Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:52 PM, Wednesday October 14th 2020

Drawabox Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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6:39 PM, Wednesday October 14th 2020

Hi 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 decent start. You are doing a good job keeping a clearly defined starting point although I do feel that your line is a bit too shaky and wavering because you are probably a little too concerned with accuracy and are making your mark too slowly. I would try making your mark in one swift motion almost without thinking. It will be less accurate at first but will be much straighter overall. This same principle rolls over into your ghosted lines and planes and one of the main reasons we use the ghosting method. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/2/smooth I do feel that your ghosted lines and planes are improving in this regard although I'm still seeing some wobble and wavering at times.

Your table of ellipses is having somewhat of the same issues with deformed ellispes. You are doing a great job drawing through all of your ellipses and I can see that you are shooting for smooth ellipse shapes for the most part and are showing real improvement throughout these pages and with your ellipses in planes as well. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed The likely reason you are still getting deformed ellipse shapes on occasion is that ellipses are hard to draw and you are still probably just a little too concernced about accuracy at times. Try and put down your marks confidently and rely on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark. Your ellipses in funnels are having some issues with tilting off the minor axis that you should be aware of as well. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned Your ellipses are definitely improving but there's plenty of room for improvement here so keep practicing these during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks fine nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective boxes turned out pretty well although you are having quite a bit of wobbly linework here. This is most likely happening because you are either skipping steps in the ghosting method or have reverted to drawing from your wrist which is something I see a lot with this exercise. So I just want to remind you to always ghost your lines multiple times and to draw from your shoulder with confidence. Even on shorter lines like these. Your wrist should be reserved for detail work only. You did 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 this is something that will become more intuitive and get better with practice.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. One of the biggest pieces of advice I can give here would have been to draw this bigger. Drawing bigger helps with thinking through spatial problems much more easily. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent for the most part. This is a hard exercise and you weren't quite nailing your rotations which is perfectly normal for now. This is a great exercise to come back to after the 250 box challenge to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic box exercise turned out pretty well. Your linework is looking more confident here which is good to see. Your box constructions are relying pretty heavily on parallel lines and in quite a few cases are diverging instead of converging so the 250 box challenge will be a really good next step of practice for you.

This was a good submission overall and you showed some nice growth with these pages. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to teach pretty well. Keep using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder and keep practicing those ellipses. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
3:18 AM, Friday October 16th 2020

Thank you so much for looking over my work and giving me the green light to proceed to the 250 box challenge. I have a few questions if you don't mind me asking. With the ghosting method and the quality of line feedback, I agree 100% with you. I feel like when I am doing the ghosting, my arm is in it, I visualize the line as i ghost it in, i am all set! But the second my pen touches paper the muscle memory is out the window because my brain takes over with "Am I holding the pen right, Is this really my shoulder or is it my elbow, or worse my wrist, why is thinking of relaxing is more stressful" and the list goes on. Are there any recommendations you have to overcome even just one of these things?

Once again, Thank you so much for taking the time to look over my work

-Chris

3:46 AM, Friday October 16th 2020

That hesitation and fear is common, and while the simple answer is to quiet your mind and force yourself to just execute without further thought, there is value in better understanding why the ghosting method exists.

I explain this in this response to another student who was struggling with similar issues, so give it a read.

5:56 AM, Saturday November 7th 2020

I must apologize that I have taken so long to respond to you're reply, I imagine how busy you are and how valuable you're time is. Like alot of people, I've spent October doing one of thousands of month long challenges. I know you're words of advice are for your courses and I'm free to do as I please outside the realm of drawabox. These words kept creeping in to my mind however. and they did help me alot. I have noticed improvement on the hesitation I felt a little over a month ago thanks to them.

Thank you for taking the time to help me!

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