Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

10:58 PM, Saturday August 8th 2020

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I'm loving this series so far! Cannot wait to do the next lesson!

2 users agree
1:02 AM, Sunday August 9th 2020

Greetings! Welcome to the course!

Superimposed lines

Ghosted Lines

  • Same comments as Superimposed Lines

  • Here it's still ok to overshoot. Ending your line at the right point will just come to you in time.

Ghosted Planes

  • The density of boxes looks good :)

  • Same wobbling lines as the other exercises

Table of Ellipses

  • The ellipses look good, though one of the things for the exercise is to try and redraw the same ellipse of the same size in each box.

  • You did a good job of positioning the ellipses :)

  • The Second Page? (album is backwards, one with 8 boxes) looks a lot better

Ellipses on Planes

  • Those are looking really good, but your brain is still driving.

Funnels

  • Remember to draw through your ellipses at least twice.

  • The ellipses should be getting wider the further out from the center

Plotted Proportion

  • Whoops, this exercise is a special one where the whole thing is supposed to be done with a ruler or straight edge (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/video)

  • More boxes of different sizes would be good.

Rough Proportion

  • Page needs to be split into thirds, and 4-6 boxes in each.

  • Use a ruler to draw lines back to the horizon extending the ones you drew

Now for the fun ones...

Rotated Boxes

Organic Perspective

  • Page needs to be split into thirds

Next Steps:

You'll need to head back to the beginning and tell your brain to stop backseat driving. Let your muscles learn to drive. The Ghosted Planes exercise is a good one to repeat as that's just a lot of lines. Remember to ghost them (move your pen through the motion just above the paper a few times, and then draw your line), and do it quickly so that your brain doesn't have time to take control back.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1 users agree
2:52 PM, Monday August 10th 2020

Hi, Hope youre having a good day. Ill just bullet point areas of improvement for you.

-your lines are quite wobbly and lack confidence throughout this lesson. Remember, consistency and fluidity of line are the most important, follow your line through with a strong stroke, look at the end point as you draw through. If you overdraw the line, this is fine, if you miss the line it is better to miss with a strong straight line rather than curve it back towards the desired end point. Draw them with a strong quick stroke, being slow will cause wobbly lines.

-practice drawing through with the elbow and the shoulder with intention for different lengths of line, the longer the line the more shoulder movement there should be.

-ghost your lines more in order to get more accuracy. This will help with the fraying you have in your superimposed line work, and also going back to your vanishing point in the rough perspective.

-ghost your lines more in order to get more consistent ellipses, they seem to be bulging or been shaped. it is better to overlap ellipses in attempt to have them touch than deform them.

-On the funnels you are deforming the ellipses in order to get them to touch the lines, its better to just make ellipses of consistent degree but increase scale in order to meet the edges of the funnel.

-you seem to lack understanding of the box form and they are becoming deformed when you attempt to rotate them. I suggest that you just practice by drawing boxes using vanishing points.

-the rotated box challenge is hard, dont worry about it for now, come back to it when you have more experience.

Overall a decent effort.

Next Steps:

I suggest you keep doing this lesson for a while until your line quality and consistency improves. I would also just keep doing the kind of drawing you enjoy and use this as a warm up. The motor skills and basic understanding of the box form are most important for the 250 box challenge and the following lessons. Submit again when you personally feel you have made some significant improvement. These exercises are good to just get you to pick up a pencil everyday so, perhaps do a couple of the exercises each day before you begin drawing or just before you go to bed or when youre on the phone or something.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
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