Dr_Scrapjack

I know this may be a "empty compliment", but that was truely poetic! (I read the poem in Spawn's voice). But anyway, onto the real critique:

Congrats on completing what i call the 'White Whale' of Drawabox! Fewer people get to this point, so be proud of yourself. You've maintained confident lines, extending lines the right direction (AWAY from the viewer), applied the correct lineweight, hatched in the right manner and a decent mix between shallow and dramatic forshortening.

I do notice that many of the boxes seem too big, and that's fine, but with too much it causes overlapping in extending lines and can sometimes be confusing. it can be useful to start putting Just my suggestion.

Your convergences are inconsistent at the beginning

And on some cases it affects the corner line negatively. This is due to your lack of placing vanishing points. The upside is that i do notice that towards the end your convergences do improve.

My recommendation is to add a vanishing point, inside of the page, or if i it's outside of the page using a separate page at the side of your main page so that you can 'ghost' towards them and get your convergences more accurately. For a bonus, here's a guide on making your convengences better. https://imgur.com/3zoQA65

Overall a great submission, with some minor mistakes. You can add to your warm up pool the additional exercises!

Hello ahmed! Overall you've done a good job, but there are a few important things I want to talk about, let's go!

Starting with your organic forms, you're doing mostly a good job with the forms themselves! The main issues is that your lines are a bit wobbly, remember you should always draw your lines confidently regardless of accuracy, always ghost and then draw prioritizing confidence, both for the organic forms and for the contour curves themselves. Examples here

Into your insect drawings, overall you're doing a good job drawing them with solid forms, but there a few things important things it's important you correct:

-1. You aren't drawing through all the forms, make sure you draw all the organic forms completely even if you can't see them fully because they are covered by things. Examples

-2. Sometimes the organic forms don't have simple forms and get a bit more complex and stiffer. Make sure you always aim to make the organic forms like on the other exercise, 2 identical balls connected with a simple tube of consistent width. Example here

-3 Just like on the organic forms your lines are overall a bit wobbly at times, focus more on confidence and try to loosen up a bit and ghost more, remember it doesn't matter if your accuracy gets a bit worse!

-4 Sometimes you don't draw intersections between forms, all forms you put on paper must be connected in some way, so don't forget to draw all the intersections! Examples

Overall you've done a good job, but I want to see if you understood the things I explained, so first of all I want you to do one page of organic forms with curves to make sure you can draw organic forms with confident curves, try to loosen up on your warmups and remember, ghost and focus on confidence! It doesn't matter if some of your curves miss or aren't that accurate, make them as smooth as you can make them. After that I'll ask you to do a pair more of insects, good luck and keep up the good work!

Hello, my name is PizzaPlease. Congratulations on finishing the first lesson of DaB.

Lines

Your lines are showing progress. I can tell you're diligent about ghosting between a set starting and ending point. I would recommend focusing more on committing to the line - remember, it is confidence over accuracy. Many of your lines wobble a little bit and making faster, more deliberate strokes can help with this. Most of your lines don't overshoot the ending point, but remember the three phases of the Ghosting Method. It is better to have confident lines that overshoot or miss the end point before you have accurate lines.

In the Superimposed Lines exercise, some of your lines fray a little at both ends. Try to set your pen down on the same starting point each time.

There is quite a bit of the course-correcting wobbling I mentioned above in the Ghosted Lines exercise.

Your Planes are accurately divided. This is a clear sign you take the time to consider each line and are using the Ghosting Method. There is one in the upper right corner of the second page you forgot to bisect, but that isn't too important.

Ellipses

Onto your Tables of Ellipses, there are large gaps between your ellipses and the frame they are within. You are drawing through them 2-3 times, which is good, but remember part of ghosting ellipses is planning exactly where they should go. Ellipses should fit snugly against one another within the frame. Additionally, more time should be taken to go back in and fill in little ellipses in the gaps after you finish the table. This gives you a little more practice and forces you to pay attention the mistakes you made. I would encourage you to slow down and do the assigned two Tables of Ellipses a second time.

Your Ellipses in Planes are much better. Some are a little distorted or not symmetrical, but they fit better within the planes.

The ellipses in your Funnels are more symmetrical and mostly pay respect to the tilt of the minor axis. They are drawn snugly.

Boxes

On your Rough Perspective pages, you could've added more boxes to the frames, especially the upper two on the first page. Taking your time with these exercises can be challenging, but is it integral to the learning process. You did a good job paying attention to aligning the edges of your boxes to the horizon, whether they needed to be parallel or perpendicular. There is plently of the aforementioned wavering in your lines. Remember, it is okay to overshoot or miss the endpoint of your line if it is drawn with confidence.

The Rotated Boxes challenge is very difficult, so the fact you completed it at all is something to be proud of. Your rotations are pretty good, but remember to keep the corners of the boxes snug. The gaps between the box corners get more significant the further out from the center you go, which is actually where you really need those corners to help you reference how the boxes are turning.

The Organic Perspective pages could've had more boxes in them. I like how densely the first two panels on the top page are filled, but the others have minimal or no overlapping boxes. Your convergence skills will get a good workout in the 250 box challenge, so I'm not going to worry about that here. Your lines look more scratchy in the Organic Perspective exercises, especially on the first page. If you are trying to add line weight to the boxes, you don't need to for this exercise. It can help later on to clarify overlapping boxes, but getting smooth, confident lines first is far more important.

So I saw your post for lesson 3 and decided to come back and critique your lesson 2.

Your arrows show that you understand the idea that the arrows need to be larger when closer to the viewer and smaller when further away. However, it appears you are stretching the arrows at various points, especially near the ends and when you put them in a loop. Try to think of the arrow as having one consistent width, and being inflexible along that axis. When this width gets stretched or squished at various points, it messes with the foreshortening illusion.

Your organic forms in the contour ellipses and the contour curves are very stretched. They almost seem to be flat flowing forms similar to the arrows. Go back to that exercise's video and keep in mind these are supposed to be as basic as possible, two spheres joined by a tube. Don't be attempting to apply foreshortening in this exercise, as it is making it much more difficult for your contours to have the intended affect of giving solidity. I am going to ask for revisions here, as I feel you misunderstood the exercise a bit. It is not about foreshortening, it's about making these simple forms feel solid.

Your texture studies show that you understand the idea of implicit textures and not explicitly outlining forms. However, in your dissections you have a lot of explicitly outlined forms and explicit textures. Keep the emphasis on cast shadows, not in explicitly outlining textural forms. Also keep your textures related to reference. I noticed you had one form labelled "triangles" I am not sure if that is actually a real-world texture.

Your form intersections have way too many forms, muddying the relationship between them. This is a very common problem, one I ran into myself. Focus on spending more time per form, using larger forms to fill up the page. This will also make it easier to clarify the relationships.

Your organic intersections look a lot better. The forms are still somewhat stretched, but appear more solid than the ones in your contour ellipses and contour curves exercise. Your cast shadows are well done and don't adhere too closely to the form.

I am going to ask for revisions on the contour curves and ellipses exercises, dissections, and form intersections. I know this is a lot especially so late. I really hope you get more timely critiques in the future.

As explained on discord the lines that are supposed to converge only partially do so. Instead of all four lines of a set of parallel lines/edges, at best two converge to the same vanishing point in most of your boxes. Maybe take another look at the exercise description (or use the text to voice function at the top of the page to have it read to you) and consider the things I pointed out regarding which lines are supposed to converge. Try doing thirty or so more with that knowledge and then we can check again for improvement.

hi

congrats in finishing lesson 1. i'm winter and i'll be offering you critique on the exercises of this part.

lines

• starting with the superimposed lines, your attempt clearly shows confident mark making which will continue to improve over time with practice. one thing to note is fraying is expected towards the end but it needs to be minimal at the starting point.

• in the ghosted lines section arching/curving is a common occurrence. this can be lessened by rotating your page and also ghosting in the opposite direction (of an arch).

• line quality is looking better with the ghosted planes. even though there's still some arching, this will also improve with the technique mentioned above and practice.

ellipses

• tables of ellipses look snug and have even forms, nice. what's standing out however is the multiple passes to draw an ellipse. it's recommended to go over 2-3 times at most to form an ellipse. plus you can ghost as many times as you want in the planning stage (no actual contact with the paper).

• the funnels turned out quite well with snuggly placed ellipses mostly aligned with the minor axis. again, no more than 2-3 passes to draw the ellipse.

• same with ellipses in planes, no more than three passes. besides, some ellipses look even and have nice shapes. others however, got slightly deformed as you tried to make them touch the four edges of the planes. it is a common misconception in this section. what's the main focus needs to be is, drawing a nice and even elliptical form even if it doesn't make contact with the edges.

boxes

• in plotted perspective, the tables are missing. while i understand trying to complete hw as fast as possible, things like rushing and not paying attention or following instructions, will only hold you back in the long run. so, i'd recommend, take your time, revisit this section and redo it. by the way, this is the only part of lesson 1 where the full excercise can be done with a ruler/ straight edge, even the hatch lines. so, keep them evenly spaced and turn out more neat.

• rough perspective is one of the complex exercises to tackle, so i'd say, not a bad attempt. a few horizontal lines are not parallel to the horizon and there are quite a few wobbly lines. that is to say you will be getting better at those with further practice. also, only add line weight on the outer lines, avoid the inside of a box.

• now for the rotated boxes you're utilising the page properly which is good. the spacing of the boxes is also looking pretty good. somethings to point out is that some boxes on the outer corners don't have much rotation to them and lines are looking scratchy. line weight works better when you add them a bit startegically and not add them on all sides/ boxes. hatching can also get some refining.

• the organic perspective section is a fairly good attempt and i can see that you already have a good grasp of the 3D space. something i need to point out is that, the line weight is present almost everywhere (in the second page) and you seem to be drawing over lines. however, with more and more practice in the future, you will become more strategic with how you place the line-weight and line variations.

overall, you seem to be doing good for the most part with demonstrating a confident effort. these exercises will become part of warm up routine, so you will only be getting better over time. that being said, i recommend you give plotted perspective another shot before moving on to the next phase which is the 250 boxes challenge.

Starting with the organic intersections, these are generally looking very good. The forms slump and sag over one another with a believable sense of gravity. What's more is that your lines are drawn with a sense of confidence, ghosting before making each mark. All in all, I have no problems with how you approached these. Good job.

Moving onto the animal constructions, these are done equally as well. The lines here are just as confident and there is clear attention being put into your general construction and showing an understanding of the relationships that exist between your different forms, and defining them clearly. There's no instances where you're working in 2d space - that is the addition of partial shapes or one off lines. Everything is introduced through a new complete, self enclosed form. There are a few things I'd like to bring up but these are but minor things.

I am definitely pleased that you're using additional masses a great deal, layering them together, and building upon them bit by bit, rather than creating single masses that take on too much and become too complex, all without having the need to slap in too many superfluous contour lines. While the masses themselves are on the right track, there are still ways you can push these further as shown here. Look for opportunities to push these masses into other forms to make the construction feel more grounded and give us clear places to use inward curves and sharp edges.

You're definitely off to a great start in the use of the additional masses along your leg structures, but this can be pushed harder. A lot of them primarily focus on the silhouette of the leg without as much consideration for the forms that don't directly impact it. There's value in exploring these inner masses - like a missing puzzle piece that helps hold together the ones that create bumps along the silhouette's edge. Here's an example from the dog's leg demo, as you can see, there's blocked out masses along the masses including the one fitting in between them all, even though it doesn't influence the silhouette. Thinking about it this way will help your further push the value of constructional exercises and puzzles.

I do like how you're approaching your feet. Corners are a good idea since they help imply the presence of internal planes and generally to make these structures feel more three dimensional. I do notice you going for boxier forms but I do think following the approach shown here from another student's work would help you push this even more. Try to push for adding other boxy forms for toes and such.

Lastly onto head construction, it seems like you're following the head contrution demos closely, and as a result much of your heads are coming along quite nicely. There are ways to push the constructional exercises harder.

One great example of this in on the camel you drew. Compared to the other contructions, the camel does feel quite a bit simpler and looking at other references, it can be a bit difficult to fit into the head construction approach shown here. The trick really comes down to making a number of smaller moves, one at a time, rather than trying to make a few big moves that capture a lot of things at once. For example, starting off with a smaller cranial ball allows us to start establishing structure, without being committed to a scale thay may not work properly. Drawing a huge cranial ball is a common mistake, resulting with the rest of the facial features being smushed down in comparison.

So be sure to start small and build up slowly with small, individual pieces and look back at your reference to see what it is you're trying to capture. Here's an example from the banana-headed rhinoceros. We're still starting with the same components but get into some unique case driven actions towards the end, especially the extra bulk in the back of the head.

And that about covers everyting I have to say. You're doing very well as a whole and working more on observation would help take a strong construction and produce even more believable constructions. I'll be marking this as complete but be sure to look over the points i've raised moving forward.

Hi Vapz, congrats on finishing lesson 1! I’ll be handling your critique relying on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ

My critique will be divided in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes. Let’s get started !

1. Lines section

First off, starting with your superimposed lines exercise, I’m seeing little to no fraying on the first end of your lines, which shows that you have executed this exercise with patience and care, so good job! Fraying on the other end is completely ok and will get better with practice.

In the ghosted lines and ghosted planes exercise I’m seeing dots on the page, which indicates that you used the ghosting method correctly. Starting a line with a starting and ending dot is important and should never be skipped, even in exercises where you’ll be focusing on other things. Your lines do have a bit of wobble, which is to be expected and will get better with practice, but please always keep in mind that confidence should be prioritized over accuracy. A confident but inaccurate line will always be more correct than a wobbly but accurate one. I also like the fact that you pushed yourself to draw very long lines in the ghosted lines exercise.

2. Ellipses section

I see that you are drawing through your ellipses 2-3 times as instructed, they also look nicely symmetrical and tight for the most part, good job! They’re a little wobbly, so as for lines keep in mind that confidence should always be prioritized over accuracy. In the table of ellipses exercise, I like that you experimented with varying sizes and degrees, you also managed to fit your ellipses snugly against each other.

Your ellipses in planes are looking somewhat egg-ish sometimes, as you struggled to have them reach all sides of the plane, so something that you can try out is focusing on having the ellipse reach 2 opposite corners of the plane rather than its sides, and trying its major axis with the diagonal of the plane going through said corners. You’ll see that even the thinnest ellipse can easily reach all corners and fit inside a plane that way. See example here: https://ibb.co/album/zhKcZD

Your ellipses are mostly aligned with the minor axis in the ellipses in funnels exercise, though some of them are a bit skewed, so keep paying attention to it in future warmups. Next time you attempt this exercise, please also try drawing more arched lines on the sides in order to have more size variation in your ellipses. You can also try widening their degree as you progress towards the sides.

3. Boxes section

In the rough perspective exercise, there are some instance where the width lines aren’t parallel to the horizon line and the height lines aren’t perpendicular to it (it is very obvious in the 2nd panel of your 2nd page, leftmost box for example), so pay attention to that in future warmups while planning your lines using the ghosting method.

The rotated boxes exercise is a tricky one, but I feel like you’ve maybe rushed this one a bit and didn’t draw the base of your boxes with enough forethought, using the ghosting method. You also did not draw the squares at both ends of both axes as instructed. Please remember that the sides of boxes that are next to each other should be quite close to each other as well as parallel. I highlighted a few pairs of lines that should be close & parallel in red and also tried to show how the planes at the bottom of your boxes should look here: https://ibb.co/ZMVhXtB

Here are also some observations on the work of another student that might help: https://ibb.co/album/MBypM0

I’m going to ask you for one more page of this exercise as a revision so I’d also definitely recommend reading through the instructions + watching the video for this exercise one more time. Please reach out if you have any questions or if some things aren’t clear enough.

Very good work on the organic perspective exercise, I’m seeing some nice size variation as well as overlap there and it gives off a real 3d feeling. However please be careful of always having the lines of your boxes converge towards the vanishing points, as I’m seeing some diverging lines there.

That’s the end of this critique! It was all in all a solid submission, and I’m sorry to ask you for more work, but I feel that this is necessary before letting you move on to the 250 boxes challenge. Above all, stay motivated and committed!

Hi DayTimeLantern, I'll be critiquing your submission.

Lines

Your lines in the first exercise are generally executed well but a few of them are a bit wobbly so try to draw form your shoulder and draw the lines without hesistation. Fraying at the ends isn't a problem, as you will improve this naturally just by practicing.

The lines in the ghosted lines and the ghosted planes exercise are less wobbly.

Ellipses

You did a great job on the ellipses in the ellipses in tables exercise! They fit snugly in the tables and you've drawn through them twice which is good:)

Same applies to the ellipses in planes exercise.

The funnels exercise is executed well, you have rotated the ellipses and most of them fit snugly in the funnels (to improve I would suggest you ghost them more)

Boxes

You forgot to extend the lines to the horizon in the rough perspective exercise so I'll have you draw them and reply with a picture of the finished exercise.

In the rotated boxes exercise you should add shading (as shown in exercise example. Reply to this message with a picture of the completed rotated box exercise:) This exercise was supposed to be hard so don't worry if it didn't turn out perfect.

The organic perspective exercise turned out well!

Try to submit the pictures in chronological order (it makes it easier to give feedback)!