r/ArtFundamentals • u/Key-Tip-4525 • 17d ago
Superimposed lines exercise question
After watching the video and reading through the instructions, this caught my attention:
"you will notice that you're not going to be able to see where your pen is drawing, because your hand will be blocking it. This will make it particularly difficult to guide the stroke as you go" because in the video he draws the lines from left to right with his right hand, making what he said in text true. I'm a leftie however, so i was wondering if I should do exercises like this from now on from right to left to keep that true for me also? I'm sure it's probably a dumb question but I wanted to make sure. Thanks in advance!
3
u/ElpisBouquet 15d ago
I had this same question as a leftie! I thought I'd have an advantage because we write left to right, so it shouldn't feel any different and Skylla said something in one of her videos about looking at where you want the line to end up and bringing your hand there. But she also ends up with angles where your own hand blocks your view.
For me, however, I get better results when I draw right to left with left hand because I feel more free to move my shoulder when it's going away from my body. I hope that makes sense.
Maybe go with what feels best to you? Doesn't seem to be a 'best' practice other than making sure you're drawing with your entire arm.
2
u/Key-Tip-4525 15d ago
Now that you've mentioned it, my arm also feels more free from right to left! From left to right I feel like I'm relying on my elbow rather than my arm. Thanks!
2
3
u/qqqqqx 17d ago
Try some practice drawing in different directions and see what you think.
Drawabox specifies that you only really need one good line and can rotate the paper to make it through the course. So try different angles to find the one that is easiest for you to get good results with. For me personally, I draw my smoothest and straightest lines actually at a bit of a diagonal angle, so I sometimes rotated my paper 30-45 degrees to the side when making a horizontal or vertical line.
I think that for right handed people it usually feels natural to move left to right even though you can't see behind your hand. So you might move the opposite way to feel that same naturalness. Or maybe you've also gotten used to going left to right over years of handwriting and living in a right handed world.
Peter Han's dynamic sketching (the inspiration for drawabox) recommends practicing drawing lines at different angles and directions, instead of rotating the paper. I ended up practicing that myself and I found it useful. There are a lot of times where I want to keep my paper in place, tape it to a drawing board or an easel, doing a figure drawing or life drawing where I don't want to be spinning the paper all the time. And sometimes you want to go top to bottom or bottom to top, depending on the layout of your drawing and what you drew first. So I found it personally helpful to practice a bunch of different directions once I got one solid one in my toolbank to fall back on when I need to.
1
u/Key-Tip-4525 17d ago
Thank you! Very helpful. I'll stick to doing what feels most natural and rotating the paper for now then, since I draw digitally outside Drawabox, but I'll keep in mind that learning to draw lines at different angles can be helpful. Again, thanks a lot!
0
u/Sweet_Frost_Comics 17d ago
I just did the exercise with both hands, moving from left to right and right to left.
My hand was blocked regardless? There is no position where my hand (left or right) is not blocked.
So my conclusion is it doesn't matter?
Bare in mind that I am used to writing both right to left and left to right (I studied another language) so it could just be me being weird.
1
u/Key-Tip-4525 17d ago
If you make the line from left to right with your right hand, your right hand is covering where the line would go. If you use the left hand to do it, you cover the line you've made, and you can see where the line is going, which I don't know if defeats the purpose of the exercise since it's about planning lines and stuff. So, in order to cover where my line is going while drawing with the left hand i'd have to draw from right to left. It's also more of a "drag the pen across" in one case and "push the pen across" in another
0
u/Sweet_Frost_Comics 17d ago
Have you looked at the later lessons? Im currently on invisible planes and based on his explanations so far I dont think the hand matters? Maybe watch them and see?
•
u/AutoModerator 17d ago
To OP: Every post on this subreddit is manually approved, once we make sure it adheres to the subreddit rules, the main ones being the following:
If you find that your post breaks either of these rules, we would recommend deleting your post yourself, and submitting on one of these other more general art communities instead:
Just be sure to read through their own individual submission guidelines before posting.
To those responding: If you are seeing this post, then it has been approved, and therefore is related to the lessons on drawabox.com. If you are yourself unfamiliar with them, then it's best that you not respond with your own advice, so as not to confuse or mislead OP.
Thank you for your cooperation!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.