Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-02-02 02:47

On the first point, no. Pencil will make you more erratic and less focused, due to its forgiving nature. Working in ink forces you to think and consider your actions, which is exactly what you need to be doing to develop your observational skills. Pencil makes you draw more, ink makes you draw less. What you need to do is draw less and observe more, so obviously the latter suits the task better.

As for planning a stroke, I do mean applying the ghosting method. Dots are perfectly fine for lines that need to be straight, but in general it's a matter of ghosting through the drawing motion and developing that muscle memory before executing. If you look at your contour curves, they're sloppy and inaccurate.

Previously I really stressed the importance of drawing with confidence to achieve smooth strokes - and I still do, of course. But ghosting and planning is the other side of that same coin, because confidence alone leads to smooth strokes with no accuracy. Ghosting beforehand allows you to achieve accuracy while continuing to execute your marks with confidence.

Don't stress about what you cannot do right now - just because you cannot visualize the stroke you want to achieve now does not mean that it will forever be so. You haven't gone through a fraction of the mileage required to establish your own limitations, so for the time being, assume that you will eventually achieve it all.

A lot of people like to strategize around their shortcomings - they will consider what they know about their problems and try and come up with potential solutions for them. At face value, that's a laudable thing - until you consider the fact that students at this stage are doing so with only a little bit of understanding available to them. These strategies can only be developed when one is able to see all of the variables at play - to develop a strategy based on what you spy through a keyhole is to run blind into the night.

Now that I've crammed togehter just as many mixed metaphors as I possibly could, I'll leave you to it. For now, just focus on visualizing and planning before each mark to improve your accuracy and the effectiveness of your lines and move onto the next lesson.

Oh, and make sure you continue to do the lesson 1/2 material as warmups.

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

2017-02-01 21:54

Your lines and ellipses are really solid. They're smooth, confident, consistent, and your volume of work is really impressive. One thing that I did notice though is that when you get into the boxes, things turn a little... sloppier. I think it coincides with the gradual death of your pen.

Your plotted perspective boxes are solid, no problem there. Your rough perspective boxes are okay as well, but I see places where you've immediately reinforced a line with another stroke to fix a perceived mistake (this is a common habit that you should really fight against). Basically we make a mistake, and we want to fix it - but by fixing it we pile more ink onto that area, making the darkest, heaviest parts of our drawing.. and therefore also the most visible, drawing everyone's eye to our blunders. It's generally best just to leave those mistakes alone.

Whenever you want to correct mistakes for the sake of learning, do so separately after you've finished - and even better, with a different coloured pen. That way it's completely separated from the process of creating the drawing or doing the exercise.

It's clear that you're struggling with the rotated boxes exercise, but this is totally normal. This exercise, and the organic perspective boxes one, were both included to allow students a chance to expose themselves to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is quite difficult, and I don't expect people to nail these exercises this early on. By being exposed to it now, you have context for when I explain how to tackle these kinds of problems later, making those instructions easier to digest.

What I am noticing that is relevant right now however is that your use of hatching tends to get much looser and more erratic. This likely aligns with your frustration with the spatial problems, which is normal, but it is something you need to try to rein in. Don't scribble, and plan all your strokes. Make sure your hatching lines stretch all the way from edge to edge.

And make sure you continue applying the ghosting method! It's very important, and it will help you develop good habits as you continue on.

I'll 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 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, which will ultimately help develop your sense of 3D space.

Oh, and.. maybe a new pen would be in order. The lessons may be free, but sadly they demand many pens be sacrificed!

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

2017-02-01 21:42

Pretty well done! Just a few things I'd like to point out:

• Draw through your ellipses! All of them! Each and every one you draw for my lessons. Yours tend to be somewhat uneven and stiff, and this will help you maintain a more confident pace when executing the marks.

• Your form intersections are decent, but your foreshortening on your forms (mainly your boxes) is a little too dramatic, which throws off the consistency of the scale across the whole scene. I talk about this a little more in these notes.

Your textures are looking especially nice, so good work there. Great attention to detail, and a good use of balance in terms of where you chose to pack in more visual information, and where you decided to be a little lighter.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 3.

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

2017-02-01 21:39

Not bad! You're doing quite well, especially considering that this is your first foray into drawing.

With your lines and ellipses, I did notice that your lines are a tiny bit on the stiff side. It's quite minor, but one good example of this is with your super imposed lines. Your lines have a tendency to meet neatly at each end, and wobble somewhat through its length. Surprisingly enough, what would be preferrable is if you had lines that started neatly at one end, but then gradually separate as they move towards the opposite end.

Basically, wobbling is bad - even if precision is off, you want more than anything to draw lines that are smooth and consistent. If they go off ever so slightly in the wrong direction, that's okay as long as it continues down that path. This kind of wobbling/stiffness is a common problem students run into, because they have a tendency to let their brains control their hands as they actually execute the marks. You don't do this too much, and you're well on your way to relying fully on your muscle memory, but it is something to keep in mind.

Give this comic a read if you haven't already.

Skipping on ahead to the boxes, you're doing pretty well here as well. Plotted perspective boxes are solid. Rough perspective boxes are coming along well - first page shows a little bit of deviation with your verticals (they tend to stray a little bit from running straight up and down) but the second page is better. Your rotated boxes are coming along well, and your organic perspective boxes are so-so.

The thing about the last two exercises is that they were included largely to let you expose yourself to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This isn't an easy thing to do (and a lot of people struggle immensely with the rotated boxes), and it's really so you have context for when I actually get into how to deal with those kinds of challenges.

I'll 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 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.

Edit: I just did a couple more critiques for other students, then remembered that you'd mentioned you were planning on embarking on the 250 box challenge. So.. :D Good plan! Sorry to repeat what you'd already mentioned.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-02-01 21:32

Extend your lines towards the vanishing point first, because that helps you actually identify when things are going wrong. Correct them after that. Also, it doesn't hurt to correct a box that's gone way off the rails.

And yeah, you're free to complete the 250 cylinder challenge whenever, so long as you complete it before lesson 6. It is generally helpful though.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-02-01 21:29

Well done! Some of your proportions are all over the place, but your constructions feel considerably more solid. Even the llama at the end (which is admittedly still a little too loose) is feeling more tangible.

My only suggestion at this point is just slow down a little bit and spend a little more time planning out your individual strokes. This should bump up the solidity of your constructions overall. This is gonna be pretty important for the next lesson, because hard surface objects are way less forgiving than organic matter.

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

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

2017-02-01 21:22

Nice work! I noticed early on in your ghosted lines that your lines were wavering slightly (a common sign of a lack of confidence behind each stroke), but this improved considerably as you got into the planes exercises. There in particular your lines seem to be much smoother, better planned and generally more purposeful. This carries on into the boxes, which is definitely good to see.

Your ellipses are generally pretty solid - they're looking confident, even and smooth. I'm glad to see that you're drawing through each ellipse, but still managing to keep those lines fairly tight. You'll continue to improve as you practice these, so keep at it - but you're definitely plodding down the right track at a good pace.

Your boxes show a pretty decent grasp of 3D space - your organic perspective boxes leave a little to be desired as far as near/far plane size relationships go, but this is entirely expected. I included the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises largely to give students the experience of facing the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space head on - and more than likely falling flat on their faces. You did a solid job with the rotated boxes though, so be proud of that.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I do want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next though to continue developing your sense of 3D space. 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 2: Organic Forms, Contour Lines, Dissections and Form Intersections"

2017-02-01 21:16

Definitely muuuuuch better. While you've still got room for improvement, you're demonstrating a much stronger ability to observe the complex detail present on a given surface. It all feels considerably more structured than it did before, which is much more visually pleasing.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-02-01 21:13

You're definitely improving with your box constructions through the set. One thing I noticed though is that your corrections aren't terribly useful. Instead of circling your perceived mistakes, actually draw in the correct lines. Additionally, extending lines towards their vanishing points (given what space you have) is a great way to identify errors you may not have noticed previously - especially when you catch two lines out of a given set of four converging much faster than the other two, when in fact they should all ultimately meet at the same vanishing point far off into the distance.

One last suggestion - since drawing through your boxes can sometimes make it a little confusing as to which side of the box is which, it can help to fill in one of the sides that faces the viewer with some tight hatching to give a visual cue and clarify that issue. This can also make spotting mistakes a little easier as well.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2 or the 250 cylinder challenge, though I do hope you take another shot at marking out corrections first, for your own benefit.

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

2017-02-01 21:09

Should have drawn through your ellipses (as you should for every single ellipse you draw for my lessons), but this is starting to move in the right direction.

Compare the lines you drew here to the ones you drew on this page. Notice how the planes exercises are much wobblier and don't flow smoothly, whereas your new page of lines may not be entirely straight, but when the line starts, it generally picks a particular trajectory and then sticks to it.

This means that you are capable of drawing lines that are smooth, but that when doing the exercises you don't trust in your muscle memory.

Next I want you to do two more pages:

• 1 page of planes, applying the ghosting method no matter how long that takes you - remember that this means that first you must make the start and end points of the line you want to draw, then you must prepare by ghosting through the motion over and over until your muscles start to feel comfortable with it. Finally you execute the mark with a single confident stroke. No slowing down to let your brain control your hand motion (which results in wobbles). We are after straight and smooth lines.

• 1 page of the table-of-ellipses exercise, being sure to draw through your ellipses two full rounds before lifting your pen. Make sure you apply the ghosting method here as well, ghosting through the drawing motion in order to build up muscle memory before executing confidently. We want even and smooth ellipses.

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

2017-02-01 00:32

I'll go ahead and add that to my backlog list. For future reference, I get notified for replies to the main thread, and replies to my own comments. If you respond to your own comment, I won't get notified.

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

2017-01-31 19:32

If by dots you mean the ghosting method (which involves placing points at the start and end of a line as part of the preparation phase), absolutely. You should be applying the ghosting method to every mark you put down from here on in.

Uncomfortable in the post "/r/ArtFundamentals and Drawabox.com: A New Beginning. Read this if you're new to this subreddit."

2017-01-31 19:32

I actually address this at the very top of lesson 1, under the heading "As this is probably your first lesson at Drawabox, read this before moving forward!". Long story short, do the amount of homework that is recommended, then submit it for critique - the whole lesson at once. Sending exercises individually, or even sections individually is greatly discouraged for the free critiques (which are done by community members, who are just less likely to respond to lessons that are not entirely complete), and is simply not allowed for the patreon-only critiques by me.

Once you've completed the recommended homework, assuming you've followed the instructions correctly, you should be okay to move onto the next lesson. That said, as you continue to move forwards, you should continue to practice exercises from lessons 1 (and eventually lesson 2 once that's completed) as warmups - picking two or three each day to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting.

The point of the homework is not to acquire mastery over each exercise (because this would take a ridiculous amount of time and would cause you to stagnate and probably burn out). The point is to get a grasp of what each exercise asks of you, and to start out down the correct path.

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

2017-01-31 01:34

You're doing quite well! I definitely see a lot of steady improvement with each exercise. Definitely room to improve with your lines and ellipses and so on, but you're heading right down the right path.

As you apply the ghosting method to the lines you draw, always remember that while you are encouraged to take as much time as you need to prepare and plan the mark out, when you execute it you must do so with confidence. That means trusting in your muscles, drawing quickly enough to keep your brain from micromanaging. This is where the wavering and wobbling comes in - of which there isn't too much in your work, but it is something you'll want to continue working on.

Your ellipses are coming along well, and as you continue to work on them you'll want to focus on tightening them up (so the multiple lines start overlapping each other more) while maintaining that confidence and smoothness that keeps the shapes even. Certainly trickier than it sounds, but you'll get there.

For your boxes, I'm pleased to see that you applied that double-checking method to your rough perspective boxes. What you're seeing there is very common, and completely expected. It is by applying this manner of reflection that we become aware of those mistakes, and gradually learn to compensate for them.

Lastly, your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be. That is, you've got a ways to go, but neither of these exercises were included with the expectation that students would nail them immediately. Rather, they're there to expose you to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when I do actually explain that material to you, you'll have some context for it all.

So, 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 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"

2017-01-31 01:15

Lovely work. Your lines are smooth and straight, your ellipses are confident and evenly shaped, and your box exercises are looking quite solid. I'm pleased to see that you were mindful of the different issues I raised in the lesson itself and in the self critique resources (double checking rough perspective boxes work, maintaining consistent foreshortening in the organic perspective boxes, etc.), and while you may have struggled with some parts initially, you definitely improved on them over each exercise.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Looking at your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes, I'm going to give you the OK to move onto lesson 2, but I do want you to give the notes over on the 250 box challenge page a read, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular helps students to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. You're not required to complete the challenge as your progress with freely rotated boxes is looking solid, but that is an option I leave to your own discretion.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects (new 30min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-31 01:11

By the end of the set, with the mouse and the charger, your constructions definitely start demonstrating a grasp of the material covered in this lesson. One thing that really stands out to me is the jug, where you're jumping into the complex detail of the handle without building up the simpler steps before it. Since you jump in with that too early, you end up with very little to support those details, and ultimately you end up trying to make up for it all through detail/rendering (which never works).

In general, detail and rendering is really doing more bad than good when it comes to this lesson, because the ability to rely on it even slightly distracts you from really putting your focus towards the constructional steps. In those last two drawings, you definitely start breaking away from this habit, though admittedly the charger is quite simple (but for this reason it was a great choice), and the other one was pulled directly from one of my demos (again, a good choice to get your head around the process).

Another issue that extends from this is that you consciously separate the "final linework" from your construction. That is, looking at your jug, you've got clear constructional lines that are pretty clean, planned out, and well executed. Then you've got your "final" linework that seems to try and replace the constructional lines. They tend to be much looser, more wobbly, more chicken-scratchy and generally look far worse.

You shouldn't be trying to replace those constructional lines. Those initial marks should be drawn with confidence, and then when it comes time to add line weight, it's not a matter of redrawing the whole thing. All you're doing is emphasizing some lines over others, and drawing attention to that which already exists in your drawing.

Before I let you move onto the next lesson, I'd like to see another four pages of these drawings. Keep what I've mentioned here in mind - focus entirely on construction, building up complexity in successive passes, and when your construction is complete, add line weight to existing lines (don't chicken-scratch when doing this) to help organize your linework.

Also, I hope you're still going through the lesson 1 and 2 exercises as warmups, as I've likely recommended previously (2 or 3 exercises chosen each day to be done for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting).

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-31 01:02

Definitely better. Your proportions certainly do need work (as is more or less expected), but by the end of these new drawings you're demonstrating a stronger grasp of how construction should be applied, and a better sense of how these different forms connect to one another to build up more complex objects. There's plenty of room for improvement, but you're back on the right track.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 6.

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

2017-01-30 01:42

Definitely an improvement. Your organic forms with contour curves, your dissection texture and your organic intersections are significantly better. There's a massive shift in how you seem to be thinking about your textures now. There's always room for growth, but this is the kind of change I was hoping to see.

One issue that I noticed with your form intersections though is that you have a tendency to apply more dramatic foreshortening to your boxes - which in turn throws the scale of the whole set off. I explain this a little more in these notes from lesson 1. Your ellipses are also looking a little bit stiff there, but this will definitely improve over time.

The last bit of advice I want to give you is that when you make a mistake, don't try to correct it. Just leave it be, as it's a bad habit to get into. You don't want the darkest, heaviest, most eye-catching parts of your drawings to be the places where you've tried to correct your mistakes out of habit.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-30 01:37

I'm definitely glad to see that you started drawing through your boxes some way through, I think you benefited considerably from that choice, as the boxes before that shit seemed to be a bit repetitious of the same kinds of mistakes. Through the rest of the set, your confidence definitely feels a little more solid, so I see clear improvement over the set.

That said, the greatest improvement really comes from going through and marking in your corrections with a differently coloured pen. I see you did some with a highlighter, but you left quite a bit untouched. One great way to test if there are issues with a box is to extend its lines towards its intended vanishing point. Each box consists of three sets of four lines - one vanishing point for each set, towards which all four lines should converge.

By extending the lines, we get a better sense of whether or not some lines are converging together a little more quickly than the others, which is a big sign that something's off. Now, in an exercise like this, something's going to be off the vast majority of the time, but we want to be focusing on the kinds of discrepancies that start to become more apparent with the naked eye.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, but I definitely hope that for your own sake, you try doing the corrections on those once more, as there are many little hitches to be found. Building an awareness of them will help you improve much more quickly.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-30 01:30

I see strengths, and I see weaknesses. The weaknesses are actually not uncommon - much of this critique will be a repetition of something I mentioned to another student yesterday, largely relating to treating the things we draw as being solid, unyielding forms, rather than abstract, or intangible loose sketches that can be altered with a thought and a mark.

Before we get into that though, I want to point out how loose and sketchy you tend to get. In some places, you even fall into the hole of chicken-scratching, which is something you need to force yourself to stop. It's a terrible habit, and it extends from the problem of thinking less and drawing more, which is more prevalent in this set.

Every mark you put down should be the result of conscious planning and forethought. Never reinforce a line reflexively after having drawn it. Never put down two marks where one would have sufficed. And lastly, don't let yourself get caught in the trap of overly energetic sketching. It's not that it's an unacceptable way to draw - it's got many strengths, the results tend to be packed full of gesture. The problem is, however, that it's not what I'm teaching you. I'm teaching you to plan and to construct.

Now through many of your bird drawings, I do get the sense that you do have a certain degree of awareness of the 3D forms you're working with. Your warblers especially demonstrate a nice sense of volume to them. The one in the bottom right of page 3 has a torso that feels strongly three dimensional, very much due to that contour ellipse that we can see quite prominently. It gives a nice cross-section that really sells the illusion.

A major problem however is that I also see signs across the set that when you lay in your initial masses (head, ribcage, pelvis) you see these as being loose approximations that will inevitably be ignored as you continue to work through the drawing.

Instead, I want you to hold true to this rule: at the end of every 'phase' of construction (in the sense that we gradually build up our objects in phases or passes, building up the complexity from simple to complex), I want you to fully believe and grasp the fact that what you've drawn thus far is solid and three dimensional. That means that the initial shape you put down for the cranium is not a shape at all - it's not a simple circle, it's a solid ball. If you don't feel convinced of this (and you may well not), you can reinforce these forms with contour lines, as you did with that warbler I mentioned before. Don't be frivolous with these contour lines, of course - add them only where necessary, and plan them before executing.

Next, when you add a form, to this construction, I want you to know explicitly how those two forms connect to each other. With many animals, you'll find that the ribcage and pelvis can be wrapped together to form a big continuous sausage form - but the neck that comes down from the cranium similarly connects to the torso sausage, but it does so in a distinct ellipse of intersection. They don't flow directly from one to the other, but rather there is a point of intersection where their flow becomes slightly disjointed. It is a matter of understanding where the flow breaks and where it continues that allows you to piece these constructions together in a way that is believable.

I see in your drawings a real urge to jump right into carrying over all the details you see in your reference image. For example, with your first rhinoceros drawing, its head seems to go from a big ellipse to its cranium, almost straight into all of the detail of the rest of its head. The biggest of your beagle head studies is certainly better, in how you've wrapped the muzzle against its cranium, and you've put thought towards the curvature of all those surfaces, but you would have benefitted more from considering the muzzle as a simpler, box-like form, hinged against that cranium, then expanded on its more nuanced curves later. Just figuring out and separating the different planes of that muzzle is an important step that you skipped over.

I'm also catching that your drawings are generally quite small, resulting in cramped, stiff drawings (like your deer) in a sea of blank space. You've got plenty of room to work, so you need to be taking advantage of it. Spatial problems require that sort of space, especially when your sense of 3D space is only just developing.

Lastly, your approach to texture is very scribbly and haphazard. This does relate back to your loose, sketchy approach thus far, but there's more to it than that. I see a lot of rather sloppy hatching, which is almost always a sign of "i don't want to take the time to really study what kind of textures are present here, but i don't want to leave it blank." It's something we all do at a point, but a good rule of thumb is that if you feel the urge to put hatching down on a drawing of an actual, real object (not just an anonymous box), it's probably a mistake. There's very few surfaces for which hatching actually matches the texture that is present.

I'd like you to do five more pages of animal drawings, but this time I want you to leave any and all detail or texture out of it. Focus entirely on gradually building up your construction, and being mindful of the solidity of the forms you're working with at every step.

Always remind yourself that you're not just drawing shapes on a page - every form you create is something you've summoned, it is solid, tangible and unassailable. If you want to adjust that form, you cannot simply change place a mark and move on - you need to actually cut it, or build on top of it with more forms. The very act of cutting or carving a form means being aware of the opposite form that you are subtracting from it. For example, if you have a ball, and you want to cut out a quarter of it, you'd actually have to hold in your mind a box that intersects with that ball, to represent the cut itself.

Here's a demo worth studying closely. In drawing this oryx, I take care to build up form gradually, always mindful of my intersections (a big one is how the legs connect to the torso at the shoulder), and I am never timid or shy with my line work, even if things start to get a little ugly. I can always come back afterwards to reinforce my line weights and help organize my mess - although of course, this is after all just an exercise, and the prettiness of the end result is irrelevant.

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

2017-01-30 01:07

There is some noticeable improvement, but you're still showing fundamental issues with how you execute your marks. You're still giving your brain the opportunity to drive the motion of your hand, rather than trusting fully in your muscles and giving yourself the opportunity to make mistakes.

The first thing I want you to do is go back and reread the critique I gave you previously. I know you've already gone through it once, but it's important to let the ideas of drawing with confidence, valuing flow and smoothness over accuracy really sink in.

Once you've reread that critique, I want you to take two pieces of paper. On one, draw straight lines. No criteria, no goals, no targets to hit. Just draw lines and execute each one as fast as you can. I don't mean that you should be drawing as many lines as you can in a short period, but rather I want your pen to touch the surface of the page for as little time as possible. Think of it like a master swordsman slashing a training dummy. Pause and wait all you want between strokes, but the stroke itself should be swift.

On the next piece of paper, I want you to do the same thing, but with ellipses. Draw through those ellipses, but don't slow yourself down. There's no criteria to hit here either, just draw freefloating ellipses all over the page.

Show me these when you're done, and we'll move on from there.

As for the critique for this set, I see that your rough perspective boxes have definitely improved after reading the notes about guessing/knowing. I do still want you to go over your completed work as described here though to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

Additionally, I noticed that in your funnels, you neglected to add the central line going down the middle of the funnel. This is important, as it represents the minor axis line to which all the ellipses are to align themselves. This becomes more important later on, so it's important that you get used to considering it.

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

2017-01-30 00:57

Pretty solid work! I just noticed a couple things that I'd like to point out:

• Your superimposed lines and ellipses are generally well done, but they both show some amounts of stiffness, where you're focusing too much on accuracy and the smooth, even flow of your lines suffer for it. One good sign of this in the super imposed lines at least is when you have them start and end together in a nice, neat point, but have them waver and wobble back and forth through their length. It may be a little surprising, but having lines that start together and gradually (but consistently) grow slightly apart through their lengths to be quite frayed by the end is better. This implies that you're trusting in your muscle memory more and focusing more on producing smooth, consistent strokes. After all, imagine what each stroke would look like on their own - the wobbly ones would be just that, wobbly, whole those that stray a bit would still be smooth and confident. That's what you want for now - your accuracy will otherwise improve in general with practice.

• Be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective could use some work.

• Your rotated boxes are coming along nicely. It does help to keep the gaps between your boxes fairly tight (you do this properly in some areas, and less so in others) so you can use neighbouring lines as hints and generally keep things consistent.

One thing to keep in mind is that you're expected to struggle a fair bit with both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises. These were included here to function as a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, and there's no expectation that you'd nail them this early on. That said, you've been doing pretty well.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move on to 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, which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-01-29 00:34

Lovely work! Your lines are smooth and confident, your ellipses are evenly shaped and well executed, and your box exercises are looking solid. I'm especially pleased with how you laid things out, maximizing the space in each page, and clearly milking each exercise for as much as you could get. That rotated boxes page is especially impressive.

I have just a couple of minor recommendations:

• Always remember that with your ellipses, you want to draw through them at least one more time before lifting your pen (which you almost always did, but I caught you experimenting with just going around once in a few places in your funnels and figured it was worth mentioning). This goes for every ellipse you draw for my lessons.

• Also keep in mind that the confidence of your stroke is paramount - accuracy is important, but it comes in second. So in places like your ellipses in planes, don't let the awkward shapes you're trying to fit those ellipses into distract you from that main priority of a confident, even, smooth ellipse. They tend to get a little more distorted when we focus too much and let our brains drive our hand motion as we draw.

• For your rough perspective boxes, after you're done, it helps a lot to go over your completed work as described here to identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

• Similarly, for your rotated boxes, if you were to extend the lines of the boxes towards either side back to the horizon line, you'll notice that your vanishing points don't reflect the behaviour demonstrated in this animated diagram. Notice how as the box rotates towards the left, the vanishing points slide towards the right? Now, this is by no means unexpected - your work for this exercise exceeded my expectations, as this exercise is here largely to give students a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is just something to keep in mind.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I would however like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, as I noticed that you did struggle a little with your box forms in the organic perspective boxes exercise. 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 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes"

2017-01-29 00:27

Your lines and ellipses are generally looking pretty good. There's still room to grow as far as finding a good balance between a confident stroke and accuracy, but that will come with further practice and doesn't require any changes to how you're approaching them.

Your boxes are generally okay, aside from the rotated boxes exercise. Before I get into that though, I do want to highlight one point - the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are there to introduce you to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. They are by no means expected to be done particularly well this early on - of course I wouldn't tell anyone that before they actually do the exercises, so they put their full effort into it.

Looking through your attempts at the two exercises, I see two issues that I will address - and they both likely are rooted in your response to frustration:

• You stopped following the instructions for the rotated boxes. The exercise description includes very strict, step-by-step instructions on how to tackle this exercise, and I see a few signs that you didn't really digest them. For example, your axes and the 'extremity' boxes are completely missing throughout.

• You demonstrated a habit in your organic perspective boxes of reflexively 'correcting' yourself. This is a bad habit, and you should work to nip it in the bud as soon as possible. If you draw a line, and it is incorrect, leave it be. Correcting it will only draw attention to your blunder, since the most noticeable, darkest, heaviest parts of your drawing will be those where you got frustrated and tried to fix your mistakes. Reflecting upon your mistakes is definitely valuable, but do it separately, once the exercise is over. Doing it in a differently coloured pen helps too.

With your rotated boxes, I can see two more points that could help - again, this exercise is tough and often times overwhelming, so I'm not surprised that you missed these points. As far as instructions go, the ones I mentioned before as being missed are low hanging fruit, whereas these are more easily missed due to the state of mind one reaches in their initial attempt at slaying this beast:

• Firstly, keep the gaps between your boxes small. This allows you to use neighbouring lines as hints and guidelines. This isn't a trick limited to this exercise, but in much later lessons (6 and 7) you'll find plenty of opportunities to use it.

• Secondly, take a look at this animated diagram. Notice how, as the box rotates towards the left, its vanishing points slide towards the right. Looking at your attempts, it seems like more often your vanishing points move in the same direction as the rotation. There are more notes about this here.

Now, one last thing - this one about your rough perspective boxes. Just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

Anyway, I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, thoroughly. Pay special attention to the tip about drawing through your forms, as this should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. There's also two videos there that should help.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-29 00:11

You're definitely moving in the right direction, but what I'm seeing right now shows very loose and therefore unconvincing construction, then wrapped up with more focus on detail and pure observational drawing to compensate for the lack of solid structure underneath. More than anything, it's a matter of convincing you of the solidity of the simple forms you're drawing - to gradually change your outlook on all this from drawing loose shapes on a flat page to manifesting, and then moulding and carving solid masses within three dimensional space.

So you've read through the notes about construction, and you understand already how we draw in successive passes - starting from simple to complex. I can see that you have a grasp of this already, so that makes this explanation a little simpler. Here's an additional rule I want you to follow:

At the end of each and every constructional pass, you must be convinced of the solidity of the forms you are working in. This means that you cannot be perceiving and treating them as loose ellipses and lines that can be undermined and adjusted at a whim - you need to hold in your mind the illusion that these things are firm and unyielding.

Our animal drawings begin with laying out the three major masses - cranium, ribcage, pelvis. Therefore, at the end of the first pass, you must have three solid three dimensional masses. If you don't feel convinced of this, then try reinforcing them with one or two contour lines as needed. Don't go overboard, and focus on the illusion of it. Think of it a little bit like a magic image (not even sure if people remember what these things are anymore), where you need to squint and adjust your own perspective before the image reveals itself from the otherwise abstract pattern.

Once you yourself are convinced of this, then all of a sudden it becomes that much harder to just whimsically ignore certain facts about the forms you're dealing with. If you believe in the lie you've constructed, you can no longer just will something to be changed - you need to carve into it, or build on top of it, which are inherently constructional acts.

Even if you're cutting a chunk away from something, you need to imagine that what you're cutting away is itself a form - like if you have a ball, you might imagine another box to subtract from it.

Another thing I mentioned above is that you tend to rely heavily on more purely observational detailing to make up for what your construction is missing. This, along with the visible difference in the kinds of lines you use to draw detail vs. construction, makes one thing clear - you're still focusing too much on the final result of the drawing.

Don't think about creating a pretty drawing in the end. This, like everything else you've done up to this point, is an exercise, nothing more. Just like the rotated boxes exercise, just like the tables of ellipses, they're just exercises. It just so happens that these have a face. Don't let it distract you.

Draw each and every line with full confidence - don't try to keep your construction lines faint and timid. Afterwards you can come back to add line weight to organize those lines, but your main drawing should not be concerned with keeping things pretty. Be mindful of your line economy, of course, but if you've decided that you're going to put a line down, draw it confidently.

Now, I'd like you to do another four pages of animal drawings, with one caveat - don't draw any detail whatsoever. Focus only on construction. No texture, no fur, no little feathery frills, just construction. Oh, and spend more time looking at your reference images - I see a lot of really strong demonstrations of a keen eye, but I also see a lot of areas that have gone sharply towards the cartoony where you're clearly working more from memory than from observation.

And to clarify something I realize might be confusing - I've mentioned observation in two ways here, one positive, one negative. Observation itself is important, but never go directly from "i see this" to "i draw this". You must first see, then you must understand (from a constructional standpoint) and then you may draw what you understand.

Back to observing more - as a rule, make sure you're not drawing for more than a second or two before you go back to observing.

One last thing - this demo specifically does a good job of stressing the importance of construction, and confidence of line. I don't try to hide anything. Whatever masses and forms I see in my reference, I try to grasp what they are, and then I build them up in my drawing. No concern for the prettiness of the final result.

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

2017-01-28 23:55

Your arrows are looking good. Your organic forms with contour ellipses are pretty well done, though the ellipses themselves are a little on the stiff side. You can see how they sometimes come to a point on one end, because you're not allowing yourself to loosen up and draw confidently enough to get a good, even shape. Definitely something to work on.

Your organic forms with contour curves are looking solid though, and your dissection textures are really nicely done. Lots of great balance of detail, and while you're simplifying a lot of the noisy detail, you're maintaining a very pleasantly realistic feel rather than going towards the cartoony.

For your form intersections, those stiff, uneven ellipses are really biting you when it comes to the spheres. Always remind yourself that the confidence of the stroke is a higher priority than your accuracy, and that accuracy will come with practice but to achieve even, smooth shapes you need to consciously keep your brain from micromanaging as you execute the mark.

Your organic intersections leave a little bit to be desired. What you want to focus on for this exercise is how the forms themselves interact with one another. Imagine that you're dropping a single one of these putty, sausagey forms onto a flat surface. Consider how it's sitting there, how its own weight is playing against the tension on its skin/surface, and how it's redistributing its own mass as much as it can. Then drop another form on top of it, once you've fully grasped all of the dynamics of the first. Imagine that it's fallen directly across the first, so that it sags over on both sides, with its midsection held up by the structure of the first. Think about how this second form now arranges itself to wrap around the object supporting it, due to that fundamental tension in its own form.

Run your mind through this sort of simulation before drawing, and then when you do draw, try and play through the scene again. Stick to simple sausage forms - don't complicate things with overly long or flat forms.

Anyway, overall you're doing quite well, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You'll definitely want to continue working on your ellipses, your form intersections and your organic intersections, but I feel that you should be ready to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-27 22:45

Yup, lesson 2 is next. The 250 Cylinder Challenge is also another option which you may want to consider, but it's up to you.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-27 20:48

I definitely see improvement in construction, line quality/weight and general confidence as you go through the set. One thing that I am very sad to see however is that you barely applied the tip about drawing through your forms, especially considering that I pointed that out pretty explicitly in my lesson 1 critique. Now you certainly have benefitted considerably from this challenge, but you missed out on the opportunity to really push that much further.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2. Make sure you apply this drawing-through matter to your form constructions in the future, and consider doing it in red to these boxes as well in order to help identify other areas where there are slight discrepancies in how each set of lines converges to their own particular vanishing point.

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

2017-01-27 20:44

You are showing improvement.

• Your rough perspective boxes are coming together better, though I can still see issues with your horizontals not always running parallel to the horizon line as explained in the notes I provided previously. I assume this is more a matter of accuracy rather than understanding. You should also be much more patient about applying the ghosting method to each and every line so as to keep your freehand lines as straight as possible. If you find that those ghosted lines arc slightly in one direction, give these notes a read.

• Your rotated boxes are also getting better, but there's two key things that I noticed. Firstly, you didn't follow the instructions to the letter (I can see that you left out the 'extremity' boxes from step 2). Secondly be mindful of how the vanishing points of each individual box changes as that box rotates. In the lesson, I provided you with this animated diagram. Pay attention to how the vanishing points move. When the box rotates towards one direction, the vanishing points slide in the opposite direction. Take a red pen and extend the lines of some of your boxes in this page of rotated boxes to see how your vanishing points actually slide in the same direction as the rotation, which is incorrect. There are more notes on this matter here

• Your plotted perspective boxes are well done.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes carefully, paying special attention to the tip about drawing through your forms. There are also two videos, be sure to watch them both. Finally, when doing this challenge, make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every line you draw, and take however much time as that may require, spreading the 250 boxes over several sittings.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-27 20:37

Your boxes are certainly coming along well. As far as corrections go though, I have a strong recommendation that should help. When going over your completed boxes, try extending the lines towards their intended vanishing point (the direction they should be converging), as demonstrated here. This will help you identify areas where your lines aren't converging properly.

For instance in this particular example,

• You can see that the red lines converge in pairs instead of all four converging roughly towards the same point (which should be waaay off in the distance, more similar to the behaviour of the blue lines)

• Same thing goes for the green lines

• Your blue lines are better, but you can see that the two ones in the middle there are actually diverging the further down they go. Since they're so close to each other, I'd actually make them run more or less parallel to one another, since their vanishing point is so far away.

Anyway, keep that in mind when you practice this in the future. Aside from that, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-27 00:17

Looking good! I can definitely see the issues you're working through in terms of adding line weight from your shoulder rather than from your wrist, but there are definite signs of that accuracy improving. Just make sure you keep doing it from your shoulder - ultimately the more you practice it, the more control you'll find you have when drawing from your shoulder, while maintaining the same kind of flow and smoothness.

As far as your corrections go, they seem to generally be on point to me. I don't exactly go through each one to point out mistakes unless there are some that a student missed that are ridiculously obvious, of which there are none here. Just make sure that whenever you do this exercise, you continue coming back to them to mark out corrections like this, as reflecting upon your work after it's completed is a great way to identify where you have room for growth.

I'm also very pleased to see the advanced boxes - I can definitely see how they've helped improve your sense of 3D space, and this will definitely come in handy in later lessons when we start looking at more geometric and hard-surface objects.

So, consider this challenge thoroughly completed. You don't need to move onto the 250 cylinder challenge next - you can head right on over to lesson 2, as most people do. My only recommendation as far as the cylinders goes is to read through the notes on that page, and at least complete the challenge by the time you start lesson 6. That should give you plenty of time.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-27 00:08

You're doing quite well thus far. I totally understand your concern with proportions - I don't see anything here that looks particularly out of whack, but proportions themselves are among the challenges that we deal with gradually as we continue to train our observational skills.

I think your use of the constructional method is improving here considerably, especially in how you reinforce your major masses with contour curves, and how you are mindful of how these different forms intersect with one another. The only thing I noticed that went contrary to that was a really minor point - on that last page, where you've got those big butterfly wings, you went back to capturing rather complex edge detail (ignoring the internal patterns, but the edges of each wing) without first establishing it at its simplest level to get the flat form of that wing down as it would exist in 3D space. Additionally, where another wing is partially blocked by the one on top of it, you should still be drawing that wing in its entirety (so as to again, capture how it sits and flows through 3D space).

Anyway, keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete! Feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-01-27 00:01

Really solid work! Your lines are confident and smooth, your ellipses are evenly shaped and quite accurate, and your box exercises show a lot of patience and a well developing sense of 3D space.

I'm very pleased to see how well everything has been laid out, and how much of the space on each page you put to good use. It's definitely a good sign of the mindset with which you approached each exercise, which is easily far more important than the execution of exercises themselves.

Looking over your work, I have only one thing to point out, and it's a minor point. For your organic perspective boxes, I noticed that your forms have foreshortening applied to them that's perhaps a little more dramatic than it ought to be. This tends to imply an inconsistent scale across the entire set, as it is described here.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You may feel free to move onto the next lesson, or you may want to take a look at the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-25 22:24

I'd say things start out somewhat weaker and less certain, but you definitely show considerable growth through this set, both in the construction of your forms, but also in the confidence of your linework. By the end you seem far more sure of your choices, whereas early on you give the impression of being a little puzzled as to why you're drawing a bunch of boxes for some crazy stranger on the internet.

This occurred to me more for your earlier boxes and seems less necessary in the later ones, but one thing I recommend to keep things clear while drawing through your boxes is to fill in one of the front-facing faces with some tight, consistent hatching. This gives a visual cue as to which side of the box is facing us, which immediately makes it much easier to understand spatially, and in turn makes it much easier to notice mistakes. This is less necessary in the later ones because the line weights make things a little easier to read - still, it is a tactic a lot of people use anyway for the sake of clarity (and because it tends to make things look nice).

Anyway, keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2 when you're ready, or you can also consider taking a look at the 250 cylinder challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-25 22:17

Your use of the constructional methods, and your capturing of form is coming along great. Each drawing feels tangible and demonstrates a strong understanding of how each component exists in 3D space, and how they connect to one another. I don't have anything to complain about on that front, so keep up the good work.

I did notice however that on the texture side of things, it looks like you're pretty much only looking at using hatching lines - this is a common shorthand people tend to use when they're not quite taking the time to really study their reference images and observe the wide variety of textures present. Hatching works great on things like boxes, because they pretty much have no texture, so hatching adds a bit of grit to it. In truth though, hatching lines only speak to a small subset of textures that exist, and more often than not they don't correlate to what actually exists on the object.

Take a look at this demo. If you look at your reference images closely, you'll notice a much wider variety of surfaces present on these insects, along with different ways the little bumps and pits and other features are arranged and clustered. There's a lot that can be pulled from these things, so you've definitely got some room to grow in that regard.

Anyway, my main focus is of course construction and you're doing great on that front. Consider this lesson thoroughly complete and feel free to move onto the next one. Additionally, if you are interested in playing with texture, you may want to look at the 25 texture challenge where I present some extra resources and lesson material on that front, as well as a particularly time consuming exercise. If you choose to try that exercise out, do it alongside your other lessons, as opposed to trying to grind it all out immediately.

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

2017-01-24 21:41

Pretty nice work. Only one thing stood out to me, and it doesn't have anything to do with the use of the medium, but it's rather the overly dramatic foreshortening on your organic perspective boxes exercise. Give these notes another read. You also may want to draw through those boxes, as discussed in the 250 box challenge. I don't mention this in the lesson itself because I like to show my students what happens when you do something one way, then what the better approach would be - but since you've already completed this lesson in the past as well as the 250 box challenge, that's something you should generally apply to any exercise of this sort.

Anyway, keep up the good work. Your line quality is solid, your ellipses are smooth and even, and you seem to be handling your hardware quite nicely.

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

2017-01-24 21:38

Looking at your work, I think you can do better. Individually, there's definitely some good here, but overall the way you lay out your work, the instructions you missed from the lesson, and so on are problems that don't really have anything to do with your technical proficiency, but rather speak to a sort of disorganization that will bite you in the ass later on. So we're going to sort that out right now.

Previously you mentioned that this paper is the only kind you can get your hands on when you sit down to do this work during your lunch break, so I'm not going to ask you to work on different paper, but I am going to reiterate the reason I encourage people to work on blank pages so that you can be aware of how that choice has been impacting you.

Over the last two years that I've been critiquing peoples' work, I've noticed a pattern that people who tend to work on paper that isn't blank - be it lined paper, the backs of worksheets, etc. - generally produce work that reflects a more disorganized mindset. They fill the pages less, they combine different exercises on the same page, they rush a lot more, they don't take the time to read through the exercise descriptions fully before starting... All that said, perhaps it's not fair to blame this on the paper. The paper is after all a symptom of the larger problem, that you're squeezing this into your lunch break.

We all have busy days, and sometimes we can only fit our work into limited periods. That's what you're being forced to do - but in order to really reap any benefits from these lessons, you've got to give each exercise the amount of attention it requires even if that means completing no more than a single exercise - or even half of an exercise - in one sitting.

Much of lessons 1 and 2 come almost directly from the lessons I did when studying at the Concept Design Academy, and the lessons were assigned on a weekly basis. I spent somewhere in the area of 6 to 8 hours on each individual lesson - that's a lot of lunch breaks. Of course, I had the advantage of having quit my job and moved across the continent just to attend that school, so I had all the time in the world. Things are more difficult for you, but all that means is that you're going to have to pace yourself more, instead of sacrificing the amount of time spent on each exercise. All that aside, the lessons 1 and 2 that I did didn't include some of the exercises that I've added to them myself, so I'd expect it to take someone even longer.

Now I'm going to quickly go over the exercises and point out things that you can improve upon:

• As I mentioned before, keep each exercise separate. Don't mix them up, as this can make it somewhat difficult to focus on one task at a time. I'm specifically referring to your arrows/organic forms here.

• When doing arrows, think about them going from a point far away to a point closer to you, moving through 3D space. It's easy to get caught up in the idea of them going across the page rather than through space. All that said, you're doing a decent job at these, and I think they'll benefit naturally if you just focus a little more while you work. You'll find that this is a general theme through this critique.

• For your organic forms with contour ellipses, your ellipses are looking rather stiff. Draw from the shoulder and do so with a confident pace quick enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you go. Do this after applying the ghosting method. Also make sure you align those ellipses such that the central line serves as the minor axis of each ellipse. This means that line should cut each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves.

• For the organic forms with contour curves, I can definitely see that you are consciously wrapping those edges (in most cases) around at the edges, having them accelerate in their curvature so they look like they continue onto the other side. The rest of the curve however flattens out quite a bit. Try and treat these curves as being the visible portion of a larger ellipse - this means a more continuous curve, rather than a flatter portion with ends that wrap around. Be sure to read through this material on the topic and try overshooting those curves a little bit to get a greater sense of the invisible ellipse. Also, just as I mentioned before - that imaginary ellipse should be aligned to that central line. In the top right side of your organic forms with contour curves, these are falling out of alignment quite a bit.

• As far as the dissections go, this is just the beginning - at this point, no one has received any real instruction from me in regards to how to tackle texture. Before I go further into that, I do want to mention that it seems that from this point on, you stopped drawing through your ellipses. This makes sense to me, as your previous attempts to do so were very stiff and wobbly. This is rather because you weren't drawing with a confident pace, and as such drawing through those ellipses seemed to be quite useless. You'll find that it becomes extremely valuable once you do increasing your drawing speed and can no longer rely on your brain, but rather have to fully trust in your muscle memory and use of the ghosting technique.

• Back to texture - Yours are rather cartoony. They're certainly complex, and they demonstrate a certain degree of tenacity when it comes to producing repeating patterns, and this will be a very valuable asset to you. What you're lacking though is the all-too-important observational component. You look at your reference image, then you store what you see in your memory, and you go to work. Unfortunately, within moments of looking away from the reference image, your brain also goes to work simplifying what you saw and throwing out what it considers to be excess information, resulting in iconographic, oversimplified and, as I mentioned before, cartoony facsimiles of what you'd actually seen. This is why your grass looks like a bed of spikes, and why the gorilla hair looks like a bunch of lines. What you need to be doing - and this is something you'll get used to as you practice - is spending vastly more time actually studying and observing that reference image to identify not only the elements present, but how they are arranged, how they are grouped, the rhythm and flow they follow, and ultimately what little features tend to differentiate them. This is a lot to worry about, so for now focus on this one thing - get into the habit of not drawing for more than two seconds before looking back at your reference. Don't put down more than a line or two, because by that point you'll already have forgotten most of the important information.

• For your form intersections, one big point stands out to me - you're drawing a fair number of dramatically stretched forms, though the instructions direct you to avoid this. This tends to bring more perspective distortion/foreshortening into the mix, which further complicates an already difficult exercise. Try to keep your forms more equilateral, being of roughly equal size in all three dimensions. You did a better job here of drawing through the ellipses of your spheres, which definitely helped keep them even, but you don't seem to have done the same for the ends of your cylinders. Lastly, the pages themselves are quite small which in itself makes things more difficult for you, as it forces you to draw smaller and gives you far less room to think through these spatial problems. Drawing on a larger piece of paper will, almost surprisingly, give you greater freedom to use your brain as well as your shoulder.

• Your organic intersection has its strengths as well as its weaknesses. You've used line weight reasonably well to demonstrate clear overlaps, though your sloppy use of contour curves still makes the forms themselves feel a little awkwardly flat.

Keeping everything I've mentioned in mind, I want you to take another stab at this lesson, from start to finish. Take your time, pace yourself, and please get yourself a larger blank sketchbook at the very least. I usually prefer loose blank sheets of printer paper, but that's probably not particularly easy to take to and from work. A sketchbook should at least be manageable.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-24 04:32

1. The thing about contour lines is that they're as much a tool for convincing you of the fact that you're drawing three dimensional forms, as they are for the viewer. We're working towards fooling ourselves, towards buying into our own illusion, so in the situation where we aren't fully convinced of this, we can add a few more contour lines even if they don't match something present in your object. Just don't go overboard with these. Also don't scribble to fill in areas of black - if an area intended to be filled in has little white bits in it, they tend to stand out quite harshly, and become rather distracting. In regards to your transitions from black to white for areas like this, you should look into working on the 25 texture challenge as you continue to work through the other lessons. I believe I mentioned this in a previous critique.

2. The thing about proportion is that it's something everyone struggles with, and it takes time to develop. As you work through it, my recommendation is not to try, then scrap your attempt if it doesn't look right. Take ownership of those mistakes and see it through completely each time. The result will likely look worse, but I want you to get practice in regards to accepting a mistake and working forwards from that point. As always, our focus isn't on drawing pretty things, they're all just exercises in learning to think in three dimensions, and to manipulate these forms. Being forced to move forward from a point like that is actually an interesting exercise in itself, which pushes you to think more in terms of construction, as you can no longer just one-to-one copy your reference image. Not that you do, but it certainly helps push one to practice in that area.

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

2017-01-23 23:43

Overall you're doing quite well! You're demonstrating a strong sense of 3D space, and a good eye for detail and texture. I do have a few things I'd like to raise however that should help you push your work to the next level:

• A minor point about the hatching in your arrows. The hatching here is a tad sloppy - rather than having the lines themselves shrink as they get further out (to cause it to sort of fade out), you can have the lines stretch all the way across (which tends to look much cleaner) but decrease their density. It's this density that tends to make a hatching pattern look darker or lighter - the further apart they are, the lighter they'll appear.

• For your organic forms with contour ellipses and contour curves, you're doing pretty well but keep in mind that the line that passes through the middle of the form represents the minor axis of each ellipse. This means each ellipse should be cut into two equal, symmetrical halves by this line through their narrower dimension. In many cases you're doing fine, but there are many where the alignment is off. There are also cases where the line doesn't pass through the dead center of the form - this is perfectly fine, it just means that you have to try and visualize what the line would look like if it did go through the center, and align your ellipses accordingly. It takes a little extra mental gymnastics, but it's not always easy to get that line dead center.

• Nice work with your textures - you're balancing out the areas of detail-density with rest areas quite well. The only thing I want to point out is that your textures, though pleasantly complex, are a bit on the cartoony side. This means that you're probably not spending enough time observing your reference image, which causes you to draw more from memory. You want to avoid this - try not to draw for more than a second or two before going back to studying your reference.

• Your form intersections are pretty solid, but don't forget to draw through your ellipses. This will keep them even, which is important for the ends of cylinders, but even moreso for spheres. Also, I noticed that you have a tendency of exaggerating the change in degree between the ellipse on the closer end and the farther end of a cylinder. Similarly to how overly-dramatic-foreshortening implies a very large scale, this shift can also give the impression that the cylinder is very large, which then throws off the cohesiveness between all of the forms in the scene. Try and keep these changes more subtle. It should also help to read up on what the degree of an ellipse signifies about the circle in 3D space that it represents.

• Your organic intersections are coming along reasonably well, and you're capturing the general sense of a bunch of forms piled on top of one another, rather than simple shapes just stamped together on a flat piece of paper.

You have a lot of points here to keep in mind as you move forward, but you're generally doing 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 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-23 23:32

Your sense of construction is definitely improving, especially over the course of this set. Your use of texture, and the general balance of detail-dense vs rest areas is also improving considerably. It's clear that things went a little wrong with your ant (it ended up way too noisy and random), but then skipping forward to the wasp at the end, your use of texture is much more controlled, especially on its thorax, and you're making far better use of blank space to give the eye somewhere to relax. In this manner, you're building up focal areas and leading the eye around.

I'd say that there are still signs of randomness, and you'll want to get rid of that entirely, but things are getting much better. On the wasp, you've gone a bit crazy on the legs with this needless scribbling of lines. They don't contribute anything, but they do produce a lot of visual noise which distracts the viewer and detracts from your intended focal points.

In general, you pretty much never want to rely on any sort of randomness or scribbling when it comes to texture. Every texture has some manner of rhythm, so even if you're looking at fur, it's going to flow in some way, so you need to take the time to pick and choose your lines, attempting to capture more the flow than the innumerable strands of hair. In the next lesson, we cover how to approach fur a little more.

Back to construction, there is one thing I noticed that I feel it is important to point out. From the looks of it, you tend to start out by very loosely roughing out your three initial masses, but then you immediately ignore them. I do understand why - being loose initially helps to situate things, and lets you figure out your proportion a little more easily before really committing. This makes sense, and I won't tell you to stop doing it altogether.

What I do want to say however is that it's important to start picturing the things you lay down as being solid 3D forms, rather than semi-abstract marks on the page. For example, if you draw a circle, think of that circle as an actual, tangible sphere. Since it is a solid sphere, you cannot simply ignore it - you need to deal with it in some manner, when working it into your construction. If you want to cut a piece away, you need to consider your cut as being yet another solid form that you're subtracting from it, rather than simply saying "well i'm drawing a line here and ignoring what that circle initially was". By having this sort of structured, tangible approach to carving your constructions, you're going to find that you'll push the solidity of the overall drawing much farther. It does however rob you of certain degrees of freedom (you now need to deal with the problems that emerge).

Anyway, overall you're doing quite well, and are already showing major improvements over the first set of plant drawings you submitted for lesson 3. Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-23 23:21

Oh wow, it sure has been a while! I definitely appreciate that you've continued to support drawabox through patreon over all this time.

So the first thing I want to point out is that you're demonstrating some very strong observational skills here. Your details and textures are generally quite well done, and in general your drawings are looking quite good. That said, I think it's rather clear that you're applying the constructional side of things a little more loosely than the lesson demands. This isn't particularly abnormal - I see it quite a bit from students who have plenty of previous experience. I could easily let you skip on forwards from here since you know how to draw animals, but you've come to me to learn how to construct them, so we'll take some time to focus on that.

So what I'm seeing is that you lay in your initial head/ribcage/pelvis sections of the body fairly well, but instead of focusing on establishing those masses as solid three dimensional forms, you jump ahead too early and start putting in more complex details with no underlying structure to support it all. You make up for this with your strong observational skills, but ultimately this doesn't teach you a lot about how these animals would look if, say, the viewing angle was changed slightly, or if the pose of the animal were adjusted.

The first step is to focus on 2D vs 3D, in terms of those initial lay-ins. You drew many of your initial forms more as 2D shapes. The two geese at the bottom of this page are an exception - you can see that the torsos are more reinforced and read distinctly as three dimensional forms. This is a good start. The one in the bottom right corner definitely has its issues though - the head is more guesswork than construction, and we have no real sense of how the legs connect with the torso.

Defining connections between forms in a more explicit manner is a great way to better grasp how all of the basic forms fit together. Granted, doing so means drawing more lines that don't contribute to the final pretty drawing, but always remind yourself that we are not pursuing pretty drawings as an end result. These are all exercises, and their purpose is to train you to think about these things as objects that exist in 3D space. Drawing in the manner in which the various basic forms intersect with one another will help you begin to shift your thinking in that direction.

On the lesson page, you'll see an additional section labelled "Other Demos", under which you'll find a bunch of more informal demonstrations. Make sure you go through them, like the oryx demo. This one in particular shows how I gradually build up the construction, only adding forms when what's already in the drawing is able to support it, and avoiding adding information that has nothing to hold it up.

I'd like you to do three more pages of animal drawings, with a bit of a twist - I don't want to see any detail or texture. That's your biggest strength, and I think you rely on it a bit much to cover up the lack of construction. By removing that, I believe you'll be forced to contend with the areas where you are weakest.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-23 03:25

Pretty well done! Your sense of construction is definitely coming along great, and you're doing a good job of conveying the solidity of your forms. I especially enjoyed the line weights on these, and these constructions as well.

I have two recommendations for you:

• Draw through your ellipses! I'm noticing that a lot of your ellipses, like here are uneven, and this is because you've completely stopped drawing through them, and are instead trying to nail them with a slower, more deliberate stroke. This lack of confidence in your execution is what results in a less even shape.

• Try not to let any flower pots stop arbitrarily - like when your drawing stops before the bottom of the flower pot, don't let it end in two parallel lines. Cap it off with another ellipse so as to maintain the illusion of 3D form. Otherwise it'll give way to flattening out considerably.

You're definitely ready to move onto the next lesson, so feel free to do so whenever you like.

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

2017-01-23 03:21

Looking pretty good! I do have just a couple things to point out, but overall you're demonstrating really solid line quality, and confident ellipses. Your rotated boxes also show a well developing grasp of 3D space.

One thing that jumped out at me a little was that in your funnels, you don't seem to be trying to align the ellipses to the central minor axis line. If you remember from the lesson on ellipses, the minor axis cuts an ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves through its narrower dimension. This comes in very handy later on when dealing with cylindrical objects, so it's important to set your mind to aligning them correctly in this exercise.

Moving onto the rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This helps to identify areas where your estimation of perspective tends to be a little off.

As I mentioned before, your rough perspective boxes are pretty impressive. There are some issues, but this exercise is really meant to be a first exposure to the challenges of rotating box forms in 3D space, and you are by no means intended to nail it.

One recommendation I have here is to keep the gaps between your boxes small and uniform. As you can see demonstrated in this image, you can use neighbouring lines as hints.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge to get some more work in developing that sense of 3D space. Be sure to read through the notes on that page and watch the videos - the tip about drawing through your forms will be particularly helpful in terms of your grasp of how each box sits in space.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-23 03:16

I think you've improved considerably - both in terms of loosening up and improving your use of the constructional method, but also in terms of the plants you selected. Overall, your linework is looking much more confident, and everything feels considerably more organic, solid and tangible.

In regards to the flower pots, it may be worthwhile to take a look at the material on the 250 cylinder challenge. One thing I noticed that you're missing is the minor axis, which helps us to align the ellipses that make up the cylinders. The pots in page 1 and 3 were decent, but it looks like the second page could have used a bit more alignment.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

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

2017-01-23 03:13

Really nice work! Overall, your line quality is very smooth and confident, your ellipses are evenly shaped and your boxes demonstrate a solid grasp of 3D space. It looks to me like you've got previous experience - in which case, good on you for deciding to go back to the basics. Paying more attention to the fundamentals is always a worthwhile endeavour.

For now, I've got only one little tip to offer. For the rough perspective boxes exercise, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to double check for any areas where your estimations of perspective stray. This is perfectly normal, and reflecting upon your work in this manner will help you maintain an awareness of where those weaknesses tend to lie.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, but before you do, give the material on the 250 box challenge a once over. No need to do the challenge itself, but some of the tips there (such as the drawing through your forms one) can be quite helpful in terms of continuing to develop one's grasp of 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-23 03:08

Looking really sharp! To be honest, I think your ellipses are absolutely moving in the right direction - as well they should, you've clearly put a lot of time and effort into them... and so many pages. There are minor discrepancies here and there, but I don't want you to obsess over them - these will go over with time and practice, but if you continue grinding so fervently on them, you'll go mad.

Just remember to continually draw with a confident motion, and don't let any doubts or second-guessing cause you to hesitate. This is where the irregularities in the shape come from. That said, where you are right now as far as ellipses go is where you should expect to be. Perfection is something that comes slowly, over months and years. It's easy to get caught up in that, since the first leg of the journey always shows considerable improvement over a short period of time. Don't let it distract you.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 3.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-22 02:28

You're on the right track, over all. That stiffness will improve, so long as you're always reminding yourself to draw big, draw from the shoulder, and apply the ghosting method, executing each mark with a confident stroke.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals (new 50min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-22 01:27

While I agree with you that the results are so-so, I think I see a lot of signs that you're really grasping the concepts of the lessons (as far as construction goes), and the rest is really a matter of training your observational skills.

I see a lot of solid combinations of forms, and I'm quite pleased with your propensity towards piling on more organic forms to flesh out the bulky muscles of your subjects. On the flipside, you do have a tendency to get quite cartoony - this often happens when we get too caught up in our drawing, and stop looking at our reference as much as we really should. Always remember - you should be looking and studying way more than you're drawing. Only draw for a second or two before forcing yourself to look back at your reference. Don't work from your memory, as this is where the cartooniness emerges.

You have a particular tendency to oversimplify when dealing with heads, though you do show some improvement on this front throughout the lesson.

Another thing I'm noticing is that your linework is a little on the stiff side, so you'll want to loosen up a little and perhaps draw somewhat larger. It's difficult to gauge what size these drawings are at, but I generally find that when you draw larger, things tend to feel a little more organic and less cramped.

Anyway- I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, because you have definitely grasped what I'm trying to teach here. You have a lot of room for growth, of course, so you'll want to keep practicing, especially when it comes to the observational side of things. Keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-22 01:20

Your constructions are looking pretty good! The angles of the lines, and the size relationships between the different planes are looking fairly consistent. I can see a few areas you can continue to work on however:

• Make sure you keep pushing yourself to apply the ghosting method to keep your lines as straight as possible - I definitely seem some lines that waver a little where you likely got maybe a little bit too eager to finish up. Applying the ghosting method can be very time consuming and taxing, but the habits it builds up are extremely valuable in the long run.

• Also, I noticed that you were being a little more timid with the lines on the opposite side of the form - likely because in the back of your mind, you wanted to hide them so that you could read the form more easily (it's pretty easy to get the sides facing the viewer and the sides facing away confused). Make sure all of your marks are drawn confidently - you can come back afterwards and fill in one of the front-faces with tight hatching lines to show the viewer which side is facing them, if you're concerned about that.

• I definitely noticed what you mentioned about your line weight - it looks like you were chicken scratching those a little, which is definitely something you should avoid. Always remember that these are just exercises, so while attempting to draw the whole line with a single continuous stroke can be more difficult and can result in mistakes, this is your main opportunity to get used to them. Just think of it in the same way you treated the super imposed lines exercise from lesson 1.

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

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

2017-01-20 21:11

As most rules, it's true that they don't always apply 100% - but as far as I've espoused this one, it's worked well enough for students and has guided them in the right direction, and by talking about the exception cases it tends to get very confusing. There was a time when I tried to explain all of this, but it ended up being a mistake to do so.

For now, just try to keep it in mind as a general rule of thumb and build your boxes around it. Don't worry too much about how the planes at the side (relative to one's point of view) tend to blend that rule, because you're generally going to be constructing those based on the planes that do follow that rule.

As for your rotated boxes, just include them with your submission for the 250 box challenge.