AlwinWren

Alright Kat, let's get to it! Congrats on your 250 Box Challenge, this was a major hurtle and I'm glad that you made it all the way through!

While at the start of your first 50 boxes you seemed a bit uncertain about how to trace back toward your marked vanishing points, over time you started to get the hang of estimating your box edges toward their given vanishing point. Whenever you go back to draw boxes like these for your warmups, I'd recommend practicing a few in the First 50 style to help drive home the idea of following back to the vanishing point.

The second set is inherently more challenging. I noticed that in some instances, like box 99, you drew your extension lines in the wrong direction. The original problem for this box seems to have been because you drew your downward-facing edges as spreading out from each other, rather than converging together toward a vanishing point, and the broken illusion may have confused you. Here's a breakdown of how this box's edges are diverging and how they'd look if you made them converge. Most of your boxes in this section are fine, I just wanted to point this one out because of the initial problem: none of its edges were aligned to a vanishing point.

As for your final 150 boxes, I could see your convergences slowly but steadily improve. You occasionally had paired convergences, like along the left side of box 185, where two sets of neighboring edges converged separately -- this is very common and will usually buff out with practice. Sometimes it helps to draw the farmost edge of the Y first, as it will have the most extreme angle in relation to its corresponding edge on the original Y, and you can trace the approximate vanishing point that those two lines meet upon and use it to orient your remaining lines. That may be a tad confusing, so I tried to illustrate it here.

Overall, your lines have been clean and confident, and you've included a great variety of box shapes, orientations, and degrees of foreshortening in your final 150. I think you've got the hang of boxes and are ready to jump into Lesson 2. Once two people have agreed with this critique, you can officially move on!

Congrats! On finishing lesson 1, from what I can tell, this looks like a solid submission, let's get it critiqued.

Superimposed lines

You did mention your desk was wobbly, I'll recommend doing your homework on a table next time. However, I'll keep this in mind when I'm reviewing your work.

Your lines seem nice and confident, you're drawing from your shoulder as intended. No fraying from the start of your lines, not much to say here.

Ghosted lines

Your ghosted lines seem nice and confident, I see you prioritizing confident over accuracy. There's not much to say here, you did well.

Tables of ellipses

Your ellipses are well drawn. I see you've drawn them at least two to three times. They look nice and snuggly, not much to say here.

Ellipse in planes

I see your lines are nice and confident. I can tell you're trying to hit all of the borders of the planes. Also, you've been using the ghosting method and drawing your ellipses two to three times. There's not much to say here, you did good work.

Funnels

Your funnels look good. There's not much to say here. I see you trying to line your ellipses with the minor axes, they're nice, and well fit with each other.

Plotted perspective

Your plotted perspective seems to be done correctly, a few of your back edges are slanted. Remember, all vertical edges supposed to run perpendicular to the horizon line, therefore parallel each other. Remember this when you tackle it in your warm-ups.

Rough perspective

Your rough perspective seems to be done correctly. I see you've been following the lesson material as intended. However, I see an increase amount of wobbling here. You did mention you did this on your desk has issues with creaking and wobbling. As before, you should do this on a solid surface. I'll still recommend you use the ghosting method and draw with a smooth confident stroke.

Rotated boxes

This is a very difficult exercise. There's not much to say here you've followed the material as intended. Your lines are nice and well drawn.

And finally, organic perspective

You've drawn a good amount of rotations here and a good amount of scaling with depth. Your lines are nice and confident. I see a few diverging lines, but that'll be fixed with the 250-box challenge.

Overall, this was a solid submission. Remember to add the rest of your lesson 1 to your warm-ups, and keep up with your 50% rule.

Hello Luffy,

This is Canoe from the Drawabox Discord server. I'll be taking a look at your submission.

Let's begin with your superimposed lines. To start, all of your lines are very short. Granted, there's nothing in the text description of the exercise that mandates using longer lines. However, I have the feeling the shorter lines prevent you from fully drawing from your shoulder. Here's where I'm going to ask you to repeat the exercise. When redoing this section, try to draw along much longer lines. I know you're using A3 paper, but as a critiquer it's somewhat difficult to tell based on the photos you've provided. Make sure you use a ruler or straight edge like the instructions say so that you have something to compare your superimposed lines against (for curved lines feel free to free-hand these). This will help you get used to drawing from the shoulder, which will be important for the later lessons in the course. If you ever need guidance, you can always orient yourself around the example homework provided on the site. From what I can see though, you do a good job of preventing fraying at the beginning of your lines. The fraying at the end of your lines is perfectly natural at this stage. Other than that, your lines follow a consistent trajectory. Keep this same practice for your longer superimposed lines and you'll be right on the money.

Moving on to your ghosted lines, these have the same characteristic where they're very short. I won't ask you to repeat this exercise as well because repeating the superimposed lines with the ghosting method should be enough to get you to start drawing with your shoulder. The lines that are on the page are very well executed. They're confident, smooth, and you've already managed to connect both points without too much overshoot. There's some slight arcing to your lines, but that's completely natural at this point.

Rounding off your lines with your ghosted planes, your lines here are showing a bit more wobble than the previous exercise. Your lines are very connected between your two established points, but remember, the purpose of this exercise is to establish confidence over accuracy! I can't quite see the entirety of your second page since it's partially covered. Also, make sure you reserve your homework pages only for homework. I can see what looks like doodling in the right corner of one of your pages. Again, I'm going to ask you to redo this part. With larger lines it shouldn't be too much of an issue. The redo is mostly for me to be able to determine if you've understood the point of the exercise.

Anyway, let's get ellipse-y, shall we? First off, your tables of ellipses is a table of ellipses (singular). The homework asked for two complete pages of tables of elipses and you've only provided one in your submission. For the ellipses that you have submitted, you've done a good job of drawing through them at least twice with confidence. However, you've neglected to fit them snugly inside the table. By fitting ellipses snugly inside pre-defined borders, we're able to more accurately judge whether our ellipses fit our pre-defined goal. I'm going to ask you to do another page of Ellipse tables in order to get you to the required 2 pages, as well as to give you the opportunity to fit your ellipses more into the table at various orientations and degrees. Refer to the homework instructions and example homework if you ever need clarification.

Next up are your ellipses in planes and those are looking good. They show a good understanding of how to fit an ellipse into a clearly defined goal and are drawn through with confidence for the most part. Rounding off your ellipses are your funnels. Here, you've given me two pages instead of one - perhaps you might of mixed up the number between this and the tables of ellipses? Regardless, taking a look at the page without the unnecessary doodles, your funnels demonstrate a good attempt at fitting your ellipses inside the confines of the funnel. Your ellipses are confident throughout. Although there are minor error alligning your ellipses with the minor axis (the line running down the middle of the funnel), this isn't a grave error at this point. More important here is the confidence and your ellipses extrude that in spades.

Let's finish off this critique with your boxes. Plotted perspective looks good. You've correctly plotted your edges back to the vanishing points while keeping your verticals perpendicular to the horizon. The back corner being off is a symptom of all the little mistakes you've made in plotting back to the vanishing points and isn't a terrible mistake. For rough perspective, you're correctly applying line extensions back to the vanishing point to evaluate how well your boxes converge. They don't always line up perfectly, but you've made a great effort. One thing to look at here is line confidence. They're a bit wobbly here. Don't forget that the ghosting method isn't just something for the first few exercises in this lesson. Rather, it's a method we're expected to apply to every lesson from here to the 250 box challenge, to the cars in lesson 7.

Your rotated boxes exhibit this same lack of confidence. Each line is connected perfectly to your predefined endpoints, but without the characteristic overshoot of confident mark making. There is a lot of wobbliness that suggests you're not employing the ghosting method to every line in the exercise. I'm willing to overlook this since the exercises I've assigned you to revise will give you the chance to correct this lapse. Still, this is something to keep in mind throughout the entirety of the course. Other than that, you done a good job setting up the exercise with center lines and boxes at the edge. You've also done well drawing through your boxes as if you had x-ray vision. The vanishing points don't quite line up, but you've made the effort and that's all we can ask at this point.

Finishing off with your organic perspective exercises, I'm seeing the same problem with the wobbly lines here as well. I can tell that you're starting to grasp the principles of foreshortening. Not every box's lines converge properly - some of them even diverge - but this is something that'll get ironed out in the 250 box challenge. Still though, I'm going to ask you to complete another page of organic perspective so that you can get plenty of mileage with the ghosting method before moving onto the 250 box challenge. I've harped a lot about the quality of your lines in the critique, but a principle of the course is to accept the mistakes that happen and move forward. If your line doesn't come out exactly as you wanted it to, then it's ok to just move on to the next line, ghosting and preparing to the best of your ability for each line. I bring this up because confidence in our marks is such a core part of Drawabox as a curriculum that I feel like it should be emphasized early. This will come up again in later lessons, so best to begin solidifying it here.

Alright then, you have your critique. You have your revisions. I look forward to seeing what you end up submitting. If you ever need help with the exercises, feel free to ask in #lesson-1 on Discord. Otherwise, I'll see you for your revisions!

Here's your critique! Make sure to ask any questions if you have them, and congrats on finishing lesson 7 and drawabox! Good luck in whatever you do next!

.Hi there, and congrats on finishing the challenge! Looking through your work here, I see strong, confident lines and boxes that consistently converge towards their respective VP's. Using red exclusively for your line analysis was pretty rough on your busiest pages, though, which makes it very difficult to analyze. THAT SAID, I think your work is a solid foundation, and you're well on your way.

• I would recommend using different colors in future analysis if you end up doing any other pages of boxes. That said, work with whatever you can get your hands on, it's the boxes that are more important here.