Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

2:59 AM, Saturday May 23rd 2020

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Hi everyone,

I'm new to the community and just finished lesson 1! I'm so excited to be part of the Draw-a-Box community, having been a lone wolf the longest time. Seeing everyone giving their best and struggles in earnest is truly inspiring. It reminds me that I'm not alone in this journey, and my frustrations are shared by many others.

Many of you are further ahead on this journey than I am, or might have only begun. Regardless, any comments, suggestions, and crits would be greatly appreciated (tough love included)! :D

PS: Does anyone know how long it takes for the official critique to come back?

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10:27 PM, Monday May 25th 2020

Before we begin I just want to mention that in the future, when you go to scan your homework submissions, it would be better to scan your homework using the "photo" setting instead of the "drawing" setting. The drawing setting tends to up the contrast on an image and can cause you to lose some of the subtlety in your line work.

I will also bring up that in the homework you should stick to only the number of pages assigned. You want to avoid grinding while doing Drawabox and adding more work onto an already challenging workload is going to hinder you more than help. You can always, and are encouraged to, incorporate the assignments into your warms ups after the lesson is marked as complete.

Starting with your super-imposed lines I can see a lot of good straight, confident lines. I also see quite a few with wobble and possibly fading in your line work. The fading could be due to your scanner settings like I mentioned above, since it isn't present with your ghosted lines. Speaking of, your ghosted lines look pretty well done. I can see a little wobble in some areas here too. But it is very minor and less than what was in your super-imposed lines. I can also see that you did alright with getting your lines to end near the plotted point. As you continue through Drawabox you will find your accuracy improving as you continue to practice the ghosting method.

I can see in your planes that you tried to maintain those straight, consistent lines. Your planes are fairly well constructed though your lines overshoot more here than they did your ghosted lines. Something that may help is to try lifting your pen off the page to end your marks instead of trying to stop the motion of your arm. This should help you end your marks closer to where you wanted and rely more on the muscle memory you build though ghosting.

Looking at your tables of ellipses I can see that you put a lot of effort into maintaining a confident and even shape to your ellipses. Your mark making here is also more smooth and consistent. You did a pretty good job placing your ellipses so that they would fit neatly in the alloted space. In your ellipses in planes you continue to improve. One thing that might help is while the instructions say that you should draw through your ellipses "2-3 times" it may be better for you to try to stick to 2 times. This can help you maintain that more confident shape in your ellipses and focus more on ghosting and planning your mark making.

In your funnels homework I can see that some of your ellipses are slanting along the minor axis. What you can try is when you notice your ellipses are slanting, turn your paper until they line up correctly.

With your rough perspective boxes I can see that you tried to plot out your boxes correctly. For the most part I can see that your horizontal lines try to stay parallel with the horizon and your vertical lines perpendicular. A lot of your boxes do manage to converge on or near your plotted vanishing point. This is something you will work on more in the next steps so this is a good start. The biggest struggle I see here is with your line quality. There is a lot of wobbling here and some areas where you either tried to correct your work or went about adding line weight without ghosting through your lines properly.

As you continue through Drawabox and being constructing more complex forms, it is important to remember that each mark you make, no matter how small should be executed with as much time and planning as needed as explained here. Also, when you go to add weight to a line you want to approach that the same way you do any other part of your construction. That means preparation, planning and ghosting through your lines so that when you execute your mark it blends seamlessly with the existing mark.

In the case of some of your marks looking like you tried to fix mistakes I would suggest that you read this comment by Uncomfortable here. In this comment he goes into detail about hesitation and moving past mistakes in Drawabox.

For your rotated boxes I'm going to comment only on the first one in the album. You do a better job with your construction in this assignment. Your boxes have a good amount of rotation along the major axes and your gaps stay fairly narrow and consistent. The additional line weight you added improves a bit here too and I can see you took more care and did more planning with your mark making over all in this exercise.

You have a good start with your organic perspective boxes. I can see you tried to get your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing point and your line weight is a bit cleaner here as well. In the next steps you will have plenty of opportunity to work more on the issues I have pointed out. Remember to take your time, plan out your marks and ghost through every mark you make. And please remember to only do the pages assigned to you as the extra work wont be of much benefit until after your lesson homework as been critiqued.

Next Steps:

Continue to the 250 Box Challenge!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:03 PM, Tuesday May 26th 2020

Hi Scyllastew,

Thanks for your very detailed feedback! I was really concerned about the wobbly lines and knowing how to end them correctly, so your tip is going to be really helpful.

Just to make sure, for one page in the instruction, that means one side of a piece A4-sized paper right? It wasn't my intent to grind - I think I might have misunderstood the instruction...

10:08 PM, Tuesday May 26th 2020

Yeah, the page assignments mean one side of a given page, not both.

11:09 PM, Tuesday May 26th 2020

Oh sweet! Thanks for the clarification, this isn't going to be as hard as I expected.

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