#drawabox

The DrawABox chronicles: About a year into drawing, I felt like I was plateauing and needed some guidance. So I started DrawABox! Here's my documented experience with each of the lessons and challenges!

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6

This is the seventh and final post in my DrawABox lesson series. Please go to this masterpost to find my commentary on the other lessons and challenges.

Lesson 7 is similar to lesson 6 but now you draw BIG OBJECTS instead of small objects!

Warm-up exercises!

Vehicles using basic forms to construct - no boxes or subdivisions, just intuiting the smaller forms that make up the larger object. The Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Car was my favorite to do, even if the wheels look pretty wonky lol.

These were all done with boxes and subdivisions in pencil that I then erased to leave the vehicle itself, since otherwise the page would have looked way too cluttered. They are not perfect, the vespa is a bit too long, the hood for Herbie needed to extend more in the front, and the jet ended up outside the box because I underestimated the wingspan.

These were probably my best attempts in this lesson.

Honestly, this lesson was HARD to get through since this past spring semester was BUSY for me, but, hey, I did, and I'm thankful for it. Subdivisions are INSANELY useful and I absolutely intend to use them in the future.

This is the sixth post in my DrawABox series. Please go to this masterpost to find my commentary on the other lessons and challenges.

Lesson 6 really hammers down on the box and perspective stuff from lesson 1 by having you draw lots of OBJECTS!

Form intersections -- still a difficult exercise, unfortunately, but I absolutely see the value in doing it

Lots boxes and subdivisions, which was good because I didn't know how to do that before. Definitely not perfect in execution, but I learned a lot about drawing complex forms in perspective by figuring out where within a box they fit. Turns out literally everything fits inside a box in some way lol. Guess that's why the course is called DrawABox.

This was probably my best attempt without using orthogonal planes.

These two objects I did with orthogonal planes. I definitely see the utility of this approach, although I think the mouse looked better than the hole puncher. Somewhere along the way with the latter I lost my sense of proportion, and probably should have been using subdivisions to better guide where things were supposed to go instead of eyeballing it.

This is the fifth post in my DrawABox series. Please go to this masterpost to find my commentary on the other lessons and challenges.

Lesson 5 is similar to lessons 3+4 but now with ANIMALS!

Overlapping organic forms -- similar to in lesson 2, I'm not sure how accurate I got the shadows but it's a good warmup overall.

Birds! Found these pretty easy, actually.

Dawg the canines+felines were STRESSING ME OUT! These snouts are HARD and fur just did not make sense to me. I think it's gonna be a while before I can consider a career as a furry artist.

Other animals were easier. Not perfect, but easier.

Probably my best attempt in this lesson, although the alligator neck may have been too long.

Hybrid animal exercise. I don't think it's terrible although the head seems detached form the body somewhat and it's also, just... not blended the most naturally? Idk I don't know much about character designer (YET)

This is the fourth post in my DrawABox series. Please go to this masterpost to find my commentary on the other lessons and challenges.

Lesson 4 is pretty much the same as lesson 3 but with Insects instead of Plants!!!

Organic forms with contour lines - a warm-up, basically

BUGS BABYYYYY! Some of these I textured, others were just constructed. The stag beetle needed a longer abdomen, the grasshopper could have felt more 3D probably, and I'm not sure what happened to the other wasp wing tbh, but overall I'm not unhappy with my attempts... sort of.

This was supposed to be a jumping spider but... yeah it just looks childish tbh. I did not capture the original forms from the reference image well, nor do I think I got the textures right. On the other hand!

I think I did a pretty good job with this dragonfly! I think it was my best attempt in this lesson.

This is the third post in my DrawABox series. Please go to this masterpost to find my commentary on the other lessons and challenges.

Lesson 3 is when you actually get to start applying the exercises to draw real things starting with PLANTS BABYYYY!!!!

Ribbons, leaves, and sticks: hey did you know that folded leaves are just ribbons of varying widths? that's what I learned. And sticks are just long cylinders! Now that's crazytown!

PLANTS! I chose lots of different sorts, half of which I added texture to. I liked applying the ribbon logic to the leaves and petals, it really helped make sense of how to draw these forms in 3D. Not that it was always easy, as you'll see below.

This was my worst attempt in the lesson, I'd say. It's supposed to be a potato plant but I got confused by the level of detail in the reference image and didn't know how to communicate it on paper. I also was scared to have any of the leaves overlap each other for some reason... yeah just not my favorite.

On the other hand, this was probably my best plant drawing? I like Hibiscus flowers and think I understood the forms and petals decently enough.

This is the second post in my DrawABox series. Please go to this masterpost to find my commentary on the other lessons and challenges.

Lesson 2 is where I'd argue things get more interesting. This lesson abandons boxes for a bit to focus on organic forms and contour lines. It also teaches you how to draw textures as a means to help indicate form. This lesson was a bit tedious, especially with the texture exercises, but I feel like I learned a lot, so it was definitely worth it.

Ribbons in perspective babygirl - not much to say on this one

Organic forms w/ contour lines, textures, then organic forms WITH textures -- Honestly the texture studies were really interesting to do. I don't think I mastered all of them but I feel like I had such a lightbulb moment when the instructor talked about texture just being tiny shadows, and if you know where to draw the shadows you get the illusions of texture. I know it's a simple thing but it was pretty mind-blowing at the time lol.

Form intersections -- bro these were hard. I really had to focus and I still don't think I got them all right. Might be an exercise worth coming back to in the future.

Overlapping organic forms: I see why this is a good exercise, it really got me to think about weight and gravity and such. I'm not sure how correct my shadows are though, although I guess it's depends on the position of the light source. Honestly, I just don't know enough about lighting to really know how good of a job I did on that aspect.

So I've recently finished all seven DrawABox lessons and decided to post about them. I'm going to be making one post per lesson and commenting on my experiences with the exercises and my opinions on their utility. For context, prior to starting DrawABox, I had about one year worth of drawing experience. I started doing DrawABox when I found myself plateauing as an attempt to learn form+perspective fundamentals and level up my art skills.

Mark making exercises -- it's just drawing lines dawg... not sure what more you can say

Circles and Ellipse practice - harder than it looked... surprising amount of fine coordination involved in drawing lol

Boxes in one and two point perspective. First time I really felt challenged since starting the course.

Biblically accurate box (not actually what it's called) -- hardest exercise yet. I was unhappy with my first attempt so I ended up repeating it the next day and I'm glad I did considering how much better it looked. I think by sleeping on it I was able to come back the next day with a better sense of intuition regarding how the boxes rotate and stuff as they move away from the center point.

Rotating boxes freehand: challenging in the sense that I could no longer rely on guiding lines or vanishing points and had to just intuit things. Some of the boxes are better than the others and I think there is something very valuable in just trying to rotate boxes and draw them from different angles intuitively.