this tends to disappear with more mileage and practice
-Moving on to the ghosted lines, these are not drawn with the same confidence as before, and some of them end up quite wobbly and arch slightly. One thing that can always help you is to draw your lines a little bit faster, so they end up fully confident. Another important thing to keep in mind is that you should prioritize confidence over accuracy at this early stage, so give each line a consistent trajectory even if they are going to miss the ending point.
-The ghosted planes are no different from the ghosted lines, overall you're doing a better job committing to those lines
Ellipses
-On the tables of ellipses we are getting some mixed results, some of them are drawn with confidence and others end up a little wobbly and distorted Keep in mind that each ellipse is no less important for being part of a larger group, give each one of them as much focus and attention as you can, and use the ghosting method to think about each mark’s purpose and how you are going to achieve it best. Another important thing to keep in mind is that the ellipse should be symmetrical and well rounded at the ends, some of yours have pointy ends
-The ellipses in planes are turning out nicely, and it is great to see that you are not overly concerned with having the ellipses touch the four sides of the plane. You are doing quite well, but you need to keep working on that confidence and drawing symmetrical ellipses.
-It seems that you had a lot of trouble with the funnels, I believe this is because you are not used to drawing small ellipses yet. Some of them have pointy ends and are wobbly, one thing that can help you is to draw them fast so they end up fully confident, just like the ghosted lines. This will sacrifice some of the accuracy but it is not a big deal as you are just beginning to do these exercises and confidence is more important.
Boxes
-Starting with the rough perspective you are doing a good job when aligning the sides of the boxes to the horizon line, your estimations to the vanishing point are good and they will get better with practice-
-The rotated boxes are turning out quite well, as you have kept the gaps between boxes narrow, and you are clearly thinking about the rotation. It is also nice to see that you are making full use of the space available in your page, the hatching is looking tidy rather than rushed which has definitely helped your boxes look much better. The only thing I want to call out is that, you should be more careful with the lineweight, you should use it very sparingly and only add one superimposed line, do your best to have overlapping with the preceding line. Take a look at this diagram which shows how to apply lineweight.
-Finishing with the organic perspective I can see that I already have a good grasp of how to work with a box in a 3 point perspective and there is really nothing to comment. It would also be a good idea to apply lineweight here, since you have a lot of overlapping boxes that create a lot of visual noise, so give it a try the next time you have a go at this exercise.
Anyways, you did quite well on the boxes, but I want you to keep working on your ellipse, so I’ll leave you some additional homework.
Next Steps:
Please do the following
-1 page of tables of ellipses
-1 page of funnels.
Hi, first of all thank you for taking the time to look at my work! I definitely see what you mean about the ellipses, and they were definitely one of the things I struggled the most with in this lesson. I will try to reply with the homework you assigned as soon as I can.
Hello, sorry for the wait. Here's the work you assigned me: https://imgur.com/a/TIqNEfP
I've tried to focus more on confidence rather than accuracy by trying to make marks faster after ghosting. I think the lines look less wobbly. Accuracy seems diminished (as I should have probably expected), especially in the tables of ellipses that have more overshooting than the original. The problem of "pointy ellipses" seems to be still there, I suspect that could be because I'm still not used to making broad curves with the whole arm, resulting in some stiffness. I guess I will have to try to focus more on ellipse-related excercises during warmup routines.
Okay. I can see that you are doing much better, I don't really have anything more to add other than what I wrote in the critique. I'll go ahead and mark this as complete. And sorry I didn't see someone had already written a critique, I only noticed when I had already written most of my critique .-.
Next Steps:
250 Box Challenge
No problem, additional insight is always welcome :) Thanks again for your time!
These are looking good, I would keep trying to focus on ghosting your lines before laying down a strike. Try and hit the edges of the last one you drew as well as touching the edges of the guides you placed. They are looking much better!
I agree with others in here, I would move on with the 250 Challenge and then Lesson 2
Next Steps:
250 Box Challenge
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
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