Uncomfortable in the post "How to keep yourself accountable?"
2023-06-23 22:19
While this subreddit is reserved for discussion specific to the Drawabox course and its assignments (and so communities like /r/ArtistLounge and /r/learnart may be more suitable, as AutoModerator mentioned), I do have some thoughts to offer in regards to your question.
Firstly, the frustration you're encountering is normal. While it's there for those of us who started much earlier, I expect it would be more palpable the older we get, as that sense of "not enough time" looms. You've spent 40 years being a human, and I'd imagine you've gotten pretty good at it. I've seen some people describe this as being a "Level 40 human", and that analogy can be quite useful. For all intents and purposes, you're currently Level 0 at drawing. What one might expect for a Level 40 human in regards to human activities, one cannot reasonably expect from drawing-related activities, if you are only Level 0. But then, few of us are concerned with what's reasonable. We want what we want.
Patience and endurance is itself a skill that is developed over time. When I started drawing, I'd spend a few minutes at most on a sketch or a doodle, before my mind would wander, or the thing would feel stale and not worth further investment. Over time however, I was able to spend longer. 15 minutes, then an hour, then several hours. More importantly than that however, was learning that I did not have to complete what I was working on in one sitting. Again, a reasonable thought, but one that most of my own students tend to overlook.
The long and the short of it is this - we all start somewhere. It's understandable that you'd be frustrated, not only because you're starting later in life, but also because you're starting over, having some memory of what you could once do, and having to deal with building back up to it.
Ultimately it all comes down to a discrepancy between what you can do, and what you want to do. It's the expectations that hold us back, those expectations which breed frustration and exacerbate the impatience that is entirely natural. So, I suggest this instead: Have your goals, have what you desire to achieve, but instead of framing them as a specific target (for instance, I would like to spend 5 hours drawing each day), frame them as directions in which you would like to move. "I'd like to be able to sit and draw for longer."
When we focus on a specific target, we tend to hyperfixate only on our failure to achieve them. A direction however gives us credit for every step we take in that direction, they allow us to acknowledge that there is growth there, regardless of the quantity. You may have drawn only for 30 seconds yesterday, but perhaps you drew for 60 seconds today. In the face of 5 hours, it's a paltry, inconsequential difference. But setting aside that specific goal, it is a doubling - and that is no small thing.
Acknowledge and recognize your small victories, and they will come to you in greater number.
Uncomfortable in the post "Will something bad happen if I draw for fun a bit more?"
2023-06-23 19:38
The 50% rule states that half your time should be spent on practice, and half on play - but in truth, that's a minimum. If you wish to spend more than that on play, then more power to you. It's an excellent thing, and something you should not be afraid of. My bigger concern is with those who ignore the need for play and fill all their time with study.
The process of learning is one where we learn and unlearn habits of all sorts. Sometimes we pick up bad habits, and have to purposefully avoid them later on. Sometimes we pick up a habit that is useful and valuable at one point, but that we ultimately grow out of, and that goes on to hold us back. This is an entirely normal part of the learning experience - not something to avoid or fear, but to accept as an inevitability. Don't let it keep you from playing.
Uncomfortable in the post "Circle the Wagons!"
2023-06-22 19:09
As AutoModerator stated, this community is specifically focused on the lessons on drawabox.com, so the other communities they recommended will be better suited to answering this question.
That said, I can answer it for you. It's not each wagon that would have its own vanishing point - it's each set of parallel edges in 3D space that would have their own vanishing point. So if each wagon were just a simple box, each box would have 3 sets of parallel edges, each set having its own vanishing point. But as you build up more structural detail on those wagons, you might end up adding more sets of edges, and thus introducing its own vanishing point.
Here are 3 videos from the first lesson of the Drawabox course that explains this concept:
Uncomfortable in the post "Trouble visualizing 3D has made this near-impossible. Now what?"
2023-06-20 18:36
Theory is one thing, and it's important, but it is a far cry from the practical. We can understand that something is proportionally incorrect, but still be miles away from being able to execute it correctly. Again - that's why this course is so heavy on the actual work. Students spend months at minimum working through the course as a whole.
To that point, keep in mind that the early lessons/challenges do not ask students to draw boxes that are proportionally cuboid - it asks for boxes in general, for which rectangular prisms are acceptable and largely expected. It isn't until much later in the course - when we hit the cylinder challenge (which comes in between lesson 5 and 6) that we start tackling the matter of our boxes' proportions more directly. There, with the cylinders-in-boxes exercise, we develop our ability to judge the relative proportions between the different planes in order to have a single opposite pair of them fit the proportions of a square in 3D space. And then, it isn't until Lesson 7 that we look at how we might apply those principles to the rest of the box to actually achieve a unit cube, from which to extend a useful grid.
As you are early on in the course, try not to let your expectations of what you should be able to do get in the way. Focus only on completing the work as it's described, following those instructions as closely as you can.
Don't leave it to yourself to judge whether you're on track or not, but rather rely on third party feedback from the community to help you assess whether there really is something you're missing, or whether the path you're following simply isn't meant to unfold as you expect it to.
As long as you follow the course as instructed, and don't add onto it with further expectations of your own, you will see growth and progress. Don't worry about approaching it from one angle or another - follow it as it's written and delivered.
Uncomfortable in the post "Trouble visualizing 3D has made this near-impossible. Now what?"
2023-06-20 17:26
It would help us better understand your situation if you describe, in detail, what you've attempted and used thus far to address this issue, and how you've approached them. For instance, Drawabox is a course that focuses entirely on developing 3D spatial reasoning skill - not by explaining tons of technical information and relying on memorization, but rather using lecture as a starting point to get students into doing exercises. It's through the exercises, with repetition and over a fair bit of time, that we gradually work through the process of rewiring our brains to better understand 3D space on an instinctual level - something the human brain is not naturally predisposed to, at least when it comes to understanding the imaginary.
So, if one has only scratched at the first lesson or two of the course and is struggling with spatial reasoning, that's entirely normal. If however you've gone through most of the course, followed the instructions to the letter, and are still seeing no real growth or improvement, then that would be quite different.
If you explain in detail what you've attempted and used to try to address the issue, that'll help us better understand where you sit currently.
Additionally, when you talk about "visualization" as your area of trouble, I should clarify that the ability to visualize and strong spatial reasoning skills are different things. For example, I have aphantasia (which I talk about in greater detail here), so I cannot visualize anything in my mind. This does not however have any impact on my ability to understand the things I wish to draw as they exist in 3D space. As such, focusing on literal visualization may be a less useful gauge of progress.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-18 18:18
I'll be looking into this further once I've finished my work on the promptathon, and before the subreddit is shut down, and will get back to you when I have more information.
Uncomfortable in the post "How realistic are my expectations?"
2023-06-18 00:42
Drawabox primarily explores one thing - developing students' spatial reasoning skills, so they can better bridge the gap between understanding what they're drawing as marks on a flat page, to understanding how they represent things in three dimensions. Someone else put it quite aptly as turning the page into your 3D playground.
That is an important skill to develop, and one that helps immensely in drawing from one's imagination and creating new things, but it is not everything you'll need. It's a starting point.
In terms of what you'd do next however, that would be a question for /r/ArtistLounge or /r/learnart instead.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-17 20:48
Are you in any way familiar with what this subreddit is built around, what it consists of, and what purpose it serves?
Uncomfortable in the post "Should I restart after a break?"
2023-06-17 18:35
I would review all of Lesson 0, then spend a couple weeks focused primarily on warmups, being sure to review the instructions for each exercise you tackle in the warmups to ensure that you're doing them as intended. Then once you feel you're ready, you can resume where you left off.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-17 18:27
There is indeed. You'll find it linked in the tl;dr at the beginning of the post.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-17 18:26
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into that further once I've finished my promptathon work.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-17 04:17
Could you give me some examples of the kinds of things you've saved from this subreddit? I'm going to have to look into this for you, and it'd help to have more context.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-17 04:10
(°°)
Uncomfortable in the post "Question about organic Intersections"
2023-06-16 19:52
There are a lot of little inconsistencies in the material that are gradually being cleaned up as we overhaul the video/demo material, bit by bit. In this case, stick to the "round" contour lines, arranging them perpendicular to the flow of the form as we would in the organic forms with contour lines exercise.
Uncomfortable in the post "Constructing Animal Feet Attempt"
2023-06-15 20:13
I think the underlying source of your struggles come down to the boxes themselves lacking solidity. Their convergences are not consistent, there are gaps in the corners where there should be none, and so forth. This inhibits our brains from interpreting them as solid boxes, and so when we try to draw further forms on top of them, we aren't able to attach them in a manner that behaves realistically in 3D space.
Keep in mind that the exercises we encounter throughout the course's lessons and challenges do continue to be a part of our regular warmup routine, as explained here in Lesson 0. Particularly in this case, it's important that you continue practicing the freely rotated boxes from the box challenge, along with the line extensions that help us assess and improve upon them over time.
Uncomfortable in the post "How do you get better at perspective drawing?"
2023-06-15 19:29
While AutoModerator has explained that you may want to ask this question in a different community, I did want to mention that the course this subreddit focuses on (drawabox.com) is potentially what you're looking for. While it's not a perspective course, it is closely related and focuses on the more general concept of 3D spatial reasoning. That is essentially developing an underlying understanding of how perspective works on an intuitive sense, and early on (in Lesson 1) we explain why 1, 2, 3, etc. point perspective is a simplification that can actually lead to some significant misunderstandings on how the tool is meant to be used.
You can learn more about the course in this introductory video to decide whether or not it suits your needs: https://youtu.be/9708PBUvCQ0
Uncomfortable in the post "Perspective drawing activities to help learn?"
2023-06-15 19:27
While AutoModerator has explained that you may want to ask this question in a different community, I did want to mention that the course this subreddit focuses on (drawabox.com) is potentially what you're looking for. As explained in this introductory video, it's a free, structured, exercise-based course that focuses primarily on developing strong spatial reasoning skills. That's essentially perspective, but unlike the very technical linear perspective, it focuses more on the intuitive use of perspective to capture the impression that the two dimensional marks drawn on a flat page represent something three dimensional.
Uncomfortable in the post "What do you guys do when you fuck up?"
2023-06-10 20:32
You should continue regardless of your mistakes. Remember that what we're doing here are exercises - we're not performing, we're not pursuing a perfect end result to show off. The end result doesn't really matter, it's the process of doing the exercise, and how it forces our brains to solve those spatial problems.
If we get used to just starting over when we make mistakes, we actually make it less likely that we're going to learn from those mistakes. If we just start over, it's like the mistake never happened. If you're forced to roll with it and adapt around it, you're forced to consider and reflect upon the mistake, which makes it a little less likely that you'll do it again.
So- don't start over, and don't attempt to correct your mistakes. Adapt around them, and make a point of considering why the mistake happened, and how you might avoid it in the future (usually by giving yourself more time to do that task, so you can take more care in its execution).
Uncomfortable in the post "Do you know where can I find a pencil like this blue one?"
2023-06-07 01:39
While AutoModerator explained that this subreddit is restricted to certain kinds of posts, I can help you identify that pencil. I believe it is a Staedtler Mars Technico 780 Leadholder. Leadholders are similar to mechanical pencils, but tend to hold much thicker lead, and have a mechanism that allows the lead to slide in and out, rather than gradually clicking it let more lead out bit by bit.
Uncomfortable in the post "Question for the lessons"
2023-05-31 21:36
You go at your own pace. Lesson 0 goes over this in detail (specifically here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/3) so make sure you've gone through it.
Uncomfortable in the post "250 box challenge complete!"
2023-05-25 23:50
You'll certainly get there!
Uncomfortable in the post "250 box challenge complete!"
2023-05-25 20:15
Ultimately that's a choice for you to make - but it does explain why you feel you did not learn much from the exercise. What I can say is that when students on the official critique track end up in this situation, a full redo is what we generally assign.
Uncomfortable in the post "250 box challenge complete!"
2023-05-25 20:10
Review the reminders listed here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/reminders - you're running afoul of the first two points.
Uncomfortable in the post "Question: Why are the videos done in digital medium?"
2023-05-23 12:46
It's as you stated towards the end. It is vastly more efficient for me to demonstrate the exercises digitally, and would require not only a lot more time but also more expensive hardware I did not already have previously. Given that as you noted the videos are freely available, our resources were extremely limited during the years in which those demos were produced.
We are now working through updating the video demo content, which includes more traditional drawing, but it's only recently that it has been a possibility. That said, there's no additional information being conveyed by doing the demos traditionally - it's really just a superficial change to make the course feel more professional.
Uncomfortable in the post "How to draw from imagination?"
2023-05-20 22:57
While AutoModerator pointed out that this subreddit is geared towards a fairly narrow focus and purpose, and that other communities may be better suited to your question, I did want to provide a bit of extra information for you to chew upon.
Drawing from your imagination is a skill that depends on a couple things:
-
The development of one's visual library - that is, the collection of information pertaining to a wide variety of subject matter. It's developed through study - that is, drawing things from observation, either from life or from photo reference, and through that process being forced to consider aspects of that subject matter to a level of depth we can only really achieve by patiently and carefully drawing them. Earlier on this can be simply with the intent of copying them visually, but as we progress as students, we learn to change our approach depending on what it is specifically we wish to study of a given object (how its elements fit together, the kinds of details that it may often feature, how those details or elements are arranged, proportions, colour palettes, etc). By "studying" them, we record information to our internal visual library, to be able to pull them out later and apply in our own work. Sometimes we might draw from our visual library directly, sometimes we might use our visual library to identify what kinds of references might suit the thing we're trying to produce.
-
The development of one's spatial reasoning skills - that is, the understanding of how complex objects can be broken down into simple 3D forms, and how those forms can be manipulated in 3D space. This plays a role in a few different ways. It allows us to approach the kind of studying I mentioned in the previous point by focusing on the structure of the subject, understanding it as a series of simple forms rather than just one big form. It can also allow us to make alterations to those simple forms before reconstructing the whole on the page - so for example, you might need to draw a person, and you might have a pretty close reference for the pose you're after, but you might need to change it so the arm is raised instead of lowered, or have the head turned in one direction instead of another. It can even allow you to combine multiple pieces of reference, pulling a little from each. And lastly, it can allow us to greatly simplify the volume of information we may be trying to commit to our visual library - instead of having to consider a wealth of different data points, we can learn to simplify things into simple arrangements of 3D forms, which is generally far easier to recall and work from.
The course this subreddit focuses on, Drawabox.com, focuses on the latter. It's a course geared entirely towards developing one's spatial reasoning skills, from the position of a complete beginner. That said, it is not an easy course, not one that can be completed quickly. It requires a great deal of patience, so it's not for everyone. It is however freely available. You can learn more about it here - the video at the top explains it in more detail.
Another video that might be useful to you is this one I made for the Proko YouTube channel on the topic of Aphantasia. In principle it's a bit tangential, but in discussing the fact that my aphantasia (the inability to visualize my imagination in my head) is not really a relevant "disability", I go quite in depth about how I approach drawing from my imagination, and explain that it is an approach that is used widely - regardless of one's ability to visualize. It includes demonstrations on doing quick studies from reference images, and then leveraging spatial reasoning skills to extract that information and leverage it to create new things.
Hope that helps.
Uncomfortable in the post "Five Years of Being a Hobbyist Artist. Reporting in!"
2023-05-20 22:43
I'm glad to hear you've grown and learned more about your own motivations for creating artwork, and that you're continuing to do so. That said, I think this post would be much better suited to /r/ArtistLounge. While the rules of this subreddit and the circumstances that necessitate them have changed over time, we are currently fairly strict in terms of what is appropriate for this community (as explained by AutoModerator), and what may be better suited to other communities. Ultimately we want to focus as much as we can on ensuring that students here have as much of an opportunity to get eyes on their lesson homework as well as on their questions, as it is generally not the easiest thing to get feedback for free.
I did want to mention one thing however - you talked a lot about style, about arriving at a unique style, and I think it might be beneficial to you to watch this video from Lesson 0 of Drawabox in its current form (rather than expanding outwards, we've put a lot of resources to going back over old material and updating it in order to improve production quality, make it more informative, and address concerns we see coming up more directly). The video - or rather, the latter half of it - goes over what style is, and how it can be understood more as a series of choices made by the artist. This can help one consider how they approach creating styles of their own, by breaking down the decisions made by other artists to achieve certain ends.
Uncomfortable in the post "Take a picture and get an animation to master perspective!"
2023-05-19 23:51
Unfortunately you've caught me at a bad time - I'm rushing around preparing travel arrangements to attend a funeral, so I can't really go into much detail. I think the tool is interesting, although I believe its value appears to be strongest as a tool to quickly take hand drawn frames and turn them into an animation.
I can see the value in it helping us to assess how well we're estimating the rotations of the form, of course, but I think that there are many ways in which one can structure a larger strategy for learning, that you pick the tools and exercises that fit together best.
Drawabox's approach focuses on things like line extensions to more directly identify the specific ways in which the line convergences are off, so the approach for the next page can be adjusted, and the process repeated. It relies on more specific, actionable information.
While a tool may itself be interesting and useful, and while it may make sense to pair it with certain learning strategies, the intent and design of the course overall still must be considered when assessing the fit.
Uncomfortable in the post "Take a picture and get an animation to master perspective!"
2023-05-19 20:19
The app certainly looks interesting, and I see you've been discussing it on #art-technology on the discord. The discord is however the more appropriate place for that discussion however. Its relevance to the course itself is more tangential, and posts here should generally be a specific question relating to the course, or a complete submission of homework, just to ensure those trying to get eyes on their work aren't pushed further down, reducing their chances of getting feedback.
Uncomfortable in the post "Unrelated question. (Still would like anyone to read it)"
2023-05-13 18:02
I'm glad you were able to find it!
Uncomfortable in the post "Unrelated question. (Still would like anyone to read it)"
2023-05-12 20:49
I do remember the ad you're describing, although I had never looked too closely at it. I tried digging through the advertising history for that ad slot, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find any further information. The ad slot was managed through Comic Ad Network, and a lot of the people who advertise there also use it to place ads on their own websites. I'd hoped I'd be able to look at the accounts that previously placed bids on the slot to get a link to their websites, but not all of them had that information visible.
You might have luck looking at some of the websites that use Comic Ad Network (you can browse through the listings on that website) but at that point it'll really just be a matter of hoping that they're advertising with someone else on there, and that you happen to stumble upon it.
Uncomfortable in the post "Question about painting"
2023-05-12 17:35
Painting, like most things, benefits from the development of multiple skills. There's all the things that are specific to painting itself - the use of the medium, that is, and understanding all of the little nuances of how to mix paints, how to use different mediums, techniques like glazing, the concept of fat over lean, and so forth - but painting as a whole is still going to share a lot of skills with every other kind of representational visual art.
What Drawabox focuses on primarily, the development of students' spatial reasoning skills, is all about helping them to understand how the marks they make on a flat page or canvas relates to the nature of the 3D forms being depicted, and how the nature of those marks would change based on how we turn the forms in 3D space, and how we combine them with others to create more complex objects. That is entirely relevant to painting.
Long story short - yes, the skills we focus on here are as valuable to a painter as they are to someone drawing with graphite, or someone illustrating with digital tools. Drawabox does not however teach anything specific to paint (or even colour), so those are skills you'd pursue separately, combining them with what you learn here, when working on your own paintings.
Uncomfortable in the post "Have this prehistoric book called "I can Draw""
2023-05-08 18:01
While I can't speak to that book, it's probably more important that I remind you that as mentioned in Lesson 0, the 50% rule splits your time into two halves, and any book, tutorial, lesson, course, etc. would fall under the same half as the work you're doing for Drawabox.
The other half is meant to push you to draw just for the sake of drawing. Not with the intent of improving, or learning, or growing, or producing anything of quality in the end. It's about gradually learning to enjoy the act of drawing itself, regardless of how it turns out - something that most students find frustrating and difficult, and tend to avoid in favour of things that will hold their hands and promise them that their time isn't being "wasted".
Uncomfortable in the post "Is this kind of box okay to draw for the 250 challenge?"
2023-05-04 23:10
Your concern is correct - this would be incorrect. It's not that you've made the foreshortening "too shallow" - shallow foreshortening still requires by definition some convergence. When we eliminate convergences altogether, we're forcing that vanishing point to infinity - something that only occurs when the set of edges in question runs perpendicular to the angle at which the viewer is looking. This is explained in the reminders section of the challenge, specifically the first point.
Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (critique please)"
2023-05-03 14:03
So this is actually very much my fault - I ended up phrasing/demonstrating that bit of the box challenge video very poorly and didn't notice until it was way too late. It'll be fixed before long, when my overhaul of the demos and videos gets to the box challenge.
Basically each box consists of 6 faces, three of which face towards the viewer, three of which face away from the viewer. You can pick any one of the three that face towards the viewer and fill it with hatching. The distinction is between those that are oriented towards the viewer and those that face away - it's not that there's one right choice, there are three.
Uncomfortable in the post "Patreon"
2023-05-02 17:24
Yes, it's still active - we simply only use Patreon's posts now when we need to share information with patrons specifically, which is very rare. The last post would have been regarding our move to a custom-built community platform on the drawabox website, which integrates with Patreon - once pledged on patreon, you'd connect your drawabox account to your patreon account, which can be done on the drawabox account settings page.
Since then, nothing's really changed that was specific to our existing patreon supporters.
Uncomfortable in the post "Does the "work" half of the 50% rule also include non drawing activities?"
2023-05-02 17:16
At its core, the 50% rule is about being mindful of how much of your time you're committing to activities whose purpose are geared towards improving your skills (through exercises, lessons, studies, courses, tutorials, etc.) and ensuring that you are not neglecting drawing for its own sake, exploring the things you wish to be able to draw well, and generally acting without the hesitation that comes from worrying about how it'll turn out, and whether or not you're "wasting your time" - the latter being something the majority of students struggle with and actively avoid, feeling that the more time they can commit to studying, the better.
In terms of specifically what falls into which category, it matters less. The spirit of the rule is to be aware of the need to do both, and the importance of drawing for its own sake. You don't need to strictly time yourself, you can decide for yourself whether time spent reading/watching videos counts towards "work".
What matters is that you regularly push yourself to draw for the hell of it, to set aside worries of wasting time or embarrassing yourself - because these are the things you will likely not want to do, and will therefore need to force yourself to (at least for a while).
Uncomfortable in the post "250 cylinders challenge question"
2023-05-01 18:14
while those boxes are presumably just helpers for the cylinders
It's more the opposite. Think of it as though the cylinders are part of the error checking method, allowing us to test whether or not the ends of the box are actually proportionally square, and helping us identify how we might shift our approach for the next page to bring those line extension convergences closer together, and achieve proportions that are more square.
This is very much intentional, and part of the exercise - it's an iterative process that will gradually refine your ability to judge which proportions to use in terms of how big things are on the page, to capture proportionally equivalent distances in 3D space regardless of how the object is rotated.
"Another boxes challenge in disguise" is a good way of putting it.
Uncomfortable in the post "Reddit bot marked my homework as spam."
2023-04-24 18:18
Using the crossposting feature on the drawabox website should automatically approve the resulting post on the subreddit, whereas posts made manually are automatically sent to the spam filter. I'll have to look into why your post was not automatically approved, although I have approved it manually.
Additionally - since it's pretty hard to get feedback via community feedback both on the subreddit and on the website, I would encourage you to look into the unofficial "critique exchange" program being run on our discord chat server to help ensure you get some feedback. There's a channel there named #critique-exchange, and you can read about how it works in the pinned messages in that channel.
Uncomfortable in the post "Question"
2023-04-23 19:42
While questions are permitted, they do need to be specific, rather than generally asking for feedback on a given exercise. Instead, go ahead and finish up the rest of lesson 1, and submit it all at once for feedback. You can also get feedback on individual exercises or partial work on our discord chat server.
Uncomfortable in the post "Digital Art"
2023-04-18 22:24
Oh, sorry- I misread it as "can I do my warmups digitally". Yes, you absolutely can do your 50% rule work digitally. I believe it's mentioned both in the video and the written material that this is perfectly okay. In fact, I encourage it.
Uncomfortable in the post "Digital Art"
2023-04-18 21:55
For the reasons explained in Lesson 0, anything you do in relation to this course - homework and warmups included - is best done in ink on paper. Remember that the recommended medium is chosen not based on what you're most comfortable with, what you prefer, or what you ultimately intend to work with long term, it's based on what will help you internalize and apply the concepts of the lesson as effectively as possible.
There's nothing at all wrong with working digitally (I myself do all my professional and personal work digitally), but every tool is chosen based on the task it is performing - in this case, that task is learning, and internalizing good habits.
Of course, you can and should feel free to work through the 50% rule using your iPad, or whatever other tools you're inclined to use.
Uncomfortable in the post "i have a weird issue atm where it i feel super uninspired but like i love to sketch things i just sruggle with coming up with ideas"
2023-04-16 21:18
While AutoModerator explained that this subreddit is more narrowly focused and gave some recommendations on other areas to ask, I do have one thing to offer. The approach I explain here in this video is largely what I lean on to help develop my ideas from the generally loose random ideas, into more concrete problems that I can then solve through design and drawing.
Hope that helps.
Uncomfortable in the post "Any recommendations for an amazing source similar to Drawabox but focusing on anatomy?"
2023-04-14 00:24
Try asking this over in /r/learnart or /r/artistlounge. Asking in those other communities will expose your question to an audience that is more familiar with a wider variety of resources will help you get more useful responses.
Uncomfortable in the post "Relearning Talent?"
2023-04-12 18:04
While AutoModerator explained why this community isn't the right place for this question (and recommended some other options for it), I did want to mention one thing in response.
It's hard to say in what form the skills you'd developed when you were younger still linger - whether simply dormant and something you can awake to some extent, or rusted away from the years of disuse. And unfortunately, I don't think you'll really ever be able to look back in hindsight to answer that question either. After all - you won't really know if what you learn now is simply you building up from scratch, or if you're filling in the gaps from whatever is left over from before.
What I can say however is that if you can choose between looking at it one way or the other, it will be far more beneficial to you and to your own growth to look at it as though you are starting from a blank slate. Ultimately if the past skills you'd developed are still present, they'll help you progress more quickly, but you'll still be following the same path, building up solid fundamentals and progressing from there.
Conversely, if you worry about recapturing what you recall of your past (which may be accurate, or it may not be, as memory itself is fairly unreliable especially if you're going back a decade and more), you will feel more inclined to skip steps, to judge whether or not you need to invest time in one area or another, in the hopes that those prior skills will "reawaken". In the long run, it just results in a lot more wasted time.
My situation is different from yours in a lot of ways, so there isn't a lot I can offer based on my own experience (although much of what I've said is also influenced by the thousands of students I've taught), but there is some small overlap. I drew a ton in my preteens and my teen years. While I wouldn't say I was impressive by any stretch, it pretty much was as it is with all things - if you put time into something that other people don't, you'll probably develop well enough to be impressive to those others. I didn't really "practice", but rather spent that time drawing whatever caught my fancy, or chasing whatever fleeting glimpse of inspiration I could, but I definitely improved over the years... just not in a very consistent or reliable manner.
I abandoned the possibility of pursuing art as a career pretty early on and went more towards game development and programming, but I never did stop drawing as a hobby. It wasn't until I'd graduated and started working in my field, that really started to feel that pursuing a career as an illustrator or a concept artist was what I wanted. But it was a goal I felt entirely ill-equipped for. Approaching drawing as I had up until that point (just doing whatever I felt like, no exercises, no structure) gave me the impression that I had hit my ceiling, and that I wouldn't really get past it. I also have aphantasia (the inability to conjure mental imagery in one's "mind's eye" - not something I'll expand on here but I did make this video for the Proko YouTube channel that explains it further), which further made me question whether this was simply the best I could do.
Looking back on it now, I realize that I simply wasn't approaching learning correctly (in that I wasn't really trying to learn, I was trying to perform, I was trying to produce, and I never allowed myself to do the things I found boring and uninteresting at the time). But that's simply the path I ended up taking, and I do feel that I simply wasn't ready to go back to the basics, to swallow my ego, and to accept that what I'd done wasn't really what I could be doing if I really wanted to pursue that goal. At least, not until that point in my life, when I was seriously considering this career change.
Ultimately I did change how I was approaching things, and through a combination of structured self-study initially while working full-time to save up, followed by six months at a school across the continent under the instruction of respected instructors (this was back in 2013/2014, when online training wasn't as developed as it is now), I was able to fundamentally restructure how I approached the work, and learned the skills that would allow me to contribute to a team as a concept artist, ultimately leading to being hired before the end of 2014.
Bringing this back around to your situation, what I was doing for the first decade prior to that shift, is similar to what you might be inclined to do if you look at it as relearning the skills you feel you had before. It's more likely to lead to cutting corners, to skipping things that may well be important, and to ultimately make you take far more time than you strictly might otherwise require. Conversely, approaching it from a blank slate and accepting that in order to develop the skills you need to concept out your own game, means accepting that a good bit of the process isn't going to be fun, there will be a lot of boring things involved, but that ultimately that's OK and you'll get through it.
One thing I would advise against however is setting a specific deadline for your project, or at least doing so right now. There's a lot of unknown unknowns - you don't know how long it'll take to learn each individual skill you need to build this whole thing out, what the project itself might entail in its entirety, and how long all of that will take. There's nothing wrong with that at all, I think it's an excellent thing to set out a project and gradually learn all it involves - but it is important not to give yourself a reason to rush. That's pretty much the biggest issue my students run into - they come in with deadlines and goals, and all I'm teaching them are the core fundamentals that'll get them started towards learning the more interesting stuff they're actually interested in. But even this takes 5-6 months at its quickest, if done as instructed (although lots of people are doing it alongside full time jobs, families, etc. so it can easily turn into a year or even two). Those students who try to decide how long they're going to take end up rushing through the work, having to go back and redo sections, and ultimately just take longer than they otherwise needed to.
Focus on doing it all to the best of your current ability at every stage. That current ability will grow over time, but trying to dictate how long it should take, how it's all going to work out, etc. but holding ourselves to deadlines we invented when we had no real sense of what that task or project would require of us means taking on an amount of authority that our existing knowledge does not support.
Anyway, I hope that helped give context to your concern. Best of luck on your pursuits.
Uncomfortable in the post "Viwer"
2023-04-08 20:54
Uncomfortable in the post "Not really sure why but can figure out why the top image interior wasnt lined up"
2023-03-31 21:16
It's entirely normal - every tiny little mistake we make in laying out the other edges, any slight discrepancies in their alignment to the vanishing points (which will generally still happen even if we're using a ruler and plotting everything back) will accumulate, and it'll manifest most visibly in the last corner we define.
Uncomfortable in the post "Does anyone know an alternative to Drawabox?"
2023-03-30 05:12
This a question you'll want to ask in a more general art subreddit, like one of those AutoModerator recommended in their response to your question.
Uncomfortable in the post "DrawABox as a process to learn digital painting?"
2023-03-29 23:52
While everyone is certainly welcome to use these resources however they see fit, the most important thing to keep in mind is that the course itself is designed for a very specific, and admittedly narrow purpose: to help students develop an understanding of how the marks they put down on the page establish forms and structures that exist in three dimensions. Developing one's 3D spatial reasoning skills in this manner helps make a lot of the other elements used in drawing, illustration, painting, design, etc. much more approachable, so we frame this as our core fundamentals.
If your intent is to develop that skill, then you should follow the course as it's laid out, with the understanding that the whole course works towards that goal, by tackling the problem from many different angles and building up that understanding gradually. Plenty of students stop early and decide to switch to other things at various points throughout the course, and that's fine - it's not exactly an "all or nothing" scenario where you don't gain anything unless you finish the whole thing - but it's not a matter of certain sections being required for certain pursuits. It's all one thing, working towards one central goal.
If your intent is different, then there may well be other approaches or courses that are better suited to your specific goal - though given your goal being digital painting, developing your spatial reasoning skills will be quite valuable as that's what helps us understand the interaction between light and form which dictates the nature of rendering and colour, among other things.
What I might suggest instead of stopping at some arbitrary point in the course, is to follow along with the course but also work on digital painting alongside it. Yes, this will result in your already limited time being spread thinner, but it'll allow you to get your hands dirty with what you're interested in, without putting you in the position of speeding through material that really should not be rushed. Additionally, as I mention in Lesson 0, working on other material alongside Drawabox is actually beneficial - it allows us to tackle the same problems from yet more angles, which generally leads to greater overall efficiency than doing everything in sequence, one after the other.
If you don't have the time to do Drawabox and something else related to digital painting, at the very least painting digitally when adhering to the 50% rule will allow you to delve into that sooner rather than later.
Uncomfortable in the post "Need Help."
2023-03-29 00:18
AutoModerator explained how this subreddit works, and given that this question is more general I'd point you to the same subreddits - /r/learnart, /r/learntodraw, and /r/artistlounge.
That said, Drawabox is a free structured course intended to help students develop strong underlying fundamentals, especially in relation to those skills needed to effectively draw from one's imagination - so you may want to check it out, at the very least in watching this introductory video.
Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals (not Drawabox) will be shutting down permanently"
2023-06-24 02:39
Unfortunately it looks like there's not a lot of options available to us to preserve that information - at least not without leaving the subreddit open, and I'm firm on my decision to move away from Reddit.
Here's what I've looked into:
Making use of the european union's GDPR policies could allow for one to retrieve their own data, although it's only feasible for getting one's own data. Apparently they're also rather slow in responding, which would not make it a feasible solution to gather data prior to the closing of the subreddit.
I've spent a good bit of time looking into the reddit API (the same one Reddit's going to be imposing extreme pricing on). My intent was to basically archive the entire subreddit - all posts, all comments - but I hit an insurmountable roadblock. Basically using the API I can grab the "newest" posts from the subreddit, but I'm blocked from accessing more than the first 1000. Apparently that's also a hard limit when browsing through the website. The content is still there, but their system actively just stops giving you responses.
PushShift is a third party data-storage project that would have allowed us to get around the previous roadblock, but unfortunately Reddit shut off their access to the API and functionally disabled its usefulness to us in this situation. So, once again - thanks a lot, reddit.
So, I am not even close to being able to archive everything. What I have been able to do however is back up anything I have been involved in - meaning anything I have posted, and anything I have commented upon (along with all other comments involved). Basically the issue is the inability to have the older posts on the subreddit listed, but by using my own user as what's being used to list the posts. In total, that's 600+ posts, containing 5400+ comments, of which 470 are my own.
At some point I'll put this archive up on the Drawabox website in a searchable format. It'll be rudimentary, and I'm not going to jump on this immediately (3 weeks of travelling + 1 week of being sick with covid while getting the promptathon together has left me drained), but I'll get to it at some point.