Probably the best free resource for starting art. Its free, self paced and specific. I'm personally using it as a starting course. Besides the content, it points you in a good direction with manging how you draw in the 50 percent rule. I've modified and complicated it to rules of fours: practice, play, pleasure and preformance. Lesson 0 does a great job of what to expect in the course. DAB teaches a core fundmental, though it can be called various things or maybe a mix of them. Construction and Deconstruction, form and structure or spatial reasoning. While also touching on mark making, observation, and perspective.
So I'm rating it as one of the best starting points if you follow the 50% rule out of 10
It is a little obesssion to finish Draw a Box. First Attempt and lifes interuption(car crash). Never wanted to stop, but life can be bumpy. I regret stopping drawing completely, even if it would have 5-10 minute drawings every day for a long while. But there is a frustration and disccouragement from being hitting those wall that you love. So I stopped facing it. I did attempt once to restart after a year and a half. It didn't go well. I was still getting headaches that stacked with recovery work. Now there is a 5-6 year gap of no drawing. Its a bit sour feeling thinking that I could have improved that has to be ignored. As a consilation to myself, my skills didn't completely disappear. At least my lines are cleaner this time around. Though that might be related to the switch to pinter paper. I used to draw in an oversized sketchbook. The oversized paper is great for drawing, but the weight is not ideal. No rotation. Happy to be back drawing.
My thrid attempt was supured on by me moving. My old stetches kinda reminded me of a sour spot and a hobby that I stopped. All my life drawing here and there, and it had stopped. I start lesson one, then 250 boxes. Never submitted, it was very casual at this point. But I was falling in love with drawing again. Back to where my second attempt stopped, I wanted to dig down and plan. This is the thrid attempt at DAB, and it felt I could do it. Nothing was stopping me. My previous injury wasn't really holding me back anymore. The return was grdual but I started getting back into my hobby again. Plans and goals from years ago were revisted. This was a nice moment in life. Progress and improvemnt are a hell of a dopamine hit. And started setting aside the time of 2-4 hours a day for the goal of drawing. rip extra, phone and computer time.
Doing lesson 2 was ok but some things kicked my butt. Overall problems is my lines still had hesitation. Especially when I stopped, but found I was a little off. My had would jerk to the point without thinking. Laster I found that "following through" after you pick up your pen helped prevent this. Another issue of followuing lines to make them bold wasn't easy. Especially cuved lines. Organic Arrow was fun. Orgnic forms are boring but I don't mind. Side note they are fun if you mess around with them. For fun, I sometimes take those warms ups and make them into something. Robot arms, catupillars, texture blobs, blobs of hair. Texture Analysis wasn't so bad. I didn't do the best but not bad. Dissection I love and hate. Texture and dissection kicked my ass, and I got a little burnt from dissections. I had some fun but it also fried my brain for subpar results. And I crammed way too many little dissection into my page that turned out terrible. If I didn't have those little things, it wouldn't have been so bad. Finding the refrences for this excercise was the least fun part for me. I ended up sunking a lot of hours into it. Even worse is I didn't orgranize a refrence folder as I did this excercise. Organic Intersections and Form intersection, they feel like the chore but the result can look kinda of cool. My biggest issue in form intersect was curved surfaces are hard to account for. Two forms intersecting, I can kinda guess. When you have 3 forms overlapping, it hurts my brain.
And throught Draw a Box, I used the 50% fun time play on projects. So far I've made a comic, making physcial books, playing with watercolor, tring ink like dip pens and brushpens. Even making this website to share. AI users posting their slop on all social media was another factor.
Now where to go after Draw a Box?
Not everything but here is a finished travel sketchbook from that time. doodles 3/19-5/13