Drego47

Hi 4kthom, I will be critiquing your post today.

Lets start with your cylinders constructed around a minor axis, and I have to say, nice job. I can’t see anything wrong with these. I appreciate how you drew them in a variety of angles, even having some where the ellipses overlap, which is not something everybody remembers. The forshortening is correct on these with the further ellipse being wider in the vast majority of the cylinders. The only thing I might recommend in the future is to practice some cylinders that have very drastic forshortening, where the lines converse much more then any of the cylinders you have drawn in this exercise. You could push the perspective much more for practice, but overall the variety you present here is sufficient.

As for the cylinders constructed in boxes, you also did amazingly here! I have no complaints (except for the fact that the blue pen you use for error checking in a little hard to see- maybe use a darker one?). You seem to have a very good grasp of perspective, and your lines look like they are pretty much spot on to the vanishing point a good amount of the time.

Overall, very good work! Now get working on lesson 6!

Lets start with the organic intersections (the sausages stacked on top of eachother.) These are pretty good. A couple of the sausages are too long and complex but you pointed that out yourself.

https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4213ce18.jpg

My main concern is that some of the lines here are pretty unconfident and wobbly. This is something you should be working on fixing, especially when you are this far into the course. Remember to always draw confidently even when tackling these large organic forms. I am not going to require it, but maybe spend some time practicing drawing large curving lines or redoing this exercise until those lines are very nice and confident. Go back and review lesson 1 material if you need too, no shame in that.

Overall, the animal drawings themselves are very nice! There are some improvements needed though. Take the dog on page six for example. You drew a sphere for the cranium, but undermined it by cutting into the sphere. Never do this. Always work constructively, adding onto forms instead of eating into them. There are many reasons why this is necessary but here is the main one:

https://i.imgur.com/VdwbRuU.png

You also make this mistake with the crow, and with the page 14 cow.

There are a couple spots where your lines are wobbly and unconfident in the animal drawings, too, but it’s not nearly as bad as in the sausages. Just keep an eye out for it. This tells me that you have the ability to draw confident smooth curvy lines but something about the sausage exercise threw you off, which is understandable. I have trouble with that one too.

Overall, I feel like the construction is a little bit lacking. You could get into more detail and add more to the forms to flesh them out a little bit more. Some images are worse then others, though. Take the page 10 cow for example, the entire snout of the cow is basically a 2d shape with no construction at all. Or the page 5 rabbit, where you did not work additively with the legs, and with the back right leg you drew a connecting line between the joints instead of building up a form there to connect the line of a leg. Would could also add much more masses to the torsos pelvis areas of the animals, usually you only add one big mass connecting them and leave it there. Try to add masses even if they don’t impact the silhouette of the animal.

You could push the construction of the legs specifically much more, like in this demo:

https://imgur.com/97hS0XF

Your head construction is having a similar problem. Remember that the point of these exercises is not to create pretty images, but to make solid constructional forms. You could flesh out the heads a bit more, like in this rhino’s head demo: https://imgur.com/fUIEAu0

By far the best approach to drawing heads in in the tiger heads demo, where you use the hexagonal shapes for eye sockets and a boxy shape for the muzzle, and adding onto the cranium instead of just cutting into it. Use that approach when at all possible and maybe review that demo if you can.

Overall though, great work though. These all look very nice and pretty despite the construction issues.

Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’ll be taking a look at it for you!

Starting off, your superimposed lines look great – they’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. I’m also pleased to see that you’ve filled your page to the brim, here – keep that up! The ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, too. By the way, and I’m sure you noticed this yourself by the end but, the non-diagonal center lines of the planes – given how those same planes are not flat, but rather rotating in space – shouldn’t be drawn by plotting points in the center of the lines of the planes (that is to say, the ‘true center’, as measured with a ruler), but rather the center in perspective. Of course, you’re not expected to have an understanding of this this early, but I wanted to say it by way of saying ‘trust your instincts, rather than what you logically think should be happening’.

Moving on to the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise is really well done. You’ve got a great variety of ellipses here, and all of them are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. I suppose, if I had to critique something, it would be those little tails at the end of your ellipses. See if you can lift, rather than flick, your pen off the page at the end of your rotations, to get rid of them. Nice work on your ellipses in planes, too. It seems like you’ve prioritized the smoothness/roundness of your ellipses, rather than having them be snug against their frames (though you’ve been able to keep them snug, too!) – that was the right call. Finally, save for some occasional spacing issues (for which I’d recommend spending a tiny bit longer ghosting each ellipse), the funnels exercise is well done. Your ellipses here continue being confident, and they’re also properly cut in half by their minor axes.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean.

The rough perspective exercise shows some nice improvement throughout the set. There’s a ways to go, even by the end, but you’re in a good place right now. To improve your convergences further, simply spend a little longer planning them. I notice that you’ve got a bunch of unused points on your page, but there’s noth9ing forcing you to commit at a certain time – if you feel like your line isn’t quite perfect yet, keep altering your point! As for the linework itself (it’s confident, if a little stiff, even by the end), the key is to remind yourself that there’s no difference between these lines, and the ones in the ghosted lines exercise. Yes, they add up to a different bigger picture, but that doesn’t change the fact that you draw them one at a time, ghosting from point A to point B, and executing confidently, as with the others.

Solid attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. It’s big (huge positive!), its boxes are snug, and they rotate quite comfortably. In fact, you’ve been so careful about keeping everything snug, that the rotation in the back is not only there, but correct (as you’ll notice from the example homework, the back faces are a little more subtle in their rotation – students usually miss this subtlety, and draw them as mirror images, essentially, but in insisting on everything being as snug as it can be, you’ve been able to subvert this).

Finally, the organic perspective exercise looks good. The construction of your boxes is solid, as are the compositions themselves; drawing the boxes such that they’re cut off by the frame, especially, adds a lot to them. Of course, their size and foreshortening is effective in conveying this illusion we’re after too. Solid work, overall

I think you get what the exercises are introducing. Overall work on line quality (curved lines) and following instructions. I saw you struggle with Rotated Boxes. I recommend to always keep example homework on your screen (it helps a lot).

Hello I am JustCuteGirlz and I shall be giving your critique today.

Starting off I noticed in alot of your exercises you used white out. I would strongly discourage you to doing this in the future. The whole purpose of these exercises is not to complete them with 0 mistakes, but to demonstrate to me you understand the concepts that are at play here and for me to provide suggestions on how to improve. When you use things like white out, erasers etc. you cover up your mistakes and I am then unable to point them out to you so you can work on improving them. As a result, you'll continue making them and you won't improve. I understand the urge to correct yourself, but please follow this rule once you execute on a mark its there for good this section is relivant to this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/3/chickenscratch

Line Exercises

Moving on lets talk about your Super Imposed Lines/ Ghosted Lines exercises. These were executed very well. You made sure to begin your line at the same point every single time. You might think this is obvious, however I personally have occassionly forgotten to take this into account and executed terrible lines as a result.

Also I would like to stress that confident lines are superior to accurate lines. A line that is straight and didn't hit the mark can still be salvaged while a accurate wobbly line most likely will not. Keep this in mind. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/3/smooth

Another thing I noticed with the Super Imposed line exercise is you didn't do any curve imposed lines. While not directly specified in the exercise if we look at the sample exercise we can see Uncomfortable has done a few curved lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/example If you can do a few of these it would help you incredibly in Lesson 2 and beyond.

Ghosted Planes

Great job on these. I did notice that your planes are pretty uniform. What I mean by that is your boxes mostly have paralle lines. Comparing it to the example exercise: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/example see how some of these planes are jagged and have unequal sized lines? Doing this will expose you more to drawing in 3d on the 2d page (The whole purpose of Draw A Box). This is okay because after the 250 box challenge you will be well familar with this exercise :)

Ellipse Exercises

I noticed your ellipses are very wobbly. Like your lines draw you ellipses with confidence too. I am almost certain that as your arm gets more use to the motion this issue will disappear, but here are some tips I've come across to perhaps improve your success:

• Make sure you are planning how the ellipse will look followed by ghosting, and then executing with your shoulder

• Make sure your drawing your ellipses at the angle that is most comfortable to you. I actually figured out which angle I draw best at, drew it on a post it note and it now hangs from the edge of my computer screen to constantly remind me. This works with lines too.

• After ghosting if something feels off don't just execute. Your line/ellipse will not be confident. Instead assess the situation. How is your body positoned? When was the last time you took a break? What angle are you ghosting? Etc. Your body is telling you something be aware enough to listen it.

Funnels

Make sure your ellipses are cut in half by the dividing line, which represents the minor axis of the ellipse. Take note of this because it will become important in lesson 2. Judging by your red marks you understand this so I wont discuss this much further.

Plotted/ Rough Perspective

Looks good.

Rotated Boxes

This is the most difficult exercise in lesson 1 and will probably cause many senior Draw A Box users trouble (me included!)

With that being said I'm glad you completed it. Two things to take note of:

1. The biggest problem you ran into is that you didn't draw your boxes close enough together. Because of this you couldn't use them as a guild for your future boxes thus making the exercise harder for yourself. This is why your boxes are all over the place.

2. Use hatching to represent the front of the box (the side that is facing the viewer). This will make your boxes more readable.

All in all, very good job with Lesson 1 I think you understand enough to continue on to the 250 Box Challenge, but I would still like you to do a page of curved super imposed lines first. If you can simply post it as a reply I'll review it and mark your lesson as complete.

JustCuteGirlz

Most of the textures seem very chaotic to me. I'm noticing a lot of scribbling and at times you are even simply drawing the thing rather than an actual texture (i.e. the tree and the pizza). In other textures you would copy the form rather than the lights and darks, which is what you should be looking out for. On top of that, I see that you are also not fully respecting the solid black line on the left. Textures should transition from pure shadow to pure light. Overall, I get the sense that you rushed this and should have taken a bit more time with this.

I feel that you need to redo this challenge. I am going to echo what LarsBarnabee said below on reaching out for feedback in the Discord server (as of the posting of this reply, you are only officially past Lesson 2, yet you have completed nearly every lesson). I believe there is an entire channel there dedicated to asking for and receiving critiques, and even a waitlist for people who have completed 5 critiques on a particular lesson. I'm sure that they could also help regarding corrections made for a user who just won't respond.

Best of luck moving forward!

Hey , first of all congratulations on finishing the challenge , now let's start

Lines

You're making great use of the ghosting method and your lines look confident, straight and smoothly drawn. Good job!

Your hatching is haphazardly done in the first boxes but it starts to be less accurate as you move forward.

I see that you didn't add any lightweight in your boxes , I know it's not a rule, but it really makes you're boxes pop and look better, also it's a good super imposed lines exercise.

Convergences

When it comes to your box constructions there's not much to point out as you've done really well and your convergences improve as you move through the challenge. There's always a thing or two to improve though, so here are a few things I believe will make your boxes better:

Sometimes your back corners are converging in pairs instead of as a set.

It would've been nice if you varied the foreshortening rate of your boxes throughout the challenge, many of your boxes are in similar perspective and most of them have their vanishing points inside the page, it would have been nice to see some more boxes with subtle convergences from you.

Varying the range of box sizes and shapes, while you attempt some different box shapes such as flat boxes and rectangular boxes it'd be nice to see some more long and rectangular boxes from you, most of your boxes are square like.

Final Thoughts

Overall, you've done really well in this challenge and have shown noticeable improvement. I believe that you're ready for the advanced box exercises, as well as Lesson 2.

Note : i also need a critique in my work so please check it out if you have the time , here is the link

https://drawabox.com/community/submission/YOKWSPG

Hi Cepni!

Here's my critique on your lesson one homework.

Lines

Superimposed lines - looks good

Ghosted lines - looks very good, excellent confidence and accuracy

Ghosted planes - looks very good, excellent accuracy with your cross lines; overall very confident and straight

Ellipses

Ellipses in planes -

• A bit wobbly. There are a few ellipses where you haven't quite made the full two rotations as well as a few places where the ellipses don't quite touch the edges of the plane.

• Overall still very good; you definitely understand the idea of the exercise.

Table of ellipses -

• Again there are a few places where you're only drawing one and a half rotations rather than the full 2 or 3 rotations so just watch out for that.

• I can see that you've used smaller circles to hide where you accidentally didn't make the ellipse touch the edge of the cell - try to be deliberate about making the ellipse meet the boundary (that's what the "table" is for, after all).

• You've done a good job of trying different degrees of ellipses and keeping them consistent within each cell.

Funnels - missing ??

Boxes

Plotted perspective - looks good

Rough perspective -

• Looks like you understood the main instructions of the exercise.

• Remember that it's just as important to use confident lines here as it was in the previous exercises.

Rotated boxes -

• It looks like you have the main idea behind the exercise and the boxes are nicely tightly packed.

• Again, it's important to use confident straight lines - they are starting to wobble. Remember to draw two dots and then ghost your lines so that you keep them straight. This will be very important in the 250 box challenge.

• For shading, I'd recommend drawing clean, equally spaced hatch marks rather than squiggles.

Organic perspective -

• You seem to understand the exercise and you've done a good job of making the boxes recede into the distance.

• You've also done a good job of playing around with the rotations and proportions of your boxes.

• I don't see evidence of ghosting though and the lines are quite wobbly.

• Next time you try this exercise, you could also try overlapping a few more of your boxes.

Summary/recommendations

1. Please submit the "Funnels" exercise. If you have already completed this exercise and just forgot to attach it, submit it as-is; if not, focus on making sure that each ellipse is drawn through no less than two times.

2. Choose either rough perspective, rotated boxes, or organic perspective, and re-submit one sheet. When you are drawing, be sure to use the ghosting method: draw a dot to mark the start and end of each line, ghost, then draw your line. Try your best to keep your lines confident and straight. I know you can do it, because your ghosted lines exercise was so good! It's just important to make sure that you remember to apply this strategy to everything you draw on drawabox. This will be very important when you get to the 250 box challenge.

3. For the rest of my feedback, just make sure to keep it in mind the next time you do these exercises (in your warmups).

Hello! I'd like to give you some comments on your L1 homework. Please, don't take it harshly, as a beginner it's fine to make mistakes because only if we see what's wrong we can work on it.

Lines

• Starting with the superimposed lines exercise, I see that after a few lines with a clearly defined starting point the rest have fraying on both ends which is a sign of not taking time to reposition your hand. There is a couple of lines looking somewhat broken and one not extending to the end. Are you sure you hadn't been rushing this exercise? Also, I think you forgot to attach the first page as I don't see it on the imgur page. Anyway, I believe you should work more on the line excercise.

• Moving on to the ghosted lines the most of them look rather accurate, however, I notice that some of them display signs of having been redrawn and also some marks have a sort of protrusions. This lesson tries to teach you to value flow over accuracy, please, make sure you are ghosting the lines thoroughly and do not, in any circumstances, draw the single line more than once. I see that you carried over the same mistake to your further pages. Additionally, make sure you keep pushing yourself to draw from your shoulder, as your lines tend to make an sligh arch. If you keep having trouble with this, try to compensate by arching your lines in the opposite direction.

• The same general comments about markmaking apply to this section too. Besides, there are some odd floating ink marks around the middle area of the planes. I don't see the difference between the width of side lines and their midpoints. Are you trying to freehand them? Again, just as for the ghosted lines, you are supposed to mark the start and end points for all the lines and only then ghost and draw them.

Ellipses

• Your ellipses look rather good. I like how they are touching their limiting lines. However, try to focus more on the eveness of their shape. It may be worth to keep the excercise section for further warmups.

• The majority funnels don't have the required longitudinal line, one of the present lines is not in the middle of the arches, and thus there are problems with the ellipses alignment. Please, reread the page and make sure you've understand the task.

Boxes

• The plotted boxes page looks weird: the boxes are confusing to read without hatching of their front sides and the horizon line is either absent or too faint on two pages. Yet, I see you trying to work on visibility in the rough perspective section, so this may be acceptable for the beginning.

• Rough perspective seems well-thought-out and hatching of the front sides makes it easier to read. Still, a couple of boxes don't have the full set of lines (back lines missing), you may want to check your pages the second time once you complete them if all the objects satisfy the task requirements.

• The rotated boxes do look rotated, but some of them don't have the back lines visible. You are supposed to make a full wireframe picture for each box to improve your 3D-thinking. This will become especially useful for the 250 boxes challenge and later drawabox stuff. The same markmaking comments apply and, once again, do not redraw you lines. One of the main goals of this course is to make you think before you put marks on the page and not to throw random stuff at a page and see how it turns out. Belive me, I've lost a ton of time because of the latter mindset before I met Drawabox. Measure twice cut once.

• The last, organic perspective. A sizable amount of boxes appear divergent — it means not every lines in the 3-lines set for a single side tend to converge to a single point as they come out of the front side. That's the essence of linear perspective and you'd probably want to work more on that matter.

Now, thank you for putting effort into this lesson. You clearly understood many of the basics, but there are some mistakes at the core concepts it is trying to teach you, so I'd like to ask you for a couple revisions.

Overall, I'd say these are looking very nice. You've definitely understood the purpose of the lesson on breaking insects down into their component forms and building the drawing from those. You're also observing the detail well I think. I do have some pointers, but for the most part their pretty minor.

1. Try to be more confident with your initial forms. I notice on some (eg the wasp abdomen, the scorpion pincher), you're going around these forms numerous times. This is usually because someone's not confident that they've laid the form down well enough, and it undermines the final drawing. Keep it to 1-2 times around max. One thing that can help is to keep a scratch piece of paper around that you practice just the initial form until it feels right, then lay it down on your final drawing.

2. Keep in mind how your texture wraps around the forms. You're applying it pretty evenly across the whole drawing. You want to vary it from darker near the edges to lighter on the planes facing the viewer, like you did in lesson 2.

3. Don't draw the drop shadow immediately below the insect. Shadows will be close on parts like legs that are touching the ground plane. But as the forms move further away from the shadow, more distance will generally open up between the insect and the drop shadow.

4. Always put at least one contour on a form. For the most part, you constructed these well in 3D, but there were a few places where it fell flat (literally). The biggest offender here is the lepidoptera. Without contours, it's just a flat shape, and the resulting drawing will be flat as well. Even a complete side on view, it helps to skew the drawing at least a little bit in one direction or the other in order to give it volume.

Again, good job overall. I think you're ready to move onto lesson 5.