Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-08 22:51

I'd definitely recommend submitting it if you have it. It is after all a prerequisite for moving onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-07 23:31

Looking good! Your confidence of execution has definitely improved considerably over this set, and I'm very pleased to see how thorough you were in marking out those line extensions. Your box constructions also become considerably more consistent, and the illusion of solidity for each form improves as well.

Whenever you practice this in the future, I want to recommend (if you're not doing this already) to try and visualize those line extensions before you actually draw the edges of the box at all. Try and think about which vanishing point you're aiming for, even if it is far off the page. I've noticed that even though you do show a fair bit of improvement over all, the mistakes still suggest that you may not be as conscious of what you should be aiming for with these convergences as you construct each box.

As you prepare for each stroke, try ghosting further along the line's trajectory, to get a fuller sense of how your lines are going to converge together. You may also want to lay down the points for many of your lines first, in order to get a better estimation of how they're going to behave together, before actually committing to any of the full marks.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Most students do complete lesson 1 first, before moving onto this challenge - since you've done it a little backwards, I want to let you know that this technique of drawing through your boxes is one you should expect to use whenever you're drawing three dimensional forms in these lessons - even if it's not explicitly stated or demonstrated in that exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-07 23:25

You show quite a bit of improvement over the set, and your last three pages demonstrate a strong grasp of the lesson material. I do have a few things to bring to your attention, but overall you're doing quite well.

• For your stems exercises, I am noticing a break of flow at each ellipse - rather than having your segments flowing fluidly into one another, there's a visible sharp transition that you'll want to work on eradicating. Remember that the goal is to keep everything flowing together. In addition, remember that the degree of the ellipses you're using communicates the orientation of that circular cross-section relative to the viewer. If it's wide and circular, that cross-section is facing the viewer dead-on. If it's very narrow, it's pointing its face across the viewing plane. You can see this if you try holding up a coin and rotating it in front of you. I noticed that your ellipses were generally all of the same degree, which suggested that you may not have been thinking a lot about that particular property.

• I caught in some of your pages that you were jumping the gun in terms of leaf complexity without providing the appropriate in-between phases of building up support/scaffolding. Here's a demonstration of what I mean. You actually do improve on this on this page, although I do think it's still worth mentioning. Also, on that page where it's better, you can see your wavy edges falling both above and below your simpler curve. Instead, you want the simpler curve to define one of the bounds - either upper or lower, and then have the waves come off it. Each wavy bump should be drawn individually, rather than as a continuous wave going back and forth, as it becomes much easier to think of what we're drawing as just 2D marks on a flat page, rather than focusing on the actual three dimensional construction.

Aside from these two points, you're doing very well. I especially do like that page I just referenced, the second from the end. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-03-07 03:05

Ask me that again with your next submission and I'll draw it for you. For now, that's the last thing you should be thinking about.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-06 20:09

Thanks for the increase. So you've got a good start here, but there are a few things that I'd like to point out that may help how you think about 3D space.

Firstly, with both the leaves and the branches, right now it seems to me your mind is still a bit trapped within the two dimensions of the page. You're starting to break free of it, but when you draw those initial lines - the central flowing line of your leaves, and the minor axis line of your branches - you're mainly thinking about drawing a line across the page itself. So, the result is that your branches and your leaves really only flow across the page as well, and don't actually move into the depth of a third dimension.

The first step is always to be convinced yourself in the fact that you're not drawing marks on a page - what you're doing is constructing objects within a full 3D world, and the page itself is just the window you use to look out onto that world. Like spying through a keyhole at the room beyond.

So when you draw those initial lines, you've got to think about how they're moving through all three dimensions of space. You've got to think about how they're coming out towards you, or plunging deeper into the depth of the scene. Something that I find helps is to draw the lines as arrows - that is, actually place a little arrowhead at the end, to get yourself thinking about how this is a line that is in motion through space.

Next, take a look at your branches specifically, and the ellipses you use to construct them. Those ellipses, as I mention in the videos associated with the organic forms with contour ellipses exercise, represent the circular cross-sections of those forms. The degree (width) of the ellipses tells us of the angle at which we are looking at those circles. If it's very skinny, the circle's face is pointing across our plane of vision. If it's very wide, the circle's face is pointing more towards us. I explain this further in these notes.

When you're setting out your ellipses for this branches exercise, you need to consider the orientation of each cross-section. At this point, is the branch going to be flowing across our plane of vision, is it going to be flowing towards the viewer, or is it going to be somewhere in between?

Lastly, I think when constructing those branches, it's best for you to try and keep their widths pretty consistent throughout. Avoid any tapering or swelling, just focus on a simple tube flowing through space, of a uniform width. Simplicity is key. You'll also want to draw them a little bigger - since this is very much about thinking about space, and tackling spatial problems, giving your brain more room to think through them by drawing bigger is going to help.

Onto the actual plants.

• Page 1. First thing that jumps out at me is that you've drawn two lines down the center of each leaf form, are than the single line to define its flow. Even if you've got a thick, healthy stem down the middle, it's not important at this initial stage of construction. You want to focus on establishing how that leaf flows through space, with a single line - then enclose the leaf's area with yet two more simple lines, one on each side. I did notice though that you didn't add the wavy edges until after you'd done the simple construction, so good on you for that.

• Page 4. I noticed at the bottom of this that your stems stopped where they were overlapped by other leaf forms. When it comes to understanding how all your forms sit in 3D space, it's very important to draw through everything. If you only draw things so far as you can see them in your reference photo, then you're only really thinking about then in terms of being 2D shapes. You've got to extend that and fill in some of the blanks to establish how everything occupies 3D space.

• Page 6. The plant on the top is similar in structure to this video demo. In the same way I handle that hibiscus, you should have your leaves flowing out from the center, rather than drawing half-leaves. Like I mention above, draw through your forms, and explore the entirety of each one. The pitcher plant on the bottom of this page has a solid core. The area where the branch comes out gets pretty stiff and your lines don't flow together too well there, but the core bulb section feels quite solid. I also like the way you've handled the leaf along the rim of its opening.

• This one is, constructionally, pretty good. In the same way all of your leaves seem to flow only in the two dimensions of the page, it does need work - but as far as the process of construction goes, it's well done.

• This page looks quite unfinished to me. There is definitely a lot more going on, but you stopped midway. I encourage you to see your constructions all the way through. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of visual information present in a reference image. When this happens, take a step back and try to think about the core components in the image and their attributes. If you've got a box-ish flower pot, think about what other parts make up its forms. Okay, it's largely a box, but is there more to it? Is there an opening? Does it have a rim? Is there thickness to that rim? Start with a box as your basis, but push it further to communicate the full extent of what makes up that object.

I've outlined a lot here, so take some time to absorb it all. You may want to read through it a few times, and it's a good idea to revisit the lesson notes and videos as well. Once you've had the chance to do that, I'd like you to try your hand at:

• 1 page of leaves

• 1 page of stems/branches

• 4 pages of plant drawings.

Remember the flow of your forms through all three dimensions of space, and that the page you're drawing on is only a window to a larger 3D space. It does take time to disengage from that mental block, but the first and most important part of learning to convince others that what you've drawn is three dimensional, is to be convinced of it yourself.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-06 19:25

Overall you've got a lot of good stuff. I did notice a few things that I'd like to point out, and I do agree that your use of hatching is a bit misguided at times.

I noticed on this page a couple things. You seem to be somewhat overusing those contour ellipses. Before drawing them, consider their purpose - we use contour curves to help either reinforce our forms (which one or two will often do nicely for even a long length of form), or more specifically to branches such as these, we use them as a sort of connect-the-dots of sorts, so we can construct longer lengths in segments, while focusing on getting them to flow together neatly.

From what I can see, your segments would cover many ellipses. In some cases it was a matter of some ellipses simply being extraneous, and in others, you were attempting to draw segments longer than you should have, resulting in areas where your branches would pinch unintentionally along the way. This undermines some of the solidity of your construction.

I also noticed that your branches had some bulging to them. A recommendation I have is that you'll probably find your constructions will maintain more solidity to them if you first construct the branches to be more consistent in their widths, then add the bulges on afterwards (like adding a sphere around an existing tube).

While this page was a little unclear, I quite liked the way you handled the main section of the venus fly trap. The leaves were sloppily done though, and look more like an after thought.

As you push on through the set, pages like this and this come out quite nicely, though on the latter one, make sure you cap off any forms rather than letting things like stems run on and suddenly stop with two parallel lines. Constructions should always be closed in order to reinforce the illusion of form.

As far as your use of shadow in texture goes, the core bulb of this one was exceptional. You've leveraged the shadows between the little layered plates very nicely, and it's clear that what you've drawn is less about lines and more about the shadows they cast by occluding the light. As for the shadows under the leaves, I think investing in a brush pen might be your best bet.

It's important that when creating these shadow shapes, you are designing something specific and clear - the way you've filled them in has resulted in all kinds of little unintentional hairs along their edges, likely in you furiously trying to fill it in. There is absolutely great value in filling them in to be as solid as possible (which is why a brush pen would do the job a little better), as the little slivers of white against the sea of black tend to stand out quite a bit and call attention to themselves.

When it comes to a shadow shape, its edges are key. While the interior of the shape is filled and solid, it's those edges that imply what kind of surface that deep shadow contains - you can use the edge to communicate it for that entire space. That's why these transitory areas between shadow and light are the most important section of a form, when it comes to actually conveying the texture. The light areas are mostly going to be blasted away by direct light, and the shadows with the complete absence of it. In between, we have enough of both to show more complexity.

As a rule, I prefer that students stay away from hatching lines when they're attempting to draw actual texture. I'm glad to see that you transitioned away from using them yourself. The thing about hatching is that it's a filler - students will often use it to represent the presence of texture, without ever actually taking the time to observe what is there. They'll use it when they're focusing on rendering (applying form shadow and light, as opposed to the cast shadows we focus on), often to reinforce the solidity of their forms.

That is not what we're doing here - we utilize those cast shadows as a tool to communicate aspects of what is being drawn. Our construction alone is enough to hold up the solidity of what we've drawn, and the illusion of form, so any shading/rendering we might add after the fact would only be either to communicate some other specific bit of information (as a tool to that end), or as decoration. We're not worried about decoration here - only communication.

Overall you're doing very well, especially in those last handful of pages. I think you've clearly wrestled with challenges of your own, and have come up with a lot of great solutions. With the few recommendations I've made here, I think you're ready to move onto the next lesson. Be sure to keep my points in mind as you move on ahead, and I'll go ahead and mark this one as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-06 16:34

Hey, you probably missed the announcement I made last week in regards to changes to the patreon tiers. To sum things up, I've changed things around to better reflect how much time critiquing some lesson takes me on average, compared to others.

Those pledging $3+ will be eligible for critiques on lessons 1 and 2, as well as the box/cylinder challenges. $7+ will be eligible for critiques on lessons 3 and 4 and the texture challenge. $10+ will be eligible for critiques on lessons 5-7 and the treasure chest challenge.

This is understandably pushing beyond some students' means, so many people have decided to cancel their pledges, but it's a necessary change to ensure that I am able to keep up with my other projects.

Also I noticed you mistakenly included a link to a youtube video, rather than your homework.

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

2018-03-05 23:06

It's more about investing more time into the planning stages, and spending more time ghosting. You should still be executing your marks with a confident pace - not necessarily as fast as you can go, but fast enough to maintain a smooth stroke.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-05 18:38

Oh! In that case, yes. Organic intersections are a great choice.

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

2018-03-05 17:27

First you draw the entire thing, one mark per line, not worrying about where the additional weight goes. Then you go back and apply additional weight similarly to the super imposed lines exercise, though you limit the weight to certain local areas rather than attempting to cover long lengths of line or entire shapes, focusing on clarifying specific overlaps. You draw those additional marks with the same confident, persistent pace you would have drawn the initial marks, using the ghosting method. Each additional mark should still be planned out, and done individually.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-05 17:25

As mentioned in the intro video and elsewhere, you should still be continuing to practice those lesson 1/2 exercises as part of a regular warmup routine. Pick two or three at the beginning of each sitting and do them for 10-15 minutes total. This will gradually improve your ability to capture those volumes and establish the illusion of weight.

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

2018-03-04 21:20

Pretty good work overall. I was especially impressed with your dissections - you did a fantastic job of capturing a variety of textures, and doing so with clear intention and conscious organization of details to communicate the surface quality rather than just attempting to mindlessly reproduce what was present in the photo. It definitely takes you a step above what I was expecting.

Your organic forms with contour lines were done well, and you managed to capture their volumes and reinforce their solidity to great effect.

For the arrows, I have just one recommendation - try to exaggerate the scale of the ends closer and further away from the viewer. Right now the scale stays fairly consistent throughout - by pushing the far end to be much smaller, and the closer end to be much larger, you can really achieve a stronger sense of depth in your scene.

I do agree that you certainly struggled somewhat with the form intersections, but I think you were allowing the challenge of figuring out how they intersect with one another to distract you from the main focus of the exercise. You'll notice that in the instructions, I talk about laying out all of my forms independently first, focusing only on whether or not their foreshortening feels consistent between them. The intersections themselves come afterwards, and are intentionally beyond what I'd expect you to be able to do right now. I think you focused too much on those intersections, allowing them to become the main challenge of the exercise, to the detriment of the simpler aspect.

I do feel that you managed things reasonably well on this page, though it's clear that your line quality suffered overall (perhaps you didn't pay enough attention to ghosting and drawing with a confident, persistent pace) so your lines stiffened somewhat.

Your organic intersections came along well, and demonstrated a good grasp of how these forms interact with one another.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I do think you should try and practice the form intersections a little further for yourself - not to focus on the intersections themselves, but on the actual purpose of the exercise as explained in the instructions. That is up to you however - I think you've demonstrated a good enough grasp of that to move forwards. You'll have plenty of opportunities to test yourself on that when tackling the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as warmups anyway.

Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

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

2018-03-04 21:10

That's not really how this works. I told you to move onto the 250 box challenge because you need in order to develop a strong enough grasp of 3D space to move tackle the later lessons. While it its technically an "optional" exercise, I've assigned it to you as a prerequisite to moving onto lesson 2 based on what you require. That direct guidance and instruction is what you're paying for.

Looking over this submission, there are a great many instructions you've missed.

• Not including the minor axis in your organic forms with contour curves and aligning your curves to it

• Your first page of dissections was fine (aside from the missing minor axis) but the rest kind of went off in some other direction.

• Your form intersections are lacking. The one dissection on this page was okay (you drew through your forms, and included a couple of good intersections between forms, though you didn't fill the page as instructed), other pages were half-finished. The lesson asks for 4 filled pages.

Is it fair to assume that since you'd completed this lesson previously on your own, you may not have read the instructions as carefully this time around, and perhaps didn't watch the videos that have been included with each exercise? You seem rather impatient to me, and that is going to bite you in the long run.

Go complete the 250 box challenge, then try this lesson again. I assure you that once you've taken the time to work through that challenge with the care and patience it requires, you'll find yourself much better equipped - not just as far as your understanding of 3D space goes, but also your ability to focus on instructions and complete work without rushing through.

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

2018-03-04 20:55

Pretty solid work overall. A few things to keep in mind, but generally you're doing quite well.

• Watch the alignment of your contour curves on the organic forms. You want to keep in mind that these curves are just the visible portion of a larger ellipse, and that ellipse must be bisected by the minor axis line, cut into two equal, symmetrical halves. Many of your curves seem to be a little bit off in this regard.

• Same goes for your organic forms with contour ellipses, actually. Take a little more time to think about that alignment. You want the cross-sections you're defining with those ellipses to be cut perpendicular to the overall flow of the form.

• Pretty good work with the arrows, just play a little more with the idea that the arrows are coming out from the depth of your page, rather than flowing over it. It'll help you to explore all three dimensions, rather than just defined by the paper.

• Your dissections are stunning. You've demonstrated fantastic care and patience, as well as a great sense of balance when it comes to presenting your textures in a way that does not become too noisy or contrasty.

• Your form intersections demonstrate a strong grasp of 3D space, and of how all these forms intersect with one another. The intersections themselves were well done too, even though that section goes beyond the scope of this exercise. Overall, your forms feel consistent and cohesive.

• You've demonstrated a good grasp of how those organic forms interact with one another in the organic intersections. My only comment is that you should probably push your line weights a little more to clarify how they overlap each other. Right now it's a mostly uniform collection of lines, and is a little difficult to pick apart at a glance.

Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one. Also, in case you didn't see the recent patreon announcement, just a reminder that the tier system has changed. You've just completed all the eligible lessons for the first tier ($3+). Critiques for lessons 3-4 are available for those pledging $7+, and critiques for lessons 5-7 and available to those pledging $10+.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-03-04 20:47

There's a lot good here, but I've got some points to raise. I am going to be marking this lesson as complete because you're demonstrating a good deal of competency in individual images, but you've got some that kinda went off the rails.

Things to work on:

• Your leaves are coming out well, but I could see a visible struggle to get yourself to get them to twist, against a need to keep your leaves flat. Twisting is good - keep working on pushing through that.

• Be mindful of where and how your various forms connect to one another. Actually draw in the point where they connect - usually going to be an ellipse in these drawings.

• Remember that flower pots are not paper thin - they've got thickness to them, so you'll want to draw an inset ellipse at its opening to establish the rim.

• You're definitely overusing contour lines - remember that they serve a purpose, there's a particular goal to them. Think about what you're trying to achieve with each mark you're about to put down, and consider whether or not how you intend to achieve it.

• You're drawing complete forms, not individual lines. If a line ends up sitting on itself without being part of a complete and solid form, then it should not be there at all. The spines on the venus fly trap were pretty catastrophically sloppy.

Here's some notes and little examples that should explain the points I mentioned above. Consider this lesson complete, and feel free to move onto the next one whilst keeping these points in mind.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-03-04 20:13

At the end of the day, regardless of how you went about it, you did convey a strong grasp of the core principles of these lessons. It's less about the how, and entirely about why one might draw something in a particular fashion, and the what - the result that comes of it. Your constructions push the solidity of your animals, and show the viewer exactly how each one sits in 3D space.

You go into a good deal of depth with each component and how they all connect to one another. There's very little guesswork here, nothing pasted on like a sticker - everything's a clear form, and they all fit together like a puzzle. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

Now my one concern does come from those legs. Not because it was wrong to tackle them the way you did (it certainly wasn't), but because any time a student professes an inability to approach things in one way and therefore felt they had to tackle it in another throws up a red flag for me.

Looking back over your work, I do think I can see signs of you implementing some of that 2D-gestural-shape, at least to some extent. If you look at this leaping horse, we can see areas where you leave gaps between the forms, then reinforce the joints with contour lines. This is essentially the technique - where you allow things to get a little more gestural and fluid, and then go back to reign them back in with some solidity. It becomes particularly useful when you've got bodies in motion - everything being blocked out too strictly leads to a sense of stiffness and rigidity that can contradict the sense that the object is moving.

It comes down to seeing the limbs as being more like a series of flexible tubes at their core. You can build up muscle form around them, but starting off with something a little more like rubber will give you that sort of needed springiness. Of course, the tubes is one way of accomplishing that sort of springiness, because it allows us as a process to not worry too much about solidity at first and push the exaggeration of such things before reinforcing them afterwards. There are other approaches that can achieve a similar effect.

If we look at this page, I think we can see two separate examples - one on the left where you achieved the sense of motion quite well, and one on the right where it got quite stiff and rigid.

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

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

2018-03-04 19:28

I wrote out some notes for your latest attempt, and just as I was about to write this critique, I realized that one major component that was missing was also missing in your last set. I was a bit too focused on your victories there, that I failed to notice at the time.

It's the minor axis of your cylindrical objects. Of course, having gone through the cylinder challenge, and having watched the material in the lesson, you should have already been aware of this. All of your cylindrical forms must be constructed around a minor axis to ensure that your ellipses remain aligned to one another. This would have been incredibly valuable in your hourglasses, as well as other constructions like your lamp.

You seem to have a habit of making several leaps forwards, and then sliding back to ignoring the basic concepts covered in these lessons. I get that there are large gaps between your submissions, so you probably have periods of time where you are not regularly doing the basics exercises (mind you, you SHOULD be doing your best to commit 10-15 minutes every few days) but at the very least you should at least review the pertinent lesson material after each gap.

You're also still very much struggling with your boxes - this is definitely in big part because you didn't apply the line extension method to all of your boxes when doing the 250 box challenge. You demonstrated that you tried it for a handful, but the point is that it's meant to show you your mistakes in an explicit fashion, so you can then go onto the next page, try to compensate for those mistakes, and then check them again.

Looking at the box for the pencil sharpener for instance, your convergences are way off, especially for the vertical lines - to the point that they're not converging as they move farther away from the viewer, they are diverging.

Lastly, please stop using hatching lines altogether. You have a habit of misusing them (being very scribbly/haphazard/sloppy with them), and using them in inappropriate places (like colouring things in you feel are darker - the colour of the material doesn't matter, imagine that what you're drawing is solid white and focus purely on the construction).

You do have one very strong construction here - the ketchup bottle. It was very well executed, and though there definitely would have been a use for a minor axis for the cylinders along the top, it came out look quite good. The label was also constructed very nicely, although you largely relied on guesswork for it rather than explicitly subdividing your box or mirroring measurements across the central axis to be more precise. I did notice though that some of your lines here seem to consist of several different marks, like you've reflexively reinforced them. It doesn't look like an attempt to add line weight - the top section of the bottle seems to have three distinct marks for each line going up its length. I have no idea why, but please refrain from doing this. One mark per line, period.

Here are my direct observations of your work: https://i.imgur.com/2nXBZeM.png

Here's what I want you to do:

• Using a RULER this time (lets try and strip away some of the additional difficulties that are getting in the way and focus on the meat of this lesson), I want you to do four pages of everyday object drawings. This also means that I expect you to draw ONE mark per line. For any curving lines, apply the ghosting method.

• Rewatch the videos and reread the notes for the 250 box challenge, the 250 cylinder challenge AND this lesson. Do it more than once if you have to.

• No guesswork. Subdivide your boxes as much as you need to to be precise.

• Do your warmups regularly - even if you're caught in periods of time where you can't work on the lesson work itself, you NEED to be practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2, as well as freely rotated boxes and cylinders from the challenges. Set aside 15-20 minutes every day, or every couple of days and spend it doing 3 or 4 of these exercises.

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

2018-03-04 18:33

You've got some nice work here, though I do have a few points to bring to your attention that should help you develop your skills.

Overall your grasp of form is coming along well, as is your general use of construction. You're showing a good understanding of the components that go into a more complex object, and are quite mindful of how they connect to one another. This establishes a good sense of 3D space.

There are a couple things that jump out at me as holding you back a little however.

• Your linework is quite timid, and relies heavily on you drawing with a light hand at first, drawing many marks for a single line, and 'choosing' one to emphasize. This ultimately undermines the solidity of your forms and makes things look a little chicken scratchy, or at least sketchy. We want to ensure that every mark we put down is the result of conscious planning beforehand, ghosting, and ultimately a confident execution. When we draw timidly, it's because we don't feel confident in our ability to nail something beforehand. We draw lighter, and do more of our thinking directly on the page, and it really gives the impression that we're not buying into the illusions we're creating. This in turn erodes the effectiveness of that illusion for the viewer.

• Commit to your decisions. Part of drawing confidently means committing to the marks we've made. Our marks aren't all going to come out as we want them to, but we need to learn to roll with the punches. Demonstrating that you are of two minds in a drawing will again, undermine the illusion of solidity. Take a look at this beetle. Notice how at the far left of its abdomen, you've got two curves - one goes a little further out, and another darker one cuts across the original shape that was placed on the page. This "trimming" doesn't take how the forms exist in 3D space into consideration at all - it acts on the shapes that are on the page, and as such it reinforces the idea that these are just flat marks on a flat piece of paper.

• You might be drawing too many contour lines. They're not too bad because you're drawing them faintly, but in essence, since that undermines the methodology we're after here, you're going to have to be more economical with your contour curves. For the most part, a lot of those curves aren't really contributing anything of their own. One or two will usually do the job along a fairly long length of form, and any more you add after that will have drastically diminishing returns.

• Always work from simple to complex. Generally you're doing a good job of this, but the abdomen of this wasp stood out to me. It doesn't look like there was any sort of underlying construction onto which the layers of segmentation were constructed. The form itself came out quite flat as well because of the inherent complexity to it - it should have been broken down more from the outset.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You bring a lot of great stuff to the table, and have a good grasp of how 3D space works, but you've got to work on being more decisive. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2018-03-03 03:02

Overall very nice work. I do have a few points to raise, but as it stands you're doing a great job. The issues are less about the exercises themselves, and more in how you approach them.

Your arrows flow really nicely through space, giving a good sense of depth. Your organic forms with contour lines - both ellipses and curves - convey a strong illusion of volume and form. Your dissections are fantastic, with a great variety of texture, as well as a strong grasp of how light plays off those textures to create the little cast shadows that you've drawn there.

Your form intersections are well done, but there are a couple things I want you to avoid in the future:

• Stick to one pen weight (the recommended 0.5, or whatever you have that is closest). Having such a significant margin that comes from using an entirely different pen tramples the subtlety that is inherent in successful weight variation. Additionally, I insist on the same pen tip being used because it forces you to learn to control your use of pressure.

• In the form intersections video, I talk about how to apply weight, and more importantly, how not to apply it. I mention that applying it uniformly to the entirety of a length of line or an entire shape is not how it should be done. Instead you should be applying it specifically to certain local areas, largely to clarify overlaps. You don't want it to become a sort of graphic outline, and you don't want to end up in a situation where you're forced to draw that additional line slowly and carefully because the length of line you're trying to match is rather long. This will make things look stiff. Instead you want to apply that weight the same way you drew the original mark - with a confident, persistent stroke following the ghosting method.

• Do not add rendering (distinguishing between light and shadow) to your drawings. In some cases we use hatching on a specific face - this is not to denote form shading, but rather to distinguish that face from others in order to clarify certain illusions that can occur when we draw through our forms. You'll notice that I don't actually cover any sort of rendering in my lessons - it's because I strongly believe that a student who can learn to convey form without its use is going to be in a much stronger position than one who has learned to use it as a crutch. Nail drawing without shading, and once the time comes to add light and shadow, it'll just be decoration on top of an already strong and solid construction.

Your organic intersections came out fairly well, though a couple of them had contour curves that didn't quite hook around properly (4 stood out in this regard). You generally did capture the interaction between the forms well though. I recommend that when doing this exercise, or really any of the drawabox exercises involving 3D forms, that you give yourself a lot more room to draw. Our brains benefit considerably from being given more room to think through spatial problems, whereas if we force it into a minimal corner of a page, things tend to stiffen up. And of course, none of those little grey shadows, for the same reason mentioned in regards to the form intersections.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-03-03 02:51

There is definitely improvement on the points you mentioned - line quality and accuracy of your convergences - but also in the illusion of solidity in your forms. That's definitely great to see.

As far as that line quality goes, while you certainly have improved significantly, I do still think that you'll want to continue paying special attention to your use of the ghosting method when adding line weight. At the beginning of the set, your basic lines were wavering somewhat - by the end, your lines were much straighter and smoother. The lines where you'd gone back over with additional weight however were still coming out a little stiff and uncertain. This is because when you added that weight, you did so with a slower stroke - you need to get used to adding that weight with the same kind of confidence you drew the initial mark, even if that results in mistakes here and there.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-03-03 02:41

Very nice work! I'm loving the confidence behind each ellipse - they're very smooth and evenly shaped. Your lines are as well, you're doing a great job of maintaining straight, smooth lines and together they go a long way to convey the illusion of solid, cohesive form. I'm also glad that you have a good balance here of both methods of construction - around an arbitrary minor axis as well as using a box as a starting point.

I did notice one thing however - it seems that when you're drawing your cylinders inside of boxes, you're neglecting to then use a minor axis for the alignment of your ellipses. The minor axis is still very important. Rather than seeing the box as a replacement for the minor axis, it is simply a way to position your minor axis in space, in relation to other objects (since it's easier to do that with a box than an arbitrary line). You still then go on to rely on that minor axis.

Keep that in mind as you continue to move forwards through these lessons. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2018-03-03 02:23

I guess you probably didn't see the announcement I posted on March 1st about the new changes. You should go read it - I've separated the lesson critiques into three different tiers. The $3 tier you're pledged at is now only eligible for lesson 1/2 and box/cylinder critiques. These changes are largely to reflect how much more time on average the critiques for different lessons take.

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

2018-03-02 01:01

To be entirely honest with you, I'm a bit on the fence as to whether or not I should critique this submission. Ultimately I have decided to go ahead and do it, but the reason I'm conflicted over it is that you haven't followed one of the most important rules of these lessons:

Draw the entire thing in ink. I don't want to see the kind of loose, sketchy linework you've done in pencil, and I don't want to see you going back over your drawing with a slow-and-steady hand to line it in pen again. Even when adding line weight normally, you should never be going over the entirety of a shape - line weight should be applied locally to certain areas to clarify specific overlaps, rather than to clean up or replace existing lines.

Your work has its strong points and its weak areas. You've got some drawings, or even some parts of drawings that really push a strong grasp of form, while others come out entirely flat without much application of the principles of construction. I felt it was best to convey my observations by writing directly on your work.

I'd like you to do another four pages of drawings, with only a 0.5mm fineliner this time. Think more about each individual form that goes into your construction, and focus on starting your constructions off as simply as possible. Simple is always best when it comes to conveying the illusion of form. You'll notice that in the little example doodles I added to my notes there, my forms often start off as completely even ellipses with no wavy lines or additional visual detail. Keeping them evenly shaped keeps them solid - I can then build on top of them, add the odd contour line, etc. to achieve the specific arrangement I require.

Also make sure you draw through all of those forms - explore how forms connect to one another, even where you wouldn't be able to see them. You did this in some places (in pencil), but not in others, and the latter group tended to come out quite flat.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-03-01 21:54

Nice work! You're showing a lot of clear improvement here - I think that last row of pages, so from cylinder 193 onwards is where it really starts to solidify, in terms of consistent ellipses and straighter lines.

I do want to stress the importance of always including that minor axis line though - you seem to have been leaving it out when constructing the cylinders in boxes on that last page. The minor axis is still going to be a factor for that, the box largely serves to help you figure out how to place the minor axis (between the centers of the two opposing planes of the box). The minor axis is still going to play a major role in aligning those ellipses.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-02-28 22:26

There are some good qualities you're demonstrating here, but overall there's a lot of room for improvement. I feel that in a lot of cases you're failing to put your full effort into your constructions. There are a lot of places where you rely on drawing more vaguely. When I talk about building your constructions up from simple to complex, I don't say 'simple' to mean loose. In a lot of cases, rather than drawing explicit and complete forms, you flesh things out loosely. This causes us to continue to see things as lines on a page, rather than actual solid constructions in 3D space.

I've outlined a lot of notes directly on your pages which you can find in this album. I also included a demo I'd done some time ago involving a morel mushroom, which you had attempted in this set. Notice how explicit I am with everything I draw - you can point to each mark and explain what purpose it serves and how it contributes to the overall construction, and the first step there despite being simple still captures the essence and solidity of what I'm drawing. The rest is just building on top of this framework.

I do think it would be a good idea for you to tackle this lesson again. Think more about applying what is covered in the leaves and stems exercises - you do them reasonably well when doing them as part of their own exercise, but you tend to neglect those principles in the drawings themselves (like pushing the flow through space of the leaves, and constructing your branches through a series of segments that flow smoothly into one another).

Now, I do want to mention that tomorrow I'm going to be announcing a change to the way the Patreon tiers work to better reflect the amount of time critiquing different lessons requires of me (where lessons 1 and 2 take me about 10 minutes each, lessons 3-7 average around 30 minutes, since the issues students experience tend to be more varied and require more nuanced demonstration). For this reason (as well as a few others), I'm going to be splitting it into $3/$7/$10 tiers, where:

• $3+ patrons will receive critiques for lessons 1/2 and the box/cylinder challenges

• $7+ patrons will receive critiques for lessons 3/4 and the texture challenge

• $10+ patrons will receive critiques for lessons 5-7 and the treasure chest challenge

Since you are at lesson 3, this will impact you directly so I felt it was important for me to point this out to you now so you could make your decisions accordingly.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-28 21:52

Very nice work! From a presentation stand point, those pages with all the boxes packed in tightly is pretty impressive. Overall you did a great job with the challenge - a great deal of your linework is fairly confident, and your constructions are consistent and solid. I did catch early on that when you were adding line weight, your lines wavered a little bit (possibly from drawing a little too slowly when attempting to match the original stroke). This is something you'll want to avoid, pushing yourself to draw those marks more confidently so as to keep them smooth (even if it causes you to slip up here and there). I actually see improvement on this front in the later pages, but the wobbling is still there to a lesser extent.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-28 21:48

Very nice work! Your line quality is confident, and your constructions are very consistent. I'm pleased to see that you applied the line-extension method to most of your boxes, and I can see that it has helped considerably over the set.

One recommendation that I have is in regards to a bit of an illusion you might have noticed. It's actually quite easy, when one has drawn through a box, to mix up which side is meant to be facing towards us and which is meant to face away. In order to avoid this, it can help to fill in one of the forward-facing faces with some tight hatching lines to serve as a visual cue. That tends to resolve the illusion quite well. If you didn't actually have too much trouble with that though, it's not entirely necessary.

Also, I'd recommend that as you move forwards, you play a little more with the line weights of your boxes (by going back over them after completing the initial construction), especially those on the lines that define the silhouette of your forms. I have notes on this on the challenge page, so give them a read if you haven't already.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "100 Treasure Chest Challenge"

2018-02-28 21:33

Here's my critique.

You really accomplished something special here. You started off okay - your basic constructions were generally pretty good, although I found many of your more detailed chests were lacking in solidity and felt somewhat cartoony at times. Not entirely, but bits here and there felt off. I feel like this was primarily because you were trying to hide the construction lines (drawing them in grey marker, and then going back over them with slower marks, focusing on creating a clean, pretty drawing. This sacrificed a lot of solidity, since those 'cleaner' marks weren't as confident as they could have been.

As you continued to push through, you made little steps forwards, and eventually started making leaps. Near the end of the first half, you really started to get a sense of what you were doing, and managed to work with your original construction lines and apply weight in a much more confident fashion. Even your "clean-up" drawings were looking more solid.

That last 50 chests was a delight to look through, as you can see from the decreasing amount of helpful advice.

Through the entire set, you're playing with a lot of interesting designs. You're not afraid to veer away from traditional forms, and are more than happy to carve into those boxes and cylinders and end up with a great variety. There were points where it felt like you were very resourceful in finding good reference (which is fantastic on its own), but after a point I started to feel like you were really exhibiting exceptional design sense as well.

I feel that if I were looking at this work while considering whether or not to hire you as a concept artist, I'd be leaning strongly towards a yes. There would certainly be plenty more room to develop and grow, as treasure chests are only 95% of what we do, but what you've demonstrated goes well beyond just the subject of the challenge. You've dedicated an enormous amount of time, a great deal of patience, and best of all have shown the flexibility to learn and grow along the way.

Absolutely phenomenal work. Sadly I don't have a badge for this challenge (reddit's current system is ridiculously difficult to work with), and to be entirely honest I didn't expect people to actually finish this one (you're the second I've seen in the nearly 3 months it's been up), the first of which I've had to critique. Reddit's currently beta testing their new subreddit styling system, which should make badges a lot easier. You'll be awarded one then.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-02-28 00:29

I was unsure of how exactly I wanted to tackle my critique here, as there's a lot of information I wanted to offer and it wouldn't be very clear if I only described it through text. So, I wrote over a good deal of your pages, you'll find my notes in this album.

Overall you do have a lot of room to grow. You need to be more mindful of the basic techniques covered in lesson 1 (drawing through your ellipses, ghosting your lines and drawing confidently so as to avoid wobbling and stiffness). You also need to draw larger on the page. Don't try and cram as much as you can into one page, your brain is going to benefit considerably from having more room to think through spatial problems.

You also need to think through the marks you're putting down more before you draw them. For example, contour lines - you have a habit of overusing them, but not putting very much thought into the purpose of each individual one. If you're not really conscious of what you're trying to achieve with a mark, you're not likely to achieve it. A contour line flows over the surface of a form to give visual cues to the viewer as to how that surface flows through space. Where you may have put six or seven, one or two would do the trick, if actually executed with care.

I'd like you to try the work for this lesson again, taking the notes I've written here in mind. Most of the issues aren't really a matter of you not having the skill to pull it off - it's more that you seem to be forgetting things covered in earlier lessons, and perhaps not always drawing with your full attention on the task at hand. The sloppiness I see here is fairly common among students who have the capacity to do much better, but who struggle more with focus than anything else.

I do want to warn you however - on March 1st, I'm going to be announcing changes to the way the patreon critiques work. I'll explain it in greater depth then, but I wanted to tell you that the lessons are going to be broken up into separate tiers in order to better reflect the amount of time it takes me to critique work from a given lesson. Where a critique for lesson 1 or 2 might take me 10 minutes, those for lessons 3-7 take considerably longer. This one for instance took me at least 45 minutes (although it was on the longer end, as I took the time to write over most of your pages).

As such, lessons 1/2 and the box/cylinder challenges will stay at the $3+ tier, while those pledging $7+ will be eligible for critiques on lessons 3/4 and the texture challenge, and lessons 5-7 + treasure chest challenge will be limited to those pledging $10+.

Since you're at lesson 3, I know this change will impact you specifically, so I figured I should let you know now.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-02-27 17:17

Old thread got locked, those of you eligible for private homework critiques can post your work here.

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

2018-02-27 17:15

Old thread got locked, those of you eligible for private homework critiques can post your work here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-25 23:39

Sounds about right to me.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-25 20:35

Nice work pushing through the challenge! You definitely show a good deal of progress over the set, especially in tightening up your ellipses. The cylinders build around an arbitrary minor axis tend to come out quite well. I did notice however that when you were constructing them inside of boxes, you got caught up in placing your ellipse inside of the plane a bit too much, and ended up with a lot of ellipses that weren't properly aligned to your minor axis line.

Placing an ellipse inside of a plane is admittedly quite difficult, and having all these different criteria to match can be a bit overwhelming. Above all else, try and focus on aligning to that minor axis, as it is the most important property of the construction. Once you've got the hang of that, then you play with expanding the degree of your ellipse so it fits roughly within the plane.

Overall you're making great progress, so keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-23 21:46

Nice work completing the challenge! You definitely put a lot into pushing through and completing all 250, and you certainly showed a good bit of growth in your general understanding of how these forms sit in 3D space.

I have a couple recommendations for you, as you continue to move forwards:

• While you do seem to have a good spread of boxes whose vanishing points are closer and further, I do recommend that you shift the balance to focus more on those with shallower foreshortening (where the vanishing points are much further off). You'll find these will play a more a role more frequently in your drawings, as shallower foreshortening implies a smaller, more relatable scale, while dramatic foreshortening suggests that objects are very large. Getting more practice in with shallower foreshortening is going to continue to prepare you better, especially once you hit lesson 6.

• Watch the execution of your lines - I did catch you getting a bit sloppy with your ghosting at times, where your lines did not remain entirely straight. Remember to follow through all of the steps of the ghosting process, starting with putting your points down. I'm not sure if that's something you neglected in some cases but not others, but I can see several cases where you did not apply the method fully.

Keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-23 02:15

Nice work! I can see a fair bit of improvement over the set. Your awareness of your lines' convergence increases, as does the confidence of your linework. I do believe that there is room for improvement, and that certainly will come with time and practice - but what's important is that this exercise gave you the opportunity to build up important habits in how you think about these forms and how they sit in space.

As you draw boxes for later exercises and as part of drawings in further lessons, always keep that convergence in mind - think about which lines should be parallel to one another, and what that means about their alignment in your drawing.

Also, in terms of the proximity of your vanishing points to the boxes themselves, you may have noticed that the closer the vanishing points are, the more dramatic that foreshortening gets. This also ties in with a sense of scale, where that quick convergence suggests a much larger scale (like looking at the top of a tall building from the ground), where a shallower, more gradual convergence towards a far-off VP tells us an object is of a more relatable scale, like something we might pick up.

As you continue to move forwards, one thing I recommend is that you incorporate playing with line weight into these sorts of exercises. The notes on that topic are also included on the challenge page, and I also mention them in regards to lesson 2's form intersection exercise (in the video for that one). Line weight can go a long way to bind the lines that make up a form together, making them feel more like one cohesive unit rather than a series of lines located in close proximity to one another.

Anyway, keep up the great work, and congratulations on pushing through the slog. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-23 02:02

You certainly made up for the poor quality of your camera (the camera was actually mostly fine) with the quality of your work! Very well done. You took a lot of care and demonstrated great patience across the set, and I see a good deal of improvement in the confidence with which you constructed these cylinders, and the illusion of solidity you were able to capture by the end. I'm also very pleased to see that you balanced both constructing them purely around an arbitrary minor axis as well as starting off within a box. Aside from those points, I look for the alignment of the ellipses and the relationship of the degrees of the ellipses in either end of each cylinder, and you were mindful of both.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-02-22 00:55

Not bad! I do feel like the main bodies feel a little squished - not flat, but like their forms despite being obviously three dimensional have been pancaked. Not this one though. I'm quite fond of how you handled its legs. One suggestion that can help as well is to place a contour curve right where the segments of the legs meet. Keep the lengths of those tubes clear, but reinforce the joints to kind of show how those two forms intersect.

Oh, I can see you're still not drawing through all of your ellipses.. but you are getting most of them.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-02-22 00:53

I felt like I'd received your last submission pretty recently (although it's been a week - the days are all blending together in my head at this point) so a big part of me expected the work to have been rushed. I was definitely pleasantly surprised! You've done remarkably well with this lesson.

Your forms flow very nicely through space, and you capture each subject with both the sort of simplicity I look for when it comes to construction, as well as the kind of layered complexity that gives each drawing character. You're not too heavy on detail, and in most cases you're mindful of how your forms come together. You've even got some really lovely textural experimentation near the end there, and the big swoopy what's-its came out very nicely on that last page.

I have just a couple minor things to point out:

• Try not to double up your lines - be it reflexive reinforcement from not being confident in the initial stroke, or trying to correct a mistake. You did this a fair bit on your first page of leaves, though you eased up throughout the rest of the lesson.

• Your flower pots were a little bit lacking - I am of course glad that you attacked most of them with a minor axis. One thing you did miss out on though was the thickness of the rims of those flower pots, and the fact that the bed of soil sits a little inset.

• Don't let your tubes just stop as two parallel lines floating in space. Cap them off, flesh out how they connect to other forms.

Here are some basic notes about the points above.

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

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

2018-02-22 00:24

There's definitely been growth here. There's also room for improvement, but you're moving in the right direction. Just one thing worth mentioning comes to mind right now - draw bigger. From the looks of it, you've got a lot of extra room for those casettes, but ended up limiting yourself to a fairly limited portion of the page. Spatial problems benefit considerably from having more room to think through them.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete - you'll find the next lesson is quite similar, but also more challenging as the scale steps up and complexity increases. You're also allowed to use tools like rulers, ellipse guides, and even draw in ballpoint - I recommend you take advantage of that as much as possible.

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

2018-02-20 23:41

Looking at examples would certainly help, but again - I wouldn't stress too much about it just now. As for repeating the exercises in the near future, you should absolutely be incorporating them, along with lesson 1's exercises into a regular warmup routine. As I explain in the intro video, you'll pick two or three exercises from the pool at the beginning of each sitting and do them for 10-15 minutes total.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-02-20 14:32

I'm honestly not well versed in what's out there. I've vaguely seen Michael Hampton's books to be pretty good, if a bit complicated at first. I learned most of what I know from a class I took under Kevin Chen, so I didn't end up using any of the books/tutorials that are available. I always mean to try them out just so my recommendations can be more than second-hand, but as you can imagine I don't have a whole lot of time :P

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

2018-02-20 01:15

Let's start at the beginning. Go ahead and submit lesson 1.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-02-20 00:20

These are vastly better. The sense of solidity is much more present in these constructions. As far as the proportions go, I'm glad you stuck with it and plowed on ahead.

I do have one piece of criticism to offer however - ease up on that line weight, you're applying it way too heavily. Weight should be subtle - it doesn't need to make the entire object pop out of your construction lines. Furthermore, you don't want to get caught up in trying to add those additional marks slowly, trying too hard to match up with whatever you're adding weight to. This will make your lines stiffen up, and that's the worst.

In the lesson 2 form intersections video (there weren't any videos for those things back when you completed the lesson), I explain that line weight should be applied to certain localities - not to replace or clean up existing lines, but to emphasize them in key areas, most often overlaps to show which line runs in front, and which one gets tucked behind.

In general, I'd recommend drawing the entire thing with one pen - in your case, the ballpoint you used for the construction. Going over with a completely different pen results in a disconnect and an imbalance.

Anyway, you've done great. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching lessons. As for those headlights, it's true - they can be tough. Your second car's were definitely better, but in general I think it's still a matter of sticking to those straight lines as much as you can, and understanding how you're carving that headlight into the form. The headlight has to be grounded like part of a 3D puzzle that fits together to make a car. If you stick it on like a sticker, it won't feel solid or three dimensional. This is actually very similar to how we construct the heads of animals, for which there is also a new video.

Keep up the good work, and be sure to keep on top of this! Drawabox is only meant to send you in the right direction. It's now up to you to put the mileage in.

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

2018-02-20 00:12

Very nice work! Your arrows flow very nicely through space. Your organic forms with contour ellipses are coming along well, and convey the illusion of volume. You will want to continue to work on tightening up those ellipses, but I like the confidence with which they've been drawn, it keeps them nice and even.

Your organic forms with contour curves are pretty good, though watch their alignment relative to that central minor axis line. Take a little more time when drawing each one, I think you might be rushing them a little bit, which results in the alignment being off in many cases, along with a few common results of not pacing yourself properly.

Your dissections are quite lovely. Lots of great variety and you've clearly tried to tackle each one in a manner tailored to your goal, rather than applying the same technique across the board. A few things here - firstly, always remember that these textures wrap around the form, so you'll want to ensure that they follow along. For example, the bottom right of the first page of dissections, form #3. That (octopus tentacle/sucker?) texture does not follow the form. Secondly, the midsection of #3 has got some definite scribbling going on, where you start to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of detail in there. If ever you find yourself wanting to scribble or rely on some kind of randomness, stop. Think about how else you might tackle that texture, perhaps in a way that can take advantage of focusing on specific details present in your reference and implying the rest. After all, our job here is not to reproduce something fully, but rather to communicate the presence of a certain texture, and allow the viewer's brain to fill in the rest.

Your second page of dissections feels considerably more confident, so I think you've shown a great deal of improvement on this front.

The main focus of the form intersections is to construct forms that feel consistent within the same space and scene. The intersections themselves are definitely way more advanced, and I don't expect you to be able to nail them just yet. Most of your intersections involving flat planes (so boxes with boxes, cylinders or spheres with boxes, etc.) came out quite nicely. You're definitely struggling with intersections involving two rounded forms however. On the first page of intersections, towards the upper left, you've got a cone stabbing into a sphere. You've got the same deal on the second page, towards the bottom right of the second page. The former intersection is incorrect, the latter is how it should be done.

Additionally, I do want to warn you away from being quite so haphazard at times with your hatching. Keep your lines parallel and have them stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Try not to go crazy with it, and definitely don't go in all different directions, as it tends to make things look messy and unstructured.

Your organic intersections are coming along, although I think you may not have thought quite as clearly as you could have, as your overlaps are a bit weird. Where part of a form should tuck behind another, you've drawn it as being on top - and you've done this a couple of times. You may have attempted this one while tired, or otherwise distracted, but the layering is definitely wrong. That said the forms themselves are well drawn. Just try and think more about how a form would wrap around another, and how part of it would sit in front and the other half would tuck behind, rather than putting the entirety of a form completely on top of the others.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-19 23:55

You definitely show some improvement over the set. There are a few points I want to draw your attention to.

• You don't draw through your ellipses until closer to the end - while you corrected this yourself, I really want to stress this. You should be drawing through each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons, without exception. That means drawing around the elliptical shape two full times before lifting your pen.

• Where you do start drawing through your ellipses, you also start going over them afterwards to replace the lines with "cleaner" marks. That clean-up pass involves you drawing somewhat slower, resulting in lines that stiffen up. I want you to watch the form intersections video from lesson 2. In it I explain that one should not use line weight to replace existing linework, but rather to emphasize what is already there. Furthermore, you should always add line weight with the same confident stroke that you would use when having drawn the original mark. In this case, you are distinctly attempting to do away with your rougher mark. You also make obvious attempts to draw initial lines more faintly, so you can hide them afterwards. Don't do this - every mark you draw in your initial construction should be executed without regard for making it extra faint or extra heavy. You then reorganize this hierarchy of weight by going back in and adding thickness to key places, not to entire lengths of line but to local areas. Again, I go over this in that form intersections video.

Your ellipse constructions are definitely coming along well, but these are key points in your approach that you'll want to iron out as you move forwards. Don't get caught up in the desire to end up with a clean result. All of the drawings we do for these lessons have one goal, and it's not a pretty drawing at the end. It's to learn about construction, the forms that make up complex objects, and how they relate to one another in 3D space.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

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

2018-02-19 00:55

I gotta say, you are going CRAZY with those contour ellipses. I had to go back and see if I specifically told you to add more contour lines.

Whenever a student starts overusing contour lines like this, it raises the question whether or not they understand what they are trying to achieve with them. Usually when a student doesn't really grasp the goal of the technique, they tend to just go to town on adding them, hoping that it'll work out in the end.

Contour lines have a very specific purpose. They run along the surface of a form, and in doing so, convey how that surface turns through 3D space. In doing so, it reinforces the volume and illusion of three dimensionality.

Even just ONE contour line has a great deal of impact, but the more you add, the smaller your returns and the stiffer your construction gets. Instead of adding a wealth of them, think through each individual one you draw and add as few as you can to achieve the effect you're after. Plan them out, consider their positioning and always work towards a specific goal. Don't just add them for the sake of having more.

As far as form goes, you are definitely doing much better - they do feel solid, and that is definitely in a big part due to the contour ellipses. Of course, the downside is that your drawings are extremely messy and you're being quite wasteful when it comes to line economy.

The other thing I wanted to point out was in regards to how you drew legs in the first page. I outlined it, along with a few points relating to contour lines, in these notes.

You are improving, but you need to balance how you approach things and perhaps think more and draw less. Right now you're doing a lot on each drawing, but also are doing each individual component with a little more sloppiness than you ought to. Uneven ellipses, lines getting hairy and generally being less planned out. Slow down, think about what you're doing, and invest more time into the planning phase.

I'd like to see two more pages.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-17 02:10

Very nice work! Your ellipses are looking pretty tight and even, and your lines are coming out smooth. Overall your general confidence improves a fair bit over the set, which is the main reason the last several pages still manage to look a fair bit better than the first few despite the technical improvements being more subtle.

The only thing I want to point out though is that you seem to have skipped constructing cylinders within boxes altogether, even though it was presented in the video. It's a very useful technique that you should definitely be practicing. It'll come in handy by lesson 6, where you'll want to construct specific cylinders, aligned in relation to other forms.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2018-02-17 02:04

Nice work! Your boxier constructions are generally very successful and convey a strong sense of solidity. Where things start to get curvier is where some of your remaining weaknesses become more apparent, though it's a fairly normal issue. When it comes to moving from your boxes/planar constructions to rounding out your curves, you're straying too far from those bounds and end up with curves that feel less grounded and more arbitrary, which in turn weakens the resulting forms.

Here's an explanation of what I mean. Basically you'll want to adhere more closely to your boxier constructions, or break those edges down more to create intermediate steps. I'd like you to do two more pages of drawings with curvier objects - cars are definitely a great choice for that sort of thing.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-16 18:44

It doesn't look like I have you in my records as being currently eligible for private critiques. If you are a patreon supporter, be sure to check your messages as you'll have received a message from me getting extra info such as your reddit username. Otherwise, you'll want to post directly to the subreddit for a critique from the community (which I see you already did, so that's perfect).

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-16 01:55

Admittedly I got very confused. I'd read your comment about the album being off, but didn't really register it until I saw your cylinders go from so-so to pretty damn good to shitty again. Thankfully it was just the order!

You've done great work here, and the improvement is noticeable. Your confidence with your linework also took a bit of a leap as you moved past the first hundred. I've got to say - you went above and beyond, in drawing them all in boxes, and it seems to have been well worth it.

As long as you leverage what you've learned here, I don't think you'll have too much trouble with lesson 6. There aren't any feet there, after all...

Unless you dutch have weird toasters or something. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next lesson.