This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
What Next?
So assuming you've been reading diligently (starting from lesson 0) and have followed the instructions of completing only the recommended number of pages, then you're probably wondering, "what do I do now?"
Well, the smart thing would be to get your homework reviewed. Let's say you've done that already, and want to know what your next step is going to be.
Your next step is to tackle the 250 box challenge. This exercise will take what you were introduced to in the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises and work on developing your overall grasp of, and comfort with, freely rotating forms in 3D space. The notes and video there cover techniques that will help you do this as efficiently and effectively as possible as well.
It's a tall order, but most who've gone through it have shown considerable improvement - especially those who've read through the notes and applied the error-checking approaches consistently.
And before you go, I hope you've been able to get your work reviewed by other members of the community to make sure you're still on track. You can watch me get my work reviewed by Uncomfortable, live!
He points out some mistakes I've made, and also talks about common issues he sees when critiquing others' work.
Framed Ink
I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.
Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.
Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.
Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.