Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:08 PM, Thursday May 16th 2024

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Done with a 0.5mm line pen.

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3:55 PM, Sunday May 19th 2024

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. I'm noticing that you are getting a bit of wobble in your ghosted lines and planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing improvement with your later exercises but I still want to mention this advice here so you can understand what the problem likely is.

This is the important part we need to be focusing on and the real problem I'm seeing:

You're hesitating as you execute the line, rather than drawing with a confident motion. Finally committing to a mark can definitely be quite daunting, but it's integral that you get used to accepting that mistakes do happen. Things go wrong - you can prepare as much as possible (and you should) but the moment your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid a mistake has already passed. Now you must commit yourself, push through with confidence, and execute your line. It's also worth remembering: we can still work with a line that is smooth and even, but there's not much that can be done with a wobbly one.

What's most likely happening is that you are worrying about accuracy too much while making your mark and it's causing you to slow down your stroke to compensate which is giving you quite a bit of wobble in your lines. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced.

Some of your ellipses are suffering from the exact same issue which really just goes to show that once you fix this problem it will improve every aspect of your drawing and that improvement is very evident with your organic perspective boxes and the line confidence I see there. Your tables of ellipses are coming along okay. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and while you seem to be focused on consistent ellipse shape you are getting quite a bit of line wobble trying to be accurate. This is carried over into your ellipses in planes and you are still deforming your ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/deformed This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues with wobbly linework and deformed shapes but seem fine otherwise. There is a plenty of room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape and accuracy so make sure you keep practicing these in your warmups as they can take a while to get used to.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. There is improvement here in terms of line confidence although I am still seeing a bit of wobble in some of your lines. Once again this is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. You are doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be perpendicular(straight up and down in this case) to the horizon line. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. I'm seeing more wobble in your linework here which tells me you were probably more concerned about trying to get an accurate line while making your mark. The other possibility is that you have reverted back to drawing from your wrist for some of these lines. Just something to keep an eye on. You should be drawing from your shoulder for basically every line you draw, even shorter ones. The wrist should be reserved for detail work only. While the rotations here aren't perfect this was a good effort overall. The more you draw and develop your spatial thinking ability the easier these rotations are to handle. I can see that you were a bit perplexed by the corners but please don't just leave something blank if you don't understand it as you will be assigned revisions in the future for doing so. A big part of learning how to draw is getting used to working outside of your comfort zone so at least attempt to put something down even if you don't fully understand it. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved.

Your organic perspective exercises are looking pretty good. You are still getting wobbly lines here and there throughout this exercise so I'd like to deal with that before moving on to the 250 box challenge. I can see you are developing a sense for how box lines are supposed to converge to vps but I'm still seeing convergence issues through this exercise so the 250 box challenge will be a good step for you develop this sense a bit more. Before moving on though I'd like you to consistently be able to put down confident lines. So as a revision I'd like you to do one more page of the organic perpective boxes. Focus on confident linework. Remember that your priority is a smooth confident line and it's okay if it's slightly inaccurate. No redrawing lines or adding line weight. Once you get that revision submitted and I take a look you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page of the organic perspective box exercises - Focus on confident linework

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:14 PM, Monday May 20th 2024

https://imgur.com/a/Nqkq3gx, struggled on a few lines due to my arm shaking/a bit of hesitation near the end of my line. I make sure to always draw with my shoulder however.

9:02 PM, Tuesday May 21st 2024

Okay, this is looking better. You are still getting a mix of confident lines and a bit of wobble so this is something you definitely need to keep working on and you will get plenty of practice during the 250 box challenge. I'm going to mark this as complete and you can move on to the 250 box challenge. Good luck!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:28 PM, Tuesday May 21st 2024

Thank you for your time and words.

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