Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:20 PM, Friday May 22nd 2020

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So a few things:

Right now every shop is closed and I am broke so I searched for fine liners at home and only found red and blue ones...but I promise for the next lesson I will get some black ones

Next thing: I drew for years but only now start to learn to draw...and This perspective stuff was my biggest weakness so...

I was always bad with drawing clear and good lines and since I used the ghosjkting technique and stuff my lines look even worse..

I now already that I will need to redo some stuff

I read every lessen and watched the videos more then once so I understand what the goal of the lesson is but still can't implement it in my drawings

Welp here are my atrocious stuff

I already now that I will get a heavy lot if critique ...

2 users agree
10:46 PM, Friday May 22nd 2020

Hey, Pencilshy. Your work is not atrocious as you believe it to be. There's definitely some areas you can improve and if you keep practicing correctly you will get better for sure.

The main problem with your superimposed lines is the arching, which makes me think you're not drawing with a motion from the shoulder. If you have trouble with this aspect, check this video Uncomfortable made about this issue. Your lines are fraying quite a bit at the end, but this is somewhat normal at this stage and with practice your accuracy will get better.

Another issue I notice is in your ghosted planes, where in some cases your lines miss both of the placed dots. Maybe ghosting with the pen closer to the paper might at least help you hitting that initial dot correctily. It also seems that in some cases you're not placing the dots for the inner lines, which is something you should do for all the lines you draw.

Your ellipses look good. Not major concerns here, except that some times you don't draw over the same ellipse. You should always draw through your ellipses.

On your funnels, you should have made outer arches more curved, so your ellipses woudln't end all in similar sizes as you made them to be.

Now, the boxes exercise is where you seem to be struggling the most.

The rough perspective is not bad, you managed to keep the horizontal lines aligned with the horizon and the vertical lines perpendicular to it. Again, your lines are slightly arching here, which is something you should pay attention to.

The rotated boxes was definitely a challenge to you, as it is a very hard exercise. I advice to reread the exercise page, specially the section about rotation as this will help you in the boxes challenge in the future. The thing I'm most concerned here is the fact that you go over the same line many time, which ends in a very messy drawing, as I suspect you will agree. Avoid doing this. There's no point in doing it, as it won't make anything better and will probably hide your mistakes, preventing you from identifying them correctly.

Now, on your organic perspective exercise, you did a good job in drawing the flow of the smaller boxes (farther away) to the larger ones (closer). You could have placed some more overlapping boxes and played with the line weight in order to highlight which is in front and which is in the back. The perspective could also be better and I think this happened because you might have rushed a bit and didn't took your time to prepare thinking about each box before drawing them. Your line work suffers from the same aspects as before. Another thing I'd like to mention is that when drawing the flowing line there's no need for it to be super thick in the closer end. I'd rather seem a smooth line with less thickness difference than to see the scratchy lines as you made.

Please don't be discouraged by this. You went through all the exercises in this lesson, which is a good thing. There are areas you have to improve, but I am positive that if you apply yourself, you'll definitely get better.

Next Steps:

I'm gonna ask you for 2 pages of Organic Perspective, because I feel this is what will help you more for the boxes challenge.

Please keep in mind the things that I refered about your homework, and reread the sections about constructing the boxes for this exercise, specially this one , remembering to pay attention that the perspective lines should converge towards the same vanishing point (as you've learned in the previous perspective exercises), although in this exercise it will not happen as it should happen in the boxes challenge, but it should be something to keep in mind while drawing this exercise's boxes.

Also, don't forget to place the dots for your lines before drawing them.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:59 PM, Sunday May 24th 2020
5:15 PM, Sunday May 24th 2020

Glad that you took the time to do it.

They look clean, but you definitely need to pay more attention to the way you draw your lines, as they tend to arch quite a bit.

Don't forget to do some lines warm up exercises before your drawing sessions.

Good luck for the next lessons.

Next Steps:

250 boxes challenge.

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.
4:53 AM, Monday May 25th 2020

Yeah thanks

I always so the warmup with the planes

before I start and the lines of them looks ok after a few warm ups, but when I am trying to do this in a real exercise it somehow looks weird...I will practice more I guess

thanks for the tips I appreciate it!

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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).

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