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

2016-12-18 21:09

Excellent work! Your lines are looking straight and smooth, and your ellipses are evenly shaped and every confident. Your boxes are also well done - you've clearly put a lot of time into reading (and perhaps rereading) my instructions, so you seem to have hit all the important points head on. I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking approach to the rough perspective boxes.

One thing I do want to mention is that for the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises, my plan here is largely to throw students into the deep end of the pool before teaching them how to swim - this is so they can both demonstrate what they already know, and also so they can get accustomed to the challenges they face when trying to rotate boxes freely in 3D space. This way when I do actually explain certain concepts, they can understand them more easily by relating them back to their recent experiences.

So basically, I don't expect students to be able to do particularly well at these two exercises just yet - but that said, you did a fantastic job with the rotated boxes exercise, and are doing pretty well at the organic perspective boxes as well.

For the organic perspective boxes, you're doing better than I would have expected, but there is still room for improvement. 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 before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each of these forms sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-12-18 20:08

Pretty good work. Your ellipses are definitely better here than they are in the plants exercise (as you seem to be drawing through them more consistently), though there's still a bit of stiffness that you'll have to work through. Your general cylinder constructions are solid. You do have time to work on that ellipse inside of a plane thing, as it doesn't become terribly important until lesson 6, but here's another video on the topic that may help.

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

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

2016-12-18 20:05

Pretty nice work. There are some issues that I'll mention, but you're moving in the right direction. Your form intersections look particularly nice - the forms have a sense of solidity to them.

Here's a few areas that can be improved upon:

• For your organic forms with contour ellipses, I noticed that many of them focused more on drawing the ellipses quite faintly (somehow, I'm not really sure how you managed to draw them so faintly with pen) - avoid this in the future. Drawing faintly tends to distract one from the mark they're actually putting down, as they tend to be more focused on making as little of a footprint as possible. We're not here to draw pretty things, we're here to practice specific exercises that develop certain skills.

• For your organic forms with contour curves, most of the time your curves aren't quite wrapping properly around the rounded form. They need to accelerate in their curvature and hook back around as they reach the edge to give the sense that they continue on along the other side. I talk about this more in these notes. Try to incorporate the "overshooting" approach I mention there, and give the video linked there a watch as well. You actually do a somewhat better job with these, though that's mostly because the contour ellipses give you that wrapping curvature as a part of their basic shape. That's why I stress focusing heavily on the contour ellipses during that first section, so you get a sense for how they turn in space.

• Your dissections have got a lot of good starting points, as far as experimenting with different kinds of textures goes. Keep up the good work there. Just one thing I want to point out - this exercise is meant to start off as regular organic forms with contour curves, meaning that you don't want to be thinking about the fact that you'll be covering them with texture afterwards. The first step should be entirely about constructing a form that feels solid and three dimensional, with rounded surfaces. Then you make your dissection cuts and start adding the texture. In yours, it's very clear that you went in thinking about the dissection part of it right from the beginning, which resulted in forms that didn't always feel terribly complete and solid.

• Just a couple things about the form intersections. Firstly, I noticed that you didn't use the minor axes stuff that you learned from the cylinder challenge. This helps a lot with alignment, so you should continue to apply it in the future. The other thing is that in the instructions, I said that you should avoid overly stretched/long forms (long boxes, long tubes, etc.) to keep the exercise within simpler bounds and avoid perspective distortion becoming another challenge that you need to worry about. You seem to have missed this, so please read the instructions a couple times before starting a given exercise - they're very dense, so it's not uncommon for someone to only digest part of them during their first readthrough.

• Decent work with the organic intersections - just one little thing. Try to stick with simpler sausage forms in the future, avoiding any sort of strange swelling near the ends, or tapering through the midsection. You'll notice this as a theme - if you keep the components of an exercise fairly simple, it becomes much easier to focus on the meat of the exercise and benefit more from it.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one more page of organic forms with contour ellipses, and one more page of organic forms with contour curves.

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

2016-12-18 19:48

I think you're demonstrating a lot of improvement here. A lot of your drawings feel quite solid and well constructed, and while there are issues here and there, you push through them confidently and your results benefit from that tenacity.

All of this stuff definitely is tricky, so I don't expect to see any perfect drawings - even with your mouse drawing, you definitely made a really solid attempt at applying that cross-section approach. The resulting mouse is a little assymetrical, but overall I'm quite pleased with your results. For future reference, you did try to cram that mouse and all of those lines into a pretty small space - drawing larger (maybe putting the orthographics on a separate page) will give you more room to think through your spatial problems, and will also diminish the clutter resulting from all of the lines.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson. You're right that rulers weren't allowed for this lesson, but they are allowed in the next one so feel free to take advantage of that (although you did a pretty good job with your use of the ghosting method here).

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

2016-12-18 19:45

There definitely is a lot of the stiffness you mentioned, but it's not coming from you drawing from your shoulder, so knock that out of your mind. We naturally have a tendency to point at the things that we're not used to yet as the culprit, ultimately hiding the actual reason.

Looking at your approach, when you draw your ellipses you seem to be slowing down, rather than pushing through with a confident pace. This isn't always the case, but I am seeing hints of it across the board. Additionally, you seem to try to draw most of your ellipses in one go rather than drawing through them as instructed in the past. These two points go hand in hand - you're meant to apply the ghosting method to each ellipse, execute with a confident stroke quick enough to avoid any course-correction from your brain as you draw, and then use drawing through to tighten things up.

When doing your tubes/branches/stems/whatever they're called, the curving lines that connect the ellipses are quite stiff as well - it looks like you're drawing them more from your wrist (perhaps without realizing it), and/or are not applying the ghosting method correctly. Because of the stiffness, they don't line up correctly, leading to the lines looking rather chicken-scratchy rather than all the segments flowing smoothly together. The thing about drawing from your shoulder is that when done correctly, it doesn't allow for precise changes in direction, and focuses more on things flowing in a more consistent manner. Wobbling is, by definition, a lot of changes in direction within a small space.

The other thing I wanted to point out was that the couple drawings where you added flower pots - you should have drawn through those flower pots, dealing with each one as a separate cylinder, constructing it all the way through. Because you didn't, they don't feel solid at all.

I'd like you to do 4 more pages of plant drawings - focus on the use of your shoulder, the ghosting method and drawing through your ellipses. Additionally, spend all your time on the construction phase and don't add any texture.

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

2016-12-17 21:15

Excellent work! It certainly makes my job easier. Your lines are straight and smooth, your ellipses are evenly shaped and confidently executed, and your boxes are the result of clear forethought, planning, and following my instructions to the letter. All things I love to see.

The last two exercises - rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes - were my attempt at throwing children into the deep end of the pool before teaching them much about swimming, so they'd get some water in their lungs. You know, to make them strong. Or possibly kill them. This way when I get into explaining the concepts, they're more familiar with the context and the challenges involved, and therefore are more likely to understand.

That said, you did a really solid job with the rotated boxes, and did pretty well at the organic perspective boxes. With the latter, there are some inconsistencies, so you should probably move onto the 250 box challenge, but I won't make it a firm requirement as you're already doing pretty well. Just make sure you at least read through all of the notes on that page (especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space), and do a few to make sure the concepts are clear.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete so feel free to move onto lesson 2 when you feel you're ready!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-12-17 21:06

You're progressing just fine - lining up your ellipses correctly takes a great deal of practice, and this is a big step towards being able to do it more consistently. Your cylinders were are improving a fair bit, and you seem to clearly grasp the concepts and have identified the areas where you've made mistakes.

The only thing I want to point out is that you have a tendency of doubling up the straight lines along the side of the cylinders - I'm not sure if this is an attempt to add line weight or if out of that frustration, you're falling back into a habit of immediately reinforcing your marks as a reflex. Make sure each mark you put down is preplanned and considered.

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

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

2016-12-16 13:48

Well, I'm glad you were able to come to a decision. Best of luck! - and remember, the ink thing is a restriction for lessons 1-7, but 8 onwards (which will be rewritten starting in the next couple weeks) are much more lax in their requirements.

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

2016-12-15 20:10

To be entirely clear, it wasn't a recommendation - it was an instruction, and my wording was explicit to that end.

Anyway, your arrows are well done. Your organic forms with contour ellipses and contour curves are also done well - there's room for improvement, but generally you're doing a good job of wrapping your ellipses around the rounded forms and conveying a sense of volume.

Your dissections were really well executed. You demonstrated a lot of patience and care, and I'm glad to see the wide variety of textures you experimented with.

Your form intersections aren't terrible, but they're a bit sparse (you should be filling your pages) and the line quality's really scratchy. It seems you used some chicken scratching to add extra line weight. NEEEEVER use chicken scratching, ever. Always ghost your lines and apply them in a single stroke.

Additionally, you could definitely use more practice.. you know, drawing boxes. As one would imagine. 'Cause that's what I said before. |:

Seriously though, going through the 250 box challenge in its entirety will help you:

• Get a better handle on near/far plane size relationships (which isn't terrible right now, but that big box on the middle of the second page of form intersections isn't great

• Will give you the opportunity to practice ghosting your lines a lot more, hopefully putting that chicken scratching thing to bed once and for all.

Your organic intersections are alright. Nothing remarkable there, but you are demonstrating an understanding of the concepts, so all there is left on that front is more practice playing with form and volume.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but keep in mind that if you do things out of the order that I instruct in the future, I will just ask you to redo the lesson. Tough love and all that.

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

2016-12-14 21:02

Everything's looking really sharp so far - you're taking your time with everything, planning your lines and executing with confident strokes. There is one thing I'd like to mention though - you should be submitting an entire lesson's worth of homework together, rather than submitting them part by part (I mention this in the homework section). That's pretty much why this critique's pretty sparse - there's little to be said about lines, aside form the fact that you're doing them well.

As for your questions:

• My biggest concern with lined paper is that for many people, it tends to contribute to sloppiness. Generally when students used lined paper, it's because they're in that mindset of grabbing whatever they have on hand, doing it in a rush, etc. It's less about the lined paper itself, but rather the mindset that can lead to its use. I don't see this from you at all, as your work has plenty of signs of being well thought out, but generally I would say that using blank paper is ideal. Even printer paper would be perfectly fine.

• It's not really about quantity, but it is about building up a certain degree of comfort and building muscle memory. It can be difficult to tell when you're actually comfortable, but I'd still be wary of suggesting an actual maximum. Whatever you're doing now is working for you, so stick with that.

Keep up the good work, and I look forward to seeing the rest of your work for this lesson.

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

2016-12-14 17:06

required perfectionism of using an unforgiving pen

It's really the opposite of this. People start like this when working in ink, stressing over making everything correct like each drawing they do must be the perfect embodiment of skill, but most will reach a breaking point. One of the big reasons I push ink is so that eventually students are forced to come face to face with the fact that perfectionism doesn't work. That the final drawing that comes out is not going to always be pretty, and that there's a lot of garbage that's going to come out of it.

It's the idea that the time you're putting in is not to make pretty pictures, but rather what you get out of that investment is the practice and training itself.

I think you've been riding right at that breaking point for a long time now, but you haven't allowed yourself to break. Instead you've revelled in the frustration of every single drawing falling short of your expectations, and it's quite possibly driving you mad. It's not healthy to be so ensconced in all of this negativity, covering your pages in self-critical scribbles, and it certainly isn't helping you.

Maybe you should take a break. I'm not saying give up, but I'm saying that maybe you should give your mind the time and room to recover a little, so that when you do come back to this stuff, you can look at it from a fresh perspective rather than that of someone who's been hammered day in and day out, coming back every day for more. Do you ever draw just for the sake of drawing? Do you doodle, or illustrate, or do whatever you might see yourself attempting once you've achieved the skills you're after? Maybe you should spend some time doing that for a spell. Remind yourself why you're going through this.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-12-14 05:57

Let me know if/when you get that sorted. Also, I've heard stories that fixing payment problems would result in you getting charged for all the missed months (i donno if this is true or not), so to be safe, you should cancel and repledge. Wouldn't want you to be hit by a $35 charge.

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

2016-12-14 05:37

It's true, they won't meet unless they're 100% accurate, and as you said, we are not computers and therefore our boxes will not be 100% accurate. If you look at my demos, you probably wouldn't be able to find a single box that is perfect.

As I mentioned in the video, an important skill to learn is how to compensate for those mistakes as they start to accumulate, so you can keep them under control. In the case of this back corner, it's a bit like jugging. You've got three lines to draw, but if you draw them each one at a time, you'll end up with what you have there - three different points of intersection, instead of just one, because the box already has some errors by the time you start on these three lines, and because each line will probably have its own slight errors. If the box was perfect up to that point, and you were able to draw the lines perfectly, then they'd match up just right - but again, we're only human.

So we're juggling these three lines - we're trying to visualize all three of them so that we can get them all to be close enough within our given parameters (that is, each line must fall within the convergence of its own set of parallel lines towards their own VP off in the distance), while ensuring that they all converge at the same back corner.

Thinking about it strategically, we can lay out these parameters and consider which ones have the highest priority. A deviation in convergence to a far-off vanishing point affords some leeway. On the other hand, we can see the convergence at the back corner right in front of us, so this cannot be sacrificed.

Now, you COULD try to draw the three lines while juggling this mental balancing act, but it's a lot to do all at once. Here's an easier solution - work backwards from your highest priority. Draw the point where you feel the corner should go. Just having a point there will anchor your visualization, allowing you to roughly judge whether you feel that the lines going from the other corners to that point will feel okay-ish (in terms of convergence with the far-off VPs). If you think it's a little off, then just place another point - points are low cost, they don't have much of a footprint, so that kind of adjustment is nothing. Once you're comfortable with the position of that point, it just becomes a matter of ghosting your lines from the corners.

You mentioned your opinion on the usefulness of drawing these boxes when I assigned the extra work. I will explain to you their value, but before I do so, I do want to point out that you're here because you trust my judgment. You've drawn these countless pages over the past year, and you continue to because - I can only assume - you still see value in what I have to teach you. Or at least, I hope that's why.

You're absolutely welcome to not trust me, of course. But doing both simultaneously is extremely unwise. You end up putting in the work, but without trusting that what you're doing is worth while, you can't possibly put in all the effort you have to offer. And if you can't put in your full effort, then you can't reap the full rewards of the time you're investing. Of course, then you'll come back and point out that the boxes didn't help, and your trust will be further eroded, contributing to the vicious cycle and giving me no clear way to dig you out of your rut.

Muddiness comes up a lot in terms of how I teach. I teach people to work with straight lines instead of curves, and to start with boxes before rounding off those edges - because curves are indistinct, they're muddy approximations of a more solid form. I team people to draw from a single pivot in their arm (usually the shoulder), not to combine shoulder and elbow as some people try to do - because it's muddy, and this leads to a variance in how much they rely on either given pivot, leading them to never really be fully aware of what their arm is doing. And when students follow the my particular lessons, or my critiques - I always encourage them to focus entirely on the instructions as they are written, and to temporarily set aside what they think they already know. After all, if they mix what I explain with other material before being able to see what I have to offer in its entirety, they won't understand the little things I insist upon, and therefore won't be able to judge their value.

So, I will always insist that students of anything assess their choices first, but once they dive in, to do so completely. There will always be a point at the end for reflection, to decide whether or not I utterly wasted your time. If you try to do that throughout the process, I cannot accept responsibility for the result.

So, as I promised, here's the specific benefits to practicing these boxes:

• You'll develop your ability to draw lines that run towards the same far-off vanishing point more accurately, given repeated practice and reflection thereafter to consider where your angles were off. Long term, this will diminish those accumulating mistakes, which will relieve a lot of pressure on your overall drawing. As a side note, you'll notice that in my video I demonstrate running those lines farther than the corners of the box when drawing them in colour - this is to help make that convergence clearer, for the sake of making the practice more valuable in this area. You don't seem to be doing this in yours.

• Dealing with those mistakes is just another skill that is honed through having to face those problems repeatedly. Understanding it, or anything else (such as how you know how to subdivide boxes) on a theoretical level is valuable, but it is the repeated application of those principles that will have the greatest impact. You want to be able to hold a much stronger sense of the box and the lines it's composed of in your head, and this isn't something most people start off with. Pushing your brain through these spatial challenges over and over is what will train the ability to juggle multiple lines in space, in your mind. For now, you'll rely on laying down points as I explained earlier to help anchor your brain to the features of the box you're drawing, as you figure out where and how to compensate for the accumulating errors, but this is what will lead to this increased mental flexibility.

Now it's late - I need to go salvage the hours I've got left before I have to get up for work. I hope this clarifies at least to some extent why I'm so neurotically obsessed with boxes. If ultimately you've decided that my methodology does not suit you anymore, I'll take no offense. It's always best to walk the route you're able to follow with full confidence, and I don't want you to feel as though you're wasting your time. That said, were I to tell you to draw a thousand boxes, I could do so without the slightest bit of guilt, because I genuinely know it to be an extremely valuable exercise (as long as you put your all into it).

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

2016-12-14 05:36

It's true, they won't meet unless they're 100% accurate, and as you said, we are not computers and therefore our boxes will not be 100% accurate. If you look at my demos, you probably wouldn't be able to find a single box that is perfect.

As I mentioned in the video, an important skill to learn is how to compensate for those mistakes as they start to accumulate, so you can keep them under control. In the case of this back corner, it's a bit like jugging. You've got three lines to draw, but if you draw them each one at a time, you'll end up with what you have there - three different points of intersection, instead of just one, because the box already has some errors by the time you start on these three lines, and because each line will probably have its own slight errors. If the box was perfect up to that point, and you were able to draw the lines perfectly, then they'd match up just right - but again, we're only human.

So we're juggling these three lines - we're trying to visualize all three of them so that we can get them all to be close enough within our given parameters (that is, each line must fall within the convergence of its own set of parallel lines towards their own VP off in the distance), while ensuring that they all converge at the same back corner.

Thinking about it strategically, we can lay out these parameters and consider which ones have the highest priority. A deviation in convergence to a far-off vanishing point affords some leeway. On the other hand, we can see the convergence at the back corner right in front of us, so this cannot be sacrificed.

Now, you COULD try to draw the three lines while juggling this mental balancing act, but it's a lot to do all at once. Here's an easier solution - work backwards from your highest priority. Draw the point where you feel the corner should go. Just having a point there will anchor your visualization, allowing you to roughly judge whether you feel that the lines going from the other corners to that point will feel okay-ish (in terms of convergence with the far-off VPs). If you think it's a little off, then just place another point - points are low cost, they don't have much of a footprint, so that kind of adjustment is nothing. Once you're comfortable with the position of that point, it just becomes a matter of ghosting your lines from the corners.

You mentioned your opinion on the usefulness of drawing these boxes when I assigned the extra work. I will explain to you their value, but before I do so, I do want to point out that you're here because you trust my judgment. You've drawn these countless pages over the past year, and you continue to because - I can only assume - you still see value in what I have to teach you. Or at least, I hope that's why.

You're absolutely welcome to not trust me, of course. But doing both simultaneously is extremely unwise. You end up putting in the work, but without trusting that what you're doing is worth while, you can't possibly put in all the effort you have to offer. And if you can't put in your full effort, then you can't reap the full rewards of the time you're investing. Of course, then you'll come back and point out that the boxes didn't help, and your trust will be further eroded, contributing to the vicious cycle and giving me no clear way to dig you out of your rut.

Muddiness comes up a lot in terms of how I teach. I teach people to work with straight lines instead of curves, and to start with boxes before rounding off those edges - because curves are indistinct, they're muddy approximations of a more solid form. I team people to draw from a single pivot in their arm (usually the shoulder), not to combine shoulder and elbow as some people try to do - because it's muddy, and this leads to a variance in how much they rely on either given pivot, leading them to never really be fully aware of what their arm is doing. And when students follow the my particular lessons, or my critiques - I always encourage them to focus entirely on the instructions as they are written, and to temporarily set aside what they think they already know. After all, if they mix what I explain with other material before being able to see what I have to offer in its entirety, they won't understand the little things I insist upon, and therefore won't be able to judge their value.

So, I will always insist that students of anything assess their choices first, but once they dive in, to do so completely. There will always be a point at the end for reflection, to decide whether or not I utterly wasted your time. If you try to do that throughout the process, I cannot accept responsibility for the result.

So, as I promised, here's the specific benefits to practicing these boxes:

• You'll develop your ability to draw lines that run towards the same far-off vanishing point more accurately, given repeated practice and reflection thereafter to consider where your angles were off. Long term, this will diminish those accumulating mistakes, which will relieve a lot of pressure on your overall drawing. As a side note, you'll notice that in my video I demonstrate running those lines farther than the corners of the box when drawing them in colour - this is to help make that convergence clearer, for the sake of making the practice more valuable in this area. You don't seem to be doing this in yours.

• Dealing with those mistakes is just another skill that is honed through having to face those problems repeatedly. Understanding it, or anything else (such as how you know how to subdivide boxes) on a theoretical level is valuable, but it is the repeated application of those principles that will have the greatest impact. You want to be able to hold a much stronger sense of the box and the lines it's composed of in your head, and this isn't something most people start off with. Pushing your brain through these spatial challenges over and over is what will train the ability to juggle multiple lines in space, in your mind. For now, you'll rely on laying down points as I explained earlier to help anchor your brain to the features of the box you're drawing, as you figure out where and how to compensate for the accumulating errors, but this is what will lead to this increased mental flexibility.

Now it's late - I need to go salvage the hours I've got left before I have to get up for work. I hope this clarifies at least to some extent why I'm so neurotically obsessed with boxes. If ultimately you've decided that my methodology does not suit you anymore, I'll take no offense. It's always best to walk the route you're able to follow with full confidence, and I don't want you to feel as though you're wasting your time. That said, were I to tell you to draw a thousand boxes, I could do so without the slightest bit of guilt, because I genuinely know it to be an extremely valuable exercise (as long as you put your all into it).

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

2016-12-14 01:07

Eaaase up on your neuroses there - you did some excellent work here. Mistakes are inevitable, there's absolutely no reason to scrap a page just because you messed something up, thinking that way will drive you crazy. What you've got to always remember is that the point here is not to present your overlord with a pristine stack of homework. I fully expect to see mistakes all over, because mistakes are what cause us to grow. Instead of seeing the blunders as things to hide or replace, consider them to be another mark of the progress you're making - they're badges of honour.

Anyway, like I said - you did great. Your arrows flow nicely through 3D space. Your organic forms with contour curves show me that you understand how these forms exist in 3D space not just on a conscious level, but that you're buying into this illusion of form on a more subconscious, instinctual level - that you're fooling yourself. That's what we're after here.

Your dissections are solid - some of the early ones are a bit simplistic and cartoony, while others show a nice grasp of balancing detail with keeping the amount of visual noise down. I especially like the ones with the little fleshy masses bunched up on the surface (bottom left of the first page of dissections), you've shown how you understand the forms of even those little bits.

Your form intersections are very well executed - the network of forms are cohesive and feel tangible, and your use of line weight is very confident. Same goes for your organic intersections, I can tell you understand not only how the sausage forms exist in 3D space, but also how they interact with one another, relying on each other for support, and sagging where there's nothing to hold them up.

You've done a great job. Consider this lesson complete, and feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2016-12-14 01:00

Much, much better! I have yet to be wrong when insisting that a student can do far better than what they've displayed. Your rotated boxes are especially well done. The only thing I want to remind you is that you should double check your rough perspective box work as described here. Basically, since the exercise is all about estimation, it's inevitable that you will make mistakes. We grow not by avoiding mistakes in the first place, but by reflecting upon them so we know what to compensate for the next time.

I'll be marking the lesson as complete - keep in mind that as you move forwards, you should continue keeping up with these exercises. Every day you sit down to draw, start off by picking two or three exercises from this set (and eventually the exercises from lesson 2 once we get to them) and do them for 10-15 minutes before moving onto that day's work. This will ensure that you keep sharpening your technical skills, as these exercises are really intended to be done over a long period of time.

So next you should move onto the 250 box challenge. As I mentioned before, be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. Keep up the good work!

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

2016-12-14 00:54

Well done! There's a fair bit of stumbling and struggling through the beginning, but even with some of the proportions fall out of whack (like this car), there's a clear sense of solidity and awareness of the forms and how they exist in 3D space. Rather than looking like a failed drawing, it looks like a failed car - like you drew some wacky proportioned car with belt wheels and did so faithfully.

Of course, things definitely get better. Your batmobile is excellent, as is your TIE Interceptor. In your new set, I love this one. It's clear and solid and demonstrates a really solid ability to carve and turn 3D form. And this bike! I'm not sure what design you were following, but it looks fabulous. In general you're doing extremely well. The far at the end's got some weird stretching going along on the side, so something's up there - though admittedly, I struggled a lot with that myself.

Keep up the great work, and congratulations on completing the dynamic sketching material (and in under 4 months!). As I've mentioned to a few others, if you plan to move onto the figure drawing material, hold off a little bit, as I'm hoping to release some new rewrites of those lessons later this month when I get some time off from work.

Oh, as for one of the questions that I noticed - this is how you'd tackle creating three equal sections.

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

2016-12-14 00:38

Pretty nice work! You've got some solid examples of how to approach construction, building up your basic forms. There is room for improvement, but you're generally heading in the right direction.

One thing that jumped out at me immediately was the timidity with which you approached drawing your cast shadow shapes. The shadows themselves aren't particularly significant, but the way the lines were executed (lots of gaps, etc.) made me at least want to bring it up. Try to be more deliberate and preplanned with everything you draw - the rest of your linework was done well, so make sure it carries over into everything.

There were a couple drawings I really liked - the fly being one (simple, but really solid construction), and the one between the ant and the wasp. The latter demonstrated a growing sensibility as far as texture goes - the little deliberate marks along the legs were a very nice touch, and the conscious decision to leave the abdomen more bare was a good one, compositionally.

In general you're doing well, so keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-12-13 21:55

Despite your struggles, it looks to me like you've done a pretty solid job with these cylinders, so good work there. You are getting a little lax with drawing through your ellipses though, resulting in ellipses that are a little bit stiff at times. That said, it doesn't look like your pledges on patreon have gone through since April, so you're technically no longer eligible for critiques. I'll still mark this challenge as complete, but that's definitely something to be aware of moving forwards.

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawing Boxes: Getting More Advanced. This exercise should help those of you who want a slightly more rigorous way to develop your sense of 3D space."

2016-12-13 21:46

Haha, wow, measuring with two rulers seems a bit.. encumbering. I'm glad that you're moving away form that!

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

2016-12-13 02:21

There are innumerable paths to achieving a career in the entertainment industry. Some involve a four year college program, and a lot of student debt. Others involve online education from places like schoolism or CGMA. Others involve a ridiculous amount of self-training. It's a spectrum.

Far towards the art school side, you're somewhat forced to attend classes, to complete assignments, and people with very little personal drive can get by. Conversely, I've seen plenty of people who took that route who didn't do much more than that, and ended up with very few employable skills as far as drawing/illustrating/animating/whatever.

On the other end, there's no end to the resources on the internet that can be acquired for free, both legally and through places like cgpeers. That said, a person can have all of the material in the world thrown at them, but if they don't have oodles of motivation and drive to actually dive into it and stick through the pain of continuous struggling and failure, it's hardly surprising when they have little to show for it. Not to mention the sheer amount of time investment it requires.

Learning any employable skill is always going to require passion, time and money - the route you take will determine the proportion in which these are required, but this is a hard fact. You say you haven't the time, nor the money - the only thing I can say to that is that people tend to be able to make time, when there's something they really want to achieve. To be honest though, college is a bitch of a time. It's not so much how busy one gets, it's more the unpredictability of one's schedule. I didn't start aiming for a career in the entertainment industry until I was working full time - my evenings and weekends were my own, so I chose to commit those to self-training during the year prior to my stint in southern california (had to save up for that venture, after all).

Of course, drawabox is in no way going to take you from zero to a professional. It's just a starting point, both in terms of developing the technical and observational skills, as well as putting you through the ringer of loads of tedious (but beneficial) work, developing patience, and getting comfortable with the inevitability of constant failure. I'm often criticized for having made it too difficult for people to get into, but while there's plenty of hobbyists that use it, my target audience is still people like you who want to try for something more. I think that if you can get through drawabox properly, you're probably in a better position to digest a lot of the other free material out there. That said, it's not a guarantee - I'm just another student after all, and all I have to go off is my own limited understanding of how people tend to learn.

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

2016-12-13 01:37

Haha, don't worry - I totally understand that sense of not trusting yourself, and for a beginner it's a pretty valuable thing. Often times I see students who are a little too eager to overthink things and get trapped in their own heads, thinking they can understand everything immediately. Ultimately, it does come down to deciding on what route you're going to take, and deciding to trust in something. Whether it's the drawabox lessons, the community here, or something totally different - the only way you can really assess whether or not something is going to work well for you is to throw yourself into it completely.

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

2016-12-13 00:20

You're putting me in a bit of an awkward spot here - obviously my answer's going to be "yeah, of course," but the bigger question is, am I telling you that because they're my lessons and I have faith in them? Or am I telling you that because they're my lessons, and every view of my website puts a few extra pennies in my pocket?

Ultimately, I do my best to explain my thought processes when it comes to each and every lesson - there's self critique resources there for the first two (and likely the most used) lessons that help pinpoint common mistakes people tend to make, so people can identify a lot of that for themselves. It is dense however, so people inevitably miss things, so having someone to look over your work and point things out for you is valuable. Having the person who wrote the lessons is doubly so (which is why I was drowning in homework submissions back during the two years that they were free), but when I transitioned to splitting things into paid critiques and free community critiques, I did have your particular concerns in mind.

It's for this reason that I don't leave the subreddit to fend for itself - I keep an eye on the critiques and responses that are given, and if there's any particularly harmful misinformation being spread, I'll usually throw in my two cents to keep things on track. That said, I haven't had to do so very much in the past while, as there are a small handful of students who've received enough of my critiques to be able to be very helpful in their own right.

It is of course entirely up to you, but all things considered - all of it is better than nothing. After all, critiques aren't exactly an expected staple of these kinds of resources. Websites and books generally dump the information on you and let you fend for yourself.

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

2016-12-13 00:12

So there's definitely some areas that we can work on. Overall I think you might be a little overconfident, having done these exercises on your own before.

The first thing that jumps out at me is your use of the ghosting technique. As you probably have read from the lessons, this method is intended to be used on every single mark you draw. It consists of breaking the mark making process into three distinct steps. First you mark out the start/end point of your intended line, and you identify the most comfortable angle of approach, rotating your page as needed. Then you proceed to prepare to draw by ghosting through the drawing motion repeatedly (pivoting from your shoulder only, not your wrist or elbow), as many times as is necessary until you feel comfortable and confident in the motion. The point here is to give your muscles the chance to get familiar with it, and store it away in their muscle memory. Finally, when you execute the mark, you do so with a smooth, confident pace, just as when you were ghosting through it. It's important to ensure that you're drawing just quickly enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you draw.

It's very common for beginners to spend too little time preparing, too much time executing, or more often, a combination of the two. It's also fairly common to slip back into drawing from your wrist without realizing it, especially with shorter lines. Looking at your work, you're likely doing any number of these things, so your lines tend to waver and wobble here and there. This extends into some of your ellipses as well. Some of them are quite smooth and well executed, while others wobble more, or miss the intended target in ways that a little more preparation and ghosting would improve.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, your lines here are pretty shaky as well, so again, make sure you apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down. Additionally, I noticed that you did one there with two vanishing points - try to stick to my instructions as written. Often times when students try to make the exercises a little more complex (usually due to boredom), they tend to miss the main focus of that exercise. Lastly, make sure you go over your rough perspective exercises as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective strays.

For your rotated boxes, I am going to have to ask you to complete it in full. Pushing the exercise to completion, regardless of how well it goes, is as much part of the exercise as anything else. I'll admit that with this and the organic perspective boxes exercise, I'm very much dropping you in the deep end of the pool before properly teaching you how to swim. This is both so you can get a little bit of water in your lungs (getting familiar with the sting of failure that is ultimately more a frequent companion than an enemy when it comes to learning how to draw), but also so you can get familiar with the challenges that go into rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This way when I actually do explain those matters (in the 250 box challenge), you'll have a better grasp of what I'm talking about and why the points I raise are important.

The main thing here is that it's totally fine to have difficulty in this area, and it's completely expected. Just make sure you push all the way through, and that you read through the exercise description closely, following each step as I've instructed. I'm noticing instructions that are more half-followed, so make sure you go step by step and do it all.

So before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one more page of the tables of ellipses, one more page of rough perspective boxes, and one page of rotated boxes. Take your time with all of them, and do not rush. Looking over your work, one thing that's very clear to me is that you are capable of much better, you just may have overestimated yourself and rushed through as a result. Once you submit that, I'll mark them as complete - then I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Make sure you read through all of the notes, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, as this will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

As for your question, I find that defining that Y shape pretty much determines how the rest of the box is going to go. Don't just start with two points - I mention this in the new video, how starting with a Y gives you a clear picture of each of the dimensions of the box, where two lines would only give you two dimensions, and two points would pretty much only give you one dimension. Constructing the Y does require some amount of previsualization, though not a whole lot - but you likely should be aiming more towards previsualizing your boxes, and really any marks you put down, rather than shooting from the hip and seeing how things go. A lot of the content here is very much about thinking before every mark you put down, and planning things out, so that falls very much in line with this manner of thinking.

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

2016-12-12 23:45

Your observations are correct. As I mention in the lesson, I ask only for the absolute best you can do right now - that doesn't mean I'm asking for perfect work, but what I'm asking for is inherently very difficult for most people to produce. By its very nature, the best you're capable of requires you to be patient and to be willing to put in as many hours as it takes to put your full attention towards the task at hand. Furthermore, working in an uncomfortable posture will affect your mindset, and will only push you to be sloppier.

Two hours simply isn't enough, and trying to do it all in one sitting is something I very clearly advise you against in the lesson itself. The work you've submitted is not the best you're capable of right now. Given a little more patience, and a little more care, there are a lot of issues here that you can get around. So I will be asking you to do a significant chunk of this lesson again. This is as much to force you to be patient, as it is to give you the opportunity to prove to yourself that you can do much better.

Here is where you can improve:

• Your super imposed lines are okay. It's normal to feel that the arcing/wavy lines aren't great, but this is more or less what I expect to see, as it's quite tricky and will take further practice to hone and perfect.

• Your ghosted lines are a little wobbly and wavy. You need to get used to separating your approach to drawing into the stages of the ghosting method. This means first marking out the start/end and identifying the most comfortable angle of approach (rotating your page as needed), then ghosting through the drawing motion required as many times as necessary until you feel comfortable and confident in the stroke. The execution of the mark is driven at a confident pace through the muscle memory developed through ghosting - you're repeating the same thing you've practiced, and are maintaining a quick enough pace to avoid your brain's natural desire to course-correct as you draw. These course-corrections are the wobbles that manifest there, as most people prepare less and decide they'll just take more time when actually drawing the mark. I explain this further in this comic.

• Your ellipses don't suffer from this wobbling, but they do suffer from a distinct lack of preparation and ghosting. As I mention in the lesson, you should be applying the ghosting method here and everywhere else mark making is necessary. That includes beyond this lesson - it is a tedious, time consuming habit that you must force upon yourself, forcing yourself to separate the thinking/preparing stage from the actual execution of a mark. When drawing your ellipses, focus on the ellipse you're drawing - don't think ahead to the next one. All of your attention must be on the present, on what you're doing right this second.

• Your plotted perspective boxes are well done.

• Your rough perspective boxes show similar issues to what we see in your ghosted lines. Applying this ghosting method as intended will allow you to create smoother, straighter lines, which will in turn help solidify your boxes and convey the illusion of weight and form that we're after. Additionally, when you're done, double check your work as described here.

• Your attempt at the rotated boxes exercise is pretty decent, though incomplete. One area where you can improve is to push yourself to rotate the boxes on the extremities further. Our brains like to have things to exist on grids, so it actively fights against us when we try to rotate forms off those grids. Because of this, you often have to force yourself to exaggerate beyond what your brain is willing to accept. Additionally, there's no reason at all not to complete the exercise (you left the corners out, for instance). You may have done so in order to preserve the fairly nice drawing that resulted, thinking that adding the corners would ruin it. Yeah, it might - but it doesn't matter. We're not after pretty drawings here, these are all just drills that could just as well be torn up and thrown away upon their completion. Ideally, you'll be doing a lot more of these even after the lesson is marked as complete.

• Also, I do want to mention that with the rotated boxes and the organic perspective boxes exercises, I'm pretty much throwing you into the deep end before properly teaching you how to swim. As a learning exercise, it helps to drown a little bit - both to get comfortable with the inevitability of failure, but also so that you can get more accustomed with the challenges that lay before you, so that when I ultimately do explain the finer points of those issues, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Long story short, you're not expected to nail these two exercises, or come remotely close to it. You're doing pretty well on that front though, despite that.

• Your organic perspective boxes are actually pretty well done on all fronts. The box constructions themselves are pretty decent (there's some room for improvement of course, but you're doing great relative to my expectations). More importantly, your lines are much straighter and much more confident. It appears that you are demonstrating considerable improvement with the ghosting method, so I think your second pass at this lesson should be much easier for you.

Now, while I want you to redo the lesson, I'm only going to ask for one page of selected exercises. One page of super imposed lines (straight/arc/wavy together), one page of the table of ellipses (you can leave the ellipses in planes and funnels aside for now), one page of rough perspective boxes and one page of rotated boxes. You can leave the organic perspective boxes out, though we will be coming back to the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space - when you resubmit the exercises I've listed above and I've marked the lesson as complete, I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. I'm mentioning this all now because I may forget later. Make sure that when you move onto it, you read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Back to the chunk I'm asking you to redo - make sure you take your time, and break this up between multiple sittings. The more you try to do at once, the more tired and sloppier you'll get, resulting in work that is not your best - and ultimately I'll send you to redo more. Additionally, make sure you reread the description of each exercise right before you do it. The lessons are quite dense, so it's natural that you'll miss out on parts if you don't revisit them frequently.

So, get at it. As I mentioned, I can see improvement, but I tend to have a very good eye in terms of identifying when a student is giving me their best, and when they're capable of much more.

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

2016-12-12 23:17

Pretty solid work! There's only one issue that I noticed, but I see it across a few images. It has to do with how you deal with objects connecting to the ground. You tend to avoid establishing how they connect to it in three dimensions, resulting in that end of the object appearing quite flat, which in turn spreads to the rest of the drawing. Here's an example of what I mean. Most of the cases in your submission are things that would connect to the ground in an ellipse - you generally have them connecting in a flat, straight line.

Your forms in other areas are well done - I especially like how you tackled these cacti. There is a little bit of weakness early on in the set, but overall I'm confident that your sense of form and construction has improved considerably by the last half or so.

Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

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

2016-12-12 23:06

Pretty nice work. There's definitely room for improvement across the board, but you're doing a good job of demonstrating a solid grasp of each section. For the most part, it's a matter of practice.

Your arrows are solid, flowing convincingly through 3D space. One thing I noticed here though was that your arrows tend to always flow across the page - try playing with having them go from a point far away to a point closer to the viewer, moving through the dimension of depth.

Your organic forms with contour lines are decently done. The contour lines themselves are a bit on the stiff side, so you'll have to work towards loosening up and drawing with a more confident pace, but they're wrapping well around the forms to convey a strong illusion of volume, while also reinforcing the roundedness of the form.

Your dissections are better than I expected after having read your concerns. You're demonstrating the appropriate patience and care with tackling each individual texture. Your observational skills will improve with practice, but there is some more material on the topic of handling textures in the 25 texture challenge. Keep in mind that this is the sort of thing that develops over time, rather than something that you'll just grind away at in a day. You're doing fine as is, so don't stress over it.

Your form intersections are solid, though I did notice a lot of empty space - you have a tendency to move onto the next page too early, likely because you're losing confidence in your ability to maintain the quality you've achieved in a drawing. It's this kind of fear that we need to squash out - making mistakes is not a big deal, and when doing these exercises, you should not be concerned at all with the idea of creating a beautiful drawing. They're just drills, so if they come out nicely or if they look like a pile of crap, it's irrelevant. What's important is the doing of them.

Lastly, your organic intersections are okay. I'd probably recommend sticking to basic sausage forms here (no branching of any sort), just a bunch of simple tubes laying on top of each other. Also, try not to swell them out near the ends, or taper them at all through their length.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawing Boxes: Getting More Advanced. This exercise should help those of you who want a slightly more rigorous way to develop your sense of 3D space."

2016-12-12 03:42

D: but I can do better!

Uncomfortable in the post "Drawing Boxes: Getting More Advanced. This exercise should help those of you who want a slightly more rigorous way to develop your sense of 3D space."

2016-12-12 00:05

Sorry about reposting this - the one I posted a few hours ago had audio sync issues, and youtube doesn't let you cleanly reupload the file for a particular video. What a pain.

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

2016-12-11 21:56

So I looked at your work earlier in passing, and only one question came to mind when I saw your exercises for the lines section: are you a robot?

There's barely any deviation in your super imposed lines, even with the long ones that basically everyone struggles with. It's insane. I genuinely don't believe you're human. It's like the little hiccups here and there where the line veers off slightly and returns are red herrings! I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, YOU WON'T FOOL ME ROBOT.

Okay. It's fine. I've regained my sanity. So needless to say, great work there. As for your question on the matter of ghosting, the direction doesn't matter so much (there's some who argue that 'pushing' vs 'pulling' a line is better for straights or curves, I honestly don't remember which is which, and you'll find as many people arguing the opposite). As far as I'm concerned, if you're comfortable doing it and there's no immediate averse effects, you should be fine to continue doing so. My bigger focus is that students focus on ghosting with the motion they're going to be drawing in. So for example, ghost A-B very deliberately, then lift your pen and move it back to A, and repeat. Rather than A-B-A-B-A-B.

As far as I can see, your smaller ellipses are fine, so the only thing I'd want to recommend is just continuing to practice them. I don't see any big signs with your tables of ellipses that suggests any issues with your technique. That said, with your ellipses in planes, you are exhibiting the fairly common stiffening of your shapes. This is normal because when people see the plane shape, they focus perhaps too much on getting their ellipse to fit perfectly within it, sacrificing the smoothness and evenness of the elliptical shape. Remember that precision is always a second priority to the integrity of the ellipse - so always force yourself to draw just quickly and confidently enough to avoid any of the micromanaging behaviour of your conscious brain. So long as you maintain a confident pace, it won't be able to course-correct as you go.

Your plotted perspective boxes are well done. Your rough perspective boxes are solid, though I do recommend an extra step of double checking your perspective estimation as described here.

Your rotated boxes are coming along, though one thing I'm noticing is that your corner boxes aren't rotated quite as drastically as they should be. The first cause of this is that your outer boxes in the horizontal/vertical lines don't quite rotate far enough or drastically enough, so you'll want to work towards exaggerating this. Furthermore, give this page from the demo another read. It's important that you try and keep the gaps between the boxes fairly tight, so you can use neighbouring lines as hints towards figuring out the angle and orientation of new ones.

Keep in mind though, both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely as a means to throw you into the deep end of the pool to see how you'd do, and to give you the opportunity to get a little bit of water in your lungs. It helps for students to get familiar with the challenges they face before giving them all of the additional training, so that the training itself is a more contextually appropriate when given. Basically, I don't expect anyone to nail these two just yet.

On that note, your organic perspective boxes are meeting my expectations, though there are some issues with far planes being larger than near planes, which is normal.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work - you'll find that there's notes about line weight, but there's also an important tip about drawing through your forms which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2016-12-11 21:39

So looking through your work, I can see two major issues that are trickling down and really giving you a hell of a time with these drawings.

The first one is your boxes - but you're aware of this, I can see it in some of your scribbled notes. If your overall, encapsulating box is wrong, then this will have a considerable impact on everything constructed within that box. Ultimately that's why I stress the importance of boxes and have gone so far as to name the website after them - if you could only practice one thing over and over and over, it should be drawing boxes.

The second point is the angle of your subdivision lines. It's tricky business when you've got your diagonals set up and you've found the center point of a given plane, but you have to draw the line that passes through it - figuring out its angle is something people struggle with a lot. Looking at my demos, you can see that I mess it up frequently, though often I can recover when the deviation isn't too drastic. When drawing these lines, there are clues you can rely upon (all the other lines that run parallel to this one in 3D space), but ultimately there is some guess-work involved, and it's the sort of skill you can hone through repetitive practice.

I came up with an exercise that may help you - I was actually going to just describe it in text, then thought an image demo would be better. Ultimately I ended up making a video instead, so you can check it out here.

Man, I just left this critique alone for a few hours while I made that video... where was I... Ah, right. So another issue you're definitely struggling with is proportion. I can see that you made some attempts at proportion studies - some of which were more fleshed out than others. One good example where you're struggling is the hatchback you drew. One big factor is that you didn't study the front view of the car at all, and as a result had no real sense of how wide it should be. If you remember from this video (which was included in the lesson), there are approaches you can use to figure out how to draw unit measurements out in three dimensions. I think that might answer your question, "how to do 100% wireframe box?"

Lastly, I do see that there's a part of you that is always urging you to move onto details, to jump forwards and rush ahead. This is pretty normal, but it's a part of you that you need to rein in pretty sharply. Looking at your forklift - which actually is pretty nicely done - one good example of jumping too far ahead is the actual fork-lift part at the front. The two prongs that stick out, specifically. At their simplest, each prong is just two boxes arranged in an L shape. A long flat box laying flat, and another tall flat box going up from its right side. What you drew was a little more complex - a single L form, with a rounded transition at the corner, and rounded edges at the tips of the prongs.

So here's what I'd like you to do:

• 50 of the subdivided boxes exercise that I devised for you.

• Draw 10 boxes if specific unit measurements. That is, decide on its width, height, depth and then construct a box that matches those measurements, using the technique demonstrated in the "Measuring in Perspective: Constructing to Scale" video.

• 5 more vehicles. Try not to focus on any of the details, focus entirely on making sure that your basic forms feel solid and tangible.

You're welcome to use whatever tools may make your life easier - a ruler, an ellipse guide if you can get one, and so on. No pencil of course, but you're welcome to use ballpoint pen. As you called it in your first page.. easy mode :P

On right, looking at your first page reminded me - that stuff you did to imply water... don't. Ignore actually drawing the water itself altogether. Drawing bits of dirt and stuff to help ground an object is fine, but never draw careless squiggles, it's a great way to degrade the results of your hard work.

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

2016-12-11 18:26

Nice work! You're demonstrating a solid grasp of the forms that come together to create these complex objects - the fly and the devil's coach horse beetle (man what an awesome name) are especially impressive, though the pincers on the latter are a bit weaker. I also kind of disagree with your assessment that you went overboard with texture. I think you struck a pretty good balance, and it wouldn't be terrible if you had gone a bit further with it too. Still, I'm very pleased with your results. The material in the next lesson should also give you some tips on different ways to handle furry textures (as opposed to adding stray hairs here and there).

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

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

2016-12-08 23:27

Due to the massive volume of work being thrown my way, free critiques closed indefinitely back in early October. If you happen to be a patreon supporter of drawabox, send me a line through patreon's messaging system so I can note down that this reddit account is eligible for critiques. Otherwise you're welcome to submit your homework to the main subreddit to receive a critique from the community.

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

2016-12-08 14:31

For the first two years that I ran this subreddit, people submitted homework to me and I critiqued it for free. In order to both reward completion and more importantly, to keep track of who had completed which lessons (as I didn't allow people to jump into a lesson before finishing those preceding it), I added these little badges to the user flair. If you using a mobile app, all you'll see is the text, but in a browser there's little emblems.

Now that homework submissions have been split into two categories (community critiques which are submitted directly to the subreddit to be critiqued by other users, and patron critiques which are reserved for those who support drawabox on patreon and are critiqued by me), the free community critiques don't generally receive the badges, because I have no real need of tracking them. I still do use that system for the patron critiques though.

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

2016-12-07 19:14

That point wasn't particularly important, so don't worry about it. In general I'd be more worried about any possibility of drawing too small, but it seems that you've done pretty well.

Looking through your work, you seem to be doing a good job in terms of approaching construction and building up your forms in successive passes. Your forms are generally conveying a decent illusion of form, and you seem to understand how they relate to one another (as demonstrated by your ability to compound forms together to increase complexity).

One minor point that I'd like to raise is that you shouldn't forget to add some sort of drop shadow shape or something to that effect in order to help ground your object. You don't need to fill it in (and probably shouldn't) but just creating the outline of the shape will help place your object in an environment, rather than letting it float arbitrarily on the page.

Another thing I noticed is that when you approach detail and texture, you tend to think of detail as being a collection of details - if the surface is bumpy, fill it with individual bumps. This will result in your textures getting quite noisy and distracting. Instead, try to remember that none of these details actually exist with outlines - what you see of them is really the result of little shadows being cast by them. These shadows can combine with neighbouring shadows to create larger, solid areas of black. This also means that in areas that are particularly strongly impacted by light, those shadows can get blasted out entirely - sometimes you'll have lines that disappear because of this, and then reappear a little further along. These are quite effective and visually pleasing, because our brain understands that the line/form/whatever continues in the area where it vanished, but it reduces the amount of visual noise we must contend with.

Because of this matter of 'visual noise', it's important that when you want to fill an area in, you do so solidly, not leaving little slivers of white that can increase the contrast of that area. For more information on texture, you can take a look at the notes on the texture challenge.

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

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

2016-12-07 04:40

Ultimately it is primarily just a lot of practice, both to further develop your sense of space (so you can manipulate forms more confidently and accurately in your head) as well as to push the development of your visual library (by studying a wide variety of subject matter in depth). Generally it's pretty straightforward to outline how someone should start (which is what drawabox is), but unfortunately the hours and weeks and months and years of mileage are unavoidable.

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

2016-12-06 22:17

Your lines and ellipses sections are solid - the lines are smooth and relatively straight, and your ellipses are looking confident and evenly shaped. It does look to me though that when you moved into the boxes section, you didn't carry over the same techniques - this isn't abnormal, as people tend to get more overwhelmed when having to deal with drawing entire objects composed of multiple lines, but it is very important that you keep pushing yourself to apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down. You may want to reread the breakdown of the ghosting method. You should also give this comic a read.

That said, your general sense of space is progressing nicely, and aside from the wobblier, wavier lines, your understanding of what you should be aiming for is pretty good. I'm also glad to see that you applied the double checking method for your rough perspective boxes, and that you went through all of the steps as instructed for your rotated boxes.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, both to help you put the ghosting method into practice and to improve on that front, as well as to further develop your sense of space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which comes into play with things like the organic perspective boxes exercise.

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

2016-12-06 22:13

Nice work! I think you're demonstrating a strongly improving sense of form and space, and your constructions are starting to feel much more concrete and solid. It looks like you decided not to take advantage of my suggestion of using a ruler - that's ultimately up to you, but keep in mind that mixing challenges isn't generally a good idea. There are some areas where I purposely make things a little more difficult, while in others when a subject is already difficult enough, I alleviate those restrictions.

So your constructions are looking great - the main areas where you could use some more work is generally where observation comes into play. Proportions, details, etc. These are the sort of things that will improve with continued practice, of course.

Another area where I see some mixed results are your ellipses - generally I'm seeing development in this area, but I often notice that the initial studies you do before attempting the full drawing tend to be more successful in this area. This is understandable, as you seem to be much more timid with your construction linework in the full drawing (probably because you want to avoid clutter). In this sense, using a ruler (and an ellipse guide if you can manage to get your hands on one) would help considerably, because your lines would be much more precise, allowing you to avoid that sense of clutter without being quite so light and faint with the lines themselves. Also, remember that drawing larger will reduce the clutter as well, since your lines while remaining confident, will be thinner relative to the overall size of the drawing.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll mark this lesson as complete, so congratulations on completing this lesson set. If you're interested in moving onto the figure drawing material next, keep in mind that my plan is to overhaul it closer to the end of the month, so you may want to hold off until I have the chance to start posting that new material. Doesn't hurt to take a bit of a break, or to refresh your memory on material in previous lessons that may have faded a little from your mind.

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

2016-12-06 14:26

I guess that's the downside of getting your critiques through there. You'll have to trust your own judgment, mixed in with recommendations from those who critique you.

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

2016-12-05 22:17

Looking good! I have only one recommendation - you're not drawing through your ellipses in your form intersections. In general, you seem to be trying to be especially clean with your linework, which is resulting in some of your strokes (mostly ellipses/circles) coming out rather stiff and awkward. Keep in mind that what is most important is that your linework flows smoothly - precision is second to that.

Aside from that, great work. Keep it up, and consider this lesson complete.

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

2016-12-05 21:58

That's up to you, but it is best to complete the cylinder challenge before starting lesson 6. So you've got some time.

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

2016-12-05 21:24

Pretty nice work. Your organic forms are conveying a decent sense of volume and solidity, your dissections are really quite well done, and your organic intersections show an understanding of how each of the forms is supported by those beneath it.

Your form intersections are okay, but you definitely missed the instruction about avoiding overly stretched forms. It's a matter of reducing the complexity introduced by perspective - keeping things relatively equilateral (the same size in all dimensions) makes it all much more manageable. Additionally, you should probably take a look at the 250 cylinder challenge so you can get a better sense of how to construct those kinds of forms. Cones and pyramids follow a similar process to cylinders.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-12-05 21:11

Your boxes are definitely improving over the set, so congrats on completing the challenge. I do want to point out that you definitely seem to have made the decision not to apply the whole draw through your boxes tip to all of them, and I'd say that you probably lost out because of it. I'm glad that you applied it to some of them, but you really should have done so across the board. Keep that in mind in the future.

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

2016-12-04 20:39

You're making good headway, but I see that you got a little confused with your organic forms exercises. For the organic forms with contour ellipses, here's a few ways you should adjust how you approach them:

• Keep your shapes relatively simple. Adding complexity doesn't make the exercises more effective, it's more likely to undermine the core elements of it. Focus on constructing simple sausage forms without much branching. Avoid having your forms pinch through their midsections or any sort of awkward waviness through their length, as these kinds of forms are considerably more difficult to reinforce and imbue with an illusion of solidity and volume. Right now we don't want to impose unnecessary difficulties.

• The central minor axis line that passes through the middle of each form (it's difficult to nail things in the dead-center, but do your best) should be drawn for all of your organic forms. Each contour ellipse must be aligned to this line such that the line cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension. I noticed that you left these lines out entirely in many cases, and that the complexity of your forms made it fairly difficult to keep them centered, ultimately making the whole alignment thing moot.

For your organic forms with contour curves:

• Same deal with those central minor axis lines, draw them all the way through. The curves themselves are just the visible portion of a larger ellipse, so the rules of alignment apply here as well.

• Your curves aren't quite wrapping around the organic forms convincingly - they should be accelerating and hooking around as they reach the edge, so as to create the illusion that they continue on along the other side. I expand on this concept here. Apply the 'overshooting' approach I describe there, and be sure to watch the video linked there as well.

• Try and think about all of these things you draw as being solid, 3 dimensional forms - like sausages, with smooth rounded surfaces. Try to buy into that illusion, and fool yourself. It's not an easy thing to do, and it takes a fair bit of practice, but as you buy into the illusion more and more, you'll find that your brain will fight against you whenever you try to draw a line that doesn't conform to this mental model of space.

Your dissections are coming along fine, especially into the second page. Your form intersections are decent, though your boxes tend to be a little dramatic in their foreshortening which tends to make things feel a little bit inconsistent. Keeping your perspective relatively shallow tends to help when dealing with large collections of smaller forms.

Your organic intersections are okay, but they do suffer from some of the issues I outlined with the other organic form exercises. Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one more page of organic forms with contour ellipses, one more page of organic forms with contour curves, and one more page of organic intersections.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-12-04 20:19

It's a good thing that your opinion doesn't really matter here! :D

You're doing fine. Line control, accuracy, and one's sense of space improves over time and as it stands you're moving in the right direction. I did notice however that you started to let yourself get kind of sloppy after your first 150 boxes, taking less care with the general planning and preparation of your lines. It's not a question of you not being able to do it right, since the earlier boxes demonstrated a stronger grasp of that technique. It's more likely that you were getting tired and weren't giving yourself enough breaks.

As for the line weight, it's probably fine for you to skip it for now - but when you do decide to start applying it, keep in mind that you add it in a subsequent pass. You draw the initial lines uniformly, then go back over the ones that need more weight.

One last suggestion - I noticed in a few places you put down the points for your start/end locations for each line. I'm not sure if you did this for all of your lines though, or if you got a bit lazy with that later on. Definitely keep that up across the board, and more importantly - try laying down the points for the whole box before committing to them with actual lines. This can help you get a sense of the form taking shape without necessarily putting all your cards on the table.

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

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

2016-12-03 19:33

There are much, much, much, much, much... much better. I figured it was more a matter of not really digesting the material properly, and probably skimming through it. Now that you seem to have understood my lesson, your forms are looking considerably more solid and cohesive. At this point, I have only one little bit to point out.

When drawing flowers, you start out with an ellipse, though this ellipse ultimately gets more or less... ignored from then on. I do understand that this ellipse helps you get a sense of the space you're drawing in (a blank page can be daunting), and hell - I even do this to a lesser extent in my demo. In this particular kind of situation, it makes sense. In the future however you'll come across situations where you've laid in your forms and then decide things aren't quite going ideally, and you might want to sort of ignore a shape or form you've already constructed.

When faced with this dilemma, think of what you've drawn as being actual physical forms that exist in space. It's impossible to flat out ignore them, but you can carve into them and work with them to suit your goals. This does however mean that you may not be able to make extremely drastic changes, and sometimes you'll just have to commit to what you've got. This is perfectly acceptable, even if the result ends up straying from what exactly it is you were trying to reproduce.

Anyway, keep up the great work, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2016-12-03 19:27

It looks like you're doing a solid job so far. I really don't have much to say about this, since you're applying the ghosting method pretty well, so your lines are fairly straight and smooth. When submitting a lesson's homework, you should be completing the entire thing, rather than just one section at a time. So for example for this lesson, submissions usually contain the lines section, the ellipses section and the boxes section.

As for your question, you absolutely need to plan and prepare before every mark you put down, applying the ghosting method in each instance. This means placing little points where you want the line to begin and end. It's all about separating processes into different stages, so you tackle only little challenges one by one, rather than trying to tackle multiple challenges all at once. In this case, doing so without planning means trying to nail your alignment and achieving a smooth, straight, confident stroke all at once. The more you try to do together, the less likely it is that it will come out well.

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

2016-12-03 19:22

You're doing a pretty good job of developing your sense of construction, and you definitely improve considerably over the set. There is one big issue that I'm noticing however that is holding you back quite a bit - you have a tendency to draw small. You don't do this all the time, but generally when you try to squeeze two animals into one page, both of them end up feeling very cramped and the construction as well as the line economy tends to suffer.

Ultimately I think this is why you're struggling with those feline heads. They're definitely moving in the right direction, but when working in such small spaces, you're limiting the amount of room you have to think through the spatial problems. Your line weight also ends up feeling much heavier, resulting in very clunky drawings with little to no nuance.

Beyond that, it's really a matter of spending more time observing your reference. You're doing a great job of identifying and breaking down the forms in the overall body, and the head is no different. It just happens to exist at a smaller scale, so you're going to have to give yourself more room for it.

Anyway, I'm confident that you'll be able to practice this on your own without going astray, as you're doing well already. 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"

2016-12-03 00:22

Pretty nicely done! Just a few recommendations:

• Don't forget to frame your compositions as instructed for the box exercises

• I noticed you did the second page of rough perspective boxes with a ruler. Don't do that. The first page was a great example of following the instructions (freehand, double checked afterwards), but don't stray from that on your own.

• Your rotated boxes were done pretty well, though be more mindful of your linework here. Apply the ghosting method to every line, don't draw anything by reflex (immediately reinforcing a line after drawing it due to a lack of confidence). It's important to get control of your instincts early on so that everything you put down is the result of planning and intent.

• Your first page of organic perspective boxes shows a lot of overly dramatic foreshortening. Your second page is better, but it I see a few boxes that are a bit too extreme.

You've generally done a solid job, so just keep these things in mind as you move forwards. I'll mark this lesson as complete. I do believe that it would be a good idea to move onto the 250 box challenge next - be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular helps one better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

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

2016-12-03 00:13

It's definitely a solid start. Your linework's a little bit wobbly, and your ellipses are a little stiff, but overall you're doing well. These two issues are actually coming from the same source - when drawing a mark, you need to invest all of your time during the preparation and planning phase of the ghosting method, then execute with a smooth, confident stroke, quick enough to avoid having your brain course-correct while you draw. The wobbles come from letting your brain do that. You need to trust in your muscle memory. I talk about that a little here.

It's perfectly okay that you're not going to be 100% accurate at the beginning. This will improve with practice. What is harder to fix through repetition and ultimately has to be tweaked in terms of your actual approach, is this stiffness and wobbling. We naturally are fixated on the idea of maintaining accurate lines, so we tend to slow down to compensate. Just make sure that you work against this natural urge while you practice.

Another thing I'd like to recommend is that you go over your completed rough perspective homework as described here. It helps to double check your work afterwards when the exercises are heavily focused on estimation, so you can track where you tend to make your mistakes.

Aside from that, you've done pretty well. There's definitely room to grow in your organic perspective boxes, but this is par for the course. I threw that exercise in largely to let students struggle with the idea of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, and to let them acquaint themselves with those challenges. You've done a solid job of it all things considered.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge, both to practice smoothing out your lines and drawing more confidently, and also to help you further develop your sense of 3D space. Be sure to read through the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular helps one better grasp how each box sits in space.