Uncomfortable in the post "Is it ok to listen to music while doing your free-drawing part of the 50% rule?"
2023-01-19 15:34
Yes, that's fine. You can even watch TV, youtube videos, movies, etc. if you like - as long as you don't find yourself spending most of your time listening/watching rather than drawing. The goal here is not necessarily to be putting your 100% into the drawing, but rather to just relax and let yourself draw without worry.
Uncomfortable in the post "should i just disregard proportions for gesture drawing as a beginner?"
2023-01-18 18:35
While AutoModerator explained why this subreddit isn't the place for this question, I did want to weigh in myself-
I find that it really helps to keep in mind that exercises usually have targeted areas they're meant to address. Not in terms of general topics (like that gesture drawing is an exercise that comes up in figure), but the specific goal of the exercise itself. For gesture drawing, it may vary from instructor to instructor but generally the targeted skill involved is capturing motion and fluidity.
Because the exercise is not focused on proportion itself, I believe it is perfectly okay to disregard proportion, or at least not to stress as much over it as you focus on addressing the core focus of the exercise.
Instead, you'd use other exercises to practice the other aspects of figure drawing.
Uncomfortable in the post "Rotating paper becomes a problem when drawing from reference"
2023-01-09 16:50
This suggests to me that you may still be focusing overmuch on drawing directly from observation, rather than observing your reference to identify the specific forms that are present, and one by one using that understanding to draw the shadows those forms would cast. I go into this in more detail here in these reminders.
Uncomfortable in the post "Looking for advice with drawing lines towards a vanishing point."
2023-01-06 16:58
I suppose the main thing to keep in mind is that the course is not designed in such a way that upon completing an exercise, the student has "mastered" (even remotely) that exercise. Some of them - like the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes - are as stated in the material, just really fuckin' hard. They ask things of you that you're not ready and able to provide, in order to get you familiar with those difficulties.
Then, armed with that context and introduction to the idea of what we're trying to address, we then send you into the box challenge where page after page you're checking your convergences with the line extensions, and then approaching the next page with adjustments to your approach, per what that analysis showed.
It's a slow process, but definitely not one that expects you to succeed immediately with each exercise.
Uncomfortable in the post "Looking for advice with drawing lines towards a vanishing point."
2023-01-06 16:44
This is something that the first lesson of Drawabox lays the foundation for (specifically the boxes section), but then which is further built upon in the 250 box challenge. We start out taking students from the basic principles of vanishing points, to having a point to aim for but not plot all the way back to, to having no point to aim for, and just a series of lines whose convergences we must estimate and gradually improve upon through iteration.
Uncomfortable in the post "Would critiquers mind if I did my exercises on an ipad? (i.e. digitally)?"
2023-01-03 23:15
Just to be clear, ink is required for the paid official critique track. While highly recommend in general, it is not strictly required when posting for free community feedback, though since that relies on having others choose to give you feedback and has no guarantee of receiving it, going against such a major recommendation may hurt one's chances of getting critiqued by their fellow community members.
So "you won't be able to receive critique" is not entirely accurate. It's still possible, just far less likely.
Uncomfortable in the post "25 Texture Challenge Question"
2023-01-03 00:22
Not really, as the work on each individual row would be spread out enough to make that kind of unfeasible. So feel free to tackle each row in its entirety.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 7: The Cursed Circus"
2023-01-02 04:36
I'm glad to hear that you've had a good time with the prompts!
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 7: The Cursed Circus"
2023-01-01 13:46
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 6: Kaiju Defence Force, Engineer Corps"
2022-12-31 14:28
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 5: Secret Garden"
2022-12-30 14:20
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "250 box challenge half way through. Need outside perspective "
2022-12-29 22:27
Note that as explained by automod, and as mentioned in Lesson 0, the subreddit is only open to complete homework submissions, not partial work. If you need feedback on partial work, look to our discord chat server instead.
Uncomfortable in the post "What happened to these lessons ?"
2022-12-29 22:25
Those were removed many, many years ago. I expanded into figure drawing because it seemed like the logical next step after finishing the core lesson material, as generally creating new content and tackling new things makes more sense in terms of generating revenue as a free resource.
I later realized this was a mistake, and instead decides to focus on revising, improving, and solidifying the core material based on what I'd learned from explaining it over and over across thousands of rounds of critiques I was offering to students.
The short of it is that Drawabox's goal is to do one thing really well, and not to be a one stop shop for everything.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 4: The Goblin Snow Games"
2022-12-29 11:28
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 3: Hamelin at War"
2022-12-28 20:31
I think it's important to both give students something with more to sink their teeth into, but also to give them something with many avenues to explore so they can ultimately use it as a starting point to come up with their own ideas. People just need some help to get started.
Uncomfortable in the post "Struggle using my visual library"
2022-12-28 17:18
So I've got good news, bad news, bad news again, and finally some good news to round it off.
First, the initial good news: this is not a problem that is unique to you, and you are not in any way uniquely flawed (at least not in a manner that is holding you back from drawing from your imagination). That is to say, when you worry that "this isn't for me", that isn't the case.
Second, the bad news: The way in which you've practiced thus far has been tailored specifically towards reproducing things (I'm guessing photos) from observation. While a lot of those skills are universal - you've no doubt developed strong observational skills, which are extremely important no matter what it is you're drawing - one major skill that plays an incredibly important role in drawing from one's imagination is spatial reasoning. Specifically, the ability to take a complex object, whether from life or from a reference photo, break it down into simpler forms, and then build up those simple forms on the page with a focus on how they all relate to one another in 3D space. This allows us to take our first step towards drawing from our imagination - making adjustments to what our reference actually gives us, as we translate it into our own drawing. Whether it's a matter of rotating a given form a little bit to expose one side more than the other, or to change how a hand is gripping an object, etc.
In effect, there's this whole area of study that you appear not to have had a chance to explore yet. As it stands, what you've practiced thus far is as you described it - to be a human printer. But you can certainly be more than that.
Third, another bit of bad news, although this is somewhat milder. What you described here:
I see everything almost perfectly instructed to me in my head, but when it comes to drawing it out, I genuinely have the capabilities of a beginner artist.
suggests to me that you have extremely strong visualization skills. At least, going forward that's the assumption I'm going to make, so I apologize if that's incorrect. There's a broad spectrum when it comes to the ability to visualize, spanning from hyperphantasia (the ability to visualize things very strongly to the point of giving way to maladaptive daydreaming - this is something from which my girlfriend suffers, and it can be quite distracting) to aphantasia (the inability to visualize anything, effectively having no "mind's eye" - this is closer to the end of the spectrum on which I fall). Weirdly enough, my case is particularly interesting, as when I was a child I had extremely strong visualization skills, but when I was a preteen, it all faded away. It could be related to a blow to the head I received around that time, or it could just be related to puberty, who knows.
It's actually super common for people with aphantasia to, upon learning that it's a thing (given that most of us assume everyone visualizes and experiences their imagination in the same way, having only a single point of reference in our own experience), immediately get dejected and assume that drawing isn't for us. While that is certainly not the case, I strongly believe that it is those more like you - those with strong visualization skills - who end up suffering the most from these kinds of inaccurately preconceived notions. Where someone with aphantasia will assume "oh I guess art isn't for me, I can't see things in my head," a person like you is more likely to think, "I see all these amazing things in my head, why is it that when I go to draw them, everything falls apart?" This leads to immense frustration, purely due to those unfounded expectations, and in your case can be made that much harder to bear given that you've learned to see what is actually there, through your countless reference studies and reproductions.
Here's the thing - you know how when you first started practicing, you'd glance at a reference image once in a while, but mostly worked from memory resulting in a drawing that didn't match your reference all that much? That's what you're doing right now, when trying to draw from the information in your head. You're drawing from memory. You're drawing from information that is sufficient for identifying a thing, but lacks any of the specifics required to actually capture it in a way that can be experienced as intended by another.
In effect, that image in your mind is enough to trick your brain into feeling that it's experiencing all this crazy stuff, but it's not actually enough to replace a solid reference image. But that's not to say one can't draw purely from their imagination, it just relies on exactly what you've been talking about: a visual library.
Here's the thing - what you describe as a visual library may not be entirely accurate. You may have studied many pieces of reference, and may have a ton of mileage and experience with that, but if your focus has been on reproducing them to a photo-real level, then it's unlikely that you have as much experience in building a hierarchy of what is and isn't core to a given object. That comes back to the importance of breaking those references down into simple forms, and building them back up so we can distil the structure into what is most important, and then build on top of it working from simple to complex.
That in itself helps us reduce the sheer volume of information that needs to be recalled - effectively, it retrains our understanding of how to remember things by allowing us to focus on what's important. This also allows us to commit the spatial information relating to those simple forms and structures to our memory, giving us not just an understanding of how a given object exists from one point of view, but rather something that can be rotated and moved around.
While you appear to be towards the opposite end of the spectrum on this, this video I made for the Proko Youtube channel may still shed some light on how this works.
Now, for the last bit of good news. While AutoModerator explained why this question isn't really suited for this community due to the subreddit's very specific, narrow focus on the free lessons available on drawabox.com, you will find that the concepts I teach there are specifically designed to tackle this particular problem. At its core, the course (which I won't lie, is very rigorous, and will have you doing things that you may feel you've moved beyond, and will take many months to complete) has one central focus: to develop students' spatial reasoning skills, specifically because this is the core fundamental that I feel most drawing resources available on the internet (at least the cheap/free ones) tend to depend upon, without getting into it themselves. Why? Because it's boring and repetitive to learn, and those resources make most of their money by being interesting and fun.
In effect, I'm telling you to go back to your core basics, and I know how frustrating that must be. I ended up doing something similar myself - I started drawing at around the age of 12, and it wasn't until I was 22 (after a decade of drawing whatever I wanted with no structure, no studies, no purpose-driven learning) that I looked back on my progress and realized why it had been so slow. I had improved (and by virtue of constantly drawing from my imagination, I took a different path from you), but I was still deeply unsatisfied with my work. It was around that time that I learned about aphantasia, and like most with that condition, I decided I wasn't suited to be an artist.
But I still wanted to draw, and I wanted to give it a shot, so I took my savings, quit my job, and spent six months studying the bare basic fundamentals, going back to the beginning, with instructors I felt I could trust. It cost me an arm and a leg, but it helped immensely. While what I'd learned wasn't particularly framed as "spatial reasoning" and didn't seek to target it specifically, that was essentially what I learned there, and what catapulted my work forward by leaps and bounds. It wasn't really until I started trying to share what I'd learned with others, explaining the concepts as best I understood them over and over, and reflecting upon what it was that I was doing more instinctually, but not consciously, that I started developing a strong understanding of what this core missing element - this spatial reasoning - really was. If you're curious about my progress over the years, and how 10 years of practicing inefficiently panned out, compared to a much shorter period of more directed, purpose-driven training, you can check out this large album I've got here documenting my progress over the years.
That said, I will say one last thing - looking back on all of it now, I realize that it was not a matter of "during that first decade I wasted my time and I should have worked harder/smarter". I don't believe that to be the case. I don't think it was until I was 22 that I was ready to tackle this different kind of path, and I think all that I learned prior to that helped speed up my overall progress in the later years by a considerable degree. In effect, over that first decade I'd built up fundamentals with a lot of holes in them - and so going back to the basics with a blank slate wasn't really that at all. It was filling in gaps and holes, and further strengthening what was already there. It's just that you don't know what you're missing until you've filled in that hole, so doing it with a blank slate is important. It sounds to me like you're ready for that.
Well, I've rambled enough. I hope that helps!
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 3: Hamelin at War"
2022-12-28 14:18
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "Should overhand grip be practiced?"
2022-12-27 18:52
As mentioned by AutoModerator, this subreddit is limited to questions relating specifically to the structured lessons on drawabox.com.
That said, the grip one uses depends heavily on the tools they're using. You'll often see overhand when dealing with pencils and charcoal (especially in the context of figure drawing), as well as in a lot of approaches to painting (especially when dealing with a more upright canvas).
There are a lot of situations where it's not necessary, but getting familiar with it can have a lot of benefits that aren't immediately obvious - it helps us learn to use our whole arm while drawing, and it also ensures that we don't just default to using a single type of grip regardless of what tool we use.
I'd recommend students expose themselves to working with an overhand grip even if they plan on using tools that don't require it - such as digital media. I myself work almost exclusively digitally, but the exposure I've had while learning to working overhand with pencils/charcoal, figure drawing on paper, etc. has helped a great deal in expanding my horizons, which in turn funnels back into helping me push the boundaries of what I'm willing to do when working digitally.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 2: The Great Space Bakeoff"
2022-12-27 11:35
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 1: Hidden Amongst Us"
2022-12-26 23:50
Lol in all fairness that makes a lot of sense.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 1: Hidden Amongst Us"
2022-12-26 23:34
It's a drawing prompt. That is, a piece of prose written with the purpose of giving people something to draw. Not specifically about drawing robots, but rather expressing personality in everyday machines.
Uncomfortable in the post "whats wrong with these rocks? im not good at landscapes and cant seem to get them right. looking for any advice (acrylic). thanks"
2022-12-26 19:48
You'll find a variety of suggestions in AutoMod's comment. In addition to that, you might look at /r/painting as well.
Uncomfortable in the post "Winter Promptathon Day 1: Hidden Amongst Us"
2022-12-26 14:25
For those unsure of what a Promptathon is, it's an event we try to hold at the turning of each season, where we drop a new drawing prompt each day for 7 days. Students are encouraged to submit something for each day, and are awarded with unique avatars, achievements, and double critique credits on the drawabox website.
Uncomfortable in the post "Can't I just start with figure drawing?"
2022-12-26 14:15
While Drawabox is designed to help students develop the underlying skills that make learning the more advanced concepts easier, I actually do say upfront and center (specifically in this video from Lesson 0) that you should feel free to jump into whatever other topics interest you, as long as you accept that it's going to be more difficult as your spatial reasoning skills catch up. The focus simply being on not having crazy expectations and disappointing yourself by not meeting them.
Uncomfortable in the post "Lines homework"
2022-12-23 19:02
As AutoModerator noted, remember that submissions on the subreddit are limited only to those that include all the homework assigned for a given lesson. So for Lesson 1, you'd include the lines, ellipses, and boxes sections.
Uncomfortable in the post "A thank to the team"
2022-12-19 18:32
Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad that feature has helped you out a great deal. It's definitely one I felt was important, and so shifting to what was previously a paid service with a third party partner, to taking on those costs ourselves and implementing our own solution, was well worth it.
Uncomfortable in the post "what is the best way to improve my concepts?"
2022-12-14 18:57
While AutoModerator has explained why this question is a better fit for some of the other communities they mentioned, I often find that stagnation can come from not having a complete understanding of what it is one is attempting to pursue. This can cause them to have unclear, more generalized goals, which can leave us unsure of what to tackle next.
So, a question. You mention that you do illustration and concept art - can you explain what each entails in your estimation, and what distinguishes them from each other?
Uncomfortable in the post "Part Three: The Human Figure"
2022-12-14 18:53
Those are from a long time ago, when I wasn't sure how I wanted to develop this course, and what its core focus was. At the time, I was merely regurgitating what I had learned, and since then, I've restructured the course to play a very specific role - not to be a one stop shop, but rather to introduce students to the core principles that would help them make the use of the other resources out there. That is, mainly developing their understanding of 3D space, something that is generally overlooked.
You'll find recommendations for figure drawing below this section from Lesson 0. You can also check out Proko on YouTube, and Brent Eviston on skillshare.
Uncomfortable in the post "portraits"
2022-12-12 19:46
The first page of Lesson 0 goes into exactly what this course teaches and how it fits into one's general training. The two videos there (What is Drawabox and What are the Fundamentals) are particularly pertinent to your question, so be sure to go through them.
Uncomfortable in the post "Pain when drawing from shoulder."
2022-12-09 22:29
While soreness - like what one would experience as the result of reasonable exercise - is entirely normal, what you're describing sounds more worrying. I would not advise hovering your hand, if you're doing so (as explained here), but in general if you're experiencing pain beyond what I explained above, I would consult a medical professional. While the folks here are certainly well meaning, they are not qualified to provide advice of this nature, and there is definitely risk of whatever they suggest making it worse.
Uncomfortable in the post "Detail work from the shoulder?"
2022-12-08 20:25
Give this section another read, it should help answer your question.
Uncomfortable in the post "NEW TO /r/ARTFUNDAMENTALS? Don't know what Drawabox is? Read this first."
2022-12-06 20:11
Thanks for the kind words! I wish you the best in taking another swing at this delightful pursuit.
Uncomfortable in the post "Day 1/16"
2022-12-01 23:34
I saw that you'd posted here yesterday - you got the usual AutoModerator reply explaining what this server is for, and recommending alternative communities that might be a better fit if your submission doesn't fit our guidelines.
Given that you posted again today, I can only assume that you didn't read the message - so please ensure that you do, as right now your submissions are just being removed.
Uncomfortable in the post "Question on Lesson 1 Ruler Use"
2022-12-01 21:00
Ultimately it comes down to this - humans have only so much energy and focus they can put to use on a given task. Learning requires use of that resource. When we try to pack in more things to worry about at the same time, there's no extra resources to put towards them. Rather, what we do have gets divided up and spread out.
Thus, every task needs to be considered in terms of just what are we allocating those resources towards, and whether or not that expenditure of resources is towards a clear purpose. Freehanding your lines for every exercise isn't inherently valuable - when we get to Lessons 6 and 7, I encourage students to use rulers there because they've already been armed with a ton of different exercises where they can practice their freehanded linework. Those lessons however involve a lot of complex spatial reasoning and concepts that we need to pay careful attention to, all of which would be severely undermined by further complicating the task.
Similarly, with the plotted perspective exercise, its purpose is very narrow - to ensure that students understand the mechanics of vanishing points, something we end up using a great deal throughout the rest of the course. Thus, it's very important that the student be able to focus on that alone in the exercise, and not on ensuring that their lines are straight.
Keep in mind above all else that Drawabox is a course with its own goals for its students. While you can certainly use the information provided to whatever ends you wish, to follow the course is to adopt its goals (even if you don't fully understand them). So, your own individual priorities (like the focus on learning to draw straight lines well) don't factor in. Sure, we do happen to help students with that a great deal, but it's not because that's what they're interested in - it's because freehanding smooth, confident linework helps us work towards the course's core focus of developing strong spatial reasoning skills, and one's understanding of 3D space.
Uncomfortable in the post "Discord Accountability Group"
2022-11-28 17:05
Admittedly I'm hesitant to allow posts like this through for the simple reason that as people see them gaining traction, more people will post them - whether for entirely valid reasons like yours (although I worry about fracturing students into small clusters), or to simply gain traction for a budding discord server. As such, I've generally denied the similar posts that have come in since the one I linked you to.
For this reason, I'd advise you to DM the user who posted that last post and ask them for a fresh invite.
Uncomfortable in the post "Discord Accountability Group"
2022-11-27 23:20
Aside from the official Drawabox discord, you'll find that a couple months ago a smaller accountability discord was started by another user. You'll find the link to it here in this post.
Uncomfortable in the post "Poor line quality due to muscle weakness"
2022-11-27 19:27
To be completely honest, I think this question - though I have approved it - is best asked to your doctor. The folks in this community simply won't have the understanding of how things impact the human body, or of your specific circumstances, to be able to offer reliable advice. Some of the answers people offer may help, but be careful - you never know what advice you receive from well meaning people that can be harmful.
Uncomfortable in the post "What kind of material/medium is being used here?"
2022-11-26 22:10
While this isn't the subreddit for this kind of question (as AutoMod explained), based on the fact that it's from what appears to be an interior design studio of some sort, and what we can see, I would guess that it's gouache on some kind of recycled paper (not entirely sure of the latter, but the paper's definitely got some kind of sporadic fibres that suggests it being recycled to me).
I was more certain of it being gouache on the second page, whereas the first felt more like markers, but it can definitely be gouache as well.
Uncomfortable in the post "Question about drawing ghosted/superimposed lines."
2022-11-26 22:04
This section from the ghosted lines page addresses your concern, explaining why we rotate our pages instead of worrying about being able to create straight lines in any direction within this course.
Uncomfortable in the post "I want to create art but dont know where to start."
2022-11-23 22:50
While AutoMod explained that this subreddit has a specific focus, and listed a few other communities where you can ask about this. That said, in regards to the point about the images you can see in your mind, which you can't reproduce on the page, I do have something extra to add for that.
I have a condition known as aphantasia - which is essentially the opposite. I can't see anything in my "mind's eye". The obvious conclusion to draw is that I'm not suited to be an artist, but the truth of the matter is that what you can see in your mind's eye is not as relevant as most are inclined to believe.
Rather, what you see in your mind's eye is still drawing on the same information any other person would have - that is, what you're seeing is based on only enough information to identify those things, but actually drawing and reproducing them on a page requires vastly more detail. It's why a person working from reference may still struggle a great deal if they're working with an extremely low resolution image. It's enough to identify what we're looking at, but we get virtually nothing specific enough to really understand it in specific terms.
Where I may appear to be at a disadvantage, in my experience it is actually those in your camp who have the greater disadvantage - at least towards the beginning. Where I am faced with no additional expectations of what I should or should not be able to draw (given that my mind's eye is blank), I can see the fact that there's no reason I should be able to draw anything without prior training/practice/learning clearly, whereas in your case it would be obscured.
So, to put it simply - you're not going to get it for free. Learning to draw takes time, requires the development of skills you currently do not have, but that one day you can.
I've got a video that I created for the Proko YouTube channel on aphantasia here. While it speaks specifically about something you don't have, in discussing it I believe the video provides value to those on either end of that spectrum, and helps to frame it in a more realistic fashion without false expectation.
Uncomfortable in the post "Are these the same pens sold by Drawabox"
2022-11-23 13:44
Yes, they do appear to be.
Uncomfortable in the post "Can I practice all of lesson 1 if I don't successfully complete 1.1?"
2022-11-11 01:32
Correct.
Uncomfortable in the post "Can I practice all of lesson 1 if I don't successfully complete 1.1?"
2022-11-10 18:38
The purpose of the assigned quantity is not for you to necessarily see improvement over that amount. It's to produce a body of work that, once you're done the lesson, someone else can critique in order to identify whether you understand the purpose/goal of each exercise, and whether you're moving in the right direction.
As laid out in Lesson 0 (which if you have not gone through, I strongly recommend you do), you should not be grinding away at one exercise until you feel satisfied - relying on our own arbitrary standards tends to lead to a lot of wasted time and effort.
Uncomfortable in the post "Any able to assist"
2022-11-10 18:07
You've posted here before, and your post was removed. The AutoModerator reply above explains why, but since you posted again I'm starting to think you may not have read it.
This subreddit is reserved only for those working through the lessons on drawabox.com, which is a free, exercise-based course that focuses on the core fundamentals of drawing. You are of course welcome to participate, but all posts here must be related to the course, either in the form of specific questions or homework submissions.
Uncomfortable in the post "Do they teach perspective differently in Asia mainly Korea?"
2022-11-08 17:56
While I'm sure there are, having gone through Dynamic Sketching myself, I found it to do a great job so I never ended up looking for specific alternatives myself. As to your other questions, let's continue this on your private message.
Uncomfortable in the post "How long does getting community critique on the website usually take?"
2022-11-08 17:55
Happy to help!
Uncomfortable in the post "How do I know when I should move on to the next exercise?"
2022-11-08 17:16
Your question suggests that you may have missed, or perhaps forgotten, what is explained in Lesson 0 - so I strongly urge you to go back through Lesson 0 in its entirety, but especially this video which stresses the fact that you should not be grinding your exercises until you're satisfied. You complete the amount of work that is assigned, get feedback on it, and then once the person/people giving you feedback feel you're demonstrating a good understanding of how to approach the material, then it becomes part of your warmups.
Uncomfortable in the post "How long does getting community critique on the website usually take?"
2022-11-08 17:09
As there's no real guarantee that you'd ever receive feedback on your community feedback submission (since it relies entirely on other students finding your submission and investing time into giving you feedback), there is an informal critique-exchange program being run by our students on the discord server. I mention this in one of the Lesson 0 videos.
If you jump onto our discord server you can read about how it works in the #critique-exchange pinned messages. Those submitting their Lesson 1 work can generally get added to a list to receive feedback from those who are trying to "earn" feedback for their later lessons/challenges.
Uncomfortable in the post "Do they teach perspective differently in Asia mainly Korea?"
2022-11-08 16:12
As AutoModerator pointed out, this question isn't really suited to this subreddit. That said, Drawabox (the course this subreddit focuses on) specifically seeks to train students to approach perspective and 3D space in the intuitive manner you ascribed to Korea/Asia.
I believe that perspective instruction in general - or rather, its purpose - is very often misrepresented or misunderstood even by the people teaching it in schools. While perspective as a whole does teach us techniques we can use to draw 3D space, environment, objects, etc. to very specific, precise specifications, that is not really all that useful in the vast majority of applications, especially when you're talking about illustration and concept art. Hyper-accuracy isn't really all that important - though there are certainly places where employing the specific techniques and tools to solve specific, tricky perspective problems is quite handy.
The bulk of it however is not about teaching you specific tools and techniques, but rather having students perform exercises that drive them to think in three dimensions, and to better understand the relationships between how the marks are drawn on the page, and what they're meant to represent in 3D. The goal always comes back to developing that sense of intuition and underlying 3D spatial knowledge.
So, rather than viewing it as being taught differently in different cultures and regions, consider that they apply the same approach, but that they ultimately develop a better understanding of how it's meant to be applied in practice - something many instructors and schools, regardless of where it is you study, don't always grasp themselves.
For the sake of comparison, you may want to take a look at the late Norm Schureman, who is quite well known for formalizing the "Dynamic Sketching" approach at Art Center College of Design in Southern California, which itself has spread further through his student, Peter Han, who I had the brief pleasure of learning from myself. Peter Han was an associate of Kim Jung Gi, operating more recently under their Super Ani banner, but it was Norm who was his biggest influence, and he was incubated in Southern California.
Uncomfortable in the post "How strict is the "no reference" rule when free drawing?"
2023-01-19 19:34
There's two distinctions laid out in regards to the 50% rule, when it comes to the use of reference.
One distinction, which you referred to in your question, is regarding using reference to the point of making something a study (and thus literally copying it directly as the entirety of your drawing). That should be avoided for the purposes of the 50% rule.
The other distinction however is more straightforward in some ways, but extremely difficult to wrap one's head around in others: It's the distinction between a student thinking that they "can't draw from imagination at all without reference" and thinking that they can draw without it, but simply not well. As in, whatever they draw without reference looks like absolute garbage, may not be identifiable as what they intended, etc. That does not constitute "not being able to draw" in those circumstances - just that they can't draw well. There's no harm, and no shame, in not drawing well. It's where we all start.
For the purposes of the 50% rule, I push students not to use reference at all if they feel they are unable to draw at all without it. This is to force them to come to terms with the incorrectness of that belief, and the distinction between being able to draw, and being able to draw well.
Once a student is no longer as inclined to think in that way, and to regard really bad drawings as not being the result of the act of drawing, then they can apply reference based on the first distinction. But until then, it is important for the student to push themselves to draw however they can without the reference, so as to correct that mindset.