DARKLIGHT1

Hello, I'll be reviewing your lesson 1 work. I hope this critique will be of use to you.

I may be wrong, but if you're using sketchbook paper, I recommend using printer paper.

Lines

Your superimposed lines look great. Executed with confidence. Fraying is to be expected. Longer lines are arching. When doing these in your warm ups, remember to put in a conscious effort to arch the opposite direction to correct this.

Ghosted lines are looking good. The wobbling lines are a sign of hesitance to go through with the mark. Once you put down the pen go through with it, with full confidence.

Ellipses in planes are looking really clean. Ellipses are drawn through twice with confidence, and minimal deforming. Some are a bit wobbly and out of bounds. Nothing practice can't fix

Ellipses

In your Tables of ellipses, you deformed some of the ellipses to fit inside the boundary and next to the other ellipses. Remember to prioritize smoothness, and confidence over accuracy. You did well nonetheless.

In your funnels exercise some are missing the arcing lines. The ellipses are inside the boundary. Good job

Boxes

Plotted perspective shows a good understanding of two-point perspective.

In your rough perspective pages, you improved a lot on your second page. Good job

Your page of Rotated boxes are done well, and shows a good understanding of perspective. Some are off, but the 250 box challenge will come in for that. Good job nonetheless.

In your 2 pages of Organic perspective, I see diverging lines, but the 250 boxes challenge (again) will come in for that. some boxes feel a bit rushed.

All of these will go into your warm ups pool.

Have patience with the 250 boxes challenge and use the discord for any help.

Hii Hok1l

Congratulations on completing lesson 1.

Lines

1. Super imposed lines - I see little but some fraying at the start of lines. Since its very small and could be caused because of your pen, it should be fine.

2. Ghosted lines and planes - both of these exercises are looking pretty good.

Ellipses

All the ellipses are done really well with nothing much to criticize.

Boxes

Plotted perspective and rotated boxes are great.

In rough perspective and organic perspective

You can see that you have gone over your lines once or twice to correct it. Both of these exercises should be done with ghosted lines and you should not go over your lines. So just do these exercises again and edit your submission. Once it's done I will mark this as complete and you can then move onto the 250 box challenge.

Aside from the two excercise mentioned above, you've done really great job and all the best.

I think it's important to describe what you mean by "master of perspective". Just having basic knowledge of how perspective works (1 point to 5 point, horizon line, vanishing points etc.) is honestly enough in my experience. Basically all the knowledge about perspective that drawabox covers is enough for figure drawing.

Hey ZNorb! I am paperhat and I will be doing your 250 box challenge critique.

My critique will be divided into four sections:

Lines

• Your lines are generally drawn with confidence. They are straight and not arching.

• Your hatching has also straight, confident lines and looks very neat. You also always hatch a side that is facing the viewer, which correctly done. Good job!

• The biggest problem I can see with your lines, however, is your lineweight. It looks mostly scratchy and is not applied properly. Just to mention some boxes where this is the case: 1-5, 17, 34, 36, 40, 46, 66, 96, 155, 248. Over the course of the challenge it definitely gets better, but can still be improved further. This is especially a pity, because it gives your boxes a messy look. Now onto how to improve this issue. First, have a look again at those pictures visualizing how to apply lineweight correctly: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb, https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/980a575e.jpg. As you can see it is very important to ghost all the lineweight lines! It also should be enough to add one more line as lineweight, it does not have to and should not be extremely dark in order to be noticeable (box 240 is quite dark for example, box 238 not as much but the weight is still noticeable). Be sure to include some superimposed lines (and of course more boxes :D) in your warm-ups in order to improve with your lineweight. One last thing that you did correctly is only applying the lineweight to the silhouette of the box!

Extension Lines

• You extend all your lines correctly. The only thing I noticed is that for box 26 you forgot a pair, but other that that everything is great!

Convergences

• Your lines are all converging and not diverging or staying parallel, that is very good! Your convergence also noticeably improves over the course of the challenge, especially the inner corner. That is awesome!

• Sometimes your lines are converging in pairs rather than sets (eg. 6,9,24,27,44,48,54,169,193). This picture shows what I mean by that: https://imgur.com/KSHwTwo . It might help if you think about the relationship of the lines of a set within terms of the angles the form respective to their vanishing point, see https://imgur.com/8PqQLE0 .

Orientations

• The orientations of your boxes are generally pretty similar and you do not really experiment with it (as far as I can see). This image shows the variety of orientations out there: https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX

• Your boxes are also all of similar size and generally quite small. Especially around box 200 they get even smaller. Use the space the page gives you!

• The foreshortening rate of your boxes also stays quite the same. Especially at the point where your boxes get smaller (around box 200) it is extremely similar for each box. It is important to also practice boxes with very shallow foreshortening whos VPs are outside of the page and whos lines are close to parallel.

All in all you have done a great job here! However, I would like you experiment a bit more with differently sized, shaped and oriented boxes. So I am going to leave you a little bit of homework, this is also a great to get some more practice for lineweight. Good luck!

Great work, you're definetly aready for the 250 box challenge.

Now for some crituques:

Lines: Your lines are confident and although they're innacurate at times, you'll get better at it with more practice. I'd like you to focus on keeping your lines as straight as possible without any curvature. Whatever direction your lines curve at, just make sure to draw your lines arched slightly in the opposite direction. Good work tho.

Elipses: You did an awesome job with your ellipses, they are confident, within bounds and are (mostly) not overlapping

Boxes: In the rough persepctive exercise, I see that your lines start getting more wobbly than the previous exercises. Also, make sure that the vertical and horizital axis lines are actually vertical and horizontal, not at an angle. But, your convergenses are quite good, so good job. In the oragnic persspective exercise, some of your boxes are not are of the same size as they go deeper in the 'depth' of the page. An odd 1 or two boxes in the rotated box exercise are not rotating enough, make sure the lines converge more as they roatate.

Good luck in the 250 box challenge

Hello,

I just looked at your 250 boxes and you've made a lot of improvement from the first few pages of boxes. You understand the converging parallel lines very well. I did notice that some of your perspective is a bit too dramatic. I'm not going to suggest revision but if you want you should try more subtle convergence of the lines and just practice it a bit. Especially the 3rd point perspective (so the lines that run up and down). It might be a bit difficult to understand but when the perspective is too dramatic it creates this diamond like shape of a box and if you were to draw out the vanishing points you would find that they are too close together which gives that warped sense of perspective.

You do a good job of planning your lines with dots, showing that you are deliberately breaking your mark making into the steps given with the ghosting method. your lines generally get smoother and straighter throughout the challenge, but there are still a few wobbly hesitant lines where you've prioritized accuracy over confidence. Confident lines will always be preferable to a hesitant one. You've done a good job of carefully and neatly hatching one of the front faces of each box. It doesn't look like you've been adding line weight to the silhouette of your boxes. While this is optional, it is good practice for super imposed lines. Any future warm-ups that you do you could attempt to add varied line weight to the silhouette of the box so as to add more of a feeling of depth to it. Try to avoid using white-out to cover up mistakes. It can be discouraging to make them but mistakes like that have to be made in order to improve. Try not to dwell on them and just move past it. No matter how off a line is, keep it as if it were correct and move on.

Try to add more variation of box shapes and from different view points. For example try imagining you are looking up at a box (so it will be above the horizon line) and drawing it from that perspective as well as the perspective of looking down onto it (it would be sitting below the horizon line).

Overall you did a good job.

Hi, Zakinithos! I'm JoaoSiilva and I'm here to take a look at your submission today. =)

Before starting, I would like to thank you in advance for the critiques that you've written! By writing critiques, you've helped the community and I'm pretty sure that you've learned something new too!

Let's begin!

Extended Lines

At the start of the challenge, you were often extending the lines in the wrong direction. Remember that the initial Y tells you in which direction you should extend the lines. It's always away from the center of the initial Y. After this "rough" start, you were always extending the lines in the correct direction and the lines were long enough to check the convergences (or divergences).

I noticed that you didn't extend all the lines for the boxes #159-162, and #179-182 too! Excluding that and some boxes from the the beginning of the challenge that weren't extended correctly, you did a good job.

Just in case, here's a diagram that shows you how to extend the lines.

Divergences and parallels

Another problem that occurred often is that you had lines diverging. Usually it was due the inner corner that messed up the box but there also are boxes like #113 or #173 that have entire sets of lines diverging. By the end of the challenge you almost never did this mistake.

Like it was explained on the website, you're aiming for boxes with shallow perspective and some boxes with a more dramatic perspective here and there to get a better grasp at how the vanishing points influence your boxes.

And about the inner corner that I mentioned before, one tip that personally helped me a lot was to draw the inner corner a bit earlier. That way, there's a higher chance that your box will look solid! Here's a little guide on that.

Hatching

While optional, it is a great way to improve the quality of your lines as you're doing the challenge. I'm glad that you hatched one side of each box but I need to point out that it sometimes looks rushed and the lines themselves were arcing or were wobbly. Remember that you can always ghost them.

Line-weight

You did not add line-weight to your boxes. You should have done another superimposed line on the silhouette of the box like it was explained here on the website.

When adding line-weight, remember that confidence is more important than accuracy (as always).

Lines in general

You overshot many lines and your lines sometimes were a bit wobbly or arcing. Like I said on the previous point, always aim for confident lines.

Distorted boxes

Finally, some boxes like #180 and 243 look distorted because one the angles of the initial Y was smaller than 90°. If the box has 3 visibles sides, then all 3 angles of the Y should be bigger than 90°. Here's a diagram about the angles of the initial Y for boxes with 2 or 3 visible sides.

By the end of the challenge, your boxes were starting to be consistently good but I feel like you should do a few more. The very last page that you did now (Feb 2021) looks quite good if we ignore the lines that were arcing or that you overshot.

So, I'm going to ask you to do 5 extra boxes. Keep in mind everything that I said and reply to this critique with your revision. And remember, DO NOT rush to do them. Take your time.

Hello llugaes!

Overall, you have done a fairly decent job!

Lines

In superimposed lines, there is occasional fraying occurring at both ends of the line. Other times you are starting at the same starting point, so just make sure you do this for each superimposed line.

Your lines admittedly start off a little hesitant, where they generally wobble. This is normal as you start off, since you’re working on developing that shoulder muscle memory. Though to note, confidence should take precedence and be prioritized before accuracy. It’s ok that the lines aren’t fully accurate, as it is imperative to first develop the shoulder muscle memory to draw out smooth, confident strokes. So continue to ghost and execute every line with your shoulder. Essentially, a confident stroke that is slightly inaccurate is better than an accurate but wobbly line. With that said, however, I notice some improvement in your boxes, so keep on that path.

Ellipses

Ellipses are off to a fairly decent start with a pretty good share of confident ellipses. There are some that wobble, and other times they turn sharply as you fit your ellipses in their allotted spaces. This causes the ellipses to be misshaped. Just as with lines, focus first on confident smooth strokes. Then work on maintaining its roundedness, and then accuracy last.

Ellipses in the funnel are generally aligned to the minor axis; good job.

You’re mostly drawing through your ellipses appropriately (2-3 times), which is great. There are instances, however, where they are only drawn through about 1.5 times. Draw through each ellipses fully 2 times through (3 is also acceptable, but no more than that).

Boxes

As you continue to go through your boxes, there are some nice confident lines. But there is a fair share of sketchy and repeated lines. No matter how tempting it is to correct an errant line, do not correct or repeat over it to correct it. To help prevent this, take your time with planning with dots and ghosting. The great thing about dots is you don’t have to commit to the very first dot(s) you place. They can be moved around as you see fit before you commit to a line. But once you draw the line, stick with what you have even if it’s wrong.

Rough perspective

You’ve done a pretty nice job maintaining horizontal lines to be parallel to the horizon line, and vertical lines perpendicular to it.

Rotating boxes

Great job getting through this exercise!

The boxes along the horizontal axis are rotating, so nice job with that. The boxes along the vertical axes are actually not rotating, meaning the boxes are sharing a similar or the same vanishing point as the box adjacent to it.

Great job keeping the boxes well neighbored to each other and drawing through your boxes.

Organic perspective

It looks like you’re missing a page, but I’ll take a look at the one you have.

While you have 3 frames, they should be rectangular as you've done with the plotted and rough perspective exercises. Also, don’t be afraid to take advantage of using the page in its entirety.

As the boxes get slightly smaller on the path, you’ve conveyed a sense that they move slightly away from the viewer.

In terms of perspective, there are some sets of parallel lines that diverge away, making planes that are further away appear to get larger instead of slightly smaller. But no worries, you’ll delve into this more in the 250 Box Challenge!

While you’re missing a page of organic perspective, I think you can move onto the 250 Box Challenge, but keeping in mind what was mentioned throughout. Just to summarize and reiterate some of those key points here:

• Ghost and draw with your shoulder

• Confident strokes before accuracy

• Do not reinforce or correct errant lines (Use plotting dots and move them as needed before committing to a line)