About halfway through my first rough perspective drawing, I (kinda) quit drawabox. I was busy studying for exams so I couldn't find the right time to complete it, up until recently. It took a bit to get used to the ghosting line method again, but after the rotating boxes exercise it became more comfortable for me.
Heya! This is my first critique here so I hope I can guide you in the right direction!
Just a question, is this your 2nd time doing Lesson 1? As I see you have the badge of completing it.
* Exercises 1-3
Overall great linework, 3 has that extra cleanliness too, awesome job! Ex. 1 has a very few starting points that have some splitting (for example the bottom one on page 2) but the rest are nice and clean, in time and with practice, even the ending points will even out. I personally recommend Ex. 1 and 3 as a common warm-up for the 250 Boxes challenge (1 helps with tracing lines accurately, 3 is great prep for nailing those boxes overall).
* Exercises 4-6
I can clearly see you're comfortable with ellipses as well, nice! Maybe don't be too afraid to have the ellipses be larger than the boxes you're trying to fit them into in Ex. 5 - I got the same piece of advice actually, so I'm just passing it down haha.
* Exercise 7
Nothing needed to say here, nice job. Just get that longer ruler.
Improvement is visible here, even with the pause for exams, all the line convergence inaccuracies will improve with the 250 Boxes challenge so I recommend to do this as a warm-up a couple times and be mindful of the most visible mistakes when drawing the boxes (for example the farthest edges not converging towards the vanishing point/enough, it's a very common thing for everyone and it will improve throughout the challenge, I can atest to that myself).
The Box Rotation exercise should result in a more spherical shape and the profiles/side-views should have been smaller (compared to the front-facing box) and connected to this overall "form of boxes". That said, your lines here are better and the hatching is nice and sleek too. In addition, in Ex. 10 I notice you're much more aware of the box size relative to the distance from the viewer, especially on the last page, I just love how the very last frame turned out, very pleasing to the eye! The amount and frequency of rotating/varying boxes also increases so you're getting the hang of that as well.
Next Steps:
Overall, I'd say you're ready to tackle the 250 Boxes challenge so I'm marking this as complete. As I mentioned above, I recommend warming up with Ex.1 and 3 often during the challenge, and giving a few more tries to Ex. 8 every once in a while too (it's nice seeing the improvement there after a certain amount of boxes in the challenge). Well done with completing this, even after a pause! Wishing you luck and patience with the following challenges and lessons, and I hope your exams went well!
Thank you for the feedback! I was not expecting to receive one so quickly!
(To answer your question, no this is my first time doing lesson one. I'm not sure why the badge is there.)
Most of the stuff from lesson 1 to 3 was done a lot earlier in the year, so I was a bit worried that the line work that I had completed didn't amount to much (Thank goodness it didn't). Anyway, I took time to go over the critique, and really compared that to my exercises.
Looking back at lesson 5, I can remember being uncomfortable with my ellipses going outside of the lines. I guess my brain got the better of me, and opted for cleanliness for actual practice. I'll be sure to add some ellipse drawings in my warm-ups. (And maybe pass down your.. passed down advice too hehe.)
Also, thank you for the feedback in exercise 8. I couldn't find out where I was going wrong in my perspective; in some boxes, there was something way off about it, but I couldn't pin-point exactly on how to fix them.
Ah, the rotated boxes exercise. I sectioned it off by quarters, so I can complete one, and see how to improve so I can do better on the next. Although, I had a lot of trouble grasping the perspective on the outer boxes, and couldn't exactly make them sit where I'd like them too, but that's all just part of the process.
Again, thanks a lot for the tips. I'm honestly surprised that this was your first time critiquing someone!
Sometimes the feedback is really quick here haha.
That's odd, I know you get more avatars for increasing your reputation but they're different from the ones you get for completing lessons, I guess there are exceptions or errors.
Great to hear about your effort to understand these points! Unless you've done so already, you can also try comparing your work with Uncomfy's with the new skills and knowledge you've gained and see if you further notice any points of value or just deepen the awareness of your strengths and weaknesses.
I can feel that about Ex. 5 as I did the same mistake haha, though you don't have such a problem with the ellipses being noticeably smaller than the frame when compared to mine. What helps me is to rather imagine the points on each edge of the frame where it will touch the ellipse, instead of focusing on the whole edges.
Regarding Ex. 8, it really is too early to have accurate perspective, especially as it's not just a problem of knowledge but rewiring your brain/eyes to see it, to see the approximate location of the vanishing point and see how parallel a set of lines is, for example. Once you do start to notice your errors in the 250 Boxes before you check with a ruler, though, the feeling is priceless.
Yeah I think the point of the Rotated Boxes Ex. is to just bite through it even if it's gonna look terrible and try to take out as much knowledge as you can, even if you're not able to execute it yet.
Oh no I've given feedback a number of times but it's my first here, and probably the first time it's this well structured too haha. You're more than welcome!
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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