CharlesNart

Hi TonyGotCakes,

This is well done, good job! I have a few things that I would like to point out.

For your arrows, be weary about where you put your hatching lines, as you always want them to to remain on one side of the arrow while fully conveying the arrow turning in space. One of the arrows in the middle (https://imgur.com/a/kd6e2al) has some hatching that looks like it's on the outer side of the arrow but doesn't fully cover that side when it turns in space. The hatching stops before it is able to completely reach the arrow's edge (the one that signifies a turn), which does not sell the idea of the arrow turning in space as well as if all of your hatching was to reach that edge.

Your leaves are well done. If you ever do this exercise again, I suggest that you try to explore leaves with more varied silhouettes, because, from what I see, you have a good understanding about what you are doing. Just be sure to differentiate from the middle of the leaf form and the leaf's flow line as much as you can (if the flow line doesn't represent the middle of the leaf). In leaf 3, one of the veins looks like it is connecting to the leaf's flow line, making it a little confusing visually as to where the middle of the leaf is. The flow line itself doesn't touch the line that bridges the sides of the leaf together, making identifying where the middle of the leaf is a little difficult. If it helps, you can think of the leaf's form separate from the flow line entirely, just to envision where the middle of the leaf would lie.

Your branch/tube forms rotate and sit in space well. Again, if you every do this exercise again in the future, I'd say to play around more with forms that twist and turn more in space, with their ellipses having their degrees being widened and lowered at a more noticeable rate.

Your plant constructions were clearly done with a lot of thought nad understanding about how they are constructed, which is good. I would say to watch out how many times you go over your spheres that you draw, especially in the 3rd plant. A lot of the segmented branches have spheres that look like they're drawn 3-4 times over.

I understand that you got tired by the 8th construction (which is entirely understandable), but if you were ever to do something like the Trachyandra Tortillis (the plant with a lot of twisting forms), I'd suggest to add some cast shadows to make it even more clearer about which forms overlap others. Your highlighted lines serve well, but having some cast shadows (even smaller ones) would make the construction a lot clearer.

Good luck with future endeavors!

I'll be the TA handling your Lesson 2 critique.

To quickly answer your question, doing exercises you haven't received critique on as warm ups is not a great use of time. If you're lacking understanding and doing something completely wrong you're just needlessly grinding and potentially reinforcing bad habits. Best to wait until you get the go ahead to move on, and an idea of what you need to work on before adding them to your warm up pool. Remember that even if your first attempts aren't great and you're asked for revisions, that's ultimately not a bad thing, we don't expect you to do them perfectly first try and we expect you to improve as you practice more.

You're making progress towards understanding the concepts introduced in this lesson and hopefully this critique will help you in your future attempts.

• Starting off in the arrows section your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn. You're doing a good job maintaining a consistent width as your arrows widen while moving closer to the viewer and with more mileage you'll become more consistent. It's good to see that you're trying to implement line weight, just remember that you want to keep your applications subtle and you'll become consistent with mileage. here are some things to look out for when applying it. I'd like you to experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

• Moving into the organic forms with contours exercise you're doing a good job keeping your forms simple, plenty of people tend to over-complicate them. You're keeping your line work confident here which is great, if you feel uncomfortable working with contours still don't stress with more mileage it'll become more natural. Speaking of contours I'd like you to try and shift the degree of your contours more. The degree of a contour line basically represents the orientation of that cross-section in space, relative to the viewer, and as we slide along the sausage form, the cross section is either going to open up (allowing us to see more of it) or turn away from the viewer (allowing us to see less), as shown here.

• In the texture exercises you're focusing largely on outlines and negative space rather than cast shadows created by forms along the texture itself, you also utilize a fair bit of hatching rather than creating simplified shadow shapes. This makes it difficult to create gradients with implied information which we could then use to create focal points in more complex pieces, by doing so we can prevent our viewers from being visually overwhelmed with too much detail. For more on the importance of focusing on cast shadows read here. I'd also like to quickly direct you to this image which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines.

• It's quite common for people to feel like they don't fully grasp the form intersections exercise, if you feel like you may fall into this category try not to stress too much. This exercise is just meant to get students to start thinking about how their forms relate to one another in 3D space, and how to define those relationships on the page. We'll be going over them more in the upcoming lessons.Your forms are looking quite solid here and they believably appear to belong in the same cohesive 3D space, good work.

• While wrapping up your submission with the organic intersections exercise you do a great job demonstrating that your sense of 3D space is developing as your forms begin to wrap around each other believably. You're keeping your forms simple and easy to work with which is a good strategy to help produce good results. When it comes to your shadows you're pushing them enough so that they cast rather than just hugging the form that creates them which is a great start. Your shadows appear to be following a consistent light source, be sure to experiment with different angles and intensities when trying this exercise again in the future. I recommend pushing your light source to the top left or right corner of the page to start with, it's easier than working with a light directly above your form pile.

Overall this was a solid submission, while you may have some things to work on I have no doubt you will improve with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to the next lesson.

Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 3!

Howdy!

First off, give yourself a pat on the back for getting through lesson 1!

Second off, your lines and ellipses look good, but I noticed some of the ellipses aren’t drawn through the 2nd time, though most are. Some of your lines look confident, but still kind of curve.

I would make sure when doing warms ups to work on drawing through the ellipses the 2nd time and to spend some time on your ghosted planes, paying attention to using your whole arm and to make consistent, but confident marks. Otherwise, keep up the good work!

Hello Endxnova, I will be providing you a critique! I'll be using Elodin's guide as well as adding my own observations!

Line Extensions: Starting off, all of your line extensions are great! However you've seemed to forget some sets on Boxes 18, 32, 69, and 80 -- Overall good job!

Divergence/Parallel Line and Inner Corner: For your line convergences, on earlier pages the inner corner seems to be the one that diverges the most. For example: Box 12 on page 1, you can see the inner corner on all 3 sides are either diverging or parallel. Most of your outer lines are good though GG. To help with this issue of the inner corner, you can try out this technique that I saw posted in the Draw-A-Box Discord: https://imgur.com/a/DHlA3Jh. There's also this diagram you can take a look at: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png, it's a bit hard to understand but it covers how you should look at the angles between the lines in each set, instead of in pairs. As I looked at your later pages the inner corner starts to get better at converging, your page 18 with Boxes 108 - 112 is where I noticed major improvement!

Line Hatching: As for your line hatching... there is an issue with some of them where the start of your line isn't placed carefully (Ex: Box 243, page 44). You should place your pen carefully at the start of each line, at least to where it only frays on one end, not both. Otherwise it'll look rushed and incomplete -- Remember to take your time on ghosting them too.

Line Weight: Some boxes have more weight on certain lines of the boxes. I notice this with Boxes 134(page23) and 166(page 29). Then again, I could be confusing that for your line extension marks? Apologies if that's the case. If it isn't however, then this is just a reminder to make sure you're adding weight subtly to the outer lines of the boxes for silhouette.

Wobbly Lines and Repeating Lines: There is your occasional repeating/wobbly line(ex: Box 126 inner corner, page 21) but all of your lines are confident and well executed! Well done!

Similar Orientations with Boxes: You seem to recognize and understand the error at page 28. There isn't much to say other than good job!

Congratulations on completing the challenge! Feel free to reply or ask any questions!

Nice!

I don't really understand what you tried to achieve with this line weight thing tho.

Anyway, your boxes weren't that bad from the start, but we can still see improvement overall.

I would call it done sir, good luck with the following lessons!

Hey, good work on the challenge. I'm not the best at this stuff, but I still noticed a lot of growth from start to finish. I wanted to leave some advice because I think you made a lot of the same mistakes I did, especially early on. On box 221, for example, I noticed how your green lines both were converging almost as a pair of vanishing points instead of just one. Something that helped me a little with that was keeping track of which lines were produced in what order. For example, after drawing your initial y, keep track of the first lines you draw heading to each of the three principal VPs. Afterwards, make sure each line you draw is aimed at that convergence. Your mileage might vary, but for me that helped cut down some obvious mistakes I was making early on. Still though, that's a pretty minor thing, your boxes were looking really good at the end regardless.

Hello! I'll take a look at your submission. The review will be divided in three, lines, boxes and ellipses.

Lines

Some of your super imposed lines look a bit wobbly, though it is a bit normal since you had just started and you probably lacked confidence in your lines, remember to always draw using your shoulder! Your ghosted lines look less wobbly, but they do have some arching. A trick to avoid this is to try and arch the line in the opposite direction you usually arch them in. Your lines improved in the ghosted planes, and some even manage to meet all the lines in the center, good job!

Ellipses

The ellipses in your ghosted planes look fine, most of them manage to be close to the border of the plane, and they look confident enough. The tables of ellipses look really good, although a few of them overlap each other. In the funnels, some of the ellipses are not alligned with the minor axis, remember it is supposed to divide the ellipse in two equal halves, but most of them do, so overall it looks good.

Boxes

Some lines in the rough perspective look wobbly, but it is normal. I recommend you draw the boxes a bit bigger so it's easier to draw them with your shoulder (that will be useful in the 250 boxes challenge). In the rotated boxes, in the second row, the one at the left and the one at the right don't seem to actually be rotating. Remember their vanishing points actually move when the boxes rotate, so their lines should not converge towards the same vanishing point. In the rough persoeciptive, some of the lines seem to diverge rather than converge, but that is perfectly fine, since that is what you will be covering in the 250 box challenge.

I am marking this lesson as complete, though please review the rotated boxes. I will not ask you to repeat it because most lf them look fine, but just look at the mistake I pointed out. That said, good luck on the 250 box challenge! It's tough but you can do it, keep it up!

Hello, my fellow Random_Broke_Arteest! I'm Flippy, and I will be critiquing your submission today. Let's get right into it!

Superimposed Lines

Your first page of lines looks very good. There's a bit of curvature to some of your lines, but it is minimal, so don't worry about this. It will decrease with milage.

On your second page, the longest of your lines have some wobbling. This could be a case of not drawing from your shoulder. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/2/pivots It could also be that you are drawing them too slowly, giving yourself the opportunity to correct your the line's trajectory by eye.

A final point I'll make here is that some of your lines don't begin from the same point as the starting line, causing fraying on both ends. Remember to take your time when beginning your stroke, aligning it to the same starting point as the previous strokes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/fraying

Ghosted Lines

Your ghosted lines look good. There are some instances of undershooting/overshooting, but it's nothing too major. Keep the information in the aforementioned links in mind, and your lines will continue to improve.

Ghosted Plains

It appears you were a bit confused as to which points to connect your lines to. Just remember that the plains should end up looking like simple squares with Xs connecting all four corners, no matter how distorted the plain becomes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/step3 The majority of your lines drawn, however, look good.

Ellipses in Plains

Your ellipses look very well placed and evenly shaped, for the most part, with a few becoming distorted. My only advice here is that you cut down on the number of passes on your ellipse, drawing through them only 2-3 times. This will help clean them up further, as the overlapping passes become tighter.

Funnels

Again, very good job in placing the ellipses here. They fit nicely into the confines of the curved lines.

There is one example of your ellipses coming unaligned with your center line/minor axis, but I can see the real issue was with the center line/minor axis being off centered in the first place. It happens to me too.

I like how you experimented with different sizes of ellipses. In the future, I'd encourage you (though this is optional) to try putting more emphasis on the shift in degrees of the ellipses, starting very narrow in the middle, and increasing the degree as you move towards the ends of the curves, ending with close to a full circle. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/step3

Tables of Ellipses

On the first page, your ellipses look good. They look well placed, and symmetrical, like they would divide nicely into two even halves. 

On the second page, they still look good, however, there are larger gaps between some, and it appears you've drawn through certain of them only one time, while for others, you've drawn through more than three times. I know I already mentioned this, but just try to keep the number of passes between 2-3 times (two, preferably, and three at maximum). https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/drawingthrough

Plotted Perspective

I see a lot of extra lines at first, and I'm unsure of their intended purpose. It could be that you were getting confused or lost in all of the overlaps and lines converging towards the vanishing points. This is understandable. Your boxes themselves, however, look fine, and there are fewer instances of unnecessary lines on the third panel.

Try puting thicker line weight on the outer lines, that make up the silhouette, rather than the inner lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/15/step8

Hatching, in the context of this course, is used to define the plain that is closest to us. You used it correctly for the majority of the boxes, but there is at least one drawn incorrectly. (I'm looking at the rightmost box on the third panel.) I just thought I'd point that out. For the most part though, hatching is optional.

Rough Perspective

Some of your angles came quite close to their intended targets, while others were far off. This is expected when starting out, and your ability to make educated guesses concerning perspective will improve in time.

Some of your lines are beginning to wobble/curve again. Always remember to take your time and ghost through them. This applies to the course as a whole. 

Keep in mind that, in one point perspective, all width lines are horizontal. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/6/infinity

Rotated Boxes

Now, let me first say that this exercise is supposed to be difficult, and you did an excellent job with it.

The whole point of the exercise is to observe the angles of neighboring boxes to then make educated guesses of the next stage of rotation. You did great with this. All I can say here is to keep at it, sharpening your understanding of objects in relative space. Good work!

Organic Perspective

Great job conveying depth by varying the sizes of your boxes. This is especially noticeable on your second page, as you made greater use of overlapping boxes.

Always remember that boxes consist of three sets of four parallel lines, which converge to their own vanishing points. https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/bef4343d.jpg You will learn more about this in the 250 Box Challenge.

As a final note, I noticed that you redrew some of your lines in these exercises. Please refrain from doing this in the future. I know it is difficult to resist the urge to correct our mistakes, especially when we know we could have done better, (I still struggle with this myself!) but it's for the best we draw the line, then move on, regardless of how good or bad the result. Allowing ourselves to redraw a line disincentivize us to draw it properly the first time. Don't worry too much about it though, there will always be another line for you to draw with the best of your ability.

And that concludes the critique! I think you did a great job with the first lesson, and I am confident that you are ready to move on to the 250 Box challenge!

Key points to remember:

• Draw through ellipses 2-3 times (two, preferably, three at max)

• Boxes consist of 3 sets of 4 parallel lines

• Do not redraw lines

•  And, as always, prioritize confidence over accuracy

I won't request any revisions, but just remember do the exercises learned in lesson 1 from time to time, as warm ups, to keep your skills sharp!

Hi there Ari_9, I'm PiaPal and I'll be reviewing your work!

First of all congratulations on completing the first Drawabox Lesson!

Lines

About the Superimposed Lines: they look great. I want to congratulate you on having almost no fraying ends and no fraying beginnings. The latter one meaning that you've been carefully placing your pen at the beginning of each line and being patient about it. Which is key for this course and I want to encourage you on keeping that up. Not only with lines but with ellipses, too.

Your lines look mostly straight, although sometimes a "curviness" can be seen in the Ghosted Lines Exercise. Whenever you are about to execute a line, remember to think about engaging your shoulder and to be confident of the line you're making. Ghost the action as much as you need and then execute it. Take your time. Patience is one of Drawabox' keys. Remember that straight lines are more important than the accuracy at the moment. I've also seen that you've erased a few lines with Liquid Paper? Please, don't do that! even if they turn out badly, it's okay! That's why we're using pens. This course is meant for mistakes to occur and that we cannot erase them. That's key, too. Even if you're not happy with one result, don't go over your line nor erase it. The idea is that you execute confident lines in order to reduce the amount of mistakes that you'll make.

Planes exercise: In this one, I can see a few lines overshooting and I don't know if it's because you've been executing the actions too quickly. Remember to ghost and be patient in order to avoid this.

Ellipses

In the Planes exercise, a few of them don't conserve its volume but that's okay and you'll get eventually to it with practice. I repeat, ghost your ellipses as much as you need for them to fit in the plane. You can keep working on this in your warm-ups. The Table exercise looks great; the ellipses look in place, one bunched up next to the other, they all look with a similar volume and different sizes (which in a few cases was intended so its okay!) and they look good, too. Funnels looks also great, you're doing a very good job in keeping your ellipses well bunched up next to the other, without overshooting, so far, so good. I'd only remind you to go over your ellipses two times, and that'd be fine.

Boxes

In the Rough Perspective exercise, I can see your lines getting a bit wobbly. Remember to ghost as much as you need in order to execute a confident and straight line! (Straightness above accuracy)

In the Rotated Boxes exercise, I can see that your set of parallel lines are diverging from the VP they are supposed to go to. Remember: 4 lines go to one VP. And if you take a look at (for example) the first box right to the middle box, the two lines that are on the background are parallel from one another, and the two lines in the foreground which should meet with the lines behind in a VP, are diverging from one another. (https://imgur.com/KSHwTwo something like that) If you take a ruler and straighten those lines to infinity, you'll see that these four lines will never meet in a VP, which is incorrect. I'd recommend you to do this, take a ruler, and check where your sets of parallel lines are supposed to meet, just for you to understand the mistakes that you've made. Same happens with the box to the left to the centered one. Yet, this is a difficult exercise and you've done quite okay, and you're supposed to improve this over time. The 250 Box Challenge will help you greatly.

In the last exercise I can once again see your lines getting wobbly: have you been engaging your shoulder? have you been ghosting the action enough? Have you been thinking that action well through? If you don't know where the lines are supposed to meet in a VP' I'd recommend you that while you're ghosting your lines, you extend them a bit to where your desired VP is. Train your arm muscles and then execute the action in that direction but don't draw all the way through. That's what been helping me to achieve these exercises.

Oh, and one last thing: I've also seen you erase boxes. I won't explain it again because I already did, but restrain from doing that since it infringes one of Drawabox rules.

So far, you've done good!! Keep up with the good work! I'll request revisions, so please hand them in when you're ready.

Lines

Honestly not much to say about this one, they look straight and confident. In the ghosted lines there is a bit of wobbling at the end (or start, i don't know since they look almost perfect), and you seem to have drawn through a couple of lines, but overall they look perfect.

Ellipses

You seem to have drawn through some of them more than three times but they are all tangent, and the planes with ellipses look practically perfect, with your ellipse touching all the borders of the planes. There are one or two that seem a bit wobbly, but overall it looks great. The funnels look good as well, with the minor axis dividing the ellipse in two equal halves.

Boxes

Not a lot to say about the boxes except that they also look great, rough perspective and rotated boxes are done almost perfectly and the organic perspective looks natural. Great job!

Your submission looks great, and that could be because you have more experience than an actual begginner or because it's not the first time making these exercises. If you are restarting drawabox for some reason or you had previous experience then that's great! I just want to make sure you are not grinding. Your submission is not supposed to look perfect, so you should submit your first attempt even if doesn't look very good, you will make mistakes in this course and it is normal and natural, we should learn to accept our mistakes rather than burn ourselves out trying to make our submissions perfect.

That being said, if you weren't grinding and actually submitted your first attempt then ignore what I just said, I just want to make sure that you don't get burnt out.

I am marking your submission as complete, so good luck on the 250 box challenge!