Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-07-18 19:34

So what stands out to me the most is that in a lot of these drawings, you're thinking in terms of 2D shapes. As far as you perceive them, the marks you're putting down are largely two dimensional. Additionally, your understanding of what you see in your references and what you carry over into your drawing is also limited to that space. This results in you adding a lot of details that float arbitrarily on your drawing, rather than being grounded in actual, solid construction. The eyes for instance are a good example of this.

Now this is the case to varying degrees. I think the cardinal drawing is an improvement, where the torso feels considerably more solid and three dimensional, though its head is still quite flat.

The first thing you need to accept is that when you draw, you are not simply placing marks on a piece of paper. You're adding forms within a three dimensional space that you are able to observe through that page. For example, every single construction starts by blocking out those three major masses - cranium, rib cage, pelvis. We block them out with ellipses, but these ellipses actually represent solid three dimensional ball forms. You need to be convinced of their solidity, of their tangibility.

If you had a solid sphere of marble floating there in space, that's something you have to deal with. Largely what you've been doing is simply drawing your next phase right on top, without much regard for how those new forms/shapes relate to the ball that's sitting there. This tells me that you yourself do not believe that the ball is something solid at all. To you, it's just an arbitrary mark on a page, one that can be ignored when it suits you.

Instead, you need to deal with it. We can do so by building on top of it - that is, attaching new forms to what already exists, with an understanding of how those new forms relate to the sphere. Or we can cut into the sphere, carving away the pieces we don't want. Here's an explanation of what it means to carve a form when drawing.

This is what the constructional method revolves around. If you start simple and build up complexity with successive steps, you will be able to maintain the illusion of solidity that is more easily achieved with simpler forms. If however you jump forwards in complexity, or attempt to apply complexity in a way that ignores what you've built up underneath, your drawing will appear flat and flimsy.

Take a look at how I tackle constructing a head in this demo I did for another student. Notice how I start off with a solid sphere, then build up additional solid forms around that. Each form is simple and primitive, but they come together to build up something more complex.

The other point I wanted to make is that you are not really observing your reference images as you should be. You're working a lot from memory, which tells me that you're looking at your reference, then spending longer periods drawing. What you should be doing is looking at your reference more regularly, taking only a moment or two to put down a couple lines before returning your gaze to your reference. Our brains are not designed to retain the kind of information in our memories that is needed to draw something faithfully, so as soon as you start relying on memory, things tend to get overly simplified and cartoony.

I'd like you to take another stab at this lesson. Be sure to rewatch the lesson 5 intro video, reread the lesson material, and take a look at the demonstrations in the "other demos" section of the lesson page. Remember that you need to understand how every element you add to your drawing exists in 3D space. Don't just carry details over arbitrarily from your reference. You have to apply construction to build them back up into your drawing.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-17 20:23

Excellent work. Your boxes feel solid, and you've done a great job of applying line weight to increase the general sense of cohesion. The only thing I noticed is that you were pretty sparse on corrections. Identifying where you've gone a little wrong and marking in the correct line in its place is an important part of learning from this kind of exercise. At your level, I'd say it's quite difficult to identify mistakes with the naked eye, so this approach mentioned in the challenge page notes is definitely worth looking into:

Each box consists of three sets of four parallel lines, each set having its own vanishing point. When going over a box in the correction phase, you can extend these lines two to three times their original length towards their implied vanishing point. This will give you a better sense of how these lines behave as they converge. Ideally all four lines of a given set will converge towards a single point at roughly the same rate. By extending these lines, you will start to notice how some lines within a set converge more quickly than others, which implies several points of convergence instead of just one. By being able to spot these mistakes, you should be able to learn from them that much more effectively.

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"

2017-07-17 20:20

You're right, and as far as this lesson is concerned, that's perfectly fine. The textural element to the dissections was primarily a way for me to gauge your observational skills. As it stands, your textures come out quite cartoony, which tells me that you're not spending enough time observing your references, and are relying more on your memory. The thing about our memory is that the moment we look away from our source image, our brain goes to work simplifying everything we've seen, reducing it to its core symbolic components so that it's easier to remember. This kind of information is awful for drawing from, resulting in a hyper-simplified cartoony result. Instead, you'll want to spend the vast majority of your time looking at your reference, taking only momentary breaks to draw a line or two before looking back.

I recommend that you give the texture challenge notes a read, as I go over this in much greater detail and suggest some exercises for overcoming it. Keep in mind that unlike the box/cylinder challenges, that one is meant to be done over a long period of time, in parallel with other lessons.

The rest of your work is pretty solidly done. You're doing a good job wrapping your contour curves around your organic forms, and your form intersections demonstrate a pretty well developing sense of 3D space. Your organic intersections are also pretty solid, although I did notice that at the top left of the pile, you had a form that started to get pretty bumpy and wobbly. It's important to know that this kind of complexity will undermine the illusion of solidity and make your form feel somewhat flatter and out of place. Keep things simple in order to maintain the illusion of volume and solidity.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-07-17 20:12

Overall you're doing very well. Your constructions feel quite solid, and you're demonstrating a good grasp of how forms sit in 3D space and how they relate to one another.

One thing that I wanted to point out however is that when you go through your first stage, you have a tendency to 'rough' things in, exploring your space, building a sort of suggestion for yourself. Keep in mind that this isn't the same as what we're after when constructing. We're not loosely sketching something in, rather we're defining its bounds and then abiding by them through later steps - even if they're a little bit off. So for example, the petals on these flowers would extend only to the perimeter of the ellipses you put down before them. This way the decision of how far they reach out is determined in a previous, separate step, and when you're actually drawing the petals, you no longer have to worry about that. Construction is all about breaking things down into steps. This applies to your leaves as well, where you tend to

There certainly is value to being able to loosely explore space without this sort of commitment, but what we're doing right now is a more stringent practice of construction itself, and working within the confines of our previous decisions.

Additionally, when your drawing gets cut off by the side of the page, try not to have the it just stop suddenly. You always want your forms to be capped off in order to reinforce their three dimensional nature. Leaving two parallel lines running down and suddenly stopping really flattens out the image.

For these bulbs, I think you established the underlying volumes quite well, but it would have worked out better had you treated each petal as a separate leaf-like form, first establishing its flow, then the entirety of its form.

As for your question, it's really important to keep in mind that this is purely an exercise. We're not drawing these plants to produce beautiful end-results, we're doing this to continue to develop our grasp of 3D space and form. In this sense, the use of those contour lines in such a situation is very valuable, because it reinforces our mental model of how these surfaces flow through 3D space. So in this case, you'll want to continue doing that as much as is needed. Of course, we don't want to overdo it - a couple contour lines are almost always enough to give a proper visual cue of how a surface sits in space. Furthermore, if there are simple details that can be leveraged as contour lines of their own sort, it's fine to pursue that. Just remember that the priority is not a pretty drawing at the end.

Once your understanding of form is more fully developed through exercises like these, your drawings will suggest form in more subtle ways - specific turns of the silhouette, suggested lines, etc. that you will reflect a strong subconscious grasp of form rather than consciously planned features.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep what I've said here in mind as you move forwards - especially about avoiding loose suggestive sketching and working within the confines of prior constructional stages.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-17 19:45

Congratulations on completing the challenge. Here's a couple of things to keep in mind as you continue to move forwards:

• Your line quality is a little inconsistent at times - sometimes it's fine, other times it gets a little wobbly. Remember to apply the ghosting method to all of your mark making, which effectively forces you to invest all of your time in the preparation phase, before executing with a confident, persistent pace.

• If you have trouble identifying mistakes in your boxes (which will naturally happen more and more as your skills improve, as the mistakes will become less noticeable), you'll want to apply the method I mention in the notes. I've copied it below:

Each box consists of three sets of four parallel lines, each set having its own vanishing point. When going over a box in the correction phase, you can extend these lines two to three times their original length towards their implied vanishing point. This will give you a better sense of how these lines behave as they converge. Ideally all four lines of a given set will converge towards a single point at roughly the same rate. By extending these lines, you will start to notice how some lines within a set converge more quickly than others, which implies several points of convergence instead of just one. By being able to spot these mistakes, you should be able to learn from them that much more effectively.

• Also, consider playing with line weights a little to kick your boxes up to the next level. There are notes about this in the 'other tips' section of the challenge page.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Both moving onto the cylinder challenge as well as jumping right into lesson 2 are perfectly viable options. In your particular situation, I may lean towards the cylinder challenge, as it will give you the opportunity to continue working on your line quality.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-07-16 20:16

Looking good! Your constructions are feeling quite solid, in a big part due to the attention paid to the different stages, moving from as simple as possible to more and more complex. Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-16 20:14

Nice work! I'm particularly pleased to see how dedicated you've been to going over your completed boxes with corrections. Over time it is natural for these mistakes to become less and less noticeable. At this point, applying the approach described below (and in the notes) will definitely be useful, so keep it in mind for the future:

Each box consists of three sets of four parallel lines, each set having its own vanishing point. When going over a box in the correction phase, you can extend these lines two to three times their original length towards their implied vanishing point. This will give you a better sense of how these lines behave as they converge. Ideally all four lines of a given set will converge towards a single point at roughly the same rate. By extending these lines, you will start to notice how some lines within a set converge more quickly than others, which implies several points of convergence instead of just one. By being able to spot these mistakes, you should be able to learn from them that much more effectively.

Additionally, I think another way to kick your boxes up to the next level is to play with your use of line weight to help make the boxes feel more solid and cohesive. There are notes about this in the 'other tips' section of the challenge page.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2017-07-15 13:58

Yup, that's correct. I talk a little bit about it here: http://drawabox.com/faq#smallfromwrist

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-07-14 18:32

You're doing a pretty decent job, and I'm noticing considerable improvement over the set. I noticed that you weren't drawing through your ellipses in your branches, but near the end of the lesson, you seem to have changed your approach for the better in that regard (like in the pitcher plant). Make sure you draw through all of your ellipses though, especially when constructing sphere/ball-like forms, as it goes a long way to keep the shape even, and ultimately make the form feel more solid. Additionally, you're doing a good job of progressing through your constructions in phases, starting simple and building up to greater levels of complexity.

Lastly, your leaves are doing a pretty good job of flowing through 3D space in a convincing manner. The only thing in this regard that did catch my eye though is that you may be getting a little caught up in leaf texture/detail, to the point that it may be distracting you a little from that underlying construction and establishment of flow. As a result, your simpler leaves tend to flow much better. Keep this in mind - extra worrying about detail can definitely draw your attention away from where it needs to be at the moment, especially when you're getting caught up in that part of a drawing too early.

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

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

2017-07-14 18:27

Very nice work! You're demonstrating a really solid grasp of the 3D forms you're constructing and how they relate to one another. You're not at all getting distracted by detail and a lot of the superfluous visual information that we need to filter out, and you're doing a great job of focusing on the underlying structure that exists for each object.

To be honest, I don't really have much in the way of actual critique to offer. You're applying all of the principles covered in this lesson and those prior to it, and you are absolutely moving in the right direction. Your constructions feel solid, you're observing your references carefully and not working from memory. You're mindful of your proportions and you are always striving to start simple and build up complexity in successive passes.

While there's certainly room for improvement in areas, you're clearly aware of each issue and show marked improvement with follow up drawings later in the set.

All I can really say is keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-07-14 00:11

Nice work! You're applying the concepts from the lesson quite well. Your lines are smooth and confident, your ellipses are generally quite evenly shaped (and while it's great to aim for two rounds of each ellipse, you're doing pretty well as is and wouldn't stress too much over it).

I'm very glad that you applied the ghosting method so faithfully for your rough perspective boxes! Just a couple things about that exercise. Be sure to go over your completed work as described here. It helps you become more aware of where your estimation tends to be a little bit off. Of course, that was probably minimized by how you ghosted all the way back. Secondly, just make sure your hatching lines stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Avoid having them floating arbitrarily in the middle.

For your rotated boxes, you're generally doing pretty well, though I did notice that the outer most layer of boxes should have had their rotation exaggerated somewhat more in order to continue the trend.

The rotated and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely to get students to start thinking about how forms rotate freely in 3D space. I fully expect students to struggle with this, and have no expectation of perfection. That said, you've done fairly well.

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, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-13 23:54

Very nice work. The quality of your boxes and the general confidence of your constructions definitely improves over the set, and you're demonstrating a well developing grasp of 3D space. The only thing I want to mention about the boxes where you started playing around a bit is that while it's fine to challenge yourself in certain ways, it's important to always give your full focus to the main aspects of the exercise. In your particular case, the boxes where you got a little more interesting, there was a notable decrease in the quality of those lines. So keep that in mind.

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

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

2017-07-13 23:47

You reaaaally need to relax. The work you've done here is excellent, and well beyond what anyone is expected to do at this stage. The first thing I want you to do is go back to the lesson 1 page and read through the section at the top labelled "As this is probably your first lesson at Drawabox, read this before moving forward!". Considering how long you've been supporting DaB, this may have been added after you first went through the lesson.

The point of it is that you're not supposed to grind until it's perfect, then move on. You're supposed to understand the purpose and goal of each exercise, and then as you continue to move through later lessons, incorporate these exercises into a regular warmup.

As it stands, your work is spot on. Your lines are confident, your ellipses are smooth and evenly shaped, and your boxes demonstrate a very strong grasp of 3D space. I have just a few minor things to recommend as you move forwards:

• Go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here. Since this exercise is all about estimating perspective, the expectation is that you won't be spot on. So, this allows you to identify where your estimation of perspective is a little off, so you know what to focus on during your next attempt.

• Give the notes over at the 250 box challenge a read. You by no means need to complete the challenge, especially since you're already demonstrating a really strong sense of 3D space. Just go through the notes, focusing especially on the tip about drawing through your forms. This tends to be quite helpful in improving your understanding of how each box sits in 3D space, and how they relate to one another.

So, I'll mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

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

2017-07-13 23:39

Fantastic! Third time's indeed the charm, you've done very well here. Your forms are still solid, but this time your proportions and general observation takes it to a whole new level. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-07-13 23:37

Really excellent work. Your constructions are very strong, and you clearly understand how each form sits in 3D space, and I'm very pleased to see that you're not being too precious about trying to hide constructional lines in favour of creating a prettier end result.

Just be sure to draw through your ellipses, and to draw each form in your drawing in its entirety, even when it is occluded by other forms. For example, if you have a cluster of leaves, draw each leaf completely rather than just where they are not hidden by others. Drawing them completely will give you a fuller grasp of how each one sits in 3D space. You certainly do this to certain degrees, but there are places where you don't (like here and here), and those tend to be your weaker drawings.

Overall, you're doing very well. Keep up the great work, and consider this lesson complete. Feel free to move onto the next one. As for overtime, I haven't had a day off in 25 days! :D

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-07-13 23:25

One thing that stands out to me is that you're a little distracted by detail, and as a result are skipping some integral steps of construction. This is especially the case when it comes to your leaves. You certainly do put a lot of effort into considering how to convey certain lighting or textures, but you fail to take certain steps that would ultimately help you develop a better sense of how each object sits in and flows through space.

For example, it's important for you to start your leaves out with the simplest shape that establishes how they flow through space, as shown here (sorry about the broken lines, I had to draw that on a tablet and after drawing on a cintiq for a couple years, my ability to do so has gone down the drain). Don't concern yourself with all the wavy edges, focus on the general flow of the leaf and establish that. The rest can be constructed within the framework of your initial simple shape. This allows you to tackle one challenge at a time, instead of many at once.

Additionally, draw through your forms. If you take a look at this page, you can see that your leaves stop where they are occluded by their neighbours. This reduces your understanding only to what is depicted in two dimensions, and doesn't do much to develop your mental model of 3D space. Also for that same page, remember how cylinders are constructed. Make sure you build anything remotely cylindrical around a minor axis to ensure your ellipses are aligned.

For the branches exercise, I noticed that your line segments don't flow into each other. While it's fine to construct the tubes segment by segment, it's very important that you flow from one segment into the other, rather than having a segment veer off to the side, and then ignore that with your next. The end result should look like a single continuous stroke.

I also noticed that when drawing similar branch forms in your plant drawings, you tended to leave them open-ended. As I mention in the bottom right of these notes, leaving them open will flatten your forms out. Instead, capping them with an ellipse will help reinforce their form.

All that said, there's a lot of good qualities here as well. As far as your simpler leaves and petals go, they flow nicely through space (like these petals). I just think that you're very preoccupied with creating pretty drawings, and as such are missing the real point of these exercises, which is all about challenging your brain to work through spatial problems, and to build a mental model of how these forms relate to each other in three dimensions. Drawing through forms, and developing things up from simple to complex goes a long way to build up this internal sense.

I'd like you to do another five pages of plant drawings, but with no detail or texture whatsoever. Focus on building up forms only.

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

2017-07-13 23:03

Definitely better, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. One thing that does jump out at me about your organic forms though is that you have a tendency not to be too consistent with the width of the form throughout its length. There's often these areas where the form gets pinched or expands strangely. You'll generally have much more success maintaining that illusion of solidity with forms that are more consistent, maintaining a fairly even width.

Of course, that's easy to say. I understand that it can be quite challenging, so just be sure to have that as your goal when attempting this sort of exercise.

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

2017-07-12 15:18

This is certainly an improvement. Overall your work's more consistent, somewhat more confident, and definitely moving in the right direction. Here's a few things to keep in mind in the future:

• For your planes exercises, play with distorting them a little bit. Make one side shorter, and the opposite line longer, and see how that impacts the result. This will also add a little more of a challenge when you're placing your ellipses inside of those planes, as it can be tricky to maintain confidence and focus on flow when also attempting to fit your ellipses inside of a particularly distorted plane.

• For your funnels, don't forget the central minor axis line. This is a key part of the exercise, as it trains your ability to line up your ellipses to a given minor axis (such that the minor axis cuts the ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down its narrower dimension).

• Your ellipses are definitely looking more confident, but keep working on that to make them smoother and more evenly shaped. At this point it's largely a matter of being continually aware of that, and practicing.

• When doing the table of ellipses exercise, don't leave gaps between your ellipses. The exercise is partially focused around the idea of setting up a criteria/goal for your ellipse - like having it fit between the top and bottom lines, and touching the neighbouring ellipse. This gives you a clear sense of whether or not you hit your target, or if you didn't.

• Your rough perspective boxes are coming along great. Just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify any areas where your estimation of perspective is a little off. This is totally normal.

• Your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there's plenty of room for improvement. These exercises are really intended to be super challenging for students, as a first push to get them to start thinking about how forms can be rotated in 3D space, rather than just existing as drawings on a flat page. As far as that goes, you're moving in the right direction, and we will continue to work on this. One thing to be aware of in your rotated boxes though is that as you move further out from the center, you have a tendency to be very light on your rotations. Our brains certainly prefer things to be aligned in neat little grids, so we have to fight against that when rotating boxes like this. We do so by really pushing those rotations further than we feel comfortable with, and exaggerating them.

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 that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-07-12 15:05

These are certainly looking much better structured and more organized. There's a much greater emphasis on those primitives, and they're coming out far more consistently than before. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-12 14:33

Yup, feel free.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-12 14:33

It wouldn't hurt. I'd recommend taking a look at the submissions others have made (focus on the ones where my critique is mostly positive), then try another 50. You can submit those to me too if you wish, I suspect after that you should be good to go.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-11 17:41

Congratulations on completing the challenge. I do have a couple things to comment upon however:

• Your line quality definitely seems to be a bit inconsistent here. Be sure to take care in applying the ghosting method to every single mark you put down. Invest all of your time into the preparation phase, then execute each mark with a confident, persistent pace. No hesitation, no room for wobbling.

• I can see that you applied the extending-lines approach to identifying where your angles are off, or where your far planes are larger than your near planes. What I don't see a whole lot of however is actually correcting the mistakes that you identify. It's important to do this as a part of the learning process.

• While I can't quite put it to words, I feel in my gut that separating each box into its own isolated little frame wasn't the best of ideas. I really can't give you a reason as to why, but if you look at how others approach their 250 box challenges (just pages filled arbitrarily with boxes, no borders or anything separating them), I'd recommend approaching it that way in the future.

• Be sure to experiment with using line weight to kick your boxes up to the next level in the future. There are notes on this subject in the 'other tips' section of the challenge page.

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

2017-07-11 17:38

Very nice work! Your line quality is quite confident, so your lines come out smooth and straight, and your ellipses are evenly shaped. I would recommend being a little more careful drawing the center minor axis line for your funnels though - it seems like they're a bit sloppy (you may even want to draw this with a ruler or a straight edge). The minor axis plays an important role in the alignment of the ellipses, so it's best to get that one as accurate as possible.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you seem to be quite careful and conscientious in your estimation of perspective, as well as with your execution of each line. I do want to recommend however that you go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here with the full expectation that they'd be challenging for students at this stage. While I don't expect people to nail them just yet, they're really there to get you started thinking about how forms can be constructed and rotated arbitrarily in 3D space.

As far as your organic perspective boxes go, you seem to be moving in the right direction with these. There are some issues with far planes coming out a little larger than near planes, and other things like that, but that's perfectly normal at this stage and will be dealt with.

I'm going to hold off on marking this lesson as complete until you submit the rotated boxes exercise, so be sure to let me know when you've got that in. When I do mark the lesson as complete however, I'm going to want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-11 02:25

Nice work! Your linework is very confident, and I'm pleased to see the extent to which you went with your corrections. Ultimately that is what will continue to refine your mental model of 3D space - making mistakes, and then reflecting upon them. Don't forget though, that if you feel uncertain about what exactly is wrong with a given box, you can use this method, mentioned on the challenge page:

Each box consists of three sets of four parallel lines, each set having its own vanishing point. When going over a box in the correction phase, you can extend these lines two to three times their original length towards their implied vanishing point. This will give you a better sense of how these lines behave as they converge. Ideally all four lines of a given set will converge towards a single point at roughly the same rate. By extending these lines, you will start to notice how some lines within a set converge more quickly than others, which implies several points of convergence instead of just one. By being able to spot these mistakes, you should be able to learn from them that much more effectively.

Additionally, I would recommend playing with line weight to help kick your boxes up to the next level. There are some notes about that in the 'other tips' section of the challenge page. I actually noticed that you did try it in a few places, but you applied it somewhat in reverse. You darkened the internal lines. This has the unfortunate effect of making a box appear less cohesive, since the major borders are defined inside of the form. If instead the heaviest weights are reserved for the lines that make up the box's silhouette, they will enclose the overall form, making it feel like all of these lines are grouped together.

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

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

2017-07-11 02:21

I think the biggest thing that jumps out at me here is your line quality, especially in your ellipses. It's wobbly and stiff as all hell. You're executing your marks way too slowly. Looking at some of the stuff you did for lesson 3, while they're not as smooth as a baby's bottom, they're certainly much less stiff than those you've done here. You can spend as much time as you need in the preparation phase of the ghosting method, but when you execute, you cannot execute - even if that means making a mistake every single time. Maintaining lines that flow smoothly is always going to be more important than avoiding a mistake.

For the rotated boxes, try to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so you can use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines.

For the organic perspective boxes, at this stage I don't mention drawing through your boxes, but now that you've been introduced to the concept in the box challenge, apply it whenever and wherever you can. The point here was to get students to fumble a bit by drawing the boxes without applying that technique, so they could better appreciate how drawing through forms impacts their understanding of 3D space.

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

2017-07-11 02:09

Given that you've been a patreon supporter here for close to a year, it's nice to see that you're finally taking advantage of some of the perks! There's definitely some things here that I should be able to clarify for you, so lets get on with it.

For the lines section, I definitely see that you have a tendency to make your marks with a heavy stress on accuracy, and less so on the flow of your lines. This leads to you executing your marks more slowly, resulting in a lot of wobbles where your brain has actively course-corrected your arm.

This is something you'll want to avoid. I explain it in this comic, but the idea is that your first priority should be achieving lines that are smooth, with their accuracy coming in second. When you start drawing a line, you want to maintain that same trajectory, regardless of whether or not it's going to hit the mark you intended. In order to achieve this, we execute our lines with a confident, persistent pace. This keeps our brains from interfering and course-correcting. All in all, it means trusting in your muscles, specifically in your muscle memory.

That's what the ghosting method is all about - splitting the process into preparation and executing, where we develop muscle memory by repeating the drawing motion over and over, and then execute without hesitation.

Now, your ellipses are actually considerably more confidently done, and as a result they've largely come out quite smooth and evenly shaped. Your line quality also improves a fair bit as you get int your boxes. In fact, the wobbling's pretty much gone by the time you hit the organic perspective boxes, so that's fantastic. I just wrote all of that out for nothing... well, better to have it expressed and communicated explicitly.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method. I definitely am noticing though that while you're executing your marks quite confidently, you do need to work on ensuring that your horizontals run parallel to the horizon, and your verticals run perpendicular to it, as explained here. From the looks of it, you do understand this, but may need to spend more time in the preparatory phase of the ghosting method to ensure that you hit your intended marks. This will definitely improve with practice though - whereas the wobbly lines were more a matter of approach. Just make sure that you work on reducing situations where you end up with gaps at the corners of your boxes (where two lines should be meeting).

Now, your rotated boxes aren't.. really rotated. For the most part, they cover a range of rotation of about 60 degrees from one side to the other, rather than the full 180 we're looking for. The reason for this is that our brains don't like rotating forms arbitrarily. We much prefer to keep things in grids, nice and parallel. This very exercise is something that really forces you to tackle something that is inherently uncomfortable to us. This exercise (as well as the organic perspective boxes one) aren't expected to be completed successfully by students at this stage - they're just here to get your brain started in that direction.

That said, when attempting this exercise in the future, you're really going to want to push and exaggerate those rotations beyond what your brain tells you is enough. Additionally, try not to make the boxes quite so deep. If you maintained that same depth and rotated them correctly, you'd get a lot of them intersecting (or really large gaps between your boxes, which is best avoided).

Now, 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 all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. This will also give you a good opportunity to continue practicing your use of the ghosting method.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-07-11 01:53

/u/Moonchild567 (submission from the locked thread):

Generally moving in the right direction. One thing that I'm catching fairly regularly though - and it's a minor point, but still worth mentioning - is that the side edges of your cylinders tend to be a little inconsistent. They're frequently a little bit short of straight, or don't quite hit their target. This isn't abnormal by any stretch, but it does tell me that you may want to invest a little more time in the preparation/ghosting phase of the mark-making process. Don't forget to drop points for the beginning and end points of your lines either - the ghosting method and all of its steps are very useful for building up both confident, smooth, straight lines as well as accuracy.

Overall your use of minor axes seems to be on point, and your ellipses are executed fairly well. There's certainly room for improvement, but beyond taking a little more time preparing before making your marks, you're moving in the right direction, and things will continue to solidify with practice.

Keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-07-11 01:48

/u/Tarrazan (submission from the locked thread):

Looking good! Your ellipses are definitely looking smoother than they have in the past. There is still room for improvement of course, but they're definitely moving in the right direction. You're also making good use of those minor axes. Just make sure you keep drawing through those ellipses, and you should continue improving on this front. I'll go ahead and mark the challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-07-11 01:44

Old thread got locked, those eligible to have their work critiqued by me can submit it here.

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

2017-07-11 01:38

Life certainly has a tendency to do that! Overall you're doing pretty well. There's definitely room for improvement (and that will come with practice), but you're moving in the right direction. Your lines are confident and consistent, your ellipses don't show any sign of hesitation and as a result come out fairly evenly shaped.

Jumping ahead to your boxes section, the first thing that caught my eye was the particular approach to shading in some of your rough perspective boxes. In the future, it's best to avoid anything that remotely channels chaos or randomness. As a rule, randomness is going to read as unintentional and messy. We want our linework to carry a sense of purpose - like whatever mark we put down was driven entirely our intent. In this case, if you want to shade in one of the faces here, make sure you do so with consistent, parallel hatching lines that stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Nothing floating arbitrarily in the middle. It's really a matter of presentation, and it keeps things neat and tidy.

For that same exercise, be sure to go over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify any issues with your estimation of perspective, so you know where to focus your efforts the next time you attempt the exercise.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes were a bit of a ruse. I've included them in this lesson fully expecting students to struggle with them, as they are quite challenging. By facing them here, you're forced to start thinking about how to arbitrarily rotate forms in 3D space. Key word being: start. I don't expect students to nail either of these just yet.

That said, one thing that grabbed me about your rotated boxes is that the actual range of rotation you're achieving here is very limited. You're hitting perhaps 45 degrees in either direction, while the boxes set at the extremities are a good 90 degrees out. Therefore there's a gap of a good 45 degrees to between the farthest box to either side, and the next one over.

Our brains naturally fight against us when we try and rotate these boxes by increments. See, we like to keep things in grids, all nice and parallel to each other. As a result, we may feel like something is rotating more than it actually is - our brain lies to us, in order to keep things more comfortable. For this reason, when tackling an exercise like this, we really need to push and exaggerate our rotation for each box, so as to cover the full 180 degree arc.

The other thing I wanted to mention in regards to this exercise is that you should try and keep the gaps between your boxes consistent and narrow. When they're close enough, this allows us to use neighbouring edges as hints when constructing new lines. It also tends to keep things more structured.

There's definitely room for improvement on the organic perspective boxes, but all in all you did a pretty solid job.

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 that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-07-11 01:21

Definitely better! I've got more notes for you though! :D I think we're on the right track. Take a look at this, then try the same wasp one more time. While that panelling/secondary forms thing is definitely important, I think the biggest area you need to practice is those legs.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-07-11 01:02

The squirrel is definitely better, but there's a handful of issues that I want to draw your attention to. I've noted them here.

Also, I realized that I did a demo for a student previously that was a squirrel in a very similar pose, so I dug it up for you.

On the previous topic, when you are unable to see something, it is important to realize that you are not chained to a single piece of reference imagery. It's perfectly acceptable, and encouraged, to find alternative reference for that which is hidden. It doesn't need to be photographs of the same individual, and not even the exact same species. It merely needs to be close enough to help you make an educated guess, and to include something plausible.

It's very easy to get caught up thinking too hard about a single reference image - it happens even more frequently when we're focusing too hard on reproducing that image, rather than merely constructing what is captured within it. When you find a picture of a squirrel for this lesson, your goal is not to reproduce that squirrel, but rather to use the reference to help you to draw a squirrel. Obviously drawing one in the same pose is easiest, so that's generally what we do, but there is a difference.

More than anything, focus on the idea of building things up from simple forms. For example, if you look back to the elephant from your previous set, take a look at its legs. You'll notice that the lines that make up its edges don't maintain a single, simple trajectory - they follow bumps and contours of much more complex detail. It is very difficult to take something complex right off the bat and make it feel solid. For this reason, we start simple, and then build up complexity around it. While there is a lot of extraneous information in what you see, you have to look beyond most of it to the very core. A line may curve and swoop to and fro, but you need to see the singular stroke that represents all of it. The rest can come later, once your solid scaffolding is in place.

Looking at your dachshund, I think that's the only issue there. The torso, the neck and the head feel fairly solid. The legs however are much more complex, with no structure to support that complexity.

Take some time to read through my critique here, and the hand written notes I've given you, and once you feel you've absorbed it properly, take another stab at another two pages. Take as much time as you need - more for my sake than yours. I'm running on fumes at the moment (currently on my 22nd consecutive day at work, averaging at least 10 hours a day).

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

2017-07-11 00:15

To be honest, I should have called this out last time. In my defense though, I haven't had a day off in twenty two days, and have worked almost 220 hours in that time, so I'm definitely not on the top of my game right now.

Your constructions, as always, are coming along fine, but what is demonstrably lacking is observation. What you're drawing is not really what you actually see when looking at your reference, or looking at the object you're drawing. It's what you think you see. Your memory of these objects is drastically simplified, and while you're leveraging construction in a fantastic way to make them seem vaguely plausible (in a way that made me miss it entirely in the previous set), what you're constructing isn't accurate.

Here's an example using your cricket. You've got to pay much more attention to what it is you're actually drawing. Make sure you look back at your reference frequently, taking only a moment to put a new form down before looking back. If you spend too long looking away, you will end up drawing from memory, and our memories are not designed for this sort of thing.

I'd like you to do two more pages.

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

2017-07-09 01:33

Your lines and ellipses sections are looking pretty decent. You're executing your marks with confidence, and so your lines come out fairly smooth and consistent. Your ellipses are much the same, although here and there they stiffen up a little bit. This is because you hesitate slightly - which is perfectly normal, but something you'll want to work on. By using the ghosting method, we invest all of our time in the preparation phase. When we make the mark, we do so trusting in our muscle memory. This may result in some mistakes, but that's perfectly normal. The flow and evenness of our lines and ellipses is more important than our accuracy, so that comes first.

As far as your boxes go, they're structurally quite well done, although they're very messy. The biggest issue is that you're making a habit of reinforcing lines immediately after drawing them. Remember that the ghosting method means planning and preparing before every single mark you make. This inherently makes it quite difficult to draw by reflex, which itself is a bad habit. Make sure that in the future, you draw one mark per line and no more than that. Same thing goes for making mistakes - if you slip up, just leave it alone. Attempting to correct a mistake will only make it darker and draw attention to it.

Additionally, try not to be sloppy with your hatching lines. Ensure that they stretch from edge to edge, rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle of a plane.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Overall your grasp of 3D space is pretty solid - the last two exercises of this lesson were intended to be very challenging and outside of the capabilities of most students, but you did quite well at them. This challenge will instead give you the chance to get your sketchy linework under control, as you seem to get messier when drawing lines as part of something larger (like boxes).

Make sure you read through the notes on the challenge page before starting though. The tip about drawing through your forms is especially important, and will help you continue to improve your grasp of how those boxes sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-07-09 01:05

I honestly disagree. I think they're looking great. Your lines are confident, your ellipses are even and well placed, and your forms look pretty solid. Keep up the great work! I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2017-07-08 23:28

While your work is generally moving in the right direction, I'm getting the overall impression that your brain is still somewhat trapped into thinking largely in two dimensions - those defined by the page you're drawing on - rather than a larger three dimensional space to which your paper is merely a window.

So to that end, I recommend giving these notes a read. It covers this common issue, as well as a few others that I'm seeing in your work.

Second point - watch the alignment of your contour ellipses when drawing those branches. You've got to keep them aligned to the central minor axis line, such that it cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves. Give these notes a read as well.

Thirdly, I definitely feel that when it comes to your leaves, you're blurring the lines between contour curves (which serve a specific purpose), and detail (like the lines that run along the surface of a leaf). There definitely is some overlap, in that we can take advantage of some of the lines that exist on an object and simply use them as contour lines to describe the surface of that form, but at the stage where we're focusing on construction, focus on the constructional aspect of it. That is, describing the distortion in space of the surface. Don't get caught up in drawing each line. As far as contour lines go, a couple well placed ones are generally plenty effective.

Lastly, watch your linework! I see a lot of hesitation there, where you're not executing your marks confidently, so they come out a bit wobbly and stiff. Always remember the ghosting method, where you invest your time in the preparation, and then execute with confidence. You may make mistakes as far as accuracy goes, but that's totally fine. The flow and smoothness of your linework is far more important.

Oh, and also worth pointing out - I see six pages of plant drawings, plus one page of leaves and one page of branches. The homework section asked for eight pages of plant drawings, so ten total. Either way, once you've had the chance to read through what I mentioned above, try your hand at another four pages of plant drawings. Avoid detail and focus entirely on construction (you mostly did this here as well, but I figured I should mention it explicitly).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-07-07 23:46

Hm, note quite there yet. The elephant's got some potential, but with the hare, you seem to be skipping constructional steps and relying less on observation and more on memory. After all, whenever you catch yourself drawing nondescript nubs for the feet, you can guarantee that something's not right.

Here's a bit of overdrawing. I also noticed that you tend to use a lot of contour curves (one or two is fine, but you're not going to gain anything by piling them on), and they tend to be very stiff and wobbly. You need to be drawing much more confidently. Apply the ghosting method to everything you put down, so invest all of your time in the preparation phase - but when you execute a mark, you need to do so from your muscles, not from your brain. If you make a mistake, it's not the end of the world, but if you hold yourself back out of fear of making a mistake, every mark will come out wrong.

In addition, here's an elephant demo I did a while back. And lastly, on the topic of construction, give these notes a read.

Try another two pages.

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

2017-07-07 23:29

Looking at the flies as a sort of benchmark, there is definitely improvement over the set, with the last one being significantly better than the first. In that last one, you're drawing through your ellipses, which helps keep them more evenly shaped and ultimately makes them feel more solid (so we read them more as being 3D forms rather than flat shapes). The fly's legs also flow much better in the last one, where the first one's leg segments swell in strange places.

A few things that could use some work on that last fly drawing however include:

• The head's quite small in proportion to the rest of the body

• The contour curves do not convey a form that is properly rounded - they don't hook back around as they reach the edge of the form, and so if they were to continue, they would fly off the form. You need to continue practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2, in this case specifically the organic forms with contour curves.

• The hairs don't serve any purpose, as they don't actually reflect anything you can see on your reference. Rather, they're your interpretation of what hairs would look like (from memory) rather than directly observed details.

• The detail on the wings, much like the hairs, aren't a great example of careful observation. The patterns on the wings don't actually look like that, but that is your brain's simplification (or cartoonization) of what was actually present. For now though, I wouldn't recommend paying much attention to that kind of texture/detail, as there's much more benefit from focusing entirely on construction for now.

I definitely think the scorpion is a bit too complex for you at the moment - there's a lot of complicated forms in there, and in general a whole lot going on. As a result, it can be quite difficult to carefully observe all of the forms present, and is likely to lead to more frustration.

I do have a few additional things to say about the wasp drawing at the end though:

• You're not drawing through your forms - the thorax should be drawn in its entirety, rather than stopping where it is hidden by the head.

• Don't let sections of the drawing get cut off, and if that does happen, don't let them just stop arbitrarily. If you've got a leg that goes off the side of the page, cap it off with an ellipse (to reinforce the fact that it's cylindrical).

• Definitely getting way too distracted by detail here, with those arbitrary hairs.

• Draw through all of your ellipses, and start out simple - that head definitely started off as a form more complex than a basic primitive form, so you should have started simpler and built up to that.

Here are a few resources:

• A fly demo

• A wasp demo

• A critique of another student's wasp - pay special attention to the bottom right where I construct a head

• Some notes on the importance of carving your forms, building them up step by step, and avoiding unnecessary guesswork.

I'd like to see another four insect drawings, but I want you to include no detail/texture whatsoever. That means that you should take the construction as far as you can (meaning manipulating forms and building them up on top of one another) and then stop. Be sure to include a fly and a wasp in these four pages.

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

2017-07-07 23:15

It seems you're not quite applying the whole carving thing too well just yet, so perhaps I didn't explain it clearly enough.

• Here's an in-depth critique of your wasp

• Here's a visual explanation of what I mean by carving/building up forms

In addition, I think you're getting caught up in detail a little bit (like the patterns on the wasp's abdomen) and as a result you're not observing the more fundamental forms/proportions as much as you should be. I'd like you to try to draw this wasp, but include absolutely no texture or extraneous detail. I want to see forms only. Remember that nothing should be added to the drawing that is not either a primitive form of its own, or supported by what already exists in your drawing.

In addition, it'd be great if you could take pictures of your drawing after each constructional phase, so I can see exactly how you go about tackling it from step to step.

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

2017-07-07 18:12

Definitely a solid start. There's a few things I want to point out, but you're moving in the right direction. Also, don't worry about the order - imgur always messes that up for everyone.

You're generally drawing pretty confidently, which is great. On the flipside of that though, you're also drawing a little too reflexively. That is, you should be only drawing one mark per line. Every additional stroke should be planned and prepared beforehand, using the ghosting method. Immediately reinforcing a line after drawing it is a bad habit to get into. As is correcting a line after you've drawn it, as this will only draw more attention to your blunder. It's often best just to let those things sit as they are.

So basically your mark making process should be to stop and think about what kind of mark you want to put down, then go through the process of ghosting through it, building up the appropriate muscle memory, then confidently executing the mark without hesitation. This may result in some mistakes at first, but that's totally fine. Those preparatory steps will reduce the chances of making a mistake, but they don't get rid of them entirely. What's most important here is that each line is planned, and that when executed, you maintain the same trajectory throughout (rather than wobbling back and forth while course-correcting).

It's damn time consuming, that's for sure, but it will build up good habits, and it will become second nature soon enough.

Generally most of your ellipses are looking pretty good, though I did catch a couple of instances (mostly where you tried to draw the ellipses-in-planes) where you allowed the stress of fitting the ellipse perfectly within the plane to throw off the evenness of the elliptical shape. Just like the flow of a line is paramount and accuracy is secondary, with ellipses the smooth, even, elliptical shape is most important - even if that means making mistakes with your accuracy.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you're doing okay as far as the perspective alignment goes, though make sure you continue applying the ghosting method here as well. Some of your lines got a little bit wobbly. In addition, upon completing this exercise, make sure you go over your completed work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off. This is fully expected, and figuring out where you tend to make mistakes will help you to know where you should be spending a little extra attention.

Your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes were definitely a bit of a struggle, but this is completely normal and expected. I included these two exercises here to get students to start thinking about how to deal with freely rotated boxes, so it's totally normal for it to be quite difficult. I'm not expecting to see work that is anywhere close to perfect, or even good. That said, I do have a couple recommendations:

• For your rotated boxes, draw larger. Rotating forms is very much a spatial problem, and our brains benefit considerably from being given more room to think through such challenges. When we're intimidated by an exercise, we have a tendency to draw smaller (like we're trying to hide our mistakes), but this in turn causes us to make even more mistakes.

• Also for the rotated boxes, keep the gaps between your boxes narrower and more consistent. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. It will also help keep things nice and structured, allowing you to rely far less on guesswork.

Now I'm going to mark the lesson as complete, but I would like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Not only will this give you additional practice with constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes in 3D space, but it will also give you a chance to continue practicing your use of the ghosting method, and to generally get your approach to mark making a little more under control. Make sure you read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-07-07 17:57

There's a lot of good here, but there are a few things that stand out to me:

• You're a bit lax on using the minor axis line when doing your organic forms with contour lines. This line is super important, as it helps us to align our ellipses and curves, and puts us in the best position to ensure that our contour curves give the impression of wrapping around our forms properly.

• When it comes to your contour curves, you're a bit on the fence as far as the whole illusion of the lines running along the surface of the form goes. You've got some that do a pretty good job (primarily when you overshoot your curves like this), but you've got many others that don't quite give the impression of wrapping around, as they don't accelerate in their curvature enough as they reach the edge (like these).

• Your dissections' textures are coming along very nicely. The only thing I wanted to mention here was that you should always start these exercises off as regular organic forms with contour curves. Don't worry about texture until you have a nice, solid-feeling organic form.

• Your form intersections are looking solid as well, but I did notice that you have a tendency to start things off real faint, and then draw dark on top. Don't do this in the future - focus on drawing confidently in your first pass, don't try and hide your marks. Remember that we're not hear to make pretty drawings - it's all about understanding how the forms sit in 3D space, and drawing them confidently is a big part of that.

Anyway, while I definitely recommend that you practice some more with the organic forms with contour curves to really solidify your grasp there, 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 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2017-07-07 17:33

Fantastic work! You're definitely not doing it too slowly nor too carefully - there's no such thing, at least not in the grand scheme of things. It's possible to execute an individual mark too slowly (which results in a wobbly line), but simply being careful, taking your time, preparing before each stroke, and reading through all of the material several times to make sure you understand what you're meant to be doing is a-okay and highly recommended. So keep it up!

The thing about how one should draw lines, beyond the basics of using your shoulder as a pivot, is all about finding what's most comfortable. Starting closer to you and then moving your arm outwards is more likely to be comfortable, but this also means that if there is another motion that you feel to be more comfortable (so long as you're meeting the other criteria), feel free to experiment with that instead. If however drawing in that particular fashion works fine for you already, no need to fix that which is not broken.

So, overall you've done quite well. Your lines are well planned and smoothly executed. Your ellipses are evenly shaped and are generally evenly shaped. You do get a little stiff when you try to fit your ellipses into your planes (it's pretty normal at this point to stress too much over accuracy) - just make sure you remember that the flow/evenness of your shape is paramount, and accuracy is secondary. If you happen to be off the mark a little, but have maintained a well balanced elliptical shape, then that's fine.

Your plotted perspective and rough perspective boxes are looking great, and I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method to the latter. Your rotated boxes are also quite well done, though I do recommend that you keep the gaps between your boxes a little more narrow. That said, you've been able to keep those boxes fairly structured, which is quite the struggle for most students at this stage.

While there is room for improvement with the organic perspective boxes, that's entirely expected. I included this exercise (as well as the rotated boxes one) to get students to start thinking about how to rotate boxes arbitrarily in 3D space, so rather than expecting 100% success, it's merely a jumping off point.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but 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, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-07-07 13:49

Looking good so far - your lines are confident and smooth, and that's what I'm looking for. That said, you should wait until you've completed all three sections of the lesson before submitting it for critique, rather than submitting each part individually, as mentioned in the homework section, under the list of exercises that should be submitted. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to critiquing the rest of the lesson's work.

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

2017-07-06 14:14

Nicely done! Your lines section is spot on. Your ellipses are coming out quite well, although I notice just the slightest hint of hesitation, which in turn causes your ellipses to be ever so slightly stiffer than they could be. Remember that while accuracy is important, we don't want to stress on it so much that we second-guess ourselves when executing the mark. Trust in the muscle memory you develop by applying the ghosting method, and when executing, focus entirely on maintaining a smooth, even flow. As I said though, the stiffness here is very slight. For the most part you're doing fine.

Your boxes are coming along well too, though I did notice that you got a little lax in your use of the ghosting method. Your lines are arcing a little bit, moreso than they did in the lines section. It does seem that you noticed some of this yourself however, since you marked in "ghost it!" when doing your corrections. That's definitely solid advice :P

Your rotated boxes are coming along fairly well, and I'm pleased to see that you're maintaining narrow gaps between the boxes and overall keeping things nice and structured. This exercise, as well as the organic perspective one are intended to be somewhat more difficult than most students at this stage can manage, but overall you've done a good job.

The organic perspective boxes can use a little more work, and we will get to that, but you're definitely meeting my standards at the moment. 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 that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-07-06 14:09

Congratulations on completing the challenge. You definitely stuck with it, and that's great to see. When it comes to ghosting your lines, if you catch yourself needing to see where your pen is as it goes across the page while drawing, that's a sign that you're not applying the method correctly. Generally it points to you needing to ghost through the motion a little more, but overall it can imply a misunderstanding of what the goal really is.

The point of ghosting is to communicate your intent and goals to your muscles, developing the muscle memory so you don't really need to interfere with your brain once you're actually making the mark. If you're still relying on your eyes to know when to stop the mark, then that implies that you're not 100% confident in your muscle memory.

Don't get me wrong - you will make mistakes, that's totally normal. This may well just be a matter of confidence, of allowing yourself to make those mistakes and continue on, rather than fretting too much about them. It takes time to develop a solid level of comfort with the ghosting method, so as long as you understand what you should be aiming for, keep at it and it will improve.

One thing that I want to recommend, in regards to going over your boxes with corrections, is to apply the method described on the challenge page, which I've pasted below:

Each box consists of three sets of four parallel lines, each set having its own vanishing point. When going over a box in the correction phase, you can extend these lines two to three times their original length towards their implied vanishing point. This will give you a better sense of how these lines behave as they converge. Ideally all four lines of a given set will converge towards a single point at roughly the same rate. By extending these lines, you will start to notice how some lines within a set converge more quickly than others, which implies several points of convergence instead of just one. By being able to spot these mistakes, you should be able to learn from them that much more effectively.

This should help you catch the more subtle mistakes that you may not be able to see on your own just yet. It's a nature progression - we start out making obvious mistakes, but as we improve on those, what's left are the mistakes that aren't quite so easy to notice.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2017-07-06 14:02

Overall you're doing quite well. You're developing a good sense of construction, and are applying strong observational skills throughout the lesson's work, but with a fair bit of improvement over the set. There are a few points that I'd like to raise though:

• While you do this less later on in the lesson, it's still worth stressing. Remember that the forms we start off with - those three balls - are to be treated as solid forms you've placed in 3D space. Think of it as though you're literally constructing something - you won't be able to have your next form float arbitrarily around those initial balls. Whatever you add to it needs to rest snugly against them, or envelop them tightly. For example, take a look at this page. Notice how the ribcage and pelvis are floating loosely within the torso, kind of like pickled eggs in a jar? You're going to want that torso to be tightly bound to them instead.

• While you're definitely demonstrating a grasp of the three dimensional nature of what you're drawing, and how the forms sit in space, you are visibly skipping through a few steps. For example, you're not at all fleshing out how the legs connect to the torso, or how the neck connects to the torso, etc. Take a look at the demos in the 'other demos' section of the lesson, especially this oryx demo. Try and apply those steps, and draw every one. Eventually these will be so second nature that you'll able to visualize them instead of drawing them, but that is going to be a long way off.

• I want to encourage you not to go over your drawing with a thicker pen as a 'clean up pass'. This is somewhat different from just adding line weight, which is a matter of adding extra weight to certain sections of certain lines to clarify overlaps and such. A clean-up pass focuses instead on replacing lines entirely. This will both distract you from the underlying construction (since you're clearly going to be way more focused on creating a pretty drawing, which is not our goal here), and it will also result in more wobbly, stiff lines as you strive to get your replacement lines to match those you're replacing.

I'd like you to do just two more pages of animal drawings, following what I've mentioned above, before I mark this lesson as complete. As for your other question, unfortunately I've made the decision that I will be removing the figure drawing section altogether, rather than expanding upon it. It was in many ways a mistake to venture into that area, as I know I am not skilled enough with figure drawing to teach it effectively. Moving forward, the core of drawabox will be focused around the first seven lessons, where I'm much more confident in my ability to teach, to establish a strong foundation for students. I may also expand into design-oriented lessons, although if I do end up going in that direction, the critiques for those lessons will be set at a much higher tier than the standard $3/month, since they're considerably more of a case-by-case situation than these, which follow more of a set formula.

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

2017-07-05 14:48

These are looking vastly better, and demonstrate a much better grasp of how the individual forms sit in space, and how they interact with one another. For the attachment points you cannot see, try and give your best educated guess. Try to avoid having forms that are cut off arbitrarily, as for now it'll flatten your forms out. By drawing them all the way through, you'll continue to develop your mental model of how things exist in 3D space. Later on, you'll be able to visualize that more than having to rely upon drawing it explicitly, but for now it helps considerably to put it down on the page.

I'd like to see two more pages, this time taking them to completion. Don't worry too much about going overboard with texture - construction is still the most important element here, and it is very possible for texture to contradict and undermine what you've established with your basic forms. I do however want to see how you'd complete a drawing, now that your grasp of the foundational aspects has improved. It may help to look at the "other demos" section of the lesson, to see how I don't tend to really push too hard on texture/patterning.

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

2017-07-05 14:43

Long time no submit! It's good to see you back here. From the looks of it, your time away hasn't resulted in you getting too rusty - your work is looking pretty solid. There are a couple things that I want to point out however.

• For your organic forms with contour curves, make sure you continue to include the central minor axis line, as this will help you to maintain a consistent alignment for all of your curves. The curves themselves are really merely a visible portion of a larger ellipse, so they still need to be aligned in the same way the contour ellipses are. You may also want to give these notes a read, they may help better explain how the degree of a given ellipse/curve reflects the orientation of the circle it represents in 3D space. I'm definitely pleased to see that you're doing a pretty good job of wrapping those curves around your organic forms though.

• Your dissections are looking solid. Lots of experimentation, careful observation, and not a lot of reliance on randomness/chaos.

• For your form intersections, you're generally doing well but remember back to your 250 box challenge. Drawing through your boxes (drawing all of the lines that make it up, even those that are not visible) helps immensely to grasp how a box sits in 3D space, and how those forms relate to one another. Definitely would have been helpful here.

• Your organic intersections are solid. You're demonstrating a good grasp of how those forms rest on top of one another, and how they sag where they are not supported.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-07-05 14:35

Generally you're doing quite well. I especially do like those sliced cylinders, I think it's a great way to push the exercise a little further and test your ability to control your ellipses.

Going back to the cylinders in boxes, I did notice that you were a little inconsistent in how you placed your ellipses inside of their enclosing planes. In a handful of cases, you've got ellipses that float more arbitrarily within that space. You'll want to make sure that your ellipses touch all four edges of the enclosing plane (or come as close to that as you can manage), while also matching the criteria outlined in this video.

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

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

2017-07-05 14:32

From what I can see, my records don't list you as being eligible for my homework critiques. If you are a patreon supporter, make sure you've sent me your reddit username through patreon's messaging system. Otherwise you're welcome to submit your work for a community critique, which is completely free and open to everyone.