Hate to read? No problem. We can read the text to you.
This feature is available completely free. While we will be keeping an eye on how feasible it is to eat the costs associated, we hope to keep it that way.
Just click "Listen with Drawabox"!
This one's really straight forward, though not as easy as it looks - remember those planes you drew as part of the lines section of this lesson? Find those pages (hopefully you didn't toss them out, burn them, or use them as nest materials for your pet bird), because we're gonna need 'em.
)
So, you've got your plane. Or as the case probably would be, a page full of them, but here we're going to focus on just the one. It's kind of an awkward shape to work with - this one's not too bad, but they can definitely get a bit crazy on account of being arbitrary quadrilaterals.
)
Put an ellipse in there. That's all.
It may look simple, but there are some pitfalls to watch out for. Don't worry about anything aside from getting the ellipse to be smooth and evenly shaped, and having it touch all four edges of the plane as snugly as you can manage. Of course, draw through your ellipses (as mentioned in the table of ellipses exercise).
Be sure to make use of the ghosting technique - this should of course be applied to every mark you put down, but it will especially help you here. Don't worry if you mess up - you'll have plenty of planes to practice with.
This exercise is just the beginning of something much more complicated. In the future, we'll be tackling constructing cylinders inside of boxes, and other similar challenges, and these will come with additional criteria that will need to be met. The purpose of this exercise however is just about maintaining the smooth, even shape above all else. That is your first priority. Second to that is, as mentioned above, fitting it snugly within the plane, touching all four edges. Given that these are generally awkward shapes to work in, I frequently have students who start deforming their ellipses, getting generally overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task.
More than anything, it's an exercise in calming down. The difficulties faced here are generally more of one's own making. Take it easy, and just try your best to drop a nice, even ellipse in there.
You're going to find that we're basically repeating the same things over and over - focus on a confident execution first, then address control/accuracy by using the ghosting method. It comes up so often because it really is at the heart of mark-making as a whole. So this isn't the first time we come across it, and it certainly won't be the last.
That said, let's take a look at how these concepts apply in particular to this exercise.
)
This is a mistake I see frequently. See how the ellipse is bumpy and wobbly, and it kind of reaches out to touch the edges rather than maintaining an evenness to its shape? Avoid this. As mentioned several times above, maintaining a smooth elliptical shape is critical and above all else is your first priority.
)
I also see this every now and then, though less frequently. While getting the ellipse to touch all four edges is your second priority, it is still something you should strive to do. It's pretty clear that with this example, no attempt was made to achieve that goal, and the ellipse - though evenly shaped - was just plopped in the middle rather unceremoniously.
Here's what your page should look like once it's done.
)
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
Having your work reviewed by others is critical, as those who are just starting out aren't in a position to properly judge their own work, and won't be for quite some time. Don't be afraid to show your struggles - it's by analyzing your mistakes that we can help you grow. Perfect homework is not what we're looking for; we just need it to be complete.
There are currently two places you can get your work critiqued by the community - Reddit and our Discord Chat Server.
Both of these are completely free.
If you are interested in receiving extra help, I critique the work of those who support Drawabox on Patreon.
All of these private critiques are done through reddit, in specific threads where students post their work as a comment, including a link to their work (often hosted on Imgur, though most image hosts are okay).
My requirements are more strict than the free community critiques:
The minimum pledge for this lesson is $5.00/month. The orange button above will take you to the reddit thread for this lesson, you can post a link to your work there and I'll be notified. Once I catch the submission, I'll add it to this backlog spreadsheet.
Pledges are collected at the beginning of the following month, but you may start submitting your work immediately. If you're a new patron, I'll be reaching out to your shortly to collect your reddit username.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
