Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:18 PM, Wednesday July 14th 2021

Lesson 1 - Lines, Ellipses and Boxes - Album on Imgur

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

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

Hello. I'm new to DAB, but I am glad to have found this wonderful resource so far. I'm not quite sure how this works, but I'll gladly listen to any criticisms that'll allow me to better my ability for the future. This was quite difficult for me, as it is the first time I ever did anything of the sort, but it has taught me a great deal about my current understanding (or, better put, perhaps, the lack thereof) of the concepts addressed in the lesson, as well as their importance. Thank you for your time and consideration, mates.

2 users agree
9:53 PM, Wednesday July 14th 2021

Hey there welcome!

  • Superimposed lines. These look pretty good. THe main thing you should work on here is reducing the arching of the lines. To do that you just need to practice your confidence and improve your capacity to draw straihgt lines. THis takes time so just keep at it

  • Ghosted lines. The main thing i notice here is how most of the lines are not straight. You should priortise confidence and maintaining a straight non wobbly line. This takes priority over accuracy. To improve on this i suggest you do the ghosting motion several times and then commit to it. Dont hesitate,dont do it to slow and not worry about hitting the other dot. Other then that i see a few good ones so i think you are on the right path you just need to practice more.

  • Ghosted planes. These look a lot better in terms of confidence and straight lines. not much to add here aside from what i already said earlier. Just keep at it with the same ideas and feedback i gave earlier. Also remember to plot your lines. It can help in the ghosted planes.

  • Table of Elipses. This is a great start! The main thing of note is that some of the elipses go outside of the table/box which you want to avoid. Some of them also seem to lack confidence but overall it is very good. Overall you seem to also have rememberd to draw through the elipse 2-3 times. Good work on that.

  • Funnels. Good work on these! Same note about the elipses as earlier. Some of them seem to sort of get a bit missy/jumbeld together near the middle. The main thing i notice is your minor axis is often missalligned. IT should cut your funnel/elipses in 2 symetrical halves. Most/all of your funnels are sort of missalligned and are not evenly divided and the axis often does not aim in the right direction. To improve this you should just keep practicing and take it slow. Good work

  • PLotted perspective. I cant really see that well due to the image being kind of blurry and zoomed out. For future submissions make sure they are good quality. But from what i can see these look good/Solid. You seem to understand the theory behind it and lines look clean and solid. Nice work

  • Rough Perspective. I cant really see that well here either but the red lines appear to converge pretty evenly to the vansihing point so it seems you did a good work on it. The boxes themselves look a bit wobbly and non confident however. Remember the rules of ghosting and having clear plotted points as i noted in the ghosting part.

  • Rotated boxes. I was never taht good with this one myself so i cant give to much feedback here. But they look good from what i can see. The lines are kept close togetehr overall and they have some visible rotation. Good work

  • Organic perspective. Good start! The main objecithve here is tp ush the perspective and "organic" part of it and less about the boxes being accurate. However i think you should try to really push it more by having a larger vareity in the size of the boxes. So try to make some of them really big and some small. Right now many of the boxes are roughly the same size and just sort of repeat. Aside from that it looks good. Nice work.

Overall a very good start. Well done!

I think you have done a good job. However i think it would be wise to redo the ghosted lines and superimposed lines for that little bit of extra practice. While you wont suddenly get a lot better by doing a few pages i think it is worth doing them with the feedback i gave in mind. Other then that i think you have done a good job and should move on to the box challenge after you have done the revision and shared it.

Next Steps:

2 filled pages of the Superimposed Lines exercise

1 filled page of the Ghosted Lines exercise

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:21 PM, Thursday July 15th 2021

Hello, and thank you so much for your thoughtful and timely reply! Thanks to your feedback, I have become more aware of the considerable aspects that I can now continuously work on to improve. And, as requested, I have done the exercises listed once more.

Here's the link to the exercises done for this revision: https://imgur.com/a/BT7tFWU

Something that is worth mentioning is that, from the second page of the Superimposed Lines exercise onwards, I had to work with a felt tip pen that is smaller than the one I have used until now. I hope that is not a problem, as I'm looking to buy more of the pens like my previous one to avoid situations such as these in the future.

I am somewhat frustrated that there appears to have been no significant improvement over the first itteration of these exercises that I have done (if anything, while I was making these, it felt like I was worse than the first time around, though that could just be my personal bias speaking). Despite my best efforts, I still could not comply with keeping the longer lines straight and unarched, though I suppose that it is a matter of time until I can confidently make such marks.

I will continue to work on the Lesson 1 exercises in the future, perhaps as a warmup prior to my coming challenges, as they have already proven invaluable to me. If there is anything that I should know outside of what you have already mentioned, please feel free to tell me! Once again, I thank you for your time and consideration, my friend.

4:10 PM, Wednesday August 11th 2021

Hey! I totaly forgot to log in so im sorry for responding only a month later. But i am sure you moved on and have made progress.

I just want you to know it is totaly normal to feel like you aitn getting anywhere. Getting good straight lines take time. Just keep practicing.

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.
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)

Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.

Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.

These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.

We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.

Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.

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