Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:37 AM, Monday November 16th 2020

Drawabox - Google Drive

Drawabox - Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SdjR3DEe9i2Y_U1pAxbUcboErna9QJSL?usp=sharing

Hello,

I just finished all exercises from Lesson1 and would like hear some thoughts/critique before starting next chapters.

To be honest this is my second attempt at this course (I tried it ~year ago and got stuck on rotated boxes - any attempt I made did not look even remotely presentable), I lost earlier pages and drew everything once again.

Plotted perspective is on different paper because I forgot my sketchbook and borrowed few pages from nearby printer. I also forgot to take a photo of planes exercise before drawing ellipses on them, sorry.

I hope google drive link is okay? (If not I will re-upload images to imgur or something else)

thanks :)

Daniel

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7:06 AM, Monday November 16th 2020

Hey hey, welcome. Drive works fine, though imgur would be preferred, if it’s all the same to you. Let’s take this one exercise at a time.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these look good. They’re mostly smooth (the arcing ones a little less so, unfortunately; remember that them being smooth is far more important than whether they’re sticking to the guideline), properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. The ghosted lines/planes look good, save for the occasional wobble near their ends. Here, too, it’s more important for a line to be smooth, and straight, than it is for it to stop at the correct place. Try to be a little less conscious of the end points, if you can.

The table of ellipses exercise looks good, though I notice that your ellipses will sometimes start off a little stiff/wobbly, before stabilizing in a future rotation. There’s 2 reasons that this might be happening. The first, is that you’re simply not ghosting enough- committing before you’re ready, as it is. The second, is that you’re letting your brain get involved in the execution stage, too, and it’s trying to course-correct your lines in real time. It shouldn’t, however, that’s why we split this into two stages, so that we may use the first one to figure out how the line needs to behave, and the second one to execute it, confident that we’ve built up the muscle memory to be able to. Be careful, also, not to go around your ellipses too much. 2-3 times is the recommendation; ideally 2. The ellipses in planes exercise looks solid, save for the occasional bumpy ellipse. Remember that the smoothness, and roundness of your ellipses is far more important than their accuracy (how snuggly they fit into the frame.) Save for the aforementioned issues, the funnels exercise looks good- your ellipses being snug, and properly cut in half by the minor axis; it’s just a matter of fixing these confidence issues.

Though there’s an extra page of it (the requirement is 1), the plotted perspective exercise looks clean- nicely done. The rough perspective exercise is mostly good. There’s some issues in regards to line confidence (remember that what you’re doing here is no different from what you were doing in the ghosted lines exercise; if your lines could be confident there, they can be confident here, too), and automatic reinforcing (draw each line once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out), but the convergences themselves look good, and improve throughout the set. I can tell that you’re properly considering each point, by the number of unused ones on the page; to get even better, of course, spend even longer planning. Over time, you’ll develop a feel for it, and it won’t take you nearly as long- not to worry. Solid attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. It’s big, the boxes are snug, and, though it’s a little too slight at times, they still rotate. The only thing you need to watch out for, really, is the confidence of your lines, especially in regards to the lineweight, and, of course, the occasional reinforcing. Save for that, the organic perspective exercise looks good. Your boxes properly follow the flow line, increasing in size as they do, but maintaining a consistent, but shallow, rate of foreshortening.

Solid work on this lesson- I’ll be marking it as complete, so feel free to move on to the box challenge.

Next Steps:

250 box challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
7:13 PM, Tuesday November 17th 2020

Hey, thanks for feedback :)

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