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

2017-01-20 21:05

Definitely a big improvement on both box exercises. Your funnels are also getting visibly better, but you still need to continue to work on getting them to fit snugly within whatever criteria you set out for it (in this case, between both sides of the funnel). This becomes an important part of lesson 2's organic form exercises.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Before moving onto lesson 2, I want you to redo the 250 box challenge. Don't forget to mind what I mentioned at the end of my last critique:

Be sure to read through all of the notes on the page and watch both videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is very important, as I mentioned in my critique of your previous attempt, as it helps you to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every mark as well.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles (new 40min intro video, 3 new demos)"

2017-01-20 21:01

You're definitely moving in the right direction with these. There's a lot of good going on, though I do have a couple recommendations I'll get into in a bit.

Firstly, I think that when you're focusing more on blocking out larger forms (without getting into a lot of the little bits), you're demonstrating some really good grasp of form and construction. The steam roller, the cab-over truck, the pontoon boat, etc. all show solid box forms, and I really like the way you approach dealing with their rounded corners. That is, leaving them aside until the very end. As such, they end up feeling very solid.

You're also quite diligent with your measuring, your mirroring, and your subdivisions. Though you certainly did struggle before asking me those questions you'd had, it seems that you're starting to grasp the use of these different techniques more firmly.

As I mentioned, there are a few ways you can modify your approach that will likely help improve your work on some fronts:

• A simple one - try to keep your foreshortening shallower. There were a few that stood out as being particularly extreme, like the steam roller. On the other hand, the pontoon boat was better. overly dramatic perspective distortion can be very difficult to work with, and it also throws off the sense of scale, as it tends to be reserved for things the size of buildings, rather than vehicles.

• You've got some very thick, heavy pens being used, or at least, you're laying the weight on quite thickly, and this should be avoided. Thick lines in general tend to make things look too graphic and flat, and when you have those thick lines existing on the inside of an object (like how you've handled some of your wheels later in the homework set), it starts to break up the cohesion of the forms. Even when trying to separate some lines from the heavy mess of construction, you need only be quite subtle with it for them to read.

• When doing your proportion studies, focus on both side and front/back views, and apply the measurement techniques described in this video when drawing in three dimensions. Your vehicles have a tendency of being quite stretched along the front (this is a common issue, it happens to me too when I get too lax in regards to studying the proportions in both dimensions). Though you did do proportion studies for the front in that last car, and in the bike/two-wheeled-car-thing, I don't see any sign of you actually carrying your unit measurement over into that dimension as it is described in the video. The main sign is that you have an ellipse to establish your unit plane along the side of the construction, but you don't have one to establish it in the front.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, just be sure to continue to practice this material and keep what I've mentioned above in mind. Congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching curriculum!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-19 22:01

Yup, you're free to do so.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-19 21:52

To start with, congratulations on completing the challenge. It's a lot of boxes, so be proud that you toughed all the way through.

I do agree however that a lot of your linework here is quite sloppy. You mention ghosting, drawing smoothly, etc. but I see a lot of stiffness and wobbling in your lines. You may be applying the ghosting method, but when you execute the mark, you need to do so with confidence, relying fully on the muscle memory developed by ghosting rather than letting your brain lead your hand. If you do this correctly, there are two possible outcomes:

• Either your line will be smooth and accurate, or

• Your line will be smooth and inaccurate

If you draw a confident mark, with enough speed to avoid your brain's desire to micromanage everything, the mark will be smooth. It is your wish to control that accuracy that throws you off - you seize up in your desire to hit the nail on the head.

Ultimately once you've reached the point where you're actually making the mark, there is nothing more that can be done about fixing your accuracy. You've either built up that muscle memory, or you haven't. Accept that. If you make a mistake, there's nothing wrong with that. There are many boxes yet to go.

Another thing I noticed is that you seem to be in the bad habit of correcting your mistakes as soon as you make them. If you make a mistake, leave it alone. In this challenge, I encourage you to come back afterwards with a differently coloured pen and mark in your corrections then, drawing the correct lines and reassessing the construction of your forms. By doing this separately, you gain the benefit of reflecting upon your mistakes without falling into the habit of reflexively fixing things immediately afterwards, which results in really messy linework.

For your line weight, return to the super imposed lines exercise. Just like everything else, you want to draw those lines confidently, and you will make mistakes. You will also get better, so just remember that the beauty of each individual box does not matter. They're all just exercises focused on making you improve overall.

Anyway, as I said - congratulations on completing the challenge. Hopefully the points above will help you as you continue to move forwards.

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

2017-01-19 21:43

So yes, stiffness is still there (like pointy ended ellipses and so on) but I think it may be improving. You do continuously need to push yourself to draw with more confidence though, like you're purposely overshooting your goal and then reeling yourself back, rather than gradually building up to that goal and hitting it right on. Think of it like you're firing a catapult - wind it all the way back and let her fly, then work on improving your accuracy.

In terms of your linework, there's another thing I'm noticing - it's very uniform. Basically, if you draw a stroke, it tends to be the same weight all the way through. When drawing lines myself, I tend to start and end my lines with a bit of tapering - I don't press down, then draw - I press down as I start to draw so that there's just a touch of more dynamism to it all. This could very well be another effect of your general stiffness, but it is something else to be aware of.

In general, I think your best bet right now when tackling organic forms is to draw really simple ones - basic sausage forms with no branching whatsoever. This will help you focus on conveying the flow of that initial sausage shape (before your contour lines), and then giving it a greater sense of dimension and volume by adding those contour curves.

As far as the curves wrapping around, they're okay (again aside from the stiffness). You're overshooting slightly along the sides, which is helping you get them to convey the rounded form.

Now your dissections suggest a more concrete issue that you need to work on - your observational skills need a lot of work. Or rather, your observational habits do. As it stands, the work that I'm seeing on your textures suggests that you spend a lot of time drawing, and comparatively little time actually looking at your image. You work very heavily from memory, which means you're relying on your brain's ability to store all of the minutia of what you've seen. Our brains don't do this - they very quickly throw out anything and everything that does not pertain to the very essence of the thing, resulting in our memories containing little more than highly cartoony iconography.

Instead, force yourself to draw for no more than a second or two before looking back at your reference. Consider the shapes you're seeing, the behaviour of the lines, the way things are grouped and arranged. Are there bumps? Okay, are those bumps clustered into groups or are they covering the surface uniformly? Ask yourself questions as you go along, and then only draw for a moment before looking again to double check your findings.

The ice cream's an interesting choice of texture. It does pose some challenges in how its value range is quite limited - at its darkest points, it's still quite bright, though our pens allow us only white and black. But setting that aside, each fissure in the ice cream's surface has a very specific and unique shape. You don't need to capture each one exactly, but you cannot simply say "okay I understand that this thing has fissures, so I'm going to draw a bunch of fissures." Instead you need to take the time to study them, identify how they're similar to one another and how they differ, how some are much larger gashes and others are smaller cracks - and how they have a tendency to open and close while remaining more or less part of the same flowing rhythm of a single fissure.

Your form intersections have a lot of longer, stretched forms (mostly tubes), which I warn against in the lesson. I mention that you should stick to more equilateral forms that are roughly equal in all three dimensions. This diminishes the effects of perspective distortion, which tends to make the exercise easier. Furthermore, draw your forms to be larger so you can give yourself more space to think through those spatial problems. Notice how in my example the forms are all quite large, and there isn't a whole lot of negative space between them.

For your organic intersections, while the forms themselves feel kind of cramped and clumsy and even somewhat deflated, and your contour curves aren't always wrapping around well, I am getting a strong sense that these are still three dimensional forms that are interacting with one another. They're sagging against each other, and creating a sort of pile rather than interpenetrating. This is a good sign - there's room to grow, but you're moving in the right direction.

Overall, there's improvement, but you really need to push yourself harder to draw with more confidence and stop worrying so much about the accuracy of your lines to the point of stiffening up. That is your biggest source of trouble, and it is more than anything a mental block that you can get past.

Try taking a blank piece of paper and just draw lines, draw ellipses, with no right or wrong to hit or miss. Just draw with confidence, forget about accuracy, and loosen yourself up.

After you've done some of that, I'd like to see four pages of dissections. Draw big, draw from your shoulder and focus on looking and observing rather than drawing. Think of it like a significant other's telling you about their day - you need to listen a lot more than you speak.

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

2017-01-19 20:58

A little bit.

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

2017-01-19 20:57

Pretty well done. Your lines and ellipses are generally looking pretty good - I do want to recommend though that you continue to push yourself to execute your lines (be they straight, curved or ellipses) with a bit more of a confident pace, after applying the ghosting method. You're doing a pretty good job of it already, but I'm catching just a touch of hesitation, that leads to your brain course-correcting ever so slightly as you go, which in turn manifests as stiffness to the lines or wobbling. It's very subtle, but I can see that there's still a little bit of room for you to push yourself further as far as confidence goes.

Often times when trying to learn a skill, we think in terms of being somewhat timid and strategic - crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run, move step by step towards a visible goal. Think of it instead as though you're trying to hit a target with a catapult, and start out by overshooting your target, rather than trying to fall short. Be perhaps overly confident, then rein yourself back. Ultimately it's easier to practice away inaccuracy than it is to practice away stiffness and a wobbly line.

Of course, all of these things I'm talking about with rather large metaphors are exaggerations. As I mentioned, it's subtle and almost unnoticeable in your case, so keep the need to be confident in the back of your head, and hopefully it should be enough to gently coax you in that direction - rather than any conscious attempt to change how you're doing things.

Moving ahead to your boxes, be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

For the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes, both of these exercises were included largely to let you get a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, with no real expectation of having you nail either of them. As far as this goes, you're doing just fine. Your rotated boxes are actually pretty well done all things considered, though towards your lower right quadrant the gaps between your boxes tend to expand. It helps a lot to keep them close together as you did for the rest of the boxes, as it allows you to use neighbouring lines as hints.

For your organic perspective boxes, you're also doing okay, but there's definitely some room for improvement. And we'll get to that.

I'll be marking your 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 "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-19 19:57

Looking good! Your constructions are solid and confident, and your corrections seem to be well thought out. I don't have much to offer in terms of critique - you're heading right on the right track, so keep it up. Congratulations on completing the challenge.

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

2017-01-19 19:55

Very nice work! Your lines are generally very smooth, well planned and well executed. You've got a lot of confidence to your strokes, and it comes through quite strongly in your work. Just a couple things I wanted to mention:

• For your super imposed lines, you tend to have wobblier lines that start together, separate, then end together. What you should be aiming for are lines that start together, and gradually separate towards the end - what this means is that you're not course-correcting as you go, so that the deviation in your trajectory compounds through the length of the line. It leaves your lines less accurate, but it achieves greater smoothness and consistency. Practice will decrease the separation, but you should be able to maintain that smoothness throughout. Luckily I didn't see any other significant signs of wobbling/course-correction elsewhere, so I'm thinking this was more of a problem brought on by the specific parameters of the exercise.

• Be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here

• Your rotated boxes are looking very nice.

• Your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be, though they could definitely use some more work. This exercise is more of a first introduction to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This will take time to develop, and we will explore that further in a bit.

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, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how those boxes sit in 3D space.

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

2017-01-18 22:33

Pretty nice work! Your lines are looking excellent - very smooth and well executed. Your ellipses - at least up until the end of the table of ellipses exercise - miss the mark somewhat, largely because you're not drawing through those ellipses much, and the result is quite stiff. Things improve as you get into your funnels, but keep the following in mind:

• Apply the ghosting method to your ellipses - this means putting all of your time into the preparation phase, then executing with a confident pace, enough so that you keep your brain from course-correcting as you go.

• By drawing through your ellipse once more before lifting your pen, you can help sure-up some of the inaccuracy that comes from drawing confidently. Over time you'll get used to balancing your pace out and developing your muscle memory so this becomes less necessary, but I want you to draw through each and every ellipse you draw while doing my lessons.

Your boxes are generally well done - I'm glad to see that you're applying the double-checking approach to your rough perspective boxes, and your rotated boxes are very well executed. It's clear to me that you've read through those instructions quite thoroughly.

Your organic perspective boxes do need some work, but this is entirely expected. This exercise, along with the rotated boxes exercise, were included largely to expose students to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, with no expectation of perfect results (or anything near it). By being exposed to this challenge now, when we go over the instructions on how to deal with these challenges, you'll better grasp them due to your previous encounter.

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.

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

2017-01-18 22:27

Overall your construction is looking pretty good. There's a few places where it's a bit weaker, such as the bottle tree (where you seem to be way too focused on creating a clean drawing, which is far from the purpose of this exercise), but generally you're doing well. The biggest piece of advice I have to offer here is that I am seeing places where you're drawing your lay-ins, purposely trying to keep them faint and hidden. Don't do this. Don't separate your drawing into under-drawing and clean-up phases. Draw every mark confidently, and do not distract yourself with the need to hide things. Ultimately we aren't here to draw pretty drawings - these are all exercises in thinking and constructing in 3D space.

As far as confidence goes, your house plant was definitely better - you're not going way out of your way to hide any line work, you're using line weight and black areas to create a sort of hierarchy of information and organize things afterwards, rather than worrying about what should and shouldn't be visible while drawing those initial lines. Your leafs also flow nicely through space, as you're following the method in the leaf exercise more closely than elsewhere.

When it comes to texture, your corpse flower is definitely quite messy - you've got LOADS of contrast from all of the alternating areas of white and black, so it becomes very noisy and distracting. To diminish this, merging things into areas of black tends to help - and similarly, on the area where things get brighter, letting your whites merge together helps in the same way. Just because you see a line that runs down the full length of a petal does not mean that you need to draw it as such - that line can get 'lost' halfway through, and then 'found' again later on. The texture challenge has some material that might help.

Overall you're doing okay, so keep it up - just make sure that you always remind yourself of the purpose of these drawings. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next one. Oh, one last thing I wanted to mention was that I noticed that this is your fourth submission in half a month. You should probably slow that submission rate - at this rate, we're looking at 6-8 critiques in a month, which when held up against your monthly pledge is, to put it lightly, a little much. For now I leave it to the students to self-regulate, pledging what they feel is fair for however much they use the service. I don't really want to be putting hard limits on how many submissions a student can make based on tiered pledges.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-18 21:25

Definitely looks like your confidence is improving! You're also quite diligent with your corrections, which is good to see. I do want to point out that when you use hatching lines, you're still being sloppy, which is something I pointed out in my critique of your lesson 1 homework. Remember to make sure each line stretches across the plane from edge to edge, nothing floating arbitrarily in the middle.

Anyway, congratulations on completing the challenge.

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

2017-01-18 21:09

Really nice work. You're demonstrating a strong grasp of space and how surfaces turn/twist/warp within it. You're able to convey the roundedness of your organic forms with your contour lines, your form intersections feel consistent and solid, and your organic intersections show an understanding of how the different forms sag against one another, and how they react to whether or not their weight is supported.

Your textures are also really well done - the detail and amount of visual information is well balanced and you've done well to leave certain areas blank. The only recommendation I have there is not to rely quite so much on hatching/crosshatching, and to embrace solid black areas more, as you have done in your cucumber. Additionally, graffiti really isn't a texture - think of it in terms of texture being the actual small forms that exist on a surface, and colour/pattern being something that merely runs directly on the surface. Since we're drawing in black and white and are not really concerned with form shading (only shadow as far as it allows us to convey texture), pattern/colour becomes rather irrelevant.

Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

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

2017-01-17 21:25

Definitely a really good start! And I can see a clear improvement between your practices and your main homework. I do have a few recommendations to make though:

• I noticed in your super imposed lines that you've got a lot of fraying/separation on the far side of your lines (which is totally 100% normal), and a liiiiittle bit on the starting end. This last bit is a sign that you should take a little more time to line your pen up with the starting point before starting to draw, as described here.

• Your ghosted lines aren't great, but when you apply that same method to your planes, I think you really start nailing it - those lines are looking solid and straight.

• When you started out on your ellipses, they were a little on the stiff side, but I can see your confidence and the general smoothness on that front improve a fair bit. Keep that up - your ellipses in planes are pretty smooth, though things get a little stiff again in your funnels.

• I think you get a little too relaxed in terms of applying the ghosting method to your rough perspecitve boxes - they tend to arc a little too much, and based on your work on your planes exercise, you're capable of much better. Just take the time to focus on ghosting through each one.

• Also for the rough perspective boxes exercise, when you finish it, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is a little off.

• Your rotated boxes are coming along well. Your organic perspective boxes do definitely still need some work though, but that's expected. Both of these exercises were included largely to get you acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, rather than expecting you to nail them right away. We'll do more work on this front in a bit.

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 the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. That in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Also be sure to apply the ghosting method on each and every line.

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

2017-01-17 20:54

I definitely see a lot of improvement here. I especially like the whip scorpion on the first page. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-01-17 20:51

Overall your use of construction is coming along well, though your drawings feel a bit small. I can't be sure because they're cropped rather tightly, but when comparing the drawings to the thickness of your lines, it does feel like they're on the small side. This tends to cause our linework to stiffen up, which is definitely something I see to varying degrees in your work - though primarily in those leaves. On that front, you'll definitely want to loosen up - try doing more of the leaves exercises, as well as the arrows from lesson 2. Think about how those leaves flow from a point father from you, to a point closer to you, or vice versa, and try to fill up all the space on the page.

I do like your use of cylinders - you're clearly paying attention to the thickness of the flower pots and other such geometric forms, and are applying the minor axis properly. Your cactuses are also looking pretty nice.

Overall, it's just a matter of loosening up your linework, drawing more from your shoulder, and letting yourself draw larger so as to give yourself more space to think. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the next one. You'll find the next lesson will give you ample opportunity to work through these issues.

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

2017-01-17 15:07

I'm glad the lessons have helped! And I'm a bit disappointed that a program geared towards production design doesn't teach more constructive drawing.

Uncomfortable in the post "Here's some exemplary work that I've seen over the past four months"

2017-01-17 15:07

For the rotated boxes exercise and the organic perspective boxes, it's not really expected that you'd do it perfectly the first time around. All you need to do is make sure you read and follow the instructions closely. Keep in mind that I haven't yet actually instructed you on how to deal with the particular challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space - these two exercises are included here early so that you can acquaint yourself with those challenges before having them explained, so the explanations are received with a little bit of context.

Just give your best effort for those two, then move onto the 250 box challenge where you'll find more resources on that particular topic. The tip there about drawing through your forms is especially important, as it helps one to better grasp how a box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-01-16 22:26

Excellent work. I honestly love seeing work laid out and structured like this - it goes hand in hand with the mindset I want to promote in my students. It also makes my critiques relatively painless to write!

So you're generally doing great. Your lines are straight, your ellipses are fairly confident and smooth, your boxes are well constructed, you've even done a great job at the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes - both of which were included in the lesson more to give students the chance to tangle with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, rather than to actually produce correct work. The usual plan is to send those students over to the 250 box challenge to get more practice on this, and while I thoroughly encourage you to read through the notes (if you haven't already, though I suspect you may have), I don't think it's necessary for you to go through the actual work there.

So overall, you're doing great. Keep it up, and consider this lesson thoroughly complete. Of course, I'm sure you'll continue doing these exercises as warmups (the usual recommendation is for students to pick two or three exercises from lesson 1, and eventually 2 once that's completed, to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each sitting so that they stay sharp on those basic technical skills).

As for your question, it's not one I've given a whole lot of thought to, but I do have two recommendations, and you can figure out which works best for you. Firstly, I'm thinking focusing on the center of the ellipse may help, as it is the point you're building it around. Secondly, and perhaps more likely to be useful, focus on one of the points that you want your ellipse to touch. So for example, in the funnels exercise, you've got two points of contact, one on each side of the funnel. Focus largely on one of them while ghosting, to ensure that you hit it. Ultimately when actually executing the mark, you probably don't want to focus too hard on any such thing so as to avoid having your brain course-correct, but it is probably a useful thing to do when ghosting through the motion and building up that muscle memory.

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

2017-01-16 22:14

Your lines are looking quite solid. They're smooth and straight and generally well executed. Your ellipses are alright, but I'm catching a little bit of stiffness on the initial ones, which becomes much more significant as you start tackling the ellipses in planes (granted this is totally normal, people tend to get overwhelmed with the prospect of fitting ellipses inside of those awkwardly shaped planes). The thing to keep in mind is that you need to get used to drawing those ellipses with a confident pace, enough so that your arm muscles are driving the motion, not your brain. We tend to start out by wanting everything to be exact and precise, so we rely on our brains to course-correct when we fall out of alignment. This causes stiffness and wobbling. Always remind yourself - draw confidently, trust in your muscle memory. If you happen to be off the mark, that's not the end of the world. Ultimately it's easier to practice away inaccuracy than it is to practice away an unconfident line.

As I said before though, the stiffness in most of your ellipses is slight - so just keep this in the back of your mind as you approach your ellipses, rather than trying to make any massive changes.

Moving onto your boxes, again, generally good work. I do want to point out though the importance of following my instructions to the letter - meaning, if I say you should use a ruler for the entirety of an exercise, do so. I get that you may feel it to be an opportunity to further practice your ghosted lines, but there is always method to my madness. Or at least, there usually is. So stick to things the way they're written and don't stray or interpret.

Your rough perspective boxes are looking pretty good. Just be sure to go ver your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

For your rotated boxes, you've missed a major element of the instructions. This exercise is all about grasping how a box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as the box is rotated. By neglecting to draw each box in its entirety, you miss out on this overall grasp of how the box occupies space, and end up loosing a lot of the value in the exercise. Don't concern yourself with drawing a pretty image - remember that these are all exercises with a purpose to them, they're meant to train something. As such, draw each box completely, including the hidden lines on the opposite side of the form, as shown here.

You'll also want to check the behaviour of your boxes' vanishing points - if you were to extend them back to the axes, you'll find that the vanishing points in your drawing slide in the direction of the box (meaning as the box rotates towards the left, the vanishing points slide towards the left as well). If you look at this animated diagram, you'll find that the expected behaviour is the opposite - the vanishing points should slide in the opposite direction. You can find a more in-depth explanation of this here.

For the organic perspective boxes, there's definitely room to grow, but the point for this exercise (and the rotated boxes one) is to expose you to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. The target here isn't so much to produce perfect work, and I have no expectation of that. Instead now that you've encountered this challenge, you'll better grasp the instructions on how to deal with it when that comes in a bit.

Before we get to that though, I'd like you to do one more page of rotated boxes. Give the instructions another read through before attempting it. There's a lot of information there and it can be quite dense, so it's normal to not quite absorb all of it in just one pass.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-16 21:58

Personally, I think you're doing great here. Your constructions are looking quite solid, and your line weights really do a lot to bump up the dynamism of each drawing. Through the set, your boxes start to feel considerably more tangible and weighty. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete!

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

2017-01-16 21:57

Very nice work! Your lines are generally quite fluid, smooth and confident, which helps to keep your straight lines straight and your ellipses even. Definitely keep that up. Your boxes are also fairly well constructed, you even did a solid job with your rotated boxes (which was intended to be perhaps a little beyond most peoples' abilities at this point).

Your organic perspective boxes are also fairly well done, though I think we could help bump that up a notch. I'll be marking 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. It's this that will both highlight mistakes that go beyond things looking correct at a glance, and will also help you develop a sense for how those boxes sit in 3D space.

In general you're doing very well, so keep up the great work.

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

2017-01-16 21:53

Depends on which art school. They were taught at the one I attended, but they're not taught at most. Mine was more oriented towards concept artists and various kinds of commercial art, while standard fine art schools will not teach in this fashion. I wrote these lessons as a bit of a rebellion against the standard 'fine art' approach to art education, which I have found to be somewhat lacking in structure and effectiveness.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-16 21:49

Looking pretty good! Your line quality is coming along well, and your ellipses are certainly moving in the right direction. I am still noticing some stiffness on those ellipses though, so definitely keep pushing yourself to draw from your shoulder, and draw with a confident pace after ghosting through the drawing motion. The evenness and smoothness of the shape is always of a higher priority than the accuracy, so keep that in mind.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that you do have a bit of a tendency to really exaggerate the difference between the degrees of the two ellipses. Remember what the degree itself represents (I mention it in these notes and in this video). Basically if the degree shift is really dramatic, it's going to imply very large scale (a lot like dramatic perspective distortion on a box implying large scale). So try to keep those shifts more subtle in the future.

Anyway, keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete!

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

2017-01-15 17:25

Definitely a decent first attempt. There are a few things that I'd like to point out though:

• Your super imposed lines are looking pretty good, though try and take an extra moment before starting to line your pen up right at the correct starting point. It's completely normal to see fraying/separation of the lines towards the other side, but seeing even a little bit of it on the beginning side implies that you're rushing a little too much.

• Your ghosted lines are coming along well. There's plenty of room to grow, but you're going in the right direction. Make sure you draw from your shoulder and that you spend plenty of time preparing/ghosting before each mark you put down, and you should see considerable improvement on this front.

• You definitely get a little sloppier with your planes - your lines tend to wobble more, you're drawing with less confidence, and there's more wavering here for shorter lines than there were for your much longer ones in the previous exercise. This tells me that you're probably applying the ghosting method less stringently. Keep in mind that the ghosting method should be applied fully for every single mark you put down (be it straight, curved or elliptical), and while it may take considerably more time, it will result in significant improvements to the quality of your work. Over time it'll become second nature, and you'll gain speed, but right now you need to be taking all the time you need.

• Your ellipses aren't bad. There's a little bit of stiffness and unevenness in some of them (probably coming from not drawing from the shoulder) but for the most part these are coming along well. What you always want to keep an eye on is keeping your elliptical shape even and symmetrical, and the best way to do this is to trust in your arm muscles, and draw from muscle memory. Of course, as always, it's important to ghost before hand as well.

• Your ellipses in planes do get more stiff, but this is actually something I see a lot. People tend to get a little overwhelmed by the challenge of fitting their ellipse in an awkwardly shaped plane, so they tend to stiffen up. Just remember that accuracy is important, but it's a secondary priority. Evenness of your shape is your first priority.

• Through a lot of the boxes exercises, I think you've started to draw a lot more, and perhaps read a lot less (of my instructions). From the looks of it, you're interpreting things too much, and end up straying from how the exercises are meant to be performed. For example, the plotted perspective boxes exercise, there are step-by-step instructions of how to approach it, but somehow you ended up drawing three vanishing points when the exercise only calls for two. Because of this mistake, the results end up being very inconsistent and don't make a whole lot of sense.

• Similarly for your rough perspective boxes exercise, you're putting down one vanishing point but many of your boxes seem to be implying another vanishing point elsewhere. This often comes from an issue I like to call "guessing instead of thinking/knowing". Each line in a given perspective system (1 point, 2 point or 3 point) has a very specific behaviour that will tell you how to draw it. I explain these here, definitely give them a read.

• Additionally, it helps considerably once you're done the rough perspective boxes exercise to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

• Now the next two exercises (rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes) are extremely challenging, and were included here largely to let you get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. There's no expectation of you nailing these two, but rather I've assigned them so when I do actually go into more detail on how to deal with this challenge, you'll be able to relate it back to what you dealt with here. Basically it gives the instruction greater context, making it easier to understand at that time.

• That said, especially for the rotated boxes exercise which has a step-by-step breakdown of how to approach it, what I want to see is a clear attempt at following those instructions. Again, you've kind of gone and done your own thing here based on the final result shown in the lesson. There are some things you're doing well (like keeping boxes tightly together so you can use neighbouring lines as hints), but the biggest problem is that you're not drawing through your boxes at all. This exercise is all about figuring out how a box sits in 3D space, then trying to figure out how that changes as it is rotated. By only drawing the lines that would technically be visible, you don't get a sense at all of how each box occupies space, and therefore you don't have enough information to work with to properly rotate it. It's best to draw your boxes as though you have x-ray vision - that is, drawing each and every line that makes up the box, whether it is blocked by something else or not.

• For your organic perspective boxes, the only thing I want to point out here is that you didn't start out by defining a specific flow for those boxes, so a lot of your compositions ended up being quite formless and disorganized. It's not a big issue, but it does go back to not really reading the instructions.

So before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to redo the following:

• One page of plotted perspective boxes

• One page of rough perspective boxes

• One page of rotated boxes

Read the instructions carefully immediately before attempting an exercise (and reread them as necessary to refresh your memory). Once you're done, you can resubmit them as a reply to this critique, and I'll mark the lesson as complete.

At that point, I will want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work in on the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the material there (especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which is what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes), and watch both videos.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-15 16:59

You're making good progress, but one recommendation that I have is that you try to draw your cylinders a little larger. I know that since you're not terribly confident with your use of the ghosting method that you're likely feeling inclined to draw shorter lines since they might be easier. This has an opposite negative effect however - drawing small gives us less space to think through spatial problems, which are very important when drawing any 3D forms. It also causes us to produce drawings that feel a little more clumsy, due to the thickness of the pen tip relative to the overall drawing.

The most important thing is to not allow the lack of confidence to make your decisions for you. Often times at the beginning it's necessary for us to fake confidence and behave as though we're more capable than we are. Eventually our level of technical skill catches up with us, and before we know it, we stop having to fake it.

Anyway, consider this challenge complete. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-14 01:22

Looking great! I can see that your confidence with your linework improved considerably over the set, and that you seemed to get the hang of applying line weight in a way that conveys solidity and the cohesion of the overall box. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete!

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

2017-01-14 01:15

Nice work with your lines - definitely nothing bad going on there, you seem to be following the instructions quite well. Your ellipses are generally okay through the first exercise in that section, though I noticed that in the funnels you seem to get a little too loose. Remember that there's two things we want to pin down - the confidence of the ellipse to keep it evenly shaped (you're doing this well), and the accuracy of it. That is, keeping it within the bounds we set for ourselves (in this case snugly set between the two sides of the funnel), and keeping the ellipse as tight as possible. Confidence and smoothness are your first priorities, but you don't want to let things get so loose that the ellipse ends up having no clear definition. That is definitely something you'll want to work on.

Moving ahead to the boxes, it seems that you did not continue to apply the ghosting method to your mark-making (this is likely also a major factor in your ellipses, since ghosting/preparing your marks is what helps increase your accuracy before laying down a confident stroke). As a result the lines in your rough perspective boxes, rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes aren't straight for the most part. The work is definitely quite sloppy, and I know for a fact that you're capable of doing much better than this.

While I certainly don't ask for, or expect perfect work (and you'll find that here and there I assign exercises that are purposely beyond a student's ability at that time), I do always want to see work done to the absolute best of your ability at that moment. This means taking the time to apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down - be it straight, curved or elliptical - even though it will take a considerably larger investment of time. It is this kind of work that allows me to give you helpful critiques that will ultimately push the boundaries of your abilities.

Going back to the specific exercises, I also have a few things to point out:

• You have a tendency to guess the behaviours of your rough perspective boxes' lines, rather than taking a moment to think about how they should be drawn. These notes describe this tendency and how to overcome it.

• Also for the rough perpsective boxes, after completing this exercise be sure to go over your completed work as described here to identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

• You didn't really follow the instructions for the rotated boxes exercise - I've set out specific steps in the exercise description, so give them another read. Focus on things like drawing through your boxes (something I mentioned for your box challenge as well) and also keep your boxes closer together so you can use neighbouring lines as hints.

Both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are included in this lesson not with the expectation that you'll nail them by any stretch, but rather to give you the chance to get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating your boxes freely in 3D space. This is a particularly difficult thing to get your head around, so I like to have my students jump in head-first before receiving the additional instruction available in the 250 box challenge. This way the instruction is received with more contextual understanding.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do the following:

• One more page of funnels

• One more page of rough perspective boxes

• One more page of rotated boxes

Once you've submitted that and I've marked this lesson as complete, I'm going to want you to try your hand at the 250 box challenge once more. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the page and watch both videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is very important, as I mentioned in my critique of your previous attempt, as it helps you to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every mark as well.

This can (and is) quite tedious, but I assure you that it will help. By forcing yourself to push at your limits, you will find that you will produce work far better than you're used to.

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

2017-01-13 22:24

It's fine then if it was something you did at the end - it's more that I wouldn't recommend something like that as your first shot. So all is well!

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

2017-01-13 22:04

Overall very nice work! I especially liked your form intersections - your grasp of 3D space is coming along nicely. Your textures also came out quite well, demonstrating a lot of careful observation and interesting experimentation. The only point that I wanted to mention is one that you actually improved upon considerably later on in the lesson. The particular forms you chose for that first page of organic forms with contour lines were a little bit ill-advised, largely since the particular turns of form along the sides are quite quick (the forms are flatter). That said, you still handled them pretty well.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-13 21:44

Post it again in the lesson 1 thread.

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

2017-01-13 00:45

Excellent work. You hit all the nails on the head. Your linework is looking really confident and smooth, you've captured the organic sausages in a manner that conveys their volume and solidity quite effectively, you've done great work exploring different textures, and your form intersections demonstrate a well developing sense of 3D space and how these forms relate to one another as a cohesive group. If I had to offer any critique, it'd be a stretch but in your organic intersections, it looks like some of the forms towards the right respect a particular ground plane (which is great), but the one drooping over to the left seems to ignore it which throws off the illusion a bit. Aside from that, the exercise shows a good understanding of how these forms rest upon one another, and how they sag under their own weight.

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)"

2017-01-13 00:42

You definitely improve considerably over this set. Your dogs are especially well done - those two on the last page demonstrate a strong understanding of construction and form, and how all of them relate to one another. All the while you've managed to capture their energy and gesture quite well.

Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-13 00:41

I definitely have a few things to note that should help you in the future:

• It's very important to read through all of the notes and material provided before starting on something. There's a lot there, so it can be difficult to digest all at once, but it'll help you put that time to the best possible use. In this case, you missed one major point - the tip about drawing through your forms. This is especially important, as it helps you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and highlights a lot of the most common issues, which aren't always clear otherwise.

• When doing your corrections, focus on finding lines that you've drawn that you felt were correct at the time, but weren't. With your differently coloured pen, draw in the correct line so that you can help rewire how your brain understands that form. As mentioned before, drawing through your forms can help you identify these sorts of things.

You'll definitely benefit from following the points mentioned above. That said, you have completed the challenge, as you've drawn all two hundred and fifty boxes.

Moving forwards, I definitely recommend that you submit your lesson 1 work in the lesson 1 thread, so I can give you a proper critique for it when I get the chance.

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

2017-01-13 00:35

You've clearly approached your drawings with a great deal of study. There's some good things here and some that are a little less so. In my eyes, your strongest drawing is this fly. The forms are clear and quite solid, and you clearly build up from simple to complex. The head's a little flatter, but this is likely because you started ignoring the underlying construction (the initial lay-in of the ball for the head).

Overall, one thing I see you doing is that you're quite faint and delicate with your initial block-in of form, and then your subsequent passes seem to be focused more on creating a pretty, detailed picture, rather than one that is solid. In some cases this leads you to add detail where the underlying construction does not support it, and in others it leads you to ignore that underlying construction in favour of something you see in your reference image (the fly's head).

The most important thing to remember is that we are not here to draw pretty pictures - we are here to learn how to construct solid objects, and how to manipulate form. Each phase - initial block-in included - should be drawn confidently, not stressing over what you want to hide or cover-up later on. Furthermore, each pass should end with something that feels solid. The initial masses you lay in - these are not shapes, they are solid 3D forms and if they don't feel that way to you, reinforce them with a contour curve or two. Make sure that you believe that they are three dimensional so that the forms you add in later passes can wrap around them properly, since you have already fooled yourself into buying into that illusion.

You have a lot of drawings that have good qualities and bad, rather than some drawings that are outright terrible, and others that are fantastic. This is because you understand construction and you're clearly capable of it, but you're getting distracted and your goals are misinformed. Don't concern yourself so much with the pretty picture at the end of the road. Focus on the exercise you're doing.

Lastly, don't use hatching or crosshatching so liberally - or really, at all. People tend to use it instead of really looking closely at the images they're studying, and it serves as an excuse not to really take your time and observe. For example, you used it all over your moth, but it ended up looking quite sloppy and poorly executed, as far as texture goes. Other textures, such as the cracked surface on the abdomen of this spider were drawn with more careful and closer observation, and came out much better.

I want you to do four more drawings, but I don't want to see any detail or texture. Focus entirely on construction, and leave the notes aside this time. Make sure your drawings aren't cut off along the edges of the page, but try and take up as much of the page as you can. Draw everything confidently, and don't worry about hiding things. You can come back later with additional line weight to clarify overlaps, but this happens afterwards and should not be present in your mind while drawing the initial passes.

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

2017-01-12 23:01

So looking through your work, there's one reaaaally clear issue that comes up across the board - your lines are wobbly. This isn't an uncommon problem, but it is something we'll need to sort out sooner rather than later.

Your first exercise, the super imposed lines, suggests why they are so wobbly. Looking at those lines, they tend to start off tight, waver considerably over their length, then end tight again. This suggests that you're taking your time as you draw, going slow and steady, with your brain controlling the whole way, and course-correcting when you fall off track.

That's not the approach we're after. I talk about this specifically in this comic. Basically, your brain should not be guiding the motion of your hand - it should help plan things out, but when the time comes to execute the mark, you should be trusting in your muscles. All the time you spend on drawing the mark should instead be spent preparing, applying the ghosting method, and so on. This applies to everything - straight lines, curved lines and ellipses.

Skipping on down to your rough perspective boxes, I'm seeing a lot of guesswork in terms of the behaviour of your lines. Give these notes a read, they should help. Additionally, upon completing this exercise, it's best to go over your completed work as described here to double check your estimation of perspective.

I think it would be best for you to try the homework for this lesson again. Give the lesson another read through, and make sure you go through each exercise description carefully before tackling it. There's a lot of information here so it can be quite dense - there's also a lot of work involved, so take your time and don't rush.

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

2017-01-12 22:51

Definitely looking much better. Keep up the good work, and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-12 22:49

Looking pretty great! Your linework is very confident, and your constructions are looking solid. The only bit of advice I have to offer is for when you fit your cylinders into boxes - or more specifically, ellipses into planes. Here's how you do so properly.

By the way, sorry for the delay - been struggling with some tight deadlines and overtime at work, so a lot of the homework critiques have gotten delayed over the last two weeks.

Anyway, consider this challenge complete! Keep up the good work.

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

2017-01-11 21:35

That is definitely a different kind of pen from the one I mentioned, which was the Faber Castell PITT artist pens, so that may be a factor.

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

2017-01-11 20:25

I usually use staedtler pigment liners on printer paper, but I have used faber castell pitt artist pens and haven't found them to be as you described. Is it possible that the particular pen you're using is just misbehaving?

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-11 17:22

It's fine to do the 250 cylinder challenge now, and it should help with the form intersections in lesson 2. The texture challenge should be done after lesson 2 because the dissection exercise is really meant to be the first, loose introduction to texture (to get your brain warmed up).

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

2017-01-11 15:37

Generally try to keep the angles between the arms of the Y above 90 degrees, and always remember that the center point of the Y is the corner that is closest to the viewer.

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

2017-01-11 01:56

I actually explain this in-depth in this article. It's not just about not caring about making perfect drawings - because that alone implies quite the opposite. The use of felt tip pens forces you to be strategic, to think through your marks, and to consider line economy. There's a lot of nuance to it all, but the short answer is: yeah, it matters. It's not my place to say it's the only way to do it, but in my experience it makes a significant difference, and over the last two years I've seen enough positive results come from that stance to consider it valid.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-11 01:44

Last thread got locked, so patreon supporters who are eligible for critiques can submit their work here.

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

2017-01-11 01:40

The first thing I want to recommend is actually two recommendations at once - try not to work on paper that isn't blank (it has a tendency to make us somewhat less focused, and therefore a little sloppy at times), and make sure that the pages you work on give you enough space to work through spatial problems.

Anyway, your exercises for the lines section are looking pretty solid and smooth. Your ellipses are also generally quite well done, for the most part. I do see a touch of stiffness here and there, so I just want to remind you that the evenness of the shape is your top priority. It's normal for us to want to slow down for the sake of accuracy, but this will lead to stiffness and wobbling - so execute your mark confidently, and compensate for the decrease in accuracy by spending more time ghosting your mark (which we do for every single mark we draw, be it straight, curved or elliptical).

Your rough perspective boxes are decent, though your use of hatching there is beyond sloppy. If you choose to add hatching lines, make sure they stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge, rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle. Also, make sure you go over your completed work as described here to check your estimated perspective (this will help you identify mistakes, which you can compensate for the next time you attempt the exercise).

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are both included here largely to give you the chance to acquaint yourself with the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space - not so much with the expectation that you'll do them well, so that is definitely something to keep in mind. That said, you didn't do particularly badly as far as the usual mistakes I see go, but we will definitely be able to work on them and push them further.

One thing I definitely want to point out however is with your rotated boxes, you're demonstrating a particular... lack of focus as far as the instructions go. Your understanding of space is decent, but you're skipping steps outlined in the instructions that would have greatly improved your results. It's very important that when completing my exercises, if there's step-by-step instructions, follow them to the letter. It kind of jumps out at me that you didn't even really complete the second step entirely.

The one that would have helped considerably though is this one. When keeping your boxes fairly tightly together, you can use neighbouring lines as hints for how a given line should behave. This helps especially as you go out towards the corners.

Of course, it's also worth mentioning that your use of hatching here is sloppy, as it was in the rough perspective boxes exercise.

Anyway, 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, as this will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. There's also two videos that should be helpful.

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

2017-01-11 01:29

Your arrows are looking very nice. You're doing a good job of demonstrating how they flow through space organically. Your organic forms with contour curves are okay, but I think what jumps out at me most is the particular degree you use for your ellipses at different points through the forms. It appears to be more like guesswork than actually being driven by intent. Take a look at these notes and this video. Both discuss what the particular degree of an ellipse means in regards to the orientation of the circle it represents in 3D space.

Also, I am seeing that your contour curves are riding the fence in terms of properly wrapping around the forms. They are just barely doing so, but to the point that I feel like if you were to lose focus, you might slip. You actually do end up slipping for many of your organic intersections, so I think we should probably spend a little more time there.

Your dissections are moving in the right direction. There's a couple things that jump out at me here though:

• This exercise is supposed to start off the same way as the organic forms with contour curves - that is, establish a solid, tangible form, THEN start cutting it up and adding texture. You do this in some cases, but in others you skip through.

• You tend to be drawing quite a bit from memory - that is, looking at your reference image for a bit, then spending a lot of time drawing from what you remember seeing. Our memory is not reliable at all - you need to make sure that you keep looking back at your reference image every few seconds, observing and studying the little particulars about that texture and what gives it a particular look. Try to get into the habit of drawing a little, observing a lot.

Your form intersections are actually quite solid to me. Reason being, what you're fretting about is not the focus of the exercise. This is actually mentioned in the instructions - the exercise is about drawing forms that feel cohesive and consistent within the same space, NOT about the intersections themselves. Understanding how these forms, rotated arbitrarily, intersect with one another in 3D space is actually very challenging and I do not expect you to grasp it at all at this point. Attempting them is merely starting you off in that direction, and as you work through the lessons, your understanding of it will improve.

Lastly your organic intersections are a bit borderline. The first one's decent - you demonstrate a solid grasp of how those forms interact with one another, how they sag under their own weight. Your second one is somewhat weaker, giving little impression that the forms are actually interacting in the same space.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one more page of organic forms with contour curves, after looking through the resources I linked above. Stick to basic sausage forms with no branching or complexity and work on getting your contour curves to align to the central minor axis line that passes through the middle of the form.

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

2017-01-11 01:18

I'm going to be including my critique for the cylinder challenge here as well - that lesson thread got locked (reddit automatically archives any post that's older than 6 months old) so I can't reply directly to that submission.

So your cylinders are generally coming along well - they definitely improve in confidence over the set. There is one thing I'd like to point out though. Later on in the set, you stopped using your minor axes for many of your cylinders. This isn't something you should abandon so quickly - it's important that you continue using your minor axes as the first step of your cylinder construction for some time, as not doing so will cause your ellipses to become misaligned without you being entirely aware of it.

Aside from that, good work, and consider the challenge complete.

Moving onto the plants. One thing that definitely jumps out at me is that you have a tendency to draw quite small on the page - this is something that can actually cause some of your drawings to stiffen up in certain ways, and while many of your drawings have come out quite nicely, I can see it in certain cases (for example, the pitcher plant on the third page.

Basically, when you draw smaller, it leaves you with less space to think through the spatial problems involved with constructional drawing. Additionally, it has the tendency to make your pen tip quite thick relative to the overall drawing size, resulting in drawings that can look a little clumsy.

Jumping back to your leaves exercise, I do want to point out that you should be focusing entirely on a given exercise the way it's assigned and instructed. There were very specific steps laid out for this exercise - you followed them in some places, but in others (the flower, the maple leaf, etc.) you went along on your own way. This exercises are designed to force you into a particular mode of thinking, so if you start interpreting them, skipping steps, etc. you'll miss that and then not end up following the lesson as intended.

We can see some of the consequences of this in some of your later drawings. The drawings themselves are quite well done, but you miss key concepts - for example, the raddish's leaves. Here, you jump right into the complex edge detail of each leaf without ever establishing its basic flow through space. This means you're tackling two separate challenges simultaneously. Instead, establish the general flow of the leaves, then add more complexity on top in another pass, like this.

In general I think the reason that your drawings are coming out fairly well is more because your observational skills are already very strong. This is both a blessing and a curse - it means that you'll have to push yourself extra hard to go through the steps of construction (always going from very simple to complex without skipping steps), because you'll always want to jump ahead to adding detail. The most important thing to remember is that if a drawing is not solid and tangible after you're done constructing it (and before adding any detail), detail will not fix this problem.

Now while you have skipped steps in a lot of areas, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. I feel that the next one will be a much better place for you to demonstrate your grasp of construction, as the subject matter tends to be more solid. Make sure you read through my instructions and follow them to the letter.

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

2017-01-11 00:55

Overall, you're demonstrating a pretty well developing sense of construction, and your textures are coming along quite well too. Most of your leaf forms tend to flow quite nicely, and your constructions show an improving understanding of how those forms interact with one another.

I did notice one thing about that palm tree trunk you drew - it was very uniform, which caused it to look quite boring. Here's how I would approach it.

As for your questions about those particular flowers, there's two points to be made:

• Those flowers, and rather, those particular arrangements of forms (where things are very thin, but arranged into spheres, or generally with no clear direction of flow) are very challenging. While I understand the desire to delve into anything and everything (and that's perfectly fine), there will be some things that will simply be very difficult while you continue to establish your grasp of the simpler end of the spectrum. Go ahead and try them, but talking about them beyond that isn't going to help you much right now. In general your time and effort should be focused more on constructing solid, heavy forms (both organic and geometric) and on capturing the flow of flat forms with a more clear direction to them.

• When approaching anything like this, it's important to give the form some manner of structure. Contour lines in this case are definitely your friends, and jumping into detail too early (or really, at all at this point) is going to be quite detrimental as it will distract you from the goal of establishing something more tangible. It's very easy to go off into texturing in the hopes that it'll bring the drawing together, but unfortunately detail will never make a drawing feel more believable.

Anyway, aside from those overly challenging examples, you're doing a good job overall. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. You may want to revisit these particular challenges once you've worked through the rest of the dynamic sketching lessons, and see if your grasp of form in general has improved to a point where you can conquer them. To be honest though, I myself struggle with these particular kinds of challenges - I might have tried to do a demo myself of them, but I know that it'd take me a great deal of studying those particular flowers and I have far too many critiques to get through tonight for that.

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

2017-01-11 00:09

Lovely work! It's clear that you grew a lot over this set, though I think there was a rather nice, flowing quality to your leaves from the beginning. Your constructions are generally quite solid, and your texturing in areas like the mushroom and the flower at the end are very well balanced and develop strong focal areas.

The thing with your leaf textures is that you're focusing too much on each leaf as an individual component, rather than the whole plant as a singular composition. This has several downsides - like in the potato plant, those front leaves feel really abnormally high-fidelity in comparison to most of the rest that ends up being quite blank (because you probably got tired, as anyone would). Honestly though, even if you'd stuck through and detailed the shit out of the whole thing, it'd be too noisy and distracting. I think that it would have been best to maybe pick just a few leaves within a very close radius and detail them more heavily, but leave most of the rest with something more like the leaves near the top of that drawing. I think those ones play nicely with line weight, giving a sense of form and dynamism without being particularly attention-grabbing. From there, even further out from the radius of your focal point, you could leave some leaves blank, and it would flow and balance itself nicely.

You'll notice that even if you look at the drawing to the right of it, where all the leaves are completely blank, it's much less stressful to look at because while there's less visual interest there, it's more balanced.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by detailing the foreshortened angles at which the leaves bend in your marijuana plant, but I'd say it suffers from much the same issue - you're dealing with them individually, rather than the whole plant as a single entity that needs to be balanced against itself.

One thing my instructor actually recommended was to actually draw a literal circle around our intended focal point, and then to detail the crap out of everything within that circle, and leave the rest blank. I find the literal circle to be a little bit heavy-handed, but it certainly does keep you on target and keep things balanced.

Anyway, you're doing great as it is. Your actual approach to texture on an individual basis is good, and your constructions are solid. Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

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

2017-01-10 23:56

I'm a little puzzled by my earlier critique. I'm assuming that you had submitted the entire lines section. While your ghosted lines are coming along, your planes show a fair bit of wobbling here and there that I should have called out then. Looking closer at your super imposed lines, it's visible there too.

This does improve to a degree as we get into your rough perspective boxes, but I figure I might as well emphasize this point. When lines wobble, it's generally a sign that you're drawing a little too timidly, investing more of your time into the execution of the mark. Instead, put that time towards your initial planning and preparation phase. That is, first figuring out where the lines start and end, finding a comfortable angle of approach, and ultimately applying the ghosting method several times over to familiarize your arm muscles with the motion required of them.

Once you actually execute the mark, you do so with a single smooth mark at a confident pace - maintaining a speed just fast enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you go. It's these course-corrections that manifest as the wobbles in a line. This does inherently reduce your accuracy, so we compensate for that by putting more weight on the ghosting/preparation phase.

This principle applies to all marks, ellipses included. Your ellipses are okay, though there's a touch of stiffness to them that is caused by the same sort of course-correction happening. Just keep that in mind as you approach these exercises, or any mark making in general. Your ellipses are generally good enough however for you not really to require any active change in how you approach them - just keeping these principles in mind should generally be enough to tweak things on a subconscious level. Going down to the ellipses in planes however, the stiffness does become a more prominent issue, but this is totally normal. People usually start to get more preoccupied with fitting their ellipses inside of each plane, and it causes them to stiffen up something fierce. Just remember that the smoothness and evenness of your elliptical shape is your first priority. Accuracy is secondary.

Skipping on down, your plotted perspective and rough perspective boxes are well done. The thing about the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises is that they're included here with no expectation for students to actually do a good job with either of them. You'll find that to be the case with some of my exercises, so what's most important is that you always do your absolute best, and that you never submit anything incomplete. It doesn't matter if it's bad or if you're not happy with it - if it's the best you can do right now, it should be submitted.

The purpose these two exercises serve is two-fold. Firstly, it's to introduce you to a little bit of failure, which is something you'll encounter a lot when learning to draw. It's an inevitability, and it's entirely necessary, as we grow from our mistakes by reflecting upon them. The second reason is so that you can get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when you are properly instructed in how to deal with it, you are able to understand those instructions in the context of your previous experience (rather than everything being purely theoretical). It tends to help a student digest the material more easily.

Looking at what you have here for the rotated boxes exercise - which admittedly isn't much - I can see one primary part of the instructions that you seem to have missed. Take a look at this page, and pay special attention to the coloured lines. It's very important that you keep your boxes close together, with a minimal gap between them. This is because we use the boxes surrounding one we're about to draw to provide us with hints in regards to how a given line should behave.

Your organic perspective boxes are a good first try, though there certainly is plenty of room to improve on this front, though we'll get to that.

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 on that page and watch the two videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is very important, as it will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and will allow you to identify more easily issues where your far planes are larger than your near planes, along with other discrepancies that undermine the general construction of the forms.

One last thing - I want your first bunch of boxes for the challenge to be a fully completed rotated boxes exercise. Make sure you reread the exercise instructions for it in detail before starting.