Uncomfortable in the post "Weekly Themed Challenges on Discord!"

2017-12-02 00:18

Yeah but what class would that be?

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

2017-12-01 20:01

Better. Watch your leg segments though - for some of them you're not drawing them to completion, you're stopping them where they get hidden by other forms, so they don't end up retaining enough solidity.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-30 21:41

Pretty well done! You're spot on with your observation - we're more focused on being in the ballpark of correct, rather than fussing over perfection. If it looks good, it is good.

Also, yes. Boxes are the devil. But they're your devil.

I do have a couple tips:

• Your line weights get pretty heavy by the end. Try to keep them simple - and don't apply the same weight all across the board. You had them lighter earlier on, but all the lines were light. Then later, you had them all pretty heavy. Focus on putting a little bit more weight around the silhouette, and maybe a TEEEENY bit more on one side of it to give the impression of dynamism. There are notes on this on the challenge page.

• Nice work applying those correction techniques with your extended lines. Just one thing on that front - you'll benefit most from extending all of your lines - that is, all four lines of a given set, and all three sets. Sometimes you pick only two sets, and earlier on I noticed you were only extending three out of four lines of a given set (which you did end up correcting later on, but still worth mentioning).

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-30 21:36

Fantastic work! Your boxes feel very consistent and solid, and you've clearly developed a strong grasp of 3D space already. At this point, you may find that your boxes will plateau, because your ability to identify mistakes will be overshadowed by your grasp of space. Basically, you'll still be making teeny tiny errors, but you won't be able to catch them, so there will be limited improvement beyond that point.

The way to handle this is to apply the correction method described in the challenge page notes near the beginning, which involves extending each line towards its implied vanishing point. It's best to do this upon the completion of each page of boxes, though since you're already done, it's still valuable to pick maybe your last page and apply it there. Based on the convergence of the extended lines, you'll be able to pick up on oddities where some lines are not playing along with the others.

Anyway, again - great work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-30 21:21

Nice work completing the challenge. I can definitely see that your general sense of 3D space improved over the set, though as you mentioned, you could have done a little better applying that extension method through the entire set instead of just giving up on it.

The issue you encountered with the 'flipped' lines is pretty common - you can fill in one of the forward-facing faces with some tight hatching lines to serve as a visual cue and clarify which side is which.

In the future when you do apply the line extension method, I want to stress how important it is to extend all the lines - that is, all four for each set (currently you seemed to be doing only three in some cases), and all three sets. Remember that the point is to extend them towards their implied vanishing point, so you can see how they converge, and if that convergence is consistent or if they're meeting at many different points.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so go ahead and move onto lesson 2. More boxes will always help, so you can always mix those into your warmups.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-11-29 00:58

Very nice work! For all intents and purposes, you're doing fine. The wonkiness is normal at this stage, you're about where I'd expect you to be. If you want more advice, I'd point you to this video. It's more advanced and is actually included in lesson 7, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend digging too deeply into it right now, but it does explain the mechanics of building a circle/square in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-11-29 00:45

So you are definitely improving, but there are a few things:

• Animals are like people. Little furry people. Because we all have common ancestors, there are a fuck ton of general commonalities when it comes to how our bodies are structured. Even our limbs are basically the same (it looks like they have more segments to their legs but they're actually walking on the balls of their feet, so their heel looks like a second knee, and what we perceive to be their feet are their toes). So when you say something about "how the legs connect to the neck", that's raising some red flags that what you think you see is not correct. Because if you picture a person with arms coming out of their neck, that's obviously not right. Their forelegs connect to their shoulders, which connect to their torsos. Every time.

• When it comes to the leg construction, you're getting a little panicked and tend to miss some basic points about how the limbs flow. For example, on the fox you drew the leg's flow bending one way, when it clearly bends the other way. You're also forgetting that shoulders exist to begin with in some cases.

Here are some additional notes. Like I said, you are improving, but I want to see another four pages. Take your time, and always spend most of your time observing rather than drawing.

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

2017-11-29 00:10

The vast majority of this is really, really well done. The arrows flow nicely through space, your dissections have a lot of great experimentation going on with a large variety of textures, your form intersections demonstrate a solid grasp of 3D space and your organic intersections show that you understand how those forms would interact with one anothers' volumes.

The only area that worries me is your organic forms with contour curves, as they are very clearly not wrapping around the forms all that well. Now, I think that you may have figured that stuff out by the time you reached the organic intersections, but I still want to point you to these notes. Try applying the 'overshooting' method described there to help bridge the difference between drawing a full ellipse and drawing just a partial curve.

Because you demonstrate a good grasp of that material in the organic intersections exercise, and everything else is very solid, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-11-28 22:56

Here you go.

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

2017-11-28 22:33

Nope, those are fine. All solid attempts. Go ahead and move onto the 250 box challenge.

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

2017-11-28 22:30

You've got a lot of nice constructions going on. I like the house fly a lot, the ants and cricket are decently done, and so on - but I'm going to use that one extra page to hammer home a few important points that you seem to have forgotten about in that particular page.

Take a look at these notes. Basically, always make sure you're working from simple to complex, and always draw through all of your forms. We're drawing complete forms, not letting them come to a stop where they get blocked by something else. I do think that the texture/detail in that praying mantis was probably a big distraction for you, and you were probably preoccupied with that when you should have been thinking more about construction. For that reason, it can help quite a bit to just do drawings where you don't even intend to put any texture in later on, as then you're left with nothing but construction to think about.

Anyway, overall you're still doing well, so keep those points in mind and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2017-11-27 03:47

Here you go. I threw a few tips in there and also demonstrated how I'd make one of your organic intersections better.

I'd like you to do two pages of organic forms and one more page of organic intersections. You reaaally still aren't taking your time with each one. A lot of your lines are stiff and awkward, and you're not really leveraging your line weight (but you are putting down super heavy shadows which is fine if you have the additional line weight to kind of help bridge the gap).

You're not that far off, I just think you're rushing needlessly, like you're focusing more on quantity over quality. Both are important, and you're only going to learn if you focus on doing your current best for each attempt.

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

2017-11-27 01:22

Looking good! Your lines and ellipses are solid - you're managing to maintain a fair bit of confidence through their execution, which keeps the lines smooth and consistent, and helps you to avoid situations where your ellipses become uneven and loose their elliptical shape.

Just a couple things to mention:

• Your rotated boxes are generally looking pretty good, but two things I mention in the instructions are the importance of drawing through your boxes (drawing every line that makes up the box, including those that sit on the other side of the form, which helps you to better understand how each one sits in 3D space, a major focus of this exercise) and keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent so you can use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. This keeps things structured and also reduces the need for guesswork. Guesswork is often going to be necessary, but we can strive to limit it where possible.

• Be sure to go over your rough perspective boxes as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

• You have a tendency to correct mistakes as soon as you make them - this is a bad habit to get into, and should be avoided. When you draw a mark, don't reinforce it immediately, or correct it, or do any such thing. Drawing as a reflex should be avoided (the whole purpose of the ghosting method is to force yourself to think before every mark you draw). On top of that, when you correct a mistake it doesn't actually make it better - it really just darkens the area and draws more attention to your blunder. Get used to leaving your mistakes alone instead.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms (which I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes). The bit about correction techniques near the beginning is also important, and should be applied upon the completion of each page of boxes.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-11-27 01:14

Nice work! I think you demonstrated a great deal of improvement over the lesson. At first some of your work, especially when it came to the full plant constructions, was a little uncertain, but your confidence increased over the course of the set, and with it the quality and solidity of your constructions improved considerably. Even when you ventured into more detail and texture, you were still allowing yourself to focus on the underlying forms and ensure they were solid and sturdy before moving onto anything more superfluous.

The only thing that comes to mind worth mentioning is that the fruit on this page was not terribly solid. I mean, it was okay, but I think you would have had better results had you started with two intersecting balls, and then wrapped them up together to create the compound form. This is a pretty classic case of going from very, very simple (where we can maintain greater solidity) and building up to something a little more complex, instead of jumping into the complex form and trying to reinforce the solidity that isn't really there.

Anyway, keep up the good work. 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"

2017-11-27 01:08

Ultimately, a tremor will make things difficult - but while I'm not a doctor or someone who has any sort of a remote understanding of tremors, my experience teaching this material suggests that the tremor primarily makes an existing problem more significant, rather than introducing something new. That is, our hands shake, even without neurological issues.

These exercises are designed to help with that, by teaching students to draw with more confidence, rather than giving their hands the opportunity to shake. We execute our marks quickly, after a hefty dose of preparation and building up muscle memory.

Your lines may never come out entirely smoothly, but this will help them at the very least get smoother, which in turn will help you become more proficient at whatever it is you want to do.

Looking at your work, you're already showing signs that this approach works pretty well for you. Look at your planes exercise - the lines are for the most part pretty fluid and smooth, and there isn't a whole lot of wobbling. Your super imposed lines are a little wobblier, but this may actually be more that you were attempting to draw them a little more slowly, focusing too much on your accuracy rather than on the flow of the lines. I talk about this more [in these notes](Wobbling, Drawing Too Slowly and Carefully).

This comic may also be useful.

You obviously started down the ellipses before properly absorbing the lesson material, so you did a good deal of them without drawing through as instructed. That said, when you did start doing that, they came out much better. Still a bit stiff and wobbly at times, but generally not bad. It's normal for this to improve with time, but just make sure you're applying the ghosting method here, and really everywhere, to every mark you draw.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, comparing these to your planes it does look to me like you may not be applying that ghosting method here - or if you are, not with the same level of patience and focus.

Also, after completing this exercise, be sure to go over your rough perspective work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

With your rotated boxes, it was certainly a good attempt, though you did skip some of the instructions (like setting out boxes at the extremities for step 3). You also didn't draw through all of your boxes, which is pretty important as it lets you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as the forms rotate.

This exercise, along with the organic perspective one are intended to challenge students and to force them into thinking differently about 3D space. There's no expectation of success, and it is meant to be difficult. That said, following the instructions is, of course, important.

I'm surprised you actually did draw through your forms for the organic perspective boxes - I actually purposely neglect to tell students about this approach at this point in regards to this exercise so they can flounder around a bit and better appreciate the difference it tends to make.

If there's one thing I want to tell you, and it's important - don't focus on your disadvantage here. I think you may be a bit preoccupied with it, and it may cause you to be a little sloppy (like skipping or forgetting instructions). It's true that you have an extra challenge to face, and we're not entirely sure how it is going to impact your results. Accepting it is important - but focusing on it will hamstring you further.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through the notes carefully. The ones about drawing through your boxes, as well as the correction techniques outlined near the beginning. Apply the correction techniques upon the completion of each page of boxes, rather than after each box or after the whole thing is complete. This way you can learn from your mistakes throughout the full set, but without distracting yourself and breaking your flow.

Oh, one last thing - it seems you have your flair off for this subreddit. I use the flair to track lesson completion and who is and isn't eligible for critiques. It'd be great if you could turn it back on, so I don't mistakenly think you're submitting work for a lesson you shouldn't be.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-27 00:24

Nice work! I'm really glad to see how much attention you paid to the correction phase, and it definitely paid off. Over the course of the set, your understanding of the angles of your lines and how they played together to create solid forms improved a fair bit, and by the end you were much closer to hitting the mark each time.

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

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

2017-11-27 00:17

No need to apologize for taking your time. Rushing is not a good thing, and each submission is going to take time for me to critique. Better that you give yourself the opportunity to read through my critique carefully, so you can successfully apply everything I've mentioned there.

That said, there's one thing that jumps out at me that I did point out previously that you seem to have missed. It was in the hand-written notes I provided.

Your cast-shadows should not be drawn as one continuous blob, or anything of the sort. If a line's trajectory changes dramatically, then you should be breaking it up into individual drawing movements, not striving to keep them going.

As for other stuff, here are some more notes and observations: https://i.imgur.com/CYPOpsp.png

I do think that you may generally be rushing things a little. Take more time in observing your reference and identifying different forms that sit there. You can even try drawing on top of your references to help figure out what forms exist (doing it digitally, using tracing paper, or printing stuff out and drawing on it) before drawing the object.

Also from the looks of it, your organic forms with contour curves aren't coming out as well as they could. Watch the degrees of your ellipses read these notes if you haven't already, or if you've forgotten. They're used to communicate the orientation of those cross-sections of the form, and this will shift as we move down along a given organic form.

Lastly, use line weight to clarify which forms overlap others. Looking at the page I redlined (or purple lined as the case may be), the insect on the bottom's torso is quite light relative to the legs, so their interaction/overlap is not at all clear. This serves to confuse the viewer.

Ultimately when I say to focus on construction, simplicity is a strong starting point as it allows you to lay down a strong foundation. That does not however mean that this is all construction is. It is a series of phases, on which you build up your forms and break things down to convey all of the major forms and elements that exist in an object.

I'd like to see another four pages of insects. Take your time, and spend most of that time observing your reference rather than drawing. For every second of drawing, there should be nine seconds of observation and study, trying to understand what it is you're looking at before you attempt to reproduce a given form on the page.

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

2017-11-26 21:11

You misunderstand somewhat. We need to make sure that we start simple, in order to give our drawings a solid foundation on which we want to build. This is combined with careful observation to identify the nature and proportions of this underlying foundation. Starting simple does not mean ignoring the information that is presented to us, but rather learning to sort through it.

I regularly divide the process of drawing into construction and detail. Detail constitutes the additional touches we may add where we're not overly preoccupied with what those marks tell us about the solid forms that make up the object. Everything else, however, is construction - and it can still convey a great deal of information.

Construction consists of successive passes, building on top of the previous stage to go from a very solid foundation to something that strongly represents whatever it is that we're drawing, while maintaining that solidity throughout. Jumping into the more complex phase of an object immediately will result in that solidity being lost. Now, that doesn't mean that we should just start at the first, simplest phase and just stop.

For example, take a look at your grasshopper heads.

You drew a ball, and more or less stopped. If you look at mine there, I also started with a ball, which I then carved with contour lines to clarify the various planes of the form and built on top of it to capture the segmentation and layering of exoskeleton.

In addition to this, observation is extremely important, and on many occasions you still identify the elements of things but neglect to think about their proportions, how they sit in relation to one another, and so on. We can see from this spider that you didn't actually look all that closely, and were even missing the forms of its pedipalps, among other things. You cannot expect to absorb all of this visual information at once - you MUST continuously observe and study your reference (and rely on other reference to give you information about the parts you may not be able to see), and you must continuously ask yourself questions about how these forms relate to each other.

You also are definitely struggling with the positioning of your center lines. I'm very glad that you've made big strides towards using center lines, but this shows that you do have a ways to go in terms of developing your understanding of 3D space. I hope you are still practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as part of a regular warmup routine - the organic form exercises in lesson 2 are very helpful with developing an understanding of how organic forms sit in space.

Lastly, you did have some constructions that were decent like the cockroach, though I would leverage some additional contour curves to help define the actual volume of its abdomen. There are some forms that simply do not communicate certain information as well as others might (like a sphere can tell us fairly easily how it sits in space without additional contour lines) but some are very easily perceived as flat without the additional support.

Anyway, I'd like you to try another four pages of insect drawings, taking into consideration what I've said here.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-25 19:35

Great work! Your constructions improve considerably over the set. Just a couple recommendations:

• In the challenge page notes, I describe a technique for corrections involving extending your lines back towards their implied vanishing point. This can be very useful, especially as you reach a point where one is liable to plateau due to our mistakes being so minor that we fail to detect them. By looking at the convergence of our lines as they are extended, we can see more clearly where things are going wrong.

• Try playing with more line weight (there's notes on that in the challenge page) to help push your boxes to the next level. Going back over them to make your weights a little more dynamic (in subtle ways, don't be too heavy handed) can really help improve the sense of cohesiveness and solidity.

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

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

2017-11-25 19:31

Nice work. Your lines section is looking great - your lines are very confidently executed, which keeps them smooth and consistent. You're not overly preoccupied with accuracy, which is good, as that tends to result in more wobbling due to drawing slower.

For your ellipses though, there is a touch of that hesitation that results in some stiffness. You want to make sure that you're still executing your ellipses with the same kind of confidence, and applying the ghosting method. If you hesitate while drawing them, they'll tend to come out uneven, and start to lose their elliptical shape.

For your box exercises, there are some signs that you may not be reading the instructions as carefully as you should. Here they're minor points, but it becomes a bigger issue when you move into your 250 box challenge.

• You're not framing your plotted perspective and rough perspective boxes exercises.

• You didn't complete the required number of pages for those exercises (2 pages of plotted perspective, 2 pages of rough perspective, 2 pages of organic perspective)

• You skipped the rotated boxes exercise entirely

Reading the instructions is very important - there's a lot of information presented in those lessons, but it's there for a reason. It may be dense and it may be difficult to absorb in just one read through so it is your responsibility to read through it as many times as is necessary. Generally it's best to read the instructions for an exercise before beginning your work on that exercise.

Aside from that, it's also useful to go over your completed work for the rough perspective boxes exercise as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to tackle the rotated boxes exercise. Note that I fully expect students to struggle with this exercise - the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are kind of like throwing a child into the deep end of the pool to see if they sink or swim. I don't expect you to succeed, but rather the exercises are there to get you to start thinking about 3D space differently.

On that note, you did about what I'd expect with the organic perspective boxes - there's plenty of room for improvement, but you're heading in the right direction. So once you're done attempting the rotated boxes exercise, I want you to tackle the 250 box challenge again.

The reason I want you to do it again is because you seem to have not read through the instructions for the challenge the first time around. Read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the following:

• The tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

• 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.

Lastly, don't draw on lined paper. Find some printer paper or something blank, as those lines will immediately set a standard of presentation and quality that is less than ideal, and generally makes people more accepting of a little sloppiness.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-11-24 06:22

Excellent work! Your constructions look great, and I'm glad to see how much you pushed building each one around its minor axis. The only thing I feel is missing is practicing drawing more of them from a box as a starting point. This will be particularly important when you need to align them to other objects. I noticed that you tried it at the beginning, and definitely could have had some more practice on that end.

So just keep that in mind in the future. Other than that, keep up the great work. And sorry about not giving you the box challenge badge! I'll give you both right now.

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

2017-11-24 06:05

There's a lot of great stuff here, and what's more important is that you demonstrate a lot of development in your skills and understanding of form/construction over the set. Earlier on in the set, your constructions were somewhat weaker, but you steadily improved upon it. As far as your later work goes, I'm especially impressed by this last page - the way you've layered the forms, establishing a strong sense of solidity and volume while also maintaining the general flow and fluidity is very impressive.

The only recommendation I want to make is that on pages like this one, you've treated the underlying construction as more of a rough sketch. I want you to consider every single form you put down as being a solid form. They should be drawn confidently, without trying to go out of your way to make them faint or hidden. Think of it as though you're placing a solid mass of marble into a 3D world - once it's there, you cannot "override" it with a different line, because it's effectively not just a bunch of marks on a flat piece of paper. You have to respect and abide by what already has been added to the world. Adding line weight isn't a means to 'clean things up' in this way, either - line weight is to be applied locally to sections of lines in order to clarify very specific overlaps, and make it clearer as to which form comes in front of which.

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

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

2017-11-24 05:50

Nice work! Your arrows flow very nicely through space, your organic forms capture a good sense of volume, and your dissections demonstrate a lot of excellent experimentation and exploration. Your form intersections are well done too - you're showing a well developing grasp of 3D space. Your organic intersections are alright - definitely good enough for the lesson, though you should work on getting them to feel more fluid and somewhat less stiff. Try and think of them like balloons filled with water sagging on top of each other.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-11-23 23:20

Some students tackle the lessons on their own as you have before seeking critique, but the way the lessons are structured requires that students start from the beginning, receiving critiques for each lesson in order and having each lesson marked as complete before moving onwards. Because of this, students who want to have me review their work will generally start over from the beginning.

There is logic behind this - the lessons are designed so that each one brings to light a certain set of challenges and struggles. Issues that are much more obvious due to the nature of the exercises in lesson 1 might be more difficult to diagnose at lesson 3.

So, unfortunately I have to ask that you start out by submitting the work for lesson 1.

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

2017-11-23 02:11

Nice work! I do have a few things to recommend though:

• Your ellipses are very well done - they're confidently executed, which keeps them nice and smooth. That's definitely what we're after. Your ghosted straight lines however are not quite as confidently done. You're a bit caught up in making them accurate, so you draw them more slowly and hesitantly, resulting in wobbling and stiffness. Make sure you push yourself to draw them with a more confident, persistent pace in order to avoid that wobbling and keep them smooth.

• For your rough perspective boxes, it's best to avoid having too many boxes cut off along the edges, as you seem to be doing quite a bit. We want to focus on having boxes present in their entirety.

• Also for the rough perspective boxes, go over your completed work for this exercise as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

• Your rotated boxes were done quite neatly, so the presentation is great. I actually disagree with the notes you wrote on the side there - the boxes on the right are actually done quite well, and the exaggeration of their rotation helps cover their part of the full 180 degree arc. On the left side however, there's much less rotation and no real increase in the convergence of the horizontal lines of your left most box (making it seem more like it's just getting skinnier, rather than turning in space). Overall there are definitely places where you're more hesitant to push the rotations, so while the boxes are very clean, you're definitely more timid about completing the full rotational range. This is totally normal though - our brains don't like rotating things, and will often fool us into thinking we've rotated something more than we have (which is why we need to sometimes consciously exaggerate the rotations further).

• Your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be - they're meant to be challenging, and you've given a solid attempt. I really included this exercise and the rotated boxes one to force students to think about perspective and space in a different way, rather than just through rote memorization of perspective rules. The one recommendation I have is to work on keeping your boxes closed. You've got a lot of gaps between your lines, which makes the forms seem less cohesive.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to to move onto the 250 box challenge next (which you seem to have already started on). Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space (again, you seem to have started doing that too). Also, the correction techniques mentioned there are also quite helpful in finding where things are going wrong, and should be applied upon the completion of each page. So a good place to start would be to take the one page you've done, and apply those techniques (like extending your lines towards their implied vanishing point with a different colour of pen).

Oh by the way, I know you're a new patron because I saw you on the discord earlier today - but make sure you check your patreon inbox and respond to the message I sent there so I can properly mark your reddit username down in my notes with the appropriate patreon info.

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

2017-11-23 01:55

Very nice work! You've got some excellent volumes in your organic forms with contour ellipses/curves, your dissections show a lot of great experimentation and exploration, your form intersections demonstrate a nicely developing understanding of 3D space and your organic intersections convincingly create the illusion that these forms are sagging and resting on top of each other without interpenetrating.

Just a few tips:

• When doing arrows, it helps to think about the position of the two ends in space (being closer or further away from the viewer), so you can really push the exploration of the depth of the scene.

• When drawing cylinders, push that minor axis line so it cuts through both ellipses.

Aside from that, you're doing great. Keep it up, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-11-23 01:37

Very nicely done! Overall you're hitting the major points that I'm looking for - your grasp of conveying the flat, flowing nature of leaves and petals improves a fair bit over the set, and your more three dimensional forms are combined to create believable, solid objects. You're paying a lot of attention to how the different forms relate to each other, and you're generally avoiding jumping in too complex too early. Your patience definitely rewards you well, and you show a good grasp of 3D space.

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

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

2017-11-23 01:34

Pretty nice work! Just a couple tips:

• For your arrows, try and think about one end being farther away from the viewer and the other being closer. This will help you explore the depth of your space more. Right now your arrows flow very nicely, but stay fairly limited to the space defined by the page, rather than treating the page like a window that looks out onto an infinite space.

• Your dissections tend to be a little timid - try and push yourself to experiment more. Your second page is definitely much better (though still not pushing any boundaries), but the first has very little texture at all.

Aside from that, very well done. Your organic forms are solid, your form intersections demonstrate a good grasp of 3D space and your organic intersections demonstrate the interaction between volumes very well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-11-23 01:27

You've done a pretty good job with the form intersections, but your organic forms/intersections are not reflecting a good grasp of the fact that you're meant to be drawing three dimensional forms in 3D space. From what I can see, you're not actually convinced of that.

Ultimately what we're doing here is telling a lie, and in order to tell it as convincingly as possible, you yourself must believe it. This is easier said than done, and takes time to develop, but the first step is to properly grasp what it is you're attempting to do.

Your marks currently read as just being a set of lines loosely related to one another, on a flat piece of paper. Instead, I want you to think about the fact that you're creating a plump sausage form, either floating in space or sitting on a surface. Draw with your whole arm, not just your wrist, and keep the form simple. Your current lines for the shape's outline tend to be a little stiff and at times a little uneven or wobbly - this adds complexity, which in turn undermines the illusion of form. Keep it as simple and smooth as you can.

Next, for your contour curves, you've got to apply the ghosting method more, and generally take more time planning them out. You also need to think more about how those circular cross-sections are oriented relative to the viewer. The degree of the ellipse used to represent the orientation cross-section, as described here.

Lastly, make sure you keep the alignment of your contour curves in mind as well - that central line is the minor axis, so keep that in mind.

Once you have a better grasp of the volumes you're actually trying to construct, and start to believe in those illusions, the organic intersections should get better as well, as it relies heavily on you respecting the solidity of each form (so they don't interpenetrate).

Soooo, I'd like you to try another four pages of organic forms with contour curves, then two pages of organic intersections. Also, when doing the forms with contour curves, don't just arrange them all the same way. That's going to immediately make you think robotically, like they're just flat things on a flat page.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-22 04:43

Congrats on completing the challenge! You did a solid job - there's definite and clear improvement (last two boxes aside), and I'm glad to see that you're applying the correction techniques properly. There definitely are still tendencies that you'll want to fix and adjust, but you're moving in the right direction and your general constructions/solidity are definitely getting better.

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

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

2017-11-22 04:40

So your drawings do get better through the set, but there is definitely still a strong tendency to flatten your constructions out. Also, one extremely important part of construction is to draw complete forms. When drawing the segments of your legs, you draw them more like layered scale (the next segment has a start and end point, rather than being a full, solid loop. When you don't draw things to completion, they will come out flat.

Also, try and draw your leg segments more like flowing segments (as mentioned in this demo, closer to the bottom).

Aaaaand it helps a lot to draw a center line along the surface of your forms, helps both to keep things aligned and also to ensure that you're giving the appropriate amount of volume to your forms.

Here are some additional, disorganized notes.

I think it'd be a good idea to do another three pages of insect drawings. Focus on construction, don't add any detail/texture. When you do deal in texture (later), stop scribbling. Scribbling is not a texture - texture needs to be carefully observed and intentionally executed. But again, leave that alone for now, focus only on drawing forms in whose solidity you fully believe. 90% of this is creating an illusion (of form, that you're drawing 3D forms in a 3D world and not marks on a flat page) and then buying into that lie yourself.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-11-22 00:36

This is, for the most part, the same as the last set. The same problem is happening - you're drawing what you think you see, relying on memory, not actually drawing what is there. This isn't inherently uncommon by any stretch, but this doesn't show much improvement from when I pointed it out previously.

You look at your reference. You identify a single form, and try to understand how it relates to the forms around it. You draw that one, single form on your page - nothing more - then you go back to your reference and find another. Start from the general forms, and gradually break them down as you develop enough underlying structure to support the smaller ones. That's what construction is, and it relies very heavily on identifying what is present in your reference.

You are doing two things very wrong, and they are both represented in this image.

• Look at its feet. Whatever this thing is, its feet do not look like that. Those feet are entirely cartoony symbolic representations of whatever it is that you saw - filtered through your memory - not observed directly. When constructing, it's true that we start simple and move towards more complex, but that doesn't mean we start cartoony. We start simple in terms of simple forms. There are dozens of examples across the lesson and the intro video of what simple means in this context.

• You drew a form there, that large oblong ball with the two contour ellipses. Admittedly, it does not follow the steps I outline for construction at all (doesn't start with a ribcage and a pelvis which are then used to construct a sausage for the torso), but lets set that aside for now. The rest of your drawing outright ignores it. This is not how construction works. You are not simply putting marks on the page - you are placing solid masses inside of a 3D space, and once they are there, they must be dealt with in some fashion. You cannot decide to ignore forms you've already put down no matter how bad of a direction they may be taking things. If you disrespect the solidity of your forms, no other forms present in that drawing will be able to convey any sense of weight and form. If it exists in your 3D space, you have to cut into it and carve into it - which means manipulating it in a way that demonstrates your understanding of how it sits in 3D space. If you cut away a piece, you must define how both the remaining and the removed piece exist in three dimensions.

My previous recommendation of drawing on top of printed pictures of animals (which you can do digitally as well if you have the tools) was an offhand suggestion based on your struggles with understanding the forms that actually exist (compared to the ones you're actually drawing). I don't know if it'll help, but it's absolutely worth a try because you are walking in circles here, and with each turn you're tossing aside more and more of the lessons I teach you.

When was the last time you read through the lesson or watched the intro video? And when was the last time you did any of the lesson 1 and 2 material (which you're supposed to do as warmups)? I know you're very hardworking and persistent, but I frequently get the impression that you're focusing only on drawing the assigned homework and not on reflecting upon the lesson material or revisiting the basic exercises as you're supposed to. So eventually you just end up forgetting that stuff, and falling right back into bad habits.

Try it again.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-19 21:53

It's weird how I have a habit of remembering that I forgot to answer a question many, many hours after initially responding - but i totally forgot about your question about sitting!

It's very important that you sit straight while drawing. The desk should be at such a level that if you placed your hand flat on the desk (assuming the desk itself is also flat), your elbow would be bent at roughly 90 degrees. Avoid hunching over, because that's what's going to give you back pain. If you can get your hands on an angled desk, that's ideal, though most people can't - so it is important to know that when drawing on a flat table or desk, the farther end of your piece of paper is going to be far enough to create some perspective distortion (so your drawings end up a little warped). Generally you can avoid this just by being aware of the problem though, and getting used to compensate for it.

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

2017-11-19 21:45

Overall you're doing a pretty good job, there's just one area where you do need work, but it's pretty pervasive. It's also a common issue, and one we can certainly resolve.

Right now, when drawing your lines, your priority is accuracy. Because of this, you draw more slowly and take your time in your execution. As you go, your brain course-corrects whenever you veer off track, in order to keep you going where you feel you need to go.

These course-corrections manifest as wobbles in your line. I explain this concept in this comic. Instead of focusing so much on accuracy, you should be focusing instead on the flow of your lines. Spend as much time as you feel you need when preparing to draw (while applying the ghosting method), but when you actually execute a mark do so with a confident, persistent pace, and no hesitation. Accept that mistakes will happen, and that once your pen touches the page, there is nothing you can do to avoid them. All you can do is push forwards and face them head on. At the very least, your lines will be smooth and straight, even if they're not heading perfectly in the direction you intended.

Ultimately accuracy is something that improves with practice and time, but flow relates more to one's approach. You don't inherently need to draw quickly to have nice flow, but you do need to draw quickly enough to keep your brain from interfering as you draw.

This applies both to your straight lines and your curves, but also to your ellipses. Drawing them too slowly results in them coming out stiffly and unevenly shaped.

One other thing - for your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Aside from that, you're doing a good job. You do seem to have left out the two pages of organic perspective boxes, but I've already decided that I'll be marking this lesson as complete, and that I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Usually I assign this because the vast majority of people struggle with the rotated/organic perspective boxes exercises (and generally it just really helps develop one's grasp of 3D space). In your case that will definitely be a helpful aspect of the challenge, but it will also give you ample opportunity to practice applying the ghosting method in the way that I described above.

Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Also, the correction techniques outlined there should be applied upon the completion of each full page of boxes, so you can reflect upon your mistakes and learn from them for the next page.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-11-19 21:33

Here are some things I noticed throughout your work. I actually really liked your second attempt at the camel, I felt a lot of the construction there held up fairly well. Overall though, you are definitely not observing your references carefully enough or thinking critically about what you're drawing. One important example of this is the angle and proportions of your rib cage and pelvis. The unfortunate thing is that we don't have x-ray vision, but we can generally determine the size and angle of these things either by deduction (the relationships are pretty similar in human beings, where the torso is half ribcage and a quarter pelvis) or by looking closely for tells along the animal's body. This does require you to slow down and study your subject matter carefully however, and a lot of people will respond to not entirely knowing how something works by just drawing more (a sort of panic response). I definitely see you doing this a lot when it comes to adding way too many contour curves in certain places.

Another thing I noticed was that when you add detail and texture, you tend to treat the underlying construction with a lot less respect than you should. You're entirely willing to deviate from it, treating it more like lines on a 2D page rather than solid, unyielding forms in a 3D world.

I want you to try another four pages of animal drawings, but this time I don't want you to venture into ANY sort of detail or texture. Focus entirely on construction - detail can very easily become a distraction, and being forced to ignore it can really help. Also, before revisiting the work, I want you to reread the lesson and watch the video again. Since the work took you a fairly long time, I think it's probably been a while since you looked at the lesson material, and have probably forgotten some of it.

Oh, one last thing - ease up on your brush pen. Just because you have it doesn't mean it's necessarily the best tool for the job. Your last few pages were ridiculously heavy handed on line weight. You can use the brush pen for filling in shadow shapes, but line weight itself should be subtle and should only be applied in specific localities. That is, PART of a line rather than the whole line, usually to clarify very specific overlaps. Otherwise it ends up looking really clunky and cartoony.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-11-19 20:38

So I do have a few things to mention about your overall approach to the exercise in general, and to texturing.

• Your choice of drawing material isn't the best. Your pages are quite small, and you're cramming multiple drawings onto each page, resulting in drawings that are smaller still. Construction benefits considerably from drawing larger, as giving yourself more space allows you more room to think through spatial problems, like how different forms exist in three dimensions and how they relate to one another. Drawing on lined paper is also a bad idea, as it tends to automatically reduce your standards for the kind of forethought and planning you're willing to put behind your marks. We naturally rush more when drawing on lined pages, on account of the presentation already being rather poor.

• You're quite scribbly when approaching your textures - this is something I remarked upon for your lesson 2 dissections. While texture is not the focus of any of these lessons, you may want to give the notes over at the 25 texture challenge, as I do go over various matters relating to careful observation and considering the purpose of each mark one puts down.

Aside from those two points, your forms and constructions are okay, if a bit sloppy and rushed. So I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but you need to hold yourself back a little more in the future and think through each mark and form you're about to put down. Also in general, I am noticing that you're getting somewhat distracted by the promise of moving onto detail and texture. I recommend that for the first half of the next lesson's drawings, you not move onto texture and detail at all - focus entirely on construction, so as to learn how to deal with that alone, without the additional distraction.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-18 23:51

Your boxes and line quality improves considerably over the set, as does your general box construction. One thing I did notice though is that you did not apply the correction techniques I drew your attention to when I assigned the work. In the notes, I discuss extending your lines back towards their implied vanishing point to see how they converge together, as this makes it considerably easier to detect mistakes. It's best to do this upon the completion of each page, as this allows you to learn a great deal as you progress while not cutting into the flow of the exercise too much (as would happen if you corrected after each box).

Anyway, that is ultimately for your benefit, and there is still value in going back and applying those corrections in that manner. Still, I'll leave that up to you. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-11-18 23:29

Definitely better. Lots and lots of room for improvement, but moving in the right direction so I'll mark this lesson as complete. Here are a couple of things I noticed, and also, here's an old demo on how I would tackle an elephant: https://i.imgur.com/SrkdB5a.png in case you haven't seen it yet.

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

2017-11-17 04:33

Yes, what I meant was that you were doing it, but you could have done it moreso. Your ellipses did expand in degree, but did so to a point and then kind of plateaued.

Basically the thing is that the degree of an ellipse represents the angle of the circle that ellipse represents in 3D space, relative to the viewer. Or rather, its orientation. If it's facing the viewer head-on, it's going to be fully circular. If it's facing across the viewer's plane of vision, it would have a degree of 0 (you'd be looking at its edge only, resulting in a flat line). You can think of the degree being equal to the actual angle of the orientation, so if it were turned 45 degrees, the degree would also be 45 (exactly halfway between a line and a circle).

This may also help.

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

2017-11-16 22:41

Excellent work! You've demonstrated exceptional confidence with your linework, and a patient, careful work ethic when it comes to going through and following the instructions to the best of your ability. Each and every exercise has been executed exactly as I would have hoped.

Even the one fall-back mistake I tend to catch on people with relatively exceptional work (increasing the degree of your funnels' ellipses as they go out from the center) is something you actually did do on your own - though perhaps not as much. It's pretty normal to feel that as the ellipse gets bigger, its degree does as well, though this is not the case. It's really more about the proportions of the overall ellipse, so as the ellipse gets larger, its width should increase further still (ultimately becoming more circular).

Now that's a very minor issue at best, and is just something you should keep in mind in the future.

Jumping ahead to your rotated and organic perspective boxes, both demonstrate a solid grasp of 3D space, enough so that I will not ask you to move onto the 250 box challenge next (unless you insist upon it yourself). I do ask however that you give the notes there a good read through, focusing especially on the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better deal with spatial challenges in the future, like in lesson 2's form intersections.

Keep up the fantastic work, and consider this lesson complete. As for your question, you are more than welcome to submit your work for community critique as well.

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

2017-11-16 22:33

Definitely an improvement. Just don't forget that the central minor axis line is still very important, and you should not be neglecting to include it when doing these exercises. It helps with the alignment of your contour curves, and keeps them perpendicular to the flow of the form. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next one. Be sure however to keep practicing all of the exercises from lesson 1 and 2 as part of a regular warmup routine.

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

2017-11-15 20:13

A lot of these are quite well done. The fly on the first page is an especially good example of balancing form/construction against detail and texture. Other constructions were somewhat less good (like the scorpion), and the texture on your... spider dog? was definitely very scribbly. Don't scribble!

The wasp's abdomen on this page really demonstrates a great, more subtle grasp of form in how those segments curve as they hook back along the underside. That's a very good sign as far as your understanding of 3D space goes, and your personal belief in the illusions you're producing.

I have just a few recommendations to make:

• Don't let yourself get too caught up in texture. I definitely see this with some of your drawings, like your ladybugs, where your focus from the beginning is producing a clean, pretty drawing. If you neglect your construction in favour of that, your end result will be mediocre at best, and worse still, you won't get the same value out of the exercise. That's what this is after all - an exercise. We're not in it for the drawing at the end.

• Try and keep in mind that the act of adding a form to a drawing is not that you're just putting a mark down on a page - you're placing a solid mass into a 3D world, and once that mass is there, you have to deal with it somehow. This beetle isn't bad, but I did notice that you used the initial abdomen's ellipse as a more of a guideline/experiment, and then you draw more confidently around it. That is certainly one way of going about things, but it treats your underlying construction as more of a sketch, marks on a flat page, than actual solid forms you're building up. You want to make sure that you respect their solidity, and take that into consideration when adding new forms alongside them.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one, just keep what I've mentioned here in mind.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-15 20:00

Nice work! Your confidence and general sense of construction definitely improves over the set, and I'm very pleased to see how thorough you are with applying the correction techniques. My biggest recommendation in terms of a next step to kick your boxes up a level would be to play more with some subtle line weight variation, making the silhouette of your boxes a little bit heavier to add some greater dynamism and cohesion to the overall form (giving the internal/external lines a sort of relationship like this helps make the forms feel more solid).

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-15 19:56

Pretty nice work. There's definite improvement over the set, and your general confidence with constructing these boxes definitely grows as you work through more and more of them. I'm glad to see that you applied the correction methods as well, though if I had one recommendation to make, it's that you be careful about only checking one or two of your vanishing points. There are cases where you don't check the third, and end up missing areas where that third set of lines is actually diverging rather than converging. One example is 179, though there are many others.

The thing about this technique is that it's not just about clarifying areas where you know things are going wrong, but also about finding mistakes where you think there are none. This becomes more and more of a thing as you improve, as we tend to improve our constructional skills faster than our critical eye, and are more likely to plateau because of this (where our mistakes end up being subtle enough that we miss them, and we end up progressing much more slowly due to thinking our boxes are correct).

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

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

2017-11-15 19:44

Definitely looking better, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Just don't forget to include the central minor axis line, as it helps considerably to align your contour curves so they run as cross-sections perpendicular to the flow of the overall form.

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

2017-11-15 19:19

Your work is coming along well, but I do have a few things to point out.

• For your organic forms with contour ellipses, just make sure you work towards fitting them more snugly inside of the organic shape - contour lines run along the surface of the form, so they've got to touch the actual edges (otherwise they're going to feel like they're sitting inside of the form, or outside of it, as the case may be. The confidence/evenness of your ellipses is great, so it is important to keep that up (and not slow down/hesitate) so really the only thing here will be to continue practicing executing them (after applying the ghosting method) in order to improve overall accuracy/control.

• Your contour curves aren't quite wrapping around the forms properly. One thing that's very important to remember is that the contour curves are really just contour ellipses where a portion is hidden (because they continue along the other side of the form). If you compare your curves to your ellipses, you'll notice that the curves end up following a much shallower curvature, and also don't quite 'hook around' as they come to the edge. Also watch their alignment relative to the central minor axis line. One good way of getting a hang of this idea of 'hooking around' is to overshoot your curves a little as demonstrated here.

• You've got a lot of great experimentation and interesting observations in your dissections. One suggestion that I have is to avoid hatching/crosshatching when drawing these textures, as it's a technique people often end up using instead of really looking more carefully at the details that are actually present, and when they're focusing more on rendering light/shadow rather than capturing the surface quality of a form. Forcing yourself to avoid hatching takes away a likely crutch and really ends up pushing you further in your understanding of texture.

• Your form intersections are quite well done, just watch your use of line weight. We don't want to use line weight as a sort of 'clean up' pass - line weight is used to clarify specific, local overlaps, to show where one form is in front of another. We don't want to apply line weight to the entirety of a line, but rather only to the relevant portion of it. This makes the line a little more dynamic (transitioning from one weight to another), and also makes it easier to apply them because we don't have to worry about following the entirety of a line - just a portion - and can do so more confidently and more smoothly. Also, as far as cones and pyramids go, I've got demos on constructing those inside of boxes in the big demo dump from the sidebar.

• Fundamentally your organic intersections are okay, although they do suffer from some of the same problems as your organic forms with contour curves. That said, you are demonstrating an understanding of how those forms sit in 3D space, and how they interact with each other, which is the main purpose of this exercise.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do two more pages of organic forms with contour curves.

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

2017-11-14 21:10

Your second set is VASTLY better than your first set. There is a problem that is present throughout both, but it is much diminished in the second. Basically, you always want to push yourself to execute your marks with a confident, persistent pace. If you look at all of the linework in your first set, you'll see that it wobbles a fair bit, and this gives it a sort of stiff look, rather than the sort of smoothness we're looking for. This is present both in lines (straight and curving) as well as your ellipses.

In your second set, your lines are actually considerably better, with only minimal hesitation, but there still is some stiffness to your ellipses. It's often difficult to get out of the mindset of being overly careful with your marks, but it's important to realize that once you've applied the ghosting method to the best of your ability, any mistake you make from the time your pen touches the page is entirely unavoidable. The best thing you can do is charge forwards with the preparation you have made and see it through. If you mess up, it's not the end of the world - there will always be more chances to do better. There will always be more pieces of paper, and more penfulls of ink.

Aside from that, just a couple other things. For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your organic perspective boxes were definitely a challenge, and there is certainly room to grow here, but this is entirely expected. I included this exercises here to get students to start thinking about boxes and 3D space in a different manner - forcing them to think more about the rules of perspective represent, rather than just learning them by rote memorization. You're about where I'd expect you to be, and are making considerable progress compared to your older attempts.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Also, the correction techniques mentioned there should be applied upon the completion of each page of boxes.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-11-14 21:04

Pretty nice work! The confidence in your lines definitely improves over the set, where your initial lines were a little wobblier and more hesitant, and later ones turned out much more consistent. There are a couple things that I noticed that are worth mentioning though. It looks like some of the planes you filled in with hatching lines were actually the far plane of the box (which made the whole thing quite visually confusing, generally you should be applying it to the near plane to help clarify potential visual illusions). The other thing is that the extension of your lines (which you can leave to the end of each completed page, so you don't have to worry about smudging that coloured ink) were being extended in both directions (especially towards the beginning). You really want to be focusing this towards the implied vanishing point, as that's what is going to tell you more about the nature of your lines' convergence.

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

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

2017-11-14 20:30

Excuse how shitty my lines are, my tablet's acting up and i really don't want to restart my computer. https://i.imgur.com/LgByFub.png

The most important thing that I'd add is a center line, running along the surface of your forms to help align things in space.

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

2017-11-14 20:23

https://i.imgur.com/HziPyHp.jpg