Uncomfortable

2021-11-23 17:04

To be completely honest, while I don't expect that individual intended to be rude (although definitely very direct and to-the-point), the language barrier may have made it a lot worse than they meant it to be. It definitely comes off as a very unhelpful.

That being said, having glanced at your work, while I can see that you've certainly put in a concerted effort, there are areas of weakness that should be addressed before moving forward.

• Your super imposed lines are fine - you are expected to end up with the lines fraying on one side. So where that individual suggested you focus on avoiding the fraying, they were definitely wrong. You can read more about this here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/fraying

• While your ghosted lines are a touch hesitant, they are progressing in the right direction. Just keep focusing on the idea that the approach is all about breaking markmaking into a series of steps - planning things out, preparing by going through the motion. Finally the last step, execution, needs you to push through with confidence, even though you're afraid you'll miss the mark. You need to accept the inevitability that all the planning and preparation is over, and that all you can do now is commit. While this may result in less accuracy (which will improve with practice), it will guarantee a straighter, smoother line.

• Your ellipses are definitely one area where you're struggling quite a bit. From what I can see from the marks themselves, it does look like you're slipping back to drawing them from your wrist, which is a common source of the kind of unevenness you're running into. Make sure you're using the ghosting method with these too (it should be used for all the marks we draw throughout this course), and that you're executing each mark from your shoulder, engaging your whole arm, to the best of your current ability. This will help smooth the ellipses out.

• Your rough perspective boxes are fine, although some of those frames seem a bit empty - with only a couple boxes, and plenty of room for more. Make sure that you're leaning towards getting more out of each exercise attempt, rather than focusing on getting through it quickly.

• Rotated boxes are looking solid.

• Organic perspective boxes are good, though I am seeing a habit of going back over lines reflexively - make sure that every single stroke you put down is the result of the ghosting method. This should keep you from leaning into any automatic habits, like correcting mistakes (which you shouldn't be doing).

I'd probably recommend you do some more tables of ellipses and ellipses in planes exercises - maybe one page each - before moving onto the box challenge.

Of course you certainly are welcome to mark that critique as unhelpful (I'd argue that it is indeed not very helpful), but I'll leave that to you to decide.