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8:32 PM, Monday May 13th 2024
Hello there. I'm going to be critiquing your lesson 1 work. Without further ado, let's see how you did, aye?
Lines:
Your lines are smooth, drawn confidently from start point to end point and clearly using your shoulder. Your lines start most of the time comfortably from the starting point. In Ghosted lines and planes we can see that they tend to overshoot their intended targets a bit, but this is nothing to fret over yet. Our end goal is accuracy, but it's something that we build towards with all the exercises, warmups, 50% rule and whatever other projects you have.
In the Superimposed lines exercise, it seems to me you haven't drawn the first line of each line cluster with a ruler. The first line serves as a guide for you to aim towards, so not drawing it undermines the exercise a little. Ultimately it's not that big of a deal, but when this exercise comes up again in your warmups, do put the first line down properly, okay?
A minor thing about the ghosted planes: You didn't need to do four pages of them. You could've drawn the ellipses into the first two pages that you did.
Ellipses:
In the tables of ellipses exercise, you are still exuding the same confidence in your markmaking as with the lines. In the ellipses in planes and funnels exercises some of your ellipses start getting a bit wobbly, which most likely happens because of the awkward edges you have to hit. Ghosting a few extra times and letting your muscle memory do more work may help. Remember: First and foremost you should focus on confidence, and then accuracy. As said earlier, it's something you build up over time.
You have drawn through most of your ellipses two to three times, although sometimes you lapse into only drawing the ellipse once. Two is ideal, three is okay. In the tables of ellipses exercise, it's also ideal if you drew the ellipses as shown in the example homework: As big as possible in a single frame, while touching all the available edges (top, bottom, left and right). It's not a world-shattering mistake, but you're not quite getting the intended practice that the lesson is trying to give you.
Lastly, you have drawn the curves and axises in the Funnels exercise free-hand. You're supposed to only be focusing on drawing ellipses here, not curves and straight lines. Additionally, it becomes much harder for you to determine whether or not you're keeping your ellipses aligned, which is the aim of the exercise.
Plotted perspective: You have completed the exercise just as intended. Lines are done with a ruler, and you're utilizing a two-point perspective. Additionally, you have managed to find the spots to draw the back corner with through the jungle of lines. The back corners of the boxes are slightly slanted, but it doesn't imply that you've done something wrong. Taking your time with your ruler and being careful will help you out with tackling this when you are trying it again in the future.
Rough perspective: This is where your line confidence wavers a little. This is entirely normal, as we're now dabbling with a little more complex shapes than lines and ellipses. If you aren't already, remember that you are allowed to rotate the paper around to help you out here; being able to draw from any direction is something that you'll develop through drawing in general, and is not something you need to focus on here. Additionally, remember the original instructions for drawing a line in this course: Ghost your lines and draw with your shoulder. Lastly, a tip: Ultimately, the boxes are simply a yet another cluster of lines.
The wobbly lines have resulted in some off-shape rectangles for the front and back side. It's not too bad, but it bears reminding: You're supposed to keep the front and back sides at the same angle as the edges of the frame, so you can use those as guides.
The rest of the exercise is done well. You have tried drawing boxes both close to the vanishing point and further away. This is good variation.
Rotated boxes: This is very well done! You have started the exercise with the five squares and the crosshair, and once you started drawing the boxes, you kept the gaps between tight and consistent and drew all the boxes, even the nasty ones in the corners. Each box is rotating towards its own vanishing point, and you're drawing through the boxes and we can get a glimpse at what's behind the box. The back sides seem to be the ones you struggled the most with: If you look at the front sides only, you can see that the boxes are indeed forming a ball, but when you focus on the back sides, they make more of a square. In the future, this is the part you might want to focus on. All in all, great job!
By the way, you seem to have gained some line confidence back here. Good on you!
Organic perspective: You have drawn a squiggly line which you are using as a guide to draw the boxes. Then, you are varying the size of the boxes as they follow along this line. This is good. However, your could try to keep the boxes' size difference a bit more consistent: Right now you have a bit of small boxes here, a bit bigger boxes there, and then one big box at the end. The general trend is that your boxes do get bigger on average, but it doesn't quite give that "getting closer" feeling. At least you are varying the sizes of the boxes, which is good for now.
You seem to be having a bit of trouble with converging the boxes' sides to their respective vanishing points. Sometimes one of the sides converge but the other doesn't, and sometimes they diverge instead. At the end of the second page you seem to have already gained some understanding on this, so I imagine that you don't need any additional guidance from me, plus you will be getting a lot more practice with this in the 250 box challenge. However, if you'd like some additional materials for this, you might want to check out this video by ScyllaStew, and this picture in its description.
Conclusion:
All in all, you have done a good job. Most of the time your lines are confidently drawn, and while some wobbling is present when you get some more things to keep in mind while drawing, as long as you keep ghosting the lines and drawing from your shoulder, I'm certain that eventually you'll be able to draw any kind of line smoothly. You took some liberties with the instructions in some exercises, but not to an unacceptable degree; most of the time you are following them well. It bears reminding that the exercises are designed for very specific purposes, and variations may cost you some learning opportunities.
That's the first lesson finished. Hooray! Give yourself a pat on the back. Next up is the 250 box challenge, and if you haven't, you might want to spend some time with the 50% rule. Good luck!
Next Steps:
Add the lesson 1 exercises to your warmups, and move on to the 250 box challenge
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Staedtler Pigment Liners
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).