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Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-03 15:10

I can't speak about the dysgraphia - aside from knowing that there are some artists who have it that have managed to overcome the additional challenges (like this person who posted about having dysgraphia five years ago. All I can do is critique you as I would critique anyone else. One thing I don't tolerate, however, are your three questions. "Should I give up?" That's up to you, but the weight of your whining is not something that should be weighed upon my shoulders. If you choose not to give up, then you should be willing to do whatever it takes to reach your goal.

Anyway, about your boxes - your lines certainly are wobbly (look at this page from your lesson 1 work, you are clearly capable of drawing the lines straight if you put in the effort). Beyond the wobbling though, a lot of your forms are all over the place - which is essentially fine, so long as you complete the next step that was listed on the challenge page, to go over your completed work with a different coloured pen and to mark in the correct lines after reflecting upon your mistakes. I see none of that reflection, which is entirely necessary to improve. You can't simply draw and keep bullishly ploughing on forward, you need to look back at what you've drawn, identify what went wrong and correct it on the drawing so you will be more likely to remember it the next time.

What I see from you is something I see from a lot of people who believe (with varying degrees of validity) that they are predisposed to be "shite". Beyond the additional challenges they face, their presupposition that they won't succeed no matter how hard they try drives them to not try that hard at all. They rush, they skip steps, all because they think themselves special and different from the hundreds of people who've attempted the same work. Whether or not they are actually special or different is irrelevant - thinking you're a unique case won't help you, regardless of whether or not you are.

The last point I want to make is that a few times through your set, you got bored, and drew boxy letters, rather than boxes. This is something that you must absolutely not do. It's not about the boxy letters, it's about letting your boredom allow you to stray from my explicit instructions. When you do my lessons, when you submit them for critique, you do them exactly as I have stated. You follow them to a tee. You draw your boxes, focusing entirely on understanding how each one sits in space, and focusing as best you can to apply the ghosting method, and then once your 250 are done, you go back over them to identify your mistakes and mark in your corrections.

It's not about doing it perfectly - it's about doing the best you can. From what I can see, even in the area that your condition poses its greatest challenge, you are capable of doing better since you've demonstrated that ability in the past. You just need to stop wallowing in self pity and do the work.

You drew 250 boxes, so technically you've completed the challenge. Of course, it's not like completion of these lessons mean that you're done with the exercises. As I describe here, you're saddled with them for eternity. So you'd better get used to it. You don't have to limit yourself to just these exercises, and you certainly should spend plenty of time drawing whatever you want, but you'd be wise to a little each day.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 14: Composition"

2016-07-02 17:51

I can't really speak to the thumbnail studies (since I don't have the actual reference you used) but I've got a lot of notes for your compositions. Before you look at them, I want to make clear the point that this is a very nice start. There's all kinds of issues and problems, but there's supposed to be.

http://i.imgur.com/yxzcWcg.png

Here's the issues I saw that were repeated:

I really like the third from the top on the left side (I put a star next to it), I think it's got potential due to its framing and balance. It could benefit from having a secondary and perhaps tertiary focal point, to help guide the eye through the scene to perhaps push a narrative. But it's a great starting point. My only issue there might be that the character and stone are kinda vertically centred.

I also think the bottom right could be very successful if the angle of that bridge were reversed. As it is, it's another echoed parallel line, whereas if it were reversed, you'd have a pleasant zigzag cutting through the piece, leading the eye through it. It might then fall off on the bottom right of the composition, but we could then throw in some other superforeground element there to cap that off.

Anyway, I strongly encourage you to do more of these - they give you the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes in a fairly compressed timeline, showing you what does and doesn't work. At first it can be quite difficult to see the mistakes on your own, but with time and practice (and perhaps with a few more critiques) you'll start to see them yourself.

I'm unsure if you've seen these before, but I've got a few other videos that show me thinking through some compositional problems, though they don't have much in the way of relevant commentary. They do have cool music though.

Anyway, feel free to move onto the next lesson. I have no badge to offer to your flair for these though!

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-02 17:28

I'm glad the Y method helped! Your box constructions are improving, but be mindful of your line quality. They're wobbling and wavering here and there, so you'll want to keep working on the ghosting method to keep them straight. I talk about it in this comic.

Nice work completing the challenge though - just be sure to keep up with your exercises as you continue to move forwards. These kinds of things take time and practice to fix, so you will improve as long as you don't leave the exercises behind.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-02 17:26

Your constructions are improving steadily. I'm glad to see the extensive corrections that you applied (some people get lazy in this area), and your redlines seem to be on point. I do want to stress the importance of being mindful of your linework though - here and there your lines waver somewhat - keep working towards applying the ghosting method, to keep them straight and true.

Also, in the future you may feel the urge to draw things smaller - this, especially when it comes to constructional challenges which involve thinking through spatial problems, is a bad idea. Your brain often requires more space to think and figure things out, so drawing a bit larger is usually better.

Anyway, nice work completing the challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-02 17:22

Pretty nice work. Your box constructions have improved considerably, especially once you started drawing through them. I definitely want to stress that your hatching lines are kinda sloppy though - make sure your lines reach all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Don't leave any floating arbitrarily in the middle.

When it comes to line weight, there's no real trick to it - it's one of the many reasons that continuing to practice these early exercises as you move forwards is important - as the super imposed lines exercise helps you to practice for scenarios such as these.

Feel free to tackle the cylinder challenge as you see fit. It'd be good to get a decent amount of it done before you hit the form intersections, but the other exercises in lesson 2 don't really rely upon what you'll learn in the challenge.

Congrats on completing the challenge!

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

2016-07-02 16:20

Your arrows are looking good. Your organic forms with contour curves are generally solid until your last page (http://i.imgur.com/HgZstye.jpg) where they completely cease wrapping convincingly around the rounded form. This then carries on into your organic intersections to varying degrees, so it's definitely something you need to continue practicing and working on as you move forwards. It's normal for people to slip back into bad habits if they get too relaxed about it just after grasping the idea, so you'll have to be vigilant.

Your dissections are hit and miss - there are some where you clearly exerted more patience and care in observing your references and taking your time to actually apply the textures to your forms, like the wood, scales, banana, kiwi, etc. Others, however, show not enough focus on your reference image, along with key signs of drawing from memory rather than continually looking back. Never rely on your memory, as it is faulty and will immediately oversimplify anything you look at within moments of looking away. Look at your reference, then draw a few marks, then look back, and repeat.

Also, there are some textures where you didn't quite manage to take into consideration the curvature of the form, causing the texture itself to flatten the form out. Examples of this include the wood grain, wool, brick, etc.

Moving ahead to your form intersections - the ones with just the boxes are fairly well done. The other two pages certainly demonstrate a greater struggle, though I'd like to point out that you included a lot of stretched forms (long boxes, long tubes) which said to avoid in my instructions, as they complicate matters far too much. Stick to more equilateral forms, as you did with the box-only intersections.

I'd like you to do one more page of organic intersections. Try starting off with a ground plane (as demonstrated on the right side of this old demo: http://i.imgur.com/tY6wPYK.png), or even a box, and consider the weight of the organic forms. Think about how they sag against one another. One thing I like to do is imagining a long sausage-shaped balloon filled with water, how it would behave if it were dropped over my outstretched arm. Think about how its volume would have to be displaced on either side of the obstacle, and how it would hang there still maintaining its overall form due to the tension in the balloon's material.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 4: Drawing Insects and Arachnids"

2016-07-02 15:23

Your work improves over the set, but your drawings are still coming out remarkably flat. That said, looking at your work I get the distinct impression that you're entirely capable of conveying the illusion of form, but that you're overly occupied with the idea of creating a pretty drawing that your basic form constructions suffer for it.

To put it simply, you're way too focused on your rendering/detailing. The main thing I think you're missing is consideration for how the different forms in your construction actually intersect - it helps immensely to get your head around the idea that this is all three dimensional to actually include the cross-sections of the points of intersection, so that you can fully comprehend how the two forms relate to one another. Otherwise it's easy to fall back into the trap of thinking of these as flat shapes on a flat page.

Ultimately, everything we're doing here is creating an illusion. The first person you want to be successfully fooling, however, is you.

Here's a few demos on constructing insects from the big demo dump I did earlier in June:

I'd like you to do another 3 pages of insect drawings, but do NOT go into any texture or detail. Your detailing is very good, but we want to focus on your constructions.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 6: Drawing Everyday Objects"

2016-07-01 18:43

Overall, you've done a good job. You improve over the course of the set, and you're demonstrating a solid grasp of how to see your objects as a combination of rudimentary geometric forms, rather than as overly complicated bundles of details. The more you rely on construction, and the longer you push things before rounding off your corners and adding the last touches, the more solid the result.

One thing to keep in mind of course is that since many of these forms start off with the most basic forms - boxes and cylinders - it's especially important to keep on top of practicing those. For example, 16 is an example of an object that was generally constructed well, save for the very first overall box, whose far plane was somewhat larger than its near plane (looking at the pair of faces, one on either side of the form). Because of this, the whole thing is skewed. I'm still glad that you pushed forwards with it, because it's still a good learning experience.

Also, I noticed that you struggled somewhat with that computer mouse construction, and remembered a demo I did for someone ages ago that might be of use: http://i.imgur.com/Mi2xVdj.png

Anyway, that's about all I have to offer here - you're doing well, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Phew, this is my last critique for now - I believe I've earned myself an ice cream cone!

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-07-01 18:30

Definitely a significant improvement both in construction and in texture. I have two things to recommend, one on the plant constructions, and one for your cylinders.

  1. Don't leave any part of a construction open-ended, as you have with the stems of the two mushrooms on the bottom of the first page. Cap them off - since they're cylinders, in this case you'd do so with an ellipse. Left open, the stem reads as very flat, but if it were capped off, it'd read more as a proper 3D ellipse.

  2. DRAWWW THROUUUGHHH YOURRRR ELLIPSSESSSSSS. I stress this a lot in earlier lessons, and it's of the utmost importance that you continue to do it for all the ellipses you draw for all of my lessons. What you do outside of my lessons is up to you, but this should be applied to every ellipse you submit to me.

That's about it! I'll mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Keep up the good work, and you should be proud of the strides you've made.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-01 18:02

It's kind of funny that you should ask if drawing the 'unseen' lines is okay - it's actually one of the tips I include in the notes themselves (under 'draw through your forms'). That said, the way you did it (at least for many of the boxes) is not something I would recommend in any circumstances. That is, using broken lines.

As soon as a line is broken, its integrity comes into question - when you attempt to resume the line, it will almost certainly have deviated from its original path. This defeats the purpose of the line in the first place. Use a single, solid line instead. Don't worry about the fact that the line is technically not supposed to be visible - we aren't in the business of drawing pretty pictures here, we're focusing on understanding how things sit in 3D space. If you're worried about getting confused about which lines are in the back, and which are in front, applying hatching lines to your front faces can help distinguish them.

The boxes themselves are generally okay, and they improve over the set. The broken lines sometimes send the angles of those hidden lines off a bit, but the general construction of the boxes is still fairly decent. When you started off, you were definitely still very much in the headspace of relying on explicit (or somewhat explicit) vanishing points, resulting in boxes with very dramatic foreshortening, but I'm glad that you fairly quickly moved away from this approach.

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

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-01 17:56

Pretty nice work. I noticed that 250 is a bit questionable (it might be fully isometric, or the far plane might be slightly larger than the near plane) but the rest of your boxes are generally quite well done. Keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-07-01 17:55

Fundamentally, a lot of the things we cover in the first two lessons, as well as the box/cylinder challenges aren't things we nail immediately. It takes time and persistent practice, these big groupings (as far as quantity goes) are really just a sort of forced opportunity to get familiar with them. To put it simply, you're welcome to move onto the next lesson.

There's two things I want to point out about your set here. Three, actually, but the third is really just pointing out how immensely rushed and sloppy your last 25 or so boxes were. Don't ever let yourself do sloppy work - if you get tired or bored, take a break and come back to it later. Sloppy work is a waste of time, and doesn't benefit you at all, and may reinforce bad habits. To extend that point, don't draw things so small, as it limits your ability to think through spatial problems, and don't apply hatching lines so poorly. Take the time to stretch them across the plane from edge to edge, rather than leaving them floating - that is, if you decide t o draw them at all.

Onto the other two points. Firstly, when drawing through a form, never rely on a dashed or broken line. As soon as a line is broken, its integrity comes into question - when you attempt to resume the line, it will almost certainly have deviated from its original path. This defeats the purpose of the line in the first place. Use a single, solid line instead. Don't worry about the fact that the line is technically not supposed to be visible - we aren't in the business of drawing pretty pictures here, we're focusing on understanding how things sit in 3D space. If you're worried about getting confused about which lines are in the back, and which are in front, applying hatching lines (patiently) to your front faces can help distinguish them.

The other point I wanted to make is that you are still showing a lot of instances of far planes being larger than your near planes - even in the boxes with your corrections. This is something you need to work towards identifying on your own. A few that come to mind with this problem are 207, 95, 115. There are many others, but those came up at a glance.

Anyway, like I said. Keep practicing the basic exercises, but feel free to move ahead to the next lesson as you do so.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-07-01 17:23

I get that it's been seven months since your last attempt, but I'm not at all getting the impression that you applied much of my last critique to your latest try.

This is what I said last time: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/3jflnu/lesson_3_drawing_plants_version_3/cwy3lgn

To summarize, here are the main points:

Examples: http://i.imgur.com/TSN8ALH.png, http://i.imgur.com/XXWtwJD.jpg, http://i.imgur.com/vvVfuQW.png, http://i.imgur.com/sKpJbGq.jpg (all taken from this big album).

These are two core concepts you are still missing. Your center lines often don't even extend the whole length of the leaf (telling me that you are not constructing your leaf around it), and many of your leaves' simplest edges are wavy - which is complex - rather than simple.

Another thing I'm noticing is that when you draw your flower pots, your construction of cylinders is off - you'd benefit significantly from looking at the 250 cylinder challenge, where there are notes on how to construct a proper cylinder with consideration for its minor axis and the alignment of the two ellipses. Another thing to be aware of is that it's great to draw through your forms, though I noticed that in one of your cylinders you did so with a broken, dashed line. This in particular is a bad idea - as soon as a line is broken, it ceases to maintain its flow, so the whole purpose of the dashed line becomes kind of moot. You can't trust it. Draw the entire ellipse, and draw through it as covered in lesson 1. Don't worry about the fact that part of the line is technically not visible - we are not here to make pretty pictures, we are here to learn how things exist in 3D space. Wasting lines is bad, but as long as a line is of value in helping us understand how our objects sit in 3D space, they should be drawn.

Lastly, I see several places where you're trying to add lighting. There's a reason I don't cover this - people tend to rely on shading to convey the illusion of 3D form, but this is a crutch. My lessons focus entirely on understanding the silhouettes of forms, and describing their contours. The silhouette of a form is the first thing the viewer's eye will read, and therefore has the greatest impact when describing how that form turns through space. Shading, on the other hand, is an interior detail which is not acknowledged until much later in the observational process, so its impact is significantly lessened. Don't concern yourself with it. Just focus on the things I cover in my lessons, when doing the homework for them.

Overall, I'm getting the impression that you aren't really keeping up with the material from the last two lessons. As described here, you should not be leaving those exercises behind - you're not done, not ever. As you continue to do those exercises as warmups, you'll see your lines become smoother and straighter, you'll find that your arm moves how you wish it to, by your intent, and not wobbling all over the place. To achieve this however, you have to keep at it.

Were I you, I'd start from the beginning. You started this whole process a VERY long time ago, and I'm inclined to believe that not all of that time was spent on this stuff. We get rusty, we forget things, it's normal. Also, looking back, I just realized that I never marked your lesson 2 as complete, so I'm not sure why I critiqued your first attempt at this one.

Go back to the start, and do lesson 1. Then the 250 box challenge. Then the 250 cylinder challenge. Submit both of these (you said before you'd done the 250 box challenge, but never submitted it) upon completion, so you can get feedback on them. The lesson 2. Then come back to lesson 3, read through the resources given to you carefully, and repeatedly. And try it again.

I see no signs here that you are not capable of drawing - the problems that come up are related, but very different. The gaps between attempts, the long periods of time without practicing the exercises, missing key points I've mentioned in my critiques. It's a matter of patience and focus, nothing more.

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

2016-06-30 22:05

The forms in that exercise are oriented arbitrarily, just like the organic perspective boxes from lesson 1. If you remember the boxes section from that lesson, I explain how each vanishing point governs a set of lines that are parallel to one another - so each box can have its own 3 vanishing points.

When a drawing is done in 1/2/3 point perspective, it's because every box is parallel and exists on the same grid, so to speak. As soon as one box deviates and is rotated slightly, it's going to have its own vanishing points. This easily leads to waaay too many vanishing points to keep track of, so my lessons focus on learning how to estimate perspective and construct boxes that are all cohesive with one another within the same scene, without explicitly putting down your VPs and plotting your lines back.

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

2016-06-30 20:08

Your arrows are looking pretty decent. Your organic forms with contour curves however definitely need a lot of work. Your first page is alright, though by the bottom of it and into the next page you stop drawing your minor axis/central spine and your curves completely stop giving any real impression of wrapping around the rounded form. I talk about this common issue here: Contour Curves Do Not Wrap Around Organic Forms. Be sure to watch the video included there as well.

Moving ahead, your first page of dissections is fairly well done - there's a couple things I'd like to point out for the second, however.

Firstly, the banana doesn't give the impression of being a banana at all - it's really just a bunch of cross hatching, entirely unlike the more thoughtful and carefully observed textures you drew in the previous page. It's very clear that you're capable of much better than this, but you got sloppy. We all get sloppy sometimes, but at those times it's better to take a break.

The other point in regards to the dissections that I wanted to mention was your "nose" texture. In reality, this does not constitute a texture. Objects can be divided into two components - form, the elements that exist obviously within three dimensions, and texture, which wraps around the forms - essentially the forms' surfaces. In truth the texture is actually made up of forms as well, but very small ones that have no consideration for perspective or anything like that due to their negligible scale.

Your choice of a 'nose' is a form, not a texture. This exercise is all about taking textures and wrapping them around a standard sausage-like form. The nose itself has a texture - the skins, with all of its little pores and whatnot - but the nose in and of itself is not what we're after. Keep that in mind.

Moving ahead to your form intersections, one thing that's clear is that your boxes deeeefinitely need a lot of work. Almost every single one has a far plane larger than its near plane, and entirely contradicts the basic tenets of perspective. Drawing through your boxes here, as covered in the 250 box challenge, would be very useful.

Lastly, your organic intersections show many of the issues I mentioned in regards to your organic forms with contour curves. When working with any forms like this, it's very important to keep in mind that your forms have volume to them, and weight. You yourself need to be convinced of this illusion, before anyone else will buy into it. It'll take some time, but that's really the purpose of these tricks like contour curves - to fool YOU. So when you're drawing them, try and keep in mind that you're not drawing a mark across a 2D page. You're drawing a line on the surface of that form, so it should physically be impossible to draw a simple, straight line with no curvature to it - because the surface is rounded, not flat.

So, I'd like you to do two more pages of organic forms with contour curves, one page of organic intersections and two pages of form intersections.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-06-30 19:54

Earlier on, your work definitely starts off pretty weak and stiff, likely constructing your leaves in the wrong order (starting off with the center line to determine the flow of your overall leaf form is very important). Over the course of your homework however your work gets considerably stronger and feels more solidly put together by the end, as though you are demonstrating a reasonably solid grasp of what it means to construct your objects.

There is still plenty of room for improvement, of course - keep drawing through each ellipse you do for my lessons, be mindful of your contour curves (make sure they're wrapping convincingly around the forms and overshoot them as they hook around at the edges a little if need be). Also, some of your leaf constructions (like these) deviate really far from your initial lay-in, beyond the point of simply increasing complexity. If the deviation is too great, the lay-in becomes somewhat pointless. Remember that the idea is that you're going from simple to complex - not loose and approximate to specific.

Anyway, you're doing reasonably well, so keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-06-30 01:39

You're going to have to hold onto your homework for a few more days, since free critiques are on hold for the month of june. They'll reopen on July 1st, so you can resubmit then.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-06-29 12:57

Looks like you only linked to a single image.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-06-28 18:23

Nice work completing the challenge. I have just two recommendations to offer. Firstly, when going back over to do your corrections, don't just circle areas you believe to be incorrect. Actually draw in the correct line, so you can figure out in more exact terms what the mistake was. This will make you significantly more aware of the mistakes you tend to make, and will allow you to compensate for them more effectively in the future.

The other point is about line weight - I see that you added considerably more weight to the lines that are facing the viewer (as opposed to those on the opposite side of the form, which were added in order to draw through the whole thing). I fully understand why you added extra weight to those, but one thing to be aware of is how your application of weight impacts the general cohesion of the form. By having your thickest lines on the inside, this breaks the form apart. Ideally you want to have your thickest lines be those along the silhouette of the form, so that they to some degree enclose the overall form. I talk about this more here: Line Weight.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-06-28 18:20

I got a little confused when you kept referring to them as squares - before I checked, I was a little afraid you had actually drawn a bunch of squares, rather than boxes. I'm glad that wasn't the case!

I'm glad to see that you've completed the challenge, and that you've paid special attention to applying the ghosting method to your linework. I'm also pleased to see that you drew through many of your boxes, but frankly I do believe you should continue doing this throughout (you stopped in your last page). Also, I see that you played with dashed/broken lines in the first couple boxes of the last page - this is something I strongly advise against. As soon as a line is broken, its flow cannot be recovered, so there is a good chance that there will be slight deviations in trajectory, resulting in a line that is not true and straight. Just go ahead and draw a solid line, as it will have greater integrity.

I noticed that here and there you tried to differentiate the front-facing faces from the others by applying some hatching lines to them. That's totally fine, and a good idea - but here and there you got sloppy and just applied a loose, sloppy squiggly line going back and forth instead of individual strokes stretching all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Don't allow yourself to be sloppy - if you get tired, take a break, but never give into the urge to do any less than the best you are capable of.

Lastly, I'd like to point out that you did skip an important step - that is, going back over your boxes and reflecting upon your mistakes, marking in corrections with a different coloured pen. Drawing through your boxes has made a trend of far planes being larger than near planes. Actually going back and drawing in the corrected lines will help you become more aware of these mistakes, so you can consciously compensate for them in the future.

Anyway, I'll leave you to do that for yourself - you need not resubmit them, just make sure you do the corrections as reflection and identification of your mistakes is a big part of the learning process. Aside form that, nice work completing the challenge.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-06-27 20:17

I was referring to the settings you use when scanning your pages. Most scanning software comes with presets tailored towards specific kinds of material - a lot of people use the drawing preset because they think, well, I'm scanning a drawing so this must be right. But it uses really high contrast and results in harsh images with stark blacks and whites, eviscerating the middle greys. Photo presets result in a much more accurate range of tones, displaying all of the nuance of your linework.

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

2016-06-26 20:40

I decided to remove it because it had too many mistakes in it that were confusing people. I eventually hope to remake it, but until then it will not be an official part of the drawabox material. It certainly still has value, but at the same time it made me look like an asshat, so I'd rather not share it around.

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

2016-06-26 18:16

Generally fairly well done - the only area I noticed some weakness (which we'll deal with) is the organic forms, specifically organic forms with contour curves. There's two points here to pay close attention to:

First and foremost, the minor axis (the central spine that passes through the forms) is an important guideline - all of your ellipses (and curves, as the curves are merely the visible portions of the ellipses) must be aligned to it. If you recall from lesson 1, the minor axis is the line that passes through an ellipse's narrower dimension, cutting it into two equal, symmetrical halves. Aligning your ellipses in this way can be challenging at first, but the first step is an awareness of this as a goal.

Secondly, when tackling your organic forms with contour curves, you're not quite achieving the illusion of the curves wrapping around the organic forms convincingly. Rather than accelerating and hooking back around as they reach the edge, yours maintain a fairly consistent curvature which causes them to deviate and separate from what the correct curvature of the form's surface would be. I talk about this at greater detail here: Contour Curves Do Not Wrap Around Organic Forms. Be sure to also watch the video included there.

Your form intersections are generally well done, though the ones where you drew through your forms tend to be vastly more successful, so be sure to keep that up when doing the exercise in the future.

Aside from that, you've done well. I'd like you to do one more page of organic forms with contour curves before I mark this lesson as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Cylinder Challenge"

2016-06-26 18:06

Your cylinder constructions are coming along well - I have just two things to recommend. First off, draw a little bigger. I really like how you filled each page to the brim, but when it comes to spatial problems (and constructing geometric forms is very much a spatial problem) it helps considerably to give yourself a little more room. Working smaller results in the thickness of your lines being greater in relationship to the overall size of the drawing, so this can result in things feeling a little clunkier, and less nuanced.

Secondly, right now it seems your scanner's really blasting out any contrast and nuance in your linework - I'm guessing you used a 'drawing' preset. You'll find that the results with photo presets is better, because it gives you a wider range of tones and captures your pages more accurately.

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

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

2016-06-25 18:30

Oh, about the dry stroke - br sure to test your pens before buying them if possible. Some pens will be duds, and the frequency depends on the brand. You may want to try cleaning the tip with rubbing alcohol though, I've heard that it can help if the cause of the poor inkflow is a partially clogged tip. Alternatively, many brands of pens will achieve optimal flow if you hold the pen upright, perpendicularly to the page.

At the end of the day, a good pen will keep up with you - drawing too slow can result in a wobbling line, so you should still maintain a confident pace despite the pen.

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

2016-06-25 18:27

I definitely recommend sticking to a single pen thickness - I specifically ask people to work with the 0.5 because it is easily the most versatile, allowing one to create both thick and thin marks based on their use of pressure. As you noted, using a single pen will force you to develop a keener sense of pressure.

By the way, thank you for increasing your pledge! I certainly appreciate it.

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

2016-06-25 17:12

One thing I'm noticing in your work is that you're getting a little distracted from the exercises themselves. I can see you've put a fair bit of effort into the presentation - or at least, a part of it - by adding different grey tones and such, as well as the use of a white pen. This isn't necessary, and is likely to draw your attention away from what each exercises is intended to teach you.

Presentation certainly is important, but only as far as laying out your drawings on the page (that is, how they're organized so as to most efficiently use the space), and filling the page as much as you can. When it comes to beautifying your drawings, that's not a great use of your time right now.

The white ink is an interesting scenario - Peter Han taught us in his course to use white ink to add little highlights here and there, though to use it sparingly. I purposely decided not to add that component to my interpretation of the material he taught, because I always found it to be a big distraction that is better left for a student who has already been able to demonstrate a grasp of the concepts each exercises espouses.

Long story short - stick to the exercises as they're described, and fill your pages. Enthusiasm is certainly a blessing, but can also be a curse! You've got to reel yourself back, and stick to the task at hand.

Anyway, onto your work. Your arrows are coming along well, as they're demonstrating a growing understanding of how these flat shapes can flow through 3D space. That's definitely something to always keep in mind - like a ribbon blowing through the wind, consider a point that is farther away from you, and a point that is closer, and try to grasp how it would flutter between those two anchors, finding its way from one to the other in the meandering way ribbons do.

Your organic forms with contour ellipses are alright, though I do want to stress the importance of drawing through every ellipse (twice is a good amount). This isn't necessary when your contour is no longer an ellipse, but at this point the majority of them should be. It's all about maintaining the integrity and flow of the shape.

Moving onto the organic forms with contour ellipses, here some of your contour curves give a good sense of wrapping around the forms, while others don't quite accelerate enough to hook around at the edges. One important factor to keep in mind is that the minor axis - the center spine line that passes through each form is still very important here to align your ellipses. That is, the invisible ellipses of which the curves are merely a visible section. This alignment will help you maintain a cross-section that is perpendicular to the direction the organic form is flowing, which will help you push that wrapping illusion. Overshooting your curves a little, as I describe here.

Your dissections are coming along fairly well - it would have been nice to see more, but I can see that you've got a good grasp of the concepts of observing your reference carefully and using different visual patterns to capture various textures rather than relying on the same pattern all over. I'm also glad to see that you have no qualms about letting your individual marks merge together into solid black areas.

In your form intersections, I do want to stress the importance of the fact that the exercise said not to draw individual groupings of forms, but rather to fill an entire page from the center with a single connected network of forms. Your intersections and the general congruency between them within the same scene are consistent and well constructed however.

I do want to point out though that once again, you should be drawing through every ellipse you draw for my lessons.

Furthermore - and this applies very heavily to the organic intersections as well - do not go over your lines in an attempt to do a "clean-up" pass. When you try to replace a previous line with a new one, the outcome is always a stiffer, wobblier mark. You should never be drawing faintly in a first pass, and then cleaning it up after the fact. Instead, you should draw your first lines with confidence, planning them out and ghosting through them appropriately before putting those marks down on the page - and then afterwards, simply adding line weight here and there to emphasize lines that already exist, rather than replacing them. This addition of line weight will help you to organize the hierarchy of your linework, which may cause some lines to become less noticeable, but overall that is not its purpose.

When you try to draw certain lines more faintly, you will inherently undermine the solidity of your forms, and the integrity of their shapes. When putting down a mark, consider whether or not that mark is of value - for instance, a line whose task is already accomplished by another existing mark has no value, but one that helps you to understand the forms you are drawing, and helps you buy into the illusion that they are in fact three dimensional, has great value. If your mark is valuable, draw it with full confidence. If it is not, don't draw it at all.

Anyway, with your form intersections and organic intersections, as well as your organic forms with contour curves, there is plenty of room to grow - that said, you are demonstrating a reasonable grasp of the concepts, so I'll mark this lesson as complete and leave you to practice them on your own as you continue to move forwards. Remember that as I describe here, you should pick two or three exercises each day from the first two lessons to do as a warmup before moving onto that day's work.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-06-25 15:13

The important thing to acknowledge about the arrows exercise is, that like leaves, you're taking a flat - pretty much 2D shape - and you're distorting it through 3D space. You need to acknowledge and begin to understand how to depict its movement through space to capture the sense of flow. It's very easy for people to think that since it's a 2D shape, they can draw it without consideration for 3D space - but the rules of perspective (smaller further away, larger up close, etc) are still very relevant here.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2016-06-24 15:58

The thing about these lessons is not that they teach you how to draw specific things - it's not about learning how to draw plants, insects, animals, etc. It's about learning how to capture form, volume and the illusion of weight and solidity by looking at the problem through many different lenses. You may think of these problems as being different, but as you go through similar challenges with each, you'll come to realize that it's really all the same thing.

Water and clouds both have form and volume to them - being truly aware of this on more than a superficial level will allow you to carve their silhouettes in a way that conveys that form to the person looking at the drawing. The lack of form in peoples' clouds is one of the most common problems there - people always look at them as flat shapes in the sky, and this makes them fairly unconvincing.

The ocean makes me think you're getting more into questions of landscape. Landscapes, like everything else, are built on an awareness and understanding of form, but as the majority of what you're drawing is so vast and so distant, it tends to become flattened into more graphic shapes. Because of this, the question becomes more of composition (how we lay out those shapes) as well as the use of light and colour. I have no lessons on the latter point, though I hope to delve into that some day. One book I'd recommend on that topic is Color and Light by James Gurney. That said, it is an advanced topic, so I would not recommend worrying much about that until you've established a strong sense of form.

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-23 16:30

Of course they do! They're going to eat so many dicks, for a long time. Everything will. But you can't just grind at them until they're perfect, you've got to move forwards while continuing to work on them a little bit each day.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 14: Composition"

2016-06-22 22:01

Thanks for catching that!

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-22 20:40

Mark this moment, for it shall never happen again! Cause it looks kinda dumb.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2016-06-21 22:04

I've written up two pages of notes for you, which you can find here. Overall, I think you're demonstrating a growing grasp of working in three dimensions and constructing your objects, but you're skipping some of the steps from my demonstrations, and are working more from memory than you should be. Remember that memory is faulty, and the moment you look away from your reference image, the majority of the information you gleaned from it gets overly simplified by your brain in an attempt to process it. You've got to be constantly looking back and forth between your drawing and reference.

Also, remember that one of the key aspects of constructive drawing is an awareness for how objects intersect with one another in 3D spaces. It's a grasp of this that will truly allow you to understand how things fit together, and will also allow you to properly fool yourself into believing that you're no longer drawing flat shapes on a flat page.

Along with the notes I pasted above, be sure to look through the collection of demos I shared with the subreddit earlier this month: http://imgur.com/gallery/udZZ8

I'd like you to try another four pages of animal drawings, taking what I've said here and in the notes into consideration.

Uncomfortable in the post "A Break for Uncomfortable - For the month of June, free critiques will be on hold. They will resume July 1st."

2016-06-21 17:58

I'm glad to hear that! And I also appreciate the gesture of waiting - thanks!

Uncomfortable in the post "A Break for Uncomfortable - For the month of June, free critiques will be on hold. They will resume July 1st."

2016-06-21 14:53

I'm glad you like the lessons, and thank you for the support on patreon! As you're a supporter now, remember that you're free to submit homework for critiques whenever - you don't have to wait til July if you don't want to.

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

2016-06-20 19:18

Definitely better. Just remember to keep drawing your minor axis line for all of the forms for quite some time. It's something that will steadily improve with practice, though for now you're ready to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-19 20:51

Each box is an offering, of course! As long as you make your offerings regularly and on time, there's no reason for the demon to come for you. It's a lot like a debt collector, except for boxes.

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

2016-06-19 20:42

Generally your work is decent. It will certainly benefit across the board from further practice, especially in the area of the solidity of your forms, and your form intersections could also benefit from drawing through your boxes more - though you're doing pretty well.

The one area where there is more weakness however is your organic forms with contour curves. There's two issues here - firstly, your curves aren't wrapping around the forms particularly convincingly. It's better in some areas and worse in others, and I get the impression that you do vaguely understand the premise, but you're approaching each contour curve a little sloppily, rather than taking the time to ensure that each one wraps around its form, accelerating and giving the impression that it hooks around and continues on as it reaches the edge of the form.

I've got notes on this subject, as well as a video. On a related note, I also noticed that you have points where the contour curves don't sit on the surface of a form - this generally comes from not planning and thinking through the drawing of each individual curve, so be sure to be more patient and conscientious.

The other issue is that you aren't drawing in the minor axis (the central spine of the organic form) for your contour curves. I also notice that for the contour ellipses, while you do draw the minor axis line, you don't heed it as much as you should.

Remember that the minor axis is the line that splits an ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves through its narrower dimension. In this case, you want to ensure that your ellipses (or the curves, which are merely visible portions of larger complete ellipses) align to the minor axis line in this manner.

I'd like you to do two more pages of organic forms with contour curves before I mark this lesson as complete.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 7: Drawing Vehicles"

2016-06-19 20:24

Definitely making improvements. That tank is looking quite nice. With the boat, I think you're breaking forms down too quickly, skipping steps. There's a lot of points in your construction that you've placed based on guesswork, rather than subdivision of your larger box.

Remember what I mentioned before, about sticking to constructive boxes as long as you can. I'd push the construction to a point like this before even considering any sort of guesswork or estimation: http://i.imgur.com/6Ktx0U0.png.

Uncomfortable in the post "250 Box Challenge"

2016-06-19 19:56

Very nice work! You're making great progress, and I'm really liking your experimentation with line weight. Keep doing what you're doing!

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-19 03:05

Glad I could help.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 3: Drawing Plants"

2016-06-19 01:27

Your later pages are looking much better - I especially like pages 6 and 7, you do a good job of building up construction and detail in successive passes, resulting in forms that look solid and tangible.

I'd say the only notable thing I'd like to mention right now is to draw a distinction between forms that are organic, and those that are more geometric, and specifically looking into how to approach constructing a cylinder (take a look at the notes on the 250 cylinder challenge page). I picked out one drawing where you drew your flower pot as more of an organic form, which robbed it of its solidity: http://i.imgur.com/oBaSct5.png.

Anyway, generally you're doing well - feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-19 01:14

The plan is to largely focus on common misconceptions or concerns people have (like how this one tackled the idea that you can do the first two lessons and just stop the exercises thereafter), as well as on overarching concepts - the value and rationale behind constructional drawing, the different phases of learning how to apply texture, etc. That said, I have no intention of getting overly technical, at least in situations where it requires me to cover the entire thing with text.

All in all, you do each lesson (3-7) for the same reasons - they tackle the same problem, but in different contexts and from different angles. I suppose I could possibly get a comic out of that, but it's not quite what you mentioned, in that there's no individual goal for each lesson to discuss separately.

Anyway, I'm glad you like them, and I do hope to continue with them for some time - although sporadically and spaced out over time.

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-18 22:03

All boxes must be sacrificed to me upon an altar of stone on a cloudless night beneath the light of a full moon.

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-18 22:01

Thanks! And best of luck pushing through the lessons.

Uncomfortable in the post "Uncomfortable's Unsolicited Advice: A Box a Day Keeps the Demon Away"

2016-06-18 17:03

Thanks! I definitely took some time to avoid certain pitfalls in terms of flow. The first row was a huge challenge, due to all the text. Technically the first bubble still gets missed, but I think it was a necessary sacrifice.

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!"

2016-06-17 12:27

I appreciate the offer, but it turns out that the book will be available internationally after the kickstarter is over, some time later in the summer. I'll be buying it then.

Uncomfortable in the post "Lesson 5: Drawing Animals"

2016-06-16 21:33

Not bad! Your sense of form and construction is coming along nicely. There certainly are areas where you could improve (here's some notes on what they are but generally you're moving in the right direction. There's four points I outline in those notes:

Anyway, I'll mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable in the post "Concept Art Empire - A new website with helpful tips and advice for aspiring concept artists. Found it because they were kind enough to write a review of Drawabox! (No one mentions DaB without me knowing about it)"

2016-06-16 21:04

Thanks for the kind words! And a double thank you for showing your before/after shots. The tank in the bottom right looks really snazzy, and shows a growing understanding of constructive drawing. Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable in the post "Concept Art Empire - A new website with helpful tips and advice for aspiring concept artists. Found it because they were kind enough to write a review of Drawabox! (No one mentions DaB without me knowing about it)"

2016-06-16 20:56

Haha, yes, I got that impression too.