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Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:11 AM, Wednesday April 28th 2021

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I didn't have the correct pen size until after I did the ellipses, sorry. Nothing really unique to say, I'm sure you've heard it all before and I have a multitude of obvious things to work on but would appreciate any feedback you're willing to give me. Thank you.

I want to know what you think of what Toniko Pantoja thinks in his video: How to Improve your Solid Drawing Skills at 3:05

https://youtu.be/r_ZB90XqI9E?t=185

He says "I think the assignment of drawing hundreds of boxes at different angles is not useful at all." Would love to hear your response or maybe you already have in some video somewhere. Obviously you disagree.

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7:52 AM, Saturday May 1st 2021

Hello Akakunari! I'll be critiquing your work, and hopefully you'll find it useful. It's fine if you used the wrong size for the pen, but try to use the correct one for the next one if you can.

First I would like to give my thoughts regarding about Tonika Pantoja's thoughts on it. I think I agree to it to some degree, but I obviously disagree that it's not useful at all.

What makes drawing boxes from different angles useful is the decision making process of each boxes with what you knew about perspective. Fundamentals are boring and repetitive, that's because it makes you get used to the decision making with all of your knowledge of perspective at the back of your mind - on top of that you get the mileage of your muscle memories to draw a single line deliberately with careful thoughts. It's a matter of building a good habit. Like Tonika said, drawing with INTENTION is what makes you learn something. When we see people draw fast, what we see is their hands putting a bunch of cooordinated lines together - but with thought process it's almost impossible to compare (like comparing your drawings with their drawings) because it's incomparable with our own decision making process.

With boxes it's hard because people tend to go to the path of the least resistance to work this repetitive task and doing it autopilot or mindlessly. I think that's why DaB has the 50/50 rule to somewhat relieve and keep in mind of what you learnt.

I think I watched an interview with Finnian McManus, a legendary concept artist, where he also said something similiar regarding drawing fundamentals thing over and over and over but I couldn't find the specific timestamp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGM7Im8VghQ

Drawing boxes in multiple angles will help you visualize what you draw, but that's only a part of the puzzle and not the salvation of solution. Think of it as learning to use the tools instead of the rules, you can't use a hammer and nail it mindlessly without learning how to use it - well you will probably learn how to use it via happy accidents but what you want is to put that hours to actually learn something consciously. This is my personal take on it, and please take it with grain of salt - maybe ask again in DaB discord if this answer doesn't satisfy you.

For your homework critique I'll divide by three parts. Line, ellipses, and boxes.

Lines

Your lines are very satisfactory for homework, earlier homework like the Superimposed Lines and Ghosted Lines has mistakes with fraying lines on both ends, arching lines, and wobbly lines but most of it is somewhat resolved in the next homework. So I'll say to keep what you have in mind and don't let your guard down. Keep the perseverance!

One more thing to add is some lines in your boxes and Ghosted Planes are done well, but they are just wobbly (they seem to improve overtime). Really try to ghost your lines until you think it's 100% sure to draw that line, and when you draw it - execute it with the utmost confidence because you did your ghosting. By ghosting you gain confidence because you will be prepared for the next line that you draw. Don't worry too much about accuracy at this early stage, next lessons you will be drilled for making more sophisticated drawings.

**Ellipses

It's pretty hectic in Ellipses in Tables with the wobbliness and uncertainty of the whole ellipse and it does improve with Ellipses in Tunnels. Your ellipses' problems are parallel with the lines for the critique. What I can say is to try to have the minor axis in your Ellipses in Tunnels really equal in 2 halves, that's something to keep in mind for 250 Cylinders.

**Boxes

I think you did a splendid job on the boxes, it's clean and very neat (compared to mine hahaha). I don't have any critiques for this other than to keep up the quality of the boxes and try not to get complacent with it. Did you use a different pen for the rotated boxes' outlines? If so I think it's better for you to use the 0.5 fineliner instead as it shows your work and something to improve rather than hide it with thick lines. Aside from that, you did good and I'll be nitpicking a lot if I were to really try to give a critique.

Next Steps:

You did good and I declare you graduate from Lesson 1, now do 250 Boxes! (Don't forget your 50/50).

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
8:38 PM, Saturday May 1st 2021

Thanks so much for the critique including a response to my post and video clip which I know takes extra time to think about and respond to. I just kind of thought it was a good talking point for anyone who likes DaB. I was thinking about what Toniko said a lot in the organic perspective in particular because it just felt so random not establishing a horizon line and just making boxes via the Y method... I have no way to know if those boxes are "correct" and they are not rotating, they change depth and width and are not consistent. I just wasn't sure of what I was getting out of that exercise in particular. A lot of the time in that exercise I was not visualizing the box beforehand and only tried to control one general face of it and its scale; otherwise they just turned out how they turned out. I felt I was out of control of the form for the most part if that makes sense. I did not feel this way with the other perspective assignments. Your answer satisfies me though; like I said it was just a thought. I really appreciate DaB for helping people with draftsmenship in particular and as well as form rotational exercises.

To clarify I had the wrong pen size until after the tables of ellipses. So the rotated boxes exercise is all using the correct pen size and I emboldened the edges because he said you could do that via the ghost method to help it read better; "There are going to be a lot of lines floating around, so keeping them all straight in your head will be a challenge, but you can use some strategically placed line weight to help clarify where certain forms overlap. Just make sure that when you add line weight, you're doing so with a confident stroke using the ghosting method, just as you would when initially drawing the line." For the rotated boxes exercise, it turned out decent because I measured to assure symmetry from crossing point of the x and y axis. He does not explicitly say not to measure and I've been telling people whose work I review that if they want to help keep it symmetrical and nice look to go ahead and measure. You don't have to measure using the tick marks on the ruler, you can rough it out with your pen and finger or use string etc. But idk if this is good advice to be giving people. I did not use a ruler to make the boxes, I used the ghosting freehand method to make all the boxes as he said to do, but I plotted some points after making one initial part of a quadrant to help its symmetry by measuring my first quadrant first. I just know that my rotated boxes turned out nicer than most because of this and even so the internal sphere could have been a little rounder on the x axis and the perspective could have been a little more gradual I feel, but it's fine. I plotted the boxes based on neighboring edges which was the point.

I think my ellipses are the weakest and I think your critique reflects that accurately esp the funnels. Partially it was due I think because I was using an extremely thin pen and I go over the ellipse more than 2 to 3 so it is like you say hectic.

I will have to set aside some time to watch this Bobby Chiu video-- I've heard of him but haven't watch many of his videos. Thanks for the great review!

When you say 50-50 you mean sketch for fun/not exercises as much as doing the DaB assignments? Or do you mean you want me to review your work in return for your critique (which I am happy to do if you need one but it looks like you're a couple lesson's ahead of me).

2:57 AM, Wednesday May 5th 2021

Glad that my answer satisfies you :]

I personally think DaB is to inform you about perspective in an intuitive way in the most basic form.

I think what matters most is how you achieved a certain result, if you learned by measuring it roughly then it's your win - you learned something for yourself through improvisation. It's all a matter of habit after that, it will take less time to measure in your decision making process after you do it over and over. As long as you do what the homework is supposed to do, it's fine - better if you learnt something along the way

What I meant to say is keep the balance of 50/50 of doing exercises while also having fun to not exhaust yourself, yes.

You don't need to critique my work, I get critiqued if I critique 5 times so it's a feedback loop hahaha

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