Uncomfortable's Advice from /r/ArtFundamentals
uncomfortable's Comments | Check out their posts instead

Uncomfortable in the post "State of the Union - September vacation, and dealing with the overwhelming number of homework submissions"

2016-10-05 15:25

Free critiques are open currently, and will close indefinitely after October 7th. You can read more about it in this post I made last week. Looks like I forgot to update that little red blurb above the comment boxes - I'll fix it up right now!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-10-05 02:39

Much better! Though avoid broken lines in the future - they're not particularly reliable, as every time the stroke is broken and recovered, its trajectory changes slightly. A solid, continuous line is going to serve you better. If you want to differentiate your front-facing faces and your rear ones, just fill one of the front faces with some tight, straight, consistent hatching and it should all become much clearer.

But still, this definitely kicked up your boxes a notch, so keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-10-05 00:39

Hahaha, yeah, it definitely gets tough. Thanks for the kind words, and best of luck with your own project!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-10-04 20:49

Looking great! Your boxes are looking really solid, and it seems that your sense of 3D space has definitely benefitted from drawing through your forms. Your use of line weight also goes a long way to help maintain a sense of cohesion in each box, giving each a sense of real weight and tangibility.

Keep up the fantastic work and consider this challenge complete.

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

2016-10-04 20:47

Not bad. Your constructions are (generally) pretty decent, but your observation isn't always the best. You do need to slow down at times and really take your time studying your reference image, being sure to look back at it every few seconds rather than staring at it, then relying on memory.

I really like the construction for your fly, it's probably the one that best demonstrates strong observation. Your spider's forms are solid, but the legs do not connect to the side of the body like that - there's a whole section underneath the thorax where they connect. Additionally, in your ladybug, it seems you haven't really put a whole lot of thought into how those legs actually connect to the body.

Another part of observation is a matter of proportion - it's natural to struggle with this, and it will improve with time and practice. Definitely be aware of it though, so you know to focus on how different parts of your subject's bodies relate to one another so that those size relationships are not out of whack when you reproduce them.

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

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

2016-10-04 20:43

Generally really nice work, especially with your newer stuff, though there's a lot of nice construction across the whole set. I especially loved your stag head construction here, so I think the added practice really helped improve your grasp of that boxiness, and how the various rudimentary forms interact with one another to create a more complex skull.

As far as the bushy business goes, if you were going for a stylized look that squirrel's tail would be just fine. The problem is more that the spikey tufts are massive, to the point that it really pushes the bounds of reality. Keeping your tufts smaller, but applying the same sort of diligently and purposefully designed shape language you used here would help considerably.

Looking down at your older anteater work, that's a good example of how not to tackle furry silhouettes - those bastards were really furry, so you had a lot of work cut out for you. I'd say that because of the amount of work, you likely got a little sloppy and fell into the trap of trying to apply the same repetitive motion across the board. The trick to keep be mindful and intentional with each tuft, and not to rely on randomness or repetitive action when drawing. Alternatively if you look at the right side of the squirrel drawing, you've got a few little bit clearly designed tufts coming off it, with smooth areas elsehwere - but it still manages to look quite bushy and furry. It's not entirely necessary to go crazy on the whole thing in many cases, and can be just as effective if not more to imply a lot of your fur. That tail's definitely a special case though.

Anyway, you're doing great - I think you're taking a little more of a negative view of your work than you should - these things do take a great deal of practice and more importantly, time, to sink in. 100-animal-head challenges are definitely good, but don't push yourself so hard that you break.

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

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

2016-10-04 20:31

Very nice work! Your constructions feel quite solid, and your use of line weight goes a long way to help organize and give structure to your drawings. I'm reasonably pleased with the bits of textural experimentation here too - there's not a whole lot of it, but there doesn't really need to be. I especially like the mycena interrupta.

The thing about your concern is that the goal here is not to make pretty drawings - it's about understanding and learning how all the forms sit in space and how they fit together. As a result, yeah - the lines are going to be messy because there's a lot of underlying logic that we have to parse in order to properly understand all of this stuff, and while line weight really does help to organize and structure it all, it's not going to result in anything truly clean.

One day - that is, after you've finished these lessons and then some - you'll be able to rely less on drawing all of these lines, and you'll be able to instead visualize them more in your mind. That's what all this repetitious mark-making is for, to help train your brain into thinking in this manner, so one day you'll see the marks without them actually being there. Or at least, you'll be able to draw as though they are present.

Until then, all we can do is limit ourselves to the marks that are genuinely valuable important. Drawing through forms is important, because it helps us understand the entirety of that form, and how it occupies space. Being needlessly sketchy however will result in a lot of wasted marks, and additional clutter that serves no purpose. Ultimately that's why the ghosting method is so important - to force you to really think and plan before making a mark gives you the opportunity to also consider whether or not that mark serves any real purpose. This is also why I don't recommend using any sort of randomness when tackling textures. Any sort of scribbling or erratic linework is going to read more as clutter than anything else. For instance, it's for this reason that your hibiscus' petals feel considerably more cluttered and disorganized than your mycena interrupta.

Anyway, you've done pretty well - and honestly, I think those grapes look pretty clear. The additional marks you added to the stem where it peeks through between the grapes was a nice touch. 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"

2016-10-04 19:56

Congratulations on completing the challenge. You have definitely made a fair bit of headway and progress with this, but I have one very important thing to point out - you missed out on a big opportunity to make this exercise far more effective.

In my last critique, I mentioned,

Be sure to read through the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Unfortunately you didn't take this advice, as you haven't drawn through any of the boxes in your set. I'll mark this challenge as complete, as you have completed it and you have clearly benefitted from it, but know that you could have gained a lot more from it had you read the instructions more carefully.

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

2016-10-03 23:19

Starts off pretty well, with your leaves and stems. When you get into plants though, I'm left wondering.. what's up with your pen? I don't know if it's dying, or if your drawings are really small, or your pen tip is just really fat... or if it's some combination of these, but in general that pen looks like it's had a bad day.

That said, for the most part your constructions look pretty solid, and you're hitting most of the points I'm looking for in this lesson. Just a couple bits of advice:

Anyway, keep that in mind as you move forwards. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2016-10-03 22:51

Not bad. Your arrows are looking decent, and flow nicely through 3D space. Your dissections show quite a few interesting experiments with texture. Your form intersections are generally pretty well done, with relatively solid and cohesive sets of forms, though I do want to stress the importance of drawing through your ellipses here (especially with things like spheres, where uneven shapes can really undermine the believability of the form). Your organic intersections are also pretty good, and I like that you appear to grasp how these different forms interact with one another.

For your organic forms with contour lines, there's a couple things I want to stress. Generally these are for the most part fairly well done, but it's extremely important that you not leave out that central minor axis line that passes through the length of each form. Each contour ellipse (and contour curve, for that matter) must be aligned to this, such that the minor axis cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves, as explained in lesson 1. As I mentioned, this applies to contour curves as well, as they are merely the visible portion of larger ellipses.

In general your contour curves do an okay job of wrapping convincingly around the 3D forms, but I feel that this is something you should continue to focus on consciously - you're a bit borderline here, and I believe that if you were to relax a little on that front, you might slip back into not quite getting the curves to hook around convincingly at the edges. Keep this in mind whenever drawing any contour curves around rounded forms.

So, your work is pretty good, those are just a few points to keep in mind as you move forward. I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2016-10-03 13:13

Probably a low priority issue, but I'll add it to my list!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-10-02 21:18

Pretty good work. The only thing I want to recommend (aside from watching that new video on ellipses in 3D space, which you clearly already have) is that you should make sure that your ellipses sit on the entire minor axis - the line should penetrate all the way through the ellipse, not just stop halfway. It makes it a little easier to gauge whether or not you've aligned your ellipse correctly in this manner.

As for your concern, for the most part I do what I can to avoid actually having vanishing points in the scene, largely because in most cases they're going to be really far off to the side, way off the page. For this reason, I tend to rely on roughly defining the general area my VP is going to be by drawing a few lines that go off towards it.

If you draw any two non-parallel lines, they'll intersect somewhere. In this way, you can use two simple lines to define where a vanishing point is going to be without actually drawing it on the page. From there, you just have to make sure that all of your other lines adhere to this same rule.

Additionally, including a horizon line can be very helpful, since we know that both of our horizontal vanishing points will sit upon this line.

Now, beyond that, defining a box is also very helpful in this regard, as it automatically defines all of our vanishing points for us (so long as the box is constructed in a way that is relatively correct, with all of the parallel lines running off towards the same point). That's why I'm very big on the importance of boxes - they define the perspective system rather completely, and enclose a space in which it is much easier to estimate what angles should be used for other lines. So, if you're trying to draw a camera with a big cylindrical lens coming off the side, you'd draw a box for the body, and then another box coming off it to contain the lens cylinder.

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

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

2016-10-02 21:10

Not bad! In general the biggest thing your work shows me is that you have some very strong observational skills. In many cases, your use of construction is coming along very nicely. In general though, I do get the sense that you're applying construction a little lightly in certain places - that is to say, you focus less on establishing solid forms and then building upon them, and use those initial lay-ins as more of a loose suggestion, then going on to rely more upon your strong observational skills to fill in the gap. In other cases (and in many of your more successful drawings), you adhere more strictly to those lay-ins.

The problem of relying too heavily on your observational skills is that the resulting construction will tend to feel flatter.

The first thing I'd like you to work on is drawing your construction steps with greater confidence - right now it's clear that you're trying to draw them to be a little more faint, so they don't interfere with your final drawing. This inevitably also makes them feel less important and less valuable, on a subconscious level. Instead, you want to confidently establish these things as actual masses and solid forms that exist within the world. Before you move on from them, you want to absolutely ensure that you interpret these things to be three dimensional and solid - if you don't, a couple of well placed contour curves can help. This goes for every step - don't move on until you buy into that illusion that what you've drawn is solid and has mass and volume to it.

Your use of texture is looking fantastic - there's a lot of great variation here, and you've tackled most of them with a high degree of success. Keep up the good work on that front.

I'd like to see you do two more pages of animals, focusing more on what I've mentioned above. After that, I'll mark this lesson as complete, and you can move onto the next one.

Oh, one last thing - if you ever combine a spider with a camel again, I will ban you from this subreddit! YOU MONSTER.

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

2016-10-02 20:55

Looking good! Just about all of your drawings have a really clear sense of solidity to them - they don't feel flimsy or light, they each feel firm and as though they weigh a fair bit. I especially love how well the computer mouse came out, and the variety of proportion studies you did on the side.

In general, the only area you appear to be struggling is with ellipses, and only in certain circumstances. Admittedly, they are really difficult, and do take some practice. Be sure to check out the Drawing Perfect Circles and Cubes in 3D Space and Constructing to Scale videos when you get the chance - of course, they're both linked near the beginning of lesson 7. The whole idea of how to figure out how to get the correct degree for an ellipse to represent a circle within a certain perspective system is pretty important.

Aside from that though, you're doing very well. Keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

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

2016-10-02 20:41

I saw your pledge, and sent you a message through patreon's messaging system probably a few minutes before you submitted your homework :P Just do a quick reply there when you get the chance.

Your work is looking pretty solid! Your drawings are well constructed, with a solid sense of form and how all of those forms come together to create more complex objects. I'm also really pleased with how your use of texture evolves over the homework set - the details on the hibiscus flower on page 8 is looking phenomenal. The only thing I really want to stress is the importance of drawing through your ellipses - the little ones that make up the stems of your various plant drawings aren't shaped terribly well. They're not a huge problem, but generally continuing to draw through your ellipses is a good way to maintain their shape while training your arm's muscle memory more effectively.

Aside from that, keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

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

2016-10-02 17:37

Wow, 39 pages - that's some dedication. I've listed the ones I find to be the strongest in the set below. You'll find that there's some overlap with your own selection, but the lists are a little different.

Overall your work is coming along well, but in general you need to slow down. Your approach tends to be a little erratic, and you could stand to put more thought into the execution of each individual mark, focusing on exactly the task at hand instead of thinking ahead to how that section relates to the rest of the drawing.

When constructing anything, the most important part is to focus on creating solid, 3D masses at every stage. I actually did a quick demo for another student that relates to this point, you can find it on the top right of this page. Basically, if at any given point something you've drawn still reads as a 2D shape, you need to reinforce it until you believe that it is three dimensional. Contour curves can help with this, just make sure that each one you place is well thought out, and that you're not wasting lines.

Wasting lines is definitely an issue - remember that we're not really sketching and discovering our animal as we go - we're constructing, so we need to do so with deliberate, well-planned marks. Planning a mark well doesn't necessarily mean it's going to come out perfectly, but it does increase the chances of it (so long as it's then executed with confidence), and it does mean that after you've made the mark you need to pause and consider whether or not it achieved what you were after.

Also, in terms of using hatching, yours tends to be rather sloppy in most places. I'd leave it more towards the end of a drawing when you're fully aware that you do want to, say, push the back legs further back, or whatever else you might want to do with them. At that point, make sure you keep the lines tight and parallel. I wouldn't use hatching anywhere else though - it definitely is not an effective tool for creating texture, and risks flattening out areas where you might not mean for that to be the result.

As you push through the set, I find that you spend more time drawing, and perhaps less time observing your reference carefully. This is a really important point - you don't want to fall into the trap of drawing things from memory. You should be looking back at your reference regularly, every few seconds, and you don't want to ever fall under the impression that you know what goes where.

Anyway, in general you're making good headway, and at this point you're moving in the right direction. There's plenty of room for improvement, and that will come with practice. I'm certainly going to be marking this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Don't forget to return to this material frequently, review the lesson and get a little more practice in with animals every now and then.

In many ways, I think the drastic shift in the next two lessons will be quite challenging to you, but it will also really solidify the importance of construction. What you learn there will reflect back on these animals and I feel that your ability to build them up in a way that feels believable and solid will improve.

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

2016-10-02 17:21

Your leaves are looking much better. In terms of making stems curvier, even when things feel solid and straight, try and find the subtle shifts in your reference. More than anything, I feel that the stiffness in drawings such as this one comes from not spending enough time observing your reference.

Anyway, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

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

2016-10-02 17:18

Yup, free critiques reopened yesterday, but since you're a patreon supporter now, that doesn't really matter. I did most of my critique as a series of draw-overs, you can find that here: http://i.imgur.com/AM3yXn4.png

For the most part, I think your leaves flow nicely through 3D space, and your stems exercises are pretty solid. You could stand to push your construction steps a little further. Don't be afraid to draw those construction lines with confidence - it doesn't matter if they're still visible when you're trying to apply detail and texture. By effectively employing line weight and controlling the density of your texturing, those lines will recede into the background of the drawing, becoming far less noticeable.

Keep working on the things I pointed out in my draw-over, but feel free to move onto the next lesson. You should be able to tackle most of those points when dealing with insects.

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

2016-10-02 06:28

You're moving in the right direction, but as it stands your work is very stiff. Remember what you're drawing - plants, they're really at the core of what it means for something to be organic. They're living things, after all. Their leaves twist and turn, their stems bend and sway, they're all full of life.

You definitely understand the concepts behind construction - your forms feel reasonably solid, and I really do like that mushroom. The issue is just that everything feels like it's made of stone.

Look back at these arrows you did a month ago: http://i.imgur.com/hF0Lpjw.jpg. They feel considerably more alive, they're flowing through 3D space, not just shapes on a flat, 2D page. You need to get your head back into that space and convince yourself that you're not drawing pictures on paper, but that you're drawing actual forms in a three dimensional world.

I want you to do two more pages of leaves. Fill them to the brim, I don't want to see pages as sparse as this. Draw the shapes from your imagination, focus on things that flow, and that move from being further away from you, to closer (rather than going straight across in the same level of depth). Once you've got your shapes down, you can look at reference to inform more textural details. Remember that the "other demos" section of the lesson page is full of other demonstrations of how to approach drawing leaves, so go through them as well.

Lastly, from the rest of your plants, I do get the distinct impression that you're not spending a whole lot of time observing your reference images, and that you're working a lot from memory. Don't trust your memory - you should be looking back at your reference image every few seconds, never trusting your mind to hold on for more than the smallest morsel.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-10-02 06:10

Wow, that rotated-cylinders thing on the last page is pretty mesmerizing. Overall, great work. The solidity of your cylinders really improves over the set.

One thing that definitely comes to mind is a video that I posted last week, on drawing ellipses such that they represent perfect circles in 3D space. I believe it may help round out your understanding of how ellipses can be used: https://youtu.be/yFjrSddZiv4

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

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

2016-10-02 06:05

There's definitely a fair bit of improvement here. It's still not fantastic, though there's clear signs of a growing understanding of how these forms interact with one another. As such, I will mark this lesson as complete. As you continue to move forwards, there's a few things that you do need to focus on:

In general, use fewer contour curves, but put more time and effort into drawing each one carefully and deliberately, such that it actually wraps around the forms convincingly, and is oriented and aligned correctly. If you just draw a bunch of contour curves but don't take care to draw them as well as you can, your drawings will suffer.

Anyway, go ahead and move onto the next lesson.

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

2016-10-02 03:45

Old thread got locked, post your homework here.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-10-01 21:31

They apply to the box/cylinder/texture challenges as well.

Uncomfortable in the post "Peter Han's Dynamic Bible - The legendary dynamic sketching instructor's finally launched the kickstarter for his personal notes and lectures!"

2016-10-01 17:04

Thanks for the heads up! I just ordered it. I've actually been to Gallery Nucleus before - it's in LA and pretty well known by entertainment industry pros so I suppose it's not surprising that they'd have their hands on Peter Han's book.

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

2016-10-01 01:03

Not bad. Your leaves are flowing pretty nicely, and your general buildup is pretty good. The only significant issue I'm noticing is that you seem to struggle somewhat with your cylinders. You may want to look into the 250 cylinder challenge for more practice, but I leave that up to you. In general though, when laying down the minor axis for a cylinder, you should put a little more care into ensuring that it is straight (and trying to be overly faint or use too light a touch for it isn't a great idea, for these marks or really any construction lines).

Also, on page 7 you've got a lot of attempts at what appears to be a hibiscus flower. When approaching this, there's a few things that should generally help. First and foremost, remember that you're drawing a three dimensional object. This means being aware of the forms themselves - don't leave the stem open ended, cap it off with an ellipse to establish it as a solid tube-like form. For the pistil, make sure you're constructing this as a tube as well - actually define the ellipse where this form connects to the core of the flower, rather than leaving it undefined. When drawing the petals, make sure you start with the center line in order to establish their flow through 3D space. And lastly, draw bigger on the page - cramming your details into small areas is going to make things considerably harder for you.

For your sunflower on page 6, one small point - the center of the flower is not flat, it's usually more like a hemisphere. Take a closer look at your reference image and spend more time actually observing them!

And finally, don't rely quite so much on hatching lines as a mean to show texture. Hatching is almost always a shorthand for "I don't know what goes here, but I don't want to leave this area blank". It's perfectly fine to leave an area blank, but if you do want to fill it in, actually take the time to really observe the textures that are present in your reference images and carry it over diligently. Never work from memory, as memory is flawed - keep looking back at your reference image after a second or two of drawing texture.

Anyway, I am going to mark this lesson as complete, as my main focus here is on your ability to create those flowing leaf forms. As for more solid organic and geometric forms, you'll get more practice with that on the next lesson.

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

2016-10-01 00:49

Looking pretty good! I have only one issue I'd like to raise - underlying most of your drawings, you've got some really faint, timid marks. Your construction lines, of course. It's fantastic that they're there, but they should be drawn with much more confidence - looking at how you're drawing now, it's very clear to me that you're doing so with the intent to draw a pretty picture in the end, rather than focusing on the actual process behind it. These exercises are all targeted towards fully understanding, grasping, and appreciating the approach we take not to produce a good final drawing, but rather to convince ourselves of the illusion we are constructing. Don't draw those marks with the intent to hide them - draw them as confidently as you'd draw any other marks for that drawing. Make sure they have an impact on you and how you perceive the object you're creating.

An extension of this is that by drawing your initial construction lines faintly, you then go on to sort of replace them with darker, bolder ones. This 'replacement' of marks naturally results in a stiffer line, where you're trying not to veer away from the marks you've already established. This is not the best approach.

Instead, having drawn those initial constructions with regular lines (as opposed to lightly), all you have to do now is add a little line weight to emphasize some of the lines that already exist. Rather than replacing them, you're bringing certain key marks forward to help organize and sort things out. While the difference between replacing and emphasizing is subtle, and both involve drawing over existing marks, it is there. Furthermore, since the underlying marks are now part of the final drawing, they often carry much more energy and confidence, and tend to make that a part of your overall image rather than the whole thing being rigid and overly careful.

Anyway! As far as construction and use of form goes, things are coming along great, so keep it up. Just keep what I've mentioned above in mind, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-30 22:07

Definitely. On both lessons 1 and 2 you'll find 'self critique resources' (blue buttons on the top of each lesson) to help you identify certain common mistakes people tend to make. Also, once free critiques close after the 7th, I'll be opening the subreddit up so you can post your work for others to critique.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-09-30 20:28

Nice work! It looks like you're making some pretty solid progress! I especially liked the experimentation with the plane intersections. For the couple where you tried to fit the cylinders into boxes, or ellipses into planes, you should definitely check out the video I posted last weekend (if you haven't already): https://youtu.be/yFjrSddZiv4

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

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-30 19:31

Thanks so much! It's much appreciated, and I certainly hope you jump into drawing soon!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-09-29 21:15

I think your cylinders are looking pretty good. There's a little bit of wavering with your ghosted lines here and there, but this will go away with time and practice. Overall though, you're doing great. The main thing to be concerned with here is the alignment of your ellipses, and this appears to be progressing nicely. You were already doing a pretty decent job of it to start with, and at this point improvement in this area will be more subtle than stark, but there definitely is growth. One thing I'm pleased to see is that though you started on the first page placing your ellipses to be centred on the ends of each minor axis line, you corrected your mistake by the second page and started placing the entirety of each ellipse on the minor axis, so that it penetrated all the way through. This is definitely much better, and results in better alignment.

Keep up the good work and consider this challenge complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-29 21:04

I am honestly a little worried about that, but we'll have to see how it goes. There's no backing out now, either way. I do have the expectation that eventually I'll run into the same problem (I'm hoping it wont' be for a while), but some people have suggested that when I reach that point, I can make some more nuanced adjustments - for instance, tying your pledged amount to the number of submissions you can make in a month.

To be honest, I'm very much betting on the idea that the difference between free and any dollar amount is steep enough to drive a healthy number away. Of course, the ones we see here are those who are supportive of the idea (most of whom are happy to spend the paltry amount) but it's still a pretty small number of people relative to the number of people I get submitting for critiques. Also looking at the number of increases in pledges and new pledges I've received in the past few days - there has been a significant jump, but nothing that makes me particularly worried.

And thanks for the well wishes! My mouth is actually feeling much better today, and I think I'll order myself some pizza to celebrate. ... I'd better not burn the roof of my mouth.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-29 21:00

You're absolutely right about that - I'm going to write a reminder to do that on a sticky and stick it to one of my monitors immediately. Hopefully I'll get to it this weekend while updating lesson 7. Rather than leaving it down in the homework section, I should probably go over that stuff at the top. Thanks for the prod in the right direction.

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

2016-09-29 13:15

I'm glad it helped. And thanks for the bump, it's much appreciated!

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-29 02:47

But.. I'm beautiful.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-29 02:41

We know you're (mostly?) human

The truth is... I'm actually a box.

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

2016-09-28 22:22

Unfortunately the answer really is just "make a shit ton of mistakes". That's really how you learn to improve your sense for proportion, and to learn what joints tend to exist where. For the most part, it's mileage.

I wouldn't say I ultimately ignore my initial ball masses - I certainly don't, but they tend to get wrapped up in other forms, masses and details. Their existence is very important, however - as when sculpting, you need a base form to build off, that's what these masses represent. They don't have to be directly visible in the final construction in order to have value.

You didn't ask for it, but here's my demo of that bird. It came out kind of shitty, because you're right - it is a tough pose, and its joints are pretty muddy. One important thing to keep in mind though is that it doesn't look implausible. Look at the drawing alone, it's a bird. Bring in the reference image, "why is that asshat teaching a drawing course!"

If you want to draw a specific breed of bird, then the best way to do that is to draw a SHIT ton of images of that bird from different angles. That's what studies are. There was actually an assignment in a class I took years ago on form language where in order to learn what really makes an object identifiable (in terms of shape, form and proportion), we had to draw pages and pages of that object. In my case, I did a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500:

The drawings were rough and poorly done, but there was a lot of value in doing them. I got to learn what actually looked like that object, and what didn't. At the end, we did another page of drawings where we took those proportions and played with them - maintaining a general flavour of the original object, but seeing how far we could take it before that link was severed: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QbExno2j4X4/UwsVB_ZDz-I/AAAAAAAAHHA/9pOO883wvbE/s1600/sketchbook_20140212def.jpg

Long story short, here we're focusing on constructing things that are believable. Proportion is VERY important to that, but you will find that with practice you'll get better at falling within the realm of plausibility. Once you're able to do that, you might not be able to draw "Sparrow specimen 41A" with perfect accuracy, but you will be able to construct a sparrow in a variety of poses with some loose reference.

From there, if you want to be able to draw with that kind of precision, then you'd move onto practice more targeted observational drawing stuff, which you can build on top of the construction you've learned here. That is of course outside of the scope of this course (because I'm pretty bad at being hyper accurate with my drawings).

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

2016-09-28 21:30

Excellent work! Your use of construction is coming along great - I'm especially pleased with how solid your flower pots look (this early on, it's often a weak point for students as they get caught up in the fluidity of the more organic forms involved in plants). I'm also really pleased with how that radish came out.

The only thing I have to suggest is that when you draw, say, serrated edges for a leaf, don't draw the entire edge as a single continuous, repeating wave. Draw each 'spike' or 'tooth' section individually. The problem with that sort of approach is that it often ends up becoming literally just a monotonous wave, with not enough consideration put into the design of each component.

Aside from that, fantastic work. I'll mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-28 17:38

Hi there, fellow Haligonian! I hope the lessons help.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-28 17:06

I actually did see your post on the other thread - to be honest, I didn't respond to it because I was already moving in the direction of cutting out free critiques altogether, so there wasn't much I couldn't have said that wouldn't have been a little embarrassing.

Also to note, it's fine to submit the box/cylinder challenges and lesson 6 at the same time, because they're not technically required prerequisites. The issue is more towards those who want to submit lessons 1, 2, 3, etc. rapid-fire one after another, rather than finishing off 1, receiving a critique, then applying what they've learned from the critique to lesson 2's homework.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-28 17:04

That was the initial plan - that is, over a year ago. I meant to ultimately detach from reddit and build up the whole community on the website itself. That idea fizzled out a long time ago for various reasons - mostly because actually putting it together would be a considerable amount of work. I'll be damned if I ever put a premade PhpBB or whatever else board on my server - if I bothered to do that, it would be something custom built. The most bothersome thing would be image hosting - on reddit, it's fine. We host our stuff on imgur or wherever else, and because of the nature of the environment, we're used to that. On a dedicated website, it's somewhat harder to expect that of users. It becomes a serious usability issue - you should be able to host things through the website itself. The best solution for this is using Amazon S3, but ultimately that's another cost to worry about.

Lastly, I am actually seriously considering just opening up the current subreddit rather than making a separate one (plenty of reasons why it might be better, but I won't get into them now). This presents one major advantage - every post users make will draw more attention to the subreddit, which will drive more people to the website. Basically it's free exposure, which really allowed drawabox to grow in the first place.

Long story short - it'd be far too much work and trouble to set up a forum on drawabox that would actually meet my standards. We're already on reddit, so the resistance to just opening this subreddit to other peoples' posts and discussions would be fairly minimal. Upvoting and downvoting can be an annoyance, and I certainly can go to some lengths to mitigate that impact (though not completely remove it) like hiding the upvote/downvote options, but ultimately it's a trade-off that I'm comfortable with.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-28 16:54

Do you get anything you can take with you to reference from and look at when you were taking the course?

Not entirely sure what you mean by this, but the answer is in all likelihood no - the instructor does live demos for you, but in most cases you don't get any sort of recording of the demo to refer to later. As far as the attention span thing goes, that's something you're going to have to improve upon in order to really take advantage of the resources that are out there.

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

2016-09-27 20:57

BOX THERAPY!

You've done well! Your organic forms feel pretty good, though keep working on getting your contour curves to fit snugly within the forms themselves. Your texture experimentation is coming along nicely as well. Your form intersections feel solid and the forms seem cohesive within the scene.

Your organic intersections are fine, though I do want to recommend that in the future you stick to simpler sausage forms and try to avoid having those forms taper and swell irregularly through their midsection, even in small amounts. Reason being, this inherently undermines the solidity of that form. Sticking to simple sausage-like masses can allow you to focus on how those forms interact with one another - where a form's weight is supported by another one (causing the first to wrap around the second a little) and where the form's weight is not supported (causing it to sag).

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

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

2016-09-27 20:54

Pretty nice work! Just a few things to keep in mind:

Your form intersections and organic intersections were well done. I especially liked how firm and solid the geometric forms in the former appeared. Keep up the great work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-09-27 20:50

Looking pretty good! I am a little bit disgruntled about you not drawing through your ellipses - they do look pretty good as is, though I really do want you to be drawing through them at least once more before lifting your pen. The other thing I wanted to mention is that your minor axis lines should penetrate all the way through both ellipses, as this makes it considerably easier to actually align your ellipse correctly. Your alignment is fine right now from what I can see, but it's a matter of taking all the steps necessary to have the best possible results.

Keep up the good work, and consider this lesson complete. I'm planning on updating lesson 7 this Saturday, so you may want to hold off on starting on it until after I've added an intro video and done a few more demos.

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

2016-09-27 20:42

Really phenomenal constructions, and your use of line weight is spot on. I especially like how you have a tendency to let your lines swell into their weights rather than jumping directly from one to another. This fluidity adds a certain degree of character to your drawings, and makes them feel much more believable. You also have a certain confidence with how you approach the masses you lay-in. You're not afraid (or at least you don't appear to be) of making mistakes by being overly bold.

While I do agree that some of your contour curves don't quite wrap around the forms in a way that reinforces the surface's curvature, it's actually something I didn't immediately notice. The way you handle the silhouettes of the forms already conveys such a strong sense of that curvature that many of the contour curves don't add that much more, and therefore the fact that they're a little bit weaker doesn't have a significant negative impact. Still, take more care when you draw them, and always remind yourself of how they should be hooking back around as they reach the edge.

Your newer drawings are obviously the better of the set, though I do like the textural experimentation you have going on in the earlier attempts. You do have a tendency there to rely more on using more ink however, than perhaps you should. Less is more is a good rule of thumb (and one I've probably mentioned in the past). By drawing less and thinking through the marks we're planning on putting down more, we can achieve more interesting details and textures with far less ink on the page.

Anyway, you're doing fantastically - keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-27 20:36

You're most welcome!

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-27 15:04

I did have plans to flesh out the drawabox website to actually include the ability to submit work for critique right there, among other things. Ultimately that plan fell on the backburner, and ultimately I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. It's true that reddit is a pain in the ass when it comes to this sort of thing, but as it stands, any sort of move to a different system would come with significant casualties (losing users due to confusion, and so on). It's certainly doable, but it'd also take a hell of a lot of time and effort. Currently I'm looking into ways to diminish my workload, rather than increase it, so that I can spend time on other projects I have going on.

Also, as far as doubling posts goes, it's not a bad idea but it does have a couple of problems. When I'm the only one giving critiques on a thread, it's simple - I'm automatically subscribed to every thread I make, so I get notified whenever someone posts homework. People (generally) don't get missed. If it's a single thread being followed by many people who are not subscribed to it, their homework is waaaay more likely to go unnoticed. For this reason, people who are asking questions or looking for community-critiques on their homework will have to be doing so as actual posts to the subreddit, because this bumps them up to the top and gives them some time in the spotlight before getting buried. Additionally, with every new post in the subreddit, we leech a little bit of attention from the rest of reddit, which helps grow the community. It's very, very easy for completely separate websites to remain a very small, niche environment. Had I started this thing off as a separate website, there's no way it would have grown this quickly. Reddit's a pain in the ass, but the free exposure it gives is invaluable.

I really appreciate your suggestions though - thanks for taking the time to think about how this subreddit and drawabox in general can be improved!

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-27 14:37

Thanks for the kind words! As for the one time donation, it's geared towards those who may have trouble committing to the same amount every month. Basically if you donate in a given month, you'll get treated as a patreon supporter for that month (you're welcome to critiques and I send you an email with all the current video links). So feel free to use that as an alternative.

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-27 14:29

I'm glad you think so!

Uncomfortable in the post "The Future of Free Critiques on /r/ArtFundamentals"

2016-09-27 14:29

Ahaha, I've had that book close to my heart since I was attending classes at CDA. I think I bought it right after I finished off Vis Com: Dynamic Sketching in my first term. I still keep it around, and go through it regularly whenever I'm struggling with technical perspective issues, which is one of my weaker areas. You're absolutely right, it's an excellent reference. One of the new videos I made recently, about ellipses in planes, is pretty much all pulled from there.