Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

3:24 PM, Wednesday September 30th 2020

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Post with 13 views. Lesson 1

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4:57 AM, Thursday October 1st 2020

Hi, and welcome to drawabox! Let’s take this one exercise at a time~

Your superimposed lines look good. They’re smooth, and properly lined up at the start, but not always of a consistent trajectory, so be careful in regards to that. The ghosted lines/planes look good, too. I’m pleased to see how boldly you’ve missed some of your points.

The table of ellipses exercise looks okay. The ellipses could certainly stand to be a little more confident/circular, but it’s understandable that they’re not, given their size. Small movements are a lot harder from the shoulder, so, as you’ve likely already noticed, the smaller your marks are, the harder it is to control them. As such, I’d recommend drawing a little bigger; definitely in the beginning, but also after you become comfortable with the motion, too. Anyway, outside of that, things look good, though I’d have liked to see a little more variety in regards to their degrees/angles, too. The ellipses in planes exercise looks good. Your ellipses are fairly rounded, for the most part, though their rotations don’t quite match up here. This is to be expected, given the increase in difficulty, but, just the same, see if ghosting these a little longer solves that problem. The funnels exercise is a little sloppy. There’s quite a few instances of an ellipse being misaligned, and a lot of spacing issues, too. A page of funnels might seem like a quick thing, because there’s not as many ellipses here as there are in the earlier exercises, but it should take you roughly the same amount of time, despite that. Though there’s fewer ellipses, each of them has quite a few more boxes it needs to tick to be correct, resulting in (ideally) a longer ghosting time. So, if you can, try to think about what an exercise is asking of you before jumping into it, and you’ll be more likely to avoid things like this.

The plotted perspective exercise looks good. The rough perspective exercise is definitely a little lacking, but it improves considerably throughout the set. I think if you’d spread this out over a longer period of time, and maybe had a few more boxes per frame, you’d be in a better place by the end, but it’s not so bad as it is. Mainly, you just want to double check that the points you’ve placed result in lines that are properly parallel/perpendicular to the horizon, as per the instructions, and that they head to the VP. After you’ve ghosted your line to it, and placed a point where you think it should go, ghost it again, to confirm. You’re the one who decides when to commit to a point, so do so when you’re ready- no sooner. Nice attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. The boxes on the axes lines rotate nicely, though the diagonals a little less so, and their front faces are fairly snug, though the same thing can’t be said for their back faces. Still, you’ve seen this to the end, to the best of your ability, and, really, that’s all we’re after. As you do this exercise again and again, try to improve it a little bit at a time. The next time you attempt it, go at it a little slower, perhaps, and really try to think of the purpose each line is trying to serve. The organic perspective exercise looks decent, though I notice a lot of overshooting here. I want to confirm that you are, in fact, using the ghosting method to draw these lines (place 2 points, ghost, execute), rather than just extending them arbitrarily. If you’re not, you absolutely should be. That technique is meant to be used for every single mark that you make. Outside of that, this looks fine. You’ve been mindful of your foreshortening, keeping it shallow, and consistent, and the increase in size is well done, too. As a result, your boxes convey the illusion of flow well.

There’s a couple of things here that need to improve before you’re able to move on to the box challenge, but this is something that can be done a little bit at a time. So, take note of the things I mentioned, and don’t neglect to warm up! Feel free to move on~

Next Steps:

250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:27 PM, Thursday October 1st 2020

Thanks for being so detailed in your feedback.

I'll take a look at the points you mentioned and try a few of the exercises again with your comments in mind before moving on.

Thanks again

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