Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-08-06 01:18

I definitely agree! I think youve shown some considerable improvement over the course of the challenge, and have really put the techniques and principles covered in the notes to good use. Im very pleased to see that while early on you were testing the waters with the whole line extension method (and focusing perhaps too much on only one set of lines rather than all three) you eventually did move on to looking at all three sets simultaneously and with equal scrutiny. It gets really easy otherwise to focus too much in one area and end up throwing the others out of whack.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

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

2018-08-05 02:33

Definitely better! Youre moving forward, so Ill go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. A couple things to keep an eye on:

• Your ellipses are still a little stiff. Remember that the first and main focus is to keep them smooth and even, which means executing them with a confident, persistent pace.

• Youve got a lot of great intersections in those boxes - you didnt always get them right, but you did more often than not. Thats pretty normal at this point, but keep trying to think about how the forms youre drawing relate to one another in 3D space.

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

2018-08-03 23:25

Definitely better, though in the future I do not want you to draw your construction in a different colour and then attempt to do a "clean-up" pass. I actually talk about this back in the video for form intersections in lesson 2 at around 16 minutes in. We're not ever replacing the lines from our construction - we are emphasizing how certain forms overlap, but that is all. There should be no mental separation between the construction lines and your final result - they are one and the same, and this way of looking at them forces you to show a lot more respect to your underlying construction, and to plan and prepare each mark with consideration for what it contributes to the overall exercise.

At the end of the day, as I mentioned in my previous critique, each drawing is just an exercise to better develop your understanding of space and how these forms relate to one another to create more complex objects. What you've accomplished in with your black lines ends up being largely irrelevant (being that it's more focused on creating a pretty final result), and also causes you to treat the construction in a way that is going to benefit you less in the long run.

The end goal is to have such a deeply ingrained grasp of construction, such a thorough understanding of form and space that you'll see each form you draw - partial or complete - as being something that exists beyond just the lines you've drawn on the page. This will allow you to eventually bypass most of your construction because that understanding will be internalized - but that is a long ways away.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the next lesson, but be sure to keep in mind what I've mentioned here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-08-02 23:02

Nice work completing the challenge! Your line quality and general construction is looking solid, and I see a number of places where you've got some subtle line weights going that helps contribute to the general solidity of your forms. I'm also very pleased to see you applying the line extension method so thoroughly, it definitely pays off.

One recommendation that I do have is that right now I see most of your boxes are working with vanishing points that are relatively close to your boxes, leading to foreshortening that is fairly dramatic throughout. Experience with boxes that have a much shallower foreshortening (where the vanishing points are considerably farther away, resulting in a more gradual convergence) is very useful. Where dramatic foreshortening suggests an object being either very close to the viewer or very large (like looking at the top of a building from the ground), shallower foreshortening suggests a more relatable, human scale. This is something you'll end up using a lot more often, due to most objects not being massive.

So, be sure to focus a little more on those moving forwards, as it'll definitely reap important benefits. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete - feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-08-01 21:36

There are a few things worth pointing out here, though overall you're doing a decent job.

• In your super imposed lines, your lines have a tendency to wobble somewhat. This suggests to me that you're preoccupied with the accuracy of your marks, to the detriment of the smooth flow of their execution. [As explained here](Wobbling, Drawing Too Slowly and Carefully), that flow is your main priority. So, when you make these marks, I want you to ensure that you execute them with a confident, persistent pace - even if this means your line parts from your guide line.

• This carries through into the ghosted lines. Your flow is a little better here, but there's still some wavering and hesitation, so that suggests you're going to want to keep pushing yourself to trust in your muscles. Once your pen touches the page, you're committed - any mistake you are going to make can no longer be avoided. So, face it head-on with confidence, to ensure that at the very least the mark comes out smooth and straight. If your results are inaccurate, then adjust how you approach ghosting (it can take some getting used to in order to find a good rhythm), but always execute with confidence.

Keep those two points in mind as you continue to move forwards. In addition to this, I do want to point out a couple other things:

• When you submit your work, make sure it's a complete set - so for this lesson, that means all three sections. That'll give me a solid body of work to draw my critique from, so I can identify greater trends of behaviour.

• If at all possible, upload your images separately rather than as a single file. I'm guessing you scanned everything into a PDF (I've seen a few other students doing the same), and I guess imgur interprets that as a single file. It definitely is much easier for me to jump around your work if it's an album of several images instead.

As for your question, it is okay to learn from several sources, but just make sure that when you're doing exercises from one source, that you follow those instructions to the letter. It's easy to be swayed into applying techniques from one source to the exercises of another, which can lead you to missing the reasoning behind why I might be asking you to do things a certain way. So as long as you're able to approach each in isolation, it shouldn't be a problem.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and I look forward to the rest of your submission.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-08-01 21:17

Yep! You're meant to get into the habit of applying the ghosting method to every mark you put down for these lessons. Long term this will train you to think before every stroke, even if eventually you're not putting as much intention and conscious thought behind each mark, doing so through the entirety of this lesson plan will ensure that there is a subconscious consideration to your linework that will pay dividends many times over.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-30 23:43

Honestly, you've done a really fantastic job! Your lines are smooth and confident, your ellipses (aside from a few key places where you stiffen up just a little bit) are drawn evenly and with remarkable control, and you demonstrate a great deal of patience and care when drawing your boxes.

To start with, the confidence in your lines is extremely important. While your accuracy is pretty decent, you're not putting it ahead of the general flow and smoothness of those marks, so we don't see any wobbling or hesitation. Your ellipses employ this same principle for the most part, allowing you to maintain an even, consistent shape, and avoid deforming them to suit their containing spaces. Strangely enough, I think this is the case in your ellipses in planes most of all, which actually are usually where I see most students stiffening up and getting overwhelmed by the need to fit into these awkward planes.

In the other ellipse exercises, I do see the slightest hint at times that you're allowing your conscious mind to control your hand just a little, making tiny adjustments as you go. It's almost negligible, so I don't want you to actively change your approach - just keep in mind the constant drive to draw confidently and to trust in your whole arm as you draw (rather than your conscious brain).

On that same note though, I did notice that sometimes you draw through your ellipses a bit too much, resulting in some marks that come out a bit hairy. This is only happening here and there, but try and stick to going around the ellipse two full times before raising your pen. Three works too, but two is ideal.

Your plotted perspective boxes is spot on, though this one isn't a particular challenge for most people. Your rough perspective boxes shows a lot of care and consideration for each line. You apply the ghosting method to great effect, and you're taking great care in keeping your horizontals parallel to the horizon, and your verticals perpendicular to it. I'm also pleased to see you applying that double checking method, which is great to see where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes is, for all intents and purposes, well done. You're covering the full range of rotations quite well. Most students show issues with their outermost layer of boxes, where they might not rotate quite far enough. In your case, that layer is fine, but I think it's the middle layer (the ones surrounding the central box) that perhaps could be rotated a little further. The overall shape of the system of boxes feels a little less spherical because of how these haven't turned too much relative to the center.

That's just nitpicking though - you have definitely nailed the core principles of this exercise.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are closer to what I'd expect at this stage. It's a challenging exercise that students aren't actually expected to be able to nail just yet, as I haven't properly explained how to go about drawing freely rotated boxes in 3D space. This is, of course, intentional. I want students to think about the challenge and experience it a little, so when they receive the lesson material on it, they're able to refer back to their own experiences as context, so as to absorb the information a little better.

The issues are generally with having sets of parallel lines converge together consistently towards their shared vanishing points, and we'll definitely continue to deal with this as our next step.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. As you've already decided for yourself, I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. As I'm sure you already have, be sure to read through the notes and watch the video on that page, as there are a few useful techniques that will help you make the most of the challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-07-30 23:32

All in all you've done some really fantastic work here. You've got big, bold forms with a strong sense of weight and solidity. I really love the earlier ones, as you carry the flavour of each vehicle, but simplify them quite beautifully.

When it comes to getting into the details, you start off doing a decent job with some notable issues here and there. Your proportions were usually very close (aside from this one, which feels quite squashed), and your approach to putting in smaller forms was good to start - but what's most important is that I can see a gradual trend of improvement over the course of the set.

Something about the front of the lawn mower really... for lack of a better word, stirs my loins. That is a sexy goddamn grill. The way you've hinted with cast shadows, the way you've fleshed out what is fairly minute and delicate formwork in the bars (or whatever) that fit in across the front.. you've even suggested just the slightest pattern behind them. It's fantastic.

The only issue that I saw likely relates to the point you raised about the ellipse templates you were able to get a hold of - you had a tendency to have your wheels set at a degree that was slightly off in a number of these drawings. It doesn't always stand out a lot, but I did pick up on it here and there, and when I really focused it threw the drawing off a bit.

One area where an ellipse throws things off a lot is with the very front of the locomotive (though it looks like you recognized that, based on your notes). Anyways, it happens. One thought would be, at least in regards to your ellipse templates, to actually try and build your box based off the degree of a given ellipse. So, draw a unit cube in the scene using your ellipse template, and have that determine where your lines converge towards. Then extend that cube to build out the rest of your enclosing box, and work with that. At least this will guarantee that your ellipses will represent circles in 3D space.

Aside from that, you're really doing fantastic work here. I definitely agree with your decision to go through scott robertson's books, and I strongly encourage you to keep up with constructional drawings like these (and like those covered in earlier lessons) to ensure that you're getting a healthy coverage with plants, animals, vehicles - everything between organics and hard surface. At the end of the day, drawabox isn't meant to teach you how to draw, but rather to teach you how to practice, and how to learn.

In the next several months, I'm rolling out a multi-phase update to drawabox as a whole. It starts off with rebuilding the website's design to better communicate the lesson content (and frankly, to make it a little better at generating revenue without being any more intrusive with ads than it is currently). Second phase is to expand the lessons into more advanced topics relating to design - such as shape and form language. Those are the sort of things that took me from where you are now to being able to think about creating new things.

So, I'd hope that you'd jump on that once they come out (though it'll be a couple months at least). Until then, do a lot of studies. And if you're interested in moving onto digital painting and that sort of thing, I'd recommend trying to do full photo studies. That is, replicating an entire photograph, first by focusing on value (only greyscale), and eventually moving into colour. It can be a bit of a jolt to have to apply construction to an actual illustration or scene, so it's good to get used to that early.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Congratulations on completing the entirety of the drawabox curriculum (so far).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-30 14:20

This section is specifically for students who are eligible for private critiques (by pledging to the patreon). Those students must complete all the sections of a given lesson in the recommended tools (ink).

You're going to want to post this directly to the subreddit for a free community critique, although you're likely to get a better response there if you submit after completing the whole lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-29 22:53

Going into this, I did worry about the fact that you'd done this all in one day. Rushing through things is generally a bad idea, as the focus of the lesson is largely on doing the best you possibly can at your current skill level, so the assessment you receive is as helpful as possible. If you end up slipping up on something largely because you were getting tired or bored, then pointing it out is not really that helpful. Furthermore, these kinds of mistakes can hide issues that are of the sort we really want to pick up on - issues where you misunderstood something.

That said, overall you've done a pretty decent job and seem to have understood the instructions fairly well.

Your lines section is looking solid - you're executing your marks with confidence, and this carries over into your ellipses, keeping them nice and evenly shaped. In your funnels exercise, keep an eye on how your ellipses are aligned to that central minor axis line (the one that goes down between the curving edges of the funnel). You want the minor axis to cut each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension.

Moving forward to your plotted perspective, you've done this well - I just want to warn you away from using dashed lines in the future. It's not an issue here, because you drew them using a ruler as instructed, but when freehanding a line, make sure you don't use dashed lines. Reason being, when you break the flow of a line, then try to pick it up again, it will undergo a slight shift. Do this enough times throughout the length of a line and your trajectory will end up very inconsistent. Solid lines are trustworthy, so stick to those.

In your rough perspective boxes, you've done well, just mind how you've approached applying additional hatching lines to those boxes. Any mark you put down should take presentation into consideration - it is obvious that these hatching lines were treated more as an afterthought, as being less important (and therefore being okay to be a little sloppier with them). Try not to think that way about any mark you deem important enough to put down.

Your rotated boxes are a solid attempt - you kept them nicely structured, which is fantastic and reduced the amount of guesswork necessary. I am noticing however that your outermost boxes (for example, lets look at the box furthest to the right on the horizontal axis) are actually running more or less parallel to their immediate inner neighbour (in the same example, the box directly to the left of the one I mentioned previously). If you look closely at how the lines converging towards the right vanishing point are aligned, they're actually converging together for both boxes. This tells us that there is very little actual rotation between the two individual boxes. It's pretty normal to see this, but you definitely want to push and exaggerate your rotations further, letting the vanishing point of the outermost boxes slide more dramatically towards the box.

Lastly, with your organic perspective boxes, there is definitely a lot of room for improvement here. There are issues that are fairly normal (like keeping the convergences of your sets of parallel lines consistent, which most people have trouble with at this stage). There's also issues with your linework in general. It shows that you weren't applying the ghosting method as consistently as you had earlier through the lesson, so it does suggest that you gave way to a fair bit of rushing here.

Now, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to help continue to develop your grasp of 3D space. Additionally, it'll push you to get more used to applying the ghosting method to every line you put down, letting it become a consistent habit.

One last thing - in the future, don't do this work on lined paper. It can contribute to the willingness to rush and be a little sloppy, due to the fact that it already feels like you're doing it on throw-away paper. While it's absolutely true that each and every exercise is throwaway, working on blank paper still helps you to put forward your best effort at every turn.

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

2018-07-29 21:47

On the bright side, your absence has not dulled your skills. Unless it has, in which case you were probably in a position to teach me - because your work is fantastic. I could just leave it at that and call the lesson complete, but I'll elaborate a little for the sake of your moneys!

Your submission is basically spot on, and touches all the points I wanted to see. Your arrows flow very smoothly through 3D space and explore the full depth of the space they occupy (I'm very pleased to see you playing with the scale of either end of each arrow to push the illusion of perspective). Your contour lines wrap marvelously around your organic forms, accelerating and curving nightly along the edges. The contour ellipses also are drawn with a great deal of control, and you're clearly aware (either consciously or subconsciously) of the shift in degree for these cross-sectional cuts as their orientation changes relative to the viewer.

Your dissections play with a great variety of textures, and for each one, you apply patient observation and very specific marks to best reflect exactly it is what you're trying to capture. There's no falling back to generic hatching or any kind of chaos - you take your time, and to great effect. You're also showing a fantastic use of detail density, running all around the spectrum of dense to sparse as needed to convey exactly what you're trying to communicate about the surface in question.

Continuing on, your form intersections show a solid understanding of 3D space. I would recommend drawing through all of your boxes (you certainly do it for at least a couple of them), as well as drawing around your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen to ensure that they stay as even as possible (a few were a tad lumpy in certain areas). Still, you clearly understand how these forms exist within space.

And lastly, your organic intersections are much the same (on the positive points that is). The way your forms sag and lump on top of each other conveys a good sense of just how their weight is supported (and where it is not), and paints a very convincing picture of volume and mass.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-29 21:37

Your imgur link lead to a dead end, but I took a guess and replaced /gallery/ with /a/ and it brought me here: https://imgur.com/a/Igv7Fqp. Here's hoping that's your work, because that's what's getting critiqued :P

Your lines section is looking quite solid. Lots of confidence behind those lines, it's helping you maintain some smooth, consistent executions and also helps you avoid any wobbling or hesitation. The same thing is true about your ellipses, where the confidence helps you establish nice, even shapes, but in this regard you're going to want to work on applying the ghosting method more, or rather adjusting how you apply it so as to help improve your overall control. This is definitely tricky, and it's a sort of second-step after getting your confidence down. You want to maintain confidence, but work on tightening up your ellipses and having them fall more accurately into their designated spaces.

Now, when I say that, it's a bit of an exaggeration - your accuracy is quite good in places, but overall tightening your ellipses up is what you want to focus on moving forward.

Jumping into your boxes, you're doing a pretty solid job. I'm pleased to see you applying that double checking method to your rough perspective boxes. They're looking fantastic (aside from the really dark, chicken scratchy one on the bottom of this page, not sure what happened there - just remember that if you make a mistake, going over it and trying to correct it is probably not a good idea as it'll draw way more attention to it).

Your rotated boxes have the signs of a good attempt, but there's definitely some things that could be improved. For instance, it's important to keep an eye on the gaps between your boxes - keeping them narrow and consistent helps you keep things more structured and reduce the amount of guesswork required. This is demonstrated in the instructions, specifically in figure 3.19. Additionally, try to be a little less haphazard with that hatching there. Anything you draw should be done so with a consideration for presentation and with the patience required for that.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are similar - they're a good start, but we definitely have lots of room for growth in this area. Luckily, that's expected and intentional, and we'll jump into that next.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page and watch the video there - they cover a number of strategies and techniques that can help you make the best use of this exercise.

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

2018-07-29 21:23

These are definitely much better. One thing I want you to watch is where you're drawing your intersections around a cylinder, the curves you're using have a tendency to be too shallow - so you're not getting the impression that the curve really hooks around the edge and continues along the other side of the rounded form. This is basically the same kind of challenge one faces when drawing contour curves along an organic form, so keep an eye on that as you move forwards.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-07-29 21:20

On your arrows, you've got a lot of visible attempts at trying to show the depth of the scene and have them flow towards/away from the viewer. That's fantastic - one thing I'd recommend on this front is to play with the scale of either end of the arrow. Pick one as being closer and the other as being farther, and really exaggerate their scale, making the closer end considerably larger. This will help create that illusion that it's covering a much larger space. Aside from that though, you're doing a great job in how your arrows are flowing fluidly.

Your organic forms with contour ellipses are coming along well, though your control over each ellipse (and your ability to keep them snug between the edges of the forms) will definitely improve with continued practice. Also, I'm noticing many places where you're considering how the degree of the contour ellipses shifts between narrow to wider, which is great - but there are also a number of places where you think less about this, so definitely keep an eye on that. Lastly, I can see some struggles with keeping your ellipses aligned, especially when you're dealing with wider ellipses of a greater degree.

I'm writing this as I scroll through - I just noticed the later page of arrows, these definitely push scale a lot more. That's great.

From there on, you're doing quite well. Your dissections show a lot of great textures, which you're tackling in a variety of ways and demonstrating considerable observation and patience. Your form intersections are very consistent and show a well developed sense of 3D space, with clear understanding of how the forms relate to one another. Same goes for your organic intersections, where I'm very pleased t osee how each form sags over its neighbours, wherever its weight is not quite supported.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-07-28 22:29

Nice work! You've shown a lot of diligence with extending your lines towards their implied vanishing points, which demonstrated a considerable improvement in your estimations. Early on, you also showed some fantastic use of line weight, though I noticed that you tapered off with that as you went through the set.

One thing I did notice however was that your boxes were pretty heavily leaning towards having their vanishing points positioned quite close. This results in your boxes having fairly dramatic foreshortening, which suggests that the box itself is either very large (like looking at the top of a tall building from the ground) or very close to the viewer. You will definitely want to experiment more with boxes that have vanishing points farther off, with shallower foreshortening and more gradual convergence of parallel lines. This will help you develop a familiarity with boxes that exist at a more relatable, human scale.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-27 21:35

To be completely honest, I think you did a pretty fantastic job at the first two sections, especially in terms of the confidence of your execution. I don't see a whole lot of wobbling or anything like that - your accuracy will certainly improve with time, but this is entirely in line with what I'm expecting. Along with your lines coming out smooth, your ellipses are also quite evenly shaped and consistent, and at the same time you are demonstrating a pretty solid degree of control.

All of this carried over into the boxes section, so I'm pleased to see that your boxes demonstrate the same kind of care with each individual line. A lot of students start focusing too much on the box as a whole, and end up putting less time into each line.

Now, your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises certainly do have issues but this is entirely normal. These exercises are notoriously challenging, especially at this stage, as I'm largely throwing you into the deep end of the pool without teaching you how to swim, just to see how you'll fare. It also has the benefit of giving you the context of experience before we get into the instructional parts of this particularly challenging matter, which in my experience helps students absorb the lectures more easily.

Now, on the rotated boxes I'm pleased to see that you're mostly keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent (there are some minor deviations here and there where the angles shift or a box sticks out further than it should). What I am noticing however is that your outermost layer of boxes is usually set at the same orientation as its inner neighbour. If you extend the lines of your boxes to find their implied vanishing points, you'll see that they're actually not sliding along very much (as they should, which I demonstrated in this animated diagram). Instead of rotating the boxes, what you're doing is stretching them, and showing a lot of that side face which at this point should be mostly pointing to the side (and therefore not very visible to us).

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though the convergences of your sets of parallel lines aren't very consistent. This is something we'll work on. In addition to this, I noticed that your lines have a tendency to trail off here, leaving visible gaps at the corners. Try and avoid 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. Be sure to read through all of the notes and watch the video linked there, as I cover a number of useful techniques that will help you get the most out of this exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-07-27 02:40

Overall you're doing a pretty good job, but there are w few things I definitely need to point out. Some of these are present only some of the time, and done correctly in other drawings, but it's still worth mentioning.

• When you're drawing a complex set of leaves, or really any kind of form, it's extremely important that you draw each one in its entirety, rather than drawing it only as far as it is visible, and stopping your lines where that form is hidden by another. We want to understand fully how each form sits both in space, and in relation to the forms around it. These exercises are really focused on developing that sense of the 3D world we're creating, and pushing past the idea that we're just drawing lines on a flat page. This is integral to that. You certainly did draw your forms in their entirety in a number of places, but there were a few major areas where you neglected to, so I wanted to make sure you were aware.

• Your flower pots tend to be suffering on a number of points. Firstly, draw through those ellipses to ensure that they are even. Secondly, it really helps to draw the cylindrical form (or forms, as some of the pots are more complex) around a single minor axis line, to help align the ellipses. Your alignments were generally okay, but this will continue to be an important trick moving forwards. You can read more about it in the 250 cylinder challenge page.

• Also about your flower pots, inset ellipses - that is, when you draw an ellipse inside of another ellipse to create the illusion of a rim with thickness to it - is very important, and some of your flower pots seem to have demanded it, but you neglected to deliver on that front. When you don't add the additional ellipse, you end up with a planter that appears to be paper-thin, which is virtually never the case. As a result, something feels off or unfinished, even if the viewer can't always put their finger on it.

• Again, with the pots - I see a lot of places where your flower pot has soil set at a level lower than the rim, so you've drawn an arc that is only partially visible. Related to what I mentioned in my first point, you should be drawing this ellipse in its entirety, as it is going to be very difficult to nail the curvature of this ellipse this early on. Yours tend to be too shallow in this area, so you're not at the point where you can estimate it in this manner. Think more like you're building up your forms, one primitive at a time, and try not to skip steps like these.

• On your last page, you've drawn what appears to be a cactus. Now, I'm not 100% sure if you've approached this correctly in terms of construction. On one hand, what you've drawn does feel mostly believable, but the question is of whether or not it actually corresponds to your reference. What I'm seeing here is basically a bunch of fairly flat forms, more similar to leaves than the generally more voluminous sections of cacti. What would definitely help convey the sense of volume here would be the use of contour lines (really, just one on some of these forms) that runs along the surface of the form outlining a sort of horizontal cut. This line would run along one side, then cut across the front, and back around the other side, and in doing so would demonstrate the thickness of the form. Also worth mentioning, the star lines you've drawn are also not a great way of capturing the little sprouts that one finds on cactus, as lines technically don't exist. These lines aren't enclosing anything, so you end up mixing a somewhat abstract representation with an otherwise solid construction. If the objects you're drawing are so small that they cannot be enclosed in their own form (as many textures often are), try drawing the shadows they cast rather than the object itself. Often times drawing the impact a form has on the forms around it is enough to imply its existence, without drawing it directly.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Be sure to keep the points I've raised here in mind as you continue onto lesson 4.

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

2018-07-27 02:24

There are a number of areas where you're doing well, but there are a few issues I need to point out to ensure that you continue heading in the right direction as you practice.

• I'm noticing that your use of contour curves is a little hit and miss. That is, when they reach the edge, sometimes it feels as though you may not have put enough thought behind them, as they come out too shallow and don't quite push the illusion that they're hooking around and continuing along the other side. This makes the form, which we know to be rounded, to flatten out and form a sharper edge instead.

• At the same time as the previous point, I see you drawing a great many contour lines on the same form. I often see these two points together - a student will lean towards quantity over quality, thinking less about the execution of each contour line but compensate by adding more. This doesn't really work - overdoing the contour lines tends to stiffen an object, while also not quite creating the illusion of rounded form you're after. Conversely, one or two very well executed contour curves can make an entire form feel solid and rounded, conveying a strong sense of volume without contributing much stiffness.

• It's not as obvious initially, but once I noticed it and went back to your other drawings, I started to see it everywhere - you're not drawing each form to completion. You're stopping your lines where a form is overlapped and hidden by another. It's really important that you draw each form completely, focusing on making each individual one feel solid and believable. Drawing the entire form also helps us to understand how they exist in relation to their neighbours. Keep in mind that these drawings are not intended to result in something pretty - they will if done well, but that's not really our goal. Each drawing is just an exercise in learning to understand 3D space, and form, and how it can all come together to create complex objects that feel tangible and believable. Yes, neglecting to draw certain lines will make them look cleaner, but it will also take away from the core of the lesson. Long-term, the expectation is that by doing these exercises, you will come to believe completely in the illusion you are creating with these drawings, as the first step of being able to convince someone else that what you've drawn is 3D, is to believe in that lie yourself. Once you reach that point, you'll understand the forms as they exist in space at a level that you won't need to draw the additional lines, because you'll already know that they're there. But that is a long ways off.

• While your approach to legs has yielded some decent results, it's quite inconsistent across the various drawings, leading to it being a little bit hit-and-miss. Try constructing the legs using simple sausage forms - that is, basically two balls connected by a flexible tube. These can convey a strong sense of flow and rhythm while maintaining a solid form. You can also draw a contour line right where the sausage forms intersect with one another, which is usually more than enough to convey the solidity of the whole form (saving you from having to draw a bunch of contour lines along their lengths). Here are a few places where I've demonstrated this approach to other students: https://i.imgur.com/rQvn6kV.png, https://i.imgur.com/9kAp6JZ.png, https://i.imgur.com/pPyrBgB.png, https://i.imgur.com/NQBBjvo.png

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do another four insect drawings, taking what I've said here into consideration. Also, something I should have mentioned a while ago - deviantART is a rather inconvenient platform when it comes to being able to move through a gallery for the purposes of a critique. It'd be a huge help to me if you could upload your images to imgur, as it allows me to scroll through the whole set at full size very easily, and to jump back and forth between images as I formulate my response. Imgur doesn't require you to make an account, so it's the image host most students use.

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

2018-07-27 02:05

Your first few seconds are looking really good. Your arrows flow nicely, you capture a strong sense of 3D space with your organic forms with contour lines, and your dissections explore a nice variety of textures and demonstrate a a well development approach to observational drawing. There's certainly room for improvement, but you're headed at significant speed in the right direction, so keep it up.

When you get into the form intersections though, the confidence of your linework drops quite a bit, and as a result, so does the solidity and overall quality of your form intersections. You are demonstrating an understanding of the exercise itself, but you're allowing your hesitation and fear to command how you draw your lines, and it really diminishes your results.

For example, you completely stop drawing through your ellipses (you should be doing this for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons without exception). Your start drawing your lines less confidently, and they start to waver as a result. In response to all of this, you try and apply some manner of shading with a pencil (which you should not be doing, considering that the instructions for this lesson state to use a pen only) to compensate.

Of course, nothing can compensate for a lack of confidence in your execution.

Your organic intersections come out a little better, but there is still some shakiness to how you're applying the additional line weight. Because you're very preoccupied with outlining each form completely, and matching the lines perfectly, you slow down and your lines waver once again. Line weight must be applied with the same confidence as your initial marks. You also shouldn't be looking to apply weight to the entirety of a line - it should only be applied to specific areas of lines to clarify specific overlaps of form. I talk about this in the form intersections video.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to try one more page of form intersections. Make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every mark you put down (so you can separate the process of planning/preparing from executing with confidence), and make sure you draw through each and every ellipse. Before you start this page, I want you to reread the notes and rewatch the video for that exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-07-25 23:01

That's looking better than before. Keep an eye on your horizontals and verticals though - horizontals should run parallel to the horizon, and verticals should run perpendicular to it. I'm definitely seeing some slanting here and there, and some slight arcing to your lines. Definitely something to focus on in your warmups.

I'll go ahead and mark lesson 1 as complete, so you may move onto lesson 2.

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

2018-07-25 20:50

You're actually doing a pretty good job here. There are a number of things that I want to draw your attention to, but as far as construction goes, you're applying the principles quite well and are demonstrating a good eye for how objects are broken down into simpler forms, and how to build them back up.

One issue I noticed that stands out to me quite a bit is how you're applying line weight very much as though it is something that must be applied everywhere. The way you're applying line weight suggests that you're approaching this process as though you're laying down your construction, and then going over it with a "cleanup pass" to replace the drawing with a series of heavier strokes. This is not correct.

In addition to this, your linework when adding weight tends to be much less confident, and shows a far greater degree of wobbling and stiffness than your initial construction lines, which results in the overall drawing losing its sense of confidence.

Line weight should not be applied everywhere. Along with being a subtle addition that speaks more to a viewer's subconscious (rather than grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking them while shouting "I AM A HEAVY LINE" in their face), weight should be applied only to help clarify specific overlaps. That means that while you may have a long stroke, you may only want to apply additional weight to a limited section of it. This also applies to ellipses, where instead of applying weight to the whole ellipse, you may only want to push a small portion of it. I mention and demonstrate this in the form intersections video in lesson 2.

I think that's the biggest issue right now. As for more minor ones, whenever you've got two forms that cut into each other, it really helps a lot to draw a contour line right along where they intersect one another, as demonstrated here.

Also, you're making good moves in how you're approaching drawing legs, but you should try constructing them using simple sausage forms as segments. I've done a bunch of demos for other students showing this, which you can see here:

• https://i.imgur.com/rQvn6kV.png

• https://i.imgur.com/9kAp6JZ.png

• https://i.imgur.com/pPyrBgB.png

• https://i.imgur.com/NQBBjvo.png

Sausage forms (basically two balls connected by a flexible tube) are great because they can really capture gesture and flow. In some of these you've used stretched ball-forms, which are going in the right direction, but they end up feeling much more stiff because it's harder to have them bend and flow naturally. That's how you end up with segments that feel rigid and too straight. You can also place a contour curve right where those two sausage forms intersect (like my previous point) and that'll usually be more than enough to nicely reinforce the illusion of 3D form (without having to add additional contour lines along the lengths of the segments).

This concept applies pretty nicely to animal drawing too, as shown here.

Anyway, you're doing a good job. Keep an eye on the points I've mentioned here - especially your use of line weight - and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-07-25 20:26

So, you definitely did learn some things from this exercise - though you definitely would have grown more had you approached it with less of a focus on just getting it done, and more on each individual box. Drawabox involves a great deal of tedium, especially in these early stages, and relies very heavily on having students develop a strong sense of discipline. In order to do that however, you must lean into the challenge (that is, the challenge of doing a lot of boring crap, not necessarily just the 250 box challenge), and stop fighting it.

More than that, you need to take care to follow instructions to the letter. For example, you didn't extend your lines so you could really learn from your mistakes until a ways into the challenge. You also ignored, or missed, the fact that in my critique of your lesson 1 work, I asked you to submit one more page of rough perspective boxes before moving onto the challenge. That's why you still haven't earned the lesson 1 badge.

Now, I will be marking this lesson as complete, as you have completed the work. The corners you cut are largely to your own detriment, and will hold you back somewhat as you continue to move forwards (especially on the discipline end of things), but I'll leave that to you. I will however point out a number of things I noticed, which you can keep in mind as you continue to move forwards.

• Most of the boxes whose lines you extended had vanishing points that were fairly close by. These are generally easier to get right, because you can work relative to points that aren't too far off from the box. While I'm pleased you drew a fair number of boxes with vanishing points that were much farther off, you didn't actually test many of these after the fact. These are the ones that are going to be much more difficult, and also the ones that come into play much more often. Vanishing points being farther away gives us a much shallower rate of foreshortening, which in turn communicates to the viewer that the object is either at a more human-relatable scale, or that it's some distance away. Conversely, boxes with a more dramatic rate of foreshortening tell the viewer that the object is either very large (like looking at the top of a tall building from the ground), or veeery close to the viewer's eye. The first group - with shallower foreshortening - are going to be present much more frequently in your constructions.

• Your hatching lines often come out very sloppily. This is something at the core of how you approach things right now that you need to change sooner rather than later. I don't say this to be mean, but to address an important problem. You're very willing to hedge - that is, given the option to do something properly vs. not do it at all, you pick the middle road and do it quickly. Every single mark you put down must be thought out, everything you draw must be treated as though it reflects upon you. Hatching lines are included in this - you either draw them properly, stretching individual lines across the plane from edge to edge, or you don't draw them at all. No zigzagging, no looseness, just planned, well executed lines.

Like I said, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. That said, you may not move onto lesson 2 until you provide me with the one page of rough perspective boxes I asked for in my previous critique.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-07-25 20:13

Congratulations on completing the cylinder challenge! Here are a few things to keep in mind as you continue to move forwards:

• I noticed that while you did draw your minor axis for a great many of these cylinders, you left them out in a number of places. This exercise, at its core, is about aligning ellipses to that minor axis line, and really drilling down to how important it is. So you really shouldn't be leaving it out at all.

• When it comes to spatial problems, always lean on the side of giving yourself more room to work. That is, draw things bigger. It'll engage your brain more, make it easier to solve those spatial problems, and push you to use more of your arm.

• I'm very pleased to see that you experimented with constructing cylinders inside of boxes here and there - you'll definitely benefit from playing with that more, as it gets very useful in later lessons where you have to align cylinders to other existing forms (rather than just drawing them at some arbitrary orientation). The box is great for being able to place a specific minor axis in space.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.

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

2018-07-24 20:46

Overall you're doing a pretty good job, though I do have a couple things to point out that you're going to want to focus on as you continue to move forwards.

Firstly, your arrows flow quite confidently, which is great. My only recommendation here is to try and think more about how those arrows flow through all three dimensions of space. Currently it does feel as though they're mostly moving across the two dimensions of your page. Thinking about one point of the arrow being farther away and the other being closer, and then exaggerating the scale of each end to match (with the closer being much larger and the farther being much smaller) can help you achieve a greater sense of depth.

Your organic forms with contour ellipses came out very solid. Your contour curves were considerably less so however. I can see signs that you understand that you want to get them to wrap around at the edges, as they continue along to the other side of the rounded form, but yours struggle at times to properly hook around.

Part of it has to do with how they're aligned (or rather, not aligned) to the minor axis, so definitely keep an eye on that. You may also want to try employing the overshooting method mentioned here.

Your dissections were a pretty solid start. You've demonstrated a good deal of patience and care as you observed and studied a variety of textures, and you did a good job of applying those texture to these general forms. One thing you will want to look at is how you approach the transition from dense to sparse when it comes to scales. Right now you're enclosing each scale in a solid line. It helps to think of the marks you're drawing as being cast shadows rather than actual physical demarcations. Based on how much light is being shined on a surface and at which angle, shadows can grow to be very thick and fuse with their neighbours to create larger shapes (which you were experimenting with), but it can also cause shadows to be blasted out, reducing them to minimal marks hinting at the form features present. I talk more about this sort of thing in the texture challenge page's notes.

Your form intersections were okay, but they were lacking in a couple areas:

• You didn't really fill in the pages by any stretch.

• Your boxes definitely continue to need a great deal of work, so you're going to want to continue practicing them with particular focus on how your lines converge consistenty (my guess is that since you focused primarily on boxes with vanishing points that were quite close in the box challenge, you were left without as much experience with boxes where the VPs are much further away, and the foreshortening is considerably shallower).

• Your spheres were definitely lumpy and uneven, so work on drawing ellipses - specifically circles - from your shoulder. I often see people who draw more from their elbow or wrists running into problems when they try to scale their ellipses up.

And to finish, your organic intersections were quite well done, and demonstrated a good understanding of how the forms interact with one another in space. Your contour curves were a little better here, though they still demonstrated some issues in hooking around at the edges.

I will mark this lesson as complete, but I want you to keep on top of this stuff. It's expected that students are to continue practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as part of a regular warm up routine (picking 2-3 exercises to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each sitting), but I want you to pay special attention to the issues I've mentioned here until you're able to sort them out.

That said, as I have marked the lesson as complete, you may feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-07-24 20:32

Looking good! You've definitely showed a good deal of growth over the set. I'm also pleased to see that you've played with line weight a great deal, and have made a point to tackle a great variety of orientations for your boxes.

One concern I have about the ruler technique you used to check your lines' convergence is how you could reasonably find the vanishing point to begin with, without extending your lines to see where they converged. In addition to this, the line extension technique is less about seeing whether you were right or wrong, and more about studying the way those lines converge (or more frequently how they fail to converge consistently). It's by studying this that we can identify where we go wrong in our approach.

For a page there (126 to 142), your use of line weight definitely went a bit awry (you were darkening the internal lines, which breaks the cohesion of the overall form), but I'm very pleased to see that you bounced back from that quite strongly in subsequent pages and ultimately achieved considerably stronger, more solid forms.

One last thing I am noticing fairly consistently that your linework is a little hesitant throughout the set. It's not a glaring thing, but if you loo closely, one can see that your linework is a bit shaky. Definitely push yourself to draw those lines with more confidence upon execution, and be sure to apply the ghosting method that allows you to separate the preparation and execution phases into distinct steps, so you don't have to worry about accuracy and flow simultaneously. This applies to when you're adding line weight too - it's easy to get caught up in trying to match the line perfectly to the one that you're thickening, but in doing so you can cause the original line (which may have been drawn more confidently) to feel hesitant and shaky due to the addition.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-24 00:03

Your work is really solid. You're demonstrating an immense amount of confidence without sacrificing control. It definitely shows that this is not your first time tackling this material, as most people (if doing the lessons correctly) will be pushing themselves on the confidence front to achieve smooth lines and consistent, even ellipses, while letting control/accuracy fall to a second priority. It's absolutely the right way to do things, but what you're showing here has gone beyond that and has wrangled that accuracy as well without sacrificing the first priority, flow.

Long story short, fantastic work on the first two sections. There is a little stiffness and wobbling in your funnel ellipses, and some unevenness/deformity with the ellipses in planes, so those are areas where you're going to want to shift the focus more towards confidence over control until you're able to smooth them out, but overall you're doing really well.

Your plotted and rough perspective boxes are looking really solid, and I'm quite pleased that you're double checking the latter with those red lines. Watch your horizontals in the rough perspective though - I noticed some that were a little off from being parallel with the horizon. Not by too much, but by enough to be worth calling out. Horizontals run parallel to the horizon, verticals run perpendicular to it.

Both rotated boxes attempts were well done (considering that I'm dumping students into the deep end of the pool here without teaching them how to swim), but you've shown considerable improvement between the two. The second, while being much better, still doesn't quite push the rotation to cover the full range we're after though, so you'll want to keep trying to exaggerate that rotation. The step 3 which you seem to have skipped (drawing the squares at the end of each axis) helps quite a bit, as it establishes the range of rotation you're trying to achieve, and gives you a capped space to fill rather than a limitless void to work in.

I am however quite pleased that you kept your boxes structured, maintaining narrow gaps between them to limit guesswork.

The organic perspective boxes exercise is similar in terms of the swimming analogy - you've done a reasonable job, though there is definitely lots of room to further develop your understanding of 3D space, and how these forms sit within it. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through the notes on that page and watch the video linked there, as they cover a few important techniques that'll help you get the most out of this challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-23 23:10

Your lines section is looking good. Your ellipses are coming along well, though you'll want to keep working on tightening them up and improving your control (without sacrificing confidence). This means putting more emphasis on applying the ghosting method. This can be done while incorporating the exercises from this lesson into a regular warmup routine (picking 2-3 exercises at the beginning of a sitting to do for 10-15 minutes).

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the box challenge next.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-07-23 03:22

On the point of correcting mistakes - don't. It's a common habit, but it's one you need to break sooner rather than later. You always want to be in full control of what you're drawing, and if you're caught up in correcting your blunders, you're going to allow those mistakes to govern your result.

If you make a mistake, leave it be - it's generally more likely to recede and be ignored, rather than the marks you pile ink onto, which end up calling out their presence to the viewer at every turn.

Remember that all of these drawings are just exercises. You're not drawing them to impress anyone, it's rather about what each drawing teaches you. Mistakes are an important part of that, and there's nothing to be gained from going out of your way to cover them up.

Another important point is to, if you're not already, stick to a single weight of pen. This helps maintain that subtlety, and keeps you from accidentally letting things get out of control.

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

2018-07-22 19:49

Your form intersections are considerably better now. Your organic forms with contour ellipses and curves have improved, but that's something you'll want to continue paying special attention to.

For your organic forms, I think one thing that's missing there is the use of line weight. You've got some nice shadow shapes being cast, but it's quite difficult to distinguish the other forms. A subtle addition of line weight (with the same pen you used to draw the lines) should help clarify where the forms overlap each other. So that's another thing you can focus on in the future - remember that all the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 should continue to be part of a regular warmup routine, where you'd pick two or three exercises at the beginning of a sitting to do for 10-15 minutes.

I will go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, as you're moving in the right direction.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-22 19:26

Parents can really be delightful. "My kid ate my original funnel ... so I redid it." just offhand, like that's a perfectly normal thing. And I guess it is. But either way, it made me laugh.

Those who are new to drawing - like, completely new, no prior experience - are often far easier to teach than those who've been doing it for a while on their own. Reason being, they approach it like learning anything else - they'll read the instructions carefully, take their time, and move forward without any preconceived notions of how well they should be performing. They are entirely willing to accept the failures that come with attacking something with confidence.

And frankly, that's exactly what I see here. You've done a fantastic job.

With every exercise, you've demonstrated patience and thoroughness, both in going through the instructions and applying them. I see no signs of rushing, nor do I see any of the wobbly lines and stiffness that comes from hesitation and fear. As a result, your lines are smooth and straight, and your ellipses come out evenly shaped and consistent.

Yes, accuracy is an area that has plenty of room for growth, but that's exactly what I expect and hope to see at this stage. Accuracy improves with practice, but it's the correct approach that needs to be nailed down before that growth can be achieved.

I'm very pleased to see that for the most part, with your rough perspective boxes, you took your time in applying the ghosting method and strove to keep the horizontals parallel to the horizon line, and your verticals perpendicular to it. It's also great that you went ahead and applied the double checking method to see where your estimation of perspective drifts.

The rotated boxes were admittedly a struggle at first - and frankly, they're meant to be. This exercise and the organic perspective one both are included here not unlike how one might throw a child into the deep end of the pool before teaching them to swim, just to see what they'll do. ... Wait, you're not supposed to do that? Well, it's a good thing I don't have kids.

That said, your second attempt was an incredible improvement over the first - you took what you learned from that first attempt and showed an extremely adaptive understanding of 3D space.

Now, your organic perspective boxes definitely need work, specifically with keeping the sets of parallel lines' convergence consistent, and generally constructing these arbitrarily rotated forms in space, but that will be our next step.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. As I'm sure you will, be sure to read through the notes and watch the video there, as there are a couple of techniques that will help you make the best use of this exercise - one of which is drawing through your boxes, which you already seem to be doing.

Keep up the great work.

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

2018-07-22 19:11

Overall you're doing alright, but I can see a number of places where you've not quite followed the instructions.

• You skipped the organic forms with contour ellipses

• In the form intersections exercise, you ignored the instruction about not using overly stretched forms (like long tubes) and sticking to largely equilateral ones in order to help keep the exercise as focused on the construction of forms that feel cohesive within the same space (without bringing too much foreshortening into it).

That said, the rest of the exercises are fairly well done. I do have a few suggestions to make though:

• For your arrows, try playing a little more with depth. They're flowing quite nicely right now, but by exaggerating the ends as being closer or farther away from the viewer (and therefore much larger or much smaller) you can give the impression that the arrow is flowing through the depth of the scene.

• For your organic forms with contour curves, you definitely need to work on getting the curves to sit snugly between the edges of the form. Having them fall outside as they are right now breaks the illusion that these lines are running along the surface of the form.

• Your dissections certainly are a good start, though I recommend that when you get the chance, you read the notes on the 25 texture challenge. One thing I did want to mention though is in regards to the "rusty pipe" texture. A rusty pipe's texture is really just rust - the welding lines, the rivets, etc. aren't actually a part of it. So when drawing it, you'd really want to study the way the surface of the rusted metal has chipped and flaked away, how it transitions from being smooth and polished to rough and uneven.

• You did a pretty good job in showing how your organic intersections interact with one another, and how they sag against one another. There is room for improvement, but that'll largely come with continued practice. You're headed in the right direction here.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one page of organic forms with contour ellipse (the exercise you missed) and one page of form intersections (where you should be ensuring that you stick to equilateral forms which are roughly the same size in all three dimensions).

As for your new years resolution, having a set goal and timeline can definitely be very helpful in a lot of areas, but it's not something I recommend here. It's just so important that we go through the exercises and read the instructions with patience and care, and afford the work the time we require to do them to the best of our ability. That feeling that we're running behind encourages us to rush through things and skip steps which will ultimately come back to bite us in the future. Don't worry about completing all of this by December - just focus on learning from the exercises and lessons. Think instead of December as a set time where you can look back on what you've accomplished and get a sense of whether or not drawabox has worked well for you.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-07-22 18:43

Overall you're some really fantastic work here, and are showing a great deal of growth over the set. As far as construction goes, you're doing a pretty great job of applying the principles covered in the lesson. You're also doing a lot of interesting experimentation with texture and detail without undermining the construction or distracting yourself from, it, which is great to see. I do have a few observations to point out however that should help you as you continue to move forwards.

• I noticed on this page, when a leaf or a stem is overlapped by another form, you only drew them as far as they would be visible, resulting in forms that were incomplete. It's extremely important to draw forms in their entirety (even where they get hidden), and then sort out the mess using line weight and black shadow shapes. Drawing forms in their entirety allows us to better understand how they sit in 3D space and better allows us to capture their solidity. It also helps us when it comes to establishing how different forms relate to one another. At their core, all of these construction drawings focus on getting us to understand, believe and internalize how these things exist in 3D space. This is key to being able to create the illusion that what we're drawing is three dimensional, and while these techniques aren't ones we'd necessarily use in a final "proper" drawing, doing so here allows us to visualize the same lines later on, perhaps without drawing them all.

• I noticed in a few pages that you had some areas where you added line weight that was considerably thicker than the other lines around it (probably doing so with a different pen). I don't recommend doing this, as the overly thick lines can result in a more graphic, flattened out appearance. Line weight should always be kept quite subtle - it's less about "this line is thick, this line is not", and more about the relationships between lines (this line is thicker than this one). This variation need only be obvious to the subconscious - think of it as though your drawing is whispering to the back of the viewer's mind, rather than shaking them while shouting in their faces.

• Also about line weight - it's not super noticeable, so it's a more minor point but I can see a tendency when adding line weight to stiffen up slightly and slow down as you execute the mark. This is normal, as you're trying to match an existing line, but it is something you'll need to push past. When applying line weight, one should still be applying the ghosting method - that is, building up muscle memory beforehand for the stroke you want, then executing with a confident, persistent pace so as to keep the resulting mark smooth (even if this results in a decrease in accuracy).

• Looking at the flower pots (which are mostly cylindrical), I do believe you'll benefit from some targeted practice with cylinders. Take a look at the notes on the 250 cylinder challenge. I recommend getting started on it and doing it in parallel with the rest of the lessons (aiming to have it done before you hit lesson 6).

• On a related note to my last point, take a look at this page. Notice how you've drawn the thicker rim of the flower pot with a single larger ellipse/curve? I'd recommend approaching this by drawing through the whole pot (and of course including the minor axis, though you've done this elsewhere). The construction is essentially two cylinders, one shorter but wider than the other to produce the rim. Drawing the top ellipse of the longer base cylinder helps to establish how those two cylinders connect to one another. Right now it feels somewhat indistinct, as though when you were drawing this object you hadn't considered that spatial problem in your mind.

• I'm quite fond of succulent plants like this one. One thing I like best about them is that while they have the flow of regular leaves, they actually have some thickness to them that you appear to have left out. Thickness is something we take into consideration when drawing those contour lines, as demonstrated here.

I've mentioned a lot, but overall you're still doing a great job. Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-22 17:43

Most people complete it before starting lesson 2. Technically speaking, only the form intersections in lesson 2 are dependent on the completion of this challenge, so you could move onto the organic parts, but it's still best that you sort this out first before moving on.

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

2018-07-21 23:52

Overall you've done an excellent job, and very clearly show a strong understanding of 3D space through these exercises. I do have a few things to point out though that you'll want to mind as you continue to move forwards.

• For your arrows, while they flow quite nicely, one thing I noticed was that they tend to restrict themselves in the most part to the two major dimensions of your piece of paper, with only a limited deviation through the depth of the scene. When doing this exercise in the future, I want you to think about one end of a given arrow as sitting farther away in the scene, and the other end sitting closer to the viewer, and exaggerating the scales of these different ends accordingly (with the closer end being very large and the farther end being much smaller) to achieve a sense of depth.

• Your organic forms with contour lines improved over the set, but overall I get the impression that you're being a bit loose with them. Your first page of contour curves especially seemed extremely rushed, showing no sign of applying the ghosting method to achieve any real control over your mark. Further on you do improve in regards to this, but you still need to work on getting your curves and ellipses to fit snugly between the two edges of the form. This can be tricky while maintaining the confidence necessarily to ensure a smooth stroke, which is why the ghosting method is incredibly valuable here.

• Your dissections are coming along nicely, with a good deal of observation and careful study of a variety of textures. The only thing I want to mention here is that you should try and set aside the urge to use any kind of hatching lines - that is, the sort of lines we put down when we're not really sure what we want to draw on a surface, but dont' want to leave it blank. It's a sort of fallback to focusing more on shading-for-shading's-sake, which is something I entirely neglect to cover in these lessons. Always resist the urge to just shade, unless that shading is intentionally conveying some sort of textural information. The only place hatching is accepted in my lessons is how you used it in the form intersections - that is, separating faces and serving as a visual cue, rather than trying to show form.

• Your form intersections are extremely solid. You're demonstrating an exceptional understanding of 3D space with these.

• Your organic intersections are much the same - you're doing a great job here of showing how these forms sag against one another, and how they interact in 3D space. Your contour curves here are also considerably better than they were earlier.

So, all in all, there's definitely things to keep in mind, but you're doing a great job. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-21 23:43

This is pretty solid work, and what pleases me most is that I can see slight adjustments in how you're approaching your linework at the very beginning. You start off on that first page a little uncertain, a little wobbly - but already by the second page you're demonstrating a significant increase in the confidence with which you approach the exercise, and you hold to that trend as you continue through the lesson.

As a result, your lines tend to come out quite smooth, and your ellipses achieve a consistent, even shape. Early on those ellipses come out a little bit loose, but I can see you tightening them up quite quickly.

I figure it's worth mentioning that while your ellipses in planes feel at times off, you're hitting all the points I'm looking for. You're maintaining those consistent elliptical shapes (rather than deforming them to better fill out the awkward enclosing planes), and while this sometimes throws off your accuracy, you're showing that you've got your priorities in order.

The funnels exercise is the only place where you didn't quite follow the instructions as intended. You left out the central minor axis line (the one that runs in between the two arcs of the funnel). This minor axis is extremely important, as the exercise is all about aligning your ellipses to it such that each one is cut into two equal, symmetrical halves down its narrower dimension. Your ellipses tend to be a little bit slanted in this regard, so it's definitely something to keep in mind.

Jumping ahead to the rough perspective boxes, you're doing a great job, just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes show an excellent grasp of the rotation of the forms through the horizontal and vertical axes - the only area where I think you're a bit off is the corners, where those boxes tend to stick out (both in 3D space from the rest of the boxes, and visually). Above all else, remember that you want to keep the gaps between all your boxes very narrow and consistent. You did a great job of this with the rest of the set, it's just those corners where the gap got more considerable, and those boxes fell out of sync with the others.

You've made a good start with the organic perspective boxes - as expected (this exercise is notoriously difficult and I haven't yet really taught you how to handle these free rotations of forms in space), you do have room for improvement. That said, you're demonstrating a well developing grasp of space, and I'm confident that we'll be able to iron out the issues (for example, with keeping the convergence of your sets of parallel lines consistent) fairly easily.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through the notes on that page as well as watch the video linked there, as they go over some useful techniques that will help you flesh out your grasp of 3D space and make good use of the challenge itself.

Keep up the fantastic work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-07-21 23:22

You definitely progress a fair bit as you push through the set. There are a few things I want to mention however in regards to how you're applying some of the constructional principles, or where you may be going slightly astray from them.

Before that though, I did notice that you cropped in the individual leaves quite tightly. This suggests to me that you may have wanted to show ones you specifically felt went well, which is not really what these critiques are for. In the future, show me entire pages.

Anyway, moving on. In regards to your leaves:

• You showed a really good grasp of construction with this one. You tackled a problem that was a little more advanced and did so correctly on a number of fronts. Firstly, you identified the fact that the leaf is really a series of simpler leaf constructions, and applied the steps to each one before fusing them together. Secondly, when adding the more complex edge detail, you (for the most part) ensured that your lines came off and returned to the simpler lines from the previous phase of construction. That's exactly correct, in that you're allowing the previous stage of construction determine how the form would flow through space, and all you were doing was building the additional detail around that which had already been established.

• On this page, the two towards the lower right show the opposite of that approach. You tried to jump in to a much greater level of complexity far too early, and instead of constructing each smaller element separately you tried to do so all at once. Always remember that construction is about starting everything as simply as possible and building up complexity.

• I also noticed a lot of focus on adding or attempting to imply a lot of the little details present on your leaves. This often resulted in vague marks like these. When it comes to detail in your drawings, you have two choices. You can either go the whole nine yards - which means taking a lot of time to study a reference image to identify the wealth of visual information present so each and every mark you put down corresponds to some feature you're trying to capture (rather than just putting down random marks), or you can choose to eschew detail and focus entirely on ensuring that the forms you're constructing feel solid. This exercise wasn't so much about drawing detailed leaves from reference, so it would be perfectly okay to focus entirely on construction and establishing how your leaves flow through 3D space. Either way, randomness and scribbling is never an appropriate solution to texture and detail, so refrain from doing that sort of thing in the future.

For your branches:

• You either drew each side of the form with a single continuous stroke or you did an exceptional job in applying the segment-by-segment approach described in the instructions. Based on the linework, I'm leaning towards the former, so I figure it's worth mentioning that this exercise is an opportunity to practice the technique of constructing a more complex edge with confident, controlled segments that flow into one another so as to create the impression of a single continuous line. It's an important skill, so when doing this exercise in the future be sure to apply it. If of course you were applying it, then you're doing an excellent job.

• Watch the alignment of your ellipses to the central minor axis line as well as their degrees. The degree of the ellipse tells us how the circular cross-section each ellipse represents is oriented in space relative to the viewer, so when that fails to correspond with other details (for example the spacing of the ellipses along the form - if you've got a very circular ellipse that tells us that the branch is going into the page, but your next ellipse is still roughly the same distance away as all the others had been) you can end up with conflicting visual cues.

• I find that those kinds of knots/bulges are best approached with a separate form. That is, construct a branch that is essentially just a tube of consistent width, then build a ball around a specific point to create a bulge. This generally results in a more solid and believable result.

Your plant drawings are generally pretty good. You seem to have approached these with a much keener eye when it comes to studying the information presented in your reference images, and a more consistent approach to construction. There were a few little hiccups, like:

• The little nodes on this mushroom were definitely over-constructed (that is, you put contour lines down for the sake of putting construction lines, rather than thinking about what you were trying to achieve with them, resulting in a sloppy result).

• A minor point, but for constructions like this mushroom, always be sure to draw each form in its entirety, especially how the forms intersect even when that intersection is not visible. In this case, the stem intersecting with the cap. Drawing things like that are helpful in that they help you understand how the forms relate to one another, and they help you believe in the illusion you're creating (which is the first and most important step to convince others of the lie you're peddling).

• Some of your leaves, like on your sunflower get a bit wacky in that your edges deviate way too dramatically from your flow line. That wavy flow needs to be captured in the initial flow line, not through the deviation of your edges. As shown here, the flow line basically flows through the spine of your leaf.

The last point I want to make is that you may ant to tone down the line weight a touch. Remember that it's meant to be pretty subtle - you don't want all your lines to be coming out really thick, and when you do make one line thicker than another, it should only be a shift enough for your subconscious to pick up on. It's a subtle whisper, rather than grabbing your viewer by the shoulder and shaking them as you shout in their face.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson, and keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-20 23:12

Overall you've done a pretty fantastic job. The first and most significant thing I look at with these critiques is the line quality in the first two sections. You're demonstrating a great deal of confidence with your linework, and this carries through into your ellipses as well. The result is smooth lines and even shapes without any stiffness or wobbling.

Your struggles with the ellipses in planes are understandable, for all intents and purposes, you did a good job in that you did not allow your ellipses to get deformed to match their enclosing planes. they maintained their elliptical shape regardless. Now, there is room for improvement here, but this is really what I was looking for.

In regards to your funnels, you generally did a good job here, but watch those few where the ellipses ended up a little slanted. Keep practicing on getting them all to line up to that central minor axis line, such that each ellipse is cut into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you generally did a good job by I've got two things I want to mention:

• Firstly, don't slant your boxes for this one. Stick to boxes that run parallel to the ground plane. Varying the exercise can seem more entertaining, but it's also going to distract you from the core of the exercise.

• Upon completion of this exercise, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

You did a pretty good job with the rotated boxes (though I noticed that you skipped at least one of the steps, where you lay out the four extremities on each axis to help flesh out the range of rotation you're aiming for). I'm very pleased to see that you kept the gaps between each box narrow and consistent, this definitely helped to keep things structured and eliminate as much guesswork as possible.

My only recommendation here is for those outermost boxes - try and really push and exaggerate their rotation as much as you can. If you compare the vanishing points of those boxes and their inner neighbours, you'll notice that they don't actually slide as much as they could, meaning that the rotation is minimal. Our brains prefer things to remain parallel, so they'll often trick us into thinking things have rotated more than they actually have. As a result, it becomes important to exaggerate that rotation in order to fight against this natural tendency of our brains.

For your organic perspective boxes, I'm pleased to see that you drew through most of these boxes. There is certainly room for improvement in terms of the consistent convergences of sets of parallel lines, but you're doing a great job as far as this lesson is concerned. I don't actually expect students to nail this stuff just yet.

One recommendation I do have though is in regards to scale. You've got a lot of great variation between large and small boxes here, but one thing that actually breaks the illusion of scale is that you've got a lot of small boxes situated in front of the larger boxes. We can understand that the smaller ones are in front of the boxes, but it essentially tells us that all the boxes are naturally of different sizes. In this exercise, we try to push the idea that the boxes are all the same size. This is actually a natural assumption our brains makes until it's told otherwise - that all similar objects are of the same size in 3D space, and that variation in the scale at which they're drawn corresponds to where they sit in space. That is, the smaller ones are farther away and the larger ones are closer. It ends up being a great tool for conveying the depth of the scene, so long as you don't break that illusion.

It's a pretty handy trick to keep in mind.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page before starting the work - and be sure to watch the video as well, as there are some helpful techniques that will help you to get the most out of this exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-07-20 22:44

It was difficult, but you've done a really fantastic job here. At every turn you've demonstrated a strong and continually developing grasp of all the major concepts this lesson touches upon. It's clear that you're able to discern how the various major forms that make up a given object sit in 3D space and how they relate to one another. Your various head studies show that you're able to take particular complex configurations and separate them into planes so as to construct them in as solid a manner as possible.

On top of that, you're also showing an awareness of the flow and gesture of these animals' poses - focusing so heavily on construction can easily result in a great deal of stiffness, and while I often suggest approaches that help with this, it tends to be a lot for students to absorb and apply all at once. You however have been drawing animals that convey a strong sense of life and motion, and are able to capture their weight without the associated stiffness.

Now, that isn't to say you don't have plenty of room for improvement - I think it's mostly a matter of working on your observational skills. You're doing great as is, but where things start to go askew, you're still maintaining a fairly believable construction, so it speaks to the fact that your ability to identify proportion and other matters specific to the reference image you're working from (before you actually move towards constructing what you saw or thought you saw) can certainly be improved. And it will be, with time and with practice.

I found it particularly amusing that the proportions on this big cat suggest that your observation was a little off - but frankly, I can't be sure. It's entirely possible that you were drawing a particularly fat specimen. Perhaps it's chasing a piece of cake.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was in regards to how you draw legs. There are a lot of cases here where you draw a very specific approach to drawing legs based on the reference you're working from. You often seem to be able to pull out which approach will be most effective on a case by case basis - and that's fantastic. There are however situations where the reference doesn't make this entirely clear for you, or where you're doing so a little more from your imagination, and you end up falling back to a less clear, and definitely less confident approach.

It's this "default" approach to legs that I want you to give some thought to. Personally, my default is to construct legs with sausages - that is, forms akin to two spheres connected by a tube of consistent width. Reason being that this allows me to convey a lot of flow and rhythm in how each segment's sausage curves.

What you don't want to do is try and capture the entire length of a leg (multiple segments) in a single complex form. You also don't want to capture the segments with forms that don't allow for a certain amount of flex. Stretched ovals for instance have a tendency of being in their nature quite stiff.

Looking at the coyote demo (actually, it was a wolf!), you'll see how I generally fall back onto these interpenetrating sausages, before dropping a contour line right at the point where they intersect to reinforce the joint. This tends to work pretty well no matter what kind of animal I'm drawing, so at the same time, if I'm piecing something together more from my imagination, I know I can fall back to that and it'll turn out solid.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You've done some fantastic work here, and should be proud of yourself. Keep it up.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-07-19 21:44

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but there are a few things I want you to take note of:

• Your ellipses are quite stiff, and when it comes to the smaller ones, it doesn't look like you're drawing through them. Every mark you draw needs to focus first and foremost on achieving a confident flow. Accuracy is second to that. Focusing too much on accuracy and control will result in marks that feel stiff and uneven.

• The cylinders you've drawn for your flower pots are still quite weak, so that's something you're going to want to work on. Make sure your minor axis extends all the way through both ellipses (rather than stopping at the midpoint of either).

• For the branches, continue to practice these as part of your regular warmup routine - specifically you'll want to reduce the tendency to hook your segments slightly. If you look closely, you can see the ends of those segments jerking away, so when you go on to draw the next segment, there's a visible divergence there. Honing your use of the ghosting method in this context can help reduce this response to the end of a line.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-18 20:56

Overall you're doing a pretty good job! I definitely agree that you'll need to focus to get a little more accustomed to ghosting, and finding the rhythm/pacing that works for you - just always remember that the confidence of that final stroke is what's most important. Whether you're drawing a straight line, a curve or an ellipse, you've got to make sure that you focus all your time on the preparation/ghosting phase. Once your pen touches the page, you've committed yourself and can't let your brain interfere anymore. Trust in your muscles and push forward.

Now, it is important to point out that I don't see any significant wobbling in your lines, so that's good. It's just a bit of a tendency to waver or go a little off course initially, which suggests to me a little jerk of hesitation at times. Overall though you improve on this throughout the set, so I think it's really a matter of continuing to practice with it while keeping your mind on this issue.

Aside from that though, you're doing great. I can see that you're clearly following the instructions to the letter, especially in the boxes section. Your rough perspective boxes show a clear grasp of how vanishing points work, and I'm pleased to see you double checking your alignments after the fact. You also did a fantastic job with both the rotated and organic perspective boxes exercises, which are purposely meant to be more challenging than most students at this stage can handle.

My only recommendation on the rotated boxes is to try and tuck in the far edges of the outermost boxes. So if you look at the horizontal middle row of boxes, you want the furthest left edge to move more towards the right (so the face of that box turns more to the side), and you want the furthest right edge to move more towards the left. This is essentially to push and exaggerate the rotation further, as right now those outermost faces are still set at a fairly similar angle to their neighbours.

Keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. It looks like you've decided to move onto the 250 box challenge next, which is a great choice. The notes there about drawing through boxes, and the double-checking technique described in the video are extremely useful when it comes to further solidifying your grasp of 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects"

2018-07-18 20:42

Your work here is fantastic - and frankly, I think the struggles at the beginning with the soda can highlights it. You're demonstrating an excellent grasp of boxy forms with a lot of clear planes throughout the set. This isn't uncommon at this point, as they tend to be the easier sort, but your execution conveys a sense of solidity and weight that I don't see too often and that students require much further experience and practice to pull off. It's very clear to me that you completely believe in the illusion you're producing, and it's this belief that pushes beyond your conscious decisions of construction to those only managed by one's subconscious once they've properly given themselves over. It's like how when you believe the lie you're telling someone, you can't help but be convincing and genuine about it.

Now, you did struggle more with your cylinder-based constructions, but I saw considerable improvements, and the sheer amount of care and conscientiousness really pushed you beyond. You didn't skip any steps - one area where students are bound to get sloppy is where the micron's gap connects to its body - there's an inset ellipse there that is frankly an annoyance to draw, but it speaks volumes that you saw fit to draw it in with as much care as you drew everything else.

The light bulb and the lamp are areas where your ellipses really push past the realm of struggles - you managed them extremely well, and I'm very pleased with how you managed to play with line weight without your strokes straying too far from their targets, or without having to draw them so slowly as to cause wobbling.

If I wasn't clear enough already, your work is fantastic. I see no issues with your technique or approach - at this point all that's left is to continue honing those most basics of skills, the sort of thing that one never truly masters, but keeps inching ahead. That is, continuing to push the confidence of your lines, continuing to work on your execution of those initial boxes and cylinders, and so on. All of which is already coming along well, but will always benefit from regular practice.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'm very interested in seeing how you manage with lesson 7 - it is essentially a more difficult version of this lesson where proportions and observation come even more into play while holding the same emphasis on clear and concise construction. Best of luck!

Uncomfortable in the post "Wolf Construction Demo"

2018-07-17 19:48

The lessons on this subreddit (and drawabox.com as a whole) focus very heavily on construction. This means taking complex objects and breaking them down into their major forms. Rather than focusing on specifically how to draw, say, animals or plants or insects, we use those types of objects as a way to teach how to apply construction to anything.

As a result, we don't dig into the specifics of muscles and bones - we look at what we can see, and attempt to break it down into forms we can draw confidently on the page.

Now, delving into that internal structure can help a lot when it comes to knowing what to look for. For example, knowing where the ribcage usually sits can help tell us what kind of landmarks to identify when studying our reference. Identifying the many bumps and masses on an animal can be quite confusing at times, so that's definitely a good idea for a student who wants to take things further. It's simply not what we're delving into here.

That said, individual muscles are less important than the muscle groups. Aside from a few major ones, it's more about how a variety of muscles coalesce to create a visible form, rather than being overly specific. The same principles apply to drawing humans.

Uncomfortable in the post "Wolf Construction Demo"

2018-07-17 14:50

Hahahaha. I think it comes down to context - a lot of the stuff people consider to be "RestOfTheFuckingOwl" material is actually pretty useful, given that it's not presented in isolation.

... Obviously not the owl one though. That one's terrible.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-07-17 04:23

Oh! One last thing. I had posted this demo a while back. In case you didn't see it, it details the head construction process in greater detail.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-07-17 01:52

Nice work completing the challenge! I can definitely see your eye for the convergences improving over the set, and it shows in your corrections. Those extended lines come increasingly closer to being spot on.

One thing I do feel you could have touched on more (or really at all) was boxes with vanishing points that sit much farther away. In this set you've really focused on fairly dramatic foreshortening, which usually implies an object that is either very close to the viewer, or very large (like looking at the top of a tall building from the ground). Objects with shallower foreshortening, whose vanishing points tend to sit much farther away and tend to have a more gradual convergence usually represent objects of a more relatable scale.

Keep that in mind as you continue pushing forwards. In addition to this, be sure to review the notes on the challenge page about line weight - that's a great way to kick your boxes up to the next level by reinforcing their cohesion and solidity.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-17 01:44

Definitely better. You'll certainly see improvement on those rough perspective boxes as you continue to move forwards (remember that these exercises should be incorporated into a regular warmup routine consisting of 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting), but you're showing considerable improvement in your line quality over before.

Your rotated boxes are really remarkably well done. You've really nailed those rotations.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-07-17 01:34

I spent about 2 hours on this critique, so there won't be much of a written component.

Here's the critique and here's how I would have tackled the wolf.

I'd like you to redo the lesson. I'd like you to start by drawing the same wolf again after looking over my demonstration (ideally I want you to follow along with it). Then I want you to do the full set assigned for this lesson, and then lastly I want you to do the wolf again. Both attempts at the wolf should include step-by-step photos as you've done this time.

I also don't want you to submit any sooner than August 1st.

Lastly, pay special attention to how you're drawing those contour curves - you may want to go back and specifically practice the organic forms with contour curves. Your contour lines are very stiff and uneven, and your degrees are off. As explained here, the degree of the ellipse or curve is important to demonstrate how that cross-section is oriented relative to the viewer in space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-07-16 17:17

Thanks for catching that! I've made a new thread, but I'll go ahead and critique your work here. Overall you've demonstrated a good deal of growth in your understanding of space and how these cylinders are to be constructed over the full set. You're definitely quite mindful of your minor axis and keeping your ellipses aligned, so that's fantastic.

There are two areas I believe require more of your focus. The first and definitely the most important is your line quality. I see a lot of stiffness and wobbling - I think this may be more due to how you're adding line weight rather than how you're drawing your initial lines (I could be wrong on that point). Just remember that the ghosting method - which should be applied regardless of whether you're drawing your initial lines or if you're adding line weight) relies on building up the muscle memory and familiarity with the stroke you want to put down, followed by a confident, persistent execution resulting in a smooth mark.

Once your pen touches the page, you are committed - at this point, you cannot allow your brain and eyes to guide your hand. All your trust must go into your arm, which has by this point repeated the motion several times. If you still mess up with a slightly inaccurate line, that's totally fine. It's not the end of the world - but if you freeze up and draw slowly out of fear of making a mistake, then you won't move forward from there.

The second point is that you should focus more on the techniques involving starting from a box. I saw a couple places where you attempted this, but it's definitely a useful technique to drill. It'll allow you to construct a cylinder that exists in a very specific location relative to other forms in a drawing, which is a challenge that has already come up in lesson 6, and will continue to be a major player in lesson 7.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2018-07-16 17:11

It definitely shows that this isn't your first run through - you've done an excellent job across the board. Your lines are confident and smooth, your ellipses are all evenly shaped and well controlled, and your boxes convey a strong grasp of 3D space as well as how those forms relate to one another and the world around them.

You've taken the time required to put out the best of your abilities for each exercise, and it's clear. I don't see any instructions that have been skipped or ignored, just the result of clear discipline and care.

I think your rotated boxes came out quite well, but the rotation along the horizontal axis is definitely much better than the same for the verticals. If you identify where the vanishing points end up being as the boxes rotate, you'll find that the sliding for the horizontal boxes is more dramatic and exaggerated (which is exactly what we want in order to fill out the full range of rotation).

Similarly, you did a great job with the organic perspective boxes, with some small areas where continued practice will yield further growth. Keep an eye on the consistent convergences of your lines as they recede towards their vanishing points, and also don't stop drawing a form when it gets overlapped by a neighbour. Draw each form to completion, and worry about overlaps later. This gives you a better sense of how each form sits in 3D space, so those that end up only partially drawn will tend to come out weaker for this reason.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-07-16 15:53

I generally recommend Proko, as I've given his videos a cursory glance and they seem solid. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to dive into any online figure drawing courses or books at any sort of depth due to my time being taken up by drawabox (and I learned what I know on the topic from a course I took in person).