Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
3:38 AM, Monday January 17th 2022
Hey I actually finished Lesson 1. I swear this is big for me
Hello I’ll be taking a look at your lesson 1 homework
Lines
-Starting with the superimposed lines you are doing a good job starting at a clearly defined point and keeping all of the wavering on one side, your lines don’t wobble too much, this a great first attempt at this exercise.
-Moving on to the ghosed lines, I notice that they tend to arch slightly, make sure you are engaging your whole arm when executing your marks ,and try to catch yourself when you are using another pivot
-The ghosted planes are no different from the ghosted lines, here your linework looks confident and smooth. You are using the ghosting method to good effect.
Ellipses
-Your tables of ellipses are turning out nicely, but I think you are still a little hesitant when drawing them, some of them wobble, so try to loosen up and try to draw them fast to improve their smoothness. Keep in mind that we want to prioritize confidence over accuracy.
-Moving on to the ellipses in planes, you should aim to have even and elliptical shapes for your ellipses, don’t focus too much on having your ellipses touch the four sides of the plane as it can make them distorted and wobbly.
-In the funnels you are missing the spacing, keep in mind that your ellipses have to fit in snugly within the boundaries you have set for them. Also keep in mind that the minor axis has to cut each ellipses in halves. One thing you could have done with these is start with a narrower degree ellipse in the center and then widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel. Please check the example here.
Boxes
-Starting with the rough perspective exercise, I like to see that you have kept the confident linework here, what you need to improve is the alignment of each side of the boxes, keep in mind that they have to be fully parallel when they are horizontal or perpendicular when they are vertical, you sometimes miss by a few degrees. Your estimations to the vanishing are good and they will improve with practice.
-Your rotated boxes are turning out well, despite all of the technical reminders that you have written in your notes, this exercise is meant to be complicated, so don’t worry.
You have kept the gaps between boxes narrow as they should be. the rotation is clearly there, one thing you could have used is lineweight to specify the overlaps.
-Finishing with the organic perspective, your box constructions are well done, just try to avoid any boxes with diverging lines, all of your sets of lines should converge. But this is something you will learn in the box challenge.
So good job so far, head on to the 250 box challenge.
Next Steps:
250 Box Challenge
Thanks for the advice!
Hi there! I'll try to critique to the best of my ability! Completing the first lesson is a lot of work, so congratulations and let's keep giving our best!
LINES
At the first exercise It looks like you are doing the lines with one long and fast stroke to get them straight , but with little control of where it ends because it's too fast! I can you are putting the effort to do it right, so try doing it a bit slower (but not slow! Just slower) and firmly, it will get really wobbly at first but as you develop the necessary muscle it gets easier and more precise! Just lile you did on the ghosted lines exercises!
The accuracy issues shows up in the ghosted planes exercise, and trying to do a bit more "ghosting" before actually putting the line down might help!
ELLIPSES
The ellipses are looking nice! The ellipses on the funnels exercise are anchored to one of the lines (most probably the starting point of the elipse drawing) and that might be the reason it doesn't fill the appropriate space. Try ghosting and slowly putting the pencil down, thinking more about filling a space instead of connecting two points (I hope this is not bad advice!)
BOXES
The boxes are great too. They are by far the hardest exercice here, and it feels you really took the time to do them (even though you didn't read the instructions properly and you know! Don't do that!) and the end result is great. There is a lot of overshooting on the market edges, you can correct these by putting little dots on the direction you want to do the line AND THEN drawing the line with the ghosting method (Like he did here https://youtu.be/jlJ6rwj3PKg at around 10:40).
OVERWALL
Great job! Hope you keep having fun drawing and learning
Thanks for the critique! I'll keep that advice in mind :)
I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.
Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.
Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.
Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.
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