Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-05 17:19

Drawing texture relies on two things. Firstly, getting used to drawing what is actually in front of you. Beginners will always fall into the trap of looking at their reference, and then drawing what they remember seeing. As explained in the lesson, our memories are not trustworthy, and won't be for quite some time. It gets better with practice, but in principle, we're bad at remembering details.

Instead, what we tend to do is we'll look at something and then ascribe a word to it. For example, if you see a little protrusion you might think of it as a "bump". Once you've got that word in your head, you stop thinking about what that 'bump' actually looks like as an individual, and instead you go and you draw what you interpret the word "bump" to mean. So when you look at your reference and find some element of it that you want to transfer into your drawing, don't convert it into words in your head. Focus on the actual characteristics of it - you'll find that this is very difficult, because you won't be able to hold very much of this unnamed information in your head. That's great - it means you'll be forced to continually look back at your reference image over and over again, rather than trying to draw continuously (which is how we slip back into trying to draw from memory, and failing miserably at it). And of course, it goes without saying that any kind of scribbling or repetitious patterns all fall into the category of "I described it with a word, and then drew what that word meant to me" - and it's bad.

The second point is the nature of what it is we draw. You don't have to worry about this part while you're still getting used to the first one, but once you've got a bit of a grip on proper draw-what-you-see observational drawing, we have to discuss how you go about drawing it. Textures are basically a collection of tiny forms that exist along the surface of an object. They're JUST like the big forms we construct, but because they're so small and so numerous, we can't approach them in the same way without our textures looking awful.

When dealing with the big forms, we apply a very useful tool called line. You may have heard of it. Line doesn't actually exist in the world around us, instead it's a tool we employ to help define the boundaries between masses. Unfortunately, if we try to outline all of the little forms we see in our textures, this gives us two main problems:

• With all the lines sitting on the page, the texture ends up being VERY visually noisy. Lots of marks, lots of small slivers of white and black, lots of contrast, it all ends up creating unintentional focal areas that draws your viewer's eye where you don't want it to go. Drawing is, after all, all about communicating things to the viewer, and in order to do that we need to have pretty firm control of where they're looking and when.

• When we outline every little thing, we tell the viewer that "everything in this texture has been drawn explicitly, and that anything that has not been drawn does not exist here". This forces us into the quandry that is the first point - noisy, high contrast, overwhelming textures that have too much going on, in any situation where we want to convey a texture that does in fact have a lot going on. For example, if you have a fish with a lot of tiny scales, any way you slice it, if you want to communicate all those scales, using this kind of approach you'll HAVE to draw all those scales.

Remember though - line is not something that exists. It's a tool, it's something we impose on our drawings, and just like putting together furniture, you don't HAVE to reach for a screwdriver if you've got nails to drive into wood. I mean, you can, but it's probably not a great idea - and that's a choice for you to make.

So what other tools do we have in our toolbelt? When you look at a texture and perceive all these little lines, what you're actually seeing are shadows being cast by the little textural forms on the surface of your object. Again, lines don't exist - they're all shadows. These CAST shadows (not to be confused with form shading - cast shadows are the ones that are projected by objects when they block a light source) are our second tool. Instead of outlining everything (drawing each little textural form explicitly) we can imply their presence by capturing the shadow they cast on their surroundings. This means we're NOT drawing the form itself - we're just drawing its shadow, we're drawing around the form and by doing this, we imply the fact that it's there. The viewer's brain fills in the rest.

Cast shadows are a much better choice for this kind of problem because they're flexible. We can plunge an object into darkness, resulting in larger more expansive shadows that all merge together into a solid black shape. We can also blast it with direct light (like an overexposed photograph), obliterating all but the shadows in the deepest cracks where light cannot penetrate. By doing this we can increase or decrease the amount of actual ink that goes into capturing a texture, without changing what is actually present on the object being drawn. We can put in just the slightest shadows right where our fish scales meet instead of outlining them completely, and even leave most of them out, and that's still going to be enough information for the viewer's brain to fill it all in.

This frees us up to use texture however it suits us - we are no longer strapped into having to cover the entire thing with lines, but instead can choose to place little pockets of detail where we want them, and still communicate what we need to.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-05 17:18

Starting with your arrows, they're quite well done, and flow very nicely through all three dimensions of space. You're demonstrating a good grasp of how perspective is applied to them, both shrinking their farther ends as well as compressing the space between their zigzagging lengths.

Your organic forms with contour ellipses are coming along decently, though there are a few things I want to call out:

• Firstly, your ellipses are a little uneven at times. Many of them are quite smooth, confident and evenly shaped, though there are a few that stand out as being a little bumpy. You did mention that your desk may be screwing you up a little, but also make sure you're drawing from your shoulder.

• You're generally doing a decent job of keeping the forms simple, but remember that the instructions state that the sausages are essentially 'two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width'. You're getting the second point well, but you do have a tendency to either make one end smaller than the other, or to stretch the ends out so they are no longer spherical (resulting in a longer section of curvature).

Your contour curves are coming along pretty well - they wrap around the form quite nicely, though keep an eye on your tendency to make them a little stiff. Again, draw from the shoulder, and make sure they flow smoothly.

Now, your texture analyses have a few good points, but by and large they're somewhat lacking:

• The main strength here is that you are indeed starting to think in terms of the shadows cast by your textural forms. What you are still struggling with is a need to draw each and every form entirely. With your scales, you've drawn each and every one. This tells me that while you're moving into the territory of using shadows, you're not leveraging their greatest benefits. The thing about cast shadows is that while they may change based on how we manipulate our lighting situation, that does not impact what is actually present on the surfaces of our object. We may plunge it into darkness, causing the shadows to deepen and grow, merging into large swathes of darkness, or we may blast the shadows away with direct light, like an overexposed photograph, where the only shadows that remain are those in the deepest cracks where light cannot penetrate. Being able to blast your shadows away, to leave them only where forms meet or overlap, and allowing the viewer's brain to fill those gaps in is key to being able to create gradients from solid black to solid white.

• On your second texture, the arbitrary hatching lines you put down quite sloppily are something I never want to see in an attempt at drawing texture. Generally when students add hatching lines, it's because they want to try and give the impression of a middle-grey, instead of sticking to solid black or solid white. Black/white are all we have to play with, so we need to work within those realms. Pushing outside of them is going to cause our drawing to appear sloppy. Secondly, hatching falls into the territory of drawing on auto-pilot. Drawing texture requires a lot of careful observation of your reference image, transferring one element at a time, and never attempting to scribble in order to fill a space.

• On that point, right now your observational skills definitely do need work - there's a lot of signs that you're still largely drawing from memory, rather than actively drawing what you see, and transferring it bit by bit to your drawing. Beginners will often look at their reference, and attempt to find some element that they can ascribe a name to. For example, "a scale" or "a blob" or "a bump". Then they go to their drawing and draw the word they identified. They'll draw a scale, or a blob, or a bump, but it will be a genericized version of that thing, not the specific individual they had seen in their reference. This is essentially what we call symbol drawing - that you draw something that represents what was present, not the thing itself. As you tackle texture in the future, I want you to try to stay away from naming anything you see. Focus on the nature of the form, the things that makes it unique. You'll find that you can only carry a limited amount of this kind of information in your head, because you're no longer simplifying it - you're taking it exactly as it is. This will requires you to draw just a couple of marks, before looking back to your reference and studying it closely again to find the next bits to carry over.

These principles apply to the dissections as well, where you've ended up with many similar issues of oversimplification, and attempting to draw everything a little too explicitly.

Moving forwards, your form intersections are generally quite well done. They demonstrate a good grasp of how these forms sit in space, and how they relate to one another within it. I noticed that you included some forms that were longer in one dimension, despite the instructions to avoid such things as longer cylinders, and to keep your forms equilateral (roughly the same size in all three dimensions). Please be more mindful of the instructions in the future.

Lastly, your organic intersections came out very nicely as well, and your contour lines here are much more fluid and smooth than before. You did a great job of conveying how these forms interact with one another in 3D space - instead of feeling like a series of shapes pasted on top of each other on a page, they feel believable and solid in how they slump and sag against one another, in search of a state of equilibrium. Very well done.

Usually issues in the texture section are fine and expected, and I allow students to work on that as they move forwards. In this case however, before I mark this lesson as complete, I would like you to try the texture analysis exercise once again (1 page of 3 rows). I'm also going to include a lecture I gave to someone who'd complained about not knowing how to approach textures as a whole. I can't fit it in this comment due to reddit's character limit, so it'll be in a reply to this comment. Be sure to give it a read, as it may help you better grasp what you should be aiming for.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-05 15:52

I have a long day of critiques ahead of me, so I am thrilled to receive your submission - simply because it's very well done. You're applying construction as a whole with considerable success here, and are largely demonstrating a good grasp of the concepts covered in the lesson.

Starting with your arrows, they're flowing very well through all three dimensions of space, including the very depth of the scene. You're applying perspective not only to the arrow itself (making it smaller as it moves back into space), but you're also shrinking the spacing between the zigzagging lengths.

You carry this understanding of flow and fluidity into your leaves as well, while applying the step-by-step leaf construction method to pin down one problem at a time, building up to the overall leaf without trying to tackle too much all at once.

Your branches are coming along well, and are moving in the right direction, though there certainly is room for growth. You're generally doing a good job of keeping those little 'tails' at the end of each segment directed into the following segment, but there are a few that stick out on their own. In these cases, it's generally best to get in the habit of using the end of the previous segment as a sort of runway as you draw the following stroke - this will ensure that the segments flow into one another.

You may also want to try drawing these bigger (by starting out with larger cross-sectional ellipses), as they are feeling just a little bit cramped. As this is a spatial challenge, our brains do benefit considerably from being given more room to think, and it also allows us to engage more of our shoulder, resulting in smoother, more fluid linework.

As I mentioned before, your actual plant constructions demonstrate an excellent grasp of construction as a whole. You're stepping through them phase by phase, never taking on too much, and adhering to the decisions you make in previous steps without undermining or overwriting them in following ones. This allows you to maintain the illusion of solidity throughout. You're also balancing texture very effectively, largely using a pretty light touch, and hammering out as much as you can through construction alone before really moving into that territory. I also don't see any of the common signs that the awareness that you're planning on detailing a drawing interfering with the processes preceding that phase - to put it simply, lots of students have a tendency to focus on all the detail they're going to put in later, and end up getting sloppy on construction. You don't do this, at all, so I'm very pleased.

I have just a couple minor points to offer:

• In your pitcher plant, I noticed that your cross-sectional/contour ellipses weren't actually being aligned too well to the central minor axis that defined the flow of the overall form, specifically on the middle and rightmost drawings. Be sure to review the relationship between an ellipse and its minor axis, as explained here.

• On this page, you've got a few cases of particularly complex leaves (with multiple arms). You start approaching them decently, defining an independent flow line for each arm, but then you skip to outlining the entire leaf completely, rather than building them each up as demonstrated here.

Anyway! Keep up the fantastic work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-05 15:29

There's definitely visible improvement on the branches, but I have two things to point out:

• You've still got a lot of visible tails - this tells me that you're not following the suggestion I provided earlier, about using the previous segment as a 'runway' for your next one. When you draw the following segment, you're drawing it separately from the previous one, rather than going right over the previous one and continuing from there.

• Try drawing these bigger - meaning, making the cross-sectional ellipses larger. This is a spatial challenge, and as such your brain will benefit considerably from being given more room to work and think.

For your textures, I can see you making clear efforts towards working more with shadow, but you're still very much trapping yourself in outlining everything first, before actually putting the shadows down. You need to eliminate the lines altogether, and focus on the actual little textural forms that exist along the surface of the object, and how they cast the shadows that you interpret as being lines in your reference image. I'm going to paste below a long lecture I gave another person who asked me about why they struggle so much with texture, as I feel this should apply to everyone, and it should help you out as well:

Drawing texture relies on two things. Firstly, getting used to drawing what is actually in front of you. Beginners will always fall into the trap of looking at their reference, and then drawing what they remember seeing. As explained in the lesson, our memories are not trustworthy, and won't be for quite some time. It gets better with practice, but in principle, we're bad at remembering details.

Instead, what we tend to do is we'll look at something and then ascribe a word to it. For example, if you see a little protrusion you might think of it as a "bump". Once you've got that word in your head, you stop thinking about what that 'bump' actually looks like as an individual, and instead you go and you draw what you interpret the word "bump" to mean. So when you look at your reference and find some element of it that you want to transfer into your drawing, don't convert it into words in your head. Focus on the actual characteristics of it - you'll find that this is very difficult, because you won't be able to hold very much of this unnamed information in your head. That's great - it means you'll be forced to continually look back at your reference image over and over again, rather than trying to draw continuously (which is how we slip back into trying to draw from memory, and failing miserably at it). And of course, it goes without saying that any kind of scribbling or repetitious patterns all fall into the category of "I described it with a word, and then drew what that word meant to me" - and it's bad.

The second point is the nature of what it is we draw. You don't have to worry about this part while you're still getting used to the first one, but once you've got a bit of a grip on proper draw-what-you-see observational drawing, we have to discuss how you go about drawing it. Textures are basically a collection of tiny forms that exist along the surface of an object. They're JUST like the big forms we construct, but because they're so small and so numerous, we can't approach them in the same way without our textures looking awful.

When dealing with the big forms, we apply a very useful tool called line. You may have heard of it. Line doesn't actually exist in the world around us, instead it's a tool we employ to help define the boundaries between masses. Unfortunately, if we try to outline all of the little forms we see in our textures, this gives us two main problems:

• With all the lines sitting on the page, the texture ends up being VERY visually noisy. Lots of marks, lots of small slivers of white and black, lots of contrast, it all ends up creating unintentional focal areas that draws your viewer's eye where you don't want it to go. Drawing is, after all, all about communicating things to the viewer, and in order to do that we need to have pretty firm control of where they're looking and when.

• When we outline every little thing, we tell the viewer that "everything in this texture has been drawn explicitly, and that anything that has not been drawn does not exist here". This forces us into the quandry that is the first point - noisy, high contrast, overwhelming textures that have too much going on, in any situation where we want to convey a texture that does in fact have a lot going on. For example, if you have a fish with a lot of tiny scales, any way you slice it, if you want to communicate all those scales, using this kind of approach you'll HAVE to draw all those scales.

Remember though - line is not something that exists. It's a tool, it's something we impose on our drawings, and just like putting together furniture, you don't HAVE to reach for a screwdriver if you've got nails to drive into wood. I mean, you can, but it's probably not a great idea - and that's a choice for you to make.

So what other tools do we have in our toolbelt? When you look at a texture and perceive all these little lines, what you're actually seeing are shadows being cast by the little textural forms on the surface of your object. Again, lines don't exist - they're all shadows. These CAST shadows (not to be confused with form shading - cast shadows are the ones that are projected by objects when they block a light source) are our second tool. Instead of outlining everything (drawing each little textural form explicitly) we can imply their presence by capturing the shadow they cast on their surroundings. This means we're NOT drawing the form itself - we're just drawing its shadow, we're drawing around the form and by doing this, we imply the fact that it's there. The viewer's brain fills in the rest.

Cast shadows are a much better choice for this kind of problem because they're flexible. We can plunge an object into darkness, resulting in larger more expansive shadows that all merge together into a solid black shape. We can also blast it with direct light (like an overexposed photograph), obliterating all but the shadows in the deepest cracks where light cannot penetrate. By doing this we can increase or decrease the amount of actual ink that goes into capturing a texture, without changing what is actually present on the object being drawn. We can put in just the slightest shadows right where our fish scales meet instead of outlining them completely, and even leave most of them out, and that's still going to be enough information for the viewer's brain to fill it all in.

This frees us up to use texture however it suits us - we are no longer strapped into having to cover the entire thing with lines, but instead can choose to place little pockets of detail where we want them, and still communicate what we need to.

Now, your plant constructions are getting better - there's still a long way to go, but you're headed in the right direction. Your first page of plant constructions is notably better than the second, mainly because the second page's leftmost plant wasn't give very much room for constructing the main bulb and little petals. The sphere beneath the flower didn't end up reading clearly, which made the plant hard to identify.

So, while you do have plenty of room to grow, I am going to mark this lesson as complete and let you move onto the next lesson. Be sure to continue practicing this kind of thing on your own however, and continue applying the principles in later lessons as you work through those different topics.

Oh, and on the topic of texture, I recommend that you gradually work through the texture challenge in parallel with these lessons. Don't do it all at once - spread it out, and give your brain time to soak up what you're learning.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-04 23:30

Starting with your arrows, they're looking pretty good in how they flow through space. I'm especially pleased with the fact that the one on the top left of the page shows a clear compression of the space between the zigzagging lengths as they move farther away from the viewer - a lot of students tend to miss that important aspect of perspective, that it applies to all of space and not just to the objects themselves.

Your organic forms with contour ellipses are coming along okay, though these will need some additional attention from you as you move forwards. A couple things I noticed include:

• Your ellipses here are still kind of stiff, so you need to make sure you're loosening up, drawing from the shoulder and doing so with a confident pace.

• Keep your sausages simple - yours are MOSTLY pretty simple, but really we want to aim for what is equivalent to two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width. Anything that breaks that pattern adds complexity - for example, ends that are different sizes, ends that are more elongated (rather than spherical), a bit of pinching through the midsection, etc.

• On the top right you've got some thought towards how the degrees of the ellipses shifts over the length of the sausage, but you don't seem to think about this as much in many of the others. Just keep aware of it.

Your contour curves are a little on the stiff side too, but they're wrapping around the forms well enough, and you're doing a good job of keeping them snug between the edges of the sausage. Just keep at it - they're not all the way there, but I think you largely just need to keep practicing on loosening up overall and drawing more confidently.

I'm very pleased with the willingness to go very bold with your heavy blacks in the texture analysis exercise. One thing I'm noticing however is that while you're applying your observational skills quite well, and drawing exactly what you see, you're looking at 2D information and executing them in two dimensions - what you're missing is the section in between where you understand how these things exist in 3D space. When you see a mark or a shadow in your reference, I want you to take a moment to think not about how you're going to transfer that exact stroke, but rather think about what is causing it. Every shadow is cast by a form - think about the form that casts it, then try and figure out where that form is going to sit in your drawing, and what kind of shadow it will cast there. This will make your marks more directly relate to the actual textural forms that exist along the surface of your object, and your shadows themselves will actually be implying the presence of something specific, rather than simply being a series of marks on the page. This manner of thinking will also help with your dissections, since it really emphasizes the relationship between the shadows you're drawing, and the forms that cast them.

Your form intersections with boxes only came out reasonably well - you constructed each box mindfully, and did a pretty decent job, demonstrating a developing grasp of how they relate to one another in space. things went fairly well as you introduced more forms, although I noticed that you skipped the instruction about avoiding any forms that are overly stretched or elongated in any one dimension. The main offenders here are your cylinders - you ought to have kept them more equilateral (shortening them so they are the same size in all three dimensions). This helps us reduce the amount of foreshortening going on, to avoid any unnecessary complexity in an already difficult exercise.

Lastly, your organic intersections are looking good. You're demonstrating an understanding of how these forms slump and sag against one another as they find a state of equilibrium. At no point do they feel flat, like a drawing on a page, or like shapes that have been pasted on top of one another. They feel solid and three dimensional, so good work on that.

Overall you do have plenty of room to grow, but you're headed in the right direction. Be sure to incorporate these into your regular warmup routines along with the exercises from lesson 1, and feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-04 19:01

:D That's great to hear! I'm glad you had a good experience with them.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-04 15:01

Best of luck as you start out on this harrowing journey!

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-04 13:20

People do have interesting opinions on microns - some swear by them, while others find them to run dry rather quickly, and have nibs that wear out more easily than others. Either way, at least in my opinion, ours are much better than microns (and definitely better than stabilos) so I'm fairly confident you'll like them.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-04 03:44

Just remember to pace yourself - it's not a race, and you don't need to devote hours for each sitting. It's more important that you be regular and disciplined.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-04 03:43

Do you mean an extremely low angle? I'm not sure any fineliners will draw at extremely low angles, but these definitely hold up better than most. I'm able to draw at a 40 degree angle to the page (I generally draw at around 50 degrees).

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-04 03:40

We do, but the UK generally has some of the best access to reasonably priced fineliners (at least from what I've heard), so I'd check out local options first. If you do end up deciding to go with us, shipping to the UK is approximately $14.25 USD for the cheapest option, so one pack would run you $30.75 ($3.08/pen) and two packs would run you $47.25 ($2.36/pen).

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 23:32

Luckily microns are generally pretty affordable too. I've usually found them to be somewhat less resilient, but I'm glad they've been serving you well!

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 23:32

Pigment liners have generally been my pens of choice as well, so when I was testing out different samples from suppliers, that was the standard I was comparing them to. I feel pretty confident that the ones we found were roughly equal, if not slightly better. I hope you find the same!

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 20:19

Hahaha, those ultrafine sharpies do draw pretty well considering their cost, but everything's gotta have a downside.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 19:18

That's great to hear! :D

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-03 18:14

It is in the nature that those petals move through space in a manner that is much more difficult for a student to pin down. The one you linked on the other hand has a lot going on, but it's really just the same thing repeated over and over. The greatest likelihood of messing up with that one is simply not being patient enough to draw everything in its entirety.

So basically, if everything is made up from a relatively simple base unit, then that's not really a problem. But if that base unit - like the flower's petals - is complex in and of itself, then it's going to be much more difficult to tackle.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 17:25

These are indeed likely to be thicker compared to the ballpoints you've been using, although you can achieve a wide range of line weights with a single fineliner depending on how much pressure you apply.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-03 17:23

I mainly mentioned the reference thing offhand, but I just looked through the original references you'd used and only this one seemed particularly complicated. The rest are fine, so you can use them. Just be sure to take your time as you approach them.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 16:37

I don't think the frigidity of the room would be an issue, but cold temperatures usually also come with a drier climate. That would definitely contribute to the pens drying out more quickly.

A greater concern however would be how exactly you're drawing. For example, if you have a tendency to apply a lot of pressure when you draw (as many beginners do), you will likely damage the tips of your fineliners. Ours are a more resilient than, say, microns, but that really goes for any brand. With good fineliners, there's really no need to press hard anyway, and it can also have the downside of resulting in lines that feel a little more stiff and lifeless.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 16:21

I actually do want to eventually release the Drawabox lessons as a book in the next few years, once I'm fully confident that there aren't going to be major revisions that I want to make to any of the content of the core 7 lessons/challenges. Throwing in something like this would definitely be a nice touch, so I'll definitely keep it in mind. I'll have to set some money aside in the budget to pay those students for the use of their work though.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 16:18

It sure as hell ain't easy. That's more or less what Drawabox has always been about - taking the important information and making it accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Now we're just extending that to the supplies needed, since that's been the next biggest barrier to students working through the lessons properly.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 16:05

Awesome! The main difference you'll find between ballpoints and fineliners is that the mark it's going to make is going to be much richer and darker, even with minimal pressure. Fineliners basically don't let you sketch lightly - they'll put a solid mark down regardless, which forces you to take your time and value each stroke a lot more, and to learn to be more mindful with every mark.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 15:31

I'm glad to hear it!

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Pens are back in stock! Our first run got a great response, so we're looking to do this for the long run to help give students an accessible source of more fairly priced, high quality fineliners"

2019-07-03 14:44

We've gotten another order of 2000 pens (200 packs), same as last time. As we move forwards however, we're planning on ordering larger batches (likely 4000 next time), and doing so earlier in order to decrease the amount of time between restockings until we can finally maintain a steady, continuous supply.

Apologies to those of you who signed up for email notifications while the pens were out of stock - if you signed up prior to June 29th, it didn't go through, as I stupidly left in a piece of code that only made the function work when it was tested by me specifically. I figured people didn't care much for the notification idea, but once we fixed it we had 12 people sign up across 3 days. There were probably a number of you over the last two weeks who'd tried.

If any of you have questions about the pens, feel free to ask them. And if those of you who bought them in the last round have any feedback to offer, please feel free!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-03 01:53

Best to do it to the subreddit, since submissions here should be part of a full lesson (or specifically requested revisions).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-02 21:13

So you are definitely moving in the right direction, though I do agree that there's still room for improvement. My bigger concern however is that you delivered what constitutes a more than half of the lesson's homework in under 24 hours. That's WAY too fast, and even if you didn't rush through it, it does suggest that you didn't pace yourself particularly well. That's probably how we ended up with this particular drawing, which was definitely the worst of the set. The petals are stiff, the construction feels flat, and the attempt at detail was visibly scratchy, and not driven by proper observation and study.

This last image however was definitely the best of the set, and by a considerable margin. The petals are starting to flow a lot more smoothly, and for the most part you focused more on construction, which led to a much more successful drawing.

I have two other points to raise:

• In your leaves, you show a tendency to put down little lines on the surfaces that serve no purpose at all. When I see these from students, they're usually the result of attempting to add some kind of detail or texture, mixed in with a contour line, but accomplishes neither. Every single mark you put down needs to serve a specific purpose - if it's a contour line, make sure it is smooth and confident and runs along the entirety of the surface it is helping to describe. Furthermore, don't overdo it with these - if its purpose is already being achieved by another line, then leave it out. The thing about contour lines is that they have diminishing returns, even if they're drawn well. The first will help describe the surface a great deal, the second will help a little less, and then after that, further ones will generally not do a whole lot. They can still be worth drawing, but only if you have other reasons to do so, and if you make sure you're not stiffening up your drawing by adding them poorly. Now, if we're talking about detail, then you need to make sure that it's being informed by reference, and that you're observing it carefully, not drawing from memory, as explained here.

• For your branches, these are flowing a lot better, and your segments merge into one another more successfully than before. The point I wanted to call out however was the degree of your ellipses. Most of the branches drawn here seem to be flowing across the page, but the ellipses themselves have degrees that suggest they're turned somewhat more towards the viewer than they should be. As explained in previous lessons, the degrees you choose for the ellipse that represents a circle in 3D space is going to determine how it is oriented. Like a coin, if you turn it in your hands, you can either be staring at its edge, seeing what is essentially just a 0 degree, flat, skinny ellipse, or you can turn it gradually to make it wider and wider until it faces you head on, with a degree of 90, a full circle. You need to keep this in mind as you lay out your ellipses.

I want you to do another 4 pages of plant constructions, but this time with NO attempts at detail or texture. Focus on taking the construction as far as you can. And this time, don't do it all at once - take your time with the task, and give each drawing, every individual LINE as much time as it requires of you, applying the ghosting method, planning and preparing before every stroke.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-02 20:45

Your arrows and leaves are looking considerably better, although I have to call this out:

(no I didn't rotate the page only)

Why not? As explained back in the ghosted lines exercise, which covers the methodology you are applying to all of your linework, you should be rotating your page to find a comfortable angle of approach as part of the planning phase.

Your branches are definitely moving in the right direction, and the flow between segments is significantly improved. There are a couple things I noticed:

• You do need to keep working on maintaining a consistent width throughout the entirety of the branch. Don't let it get thicker/thinner in places, as this kind of complexity will undermine the illusion of solidity of the form.

• You definitely need to watch the degrees of your ellipses. Most of these branches seem to be flowing across the page, though you have a lot of ellipses with degrees that are wide enough to suggest that that particular cross-sectional slice is actually turning towards the viewer.

Anyway, now that you're making progress on these fronts, let's see you tackle 5 pages of plant constructions. Take it slow, and focus on applying the concepts we've covered so far. Also, when picking your reference images, try not to pick anything too complicated, and always look for high resolution images.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-02 20:36

This is definitely an improvement. Your form intersections using boxes along is especially impressive, although when you introduced other forms, you still seem to have forgotten the instruction to avoid any stretched forms. Keeping them equilateral - that is, roughly the same size in all three dimensions (so your cylinders would be rather short and squat) helps us keep the foreshortening nice and shallow, which makes it a lot simpler to deal with. You can even imagine that you're taking the boxes that you used in the boxes-only version, and placing other forms inside of them.

Aside from that, good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-02 19:58

You should be drawing through all the ellipses you draw for these lessons (although 2 times is ideal rather than 3).

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-01 21:22

This is definitely a big step in the right direction. You are definitely demonstrating a better grasp of the exercise as a whole (with the correct line extensions and all). You do still need to work on how you think about a line as you draw it, and its relationship with all the others that are to converge towards the same VP. You do still have a tendency to have one line in a given set veer off on its own, so continue to keep an eye on that.

That said, you are definitely doing much better, and I think you're solidly on the right track at this point. Where previously I was marking the challenge as complete based on the technicality of you having drawn 250 boxes, you can now consider it properly completed. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-01 18:04

Alright, these are definitely looking better. Moving forward, you definitely do need to find better paper. I'm not sure where you live, but printer paper is something that should be pretty universally available, and extremely cheap.

For your organic forms with contour curves, they're looking great, aside from one thing - you're still putting that little ellipse on the wrong end. Here's how it should be. The ellipse goes on the end that faces the viewer.

The others are looking good. Your organic intersections are solid, and your form intersections feel consistent and cohesive, though when you practice these in the future make sure you also attempt to draw the intersections between them. These are going to be difficult at first, and you'll likely make mistakes, but I want students to start giving them a shot regardless, as that's the only way you'll develop your understanding of how the forms relate to each other in space.

So, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. As I said before, make sure you get proper paper before working on lesson 3. The way you're being forced to draw due to this rougher paper is going to cause problems as you move through this course, so I won't be accepting any work that isn't done on blank (not lined), smooth paper, with printer paper being ideal.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-01 17:45

So what you're running into with the arrows feeling three dimensional and flowing energetically, while the leaves have a tendency to feel flat, is actually a pretty common struggle. It comes from the fact that arrows themselves are in many ways, perceived as an abstract representation of energy, of motion, of flow. We see an arrow, but we are well accustomed to what it means. It's more than just a physical object with a start and an end.

On the other hand, when we draw a leaf, we can easily get caught up in the trap of focusing on the fact that this is a real, static object in space. We focus on where it is in the world, the space it occupies, and not about how it's actually moving. The thing about leaves is that they are, similarly to arrows, a representation of all the forces being applied to it. They have negligible mass, and instead are subject to the whims of the wind and air currents, to the tension in their own surface, and the things that touch them.

So the trick is to focus less on where that leaf exists in space, and more on how it is only there for a moment. How it's constantly being pushed and pulled around, and how it is, just like an arrow, representing movement. You do actually achieve this some of the time - specifically in the daisy drawing, where they do feel like they're moving through three dimensions of space.

Also worth mentioning, when you're adding additional detail to the edges of these leaves, remember that as they're moving through 3D space, you're effectively extending their footprint by adding those little spikes. They're subject to how the original surface occupies space, and you need to try and think a little more about how the whole thing is a real 3D object in a 3D world. Don't get caught up in the fact that you're drawing lines on a page - you're carving the tip of your pen through three dimensions, and your piece of paper is just a window, or a portal into that larger infinite world.

In your branch exercises, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• You want to keep the width of the branch consistent. I'm seeing a tendency to pinch the width of the individual segments (between ellipses) - that width needs to stay roughly the same through the entire length of the whole thing. We're trying to keep this as simple of a form as possible, and the more little deviations we end up with, the more the illusion of three dimensionality will be undermined.

• The core of this exercise focuses on constructing a long, complex edge with individual, overlapping segments that flow seamlessly from one to the next. Each segment should be drawn to flow, meaning you want to rely heavily on your shoulder here, and apply the ghosting method to get a smooth, confident stroke. Since our focus is on getting the next stroke to flow seamlessly from the first, we do our best to aim the first towards the next ellipse. This may not work out perfectly, so you then want to take your second stroke and use the remainder of the first as a runway, overlapping it intentionally. This is to eliminate any of those runaway tails that very clearly tell us that this long, complex edge was in fact drawn in parts.

I also noticed that elsewhere, when you apply the sort of branch technique for the stems of flowers, you aren't demonstrating as much concern for the actual ellipses and their degrees. Remember that the degree of an ellipse tells us of the orientation of the circle it represents in 3D space. If you want to have a branch/stem that runs straight up and down in front of the viewer, those ellipses have to have a fairly narrow degree (shifting slightly along its length) otherwise it's not going to read correctly.

Overall your plant constructions aren't actually particularly bad. You're demonstrating a decent grasp of how to combine forms together to create more complex objects, and so on. There are a few things that are making your life more difficult however:

• You draw WAY too small. We benefit considerably from being given a lot of room to think through our spatial problems, though sometimes we'll feel inclined to draw smaller when we're not confident in ourselves. This has the wonderful benefit of shooting ourselves in the foot, because we actively make it harder to deal with spatial, constructional challenges. Draw bigger, take advantage of the whole page. This applies to the branches and leaf exercises as well.

• Your linework is still pretty stiff, so work on engaging that whole shoulder, draw more confidently, and make sure you're not pressing too hard. Your linework has a tendency to be pretty uniform, without much tapering towards the ends, so it ends up feeling kind of lifeless. Natural, flowing linework will usually taper towards the ends because the pen is already moving as it starts to make contact with the page. If we draw too slowly or press too hard, that tapering gets eliminated.

And one last thing about texture - you're not following the concepts covered in lesson 2 as far as texture is concerned. You're outlining all of the little textural forms that exist on your surfaces, as though they're each a little form you need to construct. Because there's so much going on along the surface of an object, we can't actually draw each and every one - so we rely on cast shadows to imply the presence of those forms. So get used to that idea of not drawing the little textural forms themselves, but rather drawing around them, capturing the shadows they cast onto their surroundings to imply their presence.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do the following:

• 1 page of leaves

• 1 page of branches

• 4 more pages of plant drawings.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-01 17:15

Very nice work! Through your lines section, you start out focusing on the confident execution of your marks, achieving smooth, consistent trajectories without hesitation or uncertainty. You then go on to reinforce that with the ghosting method, adding accuracy and control to your linework without undermining the confidence of those strokes. You're doing a great job of balancing the investment of your time towards the planning and preparation phases, and pushing through the execution with full commitment to the practiced stroke.

This carries over nicely into your ellipses, where the same principles apply to achieve even, well rounded shapes without visible deformation or distortion. You're also doing a great job of keeping them snug within the space they've been allotted, avoiding any overlapping/overshooting or ellipses that float a little more loosely in their containers. You're holding true to this in the ellipses in planes as well, where a lot of students struggle to avoid pushing and pulling their ellipses to touch all four edges. You're keeping them elliptical (for the most part - the big ones on the top and bottom of this page are the only ones to get a little out of shape), and also fitting them properly within their containers at the same time.

You're generally doing an okay job of keeping your funnels' ellipses aligned correctly, though I do think there's a slight tendency to tilt just a little bit. They're all following this same discrepancy however, so I think you just need to adjust your sense of alignment. It doesn't appear to be an unawareness of the particular goal - you know what you're aiming for, you just need to tweak it a little bit.

For the most part, you're keeping your rough perspectives' horizontals parallel to the horizon line, and your verticals perpendicular to it, which tells me that you're aware of the intended behaviour of each individual stroke before putting it down. You're applying proper planning and consideration beforehand, and I'm also pleased to see the checking after the fact for your lines as they converge towards the VP.

Now your rotated boxes are coming along okay. Filling the gaps in with black was probably not the best idea - I assume there was some little mistake or issue that you wanted to clean up, but I'm not going to ding you on poor presentation choices. Overall you're keeping those gaps narrow and consistent, so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you're doing a decent job of rotating the boxes relative to one another. I do think this last point could use some improvement, exaggerating the different orientations of neighbouring boxes and avoiding a tendency to have their lines converge towards similarly positioned vanishing points.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a good start. There is room for improvement, specifically with getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but this is completely normal. This exercise is all about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, so it serves as an introduction to this kind of a challenge, rather than a test of skill. We will continue to work on this next.

So, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-07-01 17:02

Great work! You've shown a great deal of progress over this set, both in your line confidence as well as in your spatial reasoning, and the overall consistency of your convergences develops by leaps and bounds. You've clearly demonstrated a lot of patience in applying the line extensions, which is great to see.

I did notice a certain pattern to some of your mistakes towards the end that can certainly be rectified with a little bit of advice. If we look at boxes like 238, 239 and 246, we see a pretty common kind of problem. Looking at the red lines, we can see that they all tend to converge in pairs, rather than all four lines of a given set at once. This happens when, as they draw a given line as part of their box, they focus too much on the lines with which it defines a plane. Instead, you should be focusing on all four lines that run parallel to one another, including those that have not yet been drawn. Specifically we want to pay attention to how they all need to be oriented in order to converge towards roughly the same far off point.

For the most part, I do get the feeling that you're doing this, but having the lines that share a plane converge early with one another is a common sign that the student is slipping in this area.

Additionally, we can think about the angles between the lines at the vanishing point itself - for example, if we look at 244, we'll see that the two middle lines of the set going downwards are diverging slightly. Often we'll see that at the vanishing point, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will end up being quite small. this in combination with the vanishing point being reasonably far from the box itself, will result in those lines running close to parallel with one another at the box. This kind of relationship is important to keep in mind, as it can help us to avoid early convergences. These notes go into this point a little further.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-30 18:05

I'm going to go ahead and do this critique since you've been a supporter for a while, even though currently you're not at the correct patreon tier (lessons 3+ are reserved for those pledged at $10).

Overall you've really done a fantastic job! While there are a few minor issues I want to touch upon, by and large you've demonstrated a good grasp of the concepts covered in the lesson, and are utilizing construction to really sell the illusion that we're looking at actual 3D objects, rather than a collection of lines on the page.

Starting with your arrows, they're flowing quite nicely through 3D space. Don't be afraid to let the zigzagging lengths get so close together that they begin to overlap however - this is how we can really sell the illusion that they're coming out from the depths of the scene, rather than simply gliding across the page. You definitely are doing a good job of letting the spacing between those lengths compress, which is great - getting some more overlaps in there will help sell the illusion even more.

Your leaves are generally done quite well, save a few of the more complex maple-leaf like ones, where you've got multiple arms going on. As shown here, you've got to remember that every technique that you're being taught needs to be considered as a tool in your tool belt, rather than a recipe to be applied only in a narrow set of circumstances.

The leaf construction steps explained in the lesson basically stand as a good representation of what the constructional method is all about. We're taking a complex problem - drawing a detailed leaf that flows through space in a particular way - and breaking it down into multiple individual problems, or questions, and answering them one at a time.

First, we ask ourselves, "How does this leaf flow through space?", and we answer it by drawing a basic flow line that captures how that element moves in space. Then we ask ourselves, "what kind of space does this leaf occupy?", and we answer it by establishing the simple 'footprint' the leaf has in the world, whilst adhering to the initial flow line we'd drawn. Finally, we ask ourselves, what kind of complex edge detail does this leaf have? And then we add that detail, but adhere to the footprint we established in the previous phase.

Now, if our object doesn't conform to the specific nature of a basic single-flow-line leaf, that doesn't mean we throw the whole technique out. For a leaf with multiple arms, we can establish each arm as though it were a separate "simple leaf shape" and then merge them together, effectively breaking the process into a few more steps. At no point do we ever want to be putting down any sort of complex detail/information without scaffolding to help support it, and at no point do we want to be solving more than one problem at a time.

I also noticed that when you add the edge detail, often times you do so in a way that doesn't directly adhere to the underlying, simpler edge from the previous phase of construction. For example, here we can see the lines zigzagging back and forth over the simpler edge, treating it more like a rough suggestion. Instead, we want to acknowledge the form that we put down previously, and build directly on top of it. Your edge detail should consist of individual strokes that rise off the simpler edge, then return to it, rather than a continuous stroke that zigzags over top, as explained here. Zigzagging actually breaks this cardinal rule of markmaking: lines must maintain a consistent trajectory. When you want to make a sharp change to a line's trajectory, it's best to break it into multiple strokes.

Looking at your branches exercises, these are looking great. Aside from your ellipses being a little stiff (make sure you're drawing through them and applying the ghosting method to them so as to achieve a smooth, confident execution), you're really nailing the core focus of this exercise, which is being able to construct longer, more complex edges with several overlapping segments which flow seamlessly from one to the next.

As for your actual plant constructions, aside from the issues I mentioned in regards to edge detail on your leaves, you're doing a great job. There are just a few other minor things I want to point out:

• Make sure you draw each individual form in its entirety - if you're drawing a petal, for example, and it gets overlapped by another, don't stop its edge where it gets overlapped and hidden. You need to be drawing each one in its entirety so you can fully grasp how it sits in space, and how it relates to those around it. Remember that every drawing is an exercise in spatial reasoning - our focus is not on drawing pretty things with nice, tidy end results. They're all exercises, and drawing everything in its entirety is at the core of their purpose.

• Constructing cylindrical flower pots around a minor axis line can help you to align your ellipses consistently, and should be used for any sort of cylindrical object.

• If you have to cut off a stem or some other long form, make sure you actually cap it off with a contour ellipse. Leaving it open-ended, with two edges that run on and then suddenly stop, will undermine the illusion of form as that open end will flatten out. Imagine that you've actually cut the object with a blade, leaving a clear end to that form. Similarly, when two forms (like the stem and soil) connect, make sure you define their intersection with a contour ellipse, for the same reason. It helps reinforce the illusion that they're 3D objects, and helps you hammer in just how the different forms all relate to one another in 3D space.

• For the cactus on this page, your tendency to outline each of the little nodes on its surface stood out to me. Remember that when you're dealing with any sort of texture/detail, we want to transition from utilizing lines (which are made-up boundaries between forms that help us establish the objects that exist in our scene in a more explicit, direct manner), to relying on the shadows those little forms on the surfaces of our objects cast. Cast shadows focus instead more on being implicit - we draw around the little forms, rather than drawing them directly, and relying on such shadows gives us a lot more flexibility. If everything is defined explicitly, we're telling the viewer that everything that exists in this world has been drawn, and anything that hasn't been drawn doesn't exist. It forces us to draw everything exactly as it is, resulting in a lot of visual information, and what tends to become very visually noisy. With cast shadows, we're implying the presence of things right off the bat. We can choose to change how the lights play against our object, either plunging it into darkness (resulting in a lot of those shadows getting very heavy and merging into one another, with large solid shapes of black), or we can overexpose it with direct light, blasting away all the shadows except those in the deepest cracks where light cannot penetrate. Regardless of how many of these shadows are drawn, we aren't changing the number of forms that actually exist in the drawing. The viewer's mind will still fill that information in, as long as there is just enough to imply their presence. The same thing applies to the gravel at the base of the cactus - don't define these numerous little forms with line, focus instead on the shadows they cast on their surroundings. I explain this a little further in these notes, as well as here.

That pretty much covers it! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so you can feel free to move onto lesson 4. Just be sure to keep what I've mentioned here in mind as you move forwards.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-30 17:09

This is a big move in the right direction! You're right that there's still some wobbling/stiffness but it's greatly decreased, so you're showing that you understood the critique and the purpose of the exercise. As such, I'm happy to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the box challenge next.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-30 03:46

Honestly this is looking to be a big improvement, so I'll go ahead and mark the lesson as complete. As for the whole chicken scratch thing, the key is to be more deliberate with what you are doing. Everything is the result of how you choose to approach it - so be sure to apply that additional weight using the ghosting method as you would have done for the original marks. You've done a much better job of that even here, where you've added shadows and weight to your organic intersections, so you're headed in the right direction. Just keep that up and don't slide back onto bad habits.

With the lesson complete, you can feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-30 00:23

Alright, so you're right in that this post is pretty confusing, but there are a few concerns that definitely jump out at me. First and foremost are the different paper situations you've got going on.

Looking at this page, we've got an example of a kind of paper you use throughout many of your exercises. This paper is very clearly quite rough and has a lot of tooth to it, the sort of paper that is usually intended for either charcoal or graphite, and is actually a really bad choice for ink, because it'll tend to absorb a lot of ink out of your pens, and still make them draw as though they're kind of dried out. What you want to use with fineliners is smooth paper - ideally, we recommend basic printer paper, though sketchbooks with smoother paper will still do the job. This is why you're ending up with lines that look as though you're drawing with a crayon.

So, with that out of the way, let's look at your individual exercises:

• Your arrows (I'm specifically looking at this page) are flowing pretty nicely through space, though your linework is definitely a little uncertain. Make sure you're drawing from your shoulder, as some of these do get a little wobbly (though most are fairly smooth and fluid).

• Your organic forms with contour ellipses showing that you may not have read the instructions as carefully as you should have. In the instructions, I ask for very simple sausage forms that are essentially two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width. Yours pretty frequently have ends of different sizes, resulting in a much more complex shape. Keeping the shapes simple is critical both to keep your focus on the core of this exercise, as well as because we will be using organic forms in the future to create more complex objects, and this will rely on the idea of combining many simple forms to create complex results, rather than increasing the complexity of the basic forms.

• Your organic forms with contour curves suffer from the same problem, but the contour curves themselves are fairly well done. One other issue I'm seeing is that the little contour ellipse you're adding is actually going on the wrong end. Your contour curves tell us that the OTHER end is facing the viewer, but by putting the ellipse where you do, you're contradicting what they're telling us. This conflict in the marks you're putting down and what you're telling the viewer breaks the illusion that what you've drawn is a 3D form.

• Your texture analyses are moving in the right direction. I can see that you're CLEARLY trying to play a lot with cast shadows, which is really good. That said, you're still clinging to the lines you draw beforehand, and you're still trying to outline your objects first, before adding the shadows. What I want you to do is try not to use any line at all, and instead work entirely with the shadows that these forms are casting. It'll be tricky at first, like taking training wheels off a bicycle, but you'll find that this really opens you up to work more flexibly. Lines after all don't actually exist - they're a tool we use to establish the boundaries between forms, and are very effective for larger construction, but are not the best tool for the job here.

• The same concept applies to your dissections - focus on the shadows the individual forms cast, and not on actually outlining them in their entirety.

• Your form intersections are all drawn on that rougher paper, so the linework is a little harder to make out. From what I can see, you're moving in the right direction, although you shouldn't be using hatching lines quite as much as you are here. At most, you should really only be applying it to ONE of the front-facing faces of a box to help clarify which side is which. Any more than that is excessive. I'm also noticing that you're applying a lot more foreshortening to your cylinders (in the instructions, I did say that you should avoid any overly stretched forms for just this reason - foreshortening overcomplicates this already difficult exercise, and takes the focus off of what I want you to be paying attention to), and that makes them feel out of place next to the other forms. In general, you should be keeping the foreshortening on all of these forms pretty shallow, as that's going to help all the forms feel more cohesive within the same space. I also noticed that you tended to draw small clusters of forms, rather than filling a page up with a single continuous network of forms, as requested in the instructions.

• Lastly, your organic intersections are moving in the right direction, specifically in how your sausage forms wrap around one another, although focusing on simple sausages as explained above is critical here, and you've only really piled up a few sausages at a time instead of creating one large pile as shown in the exercise demonstration.

By and large, this submission is kind of mixed. You're moving in the right direction in most areas, but there are a lot of issues that I want to resolve before we mark this lesson as complete. So before I do, here's what I want you to submit:

• Two pages of organic forms with contour curves (focus on simple forms that are the same as two equal spheres connected by a tube of consistent width - if you're not sure what that means, this example should help).

• Two pages of form intersections. Draw your forms bigger on the page, keep their foreshortening shallow, don't overuse hatching all over, and keep your forms equilateral - that is, roughly the same size in all three dimensions, rather than having them stretch in any one dimension.

• Two pages of organic intersections. Keep the sausages simple again, and create one big pile, one sausage at a time, for each page.

I don't want to receive a submission as scattered as this one - it was really difficult to piece together.

• Take full photographs of each page, not zoomed in photos. I get that your camera isn't great, but do your best to capture the full page with as much quality as you can.

• Work on smooth paper - I'd prefer basic blank printer paper over a sketchbook.

Looking back on your previous submissions, you're definitely capable of much smoother, cleaner linework, so I'm fairly confident that the paper is the biggest culprit here (along with a few instructions you seem to have missed - don't be afraid to reread the instructions as many time as you need to, as there's a lot there and it's easy to forget). Once that's resolved, we should be able to identify and iron out any other remaining issues before marking this lesson as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-29 23:31

Before I get into the critique, one thing definitely jumps out at me - you seem to have done this in ballpoint pen. This lesson should have been completed using fineliners/felt tip pens (as explained here and pointed out in the different homework assignment sections of this lesson). While students were allowed to use ballpoint in lesson 1 in a pinch (meaning if there were really no other way to get their hands on fineliners in a decent time frame), this does not extend beyond the first lesson.

Of course, I will critique your work, but I do want to make it clear that this requirement is important and must be followed in the future.

Starting with your arrows, they certainly do flow quite nicely through all three dimensions of space, with several pushing quite nicely into the depths of the scene. One thing I do want to encourage you to push even further however is the spacing between the zigzagging lengths of your arrows. Right now they're still pretty consistent, but based on perspective, we would generally see those gaps getting smaller and smaller as we look farther and farther away.

Also worth noting is that your linework here is visibly... for lack of a better word, sketchy. Your marks are still pretty continuous, but there's definitely a visibly sloppiness to it all, and you need to slow yourself down. We're not roughing out drawings here - we're executing marks to perform exercises to a particular specification. Confidence behind our marks is important, but make sure you're applying the ghosting method to every single mark you put down, without exception. This definitely comes out much weaker in your second page (the one with black ink).

Your organic forms with contour ellipses are at least in part, quite well done. They aren't entirely consistent however, in that you're doing certain parts very well in some of these, and less so in others:

• You're drawing through your ellipses in most of these, which is good, but there's one where you stopped doing this for some reason.

• You've got a few where you're demonstrating a good shift in the degree of your ellipses along the length of the form, but for most they're still too consistent.

• Your alignment to that central minor axis line is generally pretty decent, though there are definitely some where you're having trouble.

One thing I am very pleased with is that you're keeping these forms quite simple - they're basic sausage forms that are essentially two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width, exactly as described in the instructions. Good work on that front.

Your organic forms with contour curves however is a different story. Here there are a few problems:

• You completely neglected to include the central minor axis line, giving you nothing to align your curves to.

• Towards the top of the page you're definitely struggling to wrap your contour curves properly around the form. These also happen to be forms where the forms don't quite match the simple sausage form definition I described above - though as you move through the page you definitely improve both on this front, and in getting your curves to wrap around.

Don't skip instructions - including the minor axis line is critical, and there's no reason for it to be left out.

On your dissections and texture analyses, you're demonstrating a good overall use of observational skills, which is fantastic. This is definitely something that will serve you well as you move forwards. I do however have a suggestion on how to change the way you think about texture that may help as you move forwards.

It comes down to line vs. cast shadows. In these textures, you're carefully outlining a lot of the little textural forms that sit on the surface of our objects. Lines are a very useful tool we can employ to define the explicit border between forms, but in truth they don't really exist. They're something we make up for the purposes of communicating with our viewer. They're a tool we can use, but like all tools, there are times when tools are useful, and times when they aren't going to work as well.

In the case of textures, we've got a lot of different little forms, so if we were to outline each and every one of them, we inevitably end up with a LOT of little lines. Not only is this a pain in the ass to draw, it's also not very appealing to look at, because it generates a lot of visual noise that can draw the viewer's attention without you meaning to.

The thing about outlining everything is that it tells the viewer that we're going to be explicitly drawing everything that is present on this object, and that anything that has not been drawn, simply doesn't exist. That may sound like a no-brainer, but it excludes the possibility of implied detail - that is, things that may exist in this object you're drawing but that have not actually been drawn themselves.

So, how do we communicate all this detail instead? Well, since lines don't actually exist, what you're actually seeing that you interpret as lines and marks that you ultimately go on to draw are in fact the shadows those little textural forms cast on their surrounding surfaces. Shadows aren't lines - they're shapes that can be very skinny and narrow, or very large and expansive. Shadows can change based on how the object is lit - they can be plunged into darkness, resulting in a lot of shadows all merging together, or they can be overexposed with direct light, leaving the only shadows present as those in the deepest cracks where no light can reach them. What's most important is that no matter how many shadows you end up drawing, it doesn't change what is actually there on the surface of that object. You may put down only a few little marks, but if those shadows are drawn properly, they can still imply a lot more to the viewer.

The key here is that we're not drawing the little textural forms themselves - we're drawing around them, implying their presence based on the shadows they cast on the things around them, and those shadows are free to merge together into large solid shapes, rather than all of these noisy patterns.

Moving onto your form intersections, I notice that you seem to have ignored the instruction about avoiding forms that are overly stretched in one dimension (like longer cylinders). This instruction is pretty important because this exercise is difficult enough already, but by introducing longer forms, we bring more foreshortening into the mix, causing the student to focus on these complications instead of the core challenges of the exercise. Again - read and follow the instructions as they're written. You'll likely find that you need to reread the instructions immediately before working on the exercises, as there's a lot of information there and it's easy to forget.

I am noticing that your boxes are certainly a little weak - don't forget what we covered in the box challenge. When drawing a line as part of a box, you need to focus on how that line is going to converge with the other members of its set of parallel lines. Additionally, drawing the forms a little bigger on the page can help, as our brains benefit from being given more room to think through spatial problems. Lastly, make sure that you use minor axis lines to help align ellipses wherever you need to - in cylinders, cones, etc. drawing around a minor axis line can be very useful.

While your organic intersections are spatially conveying what I'm looking for here - the relationship between these forms as they exist in 3D space as they sag and slump against each other and find a state of equilibrium - but the issue here is that your linework is, again very rough. You're not really adhering to the principles covered in lesson 1. You're scribbling, your lines aren't continuous, and so on.

So here's what we're going to do. First, I want you to get your hands on some fineliners. The section I linked above from lesson 0 lists a number of brands from cheap to higher quality. We sell a higher quality brand at lower prices ourselves as well, but are currently out of stock and won't be restocked for another week or two, so you'll probably want to pick from one of the others. Remember that we're specifically looking to work with pens of a 0.5mm thickness, or as close to that as you can find.

Then I want you to do:

• 1 page of organic forms with contour curves

• 1 page of form intersections consisting ONLY of boxes - focus on keeping your sets of parallel lines converging consistently!

• 1 page of form intersections consisting of all the different kinds of primitive forms (keep them equilateral, no stretched forms!)

• 1 page of organic intersections

I don't want to see any sketchiness, any sloppiness, or any scribbling. Draw from your shoulder, use the ghosting method for every single mark you put down, and be patient. Overall you're demonstrating a good grasp of the spatial problems - you're just being impatient with the actual mark making aspect of it, and that's just a matter of taking your time and allowing the exercises to take as long as they need to. Rather than rushing, take breaks. And of course, reread the instructions as many times as you need to, as often as you need to.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-29 22:51

Though you're running into one major pitfall that impacts a great deal of your work, you're actually still doing a good job overall.

The major issue starts with your super imposed lines, where I can see that you're definitely focusing a great deal on achieving accurate strokes, rather than focusing all of your efforts on maintaining smooth, confident ones that maintain a consistent trajectory from the moment it touches the page and commits to a direction. Ultimately that's what this exercise is about - learning to set aside the need for everything to be perfectly accurate, and instead trusting in your muscle memory. If we get into the habit of allowing our eyes to steer our pen as we draw, we will always end up with a wobblier, stiffer stroke.

Once you hit the ghosted lines and planes exercises, you do yield a great deal of that need to control your lines, and give way to more confident, smoother strokes. There is a touch of very slight stiffness that I can still see in some cases, but by and large these are moving in the right direction, and don't show any notable wobbling.

Your ellipses on the other hand, do. Here you're choking up and allowing yourself to draw with a much more rigid hand, putting your mark down more slowly. The ghosting method applies here just as it does to straight lines - identify the mark you want to make, prepare by ghosting through the motion as needed, and then finally execute the mark by trusting in your muscle memory and drawing with confidence. The flow and evenness of the shape is a far higher priority than your accuracy, as we want to make sure that your ellipses are, above all else, evenly shaped (and therefore properly elliptical, rather than deformed to fit their containers).

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, these are generally well done, though I'm catching a few horizontals and verticals that are sitting at a slant. Remember that since this exercise is in one point perspective with all the boxes running parallel to the ground plane, this means each line can follow one of only three possible behaviours:

• Horizontals run parallel to the horizon line

• Verticals run perpendicular to the horizon line

• Lines going off into the distance converge towards the vanishing point

The third is the obvious focus of this exercise, but it's easy to forget about the first two, and to jump into drawing those lines without properly considering what we're aiming to accomplish with those strokes. Be sure to use the planning phase of the ghosting method to think about exactly how a the line you're drawing needs to behave in order to accomplish its particular goal.

In your rotated boxes, you've done a great job of keeping your gaps narrow and consistent, so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. You are still definitely struggling with rotating the boxes relative to their neighbours however, as explained in these notes.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well. There certainly is room for improvement - specifically with getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points - but this is totally normal and expected. This exercise is all about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, so it's more of an introduction than a test of your current skill. We will certainly continue working on this.

Now, before I mark this lesson as complete, I want you to do one more page of the tables of ellipses exercise, pushing to draw your ellipses more confidently, applying the ghosting method and keeping them more evenly shaped and eliminating that stiffness and wobbling. Once you submit the extra page, I'll mark it as complete and send you onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-29 22:11

Starting with your arrows, these are generally demonstrating a good awareness of all three dimensions in which they're moving. On your June 2nd attempt, towards the upper left, we see a common mistake of having the spacing between the zigzagging lengths remain fairly consistent, but towards the upper left of the next page, you're doing a much better job, allowing the gaps to compress - applying perspective not only to the width of the ribbon itself but rather to the entirety of space.

I am however concerned about the quality of your linework - it tends to look a little chicken-scratchy, and breaks a cardinal rule of markmaking: lines must flow continuously. Now, I believe this may be something happening after the fact, as you attempt to add additional weight to your marks, but the same rules still apply. In this case, when adding weight, don't try and add in to the entirety of a long, complex line. Instead, add it only to key areas where you need to clarify overlaps. Apply the same ghosting method to achieve a confident execution, and work on getting your stroke to taper in and out, so as to blend better with the underlying lines.

Moving onto the organic forms with contour lines, there are a few key points that you're missing:

• First and foremost, the instructions state that the forms should be simple, essentially like two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width. No pinching through the midsection, no ends of different sizes, etc. Your contour ellipses page is definitely better, though with a few issues, but your contour curves page is all over the place.

• You need to work on the alignment of your contour ellipses

• Your contour ellipses tend to be the same degree throughout each form, rather than having a visible shift in degree as explained here.

Now from what I can see, you are certainly moving in the right direction, but you need to pay more attention to the instructions.

Moving onto the texture analyses and dissections, these are looking really quite nice. You're demonstrating an understanding of the fact that we're dealing with cast shadows rather than individual lines, and aren't afraid to avoid outlining every little thing. You're also demonstrating well developing observational skills - you're not working from memory, but rather are willing to look back and forth between your reference as much as is needed.

The one thing I want to point out is that right now you are using a great deal of hatching, specifically as form-shading. In general, I encourage students to try and set both form shading and hatching aside - the former because students tend to use it as a crutch to help make their drawings feel three dimensional (especially when their construction isn't up to scratch), and the latter because it's very easy to fall into the trap of using generic hatching instead of observing the reference carefully enough to identify which actual textural forms are present.

Now, it's easy to get confused between form shading (which we don't want to do here) and cast shadows (which we are relying on heavily). Cast shadows are the full-dark shapes that are projected by one form onto another surface. When drawing textures, what we're really doing is drawing around the little forms that exist along the surface of our object, rather than actually drawing them directly. We imply their presence by capturing the shadows they cast (and because these shadows are subject to the amount of light available, we can plunge them into deep darkness where many shadows all merge together into areas of solid black, or we can overexpose them with direct light, resulting in only a few small shadows in the cracks where light cannot penetrate - these small shadows are STILL fully dark (in some cases you've tried to imply the shadows themselves being less dark), but they are limited in size.

Moving onto your form intersections, you're making good headway here, though you definitely need to be drawing through your ellipses more consistently, as this is something I expect you to do for each and every ellipse you draw for these lessons. In particular, your spheres end up coming out a little lumpy and uneven, which undermines the illusion that they're solid and three dimensional. And again, your application of line weight has a tendency to stiffen up your lines. Lastly, I can see you utilizing minor axes on occasion - doing this more consistently will help a great deal to align your ellipses correctly.

Lastly, your organic intersections are indeed capturing the spirit of the exercise (capturing forms that rest atop each other such that they slump and sag as they find a state of equilibrium without interpenetrating), but your linework here is quite sketchy at times, and severely undermines the illusion of solidity. You're clearly getting caught up in the "final drawing" you're working towards, rather than treating this as an exercise whose purpose exists in the actual process you apply, rather than the results you achieve.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, here's what I want to see:

• 2 more pages of organic forms with contour ellipses

• 1 more page of organic forms with contour curves

• 1 more page of organic intersections

No sketchy lines, no complex forms - just smooth, continuous strokes and basic sausage forms that match the definition of "two equally sized spheres connected by a tube of consistent width".

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-28 23:50

Overall you've done a pretty good job of completing the challenge. There are a few things that I want to point out however that will be important for you to keep in mind as you continue to move forwards.

First and foremost, you really shouldn't take it upon yourself to modify the instructions given for a task in any way, and if you do feel that it is necessary, you should ask first. It is, after all, difficult to know what it is that you don't know. In this case, deciding not to extend the lines of all of your boxes wasn't a great idea, because it took an important process of analyzing mistakes and identifying the patterns they follow and severely diluted the sample data you had to work with. Instead of 250 individual analyses, you had only 50 or so, with most of these having vanishing points fairly close to the box itself.

The point of that process is to get the student to think about what they're doing as they draw the box, and how it influences the results. While you do show progress in the overall confidence of your linework, and the overall illusion of solidity of your forms throughout the set, I do tend to see many of the same mistakes showing up. This suggests to me that you haven't necessarily been adjusting your approach based on what you'd identified.

Now, that part isn't abnormal - but the chances of that are usually higher when a student hasn't applied the line extensions as intended.

Anyway! So here's what you're doing wrong. When drawing a line as part of a box, we have to decide what exactly we're going to be drawing this line in relation to. We many choose to relate it to the lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it defines one plane of the box. Both of these are incorrect.

Instead, we need to pay attention to the lines that run parallel to the one we're drawing - the ones that share its vanishing point (including those that have not yet been drawn), so we can think about how they all converge consistently together. This is why we rely on the Y method detailed in lesson 1's organic perspective exercise, as well as the video provided with this challenge. Each arm of the Y points to a separate vanishing point.

Furthermore, as we think about how the lines converge towards their shared vanishing point, we can also consider the angles at which they leave that point. Often you'll find that the two middle lines of a given set will have a very small angle between them at the VP. This, in combination with the box being a fair distance away from the vanishing point, will often result in the two lines running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself. This is a very useful relationship to keep in mind in order to avoid early convergences. I explain this further in these notes.

The last point I wanted to mention was that your line quality, though it does improve over the course of the set, is a little sporadic. This tells me that you may not always be investing as much time as you should into each individual stroke, and applying the ghosting method as intended (putting all of that time into the planning and preparation phases, before executing a with a confident, persistent pace and without hesitation, from the shoulder). Always keep that in mind, regardless of whether or not this line appears to be important in the grand scheme of things.

So, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure to continue practicing your freely rotated boxes as part of your warmup routine (along with the lesson 1 exercises), but feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-28 23:36

Whew, okay. So over the course of this set, I'm noticing that you're definitely improving in the overall quality of your ellipses. You're getting pretty good at drawing them evenly and confidently, and while they do stiffen up just a little bit when you put them in planes, I'm seeing a lot of improvement there as well, and the stiffness is pretty minor by the end of it. One thing on that point I want to recommend is that you try and stick to drawing through your ellipses 2 full times - no more than that (and obviously no less). Drawing through it several more times generally comes from a lack of confidence, and you're already getting them in place with those first two passes that the next few are only hurting rather than helping.

One point I do want to mention is that your straight lines - mainly the sides of the cylinders - seem to have a little bit of wavering to them that suggests that you might not be using the ghosting method as conscientiously here as you could be. Your boxes are actually generally well drawn (with a few wobbly lines here and there, but most being quite straight), but the cylinders' lines are a lot more hesitant. Definitely keep on top of that, and don't let yourself get sloppy, even if it means slowing down overall and giving yourself more time.

I actually noticed something pretty interesting when giving your ellipses a close look. When drawing them in the first section (where you were constructing cylinders around an arbitrary minor axis), you actually did a really phenomenal job of aligning them to that central line. You were only off by a little bit, barely enough to really catch with the naked eye (although you still picked up on them when going back over to do your corrections, which is great).

Your cylinders in boxes were a different story, however. The margins by which you were off were a lot larger, and the corrections you put in were also off by quite a bit. You can see the differences on this page, where I've drawn the mathematical minor axes for each ellipse. I picked some from the end of both sections just for comparison's sake and used a tool to find the minor axis of each.

So what's happening is that the fact that you're drawing it in a box is throwing you off, not only when it comes to drawing the ellipses themselves (which is totally normal, as balancing the degree and orientation of an ellipse inside of a plane is very tricky), but also when going back to analyze your mistakes. Of course, ironing out the issues in the latter (by taking more time, and reacquainting yourself with what the minor axis actually is) will help you, in time and with practice, nail down the former.

All in all you've demonstrated a great deal of patience working through this exercise, and while there are plenty of areas for improvement, you're headed in the right direction. Since this doesn't come into play as much until lesson 6, you certainly do have time to continue honing your skills with these. But as far as I'm concerned, this challenge is complete. Congrats on the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-28 23:21

While it doesn't really matter, I would recommend going at it in black. Reason being, I don't want to encourage the sort of non-committal mindset that generally causes one to try and 'attempt' something in a different colour. Give it your best shot, commit to your decision, and if you muck it up, no big deal.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-28 22:54

Starting with your lines section, you're demonstrating a great deal of confidence behind each stroke, without much in the way of hesitation, or attempts to steer your pen with your eyes as you draw. You're trusting in your muscle memory and letting your arm do what it does best without interference.

Now, your use of the ghosting method does need some work however. Generally speaking, the way things work is we have you first get used to drawing with confidence (which you're doing quite well), and then reinforce that execution with two preceding phases - planning and preparation. I'm noticing a slight waver in your ghosted lines that suggests your preparation phase, where you ghost through the motion, may need work, and that you may have been drawing more from the elbow than the shoulder. This does however improve when you get into the planes exercise, although you do need to keep reducing your tendency to overshoot as you go. One thing that may help here is to get used to lifting your pen when it hits the intended end point, rather than trying to slow to a stop.

Your ellipses generally demonstrate that same confidence you started out with, which is great to see. It helps you to achieve smooth, evenly shaped ellipses without any distortion or deformation. Through the ellipses in tables exercise, you're generally doing a good job of keeping them snug within their intended spaces, though keep working on gradually tightening them up (without losing the confidence of the stroke). This will come with practice.

One thing I'd like to point out in regards to your funnels exercise is that there are many cases here where you're not quite aligning correctly to that central minor axis line. Remember that the core of this exercise is to push students to ensure that each ellipse is cut into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrowest dimension. Yours have a tendency to slant a little.

Jumping ahead to the rough perspective boxes, there are signs here that you need to stop and think a little more before moving to draw each mark. With this exercise being a one point perspective problem where all boxes are parallel to the ground plane, each line can only really follow one of three possible behaviours:

• The horizontal lines will run parallel to the horizon line

• The vertical lines will run perpendicular to the horizon line

• The lines that go off into the distance will converge towards the vanishing point

The third is obvious, as it's perceived as the main focus of this exercise, but the first two can often be overlooked, as you have done here in many cases. You've got a lot of lines that slant a little more arbitrarily, so when you set out to draw a line, you need to take the time to consider just exactly what that line is meant to accomplish, and how it needs to be drawn in order to best accomplish that task. Taking a moment to think about how that line needs to be have is critical, so try not to jump into drawing your strokes before you know what exactly you mean to put down.

Though it's definitely a bit rough (and admittedly the hatching is a little sloppy), you have nailed the two main things I look for in the rotated boxes. Firstly, you've kept the gaps between your boxes fairly narrow and consistent, so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you certainly have covered the full 180 degree arc of rotation for both major axes.

I'm sure future attempts will come out much better, but you did nail down the most important points with this one, so good job. Maybe in the future, you'll want to draw these forms to be a little larger, to give yourself more room to think through how they're laid out in 3D space.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a good start. There's definitely room for improvement, specifically in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but this is completely normal. This exercise is all about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. In that sense, it is an introduction, rather than a test of skill. We'll continue to work on this in the future.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-28 22:11

Just the plant constructions, although if you're doing any sort of detail work on the leaves, that should be informed from reference, as your mental visual library won't be developed enough to be able to detail them from your imagination.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-28 02:09

Your observation certainly is on the money - it's important to take your time, pace yourself and to take breaks whenever you need to. Some people think that forcing themselves past their limits is the only way to progress, but I find that it impedes growth and yields sloppier results. Knowing how far you can take yourself, and maybe pushing yourself a little beyond it is best.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-27 20:54

Alright! It seems to be in line with the rest of what I mentioned in regards to your linework being weaker there than in your lines and ellipses section - so be sure to keep on top of that as you move onto the 250 box challenge. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-27 20:53

You're definitely hitting a lot of points of struggle throughout this lesson, but you clearly attempt to address them and learn from them, and by the end while there's still a lot of room for improvement, I do feel that you are grasping the core elements of the lesson.

Starting with your arrows, you do still need to work on the point I mentioned in lesson 2 - that as you look farther away, the zigzagging lengths of the arrow should get closer and closer together. Don't be afraid to have these overlap each other. Right now it's giving the impression that they're moving across the two dimensions of the page, rather than through the depth of the scene. You can think of it as though the piece of paper is the surface of a pool of water, and you want to draw these arrows such that they're coming up from the depths, rather than just coasting along the surface.

Your leaf constructions are coming along reasonably well, although there's a few things I want you to keep in mind:

• Your linework is a little stiff. Try and loosen up, and don't forget to draw from the shoulder. Every mark you put down should be executed with a confident stroke (applying the ghosting method).

• On the maple leaf you attempted towards the middle of the page, you should have been approaching it as explained here and as explained here. Don't apply the methodologies covered in the lessons blindly - think about what exactly they're looking to achieve (so here, we're splitting up a complex object into many separate steps).

• For the triangular leaf to the right of the multi-armed maple leaf, you've broken one of the cardinal rules of mark making: every stroke must maintain a single consistent trajectory, and when you need to change that trajectory, you must start a new line. In other words, don't zigzag. This is actually discussed specifically with leaves in the lesson, though in the other cases you've done a better job.

Touching again on what I mentioned about the 'purpose' of this technique, it's really a first introduction to the core of construction, where we take complex problems with many components and break them up so we can tackle them one at a time. For example, a leaf has a lot going on - we need to ask ourselves, how does this leaf flow through space? What area does it occupy/what kind of footprint does it have in the world? How do its edges ripple, fray, or otherwise deviate?

Once we answer one such question, we have to stick to the answer we give - otherwise we risk contradicting ourselves, and undermining the overall illusion we're trying to create. As discussed back in lesson 2, the act of drawing is the same as the act of telling a lie. We're convincing the viewer that what they're looking at is not a piece of paper, but rather an actual object. When you try to convince someone of something that never happened, the more you contradict yourself, the less convincing you become, and eventually you lose your audience entirely.

So, looking at the zigzagging edge I pointed out, you're not really adhering closely to the answer you gave about the leaf's "footprint" in space. You're treating it more as a loose suggestion, rather than making every little extension/spike/whatever you want to call it come directly off the simple shape we'd produced before. Here you're visibly replacing the line, rather than building onto what was there. When constructing, don't think of it in terms of one phase replacing the previous one. One simply builds atop the other, and you'll often have parts of the early phases remain throughout the entire drawing.

Moving onto your branches, the key issue is that you're struggling to get your segments to overlap one another. The core of this exercise is to get you used to constructing a longer, more complex line using many smaller segments, but ensuring that those segments flow seamlessly together, so they are ultimately indistinguishable. That's the difference between what we're aiming for, and chicken scratch.

Looking at your attempts, you have an initial segment go off the rails, and then for your subsequent line you start drawing where that previous one should have been. There's two key things you need to change:

• First off, work on aiming that first segment towards the next ellipse, so it lines up more closely with the "intended" path you want that next segment to follow, so they coincide and flow together rather than creating these straying tails along the way. Apply the ghosting method, rotate your page as needed, etc.

• Secondly, use that last length of your initial segment as the "runway" for your next segment. Don't draw the second one where the first ought to have been - you've committed, and need to adhere to your goal of maintaining the illusion that this long, complex line is made up of a single continuous stroke rather than many separate ones.

In doing this, we solve the problem from both ends. Of course, drawing from your shoulder is critical - you're still quite stiff much of the time, and need to work on the basic mark making concepts.

Now, while your plant constructions do suffer from the issues raised above, you're actually showing an overall understanding of construction. You're not afraid to start simple and draw through your forms, and you build up your complexity gradually as you go. On drawings like this, I'm noticing a lot of lines that don't really accomplish anything at all - the little segments that seem really arbitrary along the petals. I feel like you might be leaning towards trying to convey some sort of texture/detail, but are not committing yourself to the actual observation and study of your reference to achieve it, and therefore end up falling quite short. Do one thing at a time - nail your construction and your major forms, and don't worry about texture. Once you do want to tackle texture, make sure your construction is already as solid as it's going to get for that drawing, and then focus in on studying your reference closely, focusing on working with cast shadows, not with line, and thinking about the forms that exist along the surface of your object that cast the shadows you interpret as lines.

I'm very pleased to see that you employed the minor axis concept in aligning the ellipses of your mushrooms (despite that not being included in the demonstration), though you can always do the same thing with your flower pots too.

Jumping onto the last page, I do feel that this is your strongest drawing. The leaves flow more fluidly, and the construction feels much simpler, and for that, much more solid. Your use of line weight is also effective. This drawing doesn't really dig much into detail, and instead you focus on the core spatial problems without getting distracted.

I think that's what you need more of - elsewhere you dig too deep into texture while still trying to figure out your construction. Tackle one thing at a time, don't try and do everything at once.

All in all, you have plenty of room to grow, but I think you're demonstrating a developing understanding of the material. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 4, though be sure to read the instructions a little more carefully, and don't be afraid to reread it as many times as you need. There is a lot to absorb, and it's easy to forget the majority of it between sittings.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants (Patreon Critique Thread)"

2019-06-27 20:29

To be honest, this is quite a bit better than I was expecting, based on your work from lesson 2. You've demonstrated quite a bit of overall improvement and growth, and are employing the concepts covered in the lesson quite well.

Starting with the arrows, these are flowing quite nicely, and generally conveying a good sense of three dimensional space - though you've got a few cases where the spacing between those zigzagging lengths of ribbon remains too consistent. You'll want them to get closer and closer together as we look farther away.

Your leaves similarly show a good sense of flow, and a very careful attention to the constructional process. I can see you solving these spatial problems step by step, breaking it into smaller questions and answering them one at a time. Even more importantly, once you've answered a question - for example, how does this form flow through space, you adhere to it closely when you move onto the next question - such as, how do the edges deviate and ripple. Well done.

In your branches, you're don't an excellent job of creating those longer curves from separate overlapping segments - they flow fairly fluidly from one to the next, and you're working well towards making them completely seamless. I am noticing however that your branches generally are laid out on the "surface" of the page (rather than delving into the depths of the scene, so that's something to keep on top of. Try pushing deeper into the 3D world, reminding yourself that the page is not the entirety of the space in which you can construct objects - it is merely a window into a larger, infinite world.

Moving into the actual plant constructions, I am noticing a tendency for your actual leaves and petals to stiffen up somewhat. For example, in your céraiste des champs, your flow lines don't actually flow all that much - they're quite rigid, and might as well be straight.

This isn't an uncommon problem, and comes from the fact that we've gone from drawing fluid, almost abstract forms like arrows that flow unrestrained through space, to drawing actual physical objects. It's easy to get caught up in the fact that there is a point where this petal begins, and where it ends, and because of that we can stiffen up, focusing on the borders and edges of the actual object.

Instead, I want you to think of the leaf in terms of being a moving, flowing thing. Petals and leaves are so thin that they don't really have much mass of their own - they're instead subject to the whims of the forces applied to them, like the wind and the air currents. So when drawing that central flow line, think about how it pushes through space - the forces themselves don't have a beginning or an ending, they simply move and push ever onwards.

Additionally, adding a little arrow head to the end of your flow line can help reinforce this idea.

While you do struggle somewhat with those leaves, overall you're demonstrating a really good use of construction. You're not afraid to draw through your forms, and you're always building things up from simple to complex, exactly as the constructional method demands.

The last thing I want to mention is in regards to texture/detail. There are two main things I'm noticing:

• I can see you relying a fair bit on line. If you remember from lesson 2, line is a very useful tool we can apply to establish the boundaries between forms, but they end up being far too explicit to draw something as detailed as texture, because it doesn't leave very much room for implying detail. Instead, I want you to think more in terms of the shadows that are cast by the forms that make up your textures. Sometimes these shadows will be as slim as lines, but the difference is that they are not the boundaries between forms - they are shapes cast and projected onto each other. So in this drawing, pushing the actual shadows being cast by all the little buds in the center would have given a much richer, much more confident result.

• Early on, in that céraiste des champs, you had a habit of putting a few arbitrary lines down along the petals. These marks give the impression that they are not necessarily specific details that you saw in the reference image - but rather that you saw something like those ridges, told yourself that there were "ridges", and then drew a symbolic representation of them (simple lines). When drawing any kind of texture, you need to be basing it off of exactly what you are seeing. Try not to think in terms of some feature you can assign a name to, as that is how we end up oversimplifying things. Instead think about the forms that cast the shadows we interpret as line, and then try and figure out what kind of shadow that form would cast in your drawing.

• Lastly, you have a tendency of using a lot of hatching - usually for shading. As explained back in lesson 2, we don't really handle shading/rendering in this course, and instead we purposely stay away from it. A strong construction will stand on its own without any shading, but students will often, when allowed, try to use shading to help reinforce a weaker construction. Leaving it out for now will help you rely more firmly on construction, and avoid using any crutches along the way. Every mark we put down is some sort of a tool, so shading for shading's sake ends up being unnecessary. The only place we really use hatching lines is where we've drawn through our forms (usually boxes) and have to provide a visual cue as to which face is pointing towards the viewer, and which is the 'rear' side. Of course, it's worth mentioning that form shading is different from cast shadows. Long story short, no shading/hatching in your constructional drawings.

So! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 4.