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Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-08 19:41

Your organic forms with contour curves have improved. Your execution of your form intersections is still very timid, however. There's two notable problems that I can see that are stopping you from drawing more confidently.

  1. You're not ghosting your lines. The ghosting technique requires you to mark out the beginning/end point of a line you wish to make (identifying the line's position/angle). Then you orient the page so that it lines up with a comfortable angle of approach, before ghosting through the motion as many times as necessary to become comfortable with the motion. Then, finally, as you continue to ghost the drawing motion, you press your pen to the page and make the mark. Many of your lines do not show enough preparation, and also demonstrate an attempt to compensate for that by being more careful while actually drawing the mark - this "carefulness" leads to wavering and wobbling. Drawing the line must be relatively swift, from the shoulder, letting your muscles take over. At this point you should have already done all of the preparation required to get it reasonably straight and accurate.

  2. You're drawing in two steps - first you're roughing in your lines, then you're going back to darken the 'correct' lines. This process causes problems, because the very process of cleaning up your lines usually involves being more 'careful' (as mentioned in the previous point). Your lines end up wobbling and simply aren't confident. I want you to tackle this in a single step - all your lines should be drawn confidently, no attempts to draw with a very faint and light hand. If you need to draw through your forms - and you will - that is perfectly fine and encouraged. If a mark you wish to make on the page contributes to the drawing - either to the final drawing or your own understanding of the forms you are drawing, it should be drawn confidently. If the line does not contribute at all, however, it simply should not be drawn.

I'd like you to do two more pages of form intersections. Focus on being confident - if you make a mistake, that's totally fine. But if you go in being terrified of the possibility of making a mistake, and altering your approach to accommodate that fear, you will fail at your task.

I also want you to be more careful when shading. It's not at all necessary to use hatching to shade, but if you choose to, you should do so carefully. No scribbling, nothing haphazard or half-assed. Regular, separate parallel lines that stretch across the surface from edge to edge. If the surface curves, your hatching lines should curve too - these things work as mini contour lines, so doing it incorrectly will mess up how your form reads.

I don't know if I linked you to this video on form intersections earlier, but you should watch it. I specifically talk about focusing only on what you're drawing at any given time - not thinking ahead to what the next form will be or how it will intersect with what you're drawing now. Just focus on the immediate task.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-07-07 23:35

One type of animal per page is still best, so you can explore the same forns from various angles and such.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-07-07 22:27

I liked your llama bear.

I think you're definitely getting there, and early on with your birds, you're definitely fleshing out some nice forms. This, however, falls off when you reach the bears, which come out very flat because you start jumping from flat circles right into full detail (probably because at this point you become very, very concerned with fur). Forget about fur for now.

These animals are constructions of forms that all connect together. In your drawings, the limbs have no clear forms, and when they do, there's no sense of how they connect to the torso. Looking at the llama at the bottom of page 7, its legs just kind of come out of nowhere, rather than connecting to the torso. It may have a heavy coat of fur, but it's up to you to really study the photo reference for the tell-tale signs of how those forms connect to one another. The information is there, but you're not spending enough time looking. Don't trust what you think you see - always go back to the reference to confirm what you think. It's very common for our memory to get distorted and simplified within seconds of observing something, especially when it comes to some of the nuanced detail that we need to learn to pick up on.

Now, you're not alone in this. The vast majority of students who reach this lesson exhibit the same problem. Because of that, I've got a few extra over-drawing demos that I can share with you, that I did for some of the others.

It's all in the lay-in. Detail really doesn't matter at all. Think back to how you laid in your insects - they had concrete forms that all snapped together at specific points. Try to carry that over.

I'd like to see four more pages of animals, but this time I don't want to see any detail or texture. No fur! Just form constructions. Once you've got that down, remind me to explore fur with you a little more, because I will definitely forget.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-07 22:18

Drawing on flat sheets definitely looks to have helped a lot.

One thing that really jumped out at me is that your ellipses are showing a great deal of wobbling. This comes from attempting to be too careful while drawing the mark on the page. While drawing slowly, your brain is given the opportunity to make micro corrections to your pen's trajectory, which manifest as little wobbles in the lines.

The trick is not to be super careful while drawing, but rather putting that effort and focus into preparing to draw. Think about the ghosting technique. You identify what line you want to draw - is it curved, is it straight, where does it start and where does it end, etc. Then you prepare to draw it. You know where it goes, so you ghost through that drawing motion, getting your arm used to the movement required to make it. If the angle of approach isn't right, you rotate your page. Finally, once you feel comfortable with the motion, you touch your pen to the page and repeat the motion you've ghosted through so many times, drawing the mark. At this point, you're not thinking hard about it - you've given your muscles the instructions and the preparation, so you let them take over.

This applies the same way to the ellipses. Focus on the preparation stage, and execute the mark quickly and smoothly. It may not always fall exactly where you wanted it, but that will come with practice, and learning how to best prepare in a way that works for you.

The only other major issue I noticed was with your organic perspective boxes - and it makes sense that you found them the most challenging. I don't actually expect people to get this one right, it's there to give me a sense of where I should send you next.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete - I do want you to continue practicing these exercises (they make great warm ups), and they're really things you should continue to do for years to come.

Next, before tackling lesson 2, I'd like you to take a stab at the 250 box challenge. There is a video and some notes in that challenge post that should be helpful. The challenge itself should help you increase your comfort level with the idea of rotating these simple forms arbitrarily in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-07-07 22:08

Generally I see a lot of improvement throughout the set. Near the end, you definitely get much more confident with your line weights, and you seem to have a better sense of the size relationship between the near/far plane. You slip up here and there, and have some with some slightly wacky angles (232, 218, etc), but it's definitely much better. Keep it up!

Also, that's a nice tidbit of information.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-07 22:05

In terms of amounts, what you did is fine. The size of the sketchbook only becomes a concern to me in two ways. First off, a smaller sketchbook can often lead people to draw more from their wrist, generally restricting their ability to get their whole arm into it. Secondly, it can also cause people to draw relatively smaller - this causes the tip of the pen to feel larger relative to the drawing size, which makes the lines themselves feel really thick and clunky. If you feel any of that happening, definitely try drawing on larger pages. I am seeing some minor signs of that with your rough perspective and organic perspective boxes.

Your first two exercises are really solid. Your ellipses look especially confident, so keep that up. Your plotted perspective boxes are also fantastic, though things get a little tricky with the other two box exercises. Part of the issue is that you should be using the ghosting technique for any and all freehand drawing. The first opportunity to use it is with these two freehand box exercises. It takes longer, going through the process of preparing and ghosting through your line before each and every mark you put down, but it eventually becomes second nature and imprints a general mindset of thinking through every individual line that goes on the page.

Secondly, with your rough perspective boxes, there's a few deviations from one point perspective that I noticed. The great (and awful) thing about perspective is that it gives you very clear rules for how each line should behave. It can get overwhelming, but with the one point perspective we use here, there's three possible behaviours for your lines.

  1. Horizontal lines are always parallel to the horizon.

  2. Vertical lines are always perpendicular to the horizon.

  3. Lines that go off into the distance always converge at the vanishing point.

If you take a step back while you're drawing and think about it, there's really no guesswork to be done. Every line will subscribe to one of these specific behaviours (setting aside things like tilting boxes, which we don't want to worry about right now).

Here's what I mean, drawn over one of your rough perspective exercises. You'll notice that not all of your horizontals run parallel to your horizon, and not all of your verticals run perpendicular to it. Now, some of these are very obviously just every-day mistakes. I don't expect perfection here, and mistakes where you wanted a line to go in a certain direction - but it just didn't - are fine.

In the lower right of the image I linked you to though, you'll see an instance where it looks like less of an accident and more of a conscious decision. That's the kind of thing I want to weed out. Just always remember, there's a limited selection of possible behaviours.

Your organic perspective boxes were mostly well done, which is great because I generally don't expect people to do well at this exercise. It tests one's ability to take a simple form and rotate it arbitrarily in 3D space. I did notice a few instances of your perspective distortion being a little inconsistent check out these notes to get a better sense of what I mean. I do also get a liiiiittle bit of a feeling that you're lacking a bit of comfort with that sort of exercise, which again is totally natural.

So. I'd like you to do a few things:

  1. Do one more page of rough perspective boxes. Ghost through those lines, and also maybe consider drawing on a bigger page. It's not about amount, but rather that it looks like attempting to work within that cramped space may be giving you a bit of trouble. Once you've finished that, submit the result to me here and I'll mark the lesson as complete.

  2. Once I've marked this lesson as complete, it'd be a good idea to check out the 250 box challenge next. The challenge post has a helpful video and some notes that are worth watching/reading. The challenge itself will also give you the opportunity to really get comfortable with rotating simple forms arbitrarily in 3D space, while also giving you a great deal of practice with ghosting lines. All of this will really help prepare you for the form intersections in lesson 2, which definitely get tricky.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-07 20:11

I definitely see vast improvement with the organic forms and the dissections. Your form intersections have improved as well, but there's still some issues. I think the biggest problem is that you're applying far too much perspective distortion to the individual forms (they get smaller very quickly as they move further away from the viewer) so you're adding an extra layer of complexity that doesn't really need to be there.

I'd like you to do two things - first, do one page of form intersections with just boxes. Then, do a page of form intersections with all your forms, but try to keep them more equilateral - that is, draw the forms so none of them are super long - so they're generally the same size in all three dimensions. This will help reduce the amount of perspective distortion in the scene.

Another thing I want you to keep in mind is that you should not be drawing your forms in two steps, roughing it in and then drawing a thicker line to clean it up. Just do the first step. Separating it into two steps messes with your general confidence, and also causes you to be too 'careful' in the second step, which leads to uneven shapes and wobbly lines.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-07-07 20:02

I definitely see a great deal of improvement, especially in the last two pages. Your confidence has definitely increased, as has your general sense of understanding when it comes to these simple forms and how they exist in 3D space. Your corrections also generally seem to be accurate.

There's definitely more room to grow, but you're totally on the right track. Nice work!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-07 20:00

Your arrows and intersections are well done (though for the intersections, I generally prefer to see people drawing through their ellipses). Your dissections are alright, though they look a little more stylized/cartoony - you should spend more time studying your photo reference (or if you didn't use photo reference to inform the textures, do so!). There are subtler details and rhythms there in the textures that come with a greater degree of focus and attention.

Your organic forms with contour curves need work, however. The contour lines don't give the illusion that they go beyond the edge of the form and continue to wrap around it in 3D space. Looking at them right now, they read as flat 2D shapes, with contour lines that simply go from edge to edge and stop abruptly.

This video, which was linked in the exercise (though lots of people seem to miss it) discusses that common pitfall. Be sure to give it a watch or two.

I'd like to see two more pages of organic forms with contour curves (as opposed to ellipses) .

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-07-07 19:53

I'm glad to see that you've returned to us.

I definitely want to point out that what you submitted really isn't.. complete. I see a few pages of loose sketches and notes, but even those aren't really reflecting much of what was covered in the lesson.

You're focusing a lot on the little things - the details and the specifics. What I want you to focus on are the major masses. The constructions, the shapes and forms. Draw a study of a single plant and dedicate an entire page to it. Then you can use whatever space is left over for minor notes and observations.

I really get the impression that you missed a great deal of what was discussed in the lesson and in the demos, so I'd like you to go back and read it over once again. Or maybe a couple times. Then, I'd like you to tackle the homework again. Remember to focus on constructing the lay-ins. Don't be loose and sketchy, draw complete forms and shapes.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-07-07 19:43

Much, much better. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-07-06 20:03

Not bad! There's definite improvement as you move through the lesson. I love page 11, and some of your horses and bisons are quite well done.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but there are a few things I want you to consider, and I definitely think you have room to grow here. First off, there's a lot of benefit that comes from focusing on the animals as 3D constructions. You're still mostly working in the 2D realm, though many of your final drawings do read as 3D objects. The only problem arises where different parts of the body connect - often times, it appears that you do not necessarily have as clear an understanding of where and how they connect to one another. For examples, the limbs connecting at the shoulder to the torso.

This kind of 3D understanding of the animals is what allows the more imaginative merged animals at the end of the lesson to read more believably. If you understand how all the parts fit together, you can interchange them more confidently.

Here's a few demos I did for others who experienced the same problem to varying degrees. Some of them were very much beginners, but ultimately this problem can be seen at a variety of skill levels. I'm sure that once you start to grasp the concept, you'll see a significant improvement in your drawings.

As you can see, they rely very heavily on simply expanding the lay-in process a little further.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-06 19:56

Very nice work! You clearly took your time and did not rush at all, and I'm glad to see that. Your ellipses are generally great - even when you only drew through them once, though I usually encourage people to draw through them at all times, I'll leave that decision up to you. If you ever find your ellipses coming out unevenly however, go back to drawing through them a couple times. It'll allow you to draw with more confidence, which ultimately leads to a more even, rounded shape.

Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-06 19:54

And thank you for joining us! Looking at your work, I think your sketchbook is giving you a great deal of trouble right off the bat. The pages don't lay flat because of how it's bound, so you have to fight with it while you draw. This is naturally going to mess some things up. So, I definitely recommend getting either a new sketchbook that can lay flat (ringed ones work well for this) OR even better, just work on loose sheets.

I think it'd be best for you to take another stab at this lesson, since the sketchbook got in the way of a lot. I can point out a few things that you can keep in mind as you do so - it's tricky to see what's the sketchbook's fault and what is the result of your own techniques, but I'll do my best.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-06 19:43

Not bad at all! I'll mark this lesson as complete, but here's a few things that you can work on to continue growing:

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-06 19:31

Nice work! Your ghosted lines are looking really nice. Just three things to add - extend the ghosting technique to all of your drawing, especially the freehand boxes. It'll help you diminish the natural urge to reinforce lines as soon as you've drawn them (a bad habit that comes from a lack of confidence), since you'll be mentally forcing yourself to go through all of these steps of preparation before each individual stroke/execution.

Also, when it comes to shading your boxes, be sure to apply hatching with as much care as you draw everything else. Don't be sloppy. Draw parallel, regular lines that stretch all the way from one side of a plane to the other. No scribbling, no quick random marks, no criss-crossing, and nothing floating in the middle of the plane.

Lastly, I will be marking this lesson as complete but I'm getting the impression that you're still somewhat less than comfortable with the idea of rotating simple forms (the boxes) in 3D space - as shown by the organic perspective boxes. This is by no means strange, and is more or less expected from most people.

You should definitely consider tackling the 250 box challenge next. There's a video and some notes in that challenge post that will help you out, and you'll also get added practice with rotating those forms arbitrarily, as well as applying the ghosting technique to general freehand drawing.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-05 17:55

Well, to start with, your arrows are really solid.

Your organic forms with contour curves are exhibiting a very common issue though. The contour curves aren't wrapping around the 3D forms - they look as though they simply go from one edge straight to the other, without giving the illusion that they continue on around. Because of this, they look flat. Check out this video, which was included in the lesson.

Because the dissections extend directly from this exercise, they exhibit similar issues. Some of your textures were interesting though, although somewhat simplistic - which leads me to believe that you didn't look at much photo reference to find interesting textures to use.

Lastly, your form intersections are getting there, but there's a couple things I'd like you to do differently.

First off, the exercise stated that you should draw a single network of connected forms per page, rather than individual clusters. Secondly, draw through your forms and ellipses completely. For the ellipses, you're only drawing through them once, so the shapes are often uneven. This especially messes up your spheres. For your forms, drawing through all of them completely will give you a better sense of how they sit in 3D space.

Lastly, watch this video on form intersections, which was also included in the lesson. Follow the step-by-step process that I outline there for drawing the form intersections.

I'd like you to take another stab at this lesson. You can leave the arrows out, since you already did those quite well, but I'd like to see two more pages of organic forms with contour curves, two pages of dissections, and two pages of form intersections. Be sure to watch the videos!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-07-05 17:44

Generally your final drawings are still quite solid, but there's a couple areas where you can improve.

In your lay-ins, there's two issues I noticed. One was that you're drawing your forms somewhat timidly. Looking at the lay-in for the rhinoceros beetle, I can see several points where the lines break. It's understandable, because you're trying to lay-in the form without leaving too much of a footprint on the page, in case the form you draw ends up being somewhat incorrect. Unfortunately, drawing timidly like this often results in shapes that are less solid. The important thing about the lay-in is to construct forms that feel like they have weight and solidity to them. The first step to achieve this is to draw complete forms and shapes, with no breaks in between. You'll end up messing up plenty, but it's important to develop this sort of confidence. If you make a mistake, that can be dealt with, but if you're afraid of that possibility, you will fall short.

Another point that is similar to that last one can be seen in your praying mantis. If you look at its arms, it's got these little serrations/spikey/jaggedy on them. These represent smaller details. It's always a better idea to draw the basic shape of the arm first - the smooth curve - and then attach these extra details on top of them. This way you have complete forms. The way you did it results in a flatter shape as well. Constructing the different forms independently will allow you to connect them to one another as full 3D forms, paying special attention to how they intersect so you can retain the illusion of volume.

Lastly, looking at the final drawing of the mosquito, I noticed one very important thing that you were slacking off on - don't forget to wrap contour lines around the forms. If you look at the mosquito's underbelly, you'll see that these lines don't really give a strong illusion of volume. Instead, they kind of flatten the form out. From the looks of it, I don't see the lay-in of the underlying simple form there - rather, I only see those segmentations.

To give you an example of how it should be approached, look at the wasp demo in the lesson. Pay special attention to how the abdomen starts off in figure 1.3, and how I build on that simple form to add the segmentations in figure 1.4.

I'm generally quite pleased with the results, but I think you can do much better. Just to ensure that you understand what I've said above, I'd like to see one more drawing of an insect, but take photographs of the different stages of the drawing process.

I'd like to see the lay-in, with simple complete forms (don't be afraid to add a contour line here or there to help remind yourself that these are 3D forms). Then I'd like to see you break down those lay-in forms until you have the whole insect roughed out and fully recognizable. And finally, one more with the details thrown in. All of these photos should be of the same drawing, just in different stages of completion.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-05 17:32

Very nice work! Despite your fears, your dissections came out very nicely. I'm not noticing any of the common pitfalls here - your contour lines generally wrap nicely around the forms, your dissections have explored a lot of great textures without resorting to any sort of randomness or scribbling, and your form intersections are looking nice and solid. Just be sure to draw through your ellipses in the intersections, it'll help keep your elliptical shapes more even.

Right now I haven't moved ahead with developing the drawabox site further. The designer I want to work with is currently busy with other things, and I'm caught up in some other projects as well. Actually building those features into the site won't take long at all, but if it so happens that we haven't made much headway in that area by mid-august, I'll just repost the lessons like I did last time.

Also, an ultrafine sharpie should be okay, just be careful with how much pressure you use. Worse cast scenario, you can draw bigger so the lines themselves end up thinner in relation to the size of the whole drawing.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-07-05 16:57

Nice work. Early on, your linework seems a bit shoddy (I'm guessing you're trying to add weight to the external lines, but they don't really come together so it looks kind of messy) but you improve considerably in that throughout the challenge. Your corrections in the other coloured pen are generally on point, so you seem to know what you should be aiming for, it's just a matter of practice. The boxes are looking pretty solid though, and I like your line weights near the end of the set.

As for your questions,

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-05 16:51

You generally did a great job. The only thing that really stood out is that some of your hatching/shading is a bit sloppy - you were really patient and careful with everything else, but the shading also requires a certain degree of care. You need to make sure that your lines are more regularly spaced, and generally more parallel to one another.

If you're having some trouble with the ghosting technique, it likely means that you need to spend more time ghosting through them. It definitely takes some time to really get used to the technique, but it's all about building up that level of comfort with the drawing motion. Keep at it, and you'll definitely improve at it. It's already pretty good though. Your lines in general are fairly solid.

All of your ellipses were fantastic, so I see no issue there. Your understanding of forms rotated in 3D space, as far as the organic perpsective boxes go, was solid as well.

Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-05 16:38

Very nice! I can tell that you put a lot of time and patience into this. Most people who procrastinate are also guilty of rushing through parts - I'm quite glad that you do not fall into that category.

There's one main thing that I wanted to point out. In your earlier line exercises, you have a tendency of wobbling quite a bit. This is generally a sign that you need to quicken your pace a little. The wobbling comes from attempting to be too careful while you're drawing the mark, rather than taking the time to plan and prepare before actually putting the mark down. If you draw a little quicker, your brain won't have the opportunity to make little mini-corrections.

I did notice though that your line quality improved throughout the lesson, and I don't really notice any wobbling in your boxes. It seems to have straightened out after you had some practice with the ghosting method, which is great. That ghosting technique should be applied to any and all freehand drawing.

The only other thing I wanted to draw your attention to was these notes. I noticed in your organic perspective boxes that there's a tiny tendency to use inconsistent perspective distortion rates on individual boxes - basically, the far planes of the boxes are a lot smaller than the near planes, and it results in some visual confusion. Hopefully those notes do a decent job of explaining the problem.

Anyway, you did great so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-03 22:46

oops I'll put all the homeworks together next time.

I'm guessing you're referring to the bit on the lesson about posting all 3 parts of the lesson together. Glad you caught it first! I look forward to seeing the rest, I'll critique it then.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-03 22:44

There's no such thing as too late, and there's no reason to be nervous. Even if I rip your homework to pieces and tell you it's terrible and that you're doing it all wrong, that's really great news. It means you'll have clear things to work on, and a path to move forward.

So, looking at your homework, I see some great things. I see a lot of patience and care, and willingness to work. I also see a whole lot of room to grow. I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but here's a few things you should definitely keep in mind moving forward - and you should also continue practicing these exercises as you forge ahead.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-07-03 22:32

I'm glad you've been doing the lessons, but I require people to start from the beginning if they want to post their homework for critique. Each lesson is designed to bring certain bad habits or misunderstandings to the surface, so if I start critiquing you at this stage, there's a lot of things under the surface that I might not catch, or at least that would be significantly more difficult for me to catch.

Start at lesson 1, then once I give you the OK to move to the next one, tackle lesson 2, and so on.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-03 22:29

Not bad. I'll mark this as complete, because you generally seem to understand what to be aiming for. You do have a lot of room to grow though, so keep practicing these exercises as you move forwards.

Here are a few issues I noticed. Some are nitpicky, others are more significant, but try to keep them all in mind.

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson. If you feel like you want more practice with ghosting, take a look at the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (version 2)"

2015-07-03 22:15

So this took me quite a while, almost a week actually.

I'm glad to hear that! It is often the more patient people that end up developing greater skills in drawing, as it requires one to take the time and effort to consider what they're doing and to strive to do it well. They may not do it perfectly the first time, but by giving their full attention and focus, they will slowly push that skill level further and further.

You did very, very well. Everything looks very solid and well thought out. The only thing I noticed is that in your rough perspective boxes, you have a tendency to become less accurate with the lines going back to the VP as they move further horizontally from it. It may help to go back and with a different coloured pen, plot all of your lines back to the horizon and compare those against the ones you drew. You'll notice that some are off by a great deal. This is totally normal though, so don't be alarmed. It just helps to go back and specifically identify your tendencies so you can consciously compensate for them in the future.

Anyway, you did great. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-07-02 19:59

Your boxes are definitely looking way more confident and solid now. They were pretty decent beforehand, but the little bit of uncertainty I was noticing seems to be gone, and that near/far relationship thing I mentioned seems to have been corrected. Nice work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-02 19:38

Pretty well done for four hours. Generally I see that you understood the purpose behind the exercises, so I'll mark the lesson as complete.

There are a couple things I'd like to point out though.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-07-02 19:28

Rather than guessing at what it is that isn't quite clear (which is totally natural, everyone learns in different ways), it's much easier for me if you make an attempt at the lesson and show me your work. That way I can very clearly point out what you did wrong so we can get things straightened out.

That said, since you haven't yet completed Lesson 1, please go back and submit that set of homework before moving onto Lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2015-07-02 19:21

I see considerable improvement over the course of your work. Your later vehicles come out much more confidently and solidly. There are still issues, of course, but you're moving in the right direction.

The biggest problem that I noticed is that your lines are very sketchy. You're thinking right on the page, rather than deciding what kind of line you want before putting your pen to paper. You may want to back to the section in lesson 1 about the ghosting technique and practice it some more. It should be used on all freehand lines, as it forces you to think and plan before making any marks on the page.

Above all, avoid chicken-scratchy lines, and do your best to draw each line with only a single mark.

Another issue I noticed was that here and there, you lose track of where the center of the front plane lies. I saw this with the moped and the tank. On the moped, your front wheel ended up deviated pretty far from the middle of the box.

That said, by the time you reached that point, you didn't really have any sort of correction you could make without ruining the drawing, so I do believe you made the right decision to keep going as it was.

Anyway, keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-07-01 18:38

Honestly, I think the improvement from your plants to your insects is massive. The forms you've drawn here are really convincing - they give me the impression of surfaces that really twist and turn through 3D space, and hard shells that have density and weight to them. You're very much on the right track.

Another thing I really liked is that your rendering does a good job establishing a clear focal point, and you do a solid job of fading out into the rest of the body. Because the forms are solid, they hold up with or without rendering, so all in all the compositions come together nicely. Practicing more with identifying and capturing different kinds of surface textures will always help, but it's a very good sign that you seem to understand how to present things nicely even without delving into every tiny little detail.

The only thing I wanted to point out is with your dropshadows. The giant termite's looks good (good god why do GIANT termites have to exist, aren't regular termites enough?) because the hatching is consistent and your shadow has a pretty well defined shape. The praying mantis' looks kind of shoddy because it's more scribbly and doesn't really have a clear shape.

When I use drop shadows (which is always good, since it helps ground the object) I don't even fill them in - I just create an outline of the shadow shape on the ground. What's most important is that this silhouette has a defined shape.

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-07-01 16:44

You're definitely moving in the right direction. Over the course of the challenge you make a few good decisions that ultimately help you overall - one of them being increasing the size of the boxes you draw. The smaller you draw, the bigger the tip of your pen is relative to the drawing, so on a smaller drawing the lines will look heavy and clunky. Drawing larger lets you be a little more subtle and nuanced with your lines.

I did want to point out however that there's two major areas where you could improve:

Overall, I think you'll benefit a lot from doing lesson 1 (honestly I usually intend for people to start there, and then I point them to the 250 box challenge if they need it), as it covers helpful techniques like ghosting through your lines.

Either way, congrats on completing the challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-06-30 20:17

There's a couple issues that I'm noticing here.

The most significant of the two is the quality of your linework. It's all very sketchy. Rather than drawing one mark per line, putting thought and planning behind every single one and using the ghosting method to identify, prepare and execute your marks, you're being very rough. You're essentially thinking right on the page instead of planning as a separate step.

That is absolutely something you're going to have to work towards fixing. It is most apparent in the form intersections, and honestly, I can fully understand why. That exercise can easily be overwhelming, so it makes sense that you'd go back to a method of drawing you feel more comfortable with, even without thinking about it.

The second issue is your contour lines. What a contour line essentially does, is it follows right along the surface of a form to quite literally tell the viewer, "this is how the surface of this form warps through 3D space." Because of this, when you've got rounded surfaces (like all of the ones we draw for this exercise), it's integral that the contour line wraps around the form completely. It's a very common mistake for the contour line to end abruptly once it reaches the edge of the form, without giving the illusion that this line actually exists in 3D space, and is simply wrapping around back to where we can no longer see it.

I made a video about this - it was linked in the lesson, and if you have already seen it, you should watch it again.

Some of your dissections have some interesting surface textures, but I do think that at times you are getting a little confused between what constitutes surface texture and what constitutes form information. Often times you try to include entirely separate forms in the same way you'd apply surface texture, so it ends up looking all strange. Surface texture wraps around a form, while new forms will protrude out into 3D space independently. For example, the lion was primarily form - the snout and all was applied as texture, but they really contain their own forms. When looking at a lion, the main texture you'd pull is the fur.

Your first page of arrows was done fairly well, though the couple subsequent pages were a little less confident. Keep in mind that when you apply hatching-lines to an object, they work as little contour lines. So, when you put straight hatching on a cylindrical form (like the one you've got an arrow wrapping around), it tells the viewer that the surface of that cylinder is in fact not round, but flat. It gets confusing to the eye, and doesn't read well.

I'd like you to take another stab at the whole lesson, taking into consideration everything I've explained here. Be sure to watch that video as well. Also, I wanted to point out that your form intersections - line quality aside - were actually done quite well. You understand how the forms work in 3D space (mostly) but it's the execution of the lines that leaves much to be desired.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-06-30 19:50

You generally did a rather good job. In your first page, your lines were kind of loose and timid, but you got much bolder and more confident by the second. I still do see situations however where you get timid, and this messes with your lines. Don't be afraid to make mistakes - if you do, just move along all the same. Worrying about making a mistake will cause you to be timid - and it takes confidence to draw things that look solid and convincing.

Your arrows were very well done, and your second page of organic forms with contour lines were pretty solid. I did notice that you did two pages of organic forms with contour curves rather than one with ellipses and the other with curves. I'll let it slide this time, but you should be aware of the value of starting off with ellipses - it helps you get used to the idea of wrapping those lines around the contour of the form.

Your dissections were fairly well done, form-wise. Where you did apply texture, it came out fairly well, but you didn't seem to do that too often.

One thing that did jump out at me though was the size of your drawings. Often it is better to draw somewhat larger on the page. When you draw small, the tip of your pen will end up larger in relation to your drawing, so the lines will end up looking overly thick, and will have no subtlety to them. If you draw larger, it'll give you a greater degree of freedom.

Your form intersections are pretty good - but there's one thing I want to point out. You approached them by roughing them in very timidly, and then going back over with 'cleaner' lines. I don't want you to do this, as it allows you to get away without developing your confidence.

Instead, I want you to draw those first rough-ins as though they are your final lines. I still want you to draw through your shapes and forms completely, but don't draw them timidly. They should not be faint scratches on the page - they should be full lines that you put thought and consideration behind.

Some people get concerned when I say this - that the final resulting drawing ends up having a lot of extra lines, and may potentially look messy. The fact of the matter is that we're not attempting to make clean and beautiful drawings. This is an exercise to help you understand how to draw solid and convincing forms.

Besides, while we're not after pristinely clean images, we are going after a different kind of presentation - one that shows forethought and planning behind every mark. Every mark made on the page should be the result of consideration and thought. Each mark should fall into one of two categories - a mark that would be a part of what we'd consider that final, clean drawing, OR a line that helps you as the artist understand the forms you are drawing. That includes contour lines, drawing through forms, etc. If a line does not contribute to either of these categories, then it should not be drawn. If it does contribute to one of these, then it is perfectly valid and should be drawn with confidence.

Anyways, you still did fairly well so I will mark this lesson as complete. As you move forward onto the next lesson, make sure you keep in mind what I've said above.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-06-30 19:41

Congrats on completing the challenge. You did pretty well - just a couple things to note:

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-06-30 19:39

I'd have a much easier time if you showed me your attempts at lay-ins - I'd be able to point out what you're doing wrong, rather than give you a directionless explanation.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-06-30 00:12

There are some simple exercises you can do. Draw a series of long, narrow rectangles on a page, going left to right. Fill them with textures - you can look at photo reference and you can also attempt to do them from your imagination. You should probably practice both. On the far left, your texture should be very dense. On the far right, it should be sparse and spread out. This establishes a value scale, using density to represent value rather than actual greys.

Here's an example of what I mean.. Except that person did the opposite, with sparse on the left and dense on the right.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-06-29 22:50

Nice work. I really liked your fly. In general, your forms are pretty solid. Your detail work is a little hit-and-miss though. There's many situations where instead of identifying the pattern present on the surface of the object, you just kind of.. fill it up with lines (like the ant) or scribbling (like the dragonfly nymph). Always remember that every line you draw should have some kind of specific purpose. No randomness of scribbling.

As for your little scribbled question, "omg how do you render fur?!?". Anywho, go ahead and move onto the next lesson. You'll be able to experiment more with fur as you draw a variety of animals!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-06-29 20:14

Much better. It's tricky to really get them to wrap around perfectly, so you've still got some room to grow in that area, but you're moving in the right direction. The rest should come with practice - just remember in your mind that you're drawing along the surface of a 3D object, not on a flat page.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-06-29 19:47

It definitely would have been nice if you'd have rotated the images to be right-side-up.. Oh well.

Your scorpion and wasp are looking pretty decent. I'm really not sure what's going on with the spider's texture - it looks like it's got metal plating. The proportions on the others are kind of strange.

So there's two things you need a lot of work on - first off, your observational skills. Draw less, study your reference more carefully. We have a tendency to forget the vast majority of what we saw in our reference within the first couple seconds of looking away from it. This means that you have to constantly look back at your reference. Keep an eye on how the different major forms of the subject relate to one another, so you can get a better sense of your proportions.

Secondly, it's a matter of understanding the forms. Continue practicing your organic forms with contour lines, and your dissections. Doing these as warmups should help.

While you have a lot of room to grow, I don't see any benefit in keeping you drawing insects over and over, so I'll mark this lesson as complete. Go ahead and move onto the animals, but be sure to read the lesson and go through the demos as carefully as you can.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2015-06-29 19:38

Nicely done! Your first few pages are very strong - after that, they become a little less so, flattening out somewhat as you shift your focus from establishing form to capturing texture. Always remember that form is the most important, and if you catch yourself applying so much texture that it affects how your forms read, you should reel yourself back.

That said, I'm very glad to see the confidence in your lines. I believe that this balance between form and detail is something that is very close to your grasp, and will come to you with more practice.

Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-06-28 18:40

Yup!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 15: Exploring an Environment"

2015-06-28 17:44

I'm very pleased to see that you're enthusiastic about jumping onto environments, but the way the lessons here are structured, you can't start in the middle. A lot of the concepts we take for granted in this lesson are dealt with in earlier ones, and as such, I need to point you to the prerequisites of this lesson.

Luckily for you, that doesn't mean you have to complete 14 different lessons before being able to move onto this one. You do however have to complete:

By complete, I mean submit your homework to me for critique, and have it marked as complete. The reason I'm strict about this is because even people who have completed the earlier lessons on their own may not have fully understood the concepts introduced in the lessons, so by the time they reach a later lesson and ask me for critique, the misunderstandings could have compounded, making it much more difficult for me to point out rather than dealing with each lesson individually. On the flipside, this also means that by submitting each lesson's homework for critique individually, you'll likely discover specific problems that throw everything else awry.

Also, note that the first two lessons need to be completed traditionally, in ink.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-06-28 17:38

You actually did a pretty solid job of the intersections. Attempting to draw your ellipses in one shot is risky business though, since it will make your ellipses come out wonky at times. Yours aren't too bad, but there are a few that were somewhat more compromised than others. I'm still a big proponent of drawing through your ellipses, as it gives you a more consistent shape and far more training for your muscles.

Your dissections are... whoa. There's a whole lot going on. Sometimes you get a little too scribbly - try to avoid any sort of randomness - but I see a lot of great stuff going on. Nice work overall.

Your organic forms with contour curves, however, leave something to be desired. The contour curves do not wrap around the forms - they reach the edge and instead of giving the illusion of wrapping around, they stop abruptly. This causes us to read the forms as being flatter than they should be.

On page 9, you've got an upside down Y. The arm of the Y that comes out towards the left is actually quite well done. Those contour curves feel like they're running along the surface of a large bulbous mass, and they're wrapping around, curling under it and continuing on. Actually, in general the curves on that page are better. The previous pages don't have that wrap-around. If you're still unsure of what I mean watch/rewatch this video on the subject.

Your arrows are fairly solid too.

I would like you to do two more pages of the organic forms with contour curves, just to make sure you have a handle on them. Yours in this submission definitely improve by that last page, but I still want to be certain.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 15: Exploring an Environment"

2015-06-28 17:29

Awesome! Thanks for the links.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (#2)"

2015-06-28 17:19

Nice work completing the challenge. Generally you do show an increase in the confidence of your lines, but there is one thing I notice throughout - your size relationships between the near and far planes of your boxes are not always correct. As I explain in the video, the far plane should always be smaller than the near plane. The amount by which it is smaller can be minimal, but it should always be smaller. I see here and there that you draw your far plane larger. For example, 8, 81, 89, 96, 178, 241, 245. There are others, but I just picked those I saw at a glance. The trick to overcoming this is to make yourself more aware of what you're doing. Drawing through your boxes completely (drawing all the lines as if the box were transparent) helps considerably, because you actually define that far plane with all four edges. It's easy to make the mistake when you're only defining two edges of the far planes.

Feel free to use coloured felt tip pens, as long as they're not something unreadable like.. yellow. Also, it's perfectly fine not to grind on the boxes constantly for days with nothing in between. Taking breaks is encouraged.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections (version 2)"

2015-06-28 16:58

  1. Your arrows are generally fairly well done. The lines do show a little hesitation (likely from being drawn a little slow) but it is generally quite difficult to draw two lines that run along each other as is required to draw the arrows, so that is just something that will go away with practice.

  2. Your organic forms read as very, very flat. This video was included in the exercise description - if you haven't had the chance to watch it, you absolutely should. Hell, if you have watched it, watch it again. In the video I explain the idea of wrapping your contour curves around the forms, accelerating your curves as you come close to the edge. Looking at your work, it does not seem to me that you yourself are convinced that you are drawing 3D objects. The contour curves you've drawn stop very abruptly at the edge, rather than wrapping around a voluminous form. This is something you will need to work on.

  3. Your form intersections are going in a good direction, but due to the fact that you're not drawing through your ellipses as explained in lesson 1, they tend to come out very uneven in shape. You should always be drawing through your ellipses - you and everyone else at this stage are far from having had enough practice to nail an ellipse in the first try, and drawing through them not only improves the shape of the ellipse you're working with at the time (despite making it somewhat messier), but it also gives your muscles a greater deal of practice with each ellipse. Just be sure to try and keep the ellipses tight, rather than wildly drawing around the ellipse over and over. Another thing I noticed is your approach in the last page, where you drew with a red pen, then cleaned up with black. Don't do this - I want you to have confidence in your first lines, even if it means that your drawing comes out a little messier. We are more focused on the integrity of your shapes and forms, and the confidence of your lines. When people tend to draw over rougher lines to 'clean them up', they have a tendency to be too hesitant and timid. Learning to be confident in your first set of lines will work towards fixing this in the long run. Oh, and yes - absolutely ghost your lines, all the time. Spend most of your time thinking and preparing to draw the mark, then execute relatively swiftly.

I'd like you to take another stab at this lesson. You don't have to redo the arrows, but you should try the organic forms, dissections and form intersections again.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-06-28 16:46

Your drawings are quite nice, but ultimately you don't seem to have carried over very much of the lesson. I'm seeing no lay-ins in your process. Instead, you seem to jump right into the detail. As far as observational drawing goes, you're quite good. Unfortunately, since you jump straight into detail, your drawings have a much greater tendency to come out flat.

A good example of what I mean is with the stinging nettle. The leaves have serrated/jagged edges. To lay in the leaf, you'd still draw the leaf with smooth, continuous lines that define how that leaf flows through 3D space without the extra jagged detail. Then you would add that detail afterwards, using the initial smooth line as a framework/guide. It does result in extra lines, but we're not interested in creating super clean drawings at the moment. We're interested in learning about how to maintain the illusion of form in our work.

When laying things in, be sure to always use complete shapes and forms. Think back to the organic arrow and organic form exercises from the previous lesson, and how the former has you explore flat shapes that twist and turn through space, and how the latter has you use contour lines that wrap completely around forms to convey the illusion of form.

Lastly, on your scanner, don't use the 'drawing' setting. Use photo presets instead. 'Drawing' settings often boost the contrast on a scan, washing out the subtle nuance to the lines and rendering them with a very harsh look.

I'd like you to take another stab at this lesson - be sure to read over the lesson again, as it seems you missed a lot of core concepts.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2015-06-27 15:12

Yup, they are considerably less sketchy. You're definitely moving in the right direction, so you can consider this lesson complete. Lots of room to grow though, so keep up with your practicing.

I did want to point out though that you need to avoid scribbling, like you did on the windshields of some of the cars. Scribbling makes your drawings look like shit, period. Use consistent, parallel lines that move from one end of the plane to the other. Be clean when you can.

I'm also noticing that you don't always seem to be subdividing your boxes to get your proportions down right. You might not even be doing any proportion studies, as far as I can tell. This is going to make your drawings more hit-and-miss.

For further reference on how to use the form intersection approach to construct things like this, as well as subdividing the boxes, take a look at this demo I did for someone else.