Hello Kriss,

Congrats on finishing Lesson 2! It is quite a daunting lesson, and you should be proud of getting through it and getting this far.

I'm happy that you fought your urges to grind, it's a pitfall that we all fall in sometimes, but we must continue ahead lest we get stuck drawing boxes for years until we can draw a perfect freehand cube.

Starting off with

Thinking in 3d Section

Arrows

Starting with your arrows, you're doing a good job by building them in chunks as it helps you mantain an arrow's consistency more often. You're also doing great on the hatching and by pushing the negative space between your arrows overlaps, keep that up.

The biggest problem you face in this exercise is actually the unconfident, stiff linework,. You have some wobble in your lines, and sometimes you try to correct your mistakes by redrawing them. Remember that for Drawabox purposes mistakes cannot be fixed, only improved upon in the next attempt.

I believe that you clearly understood the purpose of these exercise and how arrows must move through space, you just need to work on your lines to get to the next level, don't forget to tackle your weaknesses in your warm ups.

Organic Forms/Sausages

First, don't cross out mistakes. And now onto your actual sausages, you're mostly grinding a single sausage rotation, both in your sausages with ellipses and contours. Remember there is at least three.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871234269741066/790354487055351818/QTEqgJa.png

You're doing a mostly okay job of keeping your forms the desired sausage shape, but some of them feel too short in length in my opinion, you could have tried more variation with their sizes and lengths, and you struggle with the ends being kind of flat instead of spherical.

When it comes to your ellipses many are wobbly, deformed and hardly have any variation of degrees, this shouldn't happen even if the sausage is straight, here's an example of it with a top and a front view:

https://imgur.com/rXLBxSg

Your contours also face this problem, and you don't hook them to your sausages correctly, that ends up flattening your form.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/curves

Here are some photos showing how ellipses' degrees vary. Photos by user 'Slate', and often linked by Optimus

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426350263884972032/IMG_5773.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426351743190695937/IMG_5775.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426351973990662144/IMG_5774.JPG

Texture and Detail

Texture Analysis

Good job on getting through these lessons, they can be quite intimidating especially if you've never attempted textures before.

You've done a good job with your first two textures, but I feel like with your last texture you start to rely on your memory a bit too much, as there appears to be hatching and scribbling to convey your texture, instead of solid cast shadows.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/formshading

I believe your exercise would have benefited if you took some more time with it, it's very important to be patient and pace yourself well for such time intensive exercises like texture analysis.

Your gradient also shifts too harshly too fast, it's very easy to spot the black bar to the left in your last column, this type of harsh transition wouldn't be possible in the real world with the type of "lightsource" we're trying to apply to this study.

You also draw single lines sometimes, for more dynamic shadows it's best to approach them like this:

https://m.imgur.com/M9JJfr4

Texture Dissections

The first thing that jumps out to me is that you drew your sausages for this exercise too small, which impacts greatly the quality of your textures. Drawing textures too small makes it very, very hard to apply the details properly, especially with a size 0.5mm fineliner, it's almost always gonna be too big, in big sausages this is not a problem because there's still gonna be enough space on the page.

You're also relying more on drawing outlines and negative space to convey your textures, which is why it gets difficult to create a nice gradient and focal points of detail. You also have trouble wrapping textures around your forms. Ones that stand out the most to me are pineapple and the scales.

I believe your work would have greatly benefited if you paced yourself better and drew bigger. Since some dissections look overworked and others look unfinished.

Construction

Form intersections

All of your forms feel solid and like they exist within the same scene, good job, keep that up.

What I wish to point out instead is that you're not following drawabox principles when doing this exercise, you're drawing very loosely and sketchy, redoing many lines and overshooting a lot. Your hatching also feels hastily done and rushed. Remember that it doesn't matter if we're making 1 line, or 100 of them, the ghosting method should be applied to all of them.

And again, don't cross out mistakes.

Your first page of intersections feel like it doesn't actually have any intersections ( except one, the two boxes in the middle ). This gets fixed in the next pages, although you do miss some intersections like the box and cylinder in the bottom left in the second page, the box and cone in the right corner, and the box/cone and box/cylinder in the last page.

Here's Optimus handy guide for intersections:

https://imgur.com/a/6Inx5Bz

Organic form intersections

Many of your sausages feel solid.

However the hastily done lines makes it feel rushed, unfinished and the shadows hurt the illusion of these forms being piled on top of each other. You're also having trouble with your shadows, your lightsource is a bit inconsistent, and your shadows don't follow the form of the sausage they're being cast on to.

There are also no shadows on the ground when there should be.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/9/shadows

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think you that while you understood the purpose of these exercises, you didn't understand how to properly apply it. You could have executed the textures section much better if you had been more patient and given each exercise the time it needs. If it takes you 20 minutes, it takes you 20 minutes, if it takes you 6 hours, it takes you 6 hours, if it takes you a month, it takes you a month. On top of using more of your page right away.

I don't feel like you're ready for Lesson 3 yet, each lesson builds on top of one another and proper sausages will be especially important later on, I'd like you to do some revisions to understand these exercises before moving on to something more complicated.

Please read over the organic forms section and organic intersections lesson, then reply with

• 1 page of sausages with contour lines

• 1 page of organic intersections