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3:16 AM, Tuesday January 9th 2024

Welcome to drawabox, and a big congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’m TA Benj, and I’ll be taking a look at it for you.

Starting from your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. The ghosted lines (and this is especially visible in the planes) tend to struggle a little as they approach their end points. Likely, you’re slowing down in an effort to not stop short of those points, or overshoot, but that’s irrelevant. More so than accuracy, confidence is what we’re most concerned with in this course, so be careful not to make decisions that sacrifice it in exchange for accuracy.

The table of ellipses exercise looks nice. There’s some stiffness as you embark on a mark, but you seem to find your groove soon enough after. While this is not bad, it’s also not good; it’s important to ghost until you feel ready to commit, rather than just ghost for arbitrary amount of time and then draw. The entire process requires your active attention. The ellipses in planes look nicely confident and round. Some of these are drawn a few too many times (we’d prefer it if you stuck to 2), but no harm done. The funnels exercise is missing and seems to have been replaced with some sketches of your kitchen? I’m not sure what’s going on there, ahah. Nice linework, however~

The plotted perspective exercise looks good, but the hatching lines suffer from a similar issue as your ghosted lines, so again, mind your priorities. (Also, they should’ve been drawn using a ruler here, anyway.) The linework in the rough perspective exercise gets better as it goes along, but it’s still not where we’d like it, even by the end. The convergences show some nice improvement however, so there is that. Nice work on the rotated boxes exercise. Your boxes are nice and snug, and do a decent job of rotating most of the time. Linework isn’t as good as it could be, but I’m sure it’ll start improving considerably as you realign your priorities moving forward – no stress. Finally, nice work on the organic perspective exercise. Hatching isn’t important here (neither is drawing the back sides of your boxes), but you’ve stood to learn much from both efforts. As for the boxes, they’re well constructed, and flow well as a result of their size and foreshortening. Nicely done!

Next Steps:

I’m marking this lesson as complete, and moving you on to the box challenge. This will be a good chance to practice your linework, what with the many lines it’ll ask you to draw, but note that if you continue pushing their accuracy even here, by the end of the challenge, the bad habit will have stuck. So approach these carefully, and thoughtfully. Good luck!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:21 AM, Tuesday January 9th 2024

Hi Benj,

thanks for the critique!

I must have missed uploading the funnels - I have done them :)

Well spotted about the slowing down at the end of the lines, that is something I struggle with. I will pay attention to that going forward.

I've added the kitchen sketches, as I've seen others add some of their work too. For me, it was surprising to see what I actually am capable of drawing. The few tips about ghosting and confident line marking made such a big difference, it's amazing.

Again thanks

best, Jens-Christian

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