Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Thoughts on the Subject of Talent"

2018-01-23 14:34

You've got to ask yourself though, how much do you trust your ability to recollect all of this accurately? When you were younger your standards for decent art were probably much lower than they would be now, so assuming that because you found the drawings "flawless" then really doesn't tell us a whole lot. Then there's the fact that your time spent with your cousin did not account for all of the time he had in a day (I assume).

It'd be great if you could get in touch with your cousin and see if he's still kept any of his old drawings. I'd love to see them, especially if your memory has proven to be accurate.

Lastly, copying a cartoon is not something that takes a whole lot of training. With a limited amount of practice, you can probably do it pretty easily. That's why the vast majority of "how to draw" books for kids consist of that kind of material. Not because they're trying to teach anyone a useful skill, but because it's a great way to make money.

Uncomfortable in the post "Can DrawABox lessons be done digitally, rather than traditionally?"

2018-01-21 23:45

Can they be? Sure. Are they going to be helpful? Certainly. Will they be as effective as if you'd done them with the recommended tools? Unfortunately not. Is it still worth it? Yeah, but I've yet to come across someone with a good reason not to do it in ink first, then transition to digital.

Here's why the exercises work best with fineliners on paper.

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

2018-01-21 23:35

You start out with your lines being a little wobblier (exhibiting this issue), but your last page there seems to be much better. Keep in mind that your main focus when executing these lines is maintaining a consistent, smooth trajectory. The second your pen touches the page, you've committed to whatever mistakes you may make in terms of accuracy - all you can do is keep yourself from hesitating in order to avoid wobbling along the way.

In the future, you should be submitting an entire lesson's worth of work all at once, rather than in sections. I mention this in the homework section where the pages are assigned:

If you want a critique and some direction, you can submit your homework for review as a comment on this lesson's post on /r/ArtFundamentals. If you do choose to submit, please be sure to complete the homework in its entirety (all three parts as prescribed: lines, ellipses and boxes) in the required medium/media. While I am happy to help out, it does take a lot of time, and I'd greatly appreciate it if the time is taken to fully read and digest the material.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and feel free to submit the whole thing once you've got your ellipses and boxes done.

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

2018-01-21 19:16

Really solid work! Overall you're doing great, and are demonstrating a great deal of patience and care with your execution of each exercise. There were a couple minor things that I'll point out, but overall you're doing very well.

I noticed that in your super imposed lines and early into your ghosted lines exercises, there's just a touch of stiffness and wobbling to your lines. It's not terribly noticeable, but I've gotten used to catching these things. I explain the issue in these notes, but the gist of it is that you're still a little too preoccupied with accuracy as you execute your marks. Once your pen touches the page, you've committed to whatever you've prepared to do, and nothing can be done to change that. All you can do is push forwards with a confident, persistent pace and maintain a consistent trajectory. Wobbling is generally caused by a student's brain trying to course-correct as you go, which is generally only possible if you slow down.

Now I don't see any of this issue with your ellipses - they've come out very smoothly and consistently, and have lovely even shapes to them.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, your plotted perspective boxes are solid, and while there are clearly issues that you identified with your rough perspective boxes, this is totally normal. I noticed that you rushed into the rotated boxes at first (and didn't draw through your boxes), but immediately corrected that into your following attempt and all of those that came after it. By the end you did a pretty solid job, although I noticed that you neglected to fill in those corner boxes :P

Both this exercise and the organic perspective boxes were intentionally set to be out of a student's league, largely focused on getting you to think about 3D space a little differently. You certainly achieved that, so don't worry about the fact that they seemed to be rather painful. It's totally expected, and we'll be doing a little more work on this front next.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, and watch the video before starting the work.

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

2018-01-21 19:05

Doing good so far! There's a bit of wobbling on your super imposed lines (though it's minimal) - so I recommend that you give these notes a quick read. Aside from that, you're doing fine.

Just keep in mind that your homework submissions should include the entirety of a lesson's exercises, not just one section at a time. So keep up the good work, and submit the rest once you've completed the ellipses and boxes sections.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-21 18:57

Goodness, there's a lot here. But honestly, I think you've done great. There's plenty of room for growth, but in a lot of these drawings you're demonstrating a very well developing grasp of construction, and an excellent application of the principles described in the lesson.

It's clear to me that you're understanding these drawings as a collection of solid, 3D forms, rather than just flat marks on a page. You certainly are struggling with proportions in certain places (usually heads coming out too big), but this is absolutely normal, and you clearly show improvement on this front as well.

To be entirely honest, I don't have a lot of additional advice or critique to offer. You're doing exactly what you should be - tackling issues head on, understanding things as solid forms, applying construction, etc. One thing that might help is to start out with an orthographic plan of an animal before embarking on the full drawing. That is, try to draw the animal from the side (ideally if you can find a side view of the animal, use that) with the intent of understanding its proportions better. In this case, you can reduce it to 2D shapes, largely to grasp how the different components relate to one another in terms of scale. I demonstrate this in the vehicles lesson (specifically this demo), and it can definitely be applied here.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was to be a little less haphazard when adding hatching to a drawing. Your use of it (usually to push certain forms back and make them less important in a construction) is fine, just make sure you're not scribbling it and are ensuring your lines go from edge to edge. For example, it was quite sloppy on the sloth.

Aside from that, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. There is plenty of room for growth here, but like I said, you're moving in the right direction. It's just a matter of continuing to apply the same methodology you have been thus far when practicing. I do however think that the next two lessons will continue to help formalize your grasp of 3D form and space. These last few lessons have focused on organic objects, which can be a little more forgiving. When you're forced to deal with much more geometric forms, you'll find that you're pushed further, and the kind of structure you're forced to adapt can continue to help formalize your grasp of organics as well.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-21 18:42

This is pretty solid stuff. There are some minor issues I'll touch upon, but overall you're doing a good job and are demonstrating a solid grasp of 3D form and construction.

Before I start, I do want to point out that between christmas and new years, I released over twenty new videos. Most were pertaining to lessons 1 and 2 (one for each exercise), but four were for this lesson. If you haven't yet seen them, I'd recommend giving them a watch.

One thing I explain in the new hibiscus demo is how one should go about using the initial ellipses we sometimes use to establish a bunch of leaves or petals that radiate out from a central point. Take a look at the left side of this page. Those ellipses are quite vague, and the leaves themselves don't really seem to do much with the information the ellipses provide. In the hibiscus video, I talk about how the ellipse should be treated as though it defines the furthest extent to which the leaves should extend. Basically, construction is a matter of breaking things up into individual, discrete problems, which are solved through clear decisions being made. The ellipse/ball/volume/whatever defines the bounds of that part of your construction. Once made, you must heed it - even if that steers you away from being 100% accurate. Heeding that decision (rather than remaking the decision to suit your whims at this point) will keep things feeling solid and structured, and will ultimately maintain a believable construction.

Similarly, take a look at the first leaf on the second row in your leaves exercises page. It's the one with the wavy edges. Notice how the wave is going both above and below the simpler preliminary bounds of the leaf? You want to pick that simpler line as defining either the high bound or the low bound - not the middle, because the middle isn't substantial. Also, whenever a line's trajectory fundamentally changes (like a zig-zag pattern), it's often better to lift your pen and then start the next section as a separate segment. Zig-zagging will usually result in a weaker sense of form and solidity.

Lastly, I did notice that when you were adding texture, you often times (especially earlier on, less so later in the lesson) resorted to hatching, or other half-hearted measures. Notice how much better the cactus looks, despite its relative simplicity? Scribbling hatching lines, or being indistinct and vague with your texture doesn't generally look good or believable. You want your marks to exude a sense of intent - even if a lot of it is left implied rather than explicitly defined, as long as there is a clear purposefulness to the marks, your texture will be communicated much more believably to the viewer.

Anyway, those are the main things I noticed. Keep them in mind as you continue to move forwards. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-21 18:32

There's a bit of a mixed bag here. Some successes, and other areas with plenty of room for growth.

To start with, I think this construction came out quite well, especially in how you handled the flowers themselves. It shows a growing understanding of how to see these objects as a collection of simpler forms.

Overall however, I do feel that you have a tendency to draw first, think later, though this lessens over the course of the set. You tend to draw back over the same lines many times, and generally treat things as a rough sketch, rather than taking the time to think through your marks before putting them down. This results in lines having a generally heavy weight to them, which somewhat diminishes one's ability to organize one's linework by applying a subtle addition of extra thickness here and there. You need to get your linework under control - don't think on the page, plan things out in your head before executing them. It's not easy, but when you're unsure of how to approach the next line, rather than guessing at it, take a step back and think about the problem you're facing.

In the leaves, I noticed that you show a tendency to avoid folding a leaf over itself. This isn't always the case, and I'm glad to see that there are several instances where you jump into that area of discomfort, and those leaves do tend to come out better for it. But generally when you don't allow yourself to twist those leaves, they end up coming out flat. So keep chugging away on that front.

Before we move forward, I do want to mention that between christmas and new years, I released over 20 new videos, spread out across the lessons. Most were between lessons 1 and 2 (where I explain each exercise in its own video - even though you've moved past those lessons, since you're still expected to continue doing that work as part of a regular warmup routine, I encourage you give them a look), though four new videos were introduced for this lesson as well. One for each of the leaf and branch exercises, and two drawing demos with full commentary. It's important that you watch them.

In the branches video, I explain an issue you're running into a lot. I'm glad to see that you're constructing the branches from individual segments, from ellipse to ellipse, but right now they are not flowing together. You can see the little bits of each segment sticking out, while the next line turns away from it, resulting in a chicken-scratchy look. In the video I reexplain what I mention in the written instructions - that you need to overshoot past the ellipse towards the following one, so that it runs along the same path that the next segment will.

To clarify, you draw a line from the first ellipse past the second, and overshoot towards the third, hooking your curve as needed. Then you draw a line from the second ellipse past the third (so that it runs over the overshot extension of the first) and towards the fourth. Again, the video explains this more visually, so be sure to watch it.

On this page, at the top, you'll see that your leaves have a wavy edge to them. This waviness is complex information. When it comes to the construction method, we want to start out as simply as possible, with simple curves enclosing the leaf, then we break it down into these kinds of waves. This is something I mention in the new leaf video.

In a lot of these drawings, I do think that you get way too preoccupied with texture and detail, and end up scribbling quite heavily on your drawings. This only adds to the previous haphazardness I mentioned earlier, and causes things to sometimes fall apart.

Once you've had a chance to review the new video content, I'd like you to try four more pages of plant drawings. Keep what I've said here in mind - take your time with each mark, prepare and ghost through them before executing each stroke. And lastly, don't forget that you are expected to keep up with the exercises from lessons 1 and 2, picking two or three at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes before moving onto that session's work. You submitted your work for lesson 2 five months ago, so my guess is that you've likely forgotten a great deal from that material. Building on top of a weak recollection of the other exercises is going to result in shaky work going forward, so be sure to get that in order sooner rather than later.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-21 18:12

Your constructions certainly get better through the course of the exercise, but there are a few things that jump out at me. First and foremost, I feel like you're likely drawing very small on the page. It's hard to really be sure of this, because you've compiled them all into one strip (I'd really prefer it if you didn't do this, it's kind of a pain to sift through and to refer to specific drawings). There are however tell-tale signs that you're drawing smaller than you ought to, like your linework coming out stiff in certain cases.

I'm also catching a certain vagueness to much of your linework, where you're not quite putting as much time as you could into the preparation phase of all of your marks. Some are planned and executed well, while others are much more haphazard. Furthermore, you don't ever really formalize many of your constructions. That isn't to say getting into detail - I just mean completing your forms and unifying them to feel cohesive. They're often times just a mess of some very faint lines, and other very dark ones.

While you're moving in the right direction, this doesn't feel like completed work. It seems sloppy and rushed, and far below what you're definitely capable of.

I'd like you to do six more pages of plant drawings. Take care to give each drawing the room it needs (even doing just one drawing per page is perfectly fine). Your brain will benefit greatly from this additional room with which to help think through spatial problems. Make sure your forms feel solid and complete. Plan and ghost your marks out before executing them confidently, don't treat these as loose sketches.

As for your question, if your ellipses represent solid, 3D forms, draw them from the shoulder. If they're more a part of a texture, then you may use your wrist. But I think that this question was largely born of you drawing too small.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-21 17:26

You're doing pretty well, but there are a few things that stood out to me:

• Draw through your ellipses. This is most visible in your branches, but it is present everywhere. Because you're not drawing through your ellipses (you should be doing that for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons), your ellipses aren't entirely evenly shaped. This is an important factor when it comes to constructing forms that feel solid.

• For your leaves, they're alright, but they are quite limited to flowing through only the two dimensions of the page itself rather than all three. Try and think about which end of the leaf sits farther away from the viewer, and which end sits closer, so you force yourself to work in all three dimensions. The new leaf exercise video (I added many new videos between christmas and new years) discusses this.

• On this page, the constructional approach you've used for the petals doesn't quite demonstrate a proper grasp of construction. Construction is all about breaking the process of drawing something into multiple phases, where at each point you tackle a question and decide on an answer. From then on, you stick to that answer regardless of how it impacts the accuracy of your drawing. In this case, you fleshed out those ellipses first, but didn't actually end up heeding them at all, as were not respected as the bounds or any other such answer to any constructional question. They could just as well have not been present. Also, the flow of those individual petals is a little stiff, and it gives the impression that you were still thinking more about how they flowed across the flat page, than how they would be flowing through space. This is related to my last point about the leafs exercise. My newer hibiscus demo touches on both of these points, so be sure to give it a watch.

• The flower pot on this page is quite complex. You definitely jumped in a little too far forward in its construction too early, resulting in a form that ended up feeling somewhat flat. When approaching something like this, always build around a minor axis (as one would do with any cylinder), and build a series of ellipses through its length to define the different major widths. Also don't forget that the lip of the pot has thickness, so it should be composed of two ellipses, one inset within the other. Also, of course - draw through your ellipses.

• I mention this in the new leaves exercise video, but on this page you've got leaves with rippling, wavy edges. You've drawn them as a single continuous line going all the way around. Instead, whenever a line's trajectory fundamentally changes, lift your pen and start a new line. What you don't want is this sort of zig-zagging pattern, going back and forth, continually changing your trajectory. After all, you can't really ghost or apply those same preparation methods to a zigzagging line, so it should be broken down into sections where you can apply that methodology.

• This page certainly went wrong. It happens, it's no big deal, but I did want to use it as an example of where you waaay overdid it with contour curves. You've done this elsewhere as well, though in this example is to quite an extreme degree. Keep in mind what the purpose of a contour line is - to describe how a surface deforms through space. You need only one or two at most to do this even for quite a large form. Whenever I see someone applying them all over the place, it usually signifies that the person at least at the time did not fully grasp their purpose. You also definitely went off the rails with your detail/texture, but based on the fact that I've seen you do much better elsewhere, I won't dwell on this.

• For the sake not just pointing out the mistakes, I really liked this page. The leaves flow nicely through 3D space, and your construction feels more solid than it has in other pages. This one is also quite decent, though it does show some of the issues I mentioned earlier (like the ellipse being entirely pointless).

• The last thing I want to mention is that you should focus more on construction. Don't let yourself be distracted by texture and detail.

I'd like you to do three more pages of plant drawings, this time focusing only on construction and form. Be sure to watch all of the new videos I added for this lesson, and also consider reviewing some of those for lessons 1 and 2, as there are new videos for each exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-20 18:59

The pitcher plant came out quite well. For the hibuscus and the flowering sections on the peyote cactus, you missed the point I raised in my own hibiscus demo video, where the flow lines of your petals should only extend as far as the bounds of the ellipse. That's essentially the purpose that ellipse serves, and if you allow yourself to go well beyond that point, there was no real point in drawing the ellipse in the first place. Construction is essentially a matter of breaking a drawing into a series of decisions, and tackling those decisions one by one. If you end up making a decision, then going back to undermine or revise that decision later, your process falls apart.

Also, a major thing you're avoiding is drawing through your ellipses. Instead of drawing through them and doing so with a confident, persistent pace, you're drawing them slowly, resulting in a wobbly line and an uneven shape.

Lastly, your bunny ears' cactus is alright, though you definitely missed opportunities to reinforce those forms with one or two well placed contour lines. Right now it still reads as being rather flat.

It occurs to me that you are definitely far too preoccupied with detail and texture, and are worrying more about that than you do the solidity of your constructed forms.

You're definitely getting there, but I want to see two more pages of plant drawings. Draw on blank paper, draw each one big on the page, and don't include any texture or detail. Focus only on construction. Also, before you do this, I highly recommend reviewing all of the exercise videos from lessons 1 and 2 in case you haven't already. I feel like there are basic principles (drawing through your ellipses, executing marks confidently rather than slowly, etc) that you've forgotten since you last submitted your work for lesson 2 half a year ago.

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

2018-01-20 18:50

Overall you're demonstrating a pretty good grasp of construction. I went and looked at the steps for the beetle that you'd posted, and I'd say it's the best example there of a good understanding of how your forms sit in 3D space, and how they all connect together.

I have a couple things to point out though:

• You're generally not drawing through most of your ellipses. You should be doing that for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons, without exception.

• At times your linework can be a bit vague at the earlier stages. You do cover this up as you go along, but the result is that the underlying construction doesn't always end up as solid as it could and should be. This has an impact on the resulting drawing. Take more care with things like contour lines (making sure they go from edge to edge and hook around confidently so they appear to continue on along the other side - it wasn't quite achieved in your dragon fly, for example, overshooting your curves a little as they hook around can help here), and generally take more time planning your marks. Vagueness tends to come from rushing into the execution phase too early.

• If you look at the dragonfly's tail, you constructed it with a ball that has been stretched quite dramatically. In most cases, such forms are better off handled with sausages. This applies to legs too. I explain this in one of the insect video demos, here.

Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. There certainly are areas for you to grow, but you're heading in the right direction. Feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-01-20 01:18

Overall you're doing really quite well. The two exercises that you had particular trouble with are intended to be that way - they're more about getting students to think differently about 3D space, and in order to do so I drop them into the deep end of the pool before teaching them to swim.

I did notice that your linework have just the slightest, almost imperceptible tendency towards stiffness. It's barely even there, but it led me to want to just reiterate that the flow and smoothness of your lines (coming from executing each mark with a confident, persistent stroke without any hesitation) is paramount, and that the accuracy of your mark is secondary to that. Remember that once your pen touches the page, any opportunity to adjust your approach and overall avoid mistakes is over and gone. You've committed yourself, so you need to follow through.

Of course, like I said - it's a very minimal issue in your case, so I don't want you to consciously attempt to alter anything. Rather, I think just planting the seed in your mind should be enough to nudge you in the right direction.

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 on the page and watch the video. This should help you improve on the issues you experienced with the rotated boxes (which admittedly were actually done pretty well) and more specifically the organic perspective boxes.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-20 01:14

Great work! I totally agree that the yellow highlighter was a mistake, but what can you do. What's important though is that you very clearly demonstrated throughout the set that you learned from the act of extending those lines, and as you progressed your boxes started to look much more confident and solid.

You've done really well here. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, and keep it up!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-20 01:06

Yours has a little bit of curvature to it, but it doesn't really give me the impression that you really thought about it as though that lid was following along the full curvature of the ball's surface.

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

2018-01-20 01:01

Hi Danyal. You probably meant to post your homework directly to the subreddit for the free community critique. Those who post here receive critiques directly from me, and that's limited to those who support drawabox on patreon. I don't currently have you listed in my notes as being eligible for that.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-01-19 00:42

You've done quite well. I definitely noticed that you struggled somewhat with the cylinders in boxes, as you'd mentioned. One thing that may help (and this counts for the other cylinders as well) is to draw your minor axis line a little longer so it'll penetrate all the way through both ellipses once they're drawn. Since the ellipses are meant to align to this guideline, having it stretch only between their center points makes it a little trickier to line things up correctly. When it comes to the boxes, extending it further can also make it easier to tell which line is the important one.

That said, you are doing a pretty good job when it comes to the alignment of your ellipses, and while you had some that were a little weak, generally it was because of issues that you were able to learn and recover from.

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

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

2018-01-19 00:38

Excellent work! You've actually really nailed all of the exercises. Your line quality is smooth and consistent, which keeps your lines fairly straight, and your ellipses evenly shaped. You're also demonstrating a pretty solid grasp of 3D space in how you're tackling the 3D forms. The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are meant to be quite challenging, and are really more about getting students to think differently about space, but you nailed them all the same.

I have only one suggestion - I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so you should feel free to move onto lesson 2, but before you do I'd like you to read through the notes on the 250 box challenge page, and watch the video linked there. Things like drawing through your boxes, and generally how to go about practicing the construction of boxes (and checking your work for mistakes) is very helpful. You don't need to complete the challenge, just go over the content.

Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-19 00:27

So you did much better this time, primarily with that first page. You do have plenty of room to grow however, and I've outlined several issues here. I still think that you should be ready to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-18 01:18

You're clearly demonstrating strong observational skills, and at the same time, you are relying on them instead of applying construction as instructed. There are a lot of mistakes you're making here that I do bring up in the newer videos for this lesson, as well as in videos for previous lessons - so I strongly encourage you to watch those you haven't, and rewatch those you have.

I've outlined the most significant mistakes I noticed in this page. You're often far too vague and loose with your construction, and too eager to skip steps (filling the gaps in with pure observation with far less understanding of the forms that should be present there).

I actually think your ram was mostly well done, aside from the issue with the ribcage and shoulder which I pointed out in my redlining. It certainly can use work, but overall your approach in terms of form certainly is better compared to many of your other drawings, where you're considerably more preoccupied with detail.

Anyway, I want you to try another four pages of animal drawings, but this time I don't want to see any detail or texture. Focus on construction only. This should be more than enough for you to capture the essence of the animal you're after. Remember that construction is broken down into phases - each one builds on top of the last, and if the information you want to put down in your current step cannot be reasonably supported by the scaffolding you've already put down, you're likely skipping over a more rudimentary part of the construction.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-17 21:01

You get charged at the beginning of every following month. So you pledged during September, and were first charged on October 1st.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-17 20:32

Yup, you'll keep your badges. They're not technically tied to the patreon thing as a bonus or anything like that. I largely use them to track peoples' progress myself.

I hope you plan on keeping your pledge through this month however, as you have received a critique during January. While it's certainly not a $3-per-critique deal (most will maintain a pledge until they're satisfied that they've paid a fair amount for what they've received, if at all possible), cancelling your pledge before being charged for a month during which you received a critique is frowned upon to say the least.

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

2018-01-17 00:44

Pretty good work! There are a few areas that I want to direct your attention to, but overall you're doing quite well and show a long of great development in each area.

One thing that did stand out to me though was that your organic forms with contour curves kinda waffle back and forth between wrapping properly around the rounded forms (hooking back around at the edges to give the impression that they continue along the other side) and looking more like they're about to fly off the surface of the form. This suggests that you still need to quite actively think about how they need to wrap around and keep pushing that 'overshooting' method where you hook back around just a little bit more before lifting your pen.

Most of your dissections are really well done, but this page falls quite short, both with all of the blank surfaces, as well as the forms themselves. Stick to simple sausage forms.

Aside from that, everything else is solid. I especially liked your form intersections and organic intersections, as they feel like they convey a strong sense of weight.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2018-01-17 00:22

Definitely much, much better. Plenty of room for growth as far as observation goes but you're heading in the right direction. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2018-01-16 03:57

The principles you've mentioned here are actually all present in the way I present the material. A lot of people tend to miss the areas where I explain these points however, so over time I've tried to emphasize and underline them (most recently through the newest round of videos, specifically the introduction to drawabox in lesson 1).

I actually quite like how you've listed and described the points, as it's quite succinct. I'm going to piggyback off of that here and explain how they are manifested in the approach we use here (and perhaps where people tend to ignore them to their detriment).

• Spreading things out over time. It may seem like the lessons rely heavily on direct repetition, but a the few pages per exercise I assign as the recommended amount of homework are there to ensure that the student understands the purpose and goal of a given exercise. It's not an excessive amount (though contrary to my own recommendations, far too many students think that they need to grind things out until they've mastered it, which I regularly speak out against). Afterwards, those exercises become a part of a regular warmup routine, where two or three are chosen to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting. This keeps them on constant rotation, spreading them out over a long period of time.

• This focus on technical repetition as part of a warmup allows the student to get accustomed to the techniques they are then expected to apply to more meaningful content. For example, the use of the ghosting method - I don't expect a student to really grasp the purpose of it by performing the ghosting exercise, but rather to develop a second nature of thinking and planning before each confident execution when actually drawing.

• Furthermore, the warmup routine ensures that the tasks are interleaved rather than stacked into blocks, and keeps students from forgetting these key principles, by mixing a bit of purposeful cramming, followed by practical application.

• I strongly agree with the idea of testing before properly learning the material, and I emphasize it not only with my views on the value of failure, but also in certain key exercises. The rotated boxes and organic perspective box exercises are the first major manifestation of that, and while students regularly get frustrated over them, they are there to force students to think differently, rather than explaining everything up-front. Afterwards we explore the challenges they faced, but tackling them without knowing how exactly to go about it is integral to the process. Even the dissection exercise in lesson 2 throws students into the deep end of handling texture before knowing anything about it.

It's good to know that there is some validation for the principles behind how I've chosen to present this material. I'm not a trained teacher of any fashion, I've just decided to lay things out this way out of a mixture of stubborn instinct, and observation over the last several years of critiquing homework. It is a pity that so many people who tackle these lessons try and go about it their own fashion (falling into a grinding mentality, focusing on achieving mastery on one piece at a time and ignoring other explicit instructions against such approaches), but I'm hoping that the newer video content will help reduce those misunderstandings.

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

2018-01-16 02:19

Unfortunately, you're becoming a real problem for me. Your work is basically flawless. Okay, flawless might be a bit of an exaggeration, but as far as the concepts that I'm looking for in this lesson, you've nailed them all, and you've followed my instructions to a tee. It kinda makes my critiques a little pointless, and makes me wonder why you're paying for them at all :P

Your arrows flow smoothly through all three dimensions of space, exploring the depth of the scene and not being limited to the two dimensions of the page you're drawing on. Your contour lines do a great job of fleshing out the volumes of your organic forms, and the contour curve specifically really push the illusion that they're hooking back around along the edges and continuing along the other side. Your dissections are all quite varied and show a great deal of experimentation with many different surface types, and your form intersections capture a solid grasp of how these forms interact with one another in 3D space, and your spheres are eerily clean and tidy. Lastly, your organic intersections superbly capture a deep understanding of how these various forms sag and slump against one another, and where their weight is supported and when it is not.

If I had one thing to point out, it'd be a few minor errors in your form intersections, regarding the construction of some of your forms. Issues like the convergences of some forms (like the top left box on the second page of the exercise, and on that same page, the second cylinder from the bottom (down the dead center of the page)'s farther ellipse seems to be overly wide in its degree. These are the kinds of mistakes I'd expect to see however if only because of the perils of working in such a permanent medium. If anything, the fact that you did not allow such mistakes phase you and kept pushing forwards with the drawing was excellent.

All I can really say is - keep up the great work, and I hope you give me something to tear into a little in the next lesson, instead of this iron-clad sort of submission.

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

2018-01-16 02:02

I agree, the results are mixed. There are some remarkably successful constructions here, and others that are considerably less so.

I really liked this spray bottle. Overall it feels well proportioned and quite solid. There are two issues with how you approached it though, as I demonstrated here. The point about "don't replace your lines" is about the fact that you've got lines from your construction, but you're attempting to replace them where they already exist to "clean things up". That is likely an attempt at adding line weight, but the result is that you're creating a line that you've drawn much slower, and that is more likely to be more wobbly. I explain in the new form intersection video (I made a bunch of new videos, one for each exercise in lessons 1 and 2) why this is not the way you should be handling line weight, and that line weight needs to be added only to local sections of lines.

While the proportions on this one were definitely lacking, I think your construction of the overall forms was actually very well executed. Especially that lower mass. You go over your lines needlessly again, but aside from that the form is sturdy.

Some of your weaker pages tend to suffer a fair bit from starting boxes that just aren't correct, so it takes the rest of the construction down with you. That is definitely still something you are struggling with quite a bit.

It's been quite a while since you last tackled the 250 box challenge, and I've actually adjusted it somewhat in a way that I think may help you a fair bit. In the challenge, I now stress a very specific method for identifying errors and developing your understanding of 3D space. I've added a new 'how to draw a box' video that explains this technique, while also being more succinct about the matters of constructing the box.

I'd like you to go back and do the 250 box challenge again (which you should submit when you're done), and then do three more pages of everyday objects.

By the way - computer mice are generally quite difficult, but I think yours came out quite well.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-16 01:36

I'm glad you were able to complete the challenge. Having the persistence to push all the way through is definitely very important.

Your boxes vary in quality throughout the set - some are much stronger than others. There is one very important thing that you neglected to do however, and I mentioned it when assigning this challenge. That is, the correction technique where you extend the lines of a completed box back towards its implied vanishing points to see how those lines converge. I explain this in the paragraph above the video links on the challenge page, as well as in (the new version of) the how to draw a box video.

Be sure to give that video a watch, and while it would have been best had you applied this technique upon the completion of each full page, I recommend that you still apply it now to your last two pages in order to identify where you're making mistakes and what the nature of those mistakes is.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure to continue incorporating this kind of exercise into your warmups, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-16 01:32

Excellent work. Your box constructions feel very solid and cohesive, and capture a strong sense of weight. Your use of line weight also goes a long way to reinforce these principles, and I'm glad to see that you were applying the double checking methods a fair bit throughout. You're definitely heading in the right direction at considerable speed, and the confidence of your linework is really showing.

It's good to see that you haven't gotten rusty at all, despite your last submission having been almost a year ago. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2018-01-16 01:28

Pretty decent work, though I did catch a few things that I'd like you to keep in mind:

• For your arrows, they're pretty good, but you are running into a tendency to construct them within the limited space of your 2D page. That is to say, there's not a whole lot of exploration of depth. Try to play around with thinking about which end of the arrow is farther away from the viewer and which is closer, and exaggerate the width as it moves through that depth of the scene (closer should be much wider, farther should be much more narrow).

• You've got those contour curves running quite nicely over the surface of your organic forms, and you're capturing the illusion of them hooking back around to the other side well. I do however want you to refrain from neglecting to draw the central minor axis line that I mention in the instructions. It's still important here when it comes to the alignment of these contour lines.

• The portion of the dissections that you completed are definitely a good start. Quite dense, but they demonstrate good observational skills. The only thing that jumps out at me is that you clearly didn't push through to cover all your surfaces. That's something that you yourself should think about. The amount of the exercise that was assigned is not that important, but there is no real reason not to complete it. All it takes is time and patience, and giving up on that for whatever reason suggests that it's something you should come back and consider a little more.

• For your form intersections, I'm glad that after those first two pages, you did end up drawing through those forms properly, and as a result they came out much better.

On Christmas, I released videos pertaining to each individual exercise in lessons 1 and 2. Some of the issues I've mentioned here were mentioned in greater detail in that video content, so I recommend that you give them a look.

So, as I said - keep these points in mind as you continue to move forwards. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2018-01-14 09:49

Looking good. Go ahead and move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page and watch the video before starting on the work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-14 05:16

I think that's a solid plan. At the end of the day, it's not going to be perfect, it'll take time to refine and train. So it's best to keep moving forwards and keep revisiting this stuff as a warmup.

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

2018-01-14 04:28

Very well done! It's true that this lesson is quite difficult, especially when compared to the more forgiving matters of drawing organic forms like insects and animals. That said, you handled it quite well in most cases. I also noticed that your general confidence improved considerably over the course of the set, and your later drawings do feel much more solid and put together (with the exception of that disproportionate barrel).

That said, even the barrels are capturing the essence of the lesson well - your proportions are off, but the forms themselves still feel solid for the most part. The only complaint I have with both of them is that at either end, there's no visible thickness to the lip (before the rounded surface comes down to the flat face). So instead of having the minimally thick edge we see there in the reference, your rendering actually comes to a very sharp edge, one that could cut a person.

Whenever it comes to those kinds of edges, always consider whether or not it would reasonably be that sharp, or if it requires some minimal thickness to it, by constructing another inset ellipse.

Aside from that, you've done great. You've demonstrated a lot of different kinds of objects here, many of which have a lot of ellipses (which are very difficult as I'm sure you discovered). I especially liked both of your measuring tapes, as they both felt extremely solid and well constructed.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2018-01-14 04:22

Thanks for repledging! I'm glad you decided to return.

Looking over your submission, there are some areas where I can certainly help you. First and foremost, I do get the impression that you probably started your work on this lesson before new years. I say this because I actually added a few more videos pertaining to things like the leaf and branches exercises, as well as a couple breakdowns of how to approach drawing a plant. In these videos, I talk about some of the common pitfalls that you've exhibited here.

Here are some things I observed in your work:

• For your branches, two things. Firstly, draw bigger - spatial problems such as these benefit considerably from giving your brain more room to think. Secondly, in the branch notes (also in the video), I explain that you should strive to construct the edges of your branches in segments, being careful to have them flow together smoothly (to avoid a chicken scratchy look). If you tackle it all at once, you're either going to end up with an inaccurate stroke that goes all over the place, or one that has been drawn far too slowly and ends up looking wobbly and stiff.

• Another point related to the branches - draw through your ellipses.

• Your leaves aren't bad, but try to focus on the idea that these leaves flow through three dimensions of space, with one end being closer to the viewer, and one end being farther away. This is quite similar to the arrows exercise in lesson 2. Thinking in this manner keeps you from limiting yourself to just the two dimensions of the page you're drawing on.

Specifically for the plant drawings:

• You've got a lot of hatching lines being applied to your drawings - this is best avoided. People tend to get a little mixed up when they think about texture and detail. They'll use hatching because they actually are thinking more about rendering light/shadow in a drawing, rather than communicating the textures present on the various surfaces of the forms. By forcing yourself to avoid hatching, you end up having to think more about what your reference image is actually telling you, and how to go about communicating that to those looking at your drawing. Remember that we are not worrying about light in these drawings, so at no point will you be putting marks down explicitly to tell the viewer about how light hits it.

• In this page, you drastically overuse contour lines. I usually see this when one is not entirely sure of what purpose the contour lines serve, and so they overcompensate. A contour line just describes the way a surface deforms through space. More often than not, just a couple will be more than enough to do the job, while overloading a drawing with them will cause it to stiffen up and start feeling more like a 3D mesh.

• Draw through your forms. If you've got two leaves that overlap one another, don't limit yourself to drawing only the visible sections of each. Draw both in their entirety, as fully enclosed forms. These drawings are exercises not in drawing plants, but rather about construction and understanding how forms sit in 3D space and relate to one another. In order to understand this fully, we need to draw each form in its entirety.

A lot of your drawings are actually quite nice, but these issues that I've outlined here are important when it comes to grasping the specific concepts the lesson tries to impart. I'd like you to first review the new video content and then do another four pages of plant drawings.

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

2018-01-14 04:05

Pretty good work overall, but there are a few key things that you missed in the instructions, or at least, points that you didn't heed as carefully as you should have.

Before that though, I do want to mention that your line execution is quite confident, which keeps your marks quite smooth and consistent. Keep it up.

So the issues are as follows:

• Draw through your ellipses. You only seem to do this in a couple of instances, and everywhere else you strive to complete your ellipses in one go. I stress the importance of drawing through all of your ellipses (not just in these exercises, but in all of the drawabox lessons). I noticed that when you try to draw them in one go, you do manage to get very even ellipses, but your accuracy tends to be quite poor. Drawing through them will help you maintain your confidence while letting you work on developing that accuracy a little better.

• You don't seem to have done the rough perspective boxes exercise, or perhaps you forgot to include them here.

• For your rotated boxes exercise, push and exaggerate the rotations of your boxes. You're drawing through the forms very nicely, but each step doesn't rotate very much, resulting in the countless rows and columns. In the instructions, I demonstrated doing it with only a few rows/columns covering a full 180 degree arc. Our brains actually don't like rotating forms at all - they prefer things to exist on simple, straight grids. So, it's quite natural to feel that we've rotated a box further than we actually have, because our brain fools us into thinking so. Because of this, we need to push and exaggerate those rotations further each time, to compensate.

You made a solid attempt with the organic perspective boxes as well - there are issues, as I would expect, so we will be working a little further on rotating boxes freely in 3D space by moving onto the 250 box challenge. Before that though, I want you to complete and submit the rough perspective boxes exercise.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-01-14 03:50

Pretty nice work! You clearly really applied yourself here, and approached each one with a lot of patience and care. You're making good progress, but I did notice a few areas that you could stand to improve upon.

• Some of your ellipses flow quite smoothly, which is great. With some of the others, it appears as though you execute the mark a little slower, with a little more hesitation, so the line wobbles ever so slightly. It goes without saying, as I'm sure you're already doing this, but keep pushing yourself to execute those marks with a confident, persistent pace. Once your pen touches the page, there's no more room for hesitation - accept that you might make a mistake and charge forwards anyway (after applying the preparation techniques of the ghosting method of course).

• Keep working on getting your ellipses to align to the minor axis line. Again, I'm sure you're aware of this, but I think that's the most noticeable issue. For example, 242 and 243 very clearly have ellipses that are off. This will improve with time, so keep at it. You do have a lot that are spot on though, so it's not like this is something you missed - it's just an area with lots of room for growth.

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

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

2018-01-14 03:37

Nice work! You've exhibiting a lot of the qualities I'm looking for - primarily, the execution of your marks is confident, which keeps your lines smooth and consistent, and your ellipses evenly shaped. Keep in mind for your planes exercise that what we're doing here - at least for now - has nothing to do with perspective, so there's no need to add that extra pressure. That said, adapting this exercise in this manner will help later on, but for now just focus on it as an excuse to use the ghosting method.

For your funnels, I caught that little "didn't read the lesson" thing - but your follow up attempt is still missing your central minor axis line, which really is the core of the exercise. It's all about aligning to that minor axis. That said, you do seem to be aligning them more correctly in your next attempt, just be sure to actually include the line in the future.

Nice work with the rough perspective boxes, nothing to complain about there. You did reasonably well with your rotated boxes, though it's clear that thinking in this manner of freely rotating the forms posed quite the challenge. That's normal of course - it does so for everyone.

You do have a few noticeable issues of far planes being larger than near planes (so basically your lines converging in the wrong direction), in your organic perspective boxes. This isn't abnormal at all, and we will be working a little further on this area.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, and watch the video as well.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2018-01-12 23:48

Old thread got locked for being too old, those of you eligible to have me review your work can submit it here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-12 20:45

Nice work! You're constructions definitely get more consistent and confident throughout the set, and I'm glad to see that you've been trying to apply the line extension method to double check and identify your mistakes. On that note, I did notice that you were mainly extending only one set of parallel lines - keep in mind that there are three individual sets, and to really get the most out of that technique you've got to extend all of them and analyze how the lines of each given set converge towards one another. Doing it only for some of the sets leaves you open to accidentally making mistakes in other areas.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I think it'd be a good idea to take your last page or two and apply the method to the remaining lines, so you can identify mistakes that might be hiding (it's easy to miss them once your boxes have reached a certain level, this technique is intended to make them more obvious).

Anyway, keep up the good work! Once you've done that, feel free to move onto lesson 2.

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

2018-01-12 20:31

I'm glad to see that you drew through your forms this time around. You generally did the challenge fairly well, but you did miss one thing that I actually emphasized when I asked you to redo it:

The correction techniques outlined near the beginning, specifically extending your lines towards their implied vanishing point. This should be applied upon the completion of each full page of boxes (as opposed to after each individual box or after the entire set is completed), so you can learn from your mistakes along the way, but avoid breaking up the flow of your process.

If you don't follow what I mean, I did post a new 'how to draw a box' video a few weeks ago that you'll find linked on the 250 box challenge page, and it goes over this. It's important because it allows you to learn from your mistakes, which will improve the rate at which you develop.

I'm going to mark this challenge as complete, but I still strongly recommend that you go back over the last two pages of your boxes and extend the lines using that correction method so you can at least identify the kinds of mistakes you are making currently.

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

2018-01-12 01:02

You were lucky to catch me just as I was finishing up a couple extra critiques, so you're getting yours quicker than usual. Your work is actually very good. When it comes to the execution of your marks, you're doing great - each mark is confident and smoothly executed, which shows that you're not getting overly preoccupied with accuracy. Accuracy is a matter to contend with before drawing the mark - but once that pen touches the page, you are to trust in your muscle memory, which is exactly what you've done here. Your accuracy will still improve with practice, and you will find that you are going to develop greater control and stopping speed over time. What's important is that you are approaching the exercise with the correct priorities.

This applies to both your lines and ellipse sections.

Your boxes are also generally quite well done. Your plotted perspective is solid (though that's not exactly a tough one). Your'e also demonstrating a great deal of patience and care with your rough perspective boxes, and I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method there as well.

Your rotated boxes are definitely a good start - the exercise is more about getting students to think differently about 3D space, without the real expectation of any significant successes. That said, you did a good job of keeping the overall exercise structured and consistent. The only area where you could improve there is in pushing the actual rotation of the boxes (the degree to which they turn with each neighbouring box), as I think you were a little timid in that area. That is of course quite normal - our brains like to keep things on a grid, so we often have to push ourselves to exaggerate rotations in order to keep our brains from fooling us into thinking we've rotated more than we have.

The organic perspective boxes are similar, in that it's more about changing how you think about 3D space. There is definitely room for improvement here, and we'll be tackling that next.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes there and watch the video as well, as there is a lot of important information there in terms of drawing through your forms and identifying where things have gone wrong.

Keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-12 00:57

Nice work completing the challenge. Your box constructions are definitely coming along well. I do have a few recommendations though that should help as you continue to move forwards:

• Draw your boxes bigger. Right now each one is quite tiny. When it comes to spatial problems (and constructiong boxes is very much a spatial problem), our brain benefits considerably from having more room to work and think through things.

• Just above the video link, I describe a correction method that involves extending your lines towards their implied vanishing point (after finishing drawing a full page of boxes) to see how those lines converge. Give it a read, and try applying it to your last page or two. I also describe this in the new how-to-draw-a-box video that I posted on Christmas. It's very helpful in figuring out where you tend to make mistakes, so you know what to work on during your next attempt.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-12 00:54

Your boxes are looking pretty damn spiffy now - especially if you compare the first and last pages of this challenge, they look considerably more solid and confident near the end, although the beginning wasn't particularly bad either. I have just one recommendation, and it's in regards to how you're using that correction method. You actually had that one right on the first page - extend your lines in one direction, towards the implied vanishing point - not equally in both directions, as you did from the second page onwards. You want to keep track of how those lines are converging, so you only really need to focus on one side (and ideally give that other side more length in order to see more of the pattern of convergence).

Anyway, keep up the fantastic work. You're doing great.

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

2018-01-11 01:08

Since it's been a while since your last submission, I hope you've had a chance to look through the newer videos I've posted (I mean, they were very recent, but it's been a couple weeks).

Your arrows flow quite nicely, so that's great. The only recommendation I'd make here is to play a little more with the exaggeration of foreshortening - pick which end of the arrow is farther and which is closer, and play with their relative scale, so as to really push the sense of depth across which the arrow is traversing.

Your organic forms with contour lines are just about spot on. Here and there with your curves they fly a little bit off the surface of the form, but that's no big issue. The main thing is that they're wrapping around the forms convincingly, so keep up the good work there.

For your dissections, one thing that jumps out at me is that for the most part, you skipped over the step of reinforcing your forms to start with. That is, each form in this exercise should start off as a run-of-the-mill organic form with contour lines. You appear to have skipped over that for most of them, in favour of keeping those extra lines off your drawings. Don't do that.

As far as texture goes, I am pleased to see that you did a lot of experimentation and didn't rely at all on any kind of scribbling or generic hatching. You applied specific patterns and textures carefully from each subject matter, and pushed yourself to observe more carefully. There is plenty of room for improvement, but you're on the right track. I recommend giving the notes on the 25 texture challenge a read to further explore how to approach texture and specifically observational drawing.

One thing I did want to mention in regards to the dissections though is that there are places where you allowed the texture to flatten out your forms. Keep in mind that texture should always follow the surface of the form - if you have a rounded form but draw the texture as though it were resting flat, it will flatten out your form.

Your form intersections are alright, though you missed one key point that I mentioned in the lesson - don't include forms that are overly stretched in any one dimension. Reason being, it's a difficult exercise already, and introducing additional foreshortening only makes it harder in a way that doesn't help you work on the main point of the exercise. You certainly could use more work in this area, but that said things are coming along okay. I do recommend you watch the new form intersections video though.

Lastly, your organic intersections are alright, but it'd be a good idea to watch the new video for that s well. You do seem to demonstrate a reasonable grasp of how those forms are interacting with each other in 3D space, though the quality of the individual forms themselves doesn't quite match up to your earlier organic forms with contour lines.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but make sure to incorporate them, along with the lesson 1 exercises, into a regular warmup routine. This will ensure that you keep sharpening this basic, most important of skills over time, rather than letting them get rusty with disuse.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-11 00:55

You're generally doing great - the only recommendations I have here is to watch the direction in which you extend those lines. You're extending them at least a little in both (which I mean, is fine - a bit of a waste of space maybe but really not enough to matter) but there is one box on the first page (down the middle, second from the top) where you seem to extend them in the opposite direction - away from your implied vanishing point. Of course, the main point of extending your lines is to see how they all converge towards the vanishing point. Of course, one slip up is nothing. The rest of these are solid, and while there are certainly mistakes, you're applying the technique to identify what the issues are.

So, a question back to you - were you able to see places where your lines failed to converge correctly, and where their angles tended to be off by some margin?

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-11 00:45

Overall you did a pretty good job, and you've certainly benefitted from the exercise. Your constructions and general line quality improves over the set, and I believe the subtlety to your line weight variation goes a long way to lend a sense of cohesion and solidity to your boxes without overdoing it.

The correction method you applied isn't honestly all that valuable, but it is better than nothing. I definitely believe that at least going back over the last page and extending your lines towards your implied vanishing points would be very beneficial, as it's the convergence of those lines where we always mess up, and doing so will allow you to better identify where you tend to make mistakes.

By the way - your use of hatching is kind of interesting. Some people approach it rather sloppily, having inconsistent lines that don't quite stretch all the way across each plane. In your case, yours don't touch the edges but that is also very obviously intentional, so it doesn't come off as really all that sloppy. That said, it would be better for you to ensure that they stretch all the way across, for the sake of presentation. When your lines stop at different distances from the edges, it can ding your presentation a little. Not that it's one of our main concerns, but it's still worth minding a little.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Once you've extended the lines of your last page and have reviewed the kinds of mistakes that become apparent in doing so, feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-09 22:13

Great work. I'm really pleased to see just how conscientious you were about extending all of your lines. Looking over them, I can see your general construction improving over the set, but definitely keep an eye on how those lines converge. When you've got two lines that are very close to each other on the page, they're going to be running pretty close to parallel - so whenever you find that not being the case, it's the kind of mistake that's going to stand out more.

For example, if you look at 238, you've got two lines going off to the left that are pretty close to each other in the center. These two are diverging slightly, and because they're so close, it becomes quite apparent. Keep an eye on that sort of thing.

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

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

2018-01-09 21:55

The advice really is doing the 250 box challenge. You struggle and fail with a page of boxes, then use the extension method to identify where you're actually failing. Then you fail a little less on your subsequent page, and repeat the process, failing a little less each time. It's really a matter of rewiring how your brain works when you think about spatial problems, and building up your internal model of 3D space. By making a lot of mistakes, and most importantly, identifying them.

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

2018-01-07 19:53

Start from the beginning, in ink.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2018-01-07 17:09

Nice work completing the challenge. I'm glad to see that after the first twenty, you remembered the bit about drawing through your boxes. Overall, there is definitely visible improvement in the solidity of your boxes, and your use of line. I do have two things to point out though:

• You tend to draw more or less the same orientation of box each time, with very little variation. Definitely work on adding more variety to the angles of rotation. I know it can be tricky since there's only so many faces to a box and they're all the same size, but if two neighbouring boxes look like they're striving to depict the same configuration, try and change it up a little.

• Don't forget to apply the line-extension method more regularly across the set, ideally upon the completion of each full page of boxes. I saw you do it once or twice (though you should extend them towards their implied vanishing point rather than in both directions). This will help you identify more clearly where you tend to make mistakes. It's totally understandable though that you didn't do this - when I assigned this as the next step, it was quite a long time ago, and I wasn't likely stressing the importance of extending your lines at that time. I've actually got a new 'how to draw a box' video up as of these last few weeks, which goes over all of that. Be sure to check it out when you have a moment.

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