Hey man, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the hard work you put into these lessons. Learning to draw is something I've always wanted to do, and your lesson format resonates with my learning style in a big way. You're doing some kickass work; helping people learn to express themselves is a huge deal! Thanks again!
Unrelated to the lesson, I checked out the artist you mentioned at around 19:00. Literally almost made me cry. The guy had a pure love for creating and never stopped, so inspiring.
My favourite exercise so far. It's time-consuming, but a I have a lot of fun drawing shaggy oranges and other weird things. Although, some of them may be dreamed as a nightmare... I like your lessons very much, because there are really lessons, with very concrete exercises to do - not a show, and not only a lecture.
As someone who spent the past several years really focusing on pixel art, but not caring much for traditional means (but recently trying to change that), it's such a relief to have found out about Drawabox. I spent my entire art hobby around building up what shape I am trying to convey using logic and smaller, more generic, shapes and always felt that traditional art was more "Feely-Touchy" than using nothing but concrete logic, but your lessons are actually making me realize how great and universal art can really feel (it was the "Using texture density to convey value" is exactly the same as how you would dither your sprite work, and that is what made this lesson click that connection to me.) I've only been working over your lessons for only a couple weeks, but I already have the intense need to thank you despite the fact I'm working more in a vacuum (I'm not social). You've even inspired me to want to start teaching my own skills, so, thank you.
I'm glad you've been able to benefit from the lessons! I'll always encourage folks to climb out of their shells and take advantage of the community, as there's a lot of things we'll inevitably miss or misunderstand that others can identify quickly, but at the end of the day it's up to you to decide when you're ready for that next step.
I just wanted to say that these videos are extremely helpful, especially on these types of subjects. The notes for each lessons are great but it really helps a lot to see a visual representation on the entire process from beginning to end as opposed to seeing pictures of each step. Thank you for your work, this helped a lot with understanding textures.
I am still doing Lesson 1, but for my 50% drawing work, I needed to draw some texture, and these videos really helped. I would never have thought that we needed to capture the shadows. Thank you very much for creating these videos. Uncomfortable, I wholeheartedly accept you as my teacher :).
How are you? I have been conducting this lesson for two months. And this challenge is causing me a lot more pain than the 250 box challenge, but I have to do it anyway. The biggest pain I go through is having to put different textures into three-dimensional sausages of different sizes and shapes each time. The homepage says,'Don't imagine or create it.' However, the dilemma I face is as follows. What we made is a sausage close to an oval, which is meandering and rounded at the end, but not all textures. (Wood, everything that is angled) And it is difficult to get the perfect object located at the angle and point of view I want, and they have a different cross-contour line than sausage. Therefore, whatever I want to say is that I have to look at photographs or real objects and'reconstitute' them on my sausages, and that is, in other words, that my imagination must be added. This is not annoying, and I really want to get through this challenge. And, I'm working on creating a texture on this second piece of sausage now, and I'm almost finished. To be honest, when I focused on this and completed it, there was a lot to gain. This still poses a huge challenge to me whenever I encounter a new texture. Is my condition normal now? Since I am Korean, it is difficult to expect smooth communication, but I am your supporter and I have received a lot of help from you. I want to finish this challenge well.
It took so long to complete this, i am Glad that Second page took like 1/3 the time i used on the 1st. Happy that i managed to finish It, and learned to effectively study materials. Thanks for ALL the content, heading for the next lesson now.
Got really busy and stopped drawabox while doing this lesson over a year ago.... still have all my homework stuff and just rewatched all the prev lesson's videos and reread so I will be starting back up with this lesson...Determined to actually finish this time
Ankit Rawat just keep in mind that you're not expected to be able to do them. It's about getting you thinking differently, and getting a sense of how you observe. There's no expectation of good results. Just do the best that you currently can.
Really loving this exercises, mine went from a normal slime to teeth and to mosquitoes‐ and so on it was wild and time consuming but I like how fun it is!!!(the most embarssing one I did which I think is not even a texture is a body hair. yes. I do not know what was I thinking that time.)
I don’t know what it was about texture and detail, but it ended up confusing me, and It almost made me give up. After watching this. It makes me understand a bit more. On how to use references and how to actually use shadows to create a 3D depth
I don't quite understand how the surface of the kiwi is a texture? I mean of course there would be those microscopical bumps, but aren't you also drawing the changes in color here? A surface like that would be very smooth as it's cut with a knife. I'm about to try out this excersise but I feel like I'm not understanding the concept if some of the things you're transferring from the kiwi to the sausage is a texture.
If you study the surface of a kiwi very closely, you'll find that most of its surface is made up of a sort of pulp. Pulp itself is made up of smaller separated forms that are compacted together. Being forms of their own, they do create a little bit of uneveness along the surface that we can use for our purposes here. Furthermore, the seeds sit in little furroughs or channels, which also provides very subtle form information that we can leverage here (which is a bit more noticeable than the pulp, so that's what I focus on here). At the end of the day, texture is all about the little form information present on a surface. It may be smooth at a normal distance, but if you look closely enough, you will find texture. When doing this exercise, be sure to use high resolution images so you can get as much information as possible, and then decide what "level" of fidelity you'd like to focus on.
Yes, exactly. I tried cutting a kiwi and rotating and studying it very closely. There is some texture that can be captured, a lot of it comes from moisture, however, and would not look like what's on the drawing. It is clearly not what is happening in the video. Here, a reference image is used and information conveyed in the drawing is based purely on the colors and shapes (of the seeds, channels), not on texture analysis.
"Drawing from my wrist..." When do you switch from shoulder to elbow to wrist drawing? Also, do you use your wrist/elbow to trace over pencil sketches with ink. for line work? Thanks!
It's based on the kind of line I want to draw. If my line requires stiff precision (like tight areas of texture) I might use my wrist, but most of the lines I draw through construction require a consistent, smooth flow, so I rely on my shoulder. I explain back in lesson 1 about why I don't recommend the use of the elbow while you're learning. When tracing over underlying sketchbook, I still ensure that I do what I can to keep my marks fluid and smooth, which often means drawing confidently from the shoulder. I may make a mistake here or there, but there's little value in stiffening up my whole drawing with wobbly lines.
@@Uncomfortable Thank you for the thorough reply! I've been trying to get used to using my shoulder as much as possible. Small textures and intricate details are difficult, though. I just finished practicing the techniques and homework assignments for intersections, and have been enjoying it a lot, so far. Great series! Thank you!
Hi! Thank your videos and classes :) I'm sorry for being repetitive, but I'm still not sure about the "only draw cast shadows" part. Does that mean I should avoid "chrome" material, since most of it is a very smooth surface? Or that shouldn't use a "wood board" as texture analysis since it's mostly defined by the different values of it's grain?
It's a fair question for the simple reason that the answer is yes, and yet either the example in this video or the example on the lesson page (they may be the same, I forget) does include chrome. Basically the video needs to be updated, and will be as part of our ongoing efforts to update and overhaul the video content. This video is quite old, and some time after we released it we reconsidered exactly how we were teaching texture and how it tied into the course as a whole. That is when we shifted towards focusing on cast shadows only, as they have a more solid grounding in the spatial reasoning concepts drawabox has been narrowed to focus upon. The texture analysis content is more recent, and while it too will be subject to an update in the coming months, it's more in line with how we want students to approach texture for the exercises in this course. Lastly, the reminders you'll find here: drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/reminders go over how to think about your textural forms you see in your references, and how to go about transferring them to your drawing, so that may help you better understand how to apply the cast shadows approach we use here.
@@Uncomfortable That's great! Thank you very much for your answer, it truly does answer my question :) I'll continue to do my best at the exercises, especially now that it's clearer what kind of textures I should be looking for! I believe the pinterest account you linked for these exercises have great references for cast shadows only :) Again, thank you so so much
@@Uncomfortable I have the same question. To clarify, we want textures defined by the presence of forms rather than coloration or patterns. Does this mean that the meat texture wouldn't be good because it is defined by its red and white coloration pattern?
@@ahuman32478 That's correct, although meat still has its own texture made up of the fibres in its surface, which cause irregularity. You wouldn't pay attention to the local surface colours, but there is still a texture to be studied, as there is with any surface that isn't perfectly polished to a mirror finish.
Hey ho, I am a little bit confused. In the example picture on the internet page, you also use meat. There, you painted the fat areas white and the muscle areas black, but the only difference between them is the colour, nothing of it would cast shadows same goes for the aluminium example. Does both examles fall under the following statement: "things that the newer texture analysis exercise, with its focus on implicit markmaking and cast shadows specifically says not to do."
It is indeed something that falls under that consideration - the dissection video was made several years earlier, and while we're working to update our video content across the board, it's very much an uphill climb. That said, there is texture to meat - the shifts in material (from muscle fibres to fat and even between the muscle fibres themselves) do constitute of form, and do not create a perfectly level surface. Thus there are little shadows to capture even when ignoring the local colouring of the surface. It is of course very subtle, but it's there - always keep that in mind when tempted to describe a surface as having no texture. An absence of texture would be the smoothest, most friction-free surface you can imagine.
Hi Uncomfortable! I just notice that in this video you mention the importance of the light source (doing something similar to the last part of the texture analysis exercise) but you don't mention that in the notes for this exercise, even must of the examples don't have a clear light source. I know that that part is not mandatory for this exercise but anyway I think that can be some confusion with this.
I have plans to rerecord this video in the coming months, so I'll keep that in mind. It's a bit tricky, because the way I use the light source when talking about texture like this isn't quite the same as how we would when rendering a scene. Rather than the light source being this singular consistent thing that all our choices must abide by, when talking about texture I use it more as a tool to help me achieve different levels of textural density where I want them to be, based on where I'm interested in conveying more information to the viewer. I'll try and address that more clearly in the future.
Hi Uncomfortable, I have a question about this exercise/lesson Why shouldn't we outline? I get that drawabox is evolving and you've decided to focus more on shadows, but I find it really hard to make the 'gradient' (thicker to thin, darker to lighter) without outlining Idk, it just feels clunky and since i'm not copying from a reference, but applying it to a form, i dont know how thinner lines should get And yes, i'll follow your instruction and not outline, but why is this bad? I mean, what misunderstandings could it cause? Shouldn't be easier apply shadows knowing what are you applying shadows to?
Outlining each of our textural forms will definitely make drawing them each easier, but the problem is that it will completely eliminate the ability to transition from one level of density to another, as explained in these notes: drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/notransition . I explain there how outlining limits our ability to control the density. The purpose of these texture exercises is to help develop one's ability to maintain an awareness of the forms in a particular area of your object's surface without having to draw them, so we can learn how to imply them without drawing them in their entirety. That is at the core of the exercise - sure, opting to outline them can make it easier to complete the task, but doing so would also completely sidestep its purpose. As a side note, you mention "I'm not copying from a reference" - I assume you mean that you're not directly copying your reference, but you definitely should still be using reference images to help you determine what forms will be present on the surfaces, and how they relate to one another in space.
This is tricky. When you see someone else doing it, it is easqy to understand. But starting yourself at a whole nex texture and seeing how ou could put it on paper and simplify it, is just hard. With some textures it's a real problem. Also I find that the idea about just drawing cast shadows isn't always applicable. Just look at your drawing of the kiwi. You're not drawing cast shadows, but rather lines, aren't you?
I do find your instructions on these texture exercises to be a little confusing. I read your note on the website's page on this assignment stating that the examples and demos are outdated and go against some of the things you're trying to emphasize, but I'm not entirely sure which parts do that (does it include this video?). Mainly I'm just struggling to wrap my head around how we're supposed to capture very smooth textures that have little to no cast shadows. For example, the meat section you show in one of the images. Your note says to ignore surface color and focus on the 3D, which leads me to believe that this is one of the old examples you mentioned, but I struggle to see how you could capture this texture without observing the surface colors, as it would just be completely flat otherwise. Are we just meant to ignore textures like these and focus only on ones that do have significant cast shadows, or is there a technique I'm not understanding? Thanks for the work you put in to these. I am learning a lot.
A textured surface and a smooth surface are, by definition, opposite ends of the spectrum. A perfectly smooth surface wouldn't have any textural forms protruding from the surface to cast shadows - and such a surface does end up getting very reflective as a result, although we're not really getting into that here. The key point to keep in mind is that smooth = no texture. That said, there are surfaces that have very tiny textures along their surface, and meat is one of them. It's made up of fibres, so if you were to zoom into it, you'd see little textural forms layering on top of one another, casting little shadows. While you're right that the choices in this demo weren't really taking textural forms/cast shadows into consideration, technically you can zoom in close enough and still have a useful texture to draw, without regarding local surface colour. Overall though, you can take everything discussed regarding the texture analysis exercise, and treat it as though it supercedes anything discussed here. Furthermore, these reminders from the texture section of Lesson 2 go over how we should be thinking about the textures we're drawing, and the marks we put down to convey them: drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/reminders
@@Uncomfortable Thanks for taking the time to respond. Even though "smooth = no texture" feels like it contradicts "everything has a texture" from the texture analysis page, I do think I understand what you're saying and this is helpful. Thank you.
Umm i wonder if i need to set light and shadow? because in my old class when we draw something like this we need to draw sun and where light source come from.
You mention that you're drawing from your wrist. I'm assuming that's fine with these more tiny lines that can't really be drawn from the shoulder? Or should we still attempt to be using our shoulders for this?
The wrist is fine for linework that requires stiff precision rather than fluidity. Note that as mentioned in the FAQ, ( drawabox.com/faq/smalllines ), this is not because the lines are small, but rather because of the way we need those lines to behave.
The kiwis' got seeds, as well as furroughs in its pulp in which the seeds sit. These are all three dimensional forms/structures, and therefore they do cast shadows - even if those shadows are not easily visible in your reference. The trick is to use what you see to help find the forms that are present, then to draw cast shadows based on the forms that are present. This forces you to go through the process of analyzing/understanding what's there, rather than just trying to draw what you see without thinking about what it actually is that you're drawing and implying.
Hi! I have have a question to this module , cause i am little bit confusing by one thing , you say that we shoud'nt use outline to this exersise and represent all textures with cast shadow, but in a lot of cases you use for representing details and little forms : shapes , ambient oclusion ,and even a shadow of those little forms, and outlines itself , and my question is thatwe still should use only cast shadow even if in most of referencese there is no those shadows? Second question is what source do u have used to learn this thing? Cause in the course of Dynamic Sketching by Peter Han that u mentioned that you got through he does'nt explained very clear how to use them , as you explain in this course.
So a lot of it comes down to the fact that this video is very old. Drawabox is a course that has evolved over many years, from me attempting to explain what I understood, while also reflecting upon what it is that I understood and the reasoning behind how I drew things, using Peter Han's Dynamic Sketching as a sort of base. Over the years we pulled away from the approach Peter used in order to cover more of the concepts that I felt students would benefit from prior to taking Dynamic Sketching (or really any other course). The most recent video touching on the texture analysis exercise is several years newer than this one, and so it covers the concepts differently than what you see here - hence the contradictions. This is something we're working to revise and update across the entire course (I'm gradually overhauling the video demos/lectures from the start of the course, having completed all of Lesson 0, along with Lesson 1 Lines/Ellipses, and am currently working on the boxes section) although it's very slow going, as I'm always working against the continuous flow of homework submissions. For the time being however, I'd recommend you review the notes here: drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/reminders and also try to apply what's covered in the texture analysis exercise to your work on the dissections. At the end of the day, the texture section here in Lesson 2 is really just meant to plant a seed, that will gradually be nurtured across the rest of the course, so don't worry too much about understanding it all and applying it perfectly just yet. Most students don't, and that isn't really a big concern for the course as a whole.
@@Uncomfortable Man , you're amazing teacher,and your course is too amazing,even if I have some confusions , just find for myself some questions that i can't explain, cause I don't have good observational skill. Love you!!:)
Ignore the local/surface colours of the actual object and focus only on capturing the cast shadows. Also it's worth noting that being as old as this video is, it doesn't actually incorporate as many of the principles from the texture analysis exercise, with all the focusing on cast shadows. It's definitely due for an update, but in the meantime try your best to apply the principles from the texture analysis exercise and the texture section of Lesson 2 here even where the video demo may contradict those points.
Not a conscious choice - it's a very old video (from 2017) so it must have been an issue with the recording software. Not an issue in more recent recordings.
Uncomfortable after watching this video and you drawing I understand most of the things that I didn't understand on Texture details exercise, and I noticed that you first drew the forms and after you drew the cast shadows, can I do that? 'Cause I thought that when you said don't outline you mean don't draw the shape of the forms begin with only the shadow and the shadow will imply the shapes, but maybe I got it wrong.
It's more a matter of Drawabox continually evolving while I find what students need to focus on more and more. I'm trying to push students to think as much as possible in terms of shadows rather than outlines now, compared to when I made this video. That said, even here, though, you can see that i didn't fully outline those that were transitioning more to the sparser area of the texture. I purposely left those shapes open, because even if I drew them as being very narrow initially, I was still thinking about my strokes as shadows rather than outlines.
@@Uncomfortable There is some advice for when I lost myself on the picture? Example: I'm drawing and look at the picture but sometimes it has so many things that I lost where I was
@@ensis8716 It's a pretty normal thing that you'll gradually get used to, but the most important thing is that when you start to get overwhelmed by anything, people will often respond by panicking and just putting marks down without thinking about them. Instead, take a step back and try to take stock of everything you're looking at. Put your pen down, and look at your reference image as a whole and try to situate yourself in the grand scheme of what you're doing and what you're trying to draw. This can often help ground you and reinforce the importance of thinking through every mark you put down, rather than falling back into bad habits.
You mention how we should take care of our hands and not strain them. Do you know any exercises for relieving stress from our hands? I probably could have googled this but eh.
Google might be a better source than me. I don't really do a lot of exercises for my wrist, as I draw primarily from my shoulder and don't end up stressing them too much.
Yup, that's correct. Focus only on the forms themselves and the shadows they'll cast. Imagine that the whole surface is made up of a solid white material.
@@biggieboijosh1446 The kiwi has seeds, and those seeds sit in little channels/furrows. Study your reference images closely and identify information pertaining to the actual three dimensional form.
@@biggieboijosh1446 Don't outline *anything*, but think about what those "green rays" actually are. We're not trying to capture anything by simply outlining the forms - we're drawing the shadows that are cast. Those 'green rays' are the channels/furrows I mentioned before, and since the height of the surface there dips, there will be slight shadows cast into it.
There are a lot of people who feel that they should be working themselves to death now, to reap rewards later. They do this physically - pushing their hands, their wrists, their arms beyond the point of pain - and they do it mentally, by not giving themselves breaks nor patience when they require it. Take care of your hands, your body, and your mind. Don't push yourself beyond your limits, and allow those limits to shift *gradually* instead of forcing the matter. In Francis Tsai's case, it was a disease - but there are far more cases out there of people developing repetitive stress injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, and more because they decided that the only way to succeed is to push one's self too far. It's never worth it, and in all honesty, what I've experienced in my life and seen in others, we improve and grow more quickly when we treat ourselves and our bodies with care.
PureRef is available for free (it's a pay-what-you-want model, and if you click "custom amount" and enter 0, it'll tell you "We totally get that you would want to try before you buy. If you like it, please come back and support us with future development!"). That said, if you are able to, or if you decide you like the software after the fact, you should absolutely give them a little bit.
Keep in mind, above all else, that some exercises - this one included - are intended as an *introduction* to a concept you have not addressed before, and therefore there is no expectation that you will be able to do it correctly. Instead, by having you tackle it right now, you'll be able to move forward with an awareness of this particular challenge. This will help you develop those skills and that understanding as you move forwards, rather than trudging on oblivious to its existence as a problem to be solved.
@@Uncomfortable What sucks is having drawn for a decade and a half and being unable to visualize stuff. Do you have any advice for people who borderline aphantasia?
@@bigboy2217 In my experience, having aphantasia myself, the inability to visualize things ended up being a lot less significant than I had initially expected. While we cannot visualize things, that does not mean we cannot imagine, and that we cannot understand the relationships between things in space. We just learn to understand them in a more abstract fashion that is just as effective - if not moreso - than those who rely on a more visual component to their mind's eye. More and more I'm starting to suspect that those with more visual noise to sort through end up facing a lot of distractions, and a lot of twisted expectations (since visualizing something does not inherently make one capable of drawing it, though one can't help but feel that it should). My advice is not to look at aphantasia as a disability. You are not uniquely limited in what you can do - your brain will simply learn how to approach it differently than some others might. Your brain is not littered with the distractions of others - it is a blank slate in which to understand the relationships between objects in space, between elements of design, and between problems and their various available solutions in a manner that may not be as easy to attain for others. Everything still has to be learned, of course - but as you push through, you'll learn to accept this difference to be the advantage that it is. Of course, I didn't see it that way when I started. I have been drawing regularly since I was 12 years old, and I spent most of that time spinning my wheels and bemoaning the idea that I wasn't able to do things the way others could (I didn't know about aphantasia at this point). Once I learned about aphantasia in my early 20s, I thought it meant that I had no chance turning art into a career. Where many might look at that as a reason to despair, I found it immensely freeing. Seeing it as I did then had its benefits - it meant I didn't have to blame myself, and that I could fail over and over without feeling as bad about it as I did before. It meant that I could attack that blank canvas more readily, and stop being afraid of doing something wrong. Because *of course* I'd do something wrong, and it wasn't my fault. What I took from that was the confidence to do things without fear. Of course I was still going to draw - I did it because I enjoyed it - but that freedom allowed me to enjoy it all the more, and to approach exercises and training in a whole new way, no longer concerned with not doing an exercise correctly, and judging myself as lesser for it. Being able to approach things in that manner ultimately showed me that I could learn, that I could improve, and ultimately I did and still do to this day. But whether we have aphantasia or not, what stops us is the fear of being judged, the fear of judging ourselves, the fear of failing as though it somehow makes us "useless" as you put it yourself. Doing something incorrectly is a momentary thing. It's an opportunity to see where we have yet to grow and improve, but it says nothing about who we are as a person. We are not the sum of what we can do, the total of all the ways in which we can be used by others. *Everyone* fears those mistakes though, they fear those failures, and many find themselves paralyzed by it. Long, long, long story short: your aphantasia is not as relevant as you might think, and what you need to truly accept in order to move forward is exactly what everyone else struggles with. The idea that mistakes are important, that they are necessary, and that they do not reflect upon you as a person. Aphantasia changes none of that.
@@Uncomfortable Amazing comment from a psychoanalytical perspective. But I don't think my problems necessarily hinge on an inability to cope with not doing stuff correctly. The things in this course seem to be tailored towards improving your ability to visualize by definition. Because I got that feeling from the rhetoric of the course on your website my assumption was that the teaching here was somewhat incompatible with the way you would teach somebody who couldn't visualize. When you describe the canvas as a window to look through and tell people that the things they put on the page should be purposeful before they put the lines down, that sounds like you want them to imagine how that line will impact the picture. Hell the very idea of using a pen exclusively lends itself to improving your capacity to flesh out the idea before the idea hits the canvas. Now if I'm going to just assume that you are being entirely honest here, since that would be the smart thing to do for somebody who's willing to put out a shit load of free content and even hand reply to grievances, then I'm going to just go with the theory that these things do work themselves out if you just keep working at them. And that maybe my interpretation of the course isn't indicative of who the course could actually help and who it couldn't. Which is reassuring. I feel like I'll either do it or just want. That's probably all there is to it. I was kinda of hoping that there was some weird way to become less aphantasiac with time since I can sort of see a color in my head if I try and I somehow dream vividly, but hey can't win em all.
@@bigboy2217 Whether or not there's a way to actually improve one's actual visualization skills is up in the air. I know for a fact that when I was younger, I had an extremely vivid imagination - somewhere around puberty, it very gradually started to evaporate. I don't know if that means that it's possible to reclaim it, but perhaps it does. Who knows. In the lessons, when I talk about understanding the page as a window out into a scene, I can understand how the wording might suggest more to do with visualization than I actually intended. Ultimately it's about understanding that we are treating the page as though it expands out into infinite space - that's something we can do whether we see it in our mind's eye or not, because it is entirely a matter of understanding things as they exist in three dimensions, versus how they exist on the two dimensions of the page.
Hey, I'm having so much trouble with figuring out the degree of my ellipses, I barely do any variation. I mean I try but I just can't seem to do it right. Should I just go ahead and do the textures on the forms anyway or should I keep trying to get my ellipses right?
Every exercise has its own particular focus. Matters concerning the degree of your contour lines should be the focus of your organic forms with contour lines. In this exercise, the focus is on the textures - so do your best to get the contour lines right, and even if they don't come out as intended, don't let them distract you from the main focus of the exercise. You'll have ample opportunity to address the degree issues after you get feedback on your lesson's homework.
This feels like a contradiction, in the exercise before you said to not draw the outlines of the texture but the shadows, which is not what you do here. Since you are so striced on your wording I am confused
You are unfortunately correct about that - the reason is that this video is due to be updated. Since it was created (more than two years ago), I added the 'Texture Analysis' exercise, and then over the course of a year of giving feedback to students and identifying what they did and didn't understand, and really refining my own grasp of the material, I shifted more towards this cast-shadow-focused process, eschewing outlines altogether. To put it simply, there are contradictions in the course simply because it's constantly being updated and changed. If you see something in a lesson or video that has been updated more recently, then definitely go with that approach, if it conflicts with something older. I'll try and update these when I get the chance, but unfortunately with limited time I have to pick and choose what gets changed and when.
@@22koraynalbant43 The silhouette is an outline for the form as a whole. Texture impacts it, causing it to bulge out in places, but it is still a property of the form as a whole, and therefore is not subject to the restriction to drawing using shadow shapes.
Hi, I have a phobia of insects (even if it is just a photo) and I notice that you use sometimes photos of insects as a reference (especially in the advanced lessons like lesson 4). Can you please suggest some alternative to insects photos as a reference for this lesson and the future lessons? (Lesson 4 probably will be impossible for me to even start) Thank you in advance!
While I don't believe I use insect references for this exercise (so you should be safe to go through it), obviously they do come up in Lesson 4. For those who suffer from arachnophobia and entomophobia, then one alternative source of references that often is easier to work with are crustaceans - lobsters, crabs, shrimps, etc. As I am going through overhauling the course materials and making new demos (I started doing that in the spring, but because my apartment flooded it's been paused til September), I've been intending to add more demonstrations pertaining to crustaceans. For now though, there are a couple at the top of the "informal demos" page that will be useful - one of a lobster and one of a shrimp.
@@Uncomfortable Thank you very much for answering this question :) On this page drawabox.com/lesson/2/dissections, I saw that in the picture below, you used one insect, so I was worrying that you are going to use insects here in this video. If I will start lesson 4 before you post a new demos, can I skip the video and just read the text? or I will need to wait ? (I am sending my homework for official critiques)
@@0darkwings0 While you will probably be better off waiting, the text material does cover everything, so you would be okay to avoid those videos. The opposite (skipping the text and watching the videos) is actually much worse, since the videos don't cover everything - though I'm hoping to improve that with my overhaul of the video content.
Would you not recommend looking up other drawings of the texture as a reference? Also, you weren't joking about it coming out as a streaming pile of crap
I wouldn't recommend relying on others' drawings of the textures. The exercise requires you to go through a process to understand your texture's form makeup, whereas working off another's drawing would simply be a matter of copying the results of another already having gone through that process.
@@Uncomfortable Thanks for always replying to my questions. I've been really struggling with these exercises since the beginning. This one and the last one however has really pushed me to a point where it feels like I'm not making any progress at all. I try to spend more time with each exercise until I feel I truly understand the concepts before moving, but with these textures that I'm drawing it really feels like I'm just drawing unrecognizable blobs. At what point does one draw so terribly that it could be deemed as a waste of time? Right now I feel like I would have to draw 100 pages of these, or at least each texture multiple times before I can feel I'm actually learning something by drawing something that'd actually be recognizable to the reference image. I guess my question is would pushing through this feeling, ignoring the outcome regardless of how bad and whether I feel I have learned anything from it, and continuing on with the lessons by submitting the required amount of pages really make me able to stand on my own as an artist? Or should I try harder on these exercises and spend more time on each one until I feel I have truly "passed" them?
@@landgemark I really feel like you're overestimating the purpose of why this exercise is assigned in this lesson. It's not for you to improve at it, and it's not for you to accomplish anything specific. It is *only* to introduce you to the concept, to plant a seed. Texture is very difficult - it's all about understanding the little textural forms that exist along the surface of an object, and to be able to hold that understanding of how they sit in space without outlining them. It is a similar problem to construction as a whole (which is something we work on throughout this entire course), but actually demands more since you're not able to simply draw those forms using explicit markmaking techniques. By introducing this micro-scale spatial problem here, students will continue to develop their spatial reasoning skills both in regards to construction (which is more macr-scale) and texture simultaneously as they move through the lesson. As discussed back in Lesson 0, your own interpretation of whether or not your work is "good enough" or has "passed" a particular standard is irrelevant, and dangerous because it'll lead you to simply sit there and grind well beyond the intent of the course. Your job is to complete the work to the best of your *current* ability, as assigned, and then to get feedback on it. If that external feedback deems you ready to move onto the next step, then that's what you do.
Hey man, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the hard work you put into these lessons. Learning to draw is something I've always wanted to do, and your lesson format resonates with my learning style in a big way. You're doing some kickass work; helping people learn to express themselves is a huge deal! Thanks again!
Michael Holst I'm glad I could help.
@@Uncomfortable Fuck you for making texture a lesson
Unrelated to the lesson, I checked out the artist you mentioned at around 19:00. Literally almost made me cry. The guy had a pure love for creating and never stopped, so inspiring.
Francis was definitely an inspiration, and I certainly can't imagine going through what he must have, while continuing to persevere.
How do you spell it
@@qualitysweat9631 I believe its Francis Tsai
This is one of the few exercises that I both suck at AND enjoy doing.
My favourite exercise so far. It's time-consuming, but a I have a lot of fun drawing shaggy oranges and other weird things. Although, some of them may be dreamed as a nightmare... I like your lessons very much, because there are really lessons, with very concrete exercises to do - not a show, and not only a lecture.
yes!
My search history after this exercise:
Wood
Leaf
Cobblestone
Pebbles
Stone
Rock
Kiwi
Meat
Strawberry
Grass
Brick
Ice
same here ma friend ma mom is like "You Okay Honey?"
As someone who spent the past several years really focusing on pixel art, but not caring much for traditional means (but recently trying to change that), it's such a relief to have found out about Drawabox.
I spent my entire art hobby around building up what shape I am trying to convey using logic and smaller, more generic, shapes and always felt that traditional art was more "Feely-Touchy" than using nothing but concrete logic, but your lessons are actually making me realize how great and universal art can really feel (it was the "Using texture density to convey value" is exactly the same as how you would dither your sprite work, and that is what made this lesson click that connection to me.)
I've only been working over your lessons for only a couple weeks, but I already have the intense need to thank you despite the fact I'm working more in a vacuum (I'm not social). You've even inspired me to want to start teaching my own skills, so, thank you.
I'm glad you've been able to benefit from the lessons! I'll always encourage folks to climb out of their shells and take advantage of the community, as there's a lot of things we'll inevitably miss or misunderstand that others can identify quickly, but at the end of the day it's up to you to decide when you're ready for that next step.
This exercise is so cool, Its like you are designing some kind of weird exotic fruit.
Hahaha, I always loved doing them too.
scaly Kiwi ewww
I feel like drawing textures is more relaxing and satisfying than precise outlines. There's much more room for error
I just wanted to say that these videos are extremely helpful, especially on these types of subjects. The notes for each lessons are great but it really helps a lot to see a visual representation on the entire process from beginning to end as opposed to seeing pictures of each step. Thank you for your work, this helped a lot with understanding textures.
"I want you to have a solid sausage"
I want only good things for my students, and good things start with a solid sausage.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
HMMMMMMMM
@@Uncomfortable rawr
damn, there's a lot of me being at the "deep end of the pool" in drawabox
same here lol
I am still doing Lesson 1, but for my 50% drawing work, I needed to draw some texture, and these videos really helped. I would never have thought that we needed to capture the shadows. Thank you very much for creating these videos. Uncomfortable, I wholeheartedly accept you as my teacher :).
This is honestly the most fun exercise I have done up until now.
This feels some kind of biology lab project lol so freaking cool and enjoyable!
How are you? I have been conducting this lesson for two months.
And this challenge is causing me a lot more pain than the 250 box challenge, but I have to do it anyway.
The biggest pain I go through is having to put different textures into three-dimensional sausages of different sizes and shapes each time.
The homepage says,'Don't imagine or create it.'
However, the dilemma I face is as follows.
What we made is a sausage close to an oval, which is meandering and rounded at the end, but not all textures. (Wood, everything that is angled) And it is difficult to get the perfect object located at the angle and point of view I want, and they have a different cross-contour line than sausage.
Therefore, whatever I want to say is that I have to look at photographs or real objects and'reconstitute' them on my sausages, and that is, in other words, that my imagination must be added.
This is not annoying, and I really want to get through this challenge.
And, I'm working on creating a texture on this second piece of sausage now, and I'm almost finished. To be honest, when I focused on this and completed it, there was a lot to gain. This still poses a huge challenge to me whenever I encounter a new texture.
Is my condition normal now? Since I am Korean, it is difficult to expect smooth communication, but I am your supporter and I have received a lot of help from you. I want to finish this challenge well.
think of trees as elongated sausages
finally managed to lug myself from texture analysis straight to this...
theres definitely a saying for this
It took so long to complete this, i am Glad that Second page took like 1/3 the time i used on the 1st. Happy that i managed to finish It, and learned to effectively study materials. Thanks for ALL the content, heading for the next lesson now.
Got really busy and stopped drawabox while doing this lesson over a year ago.... still have all my homework stuff and just rewatched all the prev lesson's videos and reread so I will be starting back up with this lesson...Determined to actually finish this time
You are genius ! Thank you so much for your hard work !
My pleasure.
I'm so excited to do this it just looks really fun slapping a bunch of different textures on a sausage
For me this exercise is tougher than form intersections
Ankit Rawat just keep in mind that you're not expected to be able to do them. It's about getting you thinking differently, and getting a sense of how you observe. There's no expectation of good results. Just do the best that you currently can.
Can't thank you enough for these lessons 🙏 🙏🙏
I'm glad I could help!
Really loving this exercises, mine went from a normal slime to teeth and to mosquitoes‐ and so on it was wild and time consuming but I like how fun it is!!!(the most embarssing one I did which I think is not even a texture is a body hair. yes. I do not know what was I thinking that time.)
I always enjoyed art, but ive never been really good at it. but all these cool pictures you draw make me want to give it my all! 😄😅
Hey! Big thanks for providing all of this information man. Invaluable!
Glad to hear it helps!
I leant a lot from this video. Thank you!
I'm glad I could help!
This lesson is extremely difficult for me, but I also find that the most difficult things often get me to learn the fastest.
lets see how this exercise goes
been excited fot this one looks fun!
thank you so much the lessons ❤❤❤
I don’t know what it was about texture and detail, but it ended up confusing me, and It almost made me give up. After watching this. It makes me understand a bit more. On how to use references and how to actually use shadows to create a 3D depth
Thanks for the great in depth video.
My pleasure.
I don't quite understand how the surface of the kiwi is a texture? I mean of course there would be those microscopical bumps, but aren't you also drawing the changes in color here? A surface like that would be very smooth as it's cut with a knife. I'm about to try out this excersise but I feel like I'm not understanding the concept if some of the things you're transferring from the kiwi to the sausage is a texture.
If you study the surface of a kiwi very closely, you'll find that most of its surface is made up of a sort of pulp. Pulp itself is made up of smaller separated forms that are compacted together. Being forms of their own, they do create a little bit of uneveness along the surface that we can use for our purposes here. Furthermore, the seeds sit in little furroughs or channels, which also provides very subtle form information that we can leverage here (which is a bit more noticeable than the pulp, so that's what I focus on here). At the end of the day, texture is all about the little form information present on a surface. It may be smooth at a normal distance, but if you look closely enough, you will find texture. When doing this exercise, be sure to use high resolution images so you can get as much information as possible, and then decide what "level" of fidelity you'd like to focus on.
Yes, exactly. I tried cutting a kiwi and rotating and studying it very closely. There is some texture that can be captured, a lot of it comes from moisture, however, and would not look like what's on the drawing. It is clearly not what is happening in the video. Here, a reference image is used and information conveyed in the drawing is based purely on the colors and shapes (of the seeds, channels), not on texture analysis.
"Drawing from my wrist..."
When do you switch from shoulder to elbow to wrist drawing?
Also, do you use your wrist/elbow to trace over pencil sketches with ink. for line work?
Thanks!
It's based on the kind of line I want to draw. If my line requires stiff precision (like tight areas of texture) I might use my wrist, but most of the lines I draw through construction require a consistent, smooth flow, so I rely on my shoulder. I explain back in lesson 1 about why I don't recommend the use of the elbow while you're learning.
When tracing over underlying sketchbook, I still ensure that I do what I can to keep my marks fluid and smooth, which often means drawing confidently from the shoulder. I may make a mistake here or there, but there's little value in stiffening up my whole drawing with wobbly lines.
@@Uncomfortable Thank you for the thorough reply! I've been trying to get used to using my shoulder as much as possible. Small textures and intricate details are difficult, though.
I just finished practicing the techniques and homework assignments for intersections, and have been enjoying it a lot, so far. Great series! Thank you!
Wow I didn't realise at first, but this is so much like dithering.
Hi!
Thank your videos and classes :)
I'm sorry for being repetitive, but I'm still not sure about the "only draw cast shadows" part.
Does that mean I should avoid "chrome" material, since most of it is a very smooth surface? Or that shouldn't use a "wood board" as texture analysis since it's mostly defined by the different values of it's grain?
It's a fair question for the simple reason that the answer is yes, and yet either the example in this video or the example on the lesson page (they may be the same, I forget) does include chrome.
Basically the video needs to be updated, and will be as part of our ongoing efforts to update and overhaul the video content. This video is quite old, and some time after we released it we reconsidered exactly how we were teaching texture and how it tied into the course as a whole. That is when we shifted towards focusing on cast shadows only, as they have a more solid grounding in the spatial reasoning concepts drawabox has been narrowed to focus upon.
The texture analysis content is more recent, and while it too will be subject to an update in the coming months, it's more in line with how we want students to approach texture for the exercises in this course.
Lastly, the reminders you'll find here: drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/reminders go over how to think about your textural forms you see in your references, and how to go about transferring them to your drawing, so that may help you better understand how to apply the cast shadows approach we use here.
@@Uncomfortable That's great! Thank you very much for your answer, it truly does answer my question :)
I'll continue to do my best at the exercises, especially now that it's clearer what kind of textures I should be looking for! I believe the pinterest account you linked for these exercises have great references for cast shadows only :)
Again, thank you so so much
@@Uncomfortable I have the same question. To clarify, we want textures defined by the presence of forms rather than coloration or patterns. Does this mean that the meat texture wouldn't be good because it is defined by its red and white coloration pattern?
@@ahuman32478 That's correct, although meat still has its own texture made up of the fibres in its surface, which cause irregularity. You wouldn't pay attention to the local surface colours, but there is still a texture to be studied, as there is with any surface that isn't perfectly polished to a mirror finish.
Can i and Should i convert the ref to gray-mode to easier to understand the line and the shadow?
Yep, there's nothing wrong with converting your reference to greyscale, and even boosting its contrast to better focus on the shadow shapes.
hardest exercise yet
Hey ho, I am a little bit confused. In the example picture on the internet page, you also use meat. There, you painted the fat areas white and the muscle areas black, but the only difference between them is the colour, nothing of it would cast shadows same goes for the aluminium example. Does both examles fall under the following statement: "things that the newer texture analysis exercise, with its focus on implicit markmaking and cast shadows specifically says not to do."
It is indeed something that falls under that consideration - the dissection video was made several years earlier, and while we're working to update our video content across the board, it's very much an uphill climb. That said, there is texture to meat - the shifts in material (from muscle fibres to fat and even between the muscle fibres themselves) do constitute of form, and do not create a perfectly level surface. Thus there are little shadows to capture even when ignoring the local colouring of the surface. It is of course very subtle, but it's there - always keep that in mind when tempted to describe a surface as having no texture. An absence of texture would be the smoothest, most friction-free surface you can imagine.
@@Uncomfortable thank you for the clarification!
Hi Uncomfortable!
I just notice that in this video you mention the importance of the light source (doing something similar to the last part of the texture analysis exercise) but you don't mention that in the notes for this exercise, even must of the examples don't have a clear light source. I know that that part is not mandatory for this exercise but anyway I think that can be some confusion with this.
I have plans to rerecord this video in the coming months, so I'll keep that in mind. It's a bit tricky, because the way I use the light source when talking about texture like this isn't quite the same as how we would when rendering a scene. Rather than the light source being this singular consistent thing that all our choices must abide by, when talking about texture I use it more as a tool to help me achieve different levels of textural density where I want them to be, based on where I'm interested in conveying more information to the viewer. I'll try and address that more clearly in the future.
UBlock? Goated
Hi Uncomfortable, I have a question about this exercise/lesson
Why shouldn't we outline?
I get that drawabox is evolving and you've decided to focus more on shadows, but I find it really hard to make the 'gradient' (thicker to thin, darker to lighter) without outlining
Idk, it just feels clunky and since i'm not copying from a reference, but applying it to a form, i dont know how thinner lines should get
And yes, i'll follow your instruction and not outline, but why is this bad? I mean, what misunderstandings could it cause?
Shouldn't be easier apply shadows knowing what are you applying shadows to?
Outlining each of our textural forms will definitely make drawing them each easier, but the problem is that it will completely eliminate the ability to transition from one level of density to another, as explained in these notes: drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/notransition . I explain there how outlining limits our ability to control the density.
The purpose of these texture exercises is to help develop one's ability to maintain an awareness of the forms in a particular area of your object's surface without having to draw them, so we can learn how to imply them without drawing them in their entirety. That is at the core of the exercise - sure, opting to outline them can make it easier to complete the task, but doing so would also completely sidestep its purpose.
As a side note, you mention "I'm not copying from a reference" - I assume you mean that you're not directly copying your reference, but you definitely should still be using reference images to help you determine what forms will be present on the surfaces, and how they relate to one another in space.
This is tricky. When you see someone else doing it, it is easqy to understand. But starting yourself at a whole nex texture and seeing how ou could put it on paper and simplify it, is just hard. With some textures it's a real problem.
Also I find that the idea about just drawing cast shadows isn't always applicable. Just look at your drawing of the kiwi. You're not drawing cast shadows, but rather lines, aren't you?
I do find your instructions on these texture exercises to be a little confusing. I read your note on the website's page on this assignment stating that the examples and demos are outdated and go against some of the things you're trying to emphasize, but I'm not entirely sure which parts do that (does it include this video?). Mainly I'm just struggling to wrap my head around how we're supposed to capture very smooth textures that have little to no cast shadows.
For example, the meat section you show in one of the images. Your note says to ignore surface color and focus on the 3D, which leads me to believe that this is one of the old examples you mentioned, but I struggle to see how you could capture this texture without observing the surface colors, as it would just be completely flat otherwise. Are we just meant to ignore textures like these and focus only on ones that do have significant cast shadows, or is there a technique I'm not understanding?
Thanks for the work you put in to these. I am learning a lot.
A textured surface and a smooth surface are, by definition, opposite ends of the spectrum. A perfectly smooth surface wouldn't have any textural forms protruding from the surface to cast shadows - and such a surface does end up getting very reflective as a result, although we're not really getting into that here. The key point to keep in mind is that smooth = no texture.
That said, there are surfaces that have very tiny textures along their surface, and meat is one of them. It's made up of fibres, so if you were to zoom into it, you'd see little textural forms layering on top of one another, casting little shadows. While you're right that the choices in this demo weren't really taking textural forms/cast shadows into consideration, technically you can zoom in close enough and still have a useful texture to draw, without regarding local surface colour.
Overall though, you can take everything discussed regarding the texture analysis exercise, and treat it as though it supercedes anything discussed here. Furthermore, these reminders from the texture section of Lesson 2 go over how we should be thinking about the textures we're drawing, and the marks we put down to convey them: drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/reminders
@@Uncomfortable Thanks for taking the time to respond. Even though "smooth = no texture" feels like it contradicts "everything has a texture" from the texture analysis page, I do think I understand what you're saying and this is helpful. Thank you.
thank you!
Umm i wonder if i need to set light and shadow? because in my old class when we draw something like this we need to draw sun and where light source come from.
You mention that you're drawing from your wrist. I'm assuming that's fine with these more tiny lines that can't really be drawn from the shoulder? Or should we still attempt to be using our shoulders for this?
The wrist is fine for linework that requires stiff precision rather than fluidity. Note that as mentioned in the FAQ, ( drawabox.com/faq/smalllines ), this is not because the lines are small, but rather because of the way we need those lines to behave.
I came here after finishing the exercise to read the comments for emotional support..😭
but-but that kiwi had no cast shadow..weren't we only drawing cast shadows?
The kiwis' got seeds, as well as furroughs in its pulp in which the seeds sit. These are all three dimensional forms/structures, and therefore they do cast shadows - even if those shadows are not easily visible in your reference. The trick is to use what you see to help find the forms that are present, then to draw cast shadows based on the forms that are present. This forces you to go through the process of analyzing/understanding what's there, rather than just trying to draw what you see without thinking about what it actually is that you're drawing and implying.
@@Uncomfortable oh thank you so much . That had confused me a lot
So much fun
Hi! I have have a question to this module , cause i am little bit confusing by one thing , you say that we shoud'nt use outline to this exersise and represent all textures with cast shadow, but in a lot of cases you use for representing details and little forms : shapes , ambient oclusion ,and even a shadow of those little forms, and outlines itself , and my question is thatwe still should use only cast shadow even if in most of referencese there is no those shadows?
Second question is what source do u have used to learn this thing? Cause in the course of Dynamic Sketching by Peter Han that u mentioned that you got through he does'nt explained very clear how to use them , as you explain in this course.
So a lot of it comes down to the fact that this video is very old. Drawabox is a course that has evolved over many years, from me attempting to explain what I understood, while also reflecting upon what it is that I understood and the reasoning behind how I drew things, using Peter Han's Dynamic Sketching as a sort of base. Over the years we pulled away from the approach Peter used in order to cover more of the concepts that I felt students would benefit from prior to taking Dynamic Sketching (or really any other course).
The most recent video touching on the texture analysis exercise is several years newer than this one, and so it covers the concepts differently than what you see here - hence the contradictions. This is something we're working to revise and update across the entire course (I'm gradually overhauling the video demos/lectures from the start of the course, having completed all of Lesson 0, along with Lesson 1 Lines/Ellipses, and am currently working on the boxes section) although it's very slow going, as I'm always working against the continuous flow of homework submissions.
For the time being however, I'd recommend you review the notes here: drawabox.com/lesson/2/2/reminders and also try to apply what's covered in the texture analysis exercise to your work on the dissections. At the end of the day, the texture section here in Lesson 2 is really just meant to plant a seed, that will gradually be nurtured across the rest of the course, so don't worry too much about understanding it all and applying it perfectly just yet. Most students don't, and that isn't really a big concern for the course as a whole.
@@Uncomfortable Man , you're amazing teacher,and your course is too amazing,even if I have some confusions , just find for myself some questions that i can't explain, cause I don't have good observational skill. Love you!!:)
Thanks for the vid
Are we just capturing the shadows or are we allowed to draw the really dark colors?, Like if a Pea has a black spot on its surface thats not a shadow
Ignore the local/surface colours of the actual object and focus only on capturing the cast shadows. Also it's worth noting that being as old as this video is, it doesn't actually incorporate as many of the principles from the texture analysis exercise, with all the focusing on cast shadows. It's definitely due for an update, but in the meantime try your best to apply the principles from the texture analysis exercise and the texture section of Lesson 2 here even where the video demo may contradict those points.
@@Uncomfortable thank you
Completely unrelated question: Why does your cursor looks so pixelated? Is it a conscious choice or is your recording software misbehaving?
Not a conscious choice - it's a very old video (from 2017) so it must have been an issue with the recording software. Not an issue in more recent recordings.
Uncomfortable after watching this video and you drawing I understand most of the things that I didn't understand on Texture details exercise, and I noticed that you first drew the forms and after you drew the cast shadows, can I do that? 'Cause I thought that when you said don't outline you mean don't draw the shape of the forms begin with only the shadow and the shadow will imply the shapes, but maybe I got it wrong.
It's more a matter of Drawabox continually evolving while I find what students need to focus on more and more. I'm trying to push students to think as much as possible in terms of shadows rather than outlines now, compared to when I made this video.
That said, even here, though, you can see that i didn't fully outline those that were transitioning more to the sparser area of the texture. I purposely left those shapes open, because even if I drew them as being very narrow initially, I was still thinking about my strokes as shadows rather than outlines.
@@Uncomfortable There is some advice for when I lost myself on the picture? Example: I'm drawing and look at the picture but sometimes it has so many things that I lost where I was
@@ensis8716 It's a pretty normal thing that you'll gradually get used to, but the most important thing is that when you start to get overwhelmed by anything, people will often respond by panicking and just putting marks down without thinking about them. Instead, take a step back and try to take stock of everything you're looking at. Put your pen down, and look at your reference image as a whole and try to situate yourself in the grand scheme of what you're doing and what you're trying to draw. This can often help ground you and reinforce the importance of thinking through every mark you put down, rather than falling back into bad habits.
for my own review 28:46
Pretty fun eh
You mention how we should take care of our hands and not strain them. Do you know any exercises for relieving stress from our hands? I probably could have googled this but eh.
Google might be a better source than me. I don't really do a lot of exercises for my wrist, as I draw primarily from my shoulder and don't end up stressing them too much.
There are a lot of videos for wrist exercises for gamers. I know it's not the same, but it might help nonetheless.
Are we supposed to ignore the local value in this exercise?
Yup, that's correct. Focus only on the forms themselves and the shadows they'll cast. Imagine that the whole surface is made up of a solid white material.
@@Uncomfortable So how would we approach the inner kiwi?
@@biggieboijosh1446 The kiwi has seeds, and those seeds sit in little channels/furrows. Study your reference images closely and identify information pertaining to the actual three dimensional form.
@@Uncomfortable got it, so to clarify we wouldn't outline the change in the color of the skin or the green rays that radiate out?
@@biggieboijosh1446 Don't outline *anything*, but think about what those "green rays" actually are. We're not trying to capture anything by simply outlining the forms - we're drawing the shadows that are cast. Those 'green rays' are the channels/furrows I mentioned before, and since the height of the surface there dips, there will be slight shadows cast into it.
That motivation about Francis turned dark too quickly , what did you mean by take care of your hands?? 😶😶😳😳😳😳😳😳😳😳
There are a lot of people who feel that they should be working themselves to death now, to reap rewards later. They do this physically - pushing their hands, their wrists, their arms beyond the point of pain - and they do it mentally, by not giving themselves breaks nor patience when they require it.
Take care of your hands, your body, and your mind. Don't push yourself beyond your limits, and allow those limits to shift *gradually* instead of forcing the matter. In Francis Tsai's case, it was a disease - but there are far more cases out there of people developing repetitive stress injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, tendonitis, and more because they decided that the only way to succeed is to push one's self too far.
It's never worth it, and in all honesty, what I've experienced in my life and seen in others, we improve and grow more quickly when we treat ourselves and our bodies with care.
Sometimes I think That I wont Never make it. 😟 but I wont give up.
Is that PureRef free? look like 3 ~ 5 Euro @@ Anyone can tell me another one?
Thanks and sorry because my bad English
PureRef is available for free (it's a pay-what-you-want model, and if you click "custom amount" and enter 0, it'll tell you "We totally get that you would want to try before you buy. If you like it, please come back and support us with future development!"). That said, if you are able to, or if you decide you like the software after the fact, you should absolutely give them a little bit.
wow thanks! and
of course if i can draw enough to make money, then i'll pay for things that helped me.
I've never felt more useless than I do trying to do anything in this lesson
Keep in mind, above all else, that some exercises - this one included - are intended as an *introduction* to a concept you have not addressed before, and therefore there is no expectation that you will be able to do it correctly. Instead, by having you tackle it right now, you'll be able to move forward with an awareness of this particular challenge. This will help you develop those skills and that understanding as you move forwards, rather than trudging on oblivious to its existence as a problem to be solved.
@@Uncomfortable What sucks is having drawn for a decade and a half and being unable to visualize stuff. Do you have any advice for people who borderline aphantasia?
@@bigboy2217 In my experience, having aphantasia myself, the inability to visualize things ended up being a lot less significant than I had initially expected. While we cannot visualize things, that does not mean we cannot imagine, and that we cannot understand the relationships between things in space. We just learn to understand them in a more abstract fashion that is just as effective - if not moreso - than those who rely on a more visual component to their mind's eye.
More and more I'm starting to suspect that those with more visual noise to sort through end up facing a lot of distractions, and a lot of twisted expectations (since visualizing something does not inherently make one capable of drawing it, though one can't help but feel that it should).
My advice is not to look at aphantasia as a disability. You are not uniquely limited in what you can do - your brain will simply learn how to approach it differently than some others might. Your brain is not littered with the distractions of others - it is a blank slate in which to understand the relationships between objects in space, between elements of design, and between problems and their various available solutions in a manner that may not be as easy to attain for others.
Everything still has to be learned, of course - but as you push through, you'll learn to accept this difference to be the advantage that it is. Of course, I didn't see it that way when I started.
I have been drawing regularly since I was 12 years old, and I spent most of that time spinning my wheels and bemoaning the idea that I wasn't able to do things the way others could (I didn't know about aphantasia at this point). Once I learned about aphantasia in my early 20s, I thought it meant that I had no chance turning art into a career.
Where many might look at that as a reason to despair, I found it immensely freeing. Seeing it as I did then had its benefits - it meant I didn't have to blame myself, and that I could fail over and over without feeling as bad about it as I did before. It meant that I could attack that blank canvas more readily, and stop being afraid of doing something wrong. Because *of course* I'd do something wrong, and it wasn't my fault.
What I took from that was the confidence to do things without fear. Of course I was still going to draw - I did it because I enjoyed it - but that freedom allowed me to enjoy it all the more, and to approach exercises and training in a whole new way, no longer concerned with not doing an exercise correctly, and judging myself as lesser for it.
Being able to approach things in that manner ultimately showed me that I could learn, that I could improve, and ultimately I did and still do to this day. But whether we have aphantasia or not, what stops us is the fear of being judged, the fear of judging ourselves, the fear of failing as though it somehow makes us "useless" as you put it yourself.
Doing something incorrectly is a momentary thing. It's an opportunity to see where we have yet to grow and improve, but it says nothing about who we are as a person. We are not the sum of what we can do, the total of all the ways in which we can be used by others. *Everyone* fears those mistakes though, they fear those failures, and many find themselves paralyzed by it.
Long, long, long story short: your aphantasia is not as relevant as you might think, and what you need to truly accept in order to move forward is exactly what everyone else struggles with. The idea that mistakes are important, that they are necessary, and that they do not reflect upon you as a person. Aphantasia changes none of that.
@@Uncomfortable Amazing comment from a psychoanalytical perspective. But I don't think my problems necessarily hinge on an inability to cope with not doing stuff correctly. The things in this course seem to be tailored towards improving your ability to visualize by definition. Because I got that feeling from the rhetoric of the course on your website my assumption was that the teaching here was somewhat incompatible with the way you would teach somebody who couldn't visualize. When you describe the canvas as a window to look through and tell people that the things they put on the page should be purposeful before they put the lines down, that sounds like you want them to imagine how that line will impact the picture. Hell the very idea of using a pen exclusively lends itself to improving your capacity to flesh out the idea before the idea hits the canvas.
Now if I'm going to just assume that you are being entirely honest here, since that would be the smart thing to do for somebody who's willing to put out a shit load of free content and even hand reply to grievances, then I'm going to just go with the theory that these things do work themselves out if you just keep working at them. And that maybe my interpretation of the course isn't indicative of who the course could actually help and who it couldn't. Which is reassuring. I feel like I'll either do it or just want. That's probably all there is to it. I was kinda of hoping that there was some weird way to become less aphantasiac with time since I can sort of see a color in my head if I try and I somehow dream vividly, but hey can't win em all.
@@bigboy2217 Whether or not there's a way to actually improve one's actual visualization skills is up in the air. I know for a fact that when I was younger, I had an extremely vivid imagination - somewhere around puberty, it very gradually started to evaporate. I don't know if that means that it's possible to reclaim it, but perhaps it does. Who knows.
In the lessons, when I talk about understanding the page as a window out into a scene, I can understand how the wording might suggest more to do with visualization than I actually intended. Ultimately it's about understanding that we are treating the page as though it expands out into infinite space - that's something we can do whether we see it in our mind's eye or not, because it is entirely a matter of understanding things as they exist in three dimensions, versus how they exist on the two dimensions of the page.
Hey, I'm having so much trouble with figuring out the degree of my ellipses, I barely do any variation. I mean I try but I just can't seem to do it right. Should I just go ahead and do the textures on the forms anyway or should I keep trying to get my ellipses right?
Every exercise has its own particular focus. Matters concerning the degree of your contour lines should be the focus of your organic forms with contour lines. In this exercise, the focus is on the textures - so do your best to get the contour lines right, and even if they don't come out as intended, don't let them distract you from the main focus of the exercise. You'll have ample opportunity to address the degree issues after you get feedback on your lesson's homework.
@@Uncomfortable Yes sir. I'm focusing on my textures like a good little student. Thanks for the reply!
I think im drowning in the pool
I thought it was Dragon meat in the thumbnail lol. It would be perfect with wings.
Me omw (on my way) to draw Japanese orange A5 Wagyu
This feels like a contradiction, in the exercise before you said to not draw the outlines of the texture but the shadows, which is not what you do here. Since you are so striced on your wording I am confused
You are unfortunately correct about that - the reason is that this video is due to be updated. Since it was created (more than two years ago), I added the 'Texture Analysis' exercise, and then over the course of a year of giving feedback to students and identifying what they did and didn't understand, and really refining my own grasp of the material, I shifted more towards this cast-shadow-focused process, eschewing outlines altogether. To put it simply, there are contradictions in the course simply because it's constantly being updated and changed. If you see something in a lesson or video that has been updated more recently, then definitely go with that approach, if it conflicts with something older. I'll try and update these when I get the chance, but unfortunately with limited time I have to pick and choose what gets changed and when.
Uncomfortable thank you, I was confused about this too. We appreciate your hard work!
@@22koraynalbant43 The silhouette is an outline for the form as a whole. Texture impacts it, causing it to bulge out in places, but it is still a property of the form as a whole, and therefore is not subject to the restriction to drawing using shadow shapes.
cursed banana
I thought you drew a sushi when I looked at the thumbnail...
Hi, I have a phobia of insects (even if it is just a photo) and I notice that you use sometimes photos of insects as a reference (especially in the advanced lessons like lesson 4).
Can you please suggest some alternative to insects photos as a reference for this lesson and the future lessons?
(Lesson 4 probably will be impossible for me to even start)
Thank you in advance!
While I don't believe I use insect references for this exercise (so you should be safe to go through it), obviously they do come up in Lesson 4. For those who suffer from arachnophobia and entomophobia, then one alternative source of references that often is easier to work with are crustaceans - lobsters, crabs, shrimps, etc. As I am going through overhauling the course materials and making new demos (I started doing that in the spring, but because my apartment flooded it's been paused til September), I've been intending to add more demonstrations pertaining to crustaceans. For now though, there are a couple at the top of the "informal demos" page that will be useful - one of a lobster and one of a shrimp.
@@Uncomfortable Thank you very much for answering this question :)
On this page drawabox.com/lesson/2/dissections, I saw that in the picture below, you used one insect, so I was worrying that you are going to use insects here in this video.
If I will start lesson 4 before you post a new demos, can I skip the video and just read the text? or I will need to wait ? (I am sending my homework for official critiques)
@@0darkwings0 While you will probably be better off waiting, the text material does cover everything, so you would be okay to avoid those videos. The opposite (skipping the text and watching the videos) is actually much worse, since the videos don't cover everything - though I'm hoping to improve that with my overhaul of the video content.
@@Uncomfortable Thank you 🙏🏻
can I just copy your drawing? does that count? jeje
It looks like plant tissue
cursed sausage
I'm sorry but what the heck is a kiwi, I've never heard, seen or tasted a kiwi in my life lol
Give them a try - they're delicious.
Kiwi with a skin of lizard......ummmm seems kinda tasty to me.......
Would you not recommend looking up other drawings of the texture as a reference?
Also, you weren't joking about it coming out as a streaming pile of crap
I wouldn't recommend relying on others' drawings of the textures. The exercise requires you to go through a process to understand your texture's form makeup, whereas working off another's drawing would simply be a matter of copying the results of another already having gone through that process.
@@Uncomfortable Thanks for always replying to my questions. I've been really struggling with these exercises since the beginning. This one and the last one however has really pushed me to a point where it feels like I'm not making any progress at all. I try to spend more time with each exercise until I feel I truly understand the concepts before moving, but with these textures that I'm drawing it really feels like I'm just drawing unrecognizable blobs.
At what point does one draw so terribly that it could be deemed as a waste of time? Right now I feel like I would have to draw 100 pages of these, or at least each texture multiple times before I can feel I'm actually learning something by drawing something that'd actually be recognizable to the reference image.
I guess my question is would pushing through this feeling, ignoring the outcome regardless of how bad and whether I feel I have learned anything from it, and continuing on with the lessons by submitting the required amount of pages really make me able to stand on my own as an artist? Or should I try harder on these exercises and spend more time on each one until I feel I have truly "passed" them?
@@landgemark I really feel like you're overestimating the purpose of why this exercise is assigned in this lesson. It's not for you to improve at it, and it's not for you to accomplish anything specific. It is *only* to introduce you to the concept, to plant a seed.
Texture is very difficult - it's all about understanding the little textural forms that exist along the surface of an object, and to be able to hold that understanding of how they sit in space without outlining them. It is a similar problem to construction as a whole (which is something we work on throughout this entire course), but actually demands more since you're not able to simply draw those forms using explicit markmaking techniques.
By introducing this micro-scale spatial problem here, students will continue to develop their spatial reasoning skills both in regards to construction (which is more macr-scale) and texture simultaneously as they move through the lesson.
As discussed back in Lesson 0, your own interpretation of whether or not your work is "good enough" or has "passed" a particular standard is irrelevant, and dangerous because it'll lead you to simply sit there and grind well beyond the intent of the course. Your job is to complete the work to the best of your *current* ability, as assigned, and then to get feedback on it. If that external feedback deems you ready to move onto the next step, then that's what you do.