spelling_expirt in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-24 03:35
Hello again Riibot09!
Glad to see that you made it to the other side of the challenge. No matter which way you look at it, you just completed a lot of work, so take a moment to appreciate your own determination and discipline.
It may have taken you a long time, but it isnt a race, and I think your deliberate, thoughtful pace helped you in the long run. Your linework started off confident and crisp in the first boxes, and only got better as you worked through the challenge. One can tell that you put a lot of time into ghosting to get a clean strong mark. You also used the line extensions on every box to check your work.
It looks like something may have clicked in your head around box 220 or so. Up to this point, there are some boxes where either the convergence (boxes 197, 212, 219) or how the lines ended up intersecting (box 215, 216) undermined the solidity of the drawing. But after this point, the lines begin to behave together a little more nicely. A principle that is worth touching on at this point is how you treat the lines of your box. The best method to do so is consider each group of 4 parallel lines as a whole, rather than individually. By using neighboring lines to estimate angles (very similar to the rotated box exercise), you can prevent lines from converging in pairs (211, 215) or having a very off back edge (177, 198). It looks like you started to play with line weight on the silhouette of the box as well, which will serve you well in future lessons. One thing I could suggest is that for your hatching lines, try to make them extend from edge to edge on the box. Its basically free ghosted line practice that way.
You improved a lot over the challenge. Your boxes are looking more consistently believable. I think you would be pleased if you did the organic perspective exercise as a warmup at some point and then compared that to the one you had at the end of your lesson 1. Feel free to move on to lesson 2, and keep up the great work!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-24 03:08
Hello! I am a member of Uncomfortables cohort of teaching assistants. I will review your work and then he will give you your flair. Lets take a look.
Lines
As a whole, your lines are planned, ghosted, and executed with confidence. The time and care you took with your ghosting, and then the absolute commitment to your muscle memory, is totally evident. I see very little fraying and perhaps small amounts of wobble (solely in the superimposed line section). I also dont see any arcing, which tells me you are really working from the shoulder.
Ellipses
Your ellipses are a fantastic, really strong submission. They are all drawn through and packed into their allotted space, nestled in to their neighbors. They are often smooth and symmetric, and dont show any warped, flat sides, or waviness. In the ellipses in planes section, I do see a few ellipses that are a little more pointed on one side then the other, but the line work is nonetheless self assured. Additionally, you paid a good deal of attention to your minor axis, In both you ellipse table and your funnel exercises, you succeeded at keeping your ellipses either aligned to one another or to the central line. To really push yourself, I suggest that you try to vary the degree of the ellipses more in both the table and funnel exercises. Great job here as well.
Boxes
The plotted perspective contains the required components, which is a framed, two point plotted perspective in which the boxes are drawn through, and lines are plotted to their correct vanishing points. The verticals are consistently perpendicular to the horizon. In the rough perspective exercise I at last have some real advice to give. There is a lot done correctly here. Everything is framed, the boxes are drawn through, and you applied your extension lines to check your work. Your verticals are often perpendicular to the horizon, while your horizontals are parallel to it. The lines here look a little bit rougher though. Overall they are a little more wobbly, and there are occasionally thin, wispy lines that are sort of misaligned, next to very bold lines that are perhaps a little better oriented with respect to the rest of the box. Furthermore, you tried to add line weight to your best line--which is a good thing to try and practice--but the confidence you exhibited from earlier sections is wavering a little here, which undermines the solidity of your boxes. This part of lesson 1 is hard, and perhaps was your first real challenge of the set. This is great, it means you are in the right place! Remember, a box is just 12 lines, which you have been specifically practicing drawing. You may need to ghost more, or warm up with line drills, but try to apply that committed confident mindset here.
The rotated box exercise turned out well. The boxes are drawn through and you did a great job turning the boxes--on both the axes and the corners of the drawing. You used line weight and hatching to make things clearer for the viewer. This is a very well structured, tightly gridded drawing, so good job. The line work is a step up from the rough perspective section, but still has some of its trends--slightly wobbly lines which you attempt to rework. Drawing over a line second time has the effect of drawing the viewers eye to it--this is something you can leverage to great effect, but when you use it to correct mistakes it just draws the eye to the mistakes. I think you may have been able to push the convergence on the outermost ring a bit more--the boxes there have very similar angles to those of their inner neighboring boxes.
In the organic perspective, there are a lot of successes. The boxes have a consistent degree of foreshortening, and you use size and occlusion to try to convince the viewer of depth on the page. I would also say these are some of your strongest boxes. You started to draw over your initial lines less as you started to become more comfortable with drawing each box. Your added line weight becomes a more confident and crisp.
Summary
There is some great work here, and you are definitely ready for the 250 box challenge. As you move on to this challenge, keep doing lesson 1 as warmup. Try to be disciplined and commit to your lines, both in the sense of how you handle your pen on the page, as well as how you treat those lines afterwards. If you choose to add line weight, do so mindfully to enhance solidity, rather then to correct a mistake. Furthermore, approach these secondary lines with the same mindset that you use for your superimposed lines. Have fun!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-24 02:30
Hello! I am a member of Uncomfotables cohort of teaching assistants. I will review your work and then he will give you your flair. Lets take a look.
Lines
Your superimposed lines are very strong. There is little to no fraying, and little to no wobble. You are clearly ghosting, and even better, committing to your marks. You are not letting your brain take over in the middle of a line. On both the superimposed and ghosted lines, I am seeing a very faint arc. This is totally minor, and easily missed, but its my job to nitpick. Just try to be slightly more mindful to initiate and carry through from the shoulder. The lines overall in the planes section are equally solid, with perhaps a bit more wobble then the previous two sections. It looks like maybe you were pressing harder. I should also note that you forgot to add horizontal and vertical division lines. Other then that, great job.
Ellipses
All of your ellipses are drawn through, and packed up against their neighboring ellipses. You could in fact draw through fewer times--remember the ceiling is 3 times tops. I dont really see any flat spots, and they have good symmetry. I do see a slight amount of wobble. Just try to adopt the mindset you used for your lines: once your pen touches down, the time for hesitation is over. I like how you marked some of your minor axes on your ellipse table, this is a good check against other ellipses, and extra line practice to boot. It paid off, as aside from a few strays the ellipses in the funnels exercise are decently well aligned. Ellipses are quite challenging, but you are off to a great start.
Boxes
Your plotted perspective is correctly executed: framed, two points, well aligned verticals. The linework here is pretty thick here though, I would try to stay away from that in the future. The embellishment of white is visually pleasing, but unnecessary for these exercises. Your good line work in the lines section really paid off in the rough perspective exercise. All of your boxes are drawn through, and you used extension lines to check your predicted convergence against the actual convergence. The hatching was not requested here, but is precise and clean. Your horizontals and verticals are very consistent, and are well aligned with respect to the horizon. The rotated box exercise is fantastic. It is very well structured, with even, tight spacing between the boxes, each of which is drawn through. You clearly used neighboring lines to guide each subsequent line. The hatching and line weight clarified the drawing--although again I think you could make the line weight a little less extreme. Line weight should be handled with subtlety. This will become more important in later lessons, but as you move to the 250 box challenge, try to take a crack at making the difference in line thickness less exaggerated. Finally, the organic perspective exercise is really solid. You have a good grasp of space. You strongly varied the size of the box to show the depth in the page, and you used occlusion to help the viewer identify which box are closer. There is the same trend with line weight though, and I do feel the color is a distraction.
Summary
You did a fantastic job here, and you are cleared to move on to the 250 box challenge. The two big take homes I have for you is 1) Try a less exaggerated, bold line weight on the box silhouette and 2) Keep in mind these are *not* supposed to be finished drawings. They arent supposed to be a pretty, final product. Rather, the point of these is to hone a skill. If you want to dress up the drawings, this is fine, but the underlying construction is always the highest priority, and should always be the most visible. Keep up the good work!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-19 03:47
Greetings. I am one of Uncomfortables teaching assistants and will be critiquing your work. He will update your flair afterwards. Congrats on completing the lesson! Lets dive in.
Your superimposed lines look really great. The marks are bold and there is little if any wobble. This tells me you let your muscles do the work once your pen hit the page, and didnt let your brain interfere.The beginning of the mark is also tightly focused, which tells me you were really using your ghosting to get feedback on what your predicted mark would be. The ghosted lines exercise is also bold. There is a little bit of wavering here that gets ironed out by the end of the submission. Great work.
The ellipses looked like there were a bit of a struggle. The good news is that they are a struggle for everyone. There are a lot of successes to point out: the ellipses are well packed together and are all drawn through. Many of them are smooth and fairly symmetrical. The marks are for the most part pretty confident as they show little wavering. Your minor axis is fairly well aligned in the table and funnels exercises. Some of the ellipses are a little flat or distorted. This can happen when you are focused really hard on getting the ellipse to touch its boundary points (such as a neighboring ellipse or the frame of the table). We want to prioritize a smooth and evenly shaped ellipse, and to do that we need to commit to our ghosted motion. I also might suggest varying your ellipse degree more to get more out of the exercise. There is some strong work here, you just need some more mileage to fine tune your drawing muscles.
The plotted perspective exercise is correctly executed. It is framed, uses two vanishing points, and the verticals are well aligned with respect to the frame. The rough perspective also has some crisp line work despite the increase in challenge. It is also framed, and you do a decent job keeping your verticals and horizontals perpendicular and parallel to the horizon, respectively. You did seem to have more issues aligning your horizontals--don't forget you can turn the page here! Lastly you used the extension lines properly to check your work. Great work here.
The rotated box exercise continues to have strong line work, and each box is also drawn through. The spacing between the boxes is a little inconsistent, but nonetheless solid. The boxes along the axes nearly do a complete 180 degree turn, which is great. As you moved to the corners, you struggled a little bit in determining how steeply some lines might converge. This is also pretty normal--our brain resists our desire to get a really foreshortened box. If you leveraged your neighboring lines a little more aggressively, you would have gotten those corner boxes to turn a little more.
Lastly, the organic perspective exercises shows a good sense of space. I like how you had the boxes move away and then back towards the viewer. You may have been able to exaggerate the change size a little more. By the end you were clustering the boxes more closely to clearly show which box was in front.
This is a strong submission. You clearly took a lot of time to be deliberate and patient with your work. Everything is clearly ghosted and executed to the best of your ability--which is all we ask for. Please remember that these are just exercises. They dont need to be perfect, they just need to be able to teach you something, and I would argue that they have. Please feel free to move on to the 250 box challenge!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-19 02:55
Hi there! I am one of Uncomfortables teaching assistants. He will give you your flair after I critique your work. Lets take a look!
Your lines sections starts off well with the superimposed line exercise. For the most part the lines are fairly self assured. However, there are some trends worth addressing. We occasionally see individuals that have frayed or poorly grouped start and end points on their lines. While many of yours are grouped well to start, there are some that have some space between them. Furthermore, it also seems like you fairly consistently overshot your endpoint in both the superimposed and ghosted line exercise--sometimes straight off the page! Fraying and overshooting is totally expected at this stage, but as you practice your ghosting motion, include some consideration for where your pen is going to touch down and lift off the page. Lastly, I do still see a bit of arc in your straights--try to address this future as you return to these lessons during warm up. All of that said, the lines are crisp and confident, you just need to slow down to allow a little more precision in your ghosting.
In the ellipses section, all of your ellipses are properly drawn through and are pretty smooth and strong on the page. Similar to the lines section though, the ghosting may have been a little rushed, which led to a lot of asymmetrical ellipses--usually sharper on one side then the other-- that do not touch each other (for example, the table and funnels sections). You are doing a great job with a bold mark on the page, but I think you might need to slow down a little bit and really focus on what your ghosting motions are telling you about what that mark you are practicing is going to look like. In the funnels section, you have a mix of ellipses in terms of minor axis alignment. Some are decent, and others are quite skewed. In the future, try to get those ellipses to huddle together more tightly, work on the symmetry, and keep an eye on that minor axis. Just like the lines section though, your marks are confident, just take your time.
The plotted perspective has all necessary components. They are framed, plotted to two vanishing points, with well aligned verticals. The rough perspective is also plotted and framed, and you also used extensions to check your work, which is excellent. However, a little more care could be taken to get your verticals truly perpendicular to the horizon, and your horizontals more parallel to the horizon. Part of the reason you frame the drawing is to make it easier to line up your verticals and horizontals, so take advantage of that. I am also seeing a bit more arc in these lines then previously, although there is less over shooting!
The rotated box exercise contains drawn through boxes and is hatched for clarity. The spacing between the boxes is a bit irregular and I think you may have been able to leverage your neighboring lines a bit more. Remember, as you move farther away from the center of the box, the lines are going to converge more and more tightly. Additionally, you got off to a great start with your initial set of turned boxes on the axes, but you could have pushed the turn on the outermost boxes a bit more. The accuracy of your confident line work continues to improve though!
The organic perspective exercise is pretty decent. You really pushed size and occlusion to sell the depth on the page. The larger boxes are clearly closer to the viewer. The line work remains bold and self assured and is possibly the most consistently accurate in the submission, which implies to me that you started to slow down and focus on this aspect while ghosting, which is great.
Overall, you should be proud of how strong your marks are. I urge you to continue your trend of improvement by making sure to take your time with each exercise and focusing on your ghosting. This trend has clearly already started, just keep building on it. I think the 250 box challenge will be excellent for you. But sure to give the notes a thorough read and dont forget those extension lines. Paying attention to them will give you huge benefits.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-18 18:31
Hello! I am one of Uncomfortables teaching assistants. I will critique your work and he will give you your flair. Lets go!
Your lines section is off to a strong start, and a lot of growth is also visible. Your superimposed lines are a little wobbly, and there are some spots where your lines are a bit frayed on both sides, but they are nonetheless clearly ghosted. Furthermore both issues start to lessen as you move forward through the homework. It might be worthwhile to experiment with your drawing speed a little, as there is some persistent hesitance even to the end of the planes section. Try to prepare enough that when your pen touches the page, you are confident your muscles could do the work without further input from your mind.
In the more difficult ellipses section, you did a lot of things correctly. The ellipses are drawn through and packed into either their table, plane, or funnel. In the beginning, there is a bit more wavering in the linework, and some visible distortion, caused by trying to keep the ellipse accurate to itself and neighboring lines. I recommend you continue to experiment with ghosting for this section as well. You may need to ghost for much longer than you think for ellipses, and dont forget to trust your muscles. I think reworking your ghosting strategy might also help make your ellipses float a little less. By the end of the funnel exercise, your ellipses are starting to get under control with smoother, cleaner ellipses, although there is some asymmetry and minor axis misalignment. If you keep up with the exercises (and keep learning from them so well) you should have this sorted out quickly.
In the boxes section, your plotted perspective exercise is correctly framed and uses two vanishing points. Likewise, your rough perspective exercise is also framed and uses one vanishing point. Furthermore, you took a lot of care to keep you verticals and horizontals properly aligned with respect to the environment and frame. it does look like your lines regain their earlier shakiness as you stepped up to this more difficult challenge. I see this pretty often and it is totally normal. Just remember a box is essentially 12 ghosted line exercises, so try to use the mentality that you have by the end of your planes exercise to tackle more difficult subjects.
Your rotated box exercise has excellent structure. Most boxes are drawn through (other then top right and bottom left) and the spacing is tight and consistent. Besides addressing this, you could fill in more boxes in the corner quadrants as well. I am starting to see some spots where you try to remedy a stray line with further linework. I really encourage you to get out of the habit of doing this, even though I know it is difficult coming from a background with pencil. Those extra lines draw the viewer's attention to the mistake, rather then away.
Lastly, the organic perspective exercise uses the size of the box to show the viewer the depth of the page. I think you would have benefited from using a less severe degree of foreshortening, and can also make some use of occlusion to indicate which boxes are closer to the viewer.
Overall, you got a lot out of these exercises. Your line work is coming along nicely and I can tell you are starting to grasp the purpose of the ghost-then-execute methodology. Feel free to move on to lesson 2!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-18 17:14
My usual strategy is to warm up on something I felt like I was rusty on last session, or in anticipation of what I was working on that night. If I felt like my lines were weak, I'd do one of the line exercises. If I know I'm going to be doing organic shapes, I will do ellipses (or super imposed curvy lines). If you feel the exercises you mentioned are the ones you struggle most with, have at it.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-17 02:51
Hello! I am one of Uncomfortables teaching assistants. I will critique your work and he will give you your flair. Let us get started.
Your lines section is really strong. There is little fraying in the superimposed line section, and throughout this whole lesson segment, the lines are really confident and very crisp. I would need a magnifying glass to find signs of wobble. There might be very small inaccuracies, but the amount of ghosting and preparation you did for each line is totally evident.
Your patient and thorough work continues into the ellipse section. Each ellipse is drawn through and nestled up against both its neighboring ellipse and bounding frame. The ellipses are even and smooth with little to no distortion or wobble. Even the ellipses for which you have given yourself an F are still self-assured. They are simply a little inaccurate. The accuracy will come with continued practice and time, be sure to recognize that and dont expect perfection from yourself. The place where the biggest improvement could be made would be in the minor axis of the funnels section. I am seeing a bit of drift towards the outer edges--but the ellipses there are also the largest and therefore the most difficult. There is also occasionally some tilt through the whole funnel. Just keep an eye on it in the future, as adhering to the minor axis is pretty important for lesson 2.
Moving on to your boxes section, the plotted perspective is correctly executed. Framed, plotted to two vanishing points, and well aligned verticals. Enough said. The rough perspective exercise, despite your concerns, is also quite strong. It is also correctly framed and plotted, and you also used the extension lines to good effect. All things said you convergences are decently accurate; they predictably become less so as you box is drawn further from the vanishing point. This is normal. Your horizontals and verticals are parallel and perpendicular to the environment, respectively. The strong line work from the earlier section is evident here as well. Sometimes a students confidence will wane as they do the more difficult box section, but I see no evidence of that here.
The rotated box exercise is well structured, with drawn through boxes and even spacing between them. You also did a great job turning the boxes on the axes to nearly the full 180 degrees. The corners were not quite rotated as far as they could have been. It looks like as you used the neighboring lines to guide your corner boxes, you didnt quite adjust the convergence enough. This is also normal. To turn these boxes you really have to ignore whatever discomfort the greater angles might cause to your mind. I also wanted to note your added line weight was very well done. Even your added lines were confident. Sometimes, the secondary lines are a bit more wobbly as people strive for accuracy.
Lastly, the organic perspective exercise is quite good. It is framed and composed well, and you chose a consistent degree of foreshortening. You used size and occlusion to give a sense of depth to the page. If you wanted me to nitpick, I do see one spot where you drew over lines. I am not sure if that was for clarity or if it was to fix a line. If it is the latter, try to avoid doing so in the future. It is worth noting that this is basically the only time I saw this in the whole set.
This is a really good submission. I can really tell you ghosted and prepared a ton, and then once your pen hit the page, it was all muscle. You did not let your brain get involved again; you trusted your muscle memory to make the confident stroke you were practicing. Great job! Feel free to move onto the 250 box challenge!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-17 02:22
Hello! I am one of Uncomfortables teaching assistants. I will review your work and he will give you your flair. Lets go!
Your lines section is pretty strong, but there are a couple points worth discussing. First off, great job filling up those pages with work. That kind of mileage and work ethic will serve you well in the long run. In the superimposed line section, your lines start off at a consistent point and even within this set I can see a lot of gains. However, it does look like there might be an arc present in some of your lines which is also present in the ghosted lines section. The lines are often clean and confident, but what I suspect what is happening here is that you may be using your elbow a little more than your shoulder. In the future, try to initiate and drive the motion more with the shoulder. In the ghosted lines section, there is also a curious thickening on what I am guessing is the end of the stroke. I am not sure if it was a pen or surface stability issue, but if it was you trying to make that last tiny bit of the line a little more accurate, try to abolish that habit. That splotch of ink mars what would otherwise be a great, if a little inaccurate, line. I dont see much signs of this in the planes section, although I think I am seeing a tendency for you to draw over your perceived mistakes. If you take home one thing from this critique, it is to stop trying to correct bad lines with more lines. This draws the viewers eye towards that line rather than away from it, which surely is not your intent. Otherwise, your success rate with creating confident clean lines rises throughout the entire lines segment.
Moving on the ellipse section, they are drawn through twice, you tried to pack them in together. However, I do see some wobble and distortion on these. This is, in my opinion, the hardest part of this exercise. Remember to focus first on a self-assured and smooth ellipse before trying to get them accurate. Sometimes as you tried to make an accurate mark your brain took over and made the ellipse shaky. For what it is worth, I find it still takes me a lot more time to ghost ellipses then lines. Despite little distortions, you did a good job keeping your minor axis aligned in the funnel exercise. Keep experimenting with ellipses of different degrees too!
The rough perspective is plotted to two vanishing points, has a horizon line, and is framed. I see a couple places where the verticals are not perpendicular to the horizon though. Your rough perspective exercise is, likewise, plotted to one VP and framed, and you also used check lines. It does look like you struggled with keeping the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon. When ghosting in this exercise, one must constantly be comparing the ghosted stroke to the horizon or frame to gauge your accuracy. As above, I also see a tendency to try to correct your linework. Some of your lines are quite crisp, however, so you are definitely making strides here.
Your rotated box exercise is drawn through and hatched. Your box spacing is relatively even, with some looseness happening in the outer ring. You could have gotten your boxes to turn a bit more. The goal is to rotate each box 180 degrees edge to edge, and your brain will resist this goal very strongly. You can accomplish this with more severe convergence on the outer ring, and more dramatic foreshortening.
In the organic perspective exercise, your line work continues to get better. The section is properly framed and composed. I do think you could have played more with the spacing of the boxes and the size of them to give a better sense of depth to the page. I would also suggest, right now, that you compare each of these boxes to see their similarities. Not that it is an explicit goal of the exercise, but it is worth trying to get the boxes to look a little different from one another in how they are turned. Many of your boxes are pretty similarly positioned. I found that turning a cube around in real life was very instructive. You can also give this site a peek. Regardless, trying to do this mentally is nearly a required skill for construction. The 250 box challenge is a great place to strengthen this mental muscle.
You should know that, even though there are areas for improvement, none of these exercises are going to be perfect. They are not going to be pieces of art to be hung up on a wall. They are designed to give you better muscle control and hand eye control, that is it. Sometimes things are gonna look screwy, especially as you challenge yourself with material that is unfamiliar to you. So remember to not be hard on yourself as you move on. I think you are getting the idea behind lesson 1, which is to ghost and prepare enough that when your pen hits the page, you can release all control of your pen to your adequately primed muscles. Feel free to move on to the 250 box challenge!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-13 23:18
You are doing very well, just prioritize confidence before something like line thickness. The fine control will come with time. Keep it up!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-13 22:23
Hello, I one of Uncomfortables TAs; he will give you your flair after I finish my critique. Lets dive in.
This is some pretty strong work here! I havent seen your initial passes at the superimposed and ghosted lines, but this newer pass shows how you have really started to commit to your line work. While the lines are, sometimes, on the lighter side, there are still pretty confident and clearly ghosted. While there may be ever so slight arcs, there are little signs of hesitation. I do see the persistence of the habit to draw over lines you feel are incorrect (in the ghosted lines, rough perspective, and organic perspective sections). Your ghosted lines and especially your second page of planes are quite crisp. You see to have a light touch on the page, which can really assist you in future lessons. Just make sure you are making a bold, strong mark when that is the best mark in that situation. Dont make light marks out of hesitance.
Your ellipses are pretty confident and smooth. They have decent symmetry and are nestled against one another quite nicely. There is no sign of wobble. One major observation I can make is that sometimes it seems like you are drawing through your ellipse more then 3 times. Try to minimize the draw through to 2-3 times. When you go over from this number, the ellipse goes from looking strong to looking scratchy. In the funnels exercise, you did a good job adhering to your minor axis. You also really started to experiment with ellipse degree; keep pushing that as you do these exercises as warmup.
Your plotted perspective exercise checks all the boxes: It is framed, contains two vanishing points, and the verticals are consistent. In your rough perspective exercise, you did an excellent job keeping the verticals and horizonals perpendicular and parallel to the horizon, respectively. You also used your extension lines correctly. The line work is a little more hesitant here, in that I see you going over some of your lines repeatedly. It may seem nitpicky, but I like to address this habit as soon as possible so it does not carry over to future lessons. Every time you try to fix a line, the thing you are truly accomplishing is drawing the viewers eye towards the mistake, rather than away from it. Once your line is down on the page, there is no fixing it; you can adapt to it with your future lines, but try to just accept it for what it is: line in a series of exercises designed to develop strong linework and 3d thinking. It doesnt need to be perfect. Your rotated box exercise has really tight spacing--in fact the spacing is so tight that in the corners it is hard to see. You clearly used neighboring lines to plot out your subsequent ones as well. You could have perhaps rotated the boxes a little further, but this was also well executed. In your organic perspective, you used size and occlusion well to give a sense of space ot the page. On top of that, you chose a lot of different angles and positions for the boxes, which is great. The line quality drops a little here but, I think with mileage this will dissipate.
Great work! As you move to the 250 box challenge, keep in mind what was mentioned about going over your lines. Really try to eradicate that habit. I think the milage gained from the challenge will be really good for you. Dont forget to do these exercises as warmup!
spelling_expirt in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-13 21:46
Hello, I am one of uncomfortabless TAs. I will review your work and then he will assign your flair. Lets begin!
Regardless of how you felt about the challenge (although its good to hear you had fun), it is worth taking a quick moment to appreciate your discipline for this challenge. It is a lot of work, and you should be proud of completing it.
In terms of line work, there is a lot of good habits here. Your boxes are clearly ghosted and your extra line weight is also confident. Although it looks possible that you might be trying to straighten out your first line, as sometimes the lines are much thicker on one side over another. I also wanted to point out that it seems like your hatching lines were maybe a little less precise than those of your boxes. Try to approach each line on the page with the same mentality.
It was also good to see that by the end of the exercise, you were choosing more realistic, distant vanishing points to target, which will serve you well in the future. You could still push yourself more on this front. Also, nice work with using the extension lines for each box.
It looks like, even to the end of the exercise, you struggled with the angle of the rear edges of the box. This is a common issue. There are also still some very divergent lines even towards the end of the exercise, such as boxes 222 and 235. Box 237 also does not converge in a realistic way. In fact, it seems that often, when you draw a box where two opposite faces are above and below the point of view (for example boxes 237, 224, 228, 246), the box ends up looking a little less realistic. One very helpful demo uncomfortable made is about how to think about the lines in a box. In a box there are 3 sets of 4 lines. Each set converges to a single vanishing point, and as in the rotated box exercise, you can often estimate the angle of convergence by using neighboring lines. If you treat the lines as sets, rather then approaching each plane by itself, you will have a lot more success in creating realistic boxes.
There was a lot of progress made over this challenge. Your line work has gotten better, your line weight more precise, and your boxes are overall looking more solid. Nice work. Feel free to move on to lesson 2!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-13 11:53
Thanks for completing the missing work! Your ellipses are still confident and smooth, but some issues persist. Always draw through your ellipses no more then 2-3 times. Doing so adds to their solidity on the page and can often make them appear more symmetric at first glance. Secondly, really try to make sure you get those ellipse edges to touch one another. You did a good job ensuring that each minor axis is decently aligned to the funnel axis, but this could be improved as well. Other then that, nice clean, confident line work! Keep these points in mind as you move onto the 250 box challenge.
spelling_expirt in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-13 01:18
Hello, I am one of uncomfortabless TAs. I will review your work and then he will assign your flair. Lets take a look!
Congratulations on completing the challenge! There is a lot of patience and endurance required for 250 boxes! Think about it, that is 4*3*250 = 3000 lines, and then another 3000 for each extension line. You should take a moment to celebrate your discipline.
Your line work started off quite strong. The lines were clean and crisp. You also drew through all of your boxes, and while some of your extension lines may be incorrectly applied, you still used them every time. I think continuing to do the lesson 1 exercises served you well here, and will in the future, as even your added line weight was also very confident and thoughtfully placed on the silhouette of the box. It is common for students to have a confident primary line, but then the secondary lines waver as they strive for accuracy. I dont see any indication of that here.
You also chose a good degree of foreshortening by selecting vanishing points that are distant from your box. This is a more realistic and also more challenging goal then keeping the vanishing points close to each box.
One thing I was really glad to see is that, initially, your boxes, sometimes, didnt converge correctly. Taking a look at boxes 1, 5 or 10, you can see that cases where lines that should converge to a shared point are often pointing to very different places. But by the end of the exercise (Box 240, 241, 242, ad 249), the lines all really started to behave as a group. It looks like you were starting to understand that it is best to treat each set of 4 converging lines as a group, rather than tackling each separately. One way you can tell is that, for many of your later boxes, the lines on two opposite faces of the box seem to converge to the same point, rather than two points. Continuing to think of things in this manner will help you address the rear edge problem. For the record, this is a problem that nearly everyone struggles with.
I think this challenge was really good for you in terms of your line confidence and three dimensional thinking. It is great to see a students growth so visibly. Feel free to move on to lesson 2. For the future, I would suggest that you could sample more extreme box angles, for example where 4 faces are extremely foreshortened, while the front and back face are nearly perpendicular to the viewers line of sight (play around with this for a bit to see what I mean). Lastly, keep doing lesson 1 as a warmup!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-12 16:44
Hello, I am one of uncomfortabless TAs. I will review your work and then he will assign your flair.
First off, you are correct in that you are missing some pages: 1 page of ghosted lines, 1 page of ellipses in tables, 1 page of ghosted planes, 1 page of ellipses in planes, and 1 page of superimposed lines. That said, your work is sufficient to judge how you have incorporated the mindset required for these lessons.
Starting with the super imposed line exercise, things are looking decently precise and clean. There is little fraying at the beginning of the mark, but a little wobble present. This wobble persists into the ghosted lines and planes exercises. There are little curves and arc present, which shows me that as you are drawing the line, you are noticing that the line is not accurate and trying to adjust for this mid stroke. Remember, the whole point here is to ghost and prepare enough that, once our pen contacts the page, your muscle memory is entirely responsible for the mark. However, you do start to get the hang of this by the organic perspective exercise.
Your ellipses are fairly fluid and symmetrical, drawn through, and many of them contact the ellipses or lines next to them. Similar to the line section, that the lines waver a little bit as you worked to keep the ellipses accurate. My advice here is the same: once ink is flowing from your pen to your page, the time for hesitation, second thoughts, or changing your mind, is over. Make your mark and be done with it. The priority is confidence; accuracy will come with time. For many of the ellipses in your funnel exercise, they contact the funnel exterior and their neighboring ellipses well, but there is some occasional drift in the minor axis that is worth keeping an eye on. Lastly, as you continue to do this exercise in the future, try to vary the ellipse degree more.
Moving to the boxes section, your plotted perspective exercise is correctly framed. I cant tell if some of your verticals look a little askew because the page is curved or warped, but most of them are perpendicular to the horizon. Likewise, your rough perspective exercise is framed, and its verticals and horizontals are perpendicular and parallel to the horizon, respectively. They are also plotted back to check against the true vanishing point. There is hesitation in these lines as well. When you start off, you may need to ghost many times before you feel like you have a crisp, clean, straight mark. You can also vary the speed of your mark, maybe drawing a little faster would help.
The rotated box exercise was well executed. The boxes are structured, spaced evenly, drawn through, and hatched appropriately to simplify the drawing. You did a decent job turning the boxes. It looks like the first boxes adjacent to the center, on the axes, had a pretty aggressive turn, which made it hard to turn outer boxes further. This exercise and the organic perspective exercise has some of the best line work throughout the set. However, try to resist the tendency to go over a line a second time to fix it. The heavier line weight brings the viewers eye to these lines, producing the opposite effect to what you want. You spaced and shrunk each box well to give a sense of dimensionality to the page, and you kept an even degree of foreshortening throughout the page.
All in all, I think you are starting to get the point of these exercises, which is to ghost and prepare enough that a confident line can be placed on the page. You can move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to keep using the lesson 1 drills as warmup. While ghosting, really focus on what type of mark your ghosted motion will make on the page, paying attention to little tremors and adjustments in your muscles. Get those smoothed out, then blast your confident line onto the page. Also, make sure to include the complete homework in your next submission.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-11 19:17
Hello, I one of Uncomfortables TAs. After I review your work, he will give you your updated flair. Lets dive in.
Your lines section, as a whole, is fantastic. Your superimposed lines are great, with bold, confident mark making resulting in clean, crisp lines. The ghosted lines and planes are similar. I do see an occasional wobble as you try to correct and inaccurate mark mid-stroke, but most of your lines are do not waver or show hesitation.
There is a good foundation in your ellipse section. You drew through all of your ellipses. However, I do see a bit of warping and hesitation here. I want to point out how your second drawn through line is pretty tight to the first, and you paid careful attention to getting the ellipses tightly packed into their allocated space. This indicates to me that you are really trying to focus on accuracy. Instead, try to focus first on confidence, as in your lines section. Try to ghost the ellipse enough that you are confident in your muscles before marking the page. If it helps, It will likely take more ghosting for your ellipses then compared to your lines.
Moving on to the boxes section, your plotted perspective exercise did correctly use a horizon line and two vanishing points, but I do think it would be beneficial to fully draw the frame of each image, rather then using the page edges for the left and right side. Your rough perspective exercise has good alignment, where you tried to keep your verticals and horizontals perpendicular and parallel to the horizon, respectively. You also plotted your convergence lines to the horizon, which is a great way to check your work. Your line quality suffered a little here compared to, say, the planes section. This is a normal consequence of stepping up the challenge of the exercise, but just try to remember to apply the skills you are learning in the superimposed and ghosted line exercises to your boxes.
The rotated box exercise is well structured. Your boxes are drawn through, your spacing is nice and tight, and you made good use of line weight to clarify the drawing. If you compare the converging angle of the outermost boxes on the horizontal axis to boxes neighboring them on the same axis, you can see that the degree of convergence between the two is nearly the same. Your brain is going to resist you turning the boxes. I am not sure if you did the boxes on the vertical axis before or after the horizontal, but the illusion of turning is more effective on this axis.
The organic perspective exercise has some crisp and clean linework. However it does look like maybe you drew over some of your lines. If this was an intentional application of line weight, that is OK, but if it was to hide a perceived mistake, I would encourage you to leave this habit behind. Trying to cover up a mistake with more or heavier lines just brings more attention to it. For this exercise, you could experiment a little more with size to make the image feel deeper.
You have absolutely got the intent of this lesson. I can see the preparation and planning that took place before you made each mark on the page. Now that you have the basic idea, the next step is more practice, which the 250 box challenge is great for! As you move on to this challenge, keep practicing the exercises you learned in lesson 1 as warmup. While the box challenge doesnt use ellipses, keep working on these as well, keeping in mind what was discussed above. Nice work!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-11 18:39
Hello! I am one of Uncomfortables TAs. I will critique your work and then he will assign your flair. So lets take a look!
Starting with your lines section, there is a lot of good work here. Your super imposed lines start in a tight point, which shows me that you were concentrating on where the pen hits the page, and for the most part the lines are clean and straight. These features persist into your ghosted lines and planes, where your lines show little wobble. You are preparing and committing to your marks, which is the exact intent of the lessons.
Moving on to the ellipses section, there is likewise a lot of confidence in these ellipses. There is little wavering present. However, you could improve getting your ellipses to touch their neighboring edges, particularly in the ellipse table. In the able section, you did draw through many of your ellipses, but some you did not. What is great in your ellipses in planes exercise is that often people sacrifice the smoothness and symmetry of their ellipses in trying to get them to touch the four edges of their bounding plane, but your ellipses are still pretty strong in this section. Some ellipses are bowed a little i.e. a little flat on one side. Nonetheless, the priority here is confidence first, accuracy second, and you have achieved that. Accuracy will come with practice. Perhaps the biggest thing to note is that the funnel exercise is missing. Please provide the missing page of funnels, and keep in mind some of the things noted here.
Your plotted perspective exercise is framed, although usually people draw all four borders of the frame rather then using the page end. I think it is important to fully frame the horizon line. In your rough perspective, your verticals are roughly perpendicular to the horizon, and your horizontals are roughly parallel to it. There are a couple instances where this is not true, but this will be a matter of practice. Your lines have a little more wobble then what is evidenced in the Lines section of the homework. It is common for line quality to dip a little as the exercise becomes more complicated, but by the end of the boxes section, your marks start to regain their earlier confidence. You did neglect one important element, where you did not extend your converging lines to the horizon to see how close your estimation was. This is a critical component of the rough perspective exercise since its actionable, tangible feed back to your work. Keep in mind that the extension lines are also to be used in the 250 box challenge.
The rotated box exercise is pretty solid. The spacing between each box is tight, and you used adjacent lines to assist you in plotting. All the boxes are drawn through, and you did a fantastic job turning each box away from the viewer. If I could nitpick, the symmetry of the boxes could be improved. In other words, the sphere is wider then it is tall, but you definitely got the intent of this exercise. The organic perspective exercise shows me a good grasp of three dimensions. You succeeded in turning the boxes in several different ways, used size to convey space, and also used a bit of occlusion. Like the rough perspective exercise, there are some lines here that have a bit of an arc as you rise to the more difficult challenge of making a box, but I hope to see this ironed out in the 250 box challenge.
All in all, I can see the ghosting and execution mindset starting to click with you. Before I send you off to the 250 box challenge, I would like to see the on page of missing funnel exercises. In the future, try to read the instructions closely so you don't miss important parts of the exercise or required parts of the submission.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-08 01:30
Hello, I am one of Uncomfortables TAs. There are no worries on the patreon front, so you don't need to worry about that. I will critique your work and then he will assign your flair. So lets take a look!
The lines section is overall pretty good! You have a bit of fraying in your super imposed line exercise, but for the most part the lines are pretty confident. There is a consistent small arc towards the middle of these lines thats worth addressing. In both the ghosting and planes exercises, I do see a small amount of wobble. Remember, the point of these exercises is confidence first, accuracy second. Your lines might be all over the place at first, but if they are crisp and clean, then mission accomplished. This might be remedied by moving a little quicker on the page, or ghosting a planning a bit more. Just remember, once your pen has hit the page, the time for hesitation is over.
The next section is the ellipses section. Your ellipses are pretty confident. While they may be (expectedly) a little off, I dont see wavering on the page. Most of your ellipses contact their surrounding edges. In the planes section, there is a bit of warping as you try to make your ellipse accurate, so remember to prioritize symmetry and confidence before trying to make it fit perfectly in the plane. In the funnels section, I do see the ellipse lose alignment to the minor axis. Keep an eye on these things; I would also suggest you try to vary the ellipse degree more dramatically get more out of the exercise.
In the boxes section, nothing is amiss with your plotted perspective boxes. The boxes are framed, recede to the correct vanishing point, and the verticals and horizontals are oriented correctly with respect to the horizon line. In the rough perspective, you were mindful of how your verticals were perpendicular and you horizontals were parallel to the horizon. There are places with things get a little off but the effort is clear. It does seem like the line quality is pretty hesitant in this section. As you strived to make your boxes align to the vanishing points, your brain was taking over and making your drawing hand unsteady. The same ideas from the previous two sections apply here: plan, prepare, and execute. By the time your pen strikes paper, try to have every confidence that your muscles know what to do. In the rotated box exercise, your line quality is much better. Your spacing is a little uneven, but you used the neighboring, previous lines to guide each subsequent one. Furthermore you drew through your boxes and hatched them to clarify the drawing. It does look like you succeeded in getting the boxes to turn more on the vertical and horizontal axes then in the 4 corner quadrants. As the boxes turn away from the viewer, the angles get more and more severe.
By the organic perspective exercise, I can tell that you are starting to incorporate the prepare-and-execute mentality of this lesson. Considerably more lines are straight and confident. Additionally, your boxes are well plotted and framed, and you made good use of size to convey space on the page.
You definitely understood the goals of this lesson, and I really think that the 250 box challenge is going to effectively hone your new skills. Keep up the good work!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-06-25 15:38
Hello, I one of Uncomfortables TAs. After I review your work, he will give you your updated flair. Lets dive in.
Your lines section is well executed There is a little wobble or straying, but mostly the lines are confident. The ghosted section does not have a lot of fraying, and the ghosted lines are strong and clean. I do see a slight curl at the end of some of your strokes, and an arc on larger ones, so try to be mindful of that in the future. However, by the end of the planes exercise, I do see improvement on both of these fronts. So keep up the good work.
There is definitely evidence of struggle in the ellipses section. You did well with drawing through the ellipses, and you were also really trying to make the ellipses touch their neighboring edges. However, a lot of ellipses are warped, wobbly, or asymmetric. Remember, like the lines section, the highest priority is confidence first, accuracy second. I also wanted to note that a lot of your ellipses are, mostly, the same degree. That is, there are not really narrow ellipses or nearly circular ones. Ellipses are tricky, but can be tackled if you plan and ghost more before letting your pen hit the page. Then, let your muscles do the work.
In the boxes section, your start by correctly framing your plotted and rough perspective exercises. You additionally properly extended your check lines. However, it seems like your line work is a little less confident, I can see more straying marks. Furthermore, often your verticals are not perpendicular to the horizon. However, by the end of the rough and organic perspective exercises, you seemed to become more comfortable with using the skills from previous sections to approach each box line by line. By the end, the boxes are drawn more confidently with cleaner stronger lines. Your rotated box exercise is well ordered, and you used line weight and hatching well to delineate each box. You did a decent job rotating the boxes as well, although it looks like maybe you rotated the boxes directly adjacent to the center box a bit too much. Lastly, your organic perspective exercise shows that you understand how to make use of smaller boxes to give a sense of space to the page. In a couple spots, I can see that you went over your previous lines. Just be aware that doing so can attract the viewers attention, so it is best to leave your lines as your first made them, and to use additional line weight more strategically (more on this in the 250 box challenge).
There is a lot of growth throughout this submission as you come to terms with the principles of planning, preparing, and execution. The benefits you are getting from doing the exercises definitely shows; your hard work is paying off. You are ready for the 250 box challenge. Be sure to continue to do lesson 1 as warm up. Pay special attention to the ellipses exercise in the future. Try to make your ellipses as confident as your lines are. At first, you may need to ghost for a very long time to get your muscles ready, and that is normal.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-06-25 14:30
Hello, I one of Uncomfortables TAs; he will give you your flair after I finish my critique. Lets dive in.
Your lines are off to a great start, where each line made is crisp and straight. Your super imposed lines are not significantly frayed, and even your longer lines only show slight wobble. Likewise, your ghosted lines are nice and clean. There is even a little bit of variance in line weight; your ability to control this will benefit you in subsequent lessons. The confident, planned linework extends to the planes section. There are some slight accuracy issues, as you tend to overshoot just a little, but this will improve with time.
Your ellipses are equally confident. They are all drawn through and show very little warping or wobbling, implying that you ghosted the motion before making your mark. You really took care to try to make each ellipse right size for its containing shape, whether it be planes, tables, or funnels. As in the lines section, the accuracy of these ellipses will increase with time. I do see just a little drift in your minor axis in the funnel exercise, so keep an eye on that as well.
In the boxes segment, everything is properly plotted and framed. Check lines are correctly used. In the rough perspective exercise, the horizontals and verticals are parallel and perpendicular to the horizon, respectively, and the lines are perhaps a little less confident then the lines section, but still overall show evidence of planning. It does look like you had a tendency to draw over lines you felt were not good enough; you will definitely want to avoid this trend in the future. Drawing over your lines attracts the viewers eye to it, producing the opposite of the intended effect. Your rotating box exercise is, aside from drawing over your lines a little too much, fantastic. The spacing between boxes is even, you drew through them, and you made good use of line weight and hatching for clarity. You really rotated the boxes to a significant degree; often boxes are under-rotated. In the organic perspective section, it seems like you stopped drawing over lines (for the most part). You used size well to convey the recession of the boxes into the background; it might be worthwhile to experiment with occlusion more when you use this exercise as warmup.
The attention to detail, planning, and confident execution is extremely evident throughout this submission. Great work! Feel free to move on the 250 box challenge. Dont forget to use this lesson as warmup.
spelling_expirt in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-06-04 00:24
Hello, I am one of Uncomfortable's teaching assistants. After I critique your work he will give you your flair.
Congratulations on completing the challenge. 250 boxes does take a degree of fortitude, so take a moment to appreciate your achievement.
From your first boxes, it is obvious that you paid a great deal of attention to both the instruction and purpose of the exercise. All of your boxes are drawn through, your lines are extended properly, one face of most boxes are hatched, and the outer edges of each box even has additional line weight, which adds to the solidity of each drawing. Importantly, it is clear that each line is ghosted, because they are crisp and straight. There is a little room for increased accuracy on your hatching lines, but this will come with time.
There is a marked improvement as you proceed through the lesson, where one can see that, as a group, each set of parallel edges starts to converge more consistently. Additionally, you really started to turn each box in a lot of different ways, and you also tested how a box would look with closer versus more distant vanishing points.
While there are gains made on this front, I do notice a slight tendency which persists to the end of the challenge, which affects many people. In some cases, it seems like within two opposite faces of a particular box the lines seem to converge more tightly, rather than the group of parallel lines as a whole. Additionally, sometimes the rear, hidden edge is noticeably askew compared to its parallel neighbors. For some examples, see boxes 240, 241, 207, 176, 175, and 174. Remember, it is good to approach each group as a whole, as shown here. Doing so helps you keep the convergences more consistent throughout each edge of the box, and is more useful than a face by face approach to the construction of the box.
This is great work, and I hope you are proud of what you have done here, and what you have gained from it. Feel free to move on to lesson 2!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"
2019-02-21 02:37
Welp, its been a long journey, but here is my lesson 7. Fun fact: I started on drawabox on September 26, 2017.
Thanks for everything.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects"
2018-11-18 04:00
Hello! It has been a while!
I had taken a bit of a hiatus to recoup from lesson 5, some personal stuff got in the way, and then inktober came around, so when i started this lesson I was a bit rusty. But I was doing part of the 250 box challenge as warmups, and then ellipse tables, and by the end I think things got under control. I really struggled with ellipses that are very close to each other (as on the pressure gauge) so I am still figuring out strategies to do that.
Thank you!
P.S. BTW, I drew a cheetah in draw a box style and made sure to give it some extra pudge from eating too much cake, as was the case with my snow leopard.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"
2018-07-20 03:59
Here we go! This lesson was very hard on multiple levels.
I did most of these before your coyote demo--and I had put myself in the "stop here" camp, so I mostly focused on construction.
I wanted to say thanks once more for making this resource and pouring your energy into it. The community around DaB has been a great boon.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"
2018-05-17 14:32
I took a different approach for this lesson, where instead of doing 2 pages of lay ins, I sort of did individual analyses for each bug. Let me know if you disapprove of this--or the red pen at the end--because I am thinking I might approach animals this way too.
I know you prefer the construction lines to be placed boldly, but I was finding that I got a lot less confused when I started with thinner lines. I was also unsure how much to push detail, so i went pretty easy on it by the end there.
spelling_expirt in the post "Drawabox, /r/ArtFundamentals and Reddit going forward. My plans for the future, and the chance to include you lot in on the discussion."
2018-05-07 17:40
Thanks for asking for input! I felt like a lot of my quibbles with the website are mostly UI, tiny change type stuff that you have likely already identified. For example, if I mouseover the learn tab, based on other websites I would expect the entire list of lessons to drop down, instead it has to be clicked (not a big deal). Or the way that the page responds when I expand a certain part of it such as "lessons" or "video demos". Because any previously expanded section is closed, it often makes it take a little longer to find the beginning of the section (also not a big deal). I would also like to be able to find the unsolicited advice comics more easily, they are a good sanity check (still not a big deal). But I think you are planning on fixing this stuff. The current layout looks really nice, to me, and is organized in a sensible and legible way.
Do you think that any part of the community site would be gated by whether a person is contributing with patreon or not? One thing I have found very valuable is looking over previous critiques, even though I feel a little creepy doing so. I think that is currently a very valuable free resource, although I am not sure how much it gets used. Currently it is a little tricky to actually get to that particular lesson's subreddit but I don't really consider that to be a big problem (I could book mark it after all).
For things about the community, I feel like if would be a good idea to organize the new platform as the discord is. That is, general subforums/channels, lesson specific channels, and then some sections dedicated to certain types of art. I feel like that organization really works; the lesson 1 and 2 channels are often quite active and people are trying to help each other. While some ineffective advice can get passed around, it is usually clarified in a timely manner. By segregating the channels this way partial submissions of lessons 1 and 2 dont drown out the complete lessons, some of which take people months to complete. So the people who need immediate feedback get it, and the people who need more involved feed back aren't drowned out.
The bigger question I have is would it be possible to implement is some sort of structured community feedback--for lessons 1 and 2 in particular? These lessons are fairly straightforward, and most of the major errors can be spotted from the self critique resources. Even someone going through lesson 1 for the first time can often spot areas to improve in anothers work. How many times have you written some variation on the theme of hook your ellipses more or your lines are wobbly? Personally I have no idea how you have maintained sanity after critiquing so many lesson 1 and 2s.
The best idea I could come up with is a voting system or a quick rubric for people to provide feedback could be good. I am mostly inspired by some of the MOOCs I have taken. Often, at the end of an assignment, you must grade the work of others against set criteria before finally critiquing your own work against the same rubric. The coursework I did was was less subjective then art, but the constraints especially on lesson 1 are so tight I feel that a systematic rubric could be created. So essentially, someone would post their work for grading. They would then grade one or more fellow students work, with some example questions below:
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Did the person complete the required number of pages for every assignment of the homework?
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Was each page adequately filled with work?
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Were the super imposed lines frayed on 0, 1, or 2 ends?
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Were the lines wobbly for the point to point ghosting exercise?
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Were the ellipses wobbly in the ellipse table?
By having a systematic feedback system, one could also keep both the community reviewers and the submitter's eye on the largest, most important elements of the assignment.
Now I can certainly see the flaws here. Making a meaningful group-input rubric seems hard. Such a system could be abused. It could also become easily over-complicated or simply take too much effort to implement. So mostly I am floating this idea to see if you have thought of it at all.
Thanks again for the site and providing the platform for this community to grow. It has really been a great boon to me over these recent months.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2018-04-05 01:16
Thank you! Branches will definitely continue to be a part of my warmup routine. I did want to ask one questionhow is my application of line weight? Is there anything specific I could key in on to improve?
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"
2018-04-04 02:48
I learned today that I finished this lesson. I upped my pledge (I should have done so before April 1st, I apologize for that).
I did think a lot about each construction method I chose; with each new plant I seemed to understand it better. Your louse demo really helped me; I saw it right before I did the pitcher plant.
Thanks for all your hard work.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"
2018-02-06 22:24
Thank you!
I have a tendency to be hard on myself and frankly it is usually what stops me from maintaining the habit of drawing. Having these lessons to provide structure has been huge, and the other thing was your comic about mistakes. Whenever I dwell on what I perceive to be wrong I view it as a mistake I needed to make to get better. Its hard to describe how much it had an influence on me.
So usually I am trying to view my work with an objective eye, and veer swiftly into hypercriticism. In the future I will also try to note what seemed to work as well to balance things outthanks for mentioning it.
I will work on the line weight. I did try to be sparing with it (not outline the whole form) but I was going quite slow when I went over the lines. Pleased with lack of wobble but you are spot on about them stiffening up.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"
2018-02-06 05:36
Welp, here goes nothing. Spent a long time on all of these. I feel like I might be much better with the arrow and contour exercise then when I first started. Thank you.
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"
2017-11-17 04:44
OK, thanks that helps!
At first I thought you were implying the degree was the same but the size increased which seemed at odds with the image you just linked and the one you linked previously. I agree I could take larger degree increments. Thanks!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"
2017-11-17 02:59
Thank you for the input! I am actually surprised you thought I didn't have to do the 250 box challenge! I will probably work on it on the side.
I've read through your comment on the ellipses a few times, and I don't quite understand it still. The way I thought of it was that as the plane of the ellipses tilted away from the horizon line, the ellipse got relatively wider as well (the minor axis length to major axis length ratio increased). Are you simply saying that I attempted this a little, but could have done it to a greater effect? As in, essentially I should have increased the degree more? I was following this image as a guide. I also had a revelation while watching another video by Peter Han, where he stated that as the plane of the ellipse travels away from you (perpendicular to a vanishing point), the degree gets larger.
Thanks, once again, for your input. I will take a look at lesson 2 tonight!
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"
2017-11-16 03:12
Hello, after about 2 months, I completed the homework lesson 1!
Some general things that I noticed I could improve upon after viewing the self critiques:
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I will continue to practice all of these exercises, especially organic perspective, ghosting, superimposing, and the ellipses funnels and panes. I know I need to practice ellipses more, I am having trouble getting the ghosting movement to transfer to the page. With straight lines, I feel that the muscle memory is stronger by the time I write
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I need to continue to improve line quality. I am no longer smashing the pen down on the page, so that is nice. I was initially good about resisting the impulse to rework a line, but over the last couple exercises I backtracked. So I need to continue to pay attention to that
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I have a heck of a time drawing parallel lines of the same length at some distance apart (like this | | ). Its a combination of mechanical ability and the way I visually measure things. I think this is also affecting my ability to plot a line for the organic perspective exercise.
I had some questions:
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For correcting the organic perspective, I was finding it clearer to draw the "correct" line from a vertical to the vanishing point, rather than plotting out mine to the horizon. Is this a bad idea?
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Overall, I feel like maybe I am belaboring or overworking these exercises too much. I was working about 1 to 2 hours a night for 2 months--should I have been done faster?
Thank you so much for the subreddit and the site. Its been a great help to keep me focused and motivated.
*edit: Is it ok to also post this to the main community for critique?
spelling_expirt in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"
2019-07-24 14:41
Whichever skill you feel is most lacking from your previous set. Personally I got a lot of mileage out of superimposed lines and planes; obviously rough perspective is very similar to the box challenge. Do whatever you feel would work best for you!