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

2018-02-16 01:50

I quite like the tape dispenser and the lighter. I think those in particular demonstrate that you're developing a grasp of the importance of subdivision and figuring out specific measurements instead of relying on guesswork - which is something that tends to weaken some of your other drawings. Curves are dangerous - it's easy to draw them and have them go all over the place, because one can think of them as not having any specific location in space. I like to treat curves as though they capture a range of locations.

If you take two straight lines and join them end to end, with an angle in between, that angle is specific. It's clear. It's solid and decisive. Take a curve however, and it represents a great number of those kinds of straight, clear angles. In that sense, one has not made a decision, but rather they have only narrowed down their options.

This is why a lot of your curving lines feel flimsy, or a little flat - because the volumes you are containing within your forms are done so within a range of options. The limit may be here, or it might be a bit further - who knows? The curves certainly don't. For this reason, try to construct your objects with a greater emphasis on boxy forms. Cut and carve straight planes whenever possible - and then when you've made all your clear decisions, you can round off your corners and build your curves bounded within the limitations of those straight, clear angles. Like the bottom right of this demo, between steps 2 and 3. Focus on the transition between the base box and the trapezoidal form stacked on top of it, and the resulting curves that flow from one to the other.

Cylinders however are different. Like boxes, they have clear rules to which they must adhere, and while a proper ellipse is made up of a curving line, it has a very specific curvature to it, such that to deviate from it would be obviously incorrect. In that sense, it captures only one possible mark - a specific, intended ellipse - and not a range, like other curves. Your cylinders definitely need work. This is not surprising, as you have not yet completed the cylinder challenge, which was a recommendation in the intro video. I can see you using principles from it, like the minor axis and such, but you simply need a lot more mileage. Your boxes do as well.

One last thing that I noticed - you're being timid with your linework. The enclosing box on this page, and the minor axis on this one. You're making obvious efforts to draw lightly and hide your marks. Don't do that. You should not be expending mental energy on trying to manage your pressure so extensively at this point. Draw each and every mark confidently - any mark you are not executing with the required confidence is not a mark worth drawing. Remember that these are exercises - not an opportunity to impress someone with a pretty picture. We are here to understand how to construct forms in 3D space, and that means drawing clean and concise construction lines.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to go and do the 250 cylinder challenge, then try another four pages of every day objects.

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

2018-02-16 01:37

Good golly, your forms and constructions have really improved by leaps and bounds with this one. If we compare them to the cactus I called out in your lesson 3 work, the sense of weight and solidity of these insects is miles ahead. Each one feels tangible and three dimensional, without becoming stiff. Your use of line weight has gone a long way to really build a cohesive sense that these are not merely individual lines on a page, but marks that cannot be separated from one another.

I really love the legs on this spider - their flow is spot on, and they have a wonderful sense of direction. You've really done a phenomenal job here. I also like the fact that you pushed some experimentation with texture and detail, but maintained a sort of subtle, light touch to it, rather than going to town. Because of this your constructions stay strong throughout, while still managing to communicate the presence of different surface qualities.

I'd say the furry thorax of the bee was probably your weakest area. In the animals lesson, you'll see some notes on how to approach fur. You actually were heading right in that direction, so you may have already seen them. I believe the trick here would just be to try and draw fewer tufts, and focus more on the individual groupings as they break the silhouette. If you decrease the number but take more time in designing them, your impact should be greater.

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

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

2018-02-16 01:26

I was confused for a long time, but eventually I realized the problem was obvious. Your box is not square, it's rectangular. You're not trisecting a circle, you're trisecting something more of an oval. So one of the angles is smaller than the other two, resulting in a Y type shape. See?.

Of course, how does one draw a square in 3D space? Well, there are the techniques in the next lesson, leveraging the minor axis, vanishing points, contact points, etc. But usually eyeballing it is enough for something like this, as there's going to be a range where the proportions feel fairly squareish, and we've fallen outside of that range.

Overall your other constructions are really good. Very precise, great use of subdivision and relationships between measurements. I do think that in some cases you might jump to the curvy lines too soon (the unholy tricircular rotational device is a good example of where hammering out the structure with straighter lines then adding circles/curves would have been better) but overall your attention to detail is really phenomenal.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-15 15:46

It's good that you did try them. Make sure you do them for all your boxes from now on, and I do recommend that you do them for the last couple pages that you completed for the challenge.

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

2018-02-15 03:03

Hm.. no, you're right. I forgot to remove that from the instructions. Over time, the lessons change and little bits and pieces from get missed when I'm making those adjustments. I do believe it's much more beneficial to stick to the standard sausages.

I'll go ahead and edit that image in the lesson to reflect what I'm saying now.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-02-15 02:14

Looking good! Just a couple things:

• Don't use hatching lines. It's either demonstrating that you're trying to apply shading to your drawing (which we're not dealing with, we want to focus on conveying 3d form through line alone, with any further rendering serving more as decoration on top of an already solid object) or in your case, it's a stand-in for more involved texture. If you drop in hatching, it means you wanted to add that kind of complexity, but didn't want to take the time to really look closely at the texture present and capture its details. Don't fall in the middle - pick one or the other. No texture/construction only, or go into detail properly.

• Construct your cylinders around minor axes. This flower pot felt kinda sloppy, especially in how you curved those lines coming up from the base ellipse, rather than actually fleshing out the top of that cylindrical section (which would sit near the top of the pot).

• This page is somewhat catastrophic. You're using the hatching to shade because you couldn't get any semblance of solidity and it generally went wrong. Honestly this doesn't feel anything like your other drawings, and doesn't capture the understanding of form and construction that you nailed elsewhere - so honestly, I'm going to leave it be. I think it was a one-off, and if it's a more persistent problem, it's one that we'll be able to contend with more easily in the next lesson (since insects are made up of a lot of volumes like these cacti).

Aside from that, nice work. Your leaves are flowing nicely, and your constructions (other than flower pots and the cacti) are getting noticeably more solid.

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

2018-02-15 01:54

Hooooot damn, that is some nice work. Unfortunately I have no real criticism to offer. Your use of form is spot on, your constructions are are broken down into the simplest of components and maintain a strong sense of fluidity while remaining solid in every way.

I mean, I could offer that you should always remember to construct cylindrical things around a minor axis. On that last page, you've got some branchy things that could benefit from that - also watch the way your contour curves wrap around said branchy things, as it's not quite as good as elsewhere in your drawings. Or rather, I think the other drawings benefit from that sort of segmented look, whereas a branch is a continuous tube, so the contour curves on it need to appear as though they are running directly on the surface of the form, not marking dips within it like you'd see between segments on an exoskeleton.

I did mention in my last critique that you should draw bigger. I'd say here that your most successful drawings were the bigger ones. Some of your smaller ones were perfectly fine, while, say - the praying mantis on the top of page 3 felt a bit scrunched.

Anyway, really 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"

2018-02-15 01:38

Pretty good work! A couple concerns:

• Read the instructions! You missed the part about going back over your work and extending your lines towards their implied vanishing points to see how they're converging. Though I'm not sure when you started these boxes, I did upload a new how-to-draw-a-box video which goes over this, though it was mentioned in the exercise notes as well.

• Your lines are a little hairy at times, so watch out for that. It looks like you're a bit in the habit of correcting trying to correct mistakes. It's a bad habit! Gotta make sure you think and ghost before every mark you put down.

Overall the constructions are looking good, you just gotta watch that line quality and take the steps to identify mistakes after the fact so you can learn from them.

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

2018-02-15 01:21

Overall, pretty good but I do have a few points to raise:

• Don't neglect to draw the minor axis lines for your organic forms with contour curves. From the looks of this, you caught this issue on your own and used them throughout once a couple without went awry. Minor axes are very important when it comes to figuring out how to align those curves. I do want to stress though, the importance of sticking to simple sausages for this exercise. Don't push the complexity, it'll distract you from the main focus that is wrapping your contour lines around the surface of the form.

• Really great stuff for your dissections. Lots of excellent experimentation with different kinds of textures.

• For your form intersections, I have three concerns. Firstly, I did mention in the instructions to avoid forms that are overly stretched, and to stick to those that are more equilateral. Meaning, no long tubes. Secondly, for your cylinders and cones, it's important to build them around a minor axis. Take a look at the notes on the cylinder challenge page. Lastly, in the video I explain matters of not applying line weight to the entirety of lines, to use them locally to clarify specific overlaps and in lengths that do not force you to draw slowly and carefully. Adding weight with a stiff, careful stroke undoes the benefits of having drawn the mark with any confidence in the first place. You want to maintain that flow throughout the entire drawing, from beginning to end. Please watch that video again.

• Nice work with the organic intersections - you capture a good sense for the most part of how those forms interact with one another.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to keep the points I've raised in mind.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-12 22:05

Nice work! I'm glad that you went over your boxes with such persistence, extending those lines towards their implied vanishing points. I did notice that when you started out, you were only extending 3 of the 4 lines of a given set, but you fixed that within a couple pages.

Overall, your linework is much improved compared to lesson 1 (where your boxes tended to have wobblier, more timid lines). Your constructions feel more confident, and your convergences are getting more consistent. There certainly is room for growth of course, and I do think your ghosted lines still have a little ways to go, but you're absolutely moving in the right direction.

On additional thing you may want to work on as you continue to move forwards is line weight. There are notes regarding this in the challenge page. Varying the weights of your marks helps to add an additional sense of cohesion - where a box made up of uniform lines may have very little holding it together as a single form, reinforcing the weight of the silhouette can really go a long way to make them feel as though they make up a single cohesive form.

Keep up the great work, and consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-02-12 21:27

Overall, I think you're showing a lot of signs of skimming over the instructions, rather than following them as carefully as you ought to. The majority of the issues here relate more to you either rushing, being sloppy, not following the instructions or a combination of all three. Very little of it has anything to do with your actual abilities or skill level - you're just not paying enough attention to what the lesson tells you to do.

Here are a few things I noticed when looking through your work:

• For your arrows, they're flowing quite well, but they are doing so in a space limited by the bounds of your flat piece of paper. That is, they're moving across the two dimensions of space of the page, without pushing very much into the third dimension and playing with the depth of the scene. This is something I mentioned in the video for this exercise - that you should decide which end of the arrow is closer and which is farther from the viewer, and then exaggerate the scale of those ends to match (so the end closer to you would be much bigger, the end farther away would be much smaller). I also recommend that you draw these much larger. Since this exercise (and most of the exercises in drawabox) are about understanding how things sit in and move through 3D space, giving our brains more room to think through these spatial problems tends to be very helpful.

• There are a few issues in your organic forms with contour ellipses, so I'm breaking them into multiple points:

1. The minor axis line. You seem to have thrown aside what you learned in lesson 1 about how to draw lines, and chicken scratched all of your central minor axis lines. Don't ever do that. It's an awful habit, and one you need to break sooner rather than later. Every time you chicken scratch, you make the conscious decision to do so, so that's all on you.

2. The linework for your ellipses (while infinitely better than that chicken scratch) is still looking a little stiff. They're not awful, but there is some noticeable hesitation that causes your lines to wobble as you draw a bit as you draw them, so that's something you're going to want to keep in mind. Always push yourself to draw confidently - once your pen touches the page, the chance to avoid inaccuracies is over. Now you must commit to the line you've ghosted and all of your preparation. Make the mark, and if you make a mistake, it's not that big of a deal.

3. I noticed that some of your sausage forms here got a little weird, getting pinched/skinnier through their lengths. Most are okay, but you've got a few that get a little weirdly complicated. I highly recommend that you stick to simple sausage forms that stay consistent in their widths through their lengths, and taper down like the halves of a ball on their ends. At the bottom left of this page, you've got one that's very much like a stretched ball. It's not far off, but notice how it gets fatter the closer you move in towards the center? Instead, I want you to keep that middle section consistent, like a tube. As though you took a ball, cut it down the middle, and fit a tube in between them. The one directly above it is much better.

• I don't see a single page of organic forms with contour curves, so you seem to have skipped that section.

• There's both good and bad in your dissections. I really liked the one on the top right of this page, and I appreciate that you experimented with concentrating more detail towards the sides, and having more of a rest area towards the center. The kiwi texture there also came out quite nicely. The top left of that page however didn't go nearly as well. You chicken-scratched your contour curves and you left the vast majority of the surface devoid of any texture (effectively ignoring the point of the exercise). Now, the citrus-fruit texture you added there is overly simplified and cartoony (which comes from you drawing more from what you think you remember seeing, rather than directly observing your reference - basically, you need to build up the habit of looking at your reference 90% of the time, constantly going back to it and refreshing your memory). That said, the quality of your texture is totally normal at this point. I don't expect you to be able to draw exceptional textures at all, and symbol drawing from memory as you did there is pretty much what I'd expect from a student at this stage. It's the chicken scratching, the leaving of surfaces blank, and so on which is a case of you being sloppy.

• I also noticed that your contour curves were almost always too shallow and didn't give the impression that they wrap around the object and run along its surface. This is in all likelihood because you skipped that exercise entirely.

• Lastly for the dissections - don't use hatching lines. When a person uses hatching lines, it's usually for two reasons. First, they're not bothering to look at what texture is actually present (which defeats the purpose of this exercise altogether) and secondly, it's because they're trying to apply shading. You'll find that nowhere in any of my lessons do I even mention shading - it's because worrying about light and shadow right now is a distraction. We do play with the shadows objects might cast onto each other, but when it comes to shading itself (how light hits a surface) we are not worrying about that at all.

• On the point of hatching lines, we sometimes use it when we're drawing basic geometric forms (especially when we're drawing through them), not to serve as lighting information, but to help separate planes from one another. In that situation, you should be drawing those hatching lines so they are parallel, consistent and stretch all the way from edge to edge, filling up the whole plane. The way you've drawn them in various places in this lesson has always been sloppy and rushed. Don't do that.

• Your form intersections have many of the same issues I've mentioned before. You're not applying the ghosting method, you're chicken scratching your lines, you're ignoring instructions (like the one to avoid stretched forms like long cylinders). You at least draw through most of your forms, though not all of them.

I'm going to stop this critique here. It's clear that you missed a great deal of information from the lesson, and I'm really not sure if you watched any of the videos I included explaining each exercise individually. Like I said before - the vast majority of the issues here have nothing to do with your ability to draw, but rather your ability to follow the instructions.

Go back and do this lesson again. And remember - at the beginning of each sitting, you should be doing exercises from lesson 1 as part of a warmup routine, picking two or three and doing them for 10-15 minutes. Reread the instructions for whatever exercise you're going to do before you start it, and if there's a video available, rewatch it. Don't rely on memory, make sure everything is fresh in your mind.

One last thing - it'd be better if you uploaded your work somewhere it can all be seen at the same time. Imgur is what most people here use, and it allows the entire submission to be viewed on the same page.

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

2018-02-11 20:58

Overall, pretty well done! I do have a few things to mention but you're definitely moving in the right direction.

• Your arrows are very confidently done. The only issue I noticed was that right now they're primarily flowing in the limited space defined by the two dimensions of the page itself - they don't explore the depth of the scene very much. In the video for this exercise, I mention how you can try and think about which end of the arrow is closer and which is further away from the viewer, and in turn try and exaggerate the scale of those ends to reinforce the illusion of foreshortening to push into that third dimension more.

• For your organic forms with contour curves, you actually did a great job - but you should feel bad about neglecting to include the minor axis lines, as instructed. Bad! Bad you! They're an important component to aligning your curves, so even if you're confident in your ability to work without them, I don't want you leaving them out of this exercise.

• Your second page of form intersections were considerably better than your first. I would have loved to see more sausages per page, but you did pretty well as is. My only recommendation there is that when you want something to be solid black, actually make it solid black. Brush pens can be useful for this. If you allow little unintentional slivers of white to show through, they will generate a lot of visual noise and become quite distracting.

• Your form intersections are spot on. Really excellent grasp of 3D space, and how those forms interact with one another, and it's very clear that you were enjoying yourself while drawing these. Your organic intersections were also well done.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-11 20:45

Great work! I can definitely see considerable improvement over the set. Your boxes by the end are generally well constructed (still room for improvement on the alignment of those lines towards their VPs, but it's much better than before), and your linework is confident and self-assured, with your variation in weight contributing a lot to the solidity and cohesiveness of each construction.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this challenge complete!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-02-11 20:43

I do have a few suggestions to offer here.

• I actually really like the owl at the beginning, but it also brings to light a few important things. From what I can see, the construction is fairly minimal. You've got the major masses fleshed out, and then you add everything else in a more detail/texture oriented fashion. In doing so you do demonstrate a well developing understanding of how things sit in 3D space, so your textures aren't flat by any means. The only area where I think you might be missing some more development is on the head. I'm not sure if you've watched the newer animal drawing videos in the lesson, but I've got one on drawing heads there. In it I talk about the importance of carving into your forms and grounding components in each other. I think that when it comes to the owl's eye sockets, and that sort of brow ridge (if you can all it that, but that doesn't really matter) you'd benefit considerably from actually cutting into the cranial ball in a more concrete fashion rather than just estimating from pure observation. Think of the face like a puzzle - you want all those major forms (the puzzle pieces) to fit together properly, and then build on top of that.

• For the booby, watch how your initial cranial ball extends outside of what you ended up drawing. Adhere to the decisions you've made in your earlier constructional phases - don't ignore forms you've put down in the past. The decision was made, so you need to move forwards with it. Otherwise it will undermine the solidity of that construction. Also its feet could definitely use some work.

• For the gazelle, nice attempt at the head construction. The only thing here that I want to stress is the importance of droping in a center line early, and adhering to it to keep things aligned. I think that muzzle is probably coming out from the ball at an awkward angle, which makes things look a little bit off.

• Fur. The tufts on the top of this guy's head (also by the way that head construction is awesome, that's what I'm talking about when I mention the head being a puzzle) is well done. It's clearly intentionally designed, that tuft is not the result of your brain going on autopilot. Now look at this guy's back. That zigzagging pattern that doesn't actually adhere to the solid form of the torso is the result of your brain catching onto a repeatable pattern and going to town on it. You're not thinking about what you're doing, you're just performing an automated task. Overall, you need to limit the number of tufts you're placing everywhere (less is more! imply it in certain places, and let the viewer's brain fill in the rest), and pay more attention to the few areas you do add that kind of information.

Anyway, that's that. You're definitely progressing over all, and like I said before, your grasp of 3D space and form has improved by leaps and bounds.

I actually checked my records when I added your submission to my backlog. You've been sticking with drawabox for ages. I've got 46 homework submissions recorded from you. Some of those are definitely partial redos, but the records only go back as far as September 2015, and you were definitely around before then. It's pretty crazy.

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

2018-02-11 20:31

Overall you're doing okay, albeit your work is a little haphazard at times. I do have some points to offer:

• For your arrows, they're pretty good. The one thing I want to point out is that right now they're mainly giving the impression of flowing across the two dimensions of space defined by the page itself, without very much exploration of the depth of the scene. In the video for this exercise, I talk about the importance of pushing the depth of the scene by considering which end of the arrow is closer to the viewer and which is farther, and exaggerating the size of that end accordingly.

• For your organic forms with contour lines, your contour curves are definitely wrapping around the forms pretty well. One thing I do want to point out though is that you should try and stick to simple sausage forms that have consistent widths. This will help you maintain that illusion of solidity. Wavier lines, or pinching in various places through the length of the form will undermine that solidity, so keep things simple for now. Also don't forget that the degrees of your ellipses definitely matter, as explained in these notes.

• Your dissections are a decent start. One thing I can see you doing is purposely compressing your texture as you reach the edges of the form, where the surface starts to turn away from the viewer. This is very good - it shows that you have a clear awareness of the fact that the surface is turning. The texture on the second form doesn't show this at all, but the middle of the one above certainly does. I did notice however that you only submitted one page for this exercise, and that you really didn't even fill up the one page you did do. It's clear that you found it difficult, but that's no reason to half-ass an exercise.

• Your form intersections are coming along well. The intersections themselves aren't always on point, but this is totally normal - actually understanding how different forms will cut into one another is a pretty advanced topic and I don't expect you to nail them just yet. What I'm more focused on is whether or not you draw the forms consistently and cohesively, as though they belong together in the same scene. I did notice that in your first page, you didn't draw through your ellipses - I'm glad to see that you started doing this properly in your second page.

• Your organic intersections are admittedly a little stiff. This is an area I think you're definitely going to need to practice with - think about those sausage forms as though they're balloons filled with water. Consider how they're going to sag anywhere their weight is not supported, and how they're going to interact with one another.

There is certainly plenty of room for improvement, but you are moving in the right direction with these exercises. So, while I certainly want you to continue practicing these exercises (and those from lesson 1) as part of a regular warmup routine (pick two to three exercises at the beginning of each sitting and do them for 10-15 minutes), I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-02-10 19:17

There's definitely some good here, but also some things I want to bring to your attention.

First and foremost, in many of these drawings you're allowing detail and texture to distract you from construction. When you do decide that you're going to move forward with texture, you seem to have that on your mind while working on the earlier steps. As a result, your constructions end up sloppier, less solid, and perhaps end up being given less time before you jump the fence and frolic in the fields of detail.

Detail and texture are irrelevant. They are not what you're here to learn, and they are not the focus of these lessons. First and foremost, before touching any texture or even giving it any thought, you must have a solid construction. Then you can decide whether or not you want to take it further, but not before then.

I like how you handled the segmentation of the body for this grasshopper, (the lines wrap very nicely around that rounded form, giving it a sense of solidity) but it's very clear that you did not observe what you were drawing very carefully when drawing it. After all, you've given it a head and an abdomen, but no thorax. In the lesson, I explain the three components of the body, so you should have already been looking for them.

For this beetle, it's definitely a good start, but there are two major issues with it. First of all, you should be drawing through all of your ellipses. You didn't do this for the three major masses, and as a result the shapes are drawn more slowly, less confidently, and are generally uneven and don't give off a sense of solidity. Secondly, always work from simple to complex. The way you've handled the legs there definitely started off way too complex - focus on establishing the flow of the forms, then add additional forms on later to add bulges and other matters of greater visual complexity.

Overall I think your spiders were quite well done, especially the one on the bottom there. I have one major issue I want to mention however - when drawing the legs, you drew them in segments, where the lines of a given segment would stop as soon as they hit the previous one (you didn't draw the lines where they'd be hidden by other forms). I absolutely want you to draw through all of your forms, regardless of overlaps. If you draw incomplete forms, they will not feel as solid, and this will influence the resulting construction.

One day you'll be able to draw those forms focusing only on that which is visible, but for now each drawing is merely an exercise in learning to wrap your head around constructing complex objects from simple forms, and in developing a stronger sense of 3D space.

Lastly, this drawing has a lot of really cool texture work going on, but the abdomen is totally flat. Those layered segments should have been wrapping around the rounded abdomen (which itself wasn't really being sold as a solid 3D form to begin with), but they didn't seem to demonstrate a good grasp of how that form existed in 3D space. So, that lack of understanding of the form was then communicated to the viewer. So construction is important!

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do four more pages of construction-only drawings. No detail, no texture. I think your detail work is actually quite good, especially near the end of the lesson, but you need to build it up on top of a stronger foundation of form.

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

2018-02-10 19:04

I think you just linked me to your google photos home page, not the album :P

Let me know when you've got that fixed.

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

2018-02-10 19:01

That's so weird. I have no idea where my previous critique went, I can't find record of it anywhere.

Your constructions are definitely getting better. The only comment I have to offer is I find the lack of minor axis in your wacom pen is disturbing. Other than that, while there's room to grow with practice (working on keeping your lines perfectly straight, maintaining the alignment of your ellipses, building solid enclosing boxes), you're moving in the right direction and are making a great deal of headway on all of these fronts.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-02-10 18:42

Not bad! You're demonstrating a good deal of improvement over this set, and as you go through the drawings, it's clear that you're gradually picking up more and more of what I lay down in the lessons in regard to constructional drawings.

A few things jumped out at me.

• On this page, you talk about the feathery texture not being as good as it could have been. I assure you, if you look at a drawing and something feels off, and you pin it on the texture - you're probably wrong. That owl's head is about as flat as a pancake. You jumped into detail too early, pasting the eyes and beak on like stickers rather than grounding them in construction. You never really took the time to make the cranial ball feel like an actual three dimensional form, before attaching anything to it. That's the main issue there. Sure, the feathers aren't great, but they're not really relevant.

• This one's better. Your fur is still haphazard, zigzaggy and not really designed on any intentional level, but again - texture is irrelevant. As far as the construction goes, you're way less timid, more willing to put down lines, and flesh out your forms. The cranial ball is actually still not great (it's too loose so it's hard to feel like it's a solid form, gotta tighten it up) but you did ground that muzzle to it rather than sticking it on like a sticker. Your next german shepherd is even better. Those forms feel much more solid. Just in the future, don't shade things in that you feel should be coloured dark. We're not rendering/shading these drawings, so as nice as it looks to have that striking dark patch on the face, save it for later.

• Hop aboard the train to llama town. This one's got a lot of good. The fur is getting better, just keep in mind that you want to be designing each tuft individually. Never zigzag your lines (I'm not sure you're doing it here, at least not as much as you were in previous drawings), but just remember that you don't want to try and follow a mindless pattern. Think through each line. The contour lines around the neck do not wrap around convincingly, but overall the construction feels solid.

• While this goat is not necessarily as successful as other drawings, I do feel like it 's starting to demonstrate a better grasp of 3D space. Make sure you don't just drop lines in without considering the form they belong to, as you did with the neck. You've got to flesh out how that neck connects to the torso, and bring it down all the way from the cranial ball. Don't just start it arbitrarily. Draw through your forms!

• Your hyenas are kind of wacky proportion-wise, but one thing I caught was how you drew your legs. In this one, it looks like you drew them section by section. You should be drawing forms in their entirety, not stopping lines where they'd get overlapped by another complete form. By breaking your forms up and not drawing through them, you're breaking up their flow resulting in limbs that look stiff. Review how I draw legs in my demos, both in the video content and in the informal ones in the 'other demos' section of the lesson. I focus on establishing the overall flow, then I break them down with contour lines afterwards. I did like the head construction on this one, though that head is quite small.

So. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to keep this stuff in mind as you move forwards.

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

2018-02-06 21:56

Really, really phenomenal work. The amount of effort, time and patience expended in doing this lesson definitely shows, and it paid off. Your experimentation with how arrows flow demonstrate a really well developed grasp of three dimensional space. Your use of contour lines captures the volumes of your organic forms quite convincingly.

Your dissections are mind-blowingly detailed without becoming overwhelmingly noisy to the eye (at least in most cases). You've got a good sense of how to fuse key areas of information in order to reduce the visual stress. There's a few places where things do get a little cluttered, but for the most part your sense of balance is spot on.

Your form intersections are coming along well. You could use a little practice on your application of line weight (that is, maintaining a confident stroke when doing so - right now your lines stiffen up a little when you're trying to follow the original mark). The forms however are very consistent and cohesive within the scene.

Your organic intersections are good as well - I can see that they certainly have room for improvement, but you are absolutely establishing a good sense of how these forms interact with one another, where their weights are supported by their neighbours, and where they sag. I think the key thing to work on here is to get your sausages to fit more snugly together.

More than anything, your biggest weakness is definitely your own self confidence. Your work here excellent, and while being aware of your weaknesses is important, you must respect your accomplishments and your strengths. Take care to appreciate what you've been able to nail, and more important than that - become aware of it.

While I wouldn't describe you as wearing a shield of self-deprecation as some do to protect themselves from the sting of outside criticism, there is something to be said about your eagerness to point out your mistakes rather than letting me weigh your successes and failures against my own rubric. You'll find that I ignored the vast majority of your personal concerns, and judged you according to my own standards which likely differed considerably form yours. This is because I'm not looking at you as a finished work of art - you are a work in progress, and I can see the potential that you demonstrate. The rest is a matter of practice and time spent walking down the path you're already on.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-02-06 21:38

You're doing a pretty good job overall, I've got just a couple things that I'd like to point out.

• For your leaves, the one on this page, towards the left side with the wavy edge that goes back and forth caught my attention. Wavy lines are quite tricky, in that there are very few cases in which they're the appropriate tool for the job. Because of the repetitive sort of motion, when we draw them we tend to lose a sense of the space we're working in, and end up focusing on how that line flows across the 2D page, repeating the same sort of action over and over. Instead, I believe it is considerably better in most situations that when your line's trajectory changes, you should lift your pen and start another stroke. This allows you to plan and prepare for each section individually, giving more thought to how it should be designed. In this particular case, I'd say to left your pen and start a new mark every time you reach that previously constructed edge. It sets a concrete limit to the bounds of your leaf, which is quite useful in this case.

• As you move through, your drawings seem to get a little smaller. Remember that when it comes to construction, and thinking through 3D problems, giving yourself more space to think is going to help considerably, while drawing smaller is going to cause you to cramp up, mentally speaking.

• For your branches and the similar components to your drawings, you've got a pretty good degree of control in most cases when it comes to keeping the sides of your branches equidistant form each other and maintaining a consistent width. When things get narrower however, your control dwindles. This is completely normal, and brings to light the specific methodology I present in the branches exercise. That is, constructing the curves as segments, ensuring that they flow into one another. Please review the branches exercise video and practice this technique, as it can come in quite handy.

• Try and ease up on some of the extraneous lines you're adding to your leaves and petals. There's no need for most of those when focusing on construction (when it comes to contour lines, you only need a minimal amount to do the job). When it comes to texture on the other hand, you'll need to apply more observation and try and capture marks that actually reflect what you see, rather than a loose grasp of what may be present there. A lot of people end up doing this when it comes to leaves - that they merge the matters of contour lines and texture, and end up falling somewhere in the middle with a lot of marks that don't contribute much.

Overall you're doing a pretty good job. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-02-05 22:06

Nice work completing the challenge. I do have one major concern though that I'd like to address - while your cylinders are coming along fine, a bigger issue that I'm seeing is how you approach adding line weight to them. The result is usually that you draw far more carefully, because you're focusing too much on trying to match your line to the original one, causing you to wobble and draw ellipses that are fiercely uneven.

I actually touch upon this in some of the newer videos I've made for the earlier lessons - specifically the form intersections. Give it a watch. In it I describe how line weight should only be applied to local areas of a given line, never to "clean" up a mark and replace the underlying linework, but to emphasize overlaps and clarify certain localities. If you're not worrying about applying weight to an entire ellipse, you can do so with far more confidence - and therefore less wobbling.

Regardless, never let the risk of being less accurate cause you to give in and accept a wobblier line. Drawing with a confident pace and a consistent trajectory is always the highest priority.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work, and keep the points I've raised here in mind as you continue to move onto lesson 6.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-02-05 01:27

Congratulations on getting through all 250! It definitely is a notable accomplishment, and you should feel proud of yourself. To be honest, from what I can see, your constructions started out in a pretty strong position - your forms felt solid and reasonably well constructed to begin with, so it's not surprising that the improvement over the set was somewhat more nuanced. There definitely is improvement, both in the confidence of your linework, the subtlety of your weight variation and the solidity of your constructions, but it's not the sort of obvious, drastic improvement that comes when one is starting out from a much lower level.

One of the most notable changes that I noticed was in the way that you apply those extra weights. There's a bit of wobbling near the beginning, but by the end your application of thickness is considerably more confident, so it flows more smoothly.

Anyway, keep up the great work. You'll continue to improve at this sort of rate with practice, but as it is you're more than ready to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Resources. FAQ, Communities, Live Streams, Youtubers, etc."

2018-02-04 03:02

I really, really wouldn't recommend it. I mention that you shouldn't in the FAQ, here.

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

2018-02-03 17:48

Really solid work on your arrows and organic forms with contour lines. You're demonstrating a nicely developing grasp of all three dimensions of space, and these exercises really demonstrate how your brain is able to explore them fluidly, and establish volumes within them.

While the dissections were certainly challenging, they're meant to be - and you did an admirable job with them. You were distinctly intentional in your approach to each texture, demonstrating a great deal of focus and observation. Your first page was definitely stronger, but you may have simply been getting tired by the second and it was still pretty well done too.

Your form intersections are pretty nicely done - your forms feel confident and solid, and they all sit consistently within the space. You also nailed most of your instructions, and while some of those cones/cylinders are getting a bit too stretched (something I mentioned you should avoid in the instructions, as adding additional complexity to an already challenging exercise can be counter productive), you seem to have handled them just fine. Those first three pages were very successful, though the fourth felt like you may have been losing focus.

For the organic intersections, there's a couple things I wanted to mention that you can keep in mind as you move forwards:

• Keep the forms simple. A consistent sausage form is all you want, no waviness to them as this can undermine their solidity. No pinching through their lengths either, for the same reason. Just a consistent width. Many of your forms were just fine, but the two leftmost are the real culprits of those issues.

• I think you may grasp this already, but it's a little uncertain from the work here so I figure I should mention it. When drawing those cast shadows, always remember that the shadows are cast upon the surface beneath the object, so very much like your contour lines, they need to flow along that surface. They need to reinforce the roundedness of that form. The particularly larger cast shadow towards the right of the drawing is probably the only one that throws this into question, as it doesn't follow the curvature of the form it's cast upon.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-02-03 17:40

Well who's this handsome fellow? He sure is proud, bein' all poofy in the chest. I think he was drawn quite well, especially his head and chest (the feet and tail are somewhat weaker to be sure).

Your drawings start out with that sense of "I kind of understand what I should be doing, but it's taking some doing to get the hang of it". As you move through the lesson though, the number of successes increases, as does their magnitude. The zebra and ibex are very well done, a great balance of form/construction and letting the character of the beast come through.

Overall your progress is fine - there's room for growth on the construction side but it's coming along well and will continue to do so with more practice. There is just one thing I want to point out in regards to your detail - when it comes to feathers and fur, you do have a tendency (especially earlier on) to let a bit of mindless scribbling/zigzagging take over. For example, on this page, and here as well.

You can see that the furry sections are drawn with either zigzagging lines or marks that very clearly weren't designed with very much consideration or forethought. You kinda let your hand do the planning there, reducing what constitutes "fur" to a simple repetitive pattern.

Whenever a mark distinctly changes its trajectory, you should be lifting your pen and starting a new line. Each tuft should be designed, thinking about how they balance against their neighbours in angle, size, trajectory, etc. Don't repeat the same mark over and over, and focus on how this impacts the silhouette. The silhouette is still meant to be an enclosed shape on the page.

You do improve on this front throughout the set, but it was a significant enough concern that I wanted to really emphasize it here.

Anyway, keep up the great work - you're showing a great deal of growth, so your hard work is definitely paying off.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-02-03 17:32

Thanks for getting that sorted out.

So while you are demonstrating a grasp of many of the core principles, your general use of them is definitely on the vague and loose side, and that's something I'd like us to work through before moving on.

From what I can see, your use of construction appears to be more like sketching. When you put down those early marks (defining the major masses, for example) you seem to be intentionally making those marks less solid, as if you want them to be hidden as much as possible. As a result they become quite flimsy and flat, and don't really hold themselves up as much as they could.

I want you to take far more care in drawing each form with more focus and intent - don't rough these forms in loosely, ensure that you draw each form to be solid and confident. We are not trying to hide these marks - they may not be a part of a final "pretty" drawing, but the point of these exercises is to learn about how all the forms exist in 3D space and how they relate to one another - not to create a pretty end result. They are just exercises.

I've also noticed that you have a tendency to rely strictly on observation when it comes to things like eyes - when you draw they you're not establishing a socket, then placing a ball inside and wrapping lids around them. You're drawing strictly what you see without additional construction (this is something I demonstrate specifically in the 'drawing animal heads' video from the lesson).

Here are some additional notes that I've written over one of your pages.

I want you to try another four pages of animal drawings. This time I don't want to see any detail - focus purely on construction. Leave out the fur and all of that - I don't want it distracting you from really hammering out these solid forms.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawabox Resources. FAQ, Communities, Live Streams, Youtubers, etc."

2018-02-02 18:29

I did play around with that as a possibility some time ago, resulting in lessons 1 and 2 being translated into Spanish. I ended up deciding that it wasn't worth pursuing any further, as the contribution to the growth of website traffic did not outweigh the work that went into merely formatting the translated content (other costs aside). It also highlighted other complications, such as keeping translated material updated (as lessons are modified every now and then).

All in all, while I appreciate the offer, it's definitely too much trouble.

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

2018-02-01 21:48

You've definitely got some really nice looking constructions (I especially liked this page due to its solidity), but when it comes to cylinders, it definitely looks to me like you may have jumped the gun a bit. You haven't yet completed the 250 cylinder challenge, and it definitely shows. You've got a couple cases where you're leveraging the minor axis, but for most of your cylindrical forms you're neglecting that entirely, to the detriment of your constructions. Getting through that cylinder challenge will definitely help both instil the principles of cylinder construction, while also giving you more practice with ellipses, and specifically the ellipses one might draw to reflect a certain cross-section in space (like what you faced here).

Similarly, additional practice with your boxes will definitely help. Your boxes are okay, but there are some inconsistencies here and there, angles that are slightly off - and things like this early on in the constructional process will result in issues later down the line. That said, you should absolutely stick to those mistakes and see them to the end, as you did here. My point is merely that practicing those more basic elements are what will have the greatest impact on improving your ability to draw these more complicated objects.

Lastly, you definitely get better in terms of adding details, but when you started out, it was definitely clear that you were a little overwhelmed by the amount of visual information present in your go pro. This is entirely normal, and as a result we tend to just kind of throw marks on the page to see what sticks, without as much focus on how the forms fit together, and how, say, a button might be grounded in the rest of the object.

When you add detail to one of these constructions, focus on that - how they're grounded. Don't allow yourself to attach them like stickers, which is much more arbitrary.

I'd like you to do 4 more pages of these drawings, focusing more on cylindrical objects (but first complete the cylinder challenge).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-02-01 21:25

It looks like your patreon pledge for the month of January was declined. Give me a shout once you've sorted that out and the pledge payment has gone through (I believe it'll keep trying to charge you until it's able to), and I'll critique your work.

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

2018-02-01 21:23

Things definitely start off kind of weak, but you certainly get the ball rolling and end up with a pretty good grasp of construction. The biggest challenge you were facing at the beginning was definitely proportion. Over the course of the set, you improve on this front considerably, while building up a better understanding of how your forms convey solidity, how they relate to one another, and even your use of texture.

Your last two pages are quite well done. I do have one thing to point out however - you've got to be more deliberate with the lines you put down, and you must draw through each one entirely. Take a look at this page. The construction is solid, but we can clearly see that the lines of the abdomen distinctly stop where they get overlapped by the form of the thorax. You're purposely expending mental energy to stop yourself from drawing marks beyond these points. Drawing each form in its entirety gives you a much stronger grasp of how they sit in space, which is ultimately what we're forcing you to internalize. You won't have to do this forever, but I want you to do it in all of my lessons. Additionally, by spending that additional focus on stopping your lines early, you're also taking away the resources your brain could be applying to the other problems you're attempting to solve here.

Aside from that, you're doing great. Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-01-31 14:55

I explain this in a few places (the intro video, the blurb at the beginning of lesson 1, etc.) but basically you pick two or three exercises from the overall 'pool' of exercises. Now that you've completed lesson 2, that'd include all the exercises from lessons 1 and 2. You do your chosen exercises for that day for about 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each session, so you're not focusing on repeating the same amount of work that was assigned for the lesson itself.

Don't simply repeat the same exercises each day - put them on rotation, so you're giving most of them some attention regularly. Some of course may be redundant (the planes exercise fully incorporates the ghosted lines exercise, for example) so you won't necessarily focus on all of them - but in this regard, you'll have to exercise your own judgment.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-01-30 22:15

Great work! You start off on a pretty stable footing there, but things get more solid and confident as you push through. I'm glad to see that you're pushing that minor axis all the way through your ellipses on each end (for some reason people have a tendency to draw their ellipses centered on either end of the minor axis), and I'm also pleased to see that you've practiced building them in boxes a fair bit.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-01-30 22:14

• For your arrows, you effectively repeated the same arrow eighteen times, with no variation whatsoever. You also didn't explore any of the exaggerations of perspective mentioned in the video (establishing one end as being further from the viewer, the other end as being closer and pushing the scale of the end that is closer), and as a result your arrows feel fairly limited to the two dimensions of the page with fairly little movement through the depth of the scene. That said, the flow of the arrows and how they bend and twist is well done - it's just that repetition that calls into question the actual understanding of the exercise itself.

• Your organic forms with contour lines are decently done. I do want to point out however that your contour curves have a bit of wobble to them, so keep working on executing your marks with confident, persistent strokes.

• The dissections are reasonably well done. Some demonstrate a greater reliance on memory (drawing what you think you saw rather than what you're actually seeing), while others are coming along much better. I think youre most successful ones were generally the scalier textures.

• Your form intersections are coming along, though they do feel somewhat haphazard at the moment. One thing that jumps out at me is that you've got a few longer cylinders in there - one of the instructions was to specifically avoid forms that are overly stretched in any one dimension, as this brings too much foreshortening into the mix, making a challenging exercise that much harder. While the forms themselves are mostly alright, I think the greater issue is the execution of your marks. You've got some definite wobble here and there, which undermines the solidity of your forms. You're heading in the right direction, but you definitely need to work on your linework.

• Your organic intersections are coming along fairly well, and they demonstrate a good grasp of the interaction between these various sausage forms.

Overall I think you've got a lot of room for improvement, but you are demonstrating a reasonable grasp of the material. Be sure to incorporate the exercises from this lesson as well as the previous one into a regular warmup routine as you continue to move forwards through the lesson. Also, take more care in following the instructions. Revisit the lesson content and the videos as much as is needed in order to ensure that when you work on a particular exercise, you haven't forgotten anything important.

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"

2018-01-28 19:36

Regardless of what tool you're using, it should be added by drawing over the line again. You should not be trying to vary your weight when putting the initial construction line down - instead you go back over it afterwards, adding extra weight in local areas with a confident stroke, similar to the super imposed lines exercise. You may not trust yourself to do that successfully right now, but that's no reason not to do it anyway. Even if it ruins each and every box, they're just fodder. It doesn't matter.

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

2018-01-28 18:39

Despite your difficulty with a lot of the complexities inherent to this lesson (all the damn lines all over the place), your work here is exceptional. I agree that your last couple pages are particularly well done, but your earlier stuff demonstrates a solid grasp of the forms you're dealing with, how they relate to one another and their proportions. At no point do you waste your linework, and you're always leveraging weight in a way that does not undermine the underlying construction, but rather emphasizes and organizes it to great effect.

Most importantly in my eyes is that despite the challenge all of the construction lines posed for you, you didn't shy away from using them. You faced that difficulty head on.

I'd say the first two pages show that you're getting used to the methodology, the following four show work at the level I'd be hoping for, and the last two pages go above and beyond.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-28 18:34

Definitely an improvement, and while the whole set shows far greater control and care with your linework, I think the last page most of all demonstrates a solid grasp of this lesson. I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-28 18:32

Your constructions are definitely coming together nicely, and your convergences are becoming noticeably more consistent. A couple suggestions - if you continue to have trouble with that front/back face illusion (in case it comes back), you can fill in one of the near faces with some tight, consistent hatching lines to serve as a visual cue. Also, what you may want to play with next is varying the weight of your lines. This can go a long way to building up the cohesion and solidity of your forms. I've got some notes on how to go about this on the challenge page so be sure to check them out.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-28 18:28

You started out from a point of considerable weakness, and demonstrated a great deal of improvement over the set. One can definitely see your understanding of 3D space start to click together, and the amount of growth here is pretty fantastic. Moreover, your very last page is a big jump from your second last, with both solid constructions and confident linework. It is unfortunate that you didn't apply the line extension method to a lot of the later pages, and as a result there is definitely room for improvement in terms of keeping those convergences consistent (as I'm sure you noticed from that last page), but I am glad that you decided to mark them out at the end there.

Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-01-27 15:56

That's totally normal, and just about everyone finds that to be the case in their work. We don't expect it, which is why extending the lines in this way helps make us more aware of our tendency for that convergence to drift.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-27 02:02

"How to draw 250 boxes and still be unable to get anything right - by Aera"

youuuuu drama queen. You're doing remarkably well for a whiny little hoe who can't own his victories. Your forms feel solid, your line weights are subtle but go a long way to add a strong sense of cohesion to your forms, and you're clearly doing a great job of checking the convergence of your lines with each box.

Your lesson 1 boxes weren't that bad to begin with, but in comparison these are considerably better.

So take a tissue, dab at your tears and move onto the next lesson. You're doing good, so consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-01-27 01:55

Very nice work! You're executing your lines smoothly with a confident, persistent stroke, and maintaining a consistent, even shape for your ellipses. You're definitely demonstrating a lot of patience and care as well - and you may almost be a little too hard on yourself as far as those little notes and corrections are concerned. It's good to be aware of your mistakes, but each exercise has its purpose, and fussing too much over yourself isn't always for the best. Of course, if it isn't harming your self confidence, then by all means - just don't push yourself to the point of burnout through self-deprecation.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, I caught in your plotted perspective boxes exercise that you got a little confused on this page (where you marked out "WTF"). The reason it feels weird is that your box is outside of the two vanishing points, so it's falling prey to a lot of heavy distortion. Your box is still technically correct, it just looks all whacked out.

Jumping ahead from there, solid work on your rough perspective and rotated boxes. Your organic perspective can certainly benefit from some more work but this is completely expected. Both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes were included here with the intent of being challenging and difficult, ultimately to get students to think a little differently about 3D space. Success is not really the goal here, so while you've got some issues with the consistency of your angles and the near/far plane size relationships in your boxes, that's totally normal.

I'm going to 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 on that challenge page before starting th ework.

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

2018-01-27 01:40

Frankly you're doing a pretty solid job. You're exhibiting a strong grasp of 3D space (aside from a box here or there that went a bit awry), and even the texture work is coming along well. Some of your choices are at times questionable though - for example, applying the kiwi texture in the way you did is really weird. You didn't wrap it around the rounded form (texture is always subordinate to the form it's applied to and should never contradict it) and it seems to have been applied across the edge between the rounded section and the flat end.

Another thing that jumps out at me with that kiwi texture is that your lines feel very uniform, with not much tapering on their ends. This often happens when a student is generally applying too much pressure, so try and ease up there. It may also just be your scanner being set to pick things up too harshly, which is at least playing at least a partial role.

In your form intersections, one thing that may help give your spheres a greater sense of form is to apply a little elliptical/circular contour line around one of the 'poles'. That is, a tight, small contour ellipse that runs directly along the surface of the form on a side pointing towards us. You can see me demonstrating this right here (59 seconds in).

Oh, and don't forget to draw through your ellipses for those organic forms with contour ellipses. Ultimately you should be working towards tightening them up so the lines line up neatly. If you're prone to trying to hit them in one round, you'll end up missing out on that part of the training.

Beyond that, all I can say is to keep up the good work. The warmups are helping, and while there's always room to grow, you're making good headway.

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

2018-01-27 01:32

There's a lot of good work here. There are also a few things I want to comment on.

• Great work with the arrows, they flow quite nicely through 3D space.

• Things got a little weird with a lot of your organic forms with contour curves - specifically where they got all bulbous, where you broke them down into sections, pinching them at each contour line rather than having those lines rest on the surface. At the end you did it better - this is what you should be aiming for (although don't leave out your minor axis).

• The dissections started off a little weaker, but you showed a lot of promise throughout, exhibiting far more patience and care with your observation. By the end you were much more deliberate with your marks. The one thing I do want to call out though is that you always want to make sure that the texture does not contradict or undermine the form it's being applied to. For example, your stone wall ended up flattening out the form entirely, rather than wrapping around the rounded form. Remember that this exercise needs to start out with solid forms created identically to the organic forms with contour lines. You don't at any point change the underlying form for the sake of the texture (aside from playing with the silhouette in small ways). The texture should always be subordinate to the underlying form.

• Like the rest, your form intersections start out weak but definitely get better. One major issue however is a matter of following the instructions - I specifically stated that you should avoid forms that are very long or stretched in any one dimension, as this brings more complexity by way of foreshortening, making a difficult exercise even more challenging. Always read the material as carefully as you can. I'm glad though that by the end of this, you demonstrated a much more solid grasp of form.

• Great work with the organic intersections - you capture the relationships between these sagging forms quite well.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep what I've mentioned here in mind, but feel free to move onto the next lesson.

I gotta say though - I'm a but surprised you missed the videos, considering that I critiqued your box challenge work well after they were integrated into the lesson.

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

2018-01-27 01:22

Really nice work! Your lines and ellipses sections are solid. You're executing your marks with a confident, persistent pace, which keeps them smooth and maintains even shapes, avoiding any wobbling or hesitation.

Your boxes section is also very well done, though I do have a couple things worth pointing out. Firstly, for the rough perspective boxes, it helps considerably to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Both the rotated boxes and organic perspective exercises are intentionally challenging. They're meant to challenge you to think differently about 3D space, and I have no expectation that students at this stage will really come anywhere near success. That said, your rotated boxes were genuinely well done. The organic perspective can certainly use some more work though, maintaining consistent angles and solid constructions - but we'll definitely get to that.

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 and watch the video on that challenge page before starting the work.

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

2018-01-25 21:21

As a rule, I'd be a little concerned if I received a homework submission a few months after receiving the last. Now, I'm not sure when you submitted your lesson 1 work, but given that I started tracking things back in September of 2015, and you're not in my records...

I was needlessly worried.

Thankfully it looks like I had no reason to be. Your work is excellent. As far as the things I watch out for from not having submitted in a while, you're showing some very confident linework with no real signs of wobbling or hesitation (for the most part). Your grasp of 3D space is strong, your organic forms flow nicely and your geometric ones feel solid.

Your dissections look good, with lots of careful consideration of the textures present on each object, and a lot of great experimentation. I did mention that wobbling wasn't present for the most part - the only area where this was a little weaker was in the dissections, where we can see you trying to perhaps put more weight than you should on the accuracy of your strokes. As a result, places like that thin lemon slice have edges that don't quite hold together, which undermines the solidity of the whole form. Just something to keep in mind.

For the arrows, I do have one recommendation - try to play with considering where the end points sit relative to the viewer. That is to say, place one end of the arrow farther away, and the other closer, and try and push the foreshortening (making the closer end seem exaggeratedly larger and the farther end feel much smaller). This will help you push into that depth dimension of space, where right now you are mostly moving along the two dimensions of the page with only a little bit of deviation into the third.

For the organic forms with contour curves, I do think it's pretty important to continue to work around a minor axis line that actually punches through the form (right now you've transitioned to having your lines run lengthwise along the surface of the form). The minor axis helps you when aligning those curves so they run perpendicular to the flow of the form. This in turn makes it easier to ensure that the curves wrap properly around the form. You're doing reasonably well at this, but I do see a bit of weakness with that alignment.

Your form intersections are very well done and demonstrate, as I mentioned before, an excellent grasp of 3D space. The only thing I want to pick at here is that it's a great idea to draw through your forms. This will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and how they relate to one another. Your organic intersections are well done too, though I'd recommend focusing on simple sausage forms (not too long or stretched) and piling all of them together on one page, rather than having smaller groupings of them.

Anyway, 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 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-01-24 21:19

Excellent work. I'm really pleased to see how much of your time you spent constructing those cylinders in boxes, as this becomes a very useful technique when you need to place cylinders in a specific location in space.

The only recommendation I have is that in the future, you may benefit from giving yourself a little more space for each cylinder, so you can draw them each a little larger. I don't see any significant issues with the size you've drawn them at, but usually our brains perform better when dealing with spatial problems when given more room to think. While your constructions are looking totally fine here, the drawings are a little small so it certainly wouldn't hurt to go a little larger.

Anyway, fantastic work. Keep it up, and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-01-24 00:21

Pretty good work! I'm glad to see that you drew your minor axes all the way through your cylinders consistently (a lot of people for some reason draw them between the midpoints of the different ellipses for some reason). About the cylinders in boxes though - it would have been better if you had explored them for at least a couple pages. The challenge is about drawing cylinders, but the concept was presented to you so you could practice it - in the future, you shouldn't be concerned with whether or not something is mandatory. Consider whether you stand to gain from practicing it (the answer is always yes).

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure to practice them in boxes on your own in the future, as it's a very valuable skill to have - especially as you get closer to lesson 6, where lining up cylinders in specific ways in 3D space relative to other forms becomes very important. That is where boxes really shine.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-24 00:19

This is going in the right direction. I do have a couple things to point out however:

• I mentioned that you should focus only on construction and form. I probably should have explained this further, in that I wanted no detail or texture. You did respect this in certain areas, and not in others - for example, the first page was full of information that did not actually pertain to the construction of the forms (the hatching inside of the bulbs and the rippling lines running along the length of the outsides). The point of drawing without detail is that you are forced to rely only on the construction of your forms to convey the whole object. There are no crutches left to fall back on. Your last page was a better example of construction only.

• I did recommend that you go back and watch some of the new videos about the lessons 1/2 exercises. I want you to specifically watch the form intersection one, as I explain matters of line weight there. I see in these drawings that you tend to go back to add line weight to the entire length of given lines, and you do so with slow, laborious strokes ensuring that you follow along them. This results in new lines that end up wobbling, and generally undermines the solidity of your construction. In that video, I explain that you should only add line weight to subsections of lines, applying it locally to certain areas to clarify specific overlaps between forms, rather than attempting to darken the entirety of a long stroke. This allows you to apply weight with a more confident, smooth stroke (which is always what you should be doing when executing a line), and also keeps you from falling into the trap of having linework that feels too uniform through its length.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, and I'd like you to move onto the next one. You certainly do have room to grow, but I think you've done well enough here and stand to gain more from moving forwards.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-24 00:11

Definitely better. Things to improve upon:

• Your branches' linework, especially on the second page, are still quite stiff and wobbly. Definitely something to practice. In general, there is a slowness to the execution of your marks - you're probably pressing too hard on the pen tip which results in a lot of little things, like the stroke coming out more gradually rather than confidently, as well as a more uniform weight (which contributes to that stiffness). Try applying less pressure.

• I did mention no detail/texture - on the leaf above that pitcher plant (second page, top right) you definitely added information that was not relevant to construction. It's important to understand what separates detail and construction, and to focus on hammering out your construction fully without relying on additional decoration. Same thing goes for the cross-hatching on the dirt in your first page.

There is plenty of room for growth, but I'm going to mark this lesson as complete and have you move onto the next one. There will be plenty of opportunity to improve on these points there. Make sure you're continuing to visit the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 though, as part of a warmup routine.