2:46 PM, Monday November 20th 2023
Welcome to drawabox! Let’s take this one exercise at a time, shall we?
Starting off, your superimposed lines are well done. They’re generally smooth, and properly lined up at the start, but you’ll sometimes alter their trajectory, which is not something we like to see. I suspect this is because of how packed your page is. This is great to do (fill your page to the brim, that is), but if it’s so full that you’re cautious of encroaching onto another line’s territory, then you’ll find yourself too concerned with your line’s accuracy, which is not something we encourage. Recall that our #1 concern is with our line’s smoothness, and straightness, so please prioritize accordingly. Your ghosted lines/planes are well done. I appreciate that you’ve not forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes (most students do!), and that you’ve gotten so ambitious with your planes, especially. You do seem to have a bit of a curve to your lines, so see if curving consciously in the opposite direction doesn’t fix that.
The table of ellipses exercise looks good. You’ve got a good deal of variety to your ellipses (their degrees and angles), and they’re all smooth, rounded, and generally properly drawn through. Regarding this last bit, be careful that you draw through them a full 2 times, not just 1 and change. The ellipses in planes are able to maintain that same degree of smoothness/roundness, despite how ambitious these new frames of theirs are – nicely done! The funnels, too, are well done. Their ellipses are snug, and properly cut in half by their respective axes.
The plotted perspective exercise looks clean. In the 3rd frame, I notice that you’ve not shaded a near plane, but as it’s the same plane every time, I suspect you know what you’re doing, anyway, so no worries. The rough perspective exercise looks good. I’d definitely recommend spending a little longer on the planning stage, as, even by the end, your lines aren’t quite perfect (this is to say, after you plot a point, you should check it, and alter it as needed, as many times as is needed, before committing to it in the form of a line), but you’re not so far off that it’s a problem, so don’t stress about it too much. Great job on the rotated boxes exercise! It’s big, its boxes are snug, and though they don’t exactly rotate up front, they do a decent job of it in the back. This temptation to keep things inside a nice grid is the sort of thing that we’ll try to challenge in the upcoming box challenge, so for now, you don’t need to worry about it too much – it’s simply valuable that you’ve asked the question, that we may be able to answer it. The organic perspective exercise looks mostly good. The boxes are appropriately sized, and their foreshortening adds to their flow. Their lineweight, however, does not. Or, at the very least, it should’ve been limited to the boxes up front. Adding lineweight to the boxes in the back makes them pop forward (they vie for our attention, though they shouldn’t, because they’re supposed to be ‘in the back’). It would’ve worked if there was more lineweight up front, and less in the back, but at that point, you’re complicating the exercise needlessly.
Next Steps:
I’ll be marking this lesson as complete, and sending you off to the box challenge. Best of luck!













