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Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-05-22 23:08

So there are definitely some core problems in how you're approaching the lay-ins. Most of them are a matter of not following the lesson.

Most significantly, you're both thinking and drawing at the same time. What I try to instill in people with these lessons is the idea of separating those two steps out. You need to make a mark on the page, so you think about what kind of mark you need. Then you plan your approach, make sure you're comfortable with the motion you need to use to draw the mark. Then once all of that is sussed out, you draw the line.

Instead, you're figuring out what kind of mark you want to make by drawing. This leads to a lot of extra lines that contribute nothing to your drawing, and make it more difficult for you to understand.

You want to try to keep your lay-in simple. The lines you include there should either convey something to the viewer (so basically you intend it to be a part of the final drawing) or it should help you as the artist understand your forms (like drawing through forms, or adding contour lines). Anything that does not fall into one of those two categories simply should not be drawn.

Looking up, I just realized that I'd mentioned all of this in my initial critique. Oh well, it's worth mentioning twice!

Anyway, I took your cat and found a somewhat similar pose, and did my own breakdown of how I would approach it. Notice how it's very purposeful? I'm not exploring anything, everything I draw on there is clear and planned.

It's important not to treat this as some kind of approximate sketch. I know that's how we've all approached things til now, but that's something you've got to shed.

Another demo/breakdown you might find interesting is one I made the other day for someone else.

Anyway, I did want to point out that some of your initial drawings were quite good. The birds on the first page, and the hyena on the bottom left of page 5 were some good examples. Still, it's very much hit-and-miss because of the fact that you're being very loose with your lay-ins, and also because you're not always paying close attention to the proportions of your reference. If you can take the time to get those proportions right in the lay-in, you'll do just fine.

Uncomfortable in the post "Video: Uncomfortable Does RGD 02"

2015-05-20 19:01

Aside from the sketches that I do for the drawabox.com demo video recordings, pretty much all I do is digital painting.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2015-05-19 23:02

I'm seeing a lot of great shapes and lovely breakdown of complexity into simpler elements. I think the reason that they're hit-and-miss though is that you're kind of missing out on a lot of the basic techniques I mention in my lesson.

For example, you don't start defining the overall box (first step) until later on, and even then you don't find midpoints and subdivide it to carry your proportions over properly. Without the box grounding you and defining your space, it becomes very easy to end up with skewed drawings.

Your drawings are pretty good - some of the cars are very well done in fact - but I can't mark the lesson complete because you're not using the methods I teach, and are therefore missing out on key concepts.

I'd like to see four more pages of these, using those techniques. Also, drawing through your forms instead of just focusing on the lines you'd see in the final drawing will likely help you increase the solidity of your forms.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-05-19 22:55

Okay, one thing is clear to me. You're getting overwhelmed. You're seeing a lot of information in your reference photos, and you've reached that point where you don't know how to tackle it and you forget a lot of the things we cover in these lessons about simplifying things.

Here's a breakdown of your rhino. I purposely picked the worst drawing of the lot, just so I could cover as many issues as possible.

Compare yours with mine - the main difference is that yours is SUPER complex. There's a lot going on, all of these lines and little details and your forms are bumpy and uneven.

You're jumping into the complicated forms way too early. Go back and read over the lesson again, focus on how the first steps discuss dealing with simple forms only. Also, remember that everything needs to be connected, not just floating arbitrarily on the body.

Then there's the way you're actually drawing. You're using that two-phase drawing technique that we all learn to do. Sketch messy, then cleanup. Don't do that in my lessons. I want you to draw confident, complete forms, and don't clean them up afterwards. See in my breakdown, how I'm drawing entire forms and shapes, and I'm not erasing them afterwards? That's what I want to see from you. You can worry about being clean when you've gotten an handle on this.

Lastly, study your reference more. I've written it in multiple places in that breakdown, so I won't stress it more here. All I want to say is that you're missing a lot of major and obvious elements.

Like I said - reread the lesson, and then redo the homework from top to bottom. You are fully capable of doing much better than this, you're just letting the complexity of the subject matter psych you out.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-17 19:03

Early on your lay-ins are a little weaker, but it looks to me that you start to get the hang if it later on in the lesson. Your last few pages are looking much better. It would probably help, however, to observe your reference more carefully when it comes to drawing detail. Look for the patterns and rhythms in the surface textures, rather than just drawing somewhat erratic lines.

You'll be able to continue practicing your lay-ins and detailing in the next lesson, so I'll mark this one as complete and let you move forward.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-17 19:01

It's better. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, and let you move onto the next one. Lay-ins tend to be much easier to understand when dealing with insects, because they are made up of very obvious forms with clear, natural contour lines. A lot of people who struggled with plants really found their stride in lesson 4.

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

2015-05-17 18:33

I definitely see some improvement throughout. I do think though that it might be in your best interest to, when practicing this on your own, draw through some of the boxes to get a better understanding of how big that far plane really is relative to the closer one. Right now, the far plane is usually composed of just two lines, so we have to imagine how big it is. Drawing through it will help you get a better understanding of how it all comes together.

Anyway, congrats on completing the exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-05-17 18:02

Nice work! Generally you seem to have a good sense of form and detail. There's only one thing that really bugs me - your lines don't feel terribly confident. I'm not sure if it's because your pen is dying or the ink just isn't flowing well, or if it's something else. That does lead me into another point though - consider playing with line weights. I've got these old notes from the box stuff which might help. You can use line weight to show overlap or just play with dimension in a drawing. If all your lines are generally the same weight, it'll result in a somewhat boring drawing.

On another note, you may want to look into including as part of your lay-in the specifics on how the limbs connect to the torso, specifically on your quadrupeds. It seems you're leaving some of the shoulder-structure up to chance, rather than cleanly defining how those forms connect. Considering how that part of the body works itself out will help increase the impact of your drawings.

Anyway, I'll leave you to practice that on your own. As far as the lesson goes, I'll mark it as complete so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-05-17 17:54

Hm... There's definitely some problems here. Some of them are better than others, but they generally feel like your foundation - your lay-in, basically - is not being done correctly. The drawings tend to be very sketchy and exploratory, and some of your textures/details are very scribbly. Essentially, you're not paying enough attention to your reference, and you're not looking closely enough.

The biggest concept I try to push with all of these lessons is the idea of thinking before you put a mark down on the page. There are two kinds of acceptable marks. The ones that help convey information to the viewer (these are the ones we usually attribute to a clean, final drawing), and those that help you as the artist understand what you're doing. If a mark you're about to make does not fall into either of these categories, it should not be made. We make a lot of these marks when we're sketching roughly and trying to explore right on the page, rather than trying to think through it in our heads first.

As for the specifics of what you're doing wrong, I'd like to ask you for two pages of lay-ins. Don't go into any detail, just do what you consider to be the lay-in phase, and I'll be able to point out things you might have misunderstood. Right now it's hard to discern your lay-in from your details, so I don't want to accidentally misinterpret part of your process.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-15 22:38

It's all about focusing on the simple masses. For example, the general form of the leaf is your major form, while the smaller serration detail along its edges are minor forms/shapes. You need to focus more on establishing a solid 'big picture' before you start getting into finer details.

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

2015-05-14 22:06

Very nice! I was pleased when I saw them on facebook. Your forms are coming out nicely, and you've applied the right amount of detail to communicate what each insect is, without being overbearing.

I especially love the little guy on the top left of page 1 - that kind of viewpoint is kind of hard to draw from, but you really established the space between the insect and the ground, making it clear how it is standing there.

Feel free to move onto the next lesson!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-14 22:04

I feel like you're making things much harder for yourself than is necessary. Your potential is there, but by drawing things so small on the page, you're limiting and stifling yourself. Drawing small, especially when you don't have a lot of experience with drawing as a whole, is going to require you to have a much finer degree of control over your pressure and your movements, among other things. This only piles onto the challenges you're already facing, and that tends to result in flatter drawings with very little room for detail.

I'm having some trouble actually critiquing this stuff at such a small size, since it becomes much more difficult for me to pinpoint the root of the problem.

One thing I am noticing is that your lay-ins are not focusing enough on establishing your major forms. You're not closing your forms (especially cylinders) and you're using limited contour lines to establish that volume. On top of that, it feels like you're trying to work in too much detail into the lay-in phase.

I'd like you to read over the lesson again, follow the demos and try to separate in your mind what belongs in the lay-in stage, and what belongs in the detail stage. Then, I'd like you to do three pages of lay-ins, and three pages of final drawings - all of them MUCH larger on the page.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-14 21:48

There's some issues with how you're approaching your lay-ins, and it's affecting the rest of your process. Lay-ins are definitely the most important, and you're not really taking the time to focus on the basic forms before diving into detail.

Here's some notes. A really good example is the serrated edges on one of your plants. You're including those in your lay-in. What you should be doing is blocking in solid forms, making sure that you understand the volumes each one conveys and dropping in contour lines here and there where necessary.

When you break up the edge like that, you're immediately compromising the solidity of the form before you had a chance to establish it. The resulting final drawing will end up looking flatter.

Looking at your drawings, I think you're getting the hang of the other aspects of it, you just need to focus more on those lay-ins. Also, it would probably help to draw much larger. Trying to draw at such a small size tends to make things a lot more complicated and more difficult.

Uncomfortable in the post "Video: Uncomfortable Does RGD 01"

2015-05-14 13:09

The Pros are definitely great tablets, but a lot of the features you listed aren't things you'll really be taking advantage of. Pressure levels become more significant as you get used to using your tablet. Admittedly, they will become more important down the line, so it isn't necessarily a bad idea to invest in one now - that is, as long as you're confident you'll push through the awkward learning curve that usually comes with tablets.

The only one that is of significance at this point are the express keys, and in my experience, the greater flexibility the Pro driver affords. The Intuos Pen & Touch also has express keys, but it's only got four, I think. Personally, I stopped using the express keys ages ago - I don't find them to be particularly ergonomic. Mapping your shortcuts to one side of your keyboard might be easier to use. I actually use a gaming keypad for all of my shortcuts.

Anyway, starting off with the Intuos Pen & Touch is probably your best bet right now, so you're probably on the right track.

Uncomfortable in the post "Video: Sketching Environments"

2015-05-14 00:51

It certainly is a tool.

A crutch, when removed, will leave you weak and useless. It is for that reason that the use of reference isn't a crutch - because as you work from reference, you are developing your visual library, the area of your mind where you store away little bits of information in regards to what things look like, effective aesthetics, design details, etc.

Of course, there are good and less good ways to use your reference. Some people, rather than using reference to apply to their own composition, will simply reproduce a photograph. This can be very helpful too (specifically it's called a study), but it is only helpful if you strive to understand what it is you are reproducing, rather than mindlessly copying. As long as you are thinking through why things work certain ways, it is a great way to practice.

Taking reference and incorporating parts of it into your own composition inherently requires you to understand what you are extracting from your reference. It's very similar to the dissection exercise in lesson 2, where you take surface texture/detail from any and all objects and apply them to organic forms. You have to consider what defines that surface and what gives it that particular appearance, so you can transfer it to a completely different form.

The reason I was able to sketch like I did in the video, was because I've worked a lot with reference. A lot of it rubbed off on me and embedded itself in my brain, so when I was working off the top of my head, it made its way into my imagination.

Uncomfortable in the post "Video: Sketching Environments"

2015-05-13 23:37

I always highly recommend using reference whenever possible, but these sketches were done without any. I was just doodling, killing time, so I didn't really want to cut into my workflow to hunt down reference. There's no doubt that the result would have been better, but everything has its advantages and disadvantages.

Uncomfortable in the post "Video: Uncomfortable Does RGD 01"

2015-05-13 23:36

Personally, I use the Intuos Pro Medium, which is the intermediate line of tablets. This may be out of your budget, so if you end up going with the Intuos Pen & Touch (not the Pro), I would recommend getting a Medium rather than the small. I have a small laying around at work somewhere. I tried using it for a day or two, but it was infuriatingly limiting, especially on the larger monitors we have these days.

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

2015-05-13 23:18

Hm.. You're doing a lot right, and a lot wrong. Luckily the stuff you're doing wrong ultimately doesn't matter, and the stuff you're doing right is the important stuff.

Basically, your lay-ins are bad. They're really wireframey, and they're also flat (your contour lines, especially on the first page cricket thing don't really wrap around the forms, they do to varying degrees elsewhere). You're really covering your forms with way too many contour lines, and they end up being very regularly spaced out, making it look boring and - like I said before - wireframey. This leads me to believe that you don't fully understand their purpose, and you're just drawing as many as you can. The purpose of contour lines is to reinforce your understanding of those forms as being three-dimensional. It doesn't require much, just one here and there.

Now, this brings us to the second point, which in a way is bad, and also good. The lay-ins are supposed to be the first step to your drawing. They aren't a separate thing - so in the case of this homework, you would have simply stopped earlier on in the drawing process for the first two pages. What I'm seeing in your more complete drawings is an entirely different process.

Luckily, since the lay-ins you're showing me were bad, it seems that the lay-ins you actually used for your complete drawings were much better. Ultimately, your execution on that end was pretty solid. You show a much more confident understanding of your forms, and a solid hierarchy of information and some solid attention to detail.

There are definitely some misses (the dragonfly seems poor, and the mantis isn't great), but your bee, (moth?), fly, mosquito are fantastic.

I think it's a matter of standardizing how you approach your lay-ins, and fully understanding what you yourself are doing.

Anyway, you've definitely shown that you are understanding the bulk of the material, so feel free to move onto the next lesson. Just remember next time that your lay-ins are not something separate, but the early steps of a complete drawing.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-13 13:42

None of my lessons really directly deal with the concept of lighting - instead, I focus on understanding form, which is what lighting generally attempts to convey. Rather than relying on shading to define form, we focus on line and silhouette.

To be honest though, I'm not sure what to tell you. I let people submit their homework for that very reason - so they have a sense of whether or not they're approaching the exercises and understanding the concepts correctly, and so they know when they're ready to move forwards. Since I haven't seen any of the work you've done, I can't tell you whether you're ready or not.

That said, this lesson is intended to be your first introduction to drawing things from observation. I don't expect you to be able to do it perfectly, so you should not expect that of yourself. Instead, it is just the first step towards practicing skills that will be visited again and again through lessons 3-7.

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

2015-05-12 23:49

Sorry about missing this. I think your forms have definitely improved, but you're right about the texture. Often times you resort to being more random and scribbly than you should, rather than focusing on trying to find the rhythm/pattern in the textures of your subject. There's almost always some sort of rhythm there that will allow you to approach your texture-rendering with more control.

I do think that is something you can work on in the next lesson however, so feel free to move ahead.

Uncomfortable in the post "Video: Uncomfortable Does RGD 01"

2015-05-11 22:59

I paint as though I'm only painting on a single layer, but I do actually use multiple layers. I just usually end up painting on the top most, and whenever I want to experiment with something or separate something out, I'll just make a new layer and keep going.

When I started laying in the skin tone, I did end up creating a new layer underneath my lines and quickly blocked in her skin under there, but I don't usually do that, and I definitely didn't go in intending to do that. You can tell because of the fact that my sketch layer actually had some splotches of light blue (the background colour) where I'd painted lines out. For some reason I feel doing that is more fluid than using the eraser.

I paint as though I'm working on a single layer for that same reason. I feel like everything flows better. Thinking about what elements are on which layer becomes annoying and distracts me from the painting itself.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-10 05:57

On the point about broken lines, what I'm talking about comes before rendering. I'm talking about the lay-in, just putting down the forms themselves, before we start worrying about the fact that in the real world there are no outlines. Ultimately, once you solidify your understanding of form, you'll be able to rely more on your ability to visualize and understand what you intend to draw. First and foremost, we want to make sure that your shapes and forms are coming in accurately, and when you break a line, the shape will become irregular and uneven - simply because the second you lift that pen, your muscle memory resets.

About the white/black points, it's not about the use of a white gel pen. Consider if you had a square on a page, and you crosshatched the inside of it completely. You hit it with a bunch of horizontal lines, and then a bunch of vertical lines. Now you've got a very fine grid with a lot of black lines and a lot of white spots in between them. It's that juxtaposition of black and white that causes a lot of noise - the texture itself vibrates and calls the viewer's eye to look at it. This can work well for you in a focal point, but if you don't reduce that contrast everywhere else, you will quickly lose control of your composition.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-05-09 15:55

I'm noticing a couple things - your lay-in linework is very timid and uncertain, and also rather sketchy. Draw with confidence, but think about whether or not a mark you're making contributes anything of value before you make it. A valuable mark will do one of two things - it'll either be a part of the final drawing, intended to help convey information to your viewer, or it'll help you as the artist understand the forms you are depicting (like contour lines, or drawing through forms). If a line does not fall into either of these categories, then it should not be drawn at all.

I did want to point out that I do not take homework submissions when the prerequisite lessons have not been completed (in this case, lessons 1 to 4), as it puts extra work on my plate to go through material that may have been covered earlier on. That's why I haven't given you a critique that's terribly specific to your drawings.

You're welcome to my critiques of course, but only if you start from the beginning.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-09 15:47

Generally I don't accept homework that's been completed before I had the chance to critique the previous one, unless the previous one is done very well. So, I'm not going to be critiquing this one in depth. I did want to point out though that I rather like the drawing and the detail studies on page 2, though the crazy hatching on the outside of the plant makes it look sloppier than it would have looked without it.

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

2015-05-09 15:18

Sorry about that, it must have slipped my mind when I finished commenting on your cylinder challenge post.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-09 15:00

This is quite well done. Earlier on in the lesson I noticed that a lot of the time your shapes are composed of broken line segments - rather than confident, continuous lines. Broken lines will often undermine the solidity of a form, so I'm glad to see that you did that less and less throughout the homework.

The only other concern that I have is that your particular method of shading has a tendency to generate a lot of contrast, because you've got a lot of white/black points right next to each other. It creates noise, which draws the eye, and undermines any focal point you might be trying to produce. That is definitely something you'll want to keep in mind in the long run.

One last thing - rendering with a 0.5mm is definitely possible. You're free to approach that as you see fit, but I do want to make you aware that the reason you're having trouble putting in fine detail with the 0.5mm is because your pressure control hasn't developed entirely yet. Relying on the thinner tip won't help fix that in the long run, so you'll be missing out on some of the training these lessons provide.

In general though, you did quite well. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-07 01:38

Looks like you forgot to add the link!

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

2015-05-06 22:16

Nice work completing the challenge! I definitely notice what you're talking about - often times your boxes kinda come out at very similar orientations, like you're trying to get them to come out different but they tend to default to what you're comfortable with.

One exercise I've seen people do is drawing a box in the center of your page, and then drawing boxes next to it that slowly rotate on a particular axis in regular intervals. Dealing with intervals like that might help force your brain to deal with a wide variety of angles. Ultimately some will come out poorly since you're not comfortable with them, but that's just part of the game. You've gotta make mistakes, and right now it looks like you're terrified of letting that happen.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Cylinders"

2015-05-06 22:13

It generally doesn't help that much (at least in my experience) to even bother trying to nail them in the first try. I mean, that's my own opinion and some people will disagree. Still, I prefer to suggest that people continue to draw through their ellipses, focusing on nailing the consistent, round, even shape. Once they get that down, they can work towards getting all of those lines to tighten up, coming together until they more or less overlap into one somewhat thicker line. At that point you'll probably have a much better shot of getting them right in one shot.

Anyway, good work on completing the challenge. I can definitely see that you've worked towards getting the degree relationship between the two ends of the cylinder, and I see a good bit of progress from start to end. You may also want to go back to lesson 1 and just read the notes about the minor axis - which aligns to the spine of the cylinder. I'm going to make a video about how to draw cylinders that goes over this at some point, but I've been very busy as of late.

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

2015-05-06 22:10

Nice work! I definitely see some progress in your confidence throughout, especially at that last page. I'm glad that you feel it started to click.

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

2015-05-06 22:09

Your forms are generally pretty good, actually. I'd say the weaker side of this is your detailing. Some of your crosshatching has a tendency to not wrap around the forms very well, at other times it comes out a little too scribbly. It really helps to use the focal point circle to really focus your detail in one area, instead of worrying about the whole thing. Beyond that, I think that as you continue to practice with various subject matters, you'll come to realize that there's more information in your reference that you may not be noticing as clearly right now.

Just keep in mind - don't scribble, don't try and get random and messy. Every surface texture has a rhythm to it, and you've got to find that rhythm. Everything has some sort of structure or pattern that underlies it.

Anyway, go ahead and move onto the next lesson.

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

2015-05-05 22:39

Nice work! I'm definitely seeing a lot of progress. Here's a couple things to keep in mind though - overlapping your boxes will start complicating things, because as soon as two forms overlap, they exist in the same 'scene', so the perspective distortion between them needs to be consistent. Here's some notes on that issue. When tackling this challenge, it's best to draw them separately, so you're only dealing with the problem of drawing a solid box.

Secondly, don't draw boxes that get cut off on the side of the page. Since you're not drawing the whole thing, it's kind of... arbitrary and pointless.

Anyway, congrats on completing the challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-05-05 03:36

I'm gonna be critiquing this tomorrow (I spent this evening doing my own art so I didn't have time to get to anyone's critiques) but in the mean time, could you try and take some better pictures? Some of these are kind of difficult to work with.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2015-05-02 23:58

Ultimately that's the intent. I want to develop drawabox.com into a completely separate and self-contained community. The website will be redesigned and rebuilt with login/registration, homework submissions, badges for lesson completion and the ability for people to critique each other.

That said, I do intend to one day play a less direct role in critiquing everyone's work. I'll continue doing that for some time, but eventually I want critiquing to be a skill that members develop - as it is just as valuable as technical skill. If you can critique another's work, you'll be able to see your own flaws more effectively as well. Of course, before a member can critique someone's homework, they'll have had to have completed the homework to a very high level - showing me that they've understood well enough to share their knowledge.

I'm not sure if that'll work out (people aren't that keen on critiquing others), but I'll try and incentivize it somehow. While writing a new lesson every week isn't too taxing, it's unrealistic to expect to be able to personally critique everyone's work until the end of time - especially as the community continues to swell.

I'd have actually started on the whole redevelopment of the website sooner, but my designer is currently finishing up work on another project, and I'm heading into a pretty rough few weeks at work. At the end of the day, my full-time job always takes precedence.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-05-02 20:32

Your birds are pretty awesome - especially that eagle. The reason it's awesome is because all of your forms connect to each other at specific points. The wings, the legs, you can see how they fit together with the body.

Your quadrupeds, however, do not. You pretty much draw three circles and then ruuuuush to the detail phase. No form, no connections, nothing solid whatsoever. With those lynxes, you seem to try to move more towards fleshing things out, but there's little attention paid to how those legs connect to the main body, and even less to how the upper leg connects to the lower leg, and the paw to that.

Remember that everything is a 3D form. That circle of the head is a sphere, and your muzzle is going to be a box that extends off of it. Nothing should be floating around arbitrarily.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2015-05-02 20:28

Awesome work. The biggest problem that I'm seeing though is that you have a tendency of using very dramatic perspective, and that is making things much more difficult than they need to be.

Any attempt at actually having solid vanishing points (visible on the page) are going to result in this. The closer together those VPs are, the more dramatic that perspective gets, and the more distortion you'll see in the resulting drawing. Instead, always try to use your horizon and that initial box as your points of reference. Together, they just about allow you to approximate the angles of your other lines.

There's definitely a lot of room for growth, but I think you're moving very much in the right direction. I especially love the '69 Camero drawing at the bottom of page 8, and the drawing on the bottom of page 10. Your tanks are pretty well done too. In general, there's a lot of great stuff here. At times things get a little loopy and distorted, but you'll iron that out as you get more accustomed to this sort of drawing.

I'll mark this lesson as complete! ...Except there's no actual badge for it... Eventually I'm going to transition all the critiques and profiles to the drawabox.com website, so once it's there, you'll have a fancy badge to show off your achievement.

Keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Cylinders"

2015-05-02 20:22

Nice job! Don't forget though - the farther ellipse will always have a higher degree than the closer one, as I described in the notes. I'm going to be posting a 'how to draw a cylinder' video eventually (though possibly not for a few weeks), so keep an eye out for that. I'll elaborate the use of the minor axis as the spine of your ellipse, as it's been touched upon in lesson 1.

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

2015-05-02 20:06

Your forms have definitely improved considerably. Everything seems to exist as forms in 3D space that are interconnected - nothing is floating arbitrarily, they all have specific points of connection to one another.

When it comes to surface texture, what you've got to look out for is a certain rhythm. Early on (pages 1-5) you end up scribbling a fair bit, putting down fairly random lines. If you really study the surface texture of your subject, you'll eventually notice that the marks have a certain rhythm or flow to them. They're arranged in a particular way, almost as if on purpose rather than at random. That is because everything is governed by the laws of physics - so the way the individual hairs in a wasp's fur will arrange themselves based on the wasp's movement, the wind, etc.

In the next lesson, you'll see some notes on how to depict fur without creating too much noise and contrast. Be sure to read them carefully - right now you're drawing fur as individual lines, so soon you'll learn how to tackle them as tufts, putting down that detail with fewer marks.

Go ahead and move onto the next lesson, you're generally doing quite well, and be sure to keep putting your focus on the areas where you feel you are weakest.

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

2015-04-28 23:06

There are certain reasons to hold pencils in various ways (each one having its own benefits). For example, when I was taking an analytical figure drawing class, we drew with these conte pencils that we sharpened with knives specifically to expose a long length of lead. Holding it as you would when writing wouldn't really take much benefit of the extra surface area, so other grips definitely would impact how you could use the tool.

Personally, I don't see the benefit from holding a felt tip pen any differently. I could be wrong, but since it's limited to a fairly small nib, however you hold it is really just a matter of comfort. It's a personal choice. Personally, I hold it as I would when writing - which I guess is the 'standard' grip.

And yeah, you're onto lesson 2.

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

2015-04-28 22:33

Congrats on completing the challenge. I do have a few suggestions though.

The biggest thing I notice is that you definitely made the challenge significantly more difficult by overlapping the boxes. By doing so, you bring them into the same scene (similarly to if you had drawn a frame around them) - which means the amount of perpsective distortion on each one will have to be consistent, which can be tricky to get on top of just working on drawing the boxes themselves. It's best to tackle one problem at a time. These notes explain the idea of consistent perspective.

Also, I am noticing that some of your boxes are showing issues with the near/far plane relationships. The farther plane should never be bigger than the closer one. I go over this in the 'How to draw a box' video included in the challenge post. I'm sure you've given it a look, as with all of the notes I included, but I'd strongly recommend watching it again.

All that said, I just realized when completing lesson 1, you said you'd already completed the challenge. Is this what you were talking about, or is this a new stab at the challenge? The reason I'm asking is because the boxes you drew for lesson 1 were considerably better - so if they were done afterward, they show a marked improvement.

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

2015-04-27 22:17

I definitely see a lot of improvement over the course of your work. Well done! Just keep an eye on the whole near plane/far plane size relationships. Some of yours are still coming up backwards (with the far plane being bigger), though only just barely.

Uncomfortable in the post "OPTIONAL CHALLENGE: 250 Cylinders"

2015-04-27 22:11

Congrats on completing the challenge! I definitely see some improvement, though I think you might want to spend more time drawing through the cylinders completely. You did that at the beginning quite a bit, and I'm glad to see that, but I did see that when you stopped drawing through them, your cylinders started getting a little wonkier.

Also, you should still be drawing through the ellipses themselves - going around a couple times before lifting your pen. With cylinders, it's very important to nail the shape and degree of the ellipse you're trying to draw. You may also want to revisit the notes about ellipses from lesson 1 - the minor axis of the ellipse aligns to the center line of the cylinder it would produce.

I'm actually intending to put out a video on the topic of drawing cylinders at some point, but I'm not sure when that'll be.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-04-26 06:00

Oh, sorry- it wasn't clear to me that what you posted today was in response to the original critique I'd done. It's tough to keep track of things, but replying to the original comment chain helps.

No, I think I'll mark the lesson complete. Not perfect by any stretch, lots of room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-04-26 04:22

Pay closer attention to your proportions. Also, no more posting one page at a time, it's much easier to notice patterns and tendencies when I look at a whole body of work rather than a few drawings.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2015-04-25 20:44

Not bad! Just don't forget that animals are, like all things, made up of solid forms - and these forms connect to each other. You have a tendency to have the shoulder joints floating around on the body, instead of pinned down to connect at a specific point.

Also, don't forget that as solid forms, it helps to consider how the planes of the body are separated - the underbelly, the side, the top, etc.

Also, all penguins must wear tuxedos at all times.

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

2015-04-25 00:08

Very nice! And the lobster was a great addition. You definitely have a very distinct style to your work, and I think it'll take you very far. You do a great job of simplifying forms, which is definitely the most important thing here. You probably could push your detail a little further - and in all likelihood, probably should - but personally I like them the way they are. That's my personal bias talking though.

As for finding bugs that aren't similar - it's interesting you should mention that, because when I read it first (I usually skim through people's homework while I'm at work, but I don't critique til I'm home), it immediately made me think about how a big part of studying a particular subject is about noting how it differs from other similar things. To learn what gives something its identity as a particular kind of beetle, or spider, or whatever, involves just as much of studying what makes it different from its close relatives.

Anyway, you did great. Go ahead and move onto the next lesson.

Edit: Oh, and on the next lesson, pay special attention to the stuff I mention about drawing fur, and how you can imply it without drawing a bunch of individual lines.

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

2015-04-25 00:01

It looks good. There's always room to grow, but I think in general your boxes look quite confident, and the line weights come through quite nicely to hold the boxes together.

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

2015-04-25 00:00

Good work. Be sure to move onto playing with line weights in the future, though. Also, if you do some more box-practice in the future, instead of just circling your mistakes with the different coloured pen, it may be more helpful to mark in what you think would be more correct.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-04-24 23:58

You definitely seem to get much more comfortable with the subject matter as you progress through the lesson. Generally, you've done quite well. You may want to draw on something bigger though - I get the feeling that you're being a little restricted by the size of the page. This is more the case early on, when you're not as comfortable, but it should help in general, since your drawings will come out bigger, and the tip of the pen in relation to the drawing will seem less thick and clunky.

Anyway, go ahead and move onto the next lesson - you did quite well.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2015-04-21 23:08

Nice work! Good solid forms, strong detail (mostly). Feel free to move onto the next lesson, but here's a few things you can change as you move forward.