Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:06 AM, Monday March 8th 2021

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/YjdHaoV.jpg

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

Thank you for the huge welcome I've felt in the community and for the feedback to whoever critiques my homework.

My own critique of my work (the areas I see for improvement):

Lines:

Wobble in lines. In drawabox you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy. - I'm trying here but I do wobble sometimes. Before DaB I was definitely a chicken scratcher, but this is improving even in my other work now. My lines get wobblier as I get to boxes though, because I want them to be accurate.

Arching lines. Sometimes the lines will arch a bit: trying to arch consciously to the opposite direction is helping me.

Repeating lines. No matter how off a line is, a student should never repeat it, they should kept the line as it if were correct and move on. - I have a question on this: If I can tell a line is in the wrong place for a box, can I do the other lines semi-ignoring it, or do i need to show the whole box wrong, but meeting at single corners. e.g. if I undershoot a corner, is that now the new corner?

In the ellipses section:

As I started drawing ellipses I realised I really really couldn't do circles and I wanted to. Sometimes two rules clashed - keeping the ellpses in bounds and keeping equal ellipses within that section. I prioritised keeping the ellipses equal when they were circles. Where overlaps occured I used the 3 sides to determine the size I was going for. I've included some pages of my warm ups (green paper) to show I've continued to practice ellipses, because to my eye this is my shakiest section.

On funnels, a couple of the largest ellipses do not have minor axis (the line in the middle) which cut the ellipse in 2 symetrical halves.

I would love to learn how to make the ellipses in planes look like they are on planes... I'll keep practicing these in warm ups.

In the boxes section:

I'm not gonna lie, I'm really happy with the improvement I've made in my understanding of boxes. I can see mistakes in the perspective on my organic boxes page. I'm looking forward to working on that in the 250 boxes challenge.

0 users agree
3:13 AM, Tuesday March 9th 2021

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. My name is Rob and I'm a teaching assistant for Drawabox who will be handling your lesson one critique. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes turned out well. You are using the ghosting method to good effect to get confident linework with a pretty decent deal of accuracy that will get better and better with practice.

Your tables of ellipses is coming along well. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on a consistent smooth ellipse shape although you are slightly deforming them quite often. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes but you are still having issues with deforming ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues but they are showing some improvement in that regard although quite a few of these feel pretty stiff still. There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape and accuracy so make sure you keep practicing these in your warmups as they can take a while to get used to.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some wobble creeping back into some of your lines. Once again this is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. The other possibility is that you have reverted back to drawing from your wrist for some of these lines. Just something to keep an eye on. You should be drawing from your shoulder for basically every line you draw even shorter ones. The wrist should be reserved for detail work only. You are doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice and you were already showing improvement with the second page. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be straight up and down. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. You're not completely nailing your rotations but this is a pretty good overall effort and really quite well done considering the difficulty of this exercise. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are looking pretty good. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. Your box constructions are decent for the most part but there are some wonky ones here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a really solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence is coming along nicely but keep up with your ellipse practice as they still feel a bit stiff overall. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well. Regarding your question about using a "wrong line" the way I was approaching when I was going through these lessons is that I simply treated the misdrawn line as the new corner like you said. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:25 AM, Tuesday March 9th 2021
edited at 9:26 AM, Mar 9th 2021

Thank you Rob,

I solemnly swear i will continue to practice ellipses in my warm ups to the box challenge, and to try to prioritise smooth undeformed shapes over accuracy!

I'm gonna need more paper!

edited at 9:26 AM, Mar 9th 2021
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

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).

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.