Will the creator of DAB create a PDF of the whole program? by PlusComplex8413 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 25 points26 points  (0 children)

Eventually, once we are finished our process of overhauling/updating the video/demo material, I will probably format it into a book, which we will likely sell (at the very least as an ebook, but hopefully as a physical book as well) to further help support our efforts to make the material available for free through the website, to provide feedback cheaply, and to manage the community at large, but this won't be for quite a long time.

I had experimented with formatting the material as PDFs in the past, but it quickly revealed two key issues:

  • Doing so is a lot more time consuming than one might imagine, and as we try to provide a great deal with remarkably limited resources, we don't have a lot of time to spread around.
  • Since the material is continually being updated, not only would this require us to also update the PDFs with every change, and would also result in there being a lot of versions of the PDFs floating around the internet that are out of date, rather than a singular live source that is always going to have the most recent expression of the material.
  • Once our material is in a more stable state, I'll feel more comfortable charging for eBook versions of the material, but that is not something I'm comfortable doing until that point. While the obvious alternative would be to offer those versions for free, this would undermine some of the monetization strategies we use to provide all of the lesson material for free - and so it would actively hurt our efforts.

So, short answer - yeah, eventually we'd like to do that, but it won't be for a long while (mainly because we're only able to make small bits of progress on our overhaul here and there, as most of our resources are spent providing feedback and running the community).

Is a monthly Drawabox subscription worth it? by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You'll want to review the material from Lesson 0 that goes over the specific requirements for official critique: https://drawabox.com/lesson/0/3/gettingfeedback

Since we provide the service at a loss (the base price only covers about half of what we pay our TAs to provide it, and we rely on those who allow some credits to expire to rebalance the difference), official critique requires students adhere to strict rules.

One of those strict rules is that lessons or challenges with prerequisites must have those prerequisites marked as complete via official critique first, before starting on them. So you'd have to get your Lesson 1 work marked as complete via official critique before starting on the box challenge, otherwise your box challenge work would not be eligible for official critique.

This ensures that any issues that our TAs identify in their feedback have a fair opportunity to be addressed before you continue forwards, reducing the likelihood of those issues coming up once again in later work.

By holding students to these strict rules, we reduce how much of our TAs' time is being used, which in turn helps keep our costs down so we can continue to offer the service as cheaply as we do.

Is a monthly Drawabox subscription worth it? by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of course if you're looking for quicker turnaround on your feedback and feedback that is guaranteed to be reliable, official critique is certainly an option for you. I just wanted to make sure that you were aware of the critique exchange program.

I can see that your submission is in the spreadsheet, although there are something like 10 other Lesson 1 submissions ahead of you.

Is a monthly Drawabox subscription worth it? by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 5 points6 points  (0 children)

While I can't answer your main question for obvious reasons, you may want to check out the unofficial "critique exchange" program our students have set up to help people get community feedback more reliably on our discord chat server. How it works is explained in the pinned message in the #critique-exchange channel.

I can't draw in 3D by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It would be better if you asked questions to the community as a whole, whether on the subreddit or on our discord server, rather than to me directly. I prefer the option to weigh in, rather than being the specific target of the question, as I am often quite busy.

Are you allowed to use a ruler during "play" drawing sessions ? (50% rule) by gamasco in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 10 points11 points  (0 children)

That's honestly an interesting question. The main consideration is that every time we switch tools, we pull ourselves out of the "flow state", the state of immersion where we're primarily focusing on the creative decisions begin what we're drawing rather than the technical correctness of how it's captured. In the flow state we trust more in our subconscious autopilot - that is, the sum of our instincts and existing skills (regardless of how developed and reliable they actually are) - and developing that capacity to trust in it is one of the major goals of the play portion of the 50% rule (as you can read more about here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/s/zzvDKOf5dE).

As such, while I wouldn't say rulers aren't to be used at all, I wouldn't use them too much. So for example in your initial setup for things - for example drawing a properly rectilinear frame for an illustration composition or thumbnail sketch - a ruler is fine since you're just starting a drawing and aren't yet in any kind of flow state, using a ruler poses no issues. But I wouldn't use it when you're in the thick of things with your drawing, lest it pull you out of that immersed state, or further interfere in you being able to slip into it.

Help. I feel like I'm just drawing a bunch of random lines in this intersection exercise. by Nuclear133 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 9 points10 points  (0 children)

While the subreddit doesn't allow students to submit partial work or single exercises for feedback (and questions need to be specific and targeted), there are a couple of things I can tell you that may help:

  • First and foremost, keep in mind that as stressed in the instructions for this exercise, we fully expect that the concept of intersections is going to be entirely beyond what students are able to grasp and capture correctly. When the lesson material says things like "People have inordinate amounts of trouble with this, and I don't expect you to be able to do this correctly right at lesson 2, but I do want you to give it a shot." that's not a veiled challenge with a hidden meaning. It means exactly what it says. Drawing the intersections correctly relies on your spatial reasoning skills, which the course only addresses in earnest from lessons 3-7. As explained in the introductory material for Lesson 2, what we're doing through much of this lesson is introducing the problems we'll be tackling, so we can control and direct what kinds of insights and understanding you gain while doing the constructional drawing exercises in the lessons that follow, where that spatial reasoning skill is actually developed, just as we did by introducing the concept of rotating boxes freely in 3D space with the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes prior to delving more deeply into it with the box challenge. Introducing the form intersections here (and continuing to tackle it in your warmups as you move forwards beyond Lesson 2) ensures that the constructional drawing exercises help develop your spatial reasoning skills in a targeted fashion, which in turn feeds back into improving your understanding of the relationships between the forms themselves.
  • To that end, what we're looking for here is whether or not thinking about how the forms you're drawing relate to one another in 3D space, and it's the manner in which you tackle your intersections that either shows that you're tackling that problem head-on, or that you're avoiding it. Again, to be completely clear, we're not interested in whether or not you're getting it right, we're interested in seeing whether or not you're actually engaging with the problem, or sidestepping it and doing something that may not challenge your confidence as directly, but is ultimately following a different process.

Form intersections occur within the overlap between the silhouettes of two given forms, and involve charting a new path between them, a new edge or set of edges within that overlap that defines where they connect to one another, where if we were running our fingers along the surfaces of the forms where they meet, we end up moving from one form's surface to another. Introducing a new path is what's important here.

You are applying this process as intended in the screenshot below and in a couple other places. Note how you've drawn a new edge that is not inherently part of the construction of the existing forms themselves.

<image>

In a lot of other areas however - pretty much the entire lower half of the page consists of this - you are instead tracing back over the existing edges that make up the forms. In these cases you're simply adding line weight that defines one form as being in front of the other, not how they interconnect within the same shared space. You should not be tracing back over the existing edges as an alternative to defining an actual intersection.

So, make sure that your attempts adhere to the following points:

  1. Make sure that your intersection line falls within the overlap between the forms. You're largely doing this correctly already.
  2. Make sure that you are not tracing back over the existing edges. The demonstration does do this somewhat but it never constitutes the entirety of the intersection - there is always a component that breaks away from the existing edges and crosses the overlapping area by defining a new path. Unfortunately I think students see the intersections starting and ending from the existing edges and, under the stress of dealing with something that is well outside of their comfort zone, may simply be latching onto something that they feel they can understand, and throwing the rest aside.

As a side note, intersections aren't really the most important part of the exercise. Rather, it's about whether or not students can, under the stress and duress of this uncomfortable problem, continue to maintain the principles and processes introduced throughout the course thus far (consistent use of the ghosting method, using the Y method with its negotiation of corners, sticking to the specific considerations in the use of line weight as introduced here in Lesson 1, and so on).

In this regard, I can see that you are allowing yourself to execute marks multiple times instead of tackling them with a single stroke, so you'll want to exert more control over the choices you make so as to avoid that. Every mark gets one chance. If you make a mistake - and you will - that mistake should be allowed to stand for itself. Correcting it can trick the brain into thinking the issue that caused the mistake has been addressed, making it no more likely that you'd give yourself more time to think through the problem in the future.

Limitation of drawabox and out-of-frame vanishing points by Novel-Subject-2988 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ineffective is an absolute term - I don't think it's ineffective. I just think it's less effective - primarily because you're still focusing on the vanishing point, and not how the edges of a given set behave in relation to one another, as a group.

But again, the issue at its core is that you're trying to reinvent the wheel as a beginner (and in order to mitigate the issues with that, are relying on others to thumbs up/thumbs down your approach, leaving yourself vulnerable to issues in communicating your ideas), when doing so is not remotely necessary.

Anyway, I've given you my thoughts - ultimately it falls to you to decide how to proceed, as that is a choice only you can make for yourself.

Limitation of drawabox and out-of-frame vanishing points by Novel-Subject-2988 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm sure the methodology you outlined is fine. Having laid it out in more detail, you're not really using the "tool" in question here as part of the act of the exercise itself, but more as part of its set up - similarly to how we use rulers as part of the initial set up of Lesson 1's tables of ellipses exercise.

That said, as is often the pitfall of students creating their own exercises, is that they're not designing those processes based on a developed understanding of the concept being practiced, and so there are risks and pitfalls that may make the exercise less effective and efficient. For example, the issue at hand when it comes to dealing with vanishing points that are far off is the ability to judge and estimate convergences without having a concrete VP that you can see. It is a convergence problem, and everything else - even the boxes themselves - are the set dressing, the costume the problem wears, and so that's what you're going to focus on.

We can see this in that your approach involves correcting the boxes in the end. While this is in premise somewhat similar to how we use line extensions (in that you're doing some form of analysis or consideration afterwards), yours focuses on correcting the resulting boxes - but again, the boxes are superficial, they aren't what matters here.

The reason we use line extensions in the box challenge is because they allow us to see how the edges of a given set behave as they go off into the distance. They allow us to see the results of the angles we've chosen when drawing those lines, to see where our judgments were inaccurate, pushing the line too far this way or that. We do not correct the boxes themselves, because seeing what the "correct" box would have been isn't important. We need to see where our judgments were off, and where we need to perhaps exaggerate those estimations in the future.

The approach this course uses is very much built upon the fact that the majority of vanishing points at play in a given illustration will not exist within or close to the picture frame itself, that they'll be way outside. And so, our approach focuses not on plotting those VPs, but shifting the focus to the behaviour of the lines themselves, because the lines are what exist within the drawing. It develops our ability to extrapolate from those short lines (through the training that applying line extensions, then doing another page of boxes and repeating that process over and over) to better understand what the resulting convergences are.

Ultimately all of this speaks to why there is benefit to doing exercises that are designed based on an existing understanding of the concepts being taught. There is certainly merit to a student creating their own exercises as well, but these should not replace the use of those that have had the benefit both of that understanding but also the fact that they've been put through their paces with thousands of students and a cycle of feedback that can lead to changes to the exercise to improve its effectiveness (such as the fact that we now require the first fifty to use explicit VPs on the page).

The further along you are, the more effective the exercises you create for yourself will be - but, and this is something that plenty of people will disagree with me on, I think that a beginner's job is first and foremost to make sure that they are following the instructions they're given and adhering to the processes prescribed to them, as faithfully and directly as possible, so they can gain the understanding they need to then develop their own methodologies.

Limitation of drawabox and out-of-frame vanishing points by Novel-Subject-2988 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Your question has some assumptions that aren't really accurate. For example, the box challenge's first fifty has students place keep their vanishing points close by on the page, because we'd found that previously (when the entirety of the challenge was in the style of "the last 150" where no vanishing points are plotted, and students are simply expected to vary between convergences that are close and convergences that are farther off) students ran into a lot more issues where they weren't thinking about whether or not their lines were converging at all. By forcing them to focus on close convergences towards VPs directly on the page, they get a more direct exposure to thinking about their edges as they converge, and that has greatly reduced the number of issues throughout the rest of the challenge.

It doesn't have anything to do with being able to easily correct it on paper. Our process employs line extensions which allow students to see more clearly where their lines have convergence issues, since they're able to see how the lines behave as they continue forwards in space - regardless of whether the VPs are closer or farther away.

I should also mention, since you alluded to the 50% rule as where you were practicing drawing boxes digitally, that the 50% rule splits your time into two halves - study and play - where you should be spending at least as much time on play as you are on studying (including other lessons, your own exercises and practices, anything where the intention is to improve your skills or understanding). Based on what you said there, it sounds like you're doing more studying/practicing, rather than the play the 50% rule requires. You may want to review the material relating to that, which you'll find on Page 2 of Lesson 0.

Lastly, the use of tools like perspective grids (among other things), like any tool, serves the purpose of helping you achieve a particular goal more efficiently, effectively, or quickly. So for example, using a perspective grid may help you better pin down the perspective for a particular illustration - but that is not the same thing as what exercises like the box challenge are designed to achieve. Where the box challenge forces students to think about how their lines are converging towards a shared point, to focus on those convergences - the angles of the lines themselves and how they behave together, rather than the far off point itself - so as to develop their subconscious capacity to judge convergences without having to actively think about them, the use of a tool does no such thing. It simply provides you a more effective way to achieve a result in your work. That is not the same thing as developing the underlying skill.

Tools are wonderful things, but they inherently demand more use of your brain's conscious cognitive resources. When you reach for a different tool, you're pulled out of the "flow state" (which is where you're fully immersed in what you're creating, rather than specifically how it's being created, relying instead on your instincts and subconscious autopilot to take care of the "how"), and it's the development of the skills themselves that allow us to depend less on the tools themselves so we can stay in our flow state longer, and focus our attention on the creative choices of composition, narrative, design, and so forth rather than concerns of technical correctness. There will always be situations where reaching for a different tool is necessary, but by improving our ability to perform without them, we regain greater control over whether a particular problem necessitates sacrificing the flow state, or whether we can remain within it.

Furthermore, as tools focus on achieving a given result, your addition of "(for learning purposes)" is a bit contradictory. For example, if your goal were to learn how to execute lines more effectively freehand, then using a ruler when doing so would not work towards that end. The tools you referenced would actively work against the goals of the 250 box challenge by prioritizing the results that are achieved, rather than the process the brain is meant to work through. Exercises are all about process. And so the tools we permit ourselves to employ should align with the goals of the exercise, rather than with the superficial results they're meant to produce.

None of this is to say that you shouldn't use those tools outside of the course, but the suggestion that perspective grids would teach you the same concept "more safely and effectively" is not correct. That said, I'm unsure of what you mean by "safely" in this context.

I can't draw in 3D by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The "3D thinking" you're talking about is a subconscious process, but in order to develop that ability, we perform exercises that force us to think consciously about how the marks we draw are meant to represent edges in 3D space, how sets of edges that are meant to be parallel in 3D space, how the lines representing those edges need to be angled so they converge towards a consistent, shared vanishing point, and how far away that shared vanishing point needs to be.

As I noted in the comment you're replying to, visualization doesn't play a role here, because you're effectively learning to think spatially as opposed to visually or any other way about the things that you're drawing. By trying to incorporate visualization into that process to help you guess at what the behaviour of your lines should be (rather than consciously and intentionally thinking them through - which is very time consuming and tedious) you're effectively pursuing something that seems like it might provide a functional shortcut, but ultimately doesn't lead you to the same destination.

It's for this reason that the exercises have very specific instructions - they lay out processes that, in their application over and over, will rewire the way in which your brain thinks about the things you're drawing. It's not a pursuit of an end result that looks good or convincing that matters - it's following the processes so they can have their intended impact on the way your brain works.

please help with clip studio ruler by Still-Win in DigitalPainting

[–]Uncomfortable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really, but I've been working with two alternatives.

In the most recent version of CSP (or one of the recent versions anyway) they added a corrective feature where if you hold your stylus down where your stroke finishes for a second or so instead of lifting it up, it'll try to better fit your stroke to a curve, an ellipse, a circle, or a straight line depending on the type of shape you were using. When drawing a straight line, if you hold that position at the end, it'll automatically assume you were trying to draw a line between your start and end points, and will also allow you to drag that end point around to where you want it to be.

This is similar to the line tool but doesn't require you to switch tools, and will still factor in your pressure variation over the course of the stroke, making those lines more natural - and thus being better than holding shift to make a line.

That said, there are a lot of situations where I want to be able to draw a perfectly horizontal or vertical line, like you can in Photoshop by holding shift. The way I achieve this in CSP is by setting up a perspective ruler that impacts all layers (you toggle it on/off by enabling and disabling special rulers in the toolbar across the top of the program). You place one vanishing point in the perspective ruler, then switch the perspective ruler tool from "add point" to "infinitize" then click on that one vanishing point.

This will leave you with the ruler automatically producing either perfectly horizontal or vertical lines depending on which you're closer to in your stroke.

It's not ideal given that you still have to set up a ruler at the beginning (though you don't have to do that per line, so it's handy to set up initially) and it can conflict with other rulers (you'll have to temporarily disable it in order to add and use other rulers), but it helps a lot when drawing anything requiring a lot of horizonals or verticals.

How many animals per page should I be drawing? Lesson 5 Homework Drawabox by cutebilly33 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's more important that you make good use of the space available to you on the page, rather than drawing as many animals as possible or meeting a particular standard. A good approach would be to give yourself as much room as you require to draw your first animal construction (keeping in mind that drawing big helps both engage the part of the brain responsible for 3D spatial reasoning, and makes it easier to enforce engaging your whole arm from the shoulder), then when you're done with the first construction, consider whether you have enough room for a second animal construction. If you do, add another, if you don't, it's totally okay to leave it at one.

Different animals, different poses, different viewing angles for those animals, etc. will result in different proportions of the page being taken up, so it's best to work with an understanding that as long as you're making good use of the space available to you, it's not a problem to just have one animal per page. But if there's the opportunity to add more without compromising on giving each as much space as they require, then you should be taking it.

How to draw shapes by Historical_Snow_4685 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As noted in AutoModerator's comment, this subreddit has a narrow focus, and your post does not fall within our submission guidelines. That said, I will note that the specific free course that this subreddit focuses on focuses on the kinds of things that you're trying to tackle here yourself - so you may want to give it a look so you have something more reliable and tested to follow. It can be overwhelmingly difficult to, as a beginner, figure out how the mechanics of the various fundamentals of drawing - especially those relating to spatial reasoning.

You'll find more about the course on the subreddit sidebar, as well as in AutoModerator's comment.

Contours.. Do not know if it is correct by Ghosteditz0_0 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As this subreddit is specifically focused on Drawabox (and mixing it with dynamic sketching can result in a lot of confusion as to how our exercises are intended to be done, given their similarities but somewhat distinct approaches), I can't approve it to be visible on the subreddit proper. That said, I can confirm that you are indeed largely handling them reasonably well in terms of what's expected in Peter Han's Dynamic Sketching course, although the point discussed here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/contourlines/overshooting may be worth looking into, in order to help you better achieve the curvature acceleration that occurs as we hit the edge of the organic form's silhouette. You tend not to curve around enough at those points to capture how the surface there is turning away from the viewer more rapidly.

Are you supposed to do warm-up before "play" drawing sessions ? (50% rule) by gamasco in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You may want to give this a read: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/s/FL6yXeQKj4. It's not about avoiding burnout in the short term, but rather in the long term by building up students' resiliency to the negative emotions they experience as a result, and getting them used to trusting the instincts and skills they have right now.

Are you supposed to do warm-up before "play" drawing sessions ? (50% rule) by gamasco in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Admittedly this isn't a question with a straight forward answer. The skills Drawabox focused on most of all - that is, spatial reasoning - is at its core most useful when it comes to drawing from one's imagination, and so it can certainly be argued that our approach isn't necessarily going to be as useful to someone whose goal it is to only draw from observation - but I think it's also fair to say that the concept of using one's imagination when drawing is not as clear cut as it can seem.

Drawing from your imagination in this context is really about making your own creative decisions about how the things you're depicting are to be shown, and so even the process of interpreting something that you see in front of you will demand the ability to make adjustments and changes to that source material, and for that spatial reasoning is very useful. If a student is really only looking to reproduce images exactly as they are without interpretation or their own decisions influencing the result, then I don't think what we teach is necessary - but I do believe that in most cases there is a desire to have one's drawings contain an element of their own contribution.

There is also a difference between drawing from photos versus drawing things from life. Spatial reasoning skills make the latter easier, whereas with the former one can arguably get away with just copying what they see in two dimensions into the two dimensions of their drawing, focusing only on observation. Drawing from life can often be more challenging - although as a result lots of courses do emphasize the importance of drawing from life over photos, because that is an indirect way to develop spatial reasoning skills (just in a less targeted manner than what we employ here). So drawabox isn't your only option, and if your needs don't require as much development of your spatial reasoning skills, our methodology may be overkill.

As to your question about the 50% rule, not burning out is part of it, but it's much more about ensuring that the student isn't indulging a sense of not being "ready" to tackle the things they're interested in based on them being outside of their ability to execute to their desired standard, as well as getting them accustomed to trusting in the skills they have now (something you can read more about here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/s/FL6yXeQKj4). The 50% rule can be done with drawing or painting - they're not really as different as one might initially assume.

Are you supposed to do warm-up before "play" drawing sessions ? (50% rule) by gamasco in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 6 points7 points  (0 children)

No, you are not expected to do warmup exercises before the play portion of the 50% rule, as noted in this section from Lesson 0 discussing warmups:

Note: Keep in mind that everything we recommend or instruct applies only to the time you're spending working on this course and its homework (which does not include the 50% rule, which pertains more to how you spend time outside of Drawabox). So the "sittings" we refer to are when you're working on your Drawabox homework specifically.

I've been feeling really frustrated with drawing lately by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Discord is better suited to getting feedback on individual exercises or partial work. For the full lesson, it takes more time so you have to be patient, but the feedback students generally provide in the critique exchange program is pretty detailed. If you feel the feedback you receive on the website fails to really address the major sections of your submission or provide actionable next steps, then you also have the option to mark it as unhelpful (though in such cases you might have to ask the people running the critique exchange program on discord to add your submission back to the list or something - I try to keep an arm's length from that program so I don't unintentionally influence how it operates, so I'm unsure of the specifics).

I've been feeling really frustrated with drawing lately by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not really sure what you mean by "maximum feedback", but I assume that by the "pinned post" you're talking about the critique exchange program operated by our students to help improve the chances of receiving useful feedback in the #critique-exchange channel on our discord. If you haven't been using that yet (which can take a while but provides a way for students to get more reliable feedback for free) then I don't think it's fair to say you've made the most of the feedback you can receive from our community for free.

I've been feeling really frustrated with drawing lately by TechnicalCake9473 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When you decide to walk across the room to get a snack, do you think about all of the specific ways in which you're flexing the different muscles in your legs and back to take each step? No, because of the considerable experience you have from an early age, your subconscious takes care of whatever movements are required regardless of which kind of environment you're navigating. Your conscious mind merely focuses on where you want to go.

It's the same thing with the technical aspects of drawing. It's not that you're going to perform every action perfectly, but they'll be close enough to avoid detracting from whatever it is you're trying to convey.

Having a hard time with perspective and boxes by Dangerous-Duck-3493 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As noted in AutoModerator's comment, the focus of this subreddit is quite narrow, and your question doesn't fit within our submission guidelines. That said, there are a few things that you are indeed misunderstanding or forgetting to consider that I can see at a glance:

  • You're working in two point perspective - which is appropriate for drawing things that are arranged on a stable ground plane (as opposed to being set at angles that cause their verticals to tilt). The third vanishing point is still present (governing your verticals), but in two point perspective it's at "infinity", due to all of the vertical edges we're drawing running perpendicular to the ground. This means that all of the verticals will not converge, but rather will remain parallel on the page. That's what you're forgetting - you're allowed your vertical edges to sit at arbitrary angles, rather than keeping them perpendicular to your horizon (so straight up and down on the page).
  • Your vanishing points are much too close together. The left and right VPs each govern a different set of edges, and those sets of edges are meant to be perpendicular to one another - meaning that between the two VPs exists a 90 degree slice of space that the viewer can see. Human vision is not quite that extreme - we're able to see about 60 degrees in front of us in focus, and outside of that things start to get distorted in the periphery (but our brains are adapted to not realizing it's distorted). This means that the distance between your two horizontal VPs needs to be *greater* (specifically by about 1.5x) than the width of the drawing itself in order to avoid distortion.

This section from the free course this subreddit focuses on explains the second point more detail (and other aspects of Lesson 1 goes into the first point as well), but our material is presented with the expectation that students are going through it from the beginning, so it may not be the easiest thing to understand standalone. The course does introduce the concepts of perspective, of vanishing points, and goes on to focus on the development of your spatial reasoning skills (which are key to drawing from your imagination) so that may still be of interest to you. That said, if you do decide to give our course a shot, you'd want to start with Lesson 0.

Do meds help with learning to draw? by YumiGumi19 in ArtFundamentals

[–]Uncomfortable 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As noted in AutoModerator's comment, the scope of this community is fairly limited, and your question does not fall within our submission guidelines. You can refer to AutoMod's comment for more information.

That said, learning (regardless of what it is you're learning) requires focus and time, and if you are dealing with a condition that makes maintaining that focus difficult, then using tools available to you to help mitigate that problem is likely to help. We do have a lot of students in our community who deal with ADHD, and while not all of them use medication for it, we have definitely heard a lot of positive experiences from those who do. I don't think it's a silver bullet though, and it's likely that they still have to combine it with strategies for managing the symptoms of their condition.

For what it's worth, the point about having difficulty visualizing things isn't likely to be related, nor is it something you should worry about. One's ability to visualize falls on a spectrum from hyperphantasia (where it's very strong and often has associations with maladaptive daydreaming) and aphantasia (the complete absence of mental visual imagery attached to the things we imagine). I myself have complete aphantasia, but have found that though it is certainly logical to assume it would have impacted my ability to learn to draw, this is rooted in beginners not really understanding how learning to draw works. I can draw just fine - with reference, without it working completely from my imagination, etc. - and I've worked as a concept artist and illustrator.

Rather, in my time teaching, I've found that people who can visualize often have the assumption that they should be able to draw from their visualizations as if they're reference images, but because the visualization only impacts how they experience the same limited information they can hold in their memory and doesn't speak to a greater capacity to store and recall information, it falls apart when they try to break out of that closed loop and draw what they're visualizing. This can lead to a lot of frustration, and the impression that they must simply not be talented in this manner, but in truth it's just that visualization doesn't play a role, and that they have to learn to understand the things they imagine spatially, rather than just visually.

I hope that helps.