/r/ArtFundamentals and Drawabox.com: A New Beginning. Read this if you're new to this subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/56hyn5/rartfundamentals_and_drawaboxcom_a_new_beginning/
2016-10-08 17:24
Uncomfortable
Welcome to /r/ArtFundamentals, the home of Reddit's exercise-based approach to learning the fundamentals of drawing. I'll be your instructor, /u/Uncomfortable. Before we get started, below are a few things you should read through so that you have a full understanding of how this subreddit and the associated lessons work.
TL;DR |
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This subreddit is a fully structured drawing course that covers the fundamentals of drawing and focuses on constructional drawing. All of the lessons are, and will forever be, free at drawabox.com |
You may submit homework for review or any questions you may have to be answered by the community, but keep them related to the lessons on drawabox.com. These go directly into the subreddit as link/text posts (posting is now public, whereas previously it was restricted to moderators only). I was initially planning on making a separate sister subreddit, but decided just to use this one instead.|
Patreon supporters can still receive critiques from /u/Uncomfortable, but their submissions MUST go into the appropriate lesson thread linked in the orange button at the top of the given lesson. Homework submissions made to the subreddit as text/link posts will not be recorded. Within 24-48 hours of your homework submission, it should have been added to this spreadsheet. If after that time it has not been added, or if you see submissions that are more recent than yours listed there, send me a private message and I'll get it sorted out.|
This is the official subreddit (as well as the birthplace) of the lessons now hosted on drawabox.com. The lessons are intended both for complete beginners as well as those who have made the wise decision to go back to the basics, hoping to fill in the holes of their swiss-cheese-like fundamentals. I warn you though, this is not some fluffy feel-good course. It's time consuming, tedious, repetitive and at times quite brutal. Those who learn to work without waiting for motivation or inspiration will have the greatest chance at success. One's ability to develop the skills necessary to understand and reproduce the things they see and imagine does not depend on any innate talent - it has everything to do with how hard they're willing to work, how carefully they read and apply the instructions in each lesson, and how comfortable they are with accepting and appreciating their countless failures along the way. The rest is a matter of time and patience.
Before I get into the lessons themselves, I want to explain a few things about having your homework reviewed. Going it alone is all well and good, but having someone help point out mistakes you may have missed is an invaluable resource. The standard approach to growing in an area is to try your absolute best, fail miserably, then reflect upon your failures before trying again. It helps considerably to have someone else point out things you may be unaware of during the reflection stage.
Up until this point, students have submitted their homework as comments to individual lesson threads, and I have critiqued each and every one that met the requirements of quantity, medium used, prerequisites completed, etc. This was a temporary service that I provided freely to everyone willing to put in the work for the last two years, and it has now come to a close. In order to reduce my workload, I've limited my personal critiques to those among you who help keep the drawabox website running with a $3+ monthly contribution through patreon.
The rest of you however will now be able to post your homework and questions directly to the subreddit. Up until this point post submission has been restricted to myself alone in order to keep things from getting cluttered. Now I want this subreddit to become a proper community - I hope that those of you who have learned and grown through my lessons will be willing to pass that on to others. I initially considered creating a separate sister-subreddit, but ultimately decided against splitting things up. I will still try to keep an eye on things, of course, as it's common for misinformation to take root. I'll do what I can to gently correct any mistakes people may make in their critiques, so please don't take any offense if I happen to point something out as not being entirely correct. Conversely, I hope this also encourages you to take that leap and offer your advice without the fear of spreading the wrong ideas.
My own critiques (for patreon supporters) will still be limited to the lesson threads themselves. Every lesson has an orange button just above its title that will take you to its current active critique post. I do have to swap these out every six months as reddit automatically closes a post after that time, but this link should always lead to the correct place. I am subscribed to each of these threads, so I will receive a notification in my reddit inbox so long as you post your homework submission directly to the thread itself, and not as a reply to a comment (unless it's one of my comments). As soon as I receive a homework submission, I add it to this ongoing record of submissions. If yours hasn't been added within 24-48 hours, feel free to send me a private message. I very rarely miss submissions, but it does happen on occasion. REMEMBER: If you are a patreon supporter, do not submit your homework directly to the subreddit. Post it in the correct thread, otherwise I will not be notified and it will not get recorded.
Additionally, anyone receiving a critique from me must still follow the ordered structure of the course, completing any prerequisites for a lesson first before moving onto that lesson's work. Additionally, you must wait for me to critique your work and mark the lesson as complete before moving on (I usually respond within 48 hours, more often within 24, so it shouldn't be a long wait).
So without further ado, here's a full list of all the lessons and challenges. You will find the same list on the sidebar, along with additional informal notes and demos that can be quite helpful.
THE LESSONS|
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Each lesson contains a recommended minimum amount of homework which should be completed before moving onto the next one. With each lesson, you're aiming to understand what you should be aiming for - actually gaining any degree of mastery in each area will take far more work than just this minimum required amount, but ultimately you want to just have a sense of what you're doing before you move onto the next lesson. You can come back and practice more after you've completed the course.|
Do not ask how long a lesson should take. It's not the right question to be asking. There are no time limits, nor deadlines. All you need to focus on is putting your absolute best effort towards following the instructions to the letter and completing each exercise to the absolute best of your ability. You learn by finding your limits, so you can push beyond them. If you rush through things, you will not be reaching your own limitations, and you will gain little from it.|
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The lessons are broken up into the following sets:|
1A. The Basics. We start at the absolute bottom, introducing students to simple exercises they can use to train their technical skills and build muscle memory. These are the exercises you never stop doing - once you've completed the minimum required homework of a given lesson and fully grasp the target and purpose of each one on a theoretical level (note: this means you won't be able to do each exercise perfectly at this point, or even near-perfectly), you'll start integrating those exercises into a daily warm-up. Pick two or three exercises from the pool each day to do for 10-15 minutes before moving onto that day's work.|
LESSON 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes|
LESSON 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections|
1B. Challenges. Very similar to the basics, but they focus on very specific tasks. Each one contains specific notes (and sometimes videos) detailing the general process for the given task, as well as mistakes people tend to make. These are extremely repetitive, but often tend to be very helpful.|
2. Dynamic Sketching. These lessons focus on the idea of constructional drawing and are the real meat of what you will be learning from drawabox. Each lesson tackles the same idea from a different angle, applying a consistent set of principles to different subject matter. At first the lessons will seem largely independent and specific, but as a whole they teach you how to break down any object into its individual, primitive forms, and then how to reconstruct those forms and arrange them to ultimately reproduce that object. This is not strictly observational drawing that some of you may have tackled in other art classes. Observation is definitely an important component, but we focus much more on 3D form, with the goal of being able to draw a given object at any angle. This material is extremely valuable, even if your main focus is only to draw characters.|
LESSON 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids|
TamingSpyro
2016-10-08 21:58
Thanks Uncomfortable, to be honest the reason why I held off on posting the rest of the lessons I'd done, and the boxes for awhile, was I didn't want to take up your time. I think I'll feel much better working with others in the community.
analogphototaker
2016-10-09 00:03
It seems to me that there are two entrance points to learning drawing.
This way focuses more on construction from basic elements.
The other way would be focused on observation (Drawing on the Right Side, etc.)
Starting with observation seems to yield the best results in the shortest time. But it does not allow you to draw anything from imagination. You must observe.
Your method seems to be very slow moving (and possibly discouraging), but does it yield the rewards of drawing from imagination?
Uncomfortable
2016-10-09 01:05
Technically speaking, you need both skills in observation and in construction. Any accepted method will technically yield results in both areas, but in my experience the more traditional approach you get in fine art drawing classes, books like Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain and so on is more often applied in such a way that students tend to focus entirely on being photocopiers - that is, a machine that diligently reproduces exactly what it sees without really understanding what is being drawn.
It's one of the reasons that when you learning from that approach, the importance of drawing from life is stressed especially strongly. It's always beneficial, but in this case it at least adds a step where you're forced to deal with 3D objects somewhere along the line, whereas directly copying a reference image means taking a 2D image and turning it into a 2D drawing.
Construction forces that 3D element by looking deeper at what you're drawing, regardless of whether it's from a photograph or from life, because the very first step is all about forcing yourself to simplify it all into basic primitive forms. The ability to identify those forms and to grasp in what proportion they relate to one another certainly relies on strong observational skills. Moreover, once you've built up from the simple form construction, you further rely upon observational skills to identify and transfer details into your drawing.
All of this ultimately contributes to your visual library - the catalogue in your brain where everything you've learned about the things in the world is stored. This relates to topics both broad and specific - how certain parts of an object fit together, what kind of textures you might find on a certain kind of object, particular anatomical traits of a specific animal, and so on. None of this is something a person just has, it's something that develops through one's experiences, and it tends to develop much more quickly by actively drawing studies of... well, everything.
In this area, again, both a strong grasp of construction and of observation play a big role. As beginners, our brains are wired in such a way that we automatically simplify the things we see and toss the majority of information relating to an object away the moment we look away from it. We don't pick up on the kinds of details that would allow us to draw them later on. By honing our observational skills, we fundamentally rewire our brains to pick up on those things, especially when we sit down to specifically study them. Where glancing at a car's engine, the average person may add a post-it note's worth of information into their visual library, someone with strong observational skills might extract a full page worth of details, while someone with strong observational skills who's taken the time to actually draw a few pages of studies might commit a solid chapter to memory.
Now, construction takes this even further. A strong sense of construction leads the person diligently doing their studies to put away a whole textbook's worth of information. Construction ultimately allows us to process that information far more efficiently - it's a matter of doing what our brains did naturally before (throwing away loads of data), but doing so in a way that actually retains the information that's useful. By understanding how to summarize that engine block into its major forms, you can tuck away and remember a great deal more than if you were fussing with all of the little superfluous details.
This is getting a bit long in the tooth. The short of it is this: both methods teach you how to draw (from observation and from your imagination), if you apply them correctly. Both deal in observation and construction in different proportions. It is really a question of how a given student decides to apply that information. Due to my lessons' firm structure, there's a lot less room for personal interpretation, and therefore a lot less room to apply the lessons incorrectly. You certainly can do all kinds of things incorrectly, but since things tend to be broken down into smaller steps, it's more difficult than the more "feel-your-way-around" approach you find in certain other methods.
The last thing you mentioned was this approach being 'slow moving' and potentially discouraging. Absolutely this approach can be discouraging. People want to learn to draw to make pretty pictures, not to draw a bunch of boxes because some faceless pseudo-instructor on the internet told them to. I don't agree however with the notion that one's progress is slower. I can't speak to how they compare in terms of speed, but I can tell you that over the last two years, I've had countless students tell me that these lessons took them much farther, much faster, than other approaches did. The reason for this is of course a personal one - this method simply made more sense to them on a logical level, required fewer leaps of faith, and had fewer concepts that simply had to 'click' before one could move forwards.
upbeatfx
2016-10-09 00:45
Thanks for creating this Uncomfortable! I'm starting on lesson 1 today. Not sure if this is the right place, but I have a question. (side note: would the specific lesson thread be better?) How long should we work on an exercise before moving on to the homework? After filling up a page or two? Or should we just jump right into doing the homework?
Uncomfortable
2016-10-09 01:07
The homework is the exercises. Each part (lines, ellipses, boxes) has a homework section that outlines the number of pages of each exercises you should be doing. So jump right into doing that.
Lobachevskiy
2016-10-09 09:34
Subreddit style should allow to switch to newest submissions, otherwise I fear community critique is gonna be hard to come by.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-09 18:19
You're absolutely right. For some reason I was under the impression that I'd somehow made it default to new (which apparently isn't actually possible, I must have confused it with doing that for the comments). I've gone ahead and changed the subreddit style to include Hot/New/Top links.
Lobachevskiy
2016-10-09 20:44
Awesome. Could you also create a new thread for lesson 8 (old one is archived)? I decided to wait until you update it, but I got some questions I want to ask.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-09 20:47
Send me a PM with your questions then - I'm going to be leaving that one locked until I get the new version out.
smashedpixie
2016-10-09 10:14
Some nice content will be buried, though it is probably worthwhile.
What's about creating another spreadsheet, where whose who learn will set their submissions. And whose who are going critique can mark their intentions. Can be ruined but still.
Uncomfortable
2016-10-09 18:23
Hm, that does have quite a few downsides, like people freely manipulating that spreadsheet if they're given editing rights (which they'd need in this situation), an additional barrier to getting your homework reviewed, etc. Additionally, there's a few benefits to letting people post to the subreddit - it'll likely help grow /r/ArtFundamentals with the influx of posts. Ultimately I'll try and keep as much of that buried content in the sidebar as possible.
klexos_art
2016-10-11 06:52
Love this! I'm actually taking Peter Han's Dynamic Sketching class at Art Center right now, I thought some of the material looked really familiar and then I read the sidebar! This is a really awesome idea, keep it up!
Uncomfortable
2016-10-11 14:49
Awesome! I really loved his course. Admittedly my lessons (past lesson 2) have definitely started to veer off into my own direction as far as my emphasis on 3D forms and construction goes, all of it is very solidly rooted in what I learned from Peter. It's a fantastic course to take, and I'm sure you'll gain a lot from it.
jxpham
2016-10-12 01:41
Hi, Uncomfortable. Not sure if this is the right place but I was hoping to ask a few questions. Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems as though your method of drawing (constructive drawing) focuses on using the rules of perspective to break down complex objects into simple geometric forms, like cubes. I've recently been doing the part of lesson one that involves organic cubes and rotated cubes. Would it be a good idea to supplement these exercises by looking into and practicing mechanical perspective which involves using calculations to create an accurate cube with accurate 90 degree vanishing points and corners? I think doing rigid mechanical perspective is a good thing to learn along with the drawabox lessons because it teaches you to draw cubes in perspective accurately, which is important since the accuracy of your cube will affect the accuracy of your ellipses then subsequently the accuracy of your cylinders and cones. I figure that after doing rigid, technical perspective for a while that I'll begin to internalize the technique and be able to create accurate cubes intuitively freehand. What alternatives would you suggest for learning how to intuitively create accurate cubes in perspective, especially when you're new to constructive drawing and don't have trained eyes or anyone that can correct your mistakes? Also, what would you say about learning to draw from observation? I personally like constructive drawing, but I've had teachers who mainly approximate or "feel" what they draw through observation, not using any constructive drawing or calling it too rigid. Which is better: learning observation or constructive drawing or both? And are these two ways of drawing supposed to be used in isolation from each other: it seems hard to apply constructive drawing to observational, real life drawing because its hard to make a perspective cube, plane, circle, etc. occupy a specific amount of space or be a specific size. Sorry for the long post! I just have a lot of questions and really want your input. Thanks for creating the drawabox lessons. I never had the opportunity to take advantage of the free critiques, but I feel like i've learned more from drawabox than I have from any other art course I've taken!
Uncomfortable
2016-10-12 22:28
Generally it is a good idea to learn more technical perspective, and digest all of the rules and techniques one can use to measure and construct objects exactly correctly within a scene.
The only thing you should be aware of is the fact that it becomes very easy at times to get overwhelmed and become paralyzed by it. It's important to understand what perspective is and how it works, and how to use it when you need to achieve a specific goal, but I generally find that when people take those rules they've learned and store them in their conscious mind, trying to figure out how to apply them fully to every little thing, they lock up and stumble. The better approach - at least in my opinion - is to tuck all of that information back into your subconscious, where you're not focusing on the importance of drawing a perfect cube when a slightly imperfect cube will do just fine. If you're fully focused on all the rules of perspective, you leave no room for observation, no room for designing, no room for actually creating something.
Like you said, if you learn your rigid, technical, measured perspective, over time you will internalize those rules. So long as you remain aware of the need for this sort of internalization (as opposed to staying hyper-aware of all the rules forever), you should be fine and come out better for having taken the time to learn it.
Lobachevskiy
2016-11-07 21:11
So hey, any ETA on figure drawing lessons revision?
Still looking forward to doing those!
Uncomfortable
2016-11-07 21:43
Still trying to figure out how to approach it. It's been somewhat more difficult than I thought, and we've actually been hit with some pretty tight deadlines at work - so it might not happen for a bit. It's still on my mind though.
DerekB9Aura
2016-12-06 13:05
How do the people submitting to the general sub reddit instead of you find out whether or not they proceed to the next lesson?
Uncomfortable
2016-12-06 14:26
I guess that's the downside of getting your critiques through there. You'll have to trust your own judgment, mixed in with recommendations from those who critique you.
mikeisnerdy
2016-12-08 12:30
Im new to the subreddit and was wondering what the the tags after a user's name means. For example some will say basics comp, basic level, or art zcar.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-08 14:31
For the first two years that I ran this subreddit, people submitted homework to me and I critiqued it for free. In order to both reward completion and more importantly, to keep track of who had completed which lessons (as I didn't allow people to jump into a lesson before finishing those preceding it), I added these little badges to the user flair. If you using a mobile app, all you'll see is the text, but in a browser there's little emblems.
Now that homework submissions have been split into two categories (community critiques which are submitted directly to the subreddit to be critiqued by other users, and patron critiques which are reserved for those who support drawabox on patreon and are critiqued by me), the free community critiques don't generally receive the badges, because I have no real need of tracking them. I still do use that system for the patron critiques though.
jxpham
2016-12-12 23:20
Uncomfortable, are the lessons still worth doing, even if I can't afford critiques? I know that practice makes perfect but I dont think that saying takes into account the fact that if I practice incorrectly, I may develop bad habits. And I know that I can submit my lessons for community critique, but I have to question the effectiveness of doing so. The community seem open and welcoming but most of the community seems new to drawing so I worry that even if I get a community critique, I'll make mistakes without being cognizant of them and end up making the same mistakes over and over again, especially because its happened to me before. (in an extreme case, the high school I attended only taught me to draw from photos, only teaching me to take into consideration the outlines of objects. Only after my 4th year did I learn anything about perspective or form or realize how it applies to everything)! Im currently on the cube portion of lesson one which seems to serve as the basis for everything else and was wondering what I could do in addition to submitting my work for community critiques to effectively assess/critique the accuracy of my drawings.
Uncomfortable
2016-12-13 00:20
You're putting me in a bit of an awkward spot here - obviously my answer's going to be "yeah, of course," but the bigger question is, am I telling you that because they're my lessons and I have faith in them? Or am I telling you that because they're my lessons, and every view of my website puts a few extra pennies in my pocket?
Ultimately, I do my best to explain my thought processes when it comes to each and every lesson - there's self critique resources there for the first two (and likely the most used) lessons that help pinpoint common mistakes people tend to make, so people can identify a lot of that for themselves. It is dense however, so people inevitably miss things, so having someone to look over your work and point things out for you is valuable. Having the person who wrote the lessons is doubly so (which is why I was drowning in homework submissions back during the two years that they were free), but when I transitioned to splitting things into paid critiques and free community critiques, I did have your particular concerns in mind.
It's for this reason that I don't leave the subreddit to fend for itself - I keep an eye on the critiques and responses that are given, and if there's any particularly harmful misinformation being spread, I'll usually throw in my two cents to keep things on track. That said, I haven't had to do so very much in the past while, as there are a small handful of students who've received enough of my critiques to be able to be very helpful in their own right.
It is of course entirely up to you, but all things considered - all of it is better than nothing. After all, critiques aren't exactly an expected staple of these kinds of resources. Websites and books generally dump the information on you and let you fend for yourself.
jxpham
2016-12-13 01:13
Hi, Uncomfortable, Im sorry if I put you in an awkward position. It was not my intention to do so. I hope you know that I really value the drawabox lessons. I mentioned before that Id been a photocopier in high school, and, after talking to some professors, I did try to deviate from that and draw more from life, but, apart from the difficulties of dealing with binocular vision, drawing from life didnt seem much different than drawing from photo. But the drawabox page giving your thoughts about constructive drawing really resonated with me and addressed this problem by giving a more analytical method of drawing where the essential forms and 3d construction of an object are the main focus, not the details. So the question I had wasnt concerning the value of the lessons (if anything, this first lesson has taught me much more than any of the other art classes Ive had!). The question was more about what I should do to become cognizant of my mistakes & should I even do the lessons since I cant afford critiques. And I ask this question, not because Im suspicious about the validity of drawaboxs lessons but because I dont trust myself. Ive had times where I made mistakes and developed bad habits or practiced over and over without really learning anything. Like, really what kind of person takes art courses for 4 years or so but only focuses on the outlines of objects & doesnt learn about perspective until the last year?? I hope I explained myself better here and that its much more clear here that I do value your content and lessons. Thanks, Uncomfortable!
Uncomfortable
2016-12-13 01:37
Haha, don't worry - I totally understand that sense of not trusting yourself, and for a beginner it's a pretty valuable thing. Often times I see students who are a little too eager to overthink things and get trapped in their own heads, thinking they can understand everything immediately. Ultimately, it does come down to deciding on what route you're going to take, and deciding to trust in something. Whether it's the drawabox lessons, the community here, or something totally different - the only way you can really assess whether or not something is going to work well for you is to throw yourself into it completely.
[deleted]
2016-12-13 01:59
Hi Uncomfortable! You've mentioned a few times before how important formal lessons, great professors, etc. are (Peter Han and CDA foremost) in the process of learning to draw, especially professionally. In that light, how useful is all this information to someone who'll probably never even take art as an elective at his current university (I'm struggling as it is)?
My parents are supportive and well-off, thankfully, and I'd dearly love to be able to be taught by some of the greatest masters in the field, but neither I nor any of my relatives can afford to shoulder the space-time or monetary costs. I live in Puerto Rico and rely on Pell grants to stay in college; my parents probably couldn't afford just to pay for the course itself and they definitely won't be willing to pay the no-doubt thousands of dollars it would take for me to go to and stay in Southern California for a semester.
And given that, I'll have to fly entirely by your advice (and any other good information I discover after finishing here) then only by instinct, in other words. I know I won't be twisting in the wind, but realistically, what are my chances of making it anywhere in the art realm? (considering a career in animation specifically, if you're wondering)
Uncomfortable
2016-12-13 02:21
There are innumerable paths to achieving a career in the entertainment industry. Some involve a four year college program, and a lot of student debt. Others involve online education from places like schoolism or CGMA. Others involve a ridiculous amount of self-training. It's a spectrum.
Far towards the art school side, you're somewhat forced to attend classes, to complete assignments, and people with very little personal drive can get by. Conversely, I've seen plenty of people who took that route who didn't do much more than that, and ended up with very few employable skills as far as drawing/illustrating/animating/whatever.
On the other end, there's no end to the resources on the internet that can be acquired for free, both legally and through places like cgpeers. That said, a person can have all of the material in the world thrown at them, but if they don't have oodles of motivation and drive to actually dive into it and stick through the pain of continuous struggling and failure, it's hardly surprising when they have little to show for it. Not to mention the sheer amount of time investment it requires.
Learning any employable skill is always going to require passion, time and money - the route you take will determine the proportion in which these are required, but this is a hard fact. You say you haven't the time, nor the money - the only thing I can say to that is that people tend to be able to make time, when there's something they really want to achieve. To be honest though, college is a bitch of a time. It's not so much how busy one gets, it's more the unpredictability of one's schedule. I didn't start aiming for a career in the entertainment industry until I was working full time - my evenings and weekends were my own, so I chose to commit those to self-training during the year prior to my stint in southern california (had to save up for that venture, after all).
Of course, drawabox is in no way going to take you from zero to a professional. It's just a starting point, both in terms of developing the technical and observational skills, as well as putting you through the ringer of loads of tedious (but beneficial) work, developing patience, and getting comfortable with the inevitability of constant failure. I'm often criticized for having made it too difficult for people to get into, but while there's plenty of hobbyists that use it, my target audience is still people like you who want to try for something more. I think that if you can get through drawabox properly, you're probably in a better position to digest a lot of the other free material out there. That said, it's not a guarantee - I'm just another student after all, and all I have to go off is my own limited understanding of how people tend to learn.
KnightofBats501
2017-01-04 06:30
Hi Uncomfortable! I started your lessons today and had a question! Since we aren't supposed to try to absorb a whole lesson at once should we do the homework for the first part of a lesson one night then the next another night and so on? Or is there a different way to go about breaking down each lesson so as to not overwhelm myself? Thanks for all the work you've done on this it's something I've been looking for for a while, a comprehensive practice based lesson plan, not unlike learning music. It's awesome!
Uncomfortable
2017-01-04 14:07
It all depends on how much time you have in a sitting. Just break them down by exercise, rather than section. Do an exercise to completion, then consider whether you: a) have time to do another, and b) aren't yet too tired to focus properly. Feel free to take plenty of breaks and spread it out over several days - just try not to leave too long a space between sittings (like don't do one a week) otherwise you'll forget what you learned in the previous lesson. Also be sure to reread the description of whatever exercise you're about to do, just before you do it.
Kenya_diggit
2017-01-05 07:41
Hi uncomfortable! Thanks heaps for the effort you've put in I'm really excited to get stuck into these lessons. I'm currently drawing lots and lots of ellipses/circles and I have a question. Should I be using my shoulder/elbow or my wrist? I feel like I should use my wrist for the small ones and the rest for the bigger ones. I'm definitely less smooth with my wrist so I feel like it needs more practice so I should do lots of small circles?
Thanks again
Edit: ps: it may entertain you to know that my lines were a bit faint so I put the lid on the pen and shook it to get the ink flowing then took the lid off and ink went everywhere.
Uncomfortable
2017-01-05 14:53
Whether you use your shoulder or wrist is not related to the size of the mark you're drawing, but rather whether or not the mark needs to be very stiffly and precisely controlled, or whether it needs to flow smoothly and evenly. Think of these two points existing on opposite ends of the spectrum.
To create a smooth, even mark, we use our shoulders. To create a stiff, precise mark, we use our wrists. Ellipses fall into the former category, as the most important quality for them is for them to be evenly shaped.
Kenya_diggit
2017-01-05 20:49
Cheers for the reply I appreciate it. Just so I'm clear when you say stiff precise mark are you talking about angles, like sudden changes in direction? I would have thought very small circles need to be precise compared to larger circles. What shapes would you use your wrist for?
Thanks and have a good one
Uncomfortable
2017-01-05 20:59
I'd use my wrist more for very intricate texture work. The vast majority of things should be drawn from the shoulder because while precision is important, it's not the priority. You want to ensure that your marks flow smoothly.
ItwasCompromised
2017-01-11 01:52
Hi I have a question about using felt tip pens. Is it really required to do so? If you don't care to make perfect drawings wouldn't pencils work fine?
Uncomfortable
2017-01-11 01:56
I actually explain this in-depth in this article. It's not just about not caring about making perfect drawings - because that alone implies quite the opposite. The use of felt tip pens forces you to be strategic, to think through your marks, and to consider line economy. There's a lot of nuance to it all, but the short answer is: yeah, it matters. It's not my place to say it's the only way to do it, but in my experience it makes a significant difference, and over the last two years I've seen enough positive results come from that stance to consider it valid.
Sokradde
2017-01-11 20:18
What kind of paper/ fineliner should i use ? I currently use print paper and a faber castel fineliner and ink gets sucked into the paper really quick. If i change the direction of a line an ink dot appear.
Uncomfortable
2017-01-11 20:25
I usually use staedtler pigment liners on printer paper, but I have used faber castell pitt artist pens and haven't found them to be as you described. Is it possible that the particular pen you're using is just misbehaving?
Sokradde
2017-01-11 21:07
The ends of the lines get dotted and the superimposing line gets very thick
Uncomfortable
2017-01-11 21:35
That is definitely a different kind of pen from the one I mentioned, which was the Faber Castell PITT artist pens, so that may be a factor.
Lack-of-Focus
2017-01-16 21:29
Stupid question, but are these taught in art school?
Uncomfortable
2017-01-16 21:53
Depends on which art school. They were taught at the one I attended, but they're not taught at most. Mine was more oriented towards concept artists and various kinds of commercial art, while standard fine art schools will not teach in this fashion. I wrote these lessons as a bit of a rebellion against the standard 'fine art' approach to art education, which I have found to be somewhat lacking in structure and effectiveness.
Lack-of-Focus
2017-01-16 22:17
As long as it helps me get better at drawing and gives me a better understanding then i'm not complaining
pixiesgreene
2017-01-17 05:00
By the way, I'm so grateful for the way your articulate your approach and lay this all out. I'm actually at art school, but studying production design for film & TV. So I've been taught by some people with a concept art approach - which is probably more useful in my field! But we've had other lessons in more of the fine art school approach - try to perfect shading with your pencil, try to see things are they really are, squint to try and see light/shade values, squint and use your pencil to try and measure things to estimate their size on the page, etc. I've been mudding along, extremely confused, not really improving in my drawing at all. Until I read your lesson I didn't really understand that there were different schools of thought with different applications. Just having permission to use pen, focus on line and perspective, and think ahead and plan out each line, I've grown more in confidence in a month than I did in two years of study. So thank you again so much!
Uncomfortable
2017-01-17 15:07
I'm glad the lessons have helped! And I'm a bit disappointed that a program geared towards production design doesn't teach more constructive drawing.
pixiesgreene
2017-01-17 19:01
Certainly the intention was there to teach us perspective drawing! But yeah, a few different teachers and a range of different styles and delivery methods.
mogandsimba
2017-01-31 19:05
Hi I have a question, after you have finished the homework, do you then send it to be critiqued straight away, or do you keep re-doing the homework until there are less mistakes while reading the self critique, and then submit it? Also do you send all of lesson 1 work right at the end to be critiqued, or can you send each exercise individually?
Uncomfortable
2017-01-31 19:32
I actually address this at the very top of lesson 1, under the heading "As this is probably your first lesson at Drawabox, read this before moving forward!". Long story short, do the amount of homework that is recommended, then submit it for critique - the whole lesson at once. Sending exercises individually, or even sections individually is greatly discouraged for the free critiques (which are done by community members, who are just less likely to respond to lessons that are not entirely complete), and is simply not allowed for the patreon-only critiques by me.
Once you've completed the recommended homework, assuming you've followed the instructions correctly, you should be okay to move onto the next lesson. That said, as you continue to move forwards, you should continue to practice exercises from lessons 1 (and eventually lesson 2 once that's completed) as warmups - picking two or three each day to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting.
The point of the homework is not to acquire mastery over each exercise (because this would take a ridiculous amount of time and would cause you to stagnate and probably burn out). The point is to get a grasp of what each exercise asks of you, and to start out down the correct path.
Aceofspades____
2017-02-16 07:36
Is it said antwhere when lessons 9-13 will be finished?
Uncomfortable
2017-02-16 13:41
No, because I don't have any timeline for that unfortunately.
brilliantstar
2017-02-23 16:24
Hello uncomfortable! It is an honor to talk to you haha. But anyway I was wondering, what were lessons 9-13 on? Once I get there (far, far away atm), I might try to find similar content elsewhere. Is there a place you know of where I could go for it? Or can I just get a description of what those lessons were like and I can try to find it myself? Thank you so much for all you do!
Uncomfortable
2017-02-23 16:55
Lessons 8-13 are all to do with figure drawing. I'd recommend checking out Stan Prokopenko's youtube channel for that.
nemonicx
2017-03-09 06:22
I know you've stated that we should not use digital media. But I am really interested in learning on the iPad Pro using the Pencil. Assuming I'm a Patreon, would you still critique my lessons?
Uncomfortable
2017-03-09 14:18
Unfortunately, no. I'm quite strict in terms of having the students whose work I critique to follow my recommendations as hard requirements. Otherwise it would be entirely counter productive. I've made those specific recommendations each because of how they impact the process of learning, so it wouldn't make any sense for me to accept students purposely handicapping themselves.
You'd likely learn more effectively if you did the lessons traditionally, in ink, then upon completing the required amount, applied what you learn by repeating the exercises on the iPad.
Jmscrvnts
2017-03-16 13:39
Watch the videos before doing the lessons! It gives you an intuitive sense of what you're actually trying to accomplish.
[deleted]
2017-03-23 18:12
Which videos are you referring to? They don't seem to be in an obvious place. Are they on the website? Could you provide a link? It would be greatly appreciated!
Uncomfortable
2016-10-08 22:14
Haha, that's very kind of you.
racingbeginnernoob
2017-03-28 18:11
When will lessons 9-13 be released?
Uncomfortable
2017-03-28 18:17
Your guess is as good as mine. A long list of factors have kept me from pushing forward on that front, the most significant of which being the fact that I don't feel confident in my ability to teach that particular material. It's possible that I may simply decide to remove all figure drawing content at some point and just make drawabox purely about the material from lessons 1-7.
racingbeginnernoob
2017-03-28 19:04
Oh in that case do you think you could point to another website or YouTube channel or something that you recommend?
Uncomfortable
2017-03-28 19:16
Stan Prokopenko's YouTube Channel is definitely a good place to start.