AzureTestament

Hello Papercat, good job on the revisions!

On the rotated boxes exercise, i noticed that some boxes are missing on the corners (the top right is correct), and a there's a couple extra ones on the right side.

But considering you already did the 250 box challenge that's hardly a problem, just remember that the exercise is meant to be symmetrical on all sides.

Really good job on the ellipses, i can see you drew through them multiple times and they fit pretty snugly

And with the Rough Perspective, these are much better, i only see a couple of lines that don't quite go vertically, but otherwise it's pretty good

Yes it'd be great if you uploaded the challenge!

Getting community critique can take a while so you can upload the lessons whenever you finish them.

Hello PaperCat, i'm AzureTestament and i'll critique your work

I'll also divide the critique based on your links

-MainLink:

-Superimposed Lines

There's hardly any wobble, which is great , i can tell you did these in once clean stroke

However ,there is fraying on both sides, please be careful and be sure to take the time to start from the same point every time

-GhostedLines

Really good, your lines are very straight , and fairly accurate too!

Keep going as you are! (i got nothing >.>)

-Link2

-Ellipses in planes

Again , really great job with the lines, you also drew through all ellipses multiple times and most of them are fitting and touching the edges, great work on both pages!

It's only a one off so i won't hold it against the whole thing , but don't get discouraged!

-Ellipse Tables-P1

The thing i notice most here is , unlike the ellipses in planes, the ellipses weren't drawn through two whole times, make sure to do it , but otherwise these fit neatly , good job!

-Link3

-Ellipse Tables-P2

On this page, the ellipses are much better, but there's still many ellipses that were only drawn through once

-Funnels

These Neatly fit in, and are well aligned with the minor axis

Do not be afraid to expand them more as they go out! It's an optional thing here,but very useful

There's still a couple of instances here, where you aren't drawing through your ellipses, but i can tell you're getting better at it here so keep that up.

-Plotted Perspective

Great job, you're plotting the vanishing point back to the horizon line well and keeping your verticals straight!

Just one thing , and this isn't a critique since it isn't required, but applying line weight can make the boxes much more distinguishable.

I mean specifically going over the boxes that are closest to us with a thicker line on their outline,

alternatively, making sure that the hatching of farther boxes doesn't show on the closest ones can also be good, (and i noticed you did do this on the last part of this exercise so keep that up!)

-Link4

-Rough Perspective-P1

The major thing i noticed is that there's the tendency to redraw over your boxes multiple times, remember that even if it goes off course it's best to leave it be,

as it's really visible when there's overlapping lines.

there's also a couple of lines that were aren't vertical , make sure to always plot the dots before making the edges, make as many as you need to before committing.

You did really well with the extending lines, and you got better over time at making it land closer and closer to the vanishing point , good job there, as it will really help you for the boxes later on.

-Rough Perspective-P2

On this one, there's quite a few boxes where the lines aren't really vertical,but the main problem is the last 2/3 , where the lines weren't properly extended, or extended at all.

i say this because , again, you did really well at making the boxes converge, especially in the first part of this page and the entire previous one.

I get the frustration , especially in cases where you may have had lapses of concentration (which we all do , even famous artists, they may just not show you as they have no reason to), but extending the lines despite that will really help you in the long run.

-Rotated Boxes

This one is really hard, it's not supposed to go well for anybody.

That said, it would be better to go through with it entirely , i noticed there's quite a few boxes missing from the sides.

You were not doing bad at all, the gaps are consistent and the boxes are neatly rotating, only a couple of them were a bit wonky/with repeating lines.

Don't let your frustration get to you , please take breaks if you notice it happening.

-Link5

-Organic Perspective

Great job on making the boxes get bigger as they get closer!

And i may be repeating myself , but good job on the convergences, and you used plotting extensively too!

There's a couple of repeated lines but overall, these are pretty good

Your submission went pretty well but there's a couple of things that i'd like you to redo , mostly because they are not finished and i know you can do it.

I can tell you do understand the exercises, the one thing it'd like is for you to finish the couple that aren't , and focus on drawing your ellipses twice (even if they don't perfectly align), you can do it!

No problem!

And taking a slower approach with drawing will definetly help you in the long run,

so keep at it!

Hello NIVLAC3D , I'm AzureTestament and i'll critique your work!

**Lines

Superimposed Lines**

Good job on these , i can tell you're keeping it fairly straight.

but noticed there's quite a few spots where you had not taken your time to make sure you started from the same spot, please be more careful when moving on.

Precision isn't as important here so , though there's some fraying on the other side, it's expected and not a problem.

Ghosted Lines

Pretty great job on these! Aside from a couple, most of them hardly have any wobble and you're getting quite accurate too!

Just a note on those same lines i mentioned , i see there's some that arc quite a bit, try to consciously arc on the opposite      direction if it starts happening consistently.

Nothing else to say here , keep that in mind when doing warmups and you will be fine.

Ghosted Planes

These have quite a bit more wobble compared to the ghosted lines , i can see you're trying to be more accurate , but keep in mind that a confident stroke that misses the mark is (for drawabox's context) more important than a wobbly one that hits all dots

**Ellipses

Tables of Ellipses**

Really *really* good job with these, you've drawn them 2 full times , they're pretty confident  and smooth in line execution    and most of the time they fit very snugly.

Got nothing to say , keep going!

Ellipses in Planes

With these, again , don't worry about accuracy , i see you tried to get the ellipse to fit in which is good , but it caused the second pass to be fairly deformed compared to the first in some cases.

That said , Most of these are pretty good, just keep that in mind for future warmups

Funnels

Good job on keeping them Confident and on touching the sides!

Be sure to make them align with the axis line, i can see quite a few that are tilted

I would have liked to see these get wider as they progressed but that's not a requirement for DaB

Boxes

Plotted Perspective

Nothing much to say here, you followed the instructions really well for this one

It being on a curved page does make it difficult to tell if you made the Vertical lines truly vertical , but it seems ok to me

Rough Perspective

I think there was some confusion here , you made the vanishing point in the center which is correct.

But it's only meant to be there for comparison , it appears you extended the lines from the vanishing point to the plotted dots , but that's not quite useful

Usually a page would look something like [this](https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/20/step9) 

But your boxes have the specific mistake included in the second screenshot of this part

There's also *plently* of wobbly lines here, be really careful on it and keep ghosting your lines, even if it's not a line                   exercise.

Keep in mind that you can rotate the page if it's hard to do them vertically, it's admittedly quite uncomfortable otherwise.

Drawing on plain paper instead of something like a book can make it less frustrating too! The resistance can be quite a bother otherwise.

Rotated Boxes

The boss of lesson 1!

Most people are expected to fail this one, but you followed

But you what you had to , the boxes are rotating well, they're drawn through and fit pretty snuggly

There's also one line missing in one of the bottom right boxes and a few times where you repeated your lines, i know it's just an oversight but be careful moving on

There's also quote a few wobbly lines, i won't hold this against you , i get it can be overwhelming and you went just fine in the other line exercises.

All that said you did do really well on following the core concepts of the exercise, so it's safe moving on to

Organic Perspective

*

    As far as the exercise itself goes, these are pretty good, though there's a tendency to not foreshorten the edges as they           go farther (it DOES get better the farther along as the exercise went, but it's quite inconsistent)

There's still the problem here in regards to wobbly lines.

You're doing good and i see most of the problems are in regards to line wobbliness in the last exercises, and a misunderstanding on the rough and organic perspective,

so i'll just ask you to do one of each (just 1/3 of a page for each is fine , ie: 1 rectangle) just to make sure it won't hinder you later on, i know you can do this.

Hello Faustarp , I'm Azuretestament and i'll critique your work

1: Superimposed Lines

Good work on these! I hardly see any wobble and i see you carefully started all lines from the same point,

you're also getting close on the accuracy , but keep practicing them and you can improve it even further

2: Ghosted Lines

These are very straight , i can tell you used the ghosting method on these

the accuracy is almost there too! some are just very barely off , but others are spot on.

Keep going on your warmups,but i have no critique here.

3: Ghosted Planes

Same as my point 2, but these are very accurate! I thought i'd mention that

4: Tables of Ellipses

I see you drew through your ellipses multiple times and that's great!

Many of them get woobly over the multiple passes however , but i know that you're pretty good with the ghosting method judging by the lines you did previously.

keep in mind that making the ellipse evenly shaped and confident is probably more important than making if fit so precisely, so don't be afraid even if it goes a little off,

or if going over it multiple times,it doesn't match.

but you'll be fine , just keep it in mind and keep going with it on your warmups.

5:Ellipses in Planes

Same points as 4, they're an improvement for sure, but can get fairly woobly on occasion.

6:Funnels

You're on the right track with these.

The thing that mostly jumps out at me is still in regards to ellipses , there's a slight deviation from the minor axis but i think you'll improve that just fine.

On the topic of ellipses, while i'm not sure , the wobble may be caused by drawing over it so many times over.

While it is great of you to do that (it is very much reccomended by Charles Hu's dynamic sketching course, which drawabox is based off of), there's no need to go so far if it's overwhelming,for now.

If you do them twice over and try to make them match instead, it may become less daunting ,

and i see from the ellipses you drew only twice , that could be the case, they are on average less wobbly.

7:Plotted Perspective

I have no problem with these, you followed the instructions and it cleanly follows the vanishing points.

8:Rough Perspective

These are good! Your lines are still straight , you're applying the line extensions correctly and on top of that you're actually quite accurate on directing them towards the vanishing point in most cases.

9:Rotated Boxes

This exercise can get quite brutal, you've done good job on following all the instructions for the exercise, which was the point of it.

One thing that you slipped is that you missed drawing the absolute corners for this exercise,

i won't hold that against you and i know how challenging those specific boxes can be (they also can be forgotten very easily, being in the corners like that),

I think i'd help you in the long run to do those specific boxes, i won't ask of them in a revision or anything but it may make the 250 boxes click just a little faster if you knock them out.

10:Organic Perspective

I have no complaints here , you did pretty good , followed all you needed to do.

I don't know what it is you want to draw , but i wish you the best in pursuing it.

Hello , i'll do what i can to critique your work

1: Arrows

I don't have much to say for these as they are flowy , but be sure to draw the arrows with confident strokes , i noticed you stopped a lot and retraced your lines.

2: LEAVES

You've done really well on making the leaves flow!

In regards to textures , be sure that you don't draw as single lines, as you see here , it's be best to draw the shadow shapes to create textures

You made them overlap quite a lot which is great, i also think you did really well with the leaves' edges , you prevented zigzagging and drew each bump by itself, you could probably benefit from drawing "additionally" (ie: draw the bumps outside of your outline , not inside) so be sure to vary it when you draw more leaves!

3: BRANCHES These are really good , but i noticed that you did skip some steps in a couple of them , be sure to ghost your line so it moves past the second ellipse and halfway throught the third as it says on this page .

that said, you did improve a lot when moving on to the actual plant constructions' branches so it's hardly a problem , just remember it if you do warmups.

4: PLANTS

These are good! there's a couple things that stood out however.

First of all i noticed that you drew your textures as single lines and/or outline entire forms (like in this cactus ) , be sure that , as in the leaves exercise, you only draw the shadow shapes themselves.

this is a minor thing but always be sure to give some width/variation to any line, i mean this specifically for this plant's "hairs" , it's very easy for single lines to break the illusion of 3D, this also goes for most textures.

I did see that you've already finished drawabox apparently , i was writing the critique and didn't check first but i still hope this helps in some way, i still think aside from some textures (which are optional) you passed quite easily.

Hello ABEANBERRY , I'll do my best to critique your work!

ORGANIC ARROWS

Starting off with the organic arrows exercise, you've done a very good job.

The lines are confident and you're not afraid of letting the edges overlap on top of each other,

the only critique i have here is about the use of line weight: while you did great job in adding it specifically on overlapping edges, i can see you hesitated while going over the line to add it, and as such it ended up looking fairly wobbly.

Be sure to always ghost the lines before freehanding them , especially line weight,

it does not matter if it goes all the way off , that will improve with practice.

But as i said , that aside you handled this exercise very smoothly.

LEAVES

As far as the leaves go, you're doing good as far as making your leaves flowy and natural , although don't be afraid to make them fold,as you did with 2 of them , you handled those very well.

You've also did every leaf constructionally step by step which is great to see, and will really serve you well in this course.

As far as critiques go , the most important thing that catches to eye is that leaf texture , which ties into your question.

You've mostly seen the leaf as a series of lines , but as lessons 2 shows , it is best to focus on the shadows those "lines" cast instead,

while i don't have the specific reference you might've used , i tried my best to explain it Here.

If it helps , the lines can be thought as very small cylinders/branches with their own volume.

That being said , you've done a good job to prevent zigzaggin your edges here as well , along with your lines being smooth as always, great job!

Now moving on to

BRANCHES

I honestly don't have much to critique here , you've adhered to the instructions, most of your ellipses are pretty smooth, and i see you you drew the lines halfway to the next ellipse confidently, with the only complaint being some of the segments not overlapping as well as they could (a nitpick, since you're not expected to even in the lesson notes themselves).

I think you nailed these marvelously, keep it going!.

PLANTS

Moving onto the main part of the lesson, the plants

As far as your line confidence goes , it mostly went very well , but i can see you reverted back to a more chicken scratchy type in drawing N°2, Nothing major mind you, but be sure to keep it in mind

There's also n°4 where you handled the plant itself really well, but decided to crosshatch its' container, now this wouldn't be a problem usually , it even makes your plant pop out more i'd say,

but keep in mind that in the context of drawabox, it Specifically asks you not to use hatching, this is because these are exercises specifically to train 3d reasoning, and by using crosshatching it flattened it out and it can easily work against you.

On that same note, in order to do the ellipses it's better to start off by drawing a minor axis first, and then drawing the ellipse.

Moving on to the other plants , they mostly went smoothly , there's only a point i'll mention in regards to the textures again:

as with the leaves , you mostly focus on outlines here, imagine the little spheres on this plant as actual complete forms (without actually drawing i), and each of those spheres would cast a shadow on the ones below them, which would also cast shadows on those ever further below and so on.

I've tried to illustrate what i mean here on your [plant] (https://imgur.com/a/kKoWg3s) although if this is confusing feel free to ask questions.

Either way this is mostly a concept seen here in [lesson 2] (https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/drawingforms) which probably explains it far better.

There's also some cases where you left your leaf shapes open (plant 5) or drew in a more loose manner (plant 7's bottom "spheres", which you mostly drew as scribbles that aren't attached to the main branch , and so end up looking like they're floating marks that do not belong).

Now all of that out of the way, these are really nitpicks , as you're not even supposed to worry about textures that much in this lesson,they're optional for a reason.

You've handled the main part of the lesson , the constructional drawing, really well i think, so i have no qualms about marking this lesson as complete! Good job and Good luck!

Thank you! Unfortunately i can't edit the imgur image anymore , but i uploaded it on the discord :)

Thank you for the great critique as Always!

I have a question in regards to the bricks (texture 16).

I Remember the reference being fairly common bricks, i think i did them so protruded because i accidentally l drew the First brick's Shadow far too long, and i made all the others after It longer for the sake of consistency.

You said that i wouldn't count as a mistake if It was a conscious decision, but that confuses me a little ;

Sure i "decided It" , but It was in response to another mistake, since making the bricks that long wasn't the intent in the First Place.

Does It count as a mistake in this case?

A decision i made as if to pretend a mistake never happened?

Hello colord , while your work is looking good , there's some points you might have misunderstood a little bit, so i'll try to point them out and link the timestamps to elodin's video as well, along with a few demonstrations of my own.

I'll start off by specifying that it's quite common at this point in the course to get revisions, so rest assured that you're doing pretty well,it's enough to go look at official critiques to see that this is by far the lesson that gets the most revisions; the reason is that this is the last of the "organic" part of drawabox , as anything after this focuses mostly on precision and inorganic objects, so it's best to resolve any misunderstandings before moving on.

The points i'm about to outline here don't necessarily critique your ability to draw or your spatial reasoning skills , as those are developing quite well from what i can see on your fox, the problem here is that there's a few things that could likely undermine your efforts in the future as you practice these, so i'll be focusing on those specifically.

1.(1:20 of Elodin's video) You did not draw through some of your forms, what i mean is , your forms should not stop abruptly like they do here.

Be sure to always draw through them as if you had an x-ray vision , i drew that as an example and using a single form , which isn't quite right as the form is far too complicated and has two bumps (in elodin's own words at 2:50).

Instead, be sure to simplify your forms (3:50 in the video , elodin has a demonstration of this), as drawing the entirety of it at once isn't only difficult, but can stop you from drawing confidently when doing this kind of work on your own in the future.

I was thinking about it , and noticed that the specific form that i highlighted could also be connecting to the arm , instead of wrapping around the torso, but i can't tell as i don't know what your intent was.

In that case it would be correct, but you should still make it wrap around the armso that it interacts with it as you'll see on point 4.

2. (5:15 and 7:00 and 9:40 of elodin's video) Your beginning forms are a bit off , that is to say, you made them a little too complicated.

For example , for your construction's ribcage , you've started with a "sausage" which is already sagging down , and then connected it to the pelvis.

What Elodin meant, was to create two simple forms and then make them sag by connecting them as explained here (https://drawabox.com/lesson/5/1/masses and at 7:05 of elodin's video) using a curved line that bends down a little.

Any additional complexity you need can be made using additional forms.

Don't use the sausages to make the ribcage, use it to construct the legs.

Making an example on your own construction, i've highlighted here how i think you've drawn and connected those forms , and here is what i mean by making them sag, keep in mind that i drew the ribcage too small as it's supposed to be roughly half the torso's lenght as seen here.

These next two point are fairly minor , and you may have done these without realizing , but i thought i'd mention them so you can refer to them if needed.

3. (0:40 of Elodin's video) The sausage method : This is specifically about your legs ,although it's not a major problem, your forms are far too complex: they tend to have their ends at different sizes,this one being the most prominent, be careful around this in the future.

As shown here , it's best to make your sausages simple, and add more complexity using additional forms later on.

4. You've taken some actions in 2d space, there was just a small instance of this so i'll be brief.

To put it into simpler terms, you drew some lines that didn't actually turn into a form, like [this one] (https://imgur.com/a/B4QDDwF) on its' front leg; although it's easy to tell that it's meant to be a form, it doesn't interact much with the surrounding ones, which leads to it looking a little flat.

That "interaction" between the forms is what makes a form look 3d to the viewer, also in [this] (https://imgur.com/a/py68Fxq) case the forms seem to stop "just" as they're touching another one; do not be afraid to push them a [little further] (https://imgur.com/a/T5yJYpO) and make them overlap.

Pushing your forms can also be useful in instances like [these] (https://imgur.com/a/GzyqsTO) , where instead of focusing on just changing the sillhouette ,it interacts more with the forms underneath.

Now ,that being said, as painful as that may seem currently , i'd like to assign one other animal construction but i do recommend to wait for elodin's critique on your constructions as he's far more experienced than me on this. see last paragraph.

And as i've said before, i'm positive you can handle this very well, just be careful about the instructions (especially in the video) as this is possibly the hardest drawabox lesson, with maybe lesson 7 as the only one holding a candle to this; even if it has completely different objectives.

Good luck!

A small edit: you probably already know this , but try to take it slow, as i still think it is all just a matter of absorbing all the info, that is no small feat.

Another edit: My apologies for the broken links,it was an issue n my side i've gone ahead and fixed them , i also saw your new revision, which makes said links redundant since you've already addressed that issue , great job!

I'd also like to update the revisions to match elodin's critique, so as to not cause confusion like i did last time (which i can't do at this point, so it's still going to say "1 animal construction").