Boxaddict

Before I get into the actual critique, I personally recommend taking a photo directly above the paper without the camera distorting the perspective of your work. Just for the ease of reviewing.

I will divide your submission in 3 sections: lines, elipses and boxes.

Lines

1. Arching lines and wobbly

This is honestly a mistake most of not all will commit, especially at lesson one.

Some of your lines, including the boxes, are arching and wobbly, to eliminate the habit start using the shoulders more often with longer lines and ghosts them beforehand. Confidence is highly important

But at the pace you are improving, that won’t be an issue for long, especially when you tackle the 250 box.

2.repeating Lines

More of a nitpick, some lines are repeating, don’t worry much about it, everyone panics once in a while for not so great strokes and cover our mistakes, but usually when we try to cover it up it looks worse and creates a nasty habit.

Sometimes is better to accept the mistake and move on.

Again, is only a few a lines, to be exact around 5.

At the pace you are going it won’t be much of a problem, but worth to keep in mind

Ellipses

Just like the lines, prioritize confidence

Elipses overlap and go out of bound,

But ellipses are a pain to draw and it isn’t expected to become a master at it.

Do a few ellipses warm ups at anytime to get the hang of it, Overall you are doing great .

Boxes: asides from the obvious that almost everyone struggles with at the start, perspective, the issues all boils down to the same thing:

Repeated lines, arching lines and wobbly lines.

The key to improving the above mentioned is

Confidence

Which includes the use of shoulder for longer lines, accepting mistakes as they are and moving on and practice of ghosting lines. Trust me, the more you ghost lines the more you become natural at making the lines you want with ease.

As much as I mentioned “issues”, I only mentioned the thing worth keeping in mind.

Overall you are going at a great pace and by the time you finish the 250 box challenge, you will have much more confidence in making the strokes you want.

God, I love this critique, this was immensely useful, not only because you pointed out mistakes and habits I had that I other wise wouldn’t had known about, but this critique will help me have an good idea on how to critique others with the 250 box challenge.

I only started recently critiquing other submission, and even half of your critique takes a lot of time, let alone the effort and time you took out of your way.

I took a bit of a break from draw a box, only submitting critiques then and there, but this just motivated me to push through and do better, I haven’t felt this motivated for a critique that I didn’t even expect to see in my notification.

All I can say thanks, I wish you the best.

That is a really good critique,

I should take notes

You did really well with the entire lesson,

There are only a few issues that I could see that you should keep in mind and improve moving forward

In the rough and organic perspective, there are a few boxes with lines you were trying correct, once you go through with drawing a line, you should leave it like that and move on, no matter how dissatisfied you were with it, as the point of this lesson and even using a fine liner, is to develop confidence and getting used to the motion of line making.

Speaking of lines, the other issue I see with the rough and organic perspective is that some lines curve or wobble a bit, curved lines isn’t that big of a deal, as you warm up with the ghosted lines or do the 250 box challenge, lines will inevitably look less curved as you get used to it. But wobbly lines are more of an issue as it tends to stick longer and it is a clear indicator of line confidence, or long strike with the wrist/ not using the arm correctly when needed.

If you ever have any doubt about line confidence, I will link you this short comic by uncomfortable that you have probably seen: https://drawabox.com/comic/1

And if you have doubts about using the shoulder, elbow and wrist, here is a video that you have probably seen, but is still useful to revisit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0_AdsK8x9Lw

And the last thing is to not convince yourself “I can’t draw this” if you haven’t even gave it a try yet, although the results may be disappointing, it is always worth giving it a try.

And that’s all that I have to to say, although you didn’t know How to draw those boxes at the corner, the 250 box challenge will help you understand perspective like that.

With all that said , I wish you the best of luck.

Although this is my first time critiquing a submission, at the least I can identify mistakes that would had helped me when doing the 250 box challenge.

For the ghosted lines, asides from the mess, you did really well, although some lines do wobble slightly, you will get the hang of it quickly and executing a line will be the least of your problems later on.

For the ghosted planes you did well, although there are some ellipses that you weren’t as confident and try to fix.

I advise you to not “fix” anything like if it were a sketch, although I don’t see it that mistake often, you will definitely feel the urge to fix a line later in in the course, is a tough habit to break out of and it takes a bit of time, but you should be mindful about it.

With the table of ellipses and funnels, the only things I notice is some sharp angle from some of the ellipses, that only come from using the wrist,

Not that using the wrist is the absolute worst, but with bigger ellipses , is better to use the elbow or shoulder, asides from that, you did a good job.

In the entirety of your submission, your plotted, rough and organic perspective are were some of your problems are most apparent, asides from the rotated perspective, which I will get out the way, you did an AMAZING job at it.( the top half that is).

For the other 3 pages, the perspective aren’t the problem I will be focusing, as the 250 box challenge is there for a reason, the main problem are the lines and confidence.

For the plotted lines ,like I said at the start of this critique, you tend to try and “fix” the lines and the issue is more prevalent than in the earlier exercise.

I advise you to stray away trying to fix any lines as it hurts your confidence in making lines, you can see the mistakes I mentioned especially in the backcorners of your box

Although is a hard habit to break out of, I personally still struggle with it a bit, that will be an issue that will get worse the more mentally challenged you will be with more difficulty stuff.

There is also the issue with curved, wobbly,and scratchy lines. You can improve and those 3 line issues by thinking of yourself as a swords man and the pen as your trusty blade (not so trusty once the pen dries up). Swinging your blade at the direction you want to strike at with only a single stroke, you may not be perfect at first but you will get better at it the more you do it……….

And yes….. if you ever got to read uncomfortable unsolicited advice, i got the swordsman advice from here: https://drawabox.com/comic/1

That is all the critiques I can conceive as of now,

I apologize if I ever sound like I am nitpicking , I just wanted to make this as in-depth as I possibly can, most of the issue you will probably just fix naturally if I told you or not, but still brought it up to make you aware of it.

If I have one last thing to say before finishing this is when doing the assignments, try not to have multiple different assignments in one page like you did with the ghosted and super imposed lines.

If I had to give you praise, I am still amazed with the rotated boxes.

And with all that said you have finally reached the conclusion of this seemingly never ending critique

(Apologies if there any spelling mistake)