Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
12:32 PM, Wednesday November 18th 2020
Finally finished Lesson 1. Only took me 11 months, haha.
Hello and welcome to drawabox!
I noticed that you have submitted more pages than necessary. Next time try to limit yourself only to the number of pages that are assigned.
So, I will look through only the specified number of pages - the first aligned ones for each exercise. The additional ones I will not take into account. In some cases, it seems that some of them cold be made in different time as they look quite outstanding from previous ones. I hope you were not grinding because it is massive waste of time.
Ok, now critique.
Lines
Good attempt in superimposed lines. Lines are properly lined up at the start. That is good. However, your attempt to meet the end point properly made your lines wobbly . It would be better to draw confident, smooth, and consistent lines even it means that in the end point they will fray. In this stage fraying at the end point is entirely normal. It will reduce with practice and time as opposed to wobbly lines. And remember to draw from your shoulder.
Ghosted lines look quite confident, too. However, I notice that your lines in few cases arc as they approach the end point. It is fine for it to stop short of, overshoot, or miss the end point, because the goal here is – first confidence, then accuracy.
Ghosted planes – quite good done but lines are little wobbly. Although this exercise is still about confident lines between planed dots.
Ellipses
In tables of ellipses I see quite wide range of ellipses: (a) confident, ghosted, but less accurate (these are the best ones), (b) less confident but more accurate (these are in second place), (c) ellipses where focus on drawing confident and if possible accurate ellipse with ghosting method is lost (these are not acceptable). I also noticed that in one section ellipses are drawn too small (comparing to three targeting points - top, bottom and left) and therefore they are drawn on top of each other. Some ellipses also do not have continuous line. The good thing in your ellipses - they in the most cases are drawn around the ellipses 2 to 3 times. Also, the orientation of ellipses (the angle at which it is positioned) is also quite consistent within the same section – that is good.
Ellipses in planes. In most cases the ellipses are wobbly and therefore are not confident.
Funnels. Your ellipses are pretty good. The minor axis cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves. Also, the confidence and accuracy are in quite good balance.
Boxes
Plotted Perspective – nice and clean work. Well done.
Rough Perspective. Here I see good attempt - 2 sets of lines are mostly parallel/perpendicular to the horizon. However, the third set of lines that should converge to vanishing point on the horizon in some cases is quite far away. Even though you have mistaken in your estimations, the boxes still are likely to look close to correct. And for this stage it is enough. Just take more time to plan your dots for your lines for boxes. However, regarding the confidence of lines – it has dropped compared to ghosted lines. Remember that boxes are drawn from lines – from confident ghosted lines that are drawn through the two planed dots.
Rotated Boxes. Nice work on this exercise - gaps between boxes are narrow and your boxes are rotating.
Organic Perspective. Well done. You have constructed boxes along the swoopy line and making the boxes that are far away smaller and those who are closer – larger. However, it seems that you forgot to plan your dots before drawing a line. But in spite I noticed that you in the organic perspective exercise also considered that ‘parallel’ lines have their vanishing points. That is great.
Overall, good attempting to do Lesson 1. But from my side to complete the lesson fully (to understand the aim of exercises) I would suggest you redo some parts before moving on.
Next Steps:
1 page of straight Superimposed Lines (smooth and confident drawn from shoulder)
1 page of Tables of ellipses (confident, ghosted)
1 page of Ghosted planes + Ellipses in planes (confident, ghosted)
Thank you for the feedback!
Here are the re-dos: https://imgur.com/gallery/47lkz6S
There was one thing you said in the Table of Ellipses critique that I didn't understand: "ellipses where focus on drawing confident and if possible accurate ellipse with ghosting method is lost (these are not acceptable)." Not sure what you meant here, can you please re-word this into more than one sentence?
I have been told for years to "draw from the shoulder" but to be honest, I have only ever successfully done it when drawing or painting on large surfaces. When working on 8.5" x 11" sized paper or smaller, my elbow and wrist just take over. I would love to see some video examples of how a person achieves this, and more explanations on how it can be learned. To someone like me "draw from the shoulder" is the same as someone saying "just do it better". It's too vague to be helpful in my opinion.
Regarding your questions.
I agree that the wording of the sentence probably is unclear. There I tried to tell that in my view some of your ellipses are nor confident, nor accurate. Perhaps my critique is straight-forward but I never wanted to offend you.
Now about “drawing from shoulder” … I only have a few months of experience in drawing from shoulder that started with the “drawabox”. I mentioned “drawing from shoulder” in my critique to remind about it (since I know from my own experience that beginners in this “shoulder” field are not accustomed with it and they forget about it time to time). If I look back on my Lesson 1 submission, I can say that there is mixture of different pivots. Only now (while going through 250 box challenge) I started to get more accustomed to draw each line from shoulder with ‘locked’ wrist and elbow. However, I still need to remind myself on lighter pressure of pen. So far, I have followed only the instructions of the “drawabox”. What really helped me to understand “drawing from shoulder” is this video
and the exercise that is written here when you lock one pivot by one to feel them separately. So, this is my experience with “drawing from shoulder”. It hadn't even occurred to me to try on a larger page than A4 (until your question). Ha, ha, ha :) If you feel that you need some other advices/examples/experiences from other community members I think that you could ask your question here .
And now regarding your re-dos.
straight Superimposed Lines now are much better, i.e., they are drawn with confidence - no wobbling. Great! Frying on the far end will reduce with practice. The arching of straight lines (that I found in your work) could be due to several reasons described here
Tables of ellipses. It seems that you havn’t yet found rhythm and pace that fits the best for you to draw confident (and accurate) ellipses. Be careful that you are not confusing confidence with speed. Drawing confident line means execution of line without hesitation once preparation phases of ghosting method are completed. I would suggest watching also ScyllaStew’s live example of doing tables of ellipses (the links to these live examples are available on the bottom of each drawabox page immediately after “example homework”).
Ghosted planes. Lines now are more confident than previously. In few cases there are a little arching of lines as they approach the end point but I think that you are on the right track :) Also in the ellipses in planes I see that you made more focus on preparation stages before execution of line (compared to the table of ellipses). That is good.
I wanted to suggest you to find the right speed for your ellipses during warm-ups while you are going through 250 box challenge, but I saw that you already submitted that challenge. So, let’s make one more try - finding the ideal speed for your confident ellipses.
Next Steps:
1 page of Tables of ellipses. It is enough to make table 6x2 (as it was in the example homework) without extra levels. Choose the orientation and the degree of the first ellipse. Then try to draw it very fast, then lower your speed to very slow (or vice versa). Fill first 3 rows wit that ellipse in different speeds. The next 3 rows try the same but with circle (in my opinion it is more difficult due to the wider movement of arm). Chose the best ellipse and circle - that is your ideal speed for them now. Make sure that you do not rush, ghost each individual ellipse/circle, focus also on ‘locking’ your wrist and elbow to achieve drawing from the shoulder. Good luck!
Thank you for the feedback. Here is the exercise based on your recommendations: https://imgur.com/gallery/NWoKPw1
Thank you for the feedback. Here is the table of ellipses exercise based on your suggestions: https://imgur.com/gallery/NWoKPw1
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