Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

2:37 PM, Tuesday June 2nd 2020

Eagle's Lesson 1 Submission - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/phsqj18.jpg

Post with 36 views. Eagle's Lesson 1 Submission

Hi, complete newbie here, aiming to become good at Manga Art someday haha :-)

A few comments:

I drew the neater looking page of ellipses with my wrist first, before realising that I had to use my shoulder for EVERYTHING (I thought it only applied to those longer lines at the beginning), and they became a lot more messed up. I kept using my shoulder afterwards, and I found it pretty hard to draw accurately (a lot of my boxes have corners that aren't joined properly etc.)

For the organic perspective, it was a bit frustrating because whenever I tried to converge to 3 VPs, I ended up getting these weird trapezoid things or even things that didn't look 3D.

Rotated boxes was super difficult, but found it pretty fascinating!

Thank you so much to anyone that reviews my work!!!

2 users agree
12:46 PM, Thursday June 4th 2020

Hey, Eagle2020. Good job on going through this lesson.

Drawing from the shoulder is hard and seems counterintuitive for beginners, but in the end it pays well. Also, regarding accuracy, remember that at this first stage your priority is to be able to draw smooth confident lines. If you keep practicing correctly accuracy will naturally come later.

Now, moving on to your work.

Lines

Your superimposed lines look acceptable, but there is some wobbling in it. Also, you left a lot of empty space where you could have filled with more lines.

The ghosted lines and planes could also have smoother lines, but they are overall decent. You don't seem to have placed the dots before drawing the inner lines on the planes, though. Be sure to always plot all your lines with dots, as this gives you a goal to draw them to. If you don't place dots how can you know if your lines are accurate? This will help you check your improvement.

Ellipses

Here's the thing. You might think your first ellipses are neater, because then you go through them the second time every line is packed well together, but if you look closely, the ellipses on the first page are not nearly as smooth as the ones in the second page. Actually, in the first page, they are very wobbly. You also didn't draw through on the first of them. Always draw through your ellipses, but don't overdo it. If you keep practicing your ellipses like you did in the second page, eventually you'll be able to draw them rounder and when you go through them the second time the lines won't be so far from each other.

The ellipses on planes are decent, although in some cases you drew through them one too many times. Draw each ellipse two or three times at most.

Good job on the funnels. They could definitely be smoother, but it's not easy to draw them withing the bounds of the arch and aligned with the minor axis. Still these are aspects you should keep in mind.

Boxes

While you understood what was asked on the rough perspective exercise you struggled a lot in keeping your lines straight in here. In the end, the perspective is pretty decent, as demonstrated by your extended lines.

You actually did a very good attempt on the rotated boxes for a beginner, although the top half is quite better than the bottom one. If you kept the back corners of each box more aligned with each other you would have ended with a much better result. I understand that it might feel overwhelming for a beginner to have so many lines drawn over each other, but in the future you'll be able to tolerate it better and easily identify to what form each line belongs to.

On your organic perspective, while you drew a composition from smaller to larger boxes, you should have exaggerated their differences more, in order to better sell the illusion of depth. The larger boxes are OK and seem really close, but you should have drawn the small ones much smaller. The perspective of each box needs some work, but you'll have plenty of opportunities to understand this aspect better during the boxes challenge.

So, the aspect you really need to work one is the smoothness of your lines. While it started decently on the lines and planes exercises, your line quality dropped down going into the boxes. Be sure to plan and ghost your lines very well, so you can draw them with a smooth and swift motion.

Next Steps:

250 boxes challenge. Read well the instruction and watch the video. Good luck.

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.
5:31 AM, Tuesday June 9th 2020

Whoa I'm late... Thanks so much for the feedback Pedro!!!

I'll take it all on board and be back bigger and better with the 250 boxes challenge!

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