Omertoso

I didn't realize I should've done line weights... None of them have it x_x

Well, you're in Drawabox... How about starting with lesson 0?

Whoops, there was an extra https:// in the link I posted. here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mteUPdCHn4s

Heyo! I'm here to give some critique for your submission. Let's see how you did, aye?

Lines:

Your lines are smooth, clearly drawn confidently from your shoulder your shoulder. You take your time to start from the correct position, so any fraying and offsetting happens at the end of the line. This is good; you're focusing more on confidence while still attempting to be accurate. It's okay if it's not perfectly accurate, that's something that's developed while you keep going through the lessons, warmups, 50% and everything else you draw.

There is a small peculiarity in the Ghosted lines exercise: There are some extra dots here and there, next to the end points of some lines. It's not particularly relevant to the course, but it did pique my curiosity: If you don't mind telling me, why does this happen?

Ellipses:

You keep your marks confident. This is good, as ellipses are notoriously difficult to draw correctly. Some wobbliness does start to appear in Ellipses in planes and Funnels exercises, and usually that happens because the student is having a bit of difficulty hitting all the awkward angles and, in funnels' case, trying to keep the ellipses aligned. This is normal, and also something that you'll slowly get with practice and mileage. It may help you to ghost a few additional times before committing to the mark, and with smaller ellipses, pay more attention to drawing with your shoulder.

You are clearly attempting to keep the ellipses place snugly together. In funnels' case, you are also trying to keep them aligned to the minor axis. Very good job!

Boxes:

You are still keeping up with line confidence even when we're starting to draw actual shapes instead of just lines and ellipses. Very good! In Organic perspective, there are some lines that you attempted to fix by drawing the line again. When your pen touches the paper, that's the point where you can no longer avoid a mistake: Whatever kind of a line comes, no matter how wrong, let it be and move on to the next one. You might want to spend some more time plotting each corner; don't be afraid of putting down a few more dots, as those are not yet a commitment.

In Plotted perspective, you have taken your time to align the ruler, leading to only slight slanting in the back edges. The slanting happens due to very minute errors that you can try to limit by being even more careful with your ruler. There are some back edges missing in the second frame; might want to finish those.

Your Rotated boxes is good. The reason it looks more like a big box instead of a ball because there is not much converging on the edge boxes. Additionally, you haven't applied converging as much in the back sides of each box. Having said that, the result is still good for something that is considered the hardest task in lesson 1. You started the exercise by following the core steps: Drawing the five squares and the cross-hair. You applied convergence correctly most of the time, and you have drawn all boxes required. The gaps are tight and consistent, although there are some parts where they don't quite align. Remember, each neighbouring plane is basically a copy of each other; there's really no need to think much when drawing them.

Many of the boxes in Organic perspective have little if at all converging, some even slightly diverging. You might want to review the Organic perspective materials again. Additionally, ScyllaStew has made a video that talks about this; it may be worth for you to check it out. As for the rest, you have drawn a multitude of boxes roughly following the guiding line varying in size. Good work!

Conclusion:

You are off to a very good start! You have proven that you understood each exercise and have followed the instructions well. The results are as expected: While there may be some mistakes here and there, they are the kind that you will become better at the more you go through this course, the 50% rule and whatever other projects you have.

Give yourself a pat on the back, you've deserved it. Now, next up is the monster that is the 250 box challenge. Whatever problems you had with the box exercises in lesson 1 will surely be addressed here. Also, all the lesson 1 exercises are now in your warmup pool: When you start a session of drawing new Drawabox exercises, be sure to pick two or three lesson 1 exercises and doing them for 10 to 15 minutes. This is a major part of the course that will help you develop your skills further. Good luck!

Thanks!

Hello there. I'm going to be critiquing your lesson 1 work. Without further ado, let's see how you did, aye?

Lines:

Your lines are smooth, drawn confidently from start point to end point and clearly using your shoulder. Your lines start most of the time comfortably from the starting point. In Ghosted lines and planes we can see that they tend to overshoot their intended targets a bit, but this is nothing to fret over yet. Our end goal is accuracy, but it's something that we build towards with all the exercises, warmups, 50% rule and whatever other projects you have.

In the Superimposed lines exercise, it seems to me you haven't drawn the first line of each line cluster with a ruler. The first line serves as a guide for you to aim towards, so not drawing it undermines the exercise a little. Ultimately it's not that big of a deal, but when this exercise comes up again in your warmups, do put the first line down properly, okay?

A minor thing about the ghosted planes: You didn't need to do four pages of them. You could've drawn the ellipses into the first two pages that you did.

Ellipses:

In the tables of ellipses exercise, you are still exuding the same confidence in your markmaking as with the lines. In the ellipses in planes and funnels exercises some of your ellipses start getting a bit wobbly, which most likely happens because of the awkward edges you have to hit. Ghosting a few extra times and letting your muscle memory do more work may help. Remember: First and foremost you should focus on confidence, and then accuracy. As said earlier, it's something you build up over time.

You have drawn through most of your ellipses two to three times, although sometimes you lapse into only drawing the ellipse once. Two is ideal, three is okay. In the tables of ellipses exercise, it's also ideal if you drew the ellipses as shown in the example homework: As big as possible in a single frame, while touching all the available edges (top, bottom, left and right). It's not a world-shattering mistake, but you're not quite getting the intended practice that the lesson is trying to give you.

Lastly, you have drawn the curves and axises in the Funnels exercise free-hand. You're supposed to only be focusing on drawing ellipses here, not curves and straight lines. Additionally, it becomes much harder for you to determine whether or not you're keeping your ellipses aligned, which is the aim of the exercise.

Plotted perspective: You have completed the exercise just as intended. Lines are done with a ruler, and you're utilizing a two-point perspective. Additionally, you have managed to find the spots to draw the back corner with through the jungle of lines. The back corners of the boxes are slightly slanted, but it doesn't imply that you've done something wrong. Taking your time with your ruler and being careful will help you out with tackling this when you are trying it again in the future.

Rough perspective: This is where your line confidence wavers a little. This is entirely normal, as we're now dabbling with a little more complex shapes than lines and ellipses. If you aren't already, remember that you are allowed to rotate the paper around to help you out here; being able to draw from any direction is something that you'll develop through drawing in general, and is not something you need to focus on here. Additionally, remember the original instructions for drawing a line in this course: Ghost your lines and draw with your shoulder. Lastly, a tip: Ultimately, the boxes are simply a yet another cluster of lines.

The wobbly lines have resulted in some off-shape rectangles for the front and back side. It's not too bad, but it bears reminding: You're supposed to keep the front and back sides at the same angle as the edges of the frame, so you can use those as guides.

The rest of the exercise is done well. You have tried drawing boxes both close to the vanishing point and further away. This is good variation.

Rotated boxes: This is very well done! You have started the exercise with the five squares and the crosshair, and once you started drawing the boxes, you kept the gaps between tight and consistent and drew all the boxes, even the nasty ones in the corners. Each box is rotating towards its own vanishing point, and you're drawing through the boxes and we can get a glimpse at what's behind the box. The back sides seem to be the ones you struggled the most with: If you look at the front sides only, you can see that the boxes are indeed forming a ball, but when you focus on the back sides, they make more of a square. In the future, this is the part you might want to focus on. All in all, great job!

By the way, you seem to have gained some line confidence back here. Good on you!

Organic perspective: You have drawn a squiggly line which you are using as a guide to draw the boxes. Then, you are varying the size of the boxes as they follow along this line. This is good. However, your could try to keep the boxes' size difference a bit more consistent: Right now you have a bit of small boxes here, a bit bigger boxes there, and then one big box at the end. The general trend is that your boxes do get bigger on average, but it doesn't quite give that "getting closer" feeling. At least you are varying the sizes of the boxes, which is good for now.

You seem to be having a bit of trouble with converging the boxes' sides to their respective vanishing points. Sometimes one of the sides converge but the other doesn't, and sometimes they diverge instead. At the end of the second page you seem to have already gained some understanding on this, so I imagine that you don't need any additional guidance from me, plus you will be getting a lot more practice with this in the 250 box challenge. However, if you'd like some additional materials for this, you might want to check out this video by ScyllaStew, and this picture in its description.

Conclusion:

All in all, you have done a good job. Most of the time your lines are confidently drawn, and while some wobbling is present when you get some more things to keep in mind while drawing, as long as you keep ghosting the lines and drawing from your shoulder, I'm certain that eventually you'll be able to draw any kind of line smoothly. You took some liberties with the instructions in some exercises, but not to an unacceptable degree; most of the time you are following them well. It bears reminding that the exercises are designed for very specific purposes, and variations may cost you some learning opportunities.

That's the first lesson finished. Hooray! Give yourself a pat on the back. Next up is the 250 box challenge, and if you haven't, you might want to spend some time with the 50% rule. Good luck!

Hello. It seems you've been waiting a while for getting critique for this submission. In case you didn't know, there's a critique exchange program on Discord for cases just like these: After a week of not getting any critique, answer a few questions provided in the #critique-exchange channel and your submission will go into a list which people will prioritize over the newer submissions.

Anyway, moving on to the critique.

Superimposed lines: Looking good. There is some slight wobbling, but nothing that is unexpected for this point of time. Just keep drawing from your shoulder and focusing on the end point, and all will be good. All the fraying happens in the middle and the end, but you always start properly from the start point, which is good.

Ghosted lines: There is some more wobbling here than earlier. You might be slowing down to try too hard to accurately hit the end point, hesitating when you notice that your line is not achieving that. A big part of learning to draw is that you have to accept that mistakes will happen. The most important in this (and many other) exercises is that you draw confidently; we want those smooth lines. Accuracy is something you'll develop over time, as you keep drawing more. Once you put your pen down on the paper, any opportunity to avoid a mistake has passed, and you must commit to drawing the line.

The wobbling isn't too intense for now, though. There are some smooth, confident lines, so maybe you realized all this yourself while doing the exercise. Also, you hit the starting point well, and that's good.

Ghosted planes & Ellipses in planes: And now, the wobbling has gotten quite a bit more intense. It may have started because now you have to actually draw shapes that have some logic behind them. Either way, what I said above still applies. Alternatively, you may be rushing. I mean, the amount of work may easily seem like it's a lot, especially when the subject isn't very exciting. But it's important that you understand what the course is trying to make you do, and it's equally important that you do it correctly now rather than fix your bad habits later. Take your time, do the exercises as instructed, ghost each and every one of your lines a few times, draw from your shoulder, and it'll work out fine.

As for the exercise itself, let's talk about the good things first: You have filled the entire page with the planes. You have drawn planes of different shapes. You are still hitting the starting point of each line properly. Lastly, you have clearly tried to hit the edges of the planes with the ellipses, and not just draw them floating around. These are all very good things.

However, as said earlier, your hesitation has turned to the worse here, both on the lines and the ellipses. You haven't finished a majority of the lines crossing the planes, and many of the ellipses have not been drawn through.

The hesitation with the ellipses may be because you're trying too hard to hit the edges of each planes, again meaning that you're prioritizing accuracy over confidence. The ellipses drawn in this exercise are quite awkward because of the shapes of each plane, so it's normal to find it quite difficult to hit the edges. But again, that is a skill you develop over time, as you do these same exercises as warmups, work on other lessons and exercises of this entire course, and when doing your 50% work and other projects. Many students have started similarly to you, and those who have pressed on have found out that it will work out. Trust the process.

Due to the amount of hesitation and the unfinished nature of the planes, I'll have to ask you to do an extra page. First draw a page full of the planes as you have done here - except for focusing more on confidence and drawing with your shoulder, and then taking your time with ghosting - and then draw ellipses inside them in the same manner. You've got this!

Tables of ellipses: Good things first: You have many frames and filled each one, and have varied the ellipse angles and directions. Afterwards, you have gone back to fill in some gaps with smaller ellipses. Most of the ellipses have been drawn through, although you might want to try doing that twice; sometimes you only end up with only one and a half times.

You should pay more attention to have the ellipses hit the edges of the frame and the neighbouring ellipses. While it's entirely normal to struggle with that - ellipses are notoriously difficult to draw, after all - there are simply too many frames where it seems like you haven't tried as much as you could. Or maybe you have tried, but for some reason they just didn't go as planned? Perhaps you were trying to go too fast, as with the ghosted planes? Either way, it goes back to taking your time and all that jazz that I have talked about a few times already. Oh, and there's also some wobbling that has been present before.

All of the above means that you'll be doing an extra page of tables of ellipses as a revision. What we want to see is that you truly understand what you're working towards, and the best way to do that is to follow the instructions to the dot, no more and no less.

Funnels: You really should use guides to draw the curves and the axises. This exercise is to practice ellipses, not free-hand curves and straight lines. Failing to draw the ellipses unaligned to the minor axis is entirely normal and should not be something to be afraid of - just try your best, as always; you're a beginner, you're not supposed to get everything right the first time around - but there's no point if the minor axis itself is not aligned properly, making it all the more harder to do the exercise as is intended. For this reason, you should revise this exercise.

However, this time around you have managed to draw the ellipses more snugly between the curves and each other, so it's clear that you are having progress. Nice! Keep it up.

Plotted perspective: The setup for this exercise is done correctly. There are two vanishing points, and you're using a straight edge to draw everything. Additionally, you have afterwards hatched in a side of each box. Good start.

However, there are quite a few lines missing. In fact, all boxes have missing sides to them. You should draw them, and then draw the back edge.

Also, you are using some kind of a straight edge (I'm not sure if it's a ruler or something else), so there should be no need for correcting lines. Take your time to place the ruler, and only then draw a line.

Rough perspective: Judging from all the ink mess in the Plotted perspective exercise, I'm guessing something happened to your pen and now you switched to an another one. The rest of the exercises are drawn in a much thicker pen. Considering that you started with a proper size pen, I feel I don't need to talk about the importance of having a 0.5mm fineliner. For now, we can work with what you have for now while you get a new one.

The first page starts off strongly. Both the front and back sides are mostly rectangles, each pointing towards a non-existent vanishing point. Then, you plot the sides that are not facing the viewer towards the vanishing point, although for some reason you haven't done the line extensions.

And then, from the third frame to the end of second page, you drop the ball. You don't draw through the boxes anymore, and especially on the second page, some boxes don't have those rectangular sides anymore.

In fact, looking at the exercise carefully, it doesn't seem like you're placing down any dots before drawing the lines. Just like with the Ghosted lines exercise, all lines should start with placing down two dots, then choosing the dot where you start the line, ghosting the line a few times, and only then drawing. This takes time, but it's important that you do it. Refer to the Ghosted lines exercise as to why.

You should re-do this exercise. Read through the materials again, consider each step carefully, and take your time with going through this exercise.

Rotated boxes: This is where the thicker pen really starts hurting. Drawing through all the boxes becomes very messy to look at.

Still, even though unfinished, what you've managed here is very good! You have placed the neighbouring planes between each box correctly, you have drawn through each box, and converged the boxes adjacent to the middle-most ones well, plus the gaps between boxes are tight and consistent. Well done!

For outer-most boxes, what you should do is converge them even more towards the horizontal or vertical line as the box before it. All the information you need for the converging is already there in the other boxes you've drawn; you only need to refer to those to see how the convergences go. It requires patience, but the result will be worth it.

You can finish this page if you want to, but if you're going to get a new 0.5mm fineliner, might as well start over. Oh, and one small thing: The squares drawn at the beginning as guides should be drawn with a ruler. It's not really a big issue, but if you're going to restart, you should keep that in mind.

Organic perspective: The good: The setup is done correctly, and you're drawing a good amount of boxes. There is a slight difference in the size of the boxes as they move around the line.

But it doesn't seem like you're applying any convergence to the boxes, plus they're all of the same shape. In other words, you aren't applying the perspective part of this exercise. While the exercise doesn't want you to do dramatic foreshortening, without the ghosting method it becomes very difficult to do the shallow converging. You could also stand to do a bit more size difference between boxes that are close to the viewer and those that are further away, with some boxes even going outside of the frame.

Conclusion:

It's clear to me that you haven't spent the time necessary to go through the materials and apply the instructions properly. Sometimes it looks like you start an exercise applying those principles properly, but then at some point you stop it and either leave the exercise unfinished or cut corners wherever possible. This highly suggests that you're impatient, and when one wants to finish fast, they first drop whatever feels inconvenient.

However, those inconvenient bits are the important parts of each exercise. Drawabox doesn't demand you to draw all these things in such a way for no reason. No, there's thought put behind them; Uncomfortable is trying to teach you to learn to draw the right way. It's entirely normal for you to not grasp entirely the reasons why, but just because you don't understand doesn't mean you should take shortcuts. Nobody learns to draw in a day, and when it comes to the fundamentals, even if you get to the parts of a course where they teach you to draw the things you want to draw, you'll only end up struggling even more because you haven't tried to understand why things work the way they do.

There's also the possibility that you started to realize the amount of time and effort this course requires, but weren't at that moment ready to give that time and effort. This is understandable, because the exercises start with simple lines and ellipses that are relatively fast to do. Usually a bit of this can be seen in the Ghosted planes exercise which requires a surprising amount of time to finish, but it becomes very apparent in the box exercises. I noticed that you started drawing smoother lines, but I think that's because you were no longer applying the ghosting method nor were you putting in the time required for all the converging, instead just guessing.

And this is all a shame, because it's also clear to me that you can do it when you try. You're more capable than you think; there's no need for you to cut corners! Follow the instructions to a T, no more, no less. If you're confused about something, you might want to drop in to the Discord server and ask in related channels. There's a community here, ready to help you out. You don't need to work in a vacuum.

There's quite a lot of revisions for you to do. You can reply here once you're done with them, and I'll look them over.

A last reminder: Take your time, ghost the lines, draw from your shoulder, and once you touch the paper with your pan, any chance to avoid a mistake is past, and from there on you must commit to the line. You can do this.

Hello there. I'll be critiquing your homework. Let's see how you did!

Superimposed lines: Looking good. You start from one point and strive for the end point. There is fraying, but that's to be expected. The important part is that you're drawing smooth, confident lines. You should try to do a few more superimposed lines; there's still quite a bit space left over in your paper.

Ghosted lines: Also looking good. Your lines are sometimes overshooting quite a bit, but again, the important part is that you're drawing confidently. Accuracy will develop slowly but surely as you keep drawing.

Ghosted planes & Ellipses in planes: I'd like to say that you didn't need to do four pages of ghosted planes, but as with superimposed lines, there's quite a bit of room left over in each page. Maybe those extra pages ended up giving you the amount needed. You should fill each page of homework with as many of what is required as you can.

The planes themselves are looking good, you're still drawing confidently. Nothing to add there that hasn't already been said above. As for the ellipses, you're not quite hitting the sides of the planes, but it looks like you're trying to, so that's alright. What I said about accuracy above also applies here, and you'll be getting a lot of experience and mileage as you do these same exercises as warmups in the future.

Some ellipses you have drawn through a few more times than necessary. Keep it at 2 - 3 times, anything less is redundant. Also, go back and draw ellipses on the other two pages of ghosted planes.

Tables of ellipses: Let's start with the good things: You're still drawing confidently, and most of the time you're drawing through 2 or 3 times. You've filled each frame with circles that touch each other. That's a good start.

Then, the problems:

1. You have not tried to hit all the edges of a frame. The instructions state that you should start from either the far left or the far right side, draw an ellipse that hits the top, bottom and left/right side of the edge, and then draw an another ellipse that again hits the top, bottom and the neighbouring ellipse. What you've done here is draw an ellipse that only hits two edges. You should try to hit three edges at all times, even when drawing the smaller ellipses to fill up a frame.

2. Your frames are entirely too large. If you look at the example homework, we can see that there are 12 frames. Meanwhile, yours have 6 and 8. Now, the materials don't explicitly say how many frames to do, but as with superimposed lines and ghosted planes, it's become a pattern here that you're doing less than what's asked. I can't tell why you would do this - maybe you just want to be done faster, or maybe you just didn't go through the instructions properly - but you won't win any favors by not doing what's asked.

I'll have to ask you to do one extra page of this exercise. Go over the instructions again, and give more thought to what I stated above. You have already demonstrated that you can do what's needed here, now you just need to follow through.

Funnels: This is looking mostly fine. You are trying to hit the curves and keep the ellipses aligned to the minor axis, although the minor axis could stand to be a bit longer; it'll make it a bit easier for you.

It seems this exercise made you draw through ellipses more than before. Considering that ellipses are notoriously difficult to draw properly, in addition to having to deal with the minor axis and the changing sizes of the ellipses induced by the curvy edges, you may be trying to force the ellipses to look accurate. Your homework don't need to be "perfect", or even "good" in order to pass the lesson. What matters is that you demonstrate that you understand what you are aiming for, which in this case is trying to keep the ellipses aligned to the minor axis, and trying to hit both the curves and a neighbouring ellipse. You have already demonstrated this, and you pass this exercise. However, you're still a beginner, nobody is asking you to draw these things perfectly right now. It takes time to become accurate.

Plotted perspective: There's no image for your plotted perspective in the album. Did you forget it? You need it to pass the lesson.

Boxes, in general: It's clear that you really struggle with the box exercises. The material really gets dense here, and there are a lot of concepts that may make little sense. It must have felt very frustrating. The good thing is, you don't need to understand all the theory right this moment; these are the kinds of things that you start to understand at least intuitively the more you keep drawing.

Now, I can't exactly tell what was going through your mind while you were going through the lesson 1 exercises, but I can't help but feel that you might be trying to go through them a bit too fast. The remaining space in each page, drawing through ellipses more times than necessary, not quite following the instructions - These all seem to point towards impatience, both in doing the exercises and going through the materials.

The unfortunate reality is, you won't be able to learn to draw by going fast. In fact, even when you finish all the lessons and challenges Drawabox has, you may still not be where you want to be. You cannot learn to draw in a short amount of time. Obviously the time taken varies from person to person, but there is something the everyone who draws well has done, and that is draw a lot, for years. You cannot attain that experience in just one course.

As with learning anything, what you need to do is take your time. The good thing with these exercises is that you don't need to be able to do them well right in this instant. The reason Drawabox has you do this whole submission thing is for you to show that you understand why these exercises exist. Once you have been given the pass, then while doing other lessons, you will do these exercises as a part of your warmup, for 10-15 minutes before each session of study drawing. That's where you'll gain mileage, the same experience that the pros have already done for so long. In addition, there is the 50% rule to follow - you'll draw the same kinds of lines, ellipses and boxes in your own projects, too. This is all here for a reason: For you to gain mileage, experience, repetition, confidence, enjoyment.

Again, I'm not a seer - I can't see if this is exactly why this is happening to you. If it does not resonate, you can forget the above two paragraph entirely, and take it as me being too assuming. Either way, in practice it's quite simple: Follow the instructions, do what's asked of you, to the dot. No more, no less. Trust the process. You have already proven that you can follow instructions, and you can do so with confidence. It's going to be alright, I know you can do this.

With that all said, let's look at what you've managed for the box exercises. You'll need to revise all of them, but we can at least try to see what exactly went wrong, and what went right.

Rough perspective:

• You have drawn the front and back sides mostly rectangular. This is good.

• You have drawn three frames per page. Also good.

• You aren't quite drawing all the lines with as much confidence as before, resulting in misshapen rectangles. Remember, ghost the lines a few times, draw with your shoulder, and don't worry too much if you can't quite hit the end point. Leave it as it is, and move on to the next line.

• You have pinpointed a vanishing point on the horizon line, but the majority of your boxes are not converging towards it. When drawing the sides that are not facing the viewer, you should try to aim towards vanishing point. Use the ghosting method for this: Start from a corner of the box, and ghost towards the vanishing point.

• The line extensions do not follow the boxes' sides, and are not drawn with a ruler. We are trying to converge the boxes towards the vanishing point, and the line extensions are done to see how accurately you have managed it. Again, good accuracy is not how you pass the lesson; understanding and demonstrating that understanding is how.

• You have not drawn enough boxes. There should be 5 - 6 each frame.

Rotated boxes:

• You have gained a bit of your line confidence back. Very good.

• You have drawn through the boxes. This is good.

• You have omitted the squares at the end of each axis. Additionally, the middle square is drawn without a ruler, and the horizontal axis is a little tilting. These serve as guides, to help you finish the exercise.

• On some boxes you have successfully drawn the neighbouring planes snugly together, but on some boxes you have not. Drawing the neighbouring planes is simpler than it seems, as they're essentially just copies of the plane they're next to. There is no need to think about converging at this step.

• You have successfully drawn a little bit of converging on the boxes. For example, when looking from the middle, the front face of the corner box at the top left. This has very good converging. However, on many boxes you have either not done any converging at all or there is too little of it. There is a lot of guesswork that has to be done, but you can take in information from all boxes that are right next to the one you're drawing. Remember, the further away a box is from the middle-most box, the more each side should turn towards the horizontal/vertical line.

• When you do the exercise again and you get to the corner boxes further away from the middle box, drawing through the boxes will get even more confusing. Take your time, and do the best you can at that moment, but do finish the exercise.

Organic perspective:

• On the first page, you have drawn boxes in increasing size as the winding line progresses. Very good!

• You have used the Y-method... At least, it looks so. This is good, if you have.

• You have drawn a good amount of boxes each page. Very good!

• You use an entire page for a frame. It should be three frames per page.

• Most of the time the boxes don't quite converge towards their respective (and unseen) vanishing points. Instead, they diverge, the exact opposite. This is where you need to take it slow: I suggest re-reading the "Negotiating a corner" section thoroughly. You don't need to guess too much, all the information that is needed is in the Y. Don't be afraid of multiple dots while trying to find the proper spot for the corner, but remember, once you draw the line, any opportunity for avoiding a mistake has passed. Whatever comes, leave it as it is, and move on to the next one.

Conclusion:

You start off very strong, drawing confident lines and ellipses. Even in the boxes you keep a little bit of the confidence when focusing only on the lines. You have demonstrated that you can follow the instructions given, but it's clear to me there's a lot going on in your mind that stops you from doing so, and my guess is that you're afraid of the homework looking bad. I've already explained this multiple times, so I'll only say this: Practice makes perfect. Don't worry about it too much.

This means that there are quite a few revisions that you need to do. It may feel frustrating, but ultimately it's a good thing you decided to submit your work anyway. Imagine someone who did all these mistakes, yet went on to the 250 box challenge and on regardless, not realizing that they're practicing to draw things wrong!

Have you checked out the Drawabox Discord? If you have any questions regarding these exercises, there are channels there that are precisely for asking those questions. Don't be afraid to pop in! The community is always ready to help.

Heyo. I'll be critiquing your submission with the official critique guide. Without further ado, let's check how you did, aye?

Superimposed lines: There's quite a bit of fraying, but it's clear to me you're drawing confidently, and that's the most important part. However, I'm not sure why, but your overshooting the end points of the initial lines quite a bit. It's said in the materials that you should execute your lines fast so that your brain doesn't have time to do its wobbly corrections, but perhaps you're going a bit too fast? Or you aren't trying to look at where the end point actually is. Either way, it's something to pay attention to when you do these exercises as warmups. For now, you've done good.

Ghosted lines: The page is quite crumbled... Makes it difficult to see whether or not your lines are wobbly. From the other exercises and by matching the crumbles in the paper to the wobbly parts of the lines I'm fairly certain that they aren't wobbling, so it should be alright.

Every now and then it seems you accidentally hit the paper with your pen while ghosting. Nothing to fret over too much, you'll be able to control your pen better the more you practice. There's also a strange curved line... There's only one so it's no big deal, and I bet you already know, but I'll mention just in case: The exercise is supposed to be straight lines only.

You're hitting start point of the line most of the time well, and when you miss it it's only a little. Meanwhile, you tend to overshoot the end point or missing it by a small margin. Meaning, going by the levels of the exercise, you're close to the level 2 portion. This is good; in the future, what you should pay most attention to is to get closer to the actual end point when doing your lines.

One more thing: It's clear that you're doing exercises on both sides of the paper. This is not a bad thing, but in your case the ink from your pen is bleeding through the other side, which makes it a bit more difficult for both you, in doing other exercises on the other side, and for people who critique your work, in that it makes it a tad harder to see what's going on in each page. However, if you're like me and really don't want to waste paper, you might want to take a photo of your exercise first, and then later on fill the other side with warmups or whatever else you're drawing.

Tables of ellipses: You seem to have grasped the exercise mostly, but there are some things that we need to pay attention to:

You started off with drawing through the ellipses four or more times. The recommendation is from two to three; anything more is redundant. However, as you progressed through the exercise, you dropped down to three iterations, and eventually to two. This is good progress. Well done!

Sometimes, you vary the angles of the ellipses in a single frame. You should strive to keep all the ellipses in a similar shape within one frame. Before filling in the gaps with smaller ellipses, that is.

There are a few split frames where it seems you're haphazardly drawing circles without trying to hit any edges. I'm not sure if this is intentional or just you trying to draw circles that don't "properly" fit the frame. I can't tell what you think, so give this some thought yourself and try to understand why this happens. Or you can reply to this post with your reasoning, if you're so willing.

For some reason, you haven't finished the pages... Actually, it seems to me the paper is bigger than a standard A4. Did you perhaps try to do the exercise as if you were drawing on an A4? That would be fine, I suppose.

All in all, while there are many pecularities in your submission, they aren't anything that warrants a re-do, at least in my opinion. Just more things to keep in mind when you do these as your warmups in the future.

Ghosted planes + Ellipses in planes: These are looking good. We're already seeing progress in your lines and ellipses. Very good! There's nothing more to add here that I haven't already said above. You might want to try fit in a bit more planes in the future, though; they can almost touch each other, like what's seen in the example

Funnels: You're keeping the ellipses inside the arc, and keeping most of them aligned to the minor axis. Additionally, you even took on the optional challenge, with satisfying results. Good on you!

You only have four funnels in a page. It seems you started a fifth, but I'm guessing you stopped because it was overlapping a bit with the other one? Either way, there's still space to do more, and you should always try to fill a page completely. You can go back and do one extra funnel for funsies, but it's not a requirement to pass. You'll be doing these as warmups, anyways.

Plotted perspective: Lookin' good, most of it. You did 4 - 5 boxes per frame, when the instruction is 5 - 6; the result will (and already does with just 4 boxes) look very confusing, but it's on purpose, because eventually when you start dabbling on the construction side of this course, you'll be doing a lot of these kinds of lines. Building up the skill to be able to see through the jungle of lines is the reason for the recommendation. It's fine for now, but in the future try to keep to the instructions, the exercises are done the way they are for a reason.

For some reason, you're drawing through the back lines multiple times, and some other lines too. Are you free-handing them? You're supposed to use the ruler for the entirety of the exercise. Or maybe your ruler just slipped?

Other than that, the homework is all good. Do note that despite me picking on all these small mistakes, it still seems clear to me that you're trying hard to follow the instructions (although every so often you seem to take your own liberties, for whatever reason (that may actually be decent reasons!)), and that plus confidence in your marks is the most important part for now.

Rough perspective: Again, you undershot the instruction by doing four boxes each frame instead of 5 - 6. I won't dwell more on it because I've already explained it twice.

Another thing that is happening here is that every now and then you are drawing a line multiple times. This might occur because you're trying to "fix" a mark that didn't go as you planned. There should ever be one mark: When you touch your pen on the paper to draw a line, any chance to avoid a mistake has already passed. And it's okay if it's not a perfectly executed line! The most important thing for now is to learn to draw confidently. Accuracy is something you'll get better at slowly as you keep drawing, both for studies and everything else. Don't worry about being perfect, just do confident strokes.

Another reason I see people do these kinds of lines is because their fineliners are dying out. I'm not sure if this is happening to you, but if nothing else then for future reference: Try and rotate the pen around, perhaps even draw from a higher angle, more perpendicular to the paper. If that doesn't work out, then it might be time to get a new fineliner. You may also be pressing the pen too hard on the page, which crushes the nib, inhibiting the ink flow.

Other than that, your submission is as it should be: One-point perspective with the vanishing point around the center, the sides facing the viewer have horizontal and vertical sides, and all sides are drawn free-hand. Good work!

Organic perspective: It's more clear here that your pen might actually be dying. Refer to what I wrote two paragraphs ago.

Besides that, these are well-drawn boxes, just as expected! You're playing around with different perspectives, and the convergences of each side is something you put thought into. Good job!

Also, at this point we can clearly see the improvement with your lines, as they aren't overshooting the end-points so much anymore. Damn you're good!

Rotated boxes: It's a little confusing to look at, what with the messy dots, extra lines and crumpled paper, but it doesn't look like there's anything new here, at least mistake-wise.

First thing first, a reiteration: Don't draw over lines multiple times. Commit to the mark, and live with the mistakes.

That aside, you've done quite well on converging the boxes around the middle one, giving them that rotating look. The sides of the boxes are packed closely to each other, leaving only small gaps. A minor thing: The squares at the middle and the sides were supposed to be drawn with a ruler.

The general messiness makes it hard to see, but it seems that you're missing some back sides and corner boxes. You should try and finish those before moving on. After that, it's a job well done!

Conclusion

There are many points where you need to keep your mind on, but at the same time, you've clearly put a lot of effort in these exercises. You started with overshooting the end points of each line wildly, but this has considerably improved just by completing lesson 1. You started with drawing through ellipses too many times, but still managed to lower that amount to the recommended amount by the end. It's clear for everyone to see the amount of improvement you're having. You're going towards the right direction!

The boxes are where things get quite messy, both metaphorically and, in your case, literally. I'm still not 100% sure what exactly causes all the mess in your paper, but you might want to try out drawing with a higher angle and with less pressure (a fineliner really only needs to touch paper to leave a mark, there's no need to press it). If either of those fail, you might want to invest in a new fineliner. It might also be dissatisfaction with your accuracy, in which case you should just move on. There are much more lines to come, and you'll learn accuracy in due time.

Having said all that, you still grasped the idea behind the box exercises. I don't find any reason for you to re-do any of the exercises, because whatever mistakes you had (other than the messiness), you'll be tackling those again and again when doing these exercises as warmups and while doing your 50%.

For future exercises, you should try to focus on the instructions a bit more. There have been some minor divergences in what the instructions ask and what you try to do - again, nothing that demands revisions. The course has been made this way to teach you draw in a certain manner; if you divert from these teachings, you may end up with ideas in your head that will hurt you in the long run. Trust the process. If you are unsure about something, you may want to hop on to Discord and ask.

You should also try to make the papers look a little more clean, to make it easier for both you and whoever gives you critique to see your work properly. Keep the papers stored in a place where they don't get crumpled up, and don't draw on the other side of the paper if the ink bleeds through, at least until you've taken a photo of the complete homework.

That's all from me. You've done a phenomenal job! Next up is the monster of a task that is 250 boxes. You've already proven you have understood the idea behind drawing boxes, so I'm sure you'll manage. Take it slow, don't rush, and keep up with your warmups and 50%!

Thank you! Now I'm feeling more motivated to learn more!!