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

2017-01-10 23:35

Generally your work is quite well done. Your arrows flow smoothly through space, your organic forms are demonstrating an improving understanding of how to wrap lines around these rounded surfaces, your texture are patiently and deliberately executed (and show some great experimentation with different kinds of approaches), and your form and organic intersections suggest a properly developing sense of 3D space.

The thing about the form intersections is - as mentioned in the instructions (though most people seem to ignore this) - is that the exercuse is not actually about the intersections themselves. Actually understanding how all the forms fit together, how they cut into one another and so on is extremely challenging, and is by no means a beginner's endeavour. The exercise is more about being able to draw forms within the same space in a manner that makes them all seem cohesive, rather than feeling like completely independent forms cut-and-paste onto the same page. For the most part you're utilizing fairly shallow perspective as instructed, so your forms seem to match reasonably well.

Having students start to think about the intersections merely helps get the ball rolling - while most struggle immensely with it, it gets them to start wrapping their heads around 3D space, which gives them a nice shove in the right direction. You'll find that as you continue to move through your lessons, where you're faced with considerably more straightforward problems involving 3D space, your understanding of how such things interact will improve.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Don't forget to continue practicing the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 - I generally recommend that students do a 10-15 minute warmup at the beginning of each sitting, consisting of a random selection of 2-3 exercises from those in the first two lessons.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-10 23:26

I think overall your general confidence with your linework improves over the course of this set. There's definitely more work to be done in regards to really working out that wobbling completely, but you're definitely moving towards that. Just always remember that you're splitting the process of drawing each mark into two parts - the first part is where your brain is involved. Identifying a comfortable angle of approach, determining where you want your line to start, and ultimately ghosting through it over and over to communicate your orders to your arm muscles. The second part requires you to fully trust that your muscles understood their task - to draw with a confident pace, accepting that your accuracy may suffer for it, and doing pushing through anyway.

As for your box constructions, again - you're moving in the right direction, but there certainly still are issues with your near/far planes, many of which you're not always catching. One approach to corrections that really tends to help is to extend your lines towards their implied vanishing point to see how that convergence behaves, similarly to how this student does towards the right side of this page. You can even do this part with a ruler.

Anyway, you're moving in the right direction, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Just be sure to continue to work at it.

As for your question, honestly that's all you need. The most important thing is that you keep at it over time, rather than doing then in big spurts of energy and motivation, then leaving it alone. These exercises will improve with time, so long as you continue to push yourself to practice them regularly - so basically, doing them as warmups as discussed before.

So go ahead and move onto lesson 2, and always remember that we're not after perfect work, we're just looking to make sure that the concepts are understood on a theoretical level, and that you're moving in the right direction.

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

2017-01-09 23:19

Definitely an improvement. There's still some stiffness you'll want to be working through, and I also noticed that you aren't always drawing through your ellipses, but you've definitely grown since the last submission. Keep working towards loosening up. Also, it crossed my mind that these notes in particular may help your understanding of how those contour ellipses - and more specifically their degrees - helps communicate the orientation of the tube/branch.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-09 23:17

Nice work. Your linework is looking confident and smooth, and your corrections are on point. One thing that can also help to identify mistakes is to extend your lines towards their implied vanishing point, as demonstrated on the right side of this page.

As for your warmup there, it's looking pretty good. My usual recommendation is for students to pick two or three exercises from the first lesson (and once completed, the second lesson as well) to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of a sitting. So while right now your warmup consists primarily of lines and ellipses, you'll want to expand them to include boxes and organic forms as well. Kind of makes sense that you didn't include boxes in this one though, since.. you know. box challenge and all that.

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

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

2017-01-09 23:13

It looks like you've grown a lot over the course of this homework. Your lines initially started rather wobbly and uncertain. By the box exercises, they've much improved. Here and there they still show a bit of wobbliness, but for the most part you're taking your time with your ghosting/preparation, then executing them with a confident stroke to maintain the smooth flow of the line.

Your ellipses also show similar improvement. Initially they're generally a bit sloppy and loose, though still at times a bit stiff and awkward. By the time you hit this page, they've improved considerably, both tightening up and becoming considerably smoother and more evenly shaped.

Your boxes are well done, and though you struggled considerably with the rotated boxes one, you came out victorious at the end. I do want to let you know that I by no means expect students to nail the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises at this point. I'm giving them the opportunity here to do two things: first and foremost, to get acquainted with failure (which as you've learnt through the course of this lesson, happens a lot, and we merely have to get back up and learn from the mistakes we've made), and also to get acquainted with the particular challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space.

Despite this, you've done a very good job, and have developed a strong sense of 3D space.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Before you do though, I'd like you to go through the notes on the 250 box challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. I'm by no means requiring you to complete the challenge, but the notes should help you continue to improve your sense of 3D space, and your understanding of how the boxes you draw sit within it.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-09 23:03

Pretty nice work. I'd definitely rethink the whole heavy outline thing, though. The line variation does help, but ultimately outlining your boxes with such a thick line tends to flatten the whole thing out. When it comes to line weight, you want to have variation to make it look dynamic, but try and keep it relatively subtle.

Other than that, things are looking good. Keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-08 18:03

Thanks for sorting that out! The payment went through just fine this time, so everything seems to be in order.

As for your submission, you're generally doing well. I do have a few things I can point out though:

• Here and there your lines seem a little less solid, so make sure you're applying the ghosting method. You have many lines that are well done however, so I'm guessing these are marks where you just got a little too relaxed and sloppy.

• Using a different colour for your draw-through lines is a good way to differentiate which side faces the viewer and which side faces away. That said, if you're going to use that approach, use a different colour from your corrections for clarity. Alternatively, the approach used on the last page (filling one front-facing plane with tight, consistent hatching) works well too.

• When doing corrections, actually draw in the correct line rather than simply marking x's, circling things or other notes. We want to focus on where the line you drew was not entirely correct. If you're having trouble identifying such mistakes, it can help to extend your lines towards their implied vanishing point like the right side of this page. This can make mistakes much more apparent, so you can learn from them.

• Moving forward, line weight is definitely something you can play with more to push your boxes to the next level. I see that in the last page you did play with them a little bit, and it marks a good start.

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

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

2017-01-08 17:58

I'm a bit confused, because it seems like you're asking two different questions.

1. How do I draw wheels that are right up against the box rather than some amount of space away? The answer to this one is very straight-forward, you just draw your first wheel's box right up against your main box. Mirroring across will result in the other wheel being positioned correctly.

2. How do I place the wheels lower than the main box of the vehicle? There's a few ways you can approach this, but I would probably just do what you've been doing (keep them level with each other), then cut away a section from the bottom of the main box. In the diagram I drew for the last question, you can see how the big red plane I drew is some distance into the initial box, so it would line up with the front of the wheels. You can do the same thing for the underside by picking an arbitrary height level, drawing a line at that level across the front plane of the box, and then continuing it all the way around the rest of the box. Alternatively you could just start out by constructing two boxes stacked on top of each other - one representing the negative space under the vehicle, and one representing the main box.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-07 21:47

Very nice work. Your linework is confident, your lines are straight and smooth, your constructions are solid and your line weights help maintain cohesion for each individual box while remaining quite subtle. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Just don't forget to go over the set with a different coloured pen and actually draw in the correct lines where you've made mistakes. Sometimes it's unclear where things are off, so extending your lines towards their intended vanishing points can help identify places where certain lines of a set converge much quicker than the others (like the one on the right side of this page).

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

2017-01-07 21:45

These are definitely much, much better. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2017-01-07 21:44

Pretty nice work! Your lines and ellipses are looking confident and smooth, and your boxes are generally well constructed. There's a few minor issues in the rotated and organic perspective boxes, but this is by no means unexpected - you're definitely doing better than most here, so those two months of practice definitely show.

The issues I noticed were:

• For the rotated boxes exercise, you tend to be quite timid as far as rotating the boxes themselves goes - our brains like things to exist on grids, so we need to fight against our basic nature when we want to rotate forms. When doing an exercise like this, try and exaggerate those rotations, otherwise you'll end up with situations where your boxes merely shift enough to compensate for basic linear perspective, rather than sliding its vanishing points far enough to constitute actual rotation. For example, take a look at your top most box, the one below it, and the center. If you were to track the positions of their lower vanishing point, you'll see that it actually stays either around the center of the two axes, or slightly above it. As shown here, it needs to actually slide further downwards as the box rotates.

• Your organic perspective boxes just show a touch of overly dramatic perspective at times, and a bit of near/far plane issues, though both are probably more unintentional slipups (that we can't really correct since we're working in ink). Overall you're demonstrating a well developing sense of space.

As for your question, you should be drawing those marks with your shoulder. Keep in mind that we aren't here to draw pretty pictures - we're here to become better at the things we aren't yet comfortable with. The only exercise that is truly ruined is one where you've robbed yourself of an opportunity to learn something.

Your line weights are generally okay, though there are those corners where things get a touch too heavy. Pressure control will develop with time and practice, and you'll grow accustomed to more subtle variance in pressure and weight as you go.

I do certainly advocate for your decision to move onto the 250 box challenge next, so feel free to do that. I probably wouldn't have forced you to do so (for most students, I do), so you're also free to move onto lesson 2. But of course, the extra practice is always well worth it.

As for the rest of it, ultimately the material from lesson 1 and 2 should eventually become part of a warm-up you do at the beginning of each sitting, doing two or three of the exercises for 10-15 minutes. Don't worry about focusing more on one over others, as you don't want the others to get forgotten. Just make sure that you cycle through them regularly so that everything gets a good deal of practice. While later exercises allow you to build up your understanding of how objects are constructed, the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 are the kind that will have the greatest long-term impact, so long as you continue to do them.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and congratulations on completing this lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-07 21:30

I definitely see considerable improvement over this set, and while there is plenty room for more, you're very clearly approaching it in the correct manner. Early on you were rather sloppy, even with hatching lines that weren't neatly arranged within a given face, but by the end your attention to presentation and more importantly, the attention to your corrections were definitely quite impressive.

Those corrections seem to be highlighting the main issues (for example, extending the lines showing them meeting at different vanishing points quite far from each other), and this kind of exercise will help you become more aware of what you need to compensate for. This is definitely the best way to make your hours of practice as effective as possible.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-07 21:27

Hey, it looks like when the patreon pledges were being collected on the first of this month, yours was declined. I'm sure this isn't intentional (since you're rather active on the subreddit), but this does mean that you won't be eligible for critique until that is sorted out. Feels a bit petty saying that for three whole dollars, but oh well. This does mean that I won't be tracking this submission anymore (I only just realized the charge was declined), so if you get it resolved, let me know and remind me of this submission.

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

2017-01-07 20:55

You definitely made the right decision there - working through lessons 3-7 will give you the chance to solidify your grasp of the stuff covered in lessons 1-2.

Looking at your work, one thing that I noticed is that your linework tends to be quite stiff. For example, take a look at your stems/branches page. The ellipses look to be connected with relatively straight, disjointed lines, rather than lines that flow smoothly from one to the other. Make sure you're drawing your lines from your shoulder, and that you're overshooting them beyond the next ellipse as pointed out here in step 3.

The general stiffness though is usually caused by a combination of three things:

• Focusing more on accuracy than on smoothness/flow, and therefore drawing slowly enough for your brain to course-correct as you draw, resulting in a wobbly, stiff line. You should be investing all of your time in the preparation/ghosting phase, and executing your marks with a confident pace so your brain doesn't have the chance to interfere at that point.

• Drawing from the wrist when you should be drawing from the shoulder.

• Drawing too small - when things are really small, they tend to be much more challenging for beginners to tackle, as they're left with very little room to think through the spatial problems involved. Additionally, the tip of their pen ends up being much thicker relative to the overall drawing, making it look and feel quite clumsy.

Now this raises one important question - upon completing lessons 1 and 2, did you leave those exercises behind, or did you continue to do them? My usual recommendation is that students do a 10-15 minute warmup at the beginning of each sitting, consisting of two or three exercises from those first two lessons, ensuring that all of the exercises are done fairly regularly. This will allow you to continue to develop those basic technical skills, and will overall have a significant impact on the quality of your more complex work.

The last thing I wanted to mention was about the ear of corn at the end. It makes for a great example for explaining how texture should always follow the underlying form and ultimately wrap around it. It can be very easy to end up with texture and details that actually contradict that form, and that is what is happening here. The individual kernels you've drawn are arranged in a way that actually speaks to the surface being fairly flat, rather than curved and rounded. In this video, I talk about how the surface turns away from the viewer near the edges, and how texture will be compressed in those areas.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do two full pages of the branches exercise. I want to see those lines and ellipses loosen up.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-07 20:06

Nice work! Your constructions definitely improve over the set, and I see fewer near/far plane issues closer to the end. Your use of line weight also works well to maintain a sense of cohesiveness over each box, and generally your approach seems to be quite confident. Keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete. And by the way, thanks for increasing your pledge!

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

2017-01-07 19:59

Firstly, I'm really sorry for the delay here. Usually I try to get my critiques done within 24-48 hours, but unfortunately this past week I've been buried in overtime at work, and next week will likely be more of that. Didn't even leave the office last night til 1AM.

Anyway, your lesson 1 work here highlights some key underlying issues that definitely had an impact on the work you submitted previously. The biggest thing that I can see is that your linework is somewhat wobbly and shaky. In some cases it's more obvious, in others it's more subtle, but basically the core problem is that you're not drawing at a confident pace. You're focusing far too much on precision and accuracy, and are sacrificing the flow and smoothness of your linework.

Remember the methodology I talk about here. You want to invest all of your time into preparation - ghosting, getting used to the drawing motion, and so on - and then you execute with a motion just quick enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you go. If you happen to be a little off the mark, that's fine. Accuracy is important, but it's secondary to smoothness and flow, and it will improve with practice and adjusting how you ghost through beforehand.

This principle stands for y our ellipses too - for the most part they have a touch of that stiffness that comes from being overly careful and overly stressed with nailing your accuracy.

Skipping on down, your rotated boxes are very wobbly - don't forget to apply the ghosting method to every single line you draw.

Looking at your organic perspective boxes, in general there's a lot of signs that you should definitely tackle the 250 box challenge again, being sure to draw through each box as recommended in the tips. Go ahead and reread the notes on that page as well, and rewatch the videos. One of them was added more recently, so you likely haven't yet seen it. Be mindful especially of issues where your near planes end up smaller than your far planes. When doing the challenge, it helps also to fill in one face that is oriented towards the viewer with some tight, consistent hatching in order to serve as visual cue. Otherwise it can be difficult to tell afterwards which side of the box is which, since we're drawing through the whole thing as though we have xray vision.

Anyway, I'll mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to continue practicing your linework in the 250 box challenge.

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

2017-01-07 17:37

You done goofed. You didn't find the correct center point to mirror across, so your wheel boxes are offset from the center, shifted more towards the right. Hence there being no space between your left wheel and the main box, but lots of space between the right wheel and the main box.

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

2017-01-06 03:56

>_> funny you should mention the jaw/tooth thing. I actually cracked a molar on a candycane on Christmas Eve...

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

2017-01-06 01:10

That's good to hear. Keep it up!

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

2017-01-06 01:09

Augh those ticks are positively disgusting. I definitely think there are areas where your work improved in the new ones, but there are some qualities that you seem to have dropped. In some of your older constructions, there's a sense of confidence where you're establishing your forms. In the new ones, the forms are certainly solid for the most part, but they feel more stiff - the older ones are more organic, though at times perhaps a little less solid.

This raises a question - in the time between attempts, have you been continuing to practice the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 as warmups, or have you just kind of left them in the past? It's important to continue doing them in order to keep sharpening your technical skills, as they will get rusty. Many of the exercises from lesson 2 especially will help you work towards getting back those lively, organic feeling forms.

I am however going to mark this lesson as complete, as you are demonstrating a solid understanding on a theoretical level. You do need to work on chipping off the rust though, so definitely get on that.

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

2017-01-06 01:03

Very nice work! Just a couple things to remark upon:

• I noticed in your organic forms with contour ellipses that you're struggling with keeping the ellipses snug within the form, touching the edges. Spending more time ghosting through the drawing motion will help in this regard. I am glad to see though that your ellipses are smooth and confident - though you may want to limit yourself to draw through an ellipse just two times before lifting your pen to keep them from getting too hairy.

• The organic forms with contour curves demonstrate a decent understanding of the concept. Stick more to strictly rounded forms though - I noticed a few geometric cuts in there. Even just sticking to basic sausage forms can really help you focus on the idea of wrapping those curves convincingly around the rounded form.

• Your dissections are well done. I'm seeing a wide variety of textures and a lot of experimentation, which is good. Just one recommendation - avoid crosshatching or hatching altogether. People tend to use it as a bit of a fallback, and as a habit it tends to keep a person from really looking close to see what textures actually exist on a surface.

• Great work with your form intersections

• Aaaand fantastic work with those organic intersections, you can really clearly see how the forms interact with one another, sagging where they're not supported by other forms, and clinging where they are.

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

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

2017-01-06 00:58

Great work! Your rotated boxes are very well done, despite your struggles. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work on that whole sense of working in 3D space. Read the notes, watch the videos - the tip about drawing through your forms on that page is especially important, as it 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)"

2017-01-06 00:55

Not bad! I was actually wondering when you'd post lesson 3, because of how active you've been in the community.

Through the bulk of the lesson, you demonstrate a pretty decent understanding of construction. When it comes to the more organic forms of the plants themselves, you generally understand what you're doing. Early on however, and even at times through the first two thirds of the lesson (here and there), you tend to let your details get ahead of you. Later on however, you reel that back, and focus more on your underlying forms. Definitely the right call.

Another weakness I noticed is that while your organic constructions are pretty solid, your geometric ones (flower pots mostly) tend to fall short. Remember that a cylindrical flower pot is just a cylinder. Maybe a couple cylinders stacked on top of each other. Check out the 250 cylinder challenge page to see how you should go about constructing them. The minor axis is especially important in this regard. Similarly, your boxier pots could also use some work - though I find that more often than not these particular drawings are quite small relative to some of your more successful ones. Keep in mind that drawing larger is generally better, because it gives you more room for your brain to think through spatial problems. Form and construction is after all, nothing if not a spatial problem.

Lastly, I see some hits and misses in terms of texture - as I mentioned before, early on you demonstrate a tendency to let it get ahead of you, adding detail and texture too early before the construction and form is established. While you do show considerable improvement on this front very early on, it still does rear its ugly head here and there, like the starwberries and poinsettia on this page.

Never let your textures dominate the form - a drawing can easily come to a point where the texture and construction fall out of sync, where the form tries to communicate one thing and the texture says something different. The texture should support but be somewhat subservient to the construction.

One last thing - don't use hatching or cross hatching when drawing actual objects with real texture to them. It's very easy to fall into the trap of using hatching as a shorthand, but it usually implies either a fear of blank spaces, or a lack of willingness to look close and really see what textures exist there. And of course, if you want to fill something in with black - actually fill it in solidly. Felt tip pens should be used for this exercise (it looks like you've used ballpoint for some of these, though it's hard to be sure sometimes), as they focus heavily on the all-or-nothing no-varying-faintness application of ink, though even they can make filling things in rather tough. A brush pen can be a timesaver in such situations.

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

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

2017-01-06 00:45

Looking good! You're definitely conveying a much stronger understanding of form and construction here - each drawing feels like it exists in 3D space, and you're not letting any of the more complex detail get ahead of you. Everything seems to be constructed in a way that ensures that each such detail is supported by the forms established beforehand.

Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2017-01-06 00:42

Again, the new work's leagues better than your previous stuff, so that's definitely a very good sign. Your line weights seem to be much more controlled, and while your ellipses could still use some work in terms of precision, they're smooth and evenly shaped. Many of your previous ones tend to be much more stiff.

Anyway, I'll mark this challenge complete as well! Congratulations on completing all three.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-06 00:38

Wow, the new ones are infinitely better. Drawing through your boxes more or less is mandatory - at least to the extent that I'll look at anyone who doesn't with scorn and derision whilst marking their challenge as complete by virtue of "well you did draw 250 boxes... shitty boxes, but boxes all the same". You've redeemed yourself with the last page however - you're demonstrating a much more solid grasp of form here, so I will go ahead and mark the challenge as complete - without the scorn :P

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

2017-01-06 00:35

Excellent work. In general, your drawings demonstrate a very strong underlying understanding of form and construction. In certain cases your actual linework speaks to a slightly more rushed, almost sloppier approach, but the decisions you make when drawing make it clear that in your mind's eye, you understand what you're doing.

That said, I do want to try and warn you against being quite so quick and reflexive with how you make your marks - at least while you're doing these lessons with us. Reason being, if you allow yourself to work sloppy, you may slip further down that slope, and your grasp of space may slowly erode.

Since the constructional method follows a series of successive 'passes' where you start simple and then build up and break down form, always keep this in mind: at the end of each constructional pass, what you have in your drawing should always feel solid and three dimensional.

A good example where this is not really the case is here, especially the pig on the left. The three major masses (cranium, rib cage, pelvis) feel more like flat circles/ellipses than solid three dimensional balls. The ribcage especially is quite weak. Furthermore, we don't grasp how the legs connect to the torso, and because of this they have a tendency to flatten out somewhat.

Additionally, when drawing any mark, make sure it's deliberate and planned. Looking at the lower right rabbit, we can see two sets of contour curves along its torso (specifically around where its ribcage would be), that seem to perhaps fall a little short of properly wrapping around the 3D form. This calls the solidity of the whole form into question. Another point relating to this is the fact that you're doubling up a lot of those contour curves. Stylistically it actually looks quite nice, but as far as this exercise goes, it speaks to you drawing by reflex again.

Now it's very clear that you're quite good at drawing animals, and that you have a very solid grasp of whatever methodology you may have learned beforehand. You even have a reasonably solid grasp of how to draw solid looking 3D objects - but I want to see a few very solid examples that you understand how to construct with clear, deliberate forms and linework before I mark this lesson as complete.

Give me just two more pages, and focus on following through the constructional steps that I demonstrate in demos like this oryx. See how clear I am about how things connect to one another?

You have a tendency to draw more from observation (than form-construction). Your observational skills and even your understanding of 3D space are already well developed, so just show me that you can apply the methodology covered in the lesson and I'll mark this lesson as complete.

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

2017-01-05 20:59

I'd use my wrist more for very intricate texture work. The vast majority of things should be drawn from the shoulder because while precision is important, it's not the priority. You want to ensure that your marks flow smoothly.

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

2017-01-05 14:53

You are most welcome!

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

2017-01-05 14:53

Whether you use your shoulder or wrist is not related to the size of the mark you're drawing, but rather whether or not the mark needs to be very stiffly and precisely controlled, or whether it needs to flow smoothly and evenly. Think of these two points existing on opposite ends of the spectrum.

To create a smooth, even mark, we use our shoulders. To create a stiff, precise mark, we use our wrists. Ellipses fall into the former category, as the most important quality for them is for them to be evenly shaped.

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

2017-01-05 02:02

Very nice work! Your organic forms with contour lines are coming along great especially, you're really demonstrating a growing grasp of how to convey the illusion of rounded, voluminous forms. Your form intersections are well done too, though I do want to recommend that you avoid that sort of faint under drawing there. Don't try to hide your lines - draw everything with confidence to maintain smooth linework, then go back over it to reinforce line weight where you want to clarify overlaps and such. Purposely drawing faint lines right now isn't a good idea as far as your development goes.

Your organic form intersections are looking good too - or at least, that first page. The second one's weaker largely because your forms are very wobbly, so that illusion of form and solidity definitely doesn't come through that well. For things like this, you really need to push your contour lines, though in that case you also drew them quite faintly, and not with a lot of purpose or clear intent.

Lastly, your dissections are looking solid. Lots of careful observation and transference of detail, along with time clearly spent considering how to organize that information in order to avoid overly distracting, high-contrast areas.

Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

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

2017-01-05 01:33

I applaud your decision to start again from scratch. It certainly has been a little while since your previous submissions, so this is definitely a very good idea.

Your linework is looking very confident, so that's good. Your later pages of ellipses are better - mainly the ones where you start drawing through them - but I notice that you keep shifting between drawing through them and not. It's important that you do this for every single ellipse you draw for my lessons, and that you do so with a confident pace. This is how you'll avoid any sort of stiffness or wobbling.

Your plotted perspective boxes are looking good. Your rough perspective boxes are also fairly well done, though I have two recommendations:

• Make sure that your hatching lines, should you choose to add them, stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle. This will keep your work from looking sloppy.

• Go over your completed work for this exercise as described here to help double check your estimation of perspective.

Your rotated boxes are looking quite well done. Your organic perspective boxes do however demonstrate a lot of issues with inconsistent foreshortening, as described here. It's best to keep your foreshortening fairly shallow for exercises like this, rather than exaggerating how quickly they decrease in size with perspective.

I'm glad that you'll be moving onto the 250 box challenge again, as it certainly will help you continue to solidify your understanding of 3D space. Don't forget to draw through those boxes as mentioned in the tips section - though since you've already completed it once, I'm sure you were aware of that.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Also one other thing I wanted to mention - at the moment I'm really swamped at work (pulling lots of overtime to meet deadlines), so my critiques may trickle in slower than usual.

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

2017-01-04 14:07

It all depends on how much time you have in a sitting. Just break them down by exercise, rather than section. Do an exercise to completion, then consider whether you: a) have time to do another, and b) aren't yet too tired to focus properly. Feel free to take plenty of breaks and spread it out over several days - just try not to leave too long a space between sittings (like don't do one a week) otherwise you'll forget what you learned in the previous lesson. Also be sure to reread the description of whatever exercise you're about to do, just before you do it.

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

2017-01-04 04:42

I did want to mention - I totally understand that this is going to be a bit of a blow to your self esteem, so I offer you this. Think of this as good news. While it sets you back a little, the truth of it is that you were merely approaching it incorrectly. It means that whatever fears you've been harbouring in regards to whether or not you're cut out for this were ill founded, and that there is something at the very core of it that you can change to see greater improvement than you have been thus far.

Keep your chin up, and keep this in mind.

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

2017-01-04 01:59

The unfortunate thing here is that your procrastination kinda shot you in the foot. Because it's been so long since you last touched the previous lessons, you've loooong since forgotten a great deal of what you learned there. The thing about them is that you're not ever done with those basic exercises. Having the lesson marked as complete means that you understand the material - not that you've perfected it by any stretch. Therefore it's important that you continue practicing them. My usual recommendation is that you pick two or three exercises from lessons 1 and 2 to do as a 10-15 minute warmup at the beginning of a sitting, and that you do this pretty regularly. Every day, every few days, whatever. But if you try and jump in once in a blue moon, you will forget and you will get rusty. That's what has happened here.

Overall there's a lot of stiffness to your linework, and your forms don't read as being solid. You need to loosen up, remember to draw from your shoulder and push yourself to draw with a more confident pace.

Rather than going into the nitty gritty of your work here, I'm going to ask you to go back to the beginning. Start at lesson 1 again, and read all of the material carefully. Take your time, and present to me your best effort for every exercise. It doesn't need to be perfect - it just needs to be the best you can manage right now.

By going back to the beginning like this, I'll be able to point out where the issues are at their source, rather than doing so here where they're more difficult to identify beyond general broad strokes.

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

2017-01-04 00:57

Even ballpoint pen would be preferable to pencil, but pencil's better than nothing. It's not a question of being fine or not - it's about what ink brings to the table as a learning tool. Though keep in mind that if you want to submit work for me to critique personally (the whole patreon thing), those recommendations become requirements. If you're just submitting to the subreddit for the free community critiques, things are a little more relaxed.

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

2017-01-03 23:42

Each lesson has its own particular recommendations/requirements, listed in its homework section(s). For lessons 1-7 I recommend the use of fineliners/felt tip pens, 0.5mm in thickness. In those homework sections I've got a picture of the two brands I use (staedtler pigment liners and faber castell pitt artist pens), but there's all kinds of brands out there of varying quality and price.

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

2017-01-03 13:31

You are most welcome.

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

2017-01-03 13:30

That's great!

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

2017-01-03 00:45

I'm glad to hear that! I hope your stay with us is a pleasant one :)

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

2017-01-03 00:30

And a happy new year to you too!

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

2017-01-03 00:21

Pretty nice work! Your lines and ellipses are looking confident and smooth, which is definitely good to see. Your boxes are coming along well, though I have a few points to remark upon:

• For your rough perspective boxes, watch the angle of your horizontals and verticals relative to the horizon line. Horizontals should run parallel to the horizon, verticals should run perpendicular to it. Yours are off by a slight margin here and there, though enough to catch my eye. There's more information on this here

• Also for the rough perspective boxes, don't forget to double check your work as described here.

Your rotated boxes are looking good, and your organic perspective boxes do have plenty of room for improvement, but that's expected. Both of these exercises were included here to get you familiar with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, not so much with the expectation of your nailing both of them.

As far as the notes I included in this lesson, I did catch some overly dramatic foreshortening in your organic perspective boxes, so watch out for that.

I'll be marking your lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice with freely rotating boxes in 3D space. 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 particularly important, and should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-02 22:47

It's not a bad idea. It certainly will help with your form intersections, but there's no reason not to tackle the other exercises in lesson 2 at the same time. Variety can help decrease the tedium.

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

2017-01-02 22:43

I'm glad to help - and those who contribute to this subreddit for no benefit to themselves are absolutely the true heroes here.

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

2017-01-02 22:43

Here's to hoping it keeps getting better.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2017-01-02 21:06

Excellent work! Each one of these boxes demonstrates patience, forethought and clear consideration. Your use of line weight establishes clear cohesion within each form (though it's a bit heavy - subtlety is your friend!) and taking the time to draw through each form definitely helped you to grasp how each one sits in 3D space.

Keep up the excellent work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2017-01-02 21:03

Don't be too hard on yourself - overall your work is looking pretty solid, and there is a fundamental difference between the previous lessons and this one. Before this point, we were dealing with largely organic forms - these tend to give us a lot more leeway, allow us to be much more approximate and vague with our decision making with very little punishment one way or the other. When it comes to geometric forms, things tend to become much more unforgiving.

In the last lesson, we had a bit of a tango with your use of construction. You were falling back quite a bit on your strong observational skills, and relying less on construction - this lesson is ultimately why I've been gradually shoehorning you (and everyone else) into thinking more about how all the forms fit together, and how to manipulate those forms in 3D space. This lesson is all construction.

Now as for your actual drawings, like I said, you did a pretty good job across the board. The proportion studies on the side there definitely helped a lot, and your forms generally feel pretty sturdy and believable. There are some places where your initial boxes were a bit off and that offset the whole drawing (for example, your drawers) but fundamentally that's not a bad problem to have. While it will impact things in a big way, solving it is just a matter of practicing your boxes more. Problems tend to be scarier when it's hard to pinpoint what they actually are.

Overall however your boxes are actually pretty well handled. The next step from there I'd say is a matter of keeping things snug within those boxes. For example, you've got this drawing of a radio (same page as the weird foldy stool thing). The ratio itself, while existing in the box, has some rounded corners. The whole construction however remains very snug within the box, and you round off those corners as a last detail. It's a pretty easy example when it comes to things remaining snug.

Going down to your soap dispenser on the third last page, while the form actually holds its own pretty well, the shape is somewhat off as it is not really all that snug within the form. From the looks of it, you may have been trying to nail a rather awkward object (it looks like the side closer to us is meant to be wider than the end farther to us - I'm not sure if that's intentional or if it was a mistake, but I'll assume the former for now). With a tricky thing like this, it becomes very important to establish some kind of axis or plane across which the whole form is mirrored. Looking at your drawing, it seems you neglected to establish the center through the middle of the base plane, robbing you of a fairly important reference point. As a result, you eyeballed it more, causing the overall form to become less snug within that enclosing box.

As you move forwards, try and think about how you might cut these forms up - think about where and how these forms are symmetrical and use that to your advantage. Also, always push yourself to try and keep things snug in their boxes. If something's floating arbitrarily within another larger form, that's a sign that you probably skipped a step.

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

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

2017-01-02 20:50

Very nice work! Your lines are looking good, though I did catch your longer ghosted lines arcing a little bit. This isn't an uncommon issue - here's a way you can try correcting it. Overall though it is perfectly normal for longer lines to give you more trouble. This will improve with practice.

Your ellipses are generally looking good as well, especially the ellipses in tables. They're smooth and quite even, and you're doing a good job of keeping your lines tight whilst drawing through them a couple times.

Your plotted perspective boxes are very solid. Your rough perspective boxes are looking good as well, and I'm glad to see that you're applying the double-checking method from the self critique resources. Just one thing - when applying hatching lines as shading, make sure that you're not half-assing it. This is an optional detail you chose to add, but it will still impact the overall presentation of an image if you aren't careful with it. Take your time, make sure your lines are consistent, parallel and stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely to give you the chance to get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating forms freely in 3D space. It is not something that is easy, and I don't expect anyone to be nailing either of these exercises this early on. It's mainly there so that when we get into more in-depth explanations on how to tackle arbitrarily rotated boxes, you'll understand it in context because you'll have already dealt with those challenges before.

That said, you did a pretty solid job with your rotated boxes, so keep it up. Your organic perspective boxes do need work, but we'll deal with that soon enough.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work with those freely rotated boxes. 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 particularly important, and it should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2017-01-02 20:38

Happy new year to you too. In general you're doing a pretty solid job. Your constructions employ many of the concepts I've covered in the lesson to great effect, and the results feel quite solid. You've even done a pretty fantastic job with that camera at the end, despite its undoubtedly challenging nature. Everyone struggles with those lenses. Admittedly your cast shadow shapes are pretty terrible :P It looks like you got a bit too stressed out with it. There's really no need to try and be quite so accurate - even if the shape doesn't match up that closely to the form, it's really just meant to be something symbolic to help ground the overall form. Personally, even if my object's got lots of curves on it, I almost always go for straight lines.

There are certainly other areas that could use improvement, but overall you're moving in the right direction. More than anything, it's a matter of choosing which concepts to apply where - for example, for your watch drawing, I think the straps may have been better off treated as a more organic, ribbon-like form (with some thickness), rather than trying to fit it all into a box. Keep in mind that just because this lesson is about drawing more geometric forms doesn't mean that everything you encounter will fall into that category. Ultimately all of these lessons are covering a variety of tools you can use, and it will be up to you to choose which ones suit a given task best.

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

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

2017-01-02 20:26

Just for the record, I mentioned in my last critique that you posted three submissions in a very short period of time. Your fourth comes only a few days later. You need to slow down and for my sake, give some thought to what is fair for the compensation you are giving me in return.

Anyway, moving onto your homework. Your leaf forms are looking good - you seem to be fairly comfortable with having them twist and turn through space, whilst maintaining the focus on the fact that they're flat, like the arrows/ribbons in lesson 2.

Your first page of stems (or half page as the case may be) were quite sloppy, though you rein that in on the second.

Your drawings from there onwards do tend towards the sloppy side of things, however. You're very focused on the final result, the idea of producing a pretty drawing with shading and texture and all that stuff, but when you actually try and tackle texture, 90% of your attempts involve simple hatching. The thing about hatching is that it's what people tend to use when they don't actually know what kind of texture exists on a particular surface - it's an easy way to fill in a space without actually taking the time to study and observe what you're drawing, to identify the bumps and scratches and whatnot that exist there. When it comes to texture, the greatest thing you're missing is patience - patience to observe your reference carefully, and the patience to actually apply your marks thoughtfully rather than relying on randomness.

Looking back on your textures in lesson 2, you had patience then - you were careful, and while you used a lot of cross hatching there (probably would have been better just to fill those areas in with solid black to reduce the unnecessary contrast that resulted from the crosshatching). Here you're mostly just messy and sloppy.

As far as you degree of patience goes, it does improve somewhat as you move through, but I want you to think more about texture and not about lighting/shading. You'll notice that I didn't actually teach anything in regards to shading, and this is on purpose. More often than not, students will use shading as a crutch to demonstrate form, rather than relying on the construction and silhouette to do so. Silhouette and contour lines are often enough to convey the three dimensionality of a form, so I want you to rely on those instead of worrying about any sort of lighting information. The only place you should be thinking about lighting is when tackling texture - and only because texture itself is the result of the shadows cast by the small forms that exist along the surface of an object.

On another note, whenever you have an object cut off the side of a page, you tend to leave the lines open - like the two sides of a flower pot extending downwards and just stopping. You should always cap forms off, otherwise the form will flatten out completely and cease to read as a three dimensional object. In the case of a flower pot, you'd draw an ellipse as its base, effectively constructing a cylinder of arbitrary length.

Aside from that, your constructions are generally well done, but the way you're applying shading/lighting to everything bothers me a little. From the looks of it (it's always hard to be sure with these things), you're drawing with what appears to be a ballpoint pen - this lesson, and all lessons from 3-6 require a fineliner/felt tip pen. The thing about these tools is that they do not easily allow you to create gradients by varying the amount of pressure you use. In this way, ballpoint pens are much like permanent pencils.

By using a felt tip pen, you're forced to make decisions - both in construction and in texturing - and it does not allow you to waste lines so easily. Before I mark this lesson as complete, I want you to do four more pages with the proper tools. Look at my demonstrations once again. Though the demonstrations are done with digital media, the brush I use is specifically tailored to replicate that kind of unforgiving nature of a felt tip pen.