G4rinuun

No worries! You did a good job!

Hi! I'll be giving feedback to your 250 Cylinders challenge! In general you did a very awesome job!

150 Cylinders

The cylinders that you have drawn are well done! A lot of them are pretty close to the true minor axis we need to find with a ruler. The lines and ellipses you have made are confident, which mean you have been using the ghosting method that have been taught properly. Shading was applied to the side closest to the viewer as recommended and it wasn't done in haste indicating that you care about each line placed. Just like what you had said, there was a lack of varying foreshortening between the cylinders which could be varied if you ever want to put this as a warm up. However, after the 100s cylinders, there were attempts of varying that I appreciated. While I personally think a few more extreme foreshortening would have been great (even if it might be harder or uglier than those with shallow foreshortening), I think there was enough variation by the end.

100 Boxed Cylinders

The boxed cylinders that you have made are overall pretty well made. All lines from the boxes and the minor axis have some convergence on it, which is what we want on this challenge. I can see that on the first few boxed cylinders that the extended minor axis from the ellipses seems to be way off, specifically on the ellipses that are further away from the viewer. Thankfully, it's usually just one vanishing point out of three, the furthest side from the boxes are always some of the hardest part to draw anyway even in the 250 boxes challenge because you need to consider three vanishing point through glance / ghosting.

I think one thing I want to point out, it's not a really big mistake but I saw that some of the lines extended from the boxes / minor axis seems to be slightly curved toward the end? It must have been the ruler or that you might have moved slightly when you were extending it. It's a shame since some of those lines, if they were not curve, would have converge together toward a certain point. But it's not a big deal since the main important thing is the box and cylinders.

Hi hi! I see that you have take in my feedback for the ellipses! I'm glad to see that you have corrected your minor axis! So I'll be giving you an approval for completion!

For your question, I think you can overdo an ellipses. One of my feedback for my own 250 ellipses was that I did it a bit too much (5-6) to the point that it ended up shrinking or growing the ellipses.. I think the main concern for it is that you ended up relying less off the ghosting method before the pen hits the paper, which I think is not what the lesson want. Ideally, it would be great if we could make the perfect ellipses in one go, but 2-3 times is enough for our imperfect hands.

No worries! Good luck on the next lesson!

Thank you!

Hihi! I will be critiquing your submission! I have done a bit of corrections on some of your submission to better ilustrate my point, you can see them here:

Crane

I feel like you could probably use the method to drawing stick (ellipses and line) for the bones of it's wings or sausage to make it less scratchy. Feathers looked nice on one end, though the feather closest to the body feels scratchy, but I'm not here to focus on the texture of the crane. Overall, good construction!

Toucan

Good construction overall, though the legs could definitely use some constructions. You can build it's claw from a series of ellipses. You can see how I would draw the claw on the first image of the imgur post.

2 Birds

Pretty awesome wings texture! You seem to have done the construction part pretty well, with each form or addition functioning to add something within their body.

Wolf

I think for the feet part, I suggest having some sort of constructions instead of making little bulbs directly from it's legs. Like our hands, fingers don't immediately stem out from our arms but from the palm of the hands. I have drawn a construction I would use if I were to draw a wolf paw. It's the second image of my imgur post. Sorry if it's not nice because I was using mouse to do it.

Doe

Good use of construction on the face and I can see that you have used the method suggested for the exercise, which was to start from a ball shaped and then extending it forward. The full body one looked nice as well, with certain groves in their body from the use of addition of mass. I think my only feedback is that you should have used the constructions of the shapes for it's back legs instead of subtracting from it. If I remember correctly, the focus of this lesson was the use of additive mass.

Horse

I feel like it's feet fell a little bit flat, mostly because I could only see a construction of 3d shapes only at one of them. As for the masses, I think it looks great. I can also see clear construction for it's head, which are nice!

Chamaleon and Snakes

I don't see any problems with the snake, but with the chamaleon, I think there should have been some sor tof connections between the head and it's main body, to which you can add another on top of it's neck just like the reference. I know that it's neck are so short that it is almost nonexistent, but having such connection might make it easy if to understand their body in a 3D form if you need to draw it on another angle.

Monkeys and Frog

The frog legs fell a bit flat once more, mostly because I couldn't see any proper construction that underlines it's form. While I know that it is hard for one to see the muscle of a frog, I think it would have been better to at least try to make some construction so that we know how each body parts relate to one another.

The same could be said for the monkeys as well, who should have a 3 dimensional palm before fingers came out from it. At the very least, you have drawn an ellipses that could have used as a palm, but each of it's fingers could have been done with a bit more construction so that they don't look flat compared to the 3D construction you have for its body.

Hybrid

I'm happy to see that you have done construction on it's feet which I appreciated! I think you could have done some construction for it's tails with ellipses, but other than that it looked firm!

Organic Construction

I think my main feedback would be that some of the cast shadow that the upper forms have lacked the curves to indicate that their shadows stick to the form underneath it. Even though some of the correction I highlighted is small, it does a long way in selling the fact that it's on top of the other. I am not quite sure if you are using another type of pen, but the shadows are also wobbly as if you haveused a very large brush.

I think the constructions of the forms could also use a bit more confidence, as the contour lines that wrapped around the form tend to be wavy and wobbly so that it's a bit harder to sell that they are smooth rounded sausage. The feedback is given on the third and fourth image of the imgur post.

Bobcat

Keep an eye on those paws, make sure to construct their palm before you draw their fingers. Also, I felt like there should be a bit more curves on the upper part of the bob cat as to not make their body look like one easily shaped sausage. I can see that you have added a bit more mass for it's pelvis, but I think could have done a bit more.

Also, the tail looks very jarring due to the lack of constructions, it felt like a paper was glued to it's back. Could have used the same method you have done for the stick in lesson 3.

Another cat

While I appreciate the uses of ellipses to forms it's legs, I think you should add some mass to the connections of their joints instead of just drawing a single line that just gave them a blanket mass. You could see this in the donkey example, step 11 (click on the images) to see what I meant: https://drawabox.com/lesson/5/6/donkey

As for the close up look of the cat, I think you did a pretty good job on adding masses to form its faces.

Final Doe

I think you did a good job on the construction and you have added extra mass between the base of ellipses of their legs for their joints. Overall, I think it's pretty good, though I see that you hit some of it's feet behind the grasses.

Conclusion and some general feedback

I am pretty impressed with the way you have used construction throughout the lessons. I think the main difficulty that you are having are on it's paw. While I myself still at times have this trouble, I think for the purpose of this exercise it's best to try to construct a 3D form so that we could try to understand how it is formed in relation to other parts of their body. In particular, I suggest drawing the palm similar to a box that have been smoothen (like the correction I did for the wolves) and think of the fingers similar to that of a cylinder (bird feet images earlier).

I don't know where to put this, but I was informed that the course focuses more on the addition of forms instead of the subtraction of it. This was one of my main critique from when I did this exercise. I think you did some for the legs, but you don't focus on it too much that I think you should have a revision on this. Here is the source that I got from my main critique, which could be there in one of the many hyperlinks in the lesson so you can understand more: https://imgur.com/CWOMYuQ

Hi!

Sorry for bringing this up, but could you mark this lesson as complete if you think it's good enough to pass. Thank you :D

Hi!

First of all, congratulations for finishing this exercise! First of all, I find that mixing between digital and on paper for this assignment to be interesting, since I saw a better convergence overall on the digital part. I can't really comment on whether or not digital has a better disadvantage, but I suggest that for the next exercises / lesson that you should stick to on paper. Mostly because this whole course is designed to be done on paper and that you couldn't erase your mistake as easy as digital. I suggest that if you want to have practice on digital drawing, it might be better to do so on your spare time.

Now onto the critique:

• I think I'm impressed with how confident the lines are for your boxes! You are pretty natural with the ghosting.

• For boxes 13-18, hatching should be the on the side that is closest to the viewer. You did the rest of the exercise correctly by hatching the closer side, but I just want to point this out.

• As a general feedback, I think I saw that you are having difficulty trying to do the convergence at the side further to a particular angles. You didn't seem to have much problem with the corners, which I and others have experienced difficulty with. But on the later boxes (where you drew tall boxes with extreme foreshortening at the base), you seem to be having difficulty hitting the convergence on one of the base. From what I see at the extension, one of the lines seems to hit too short compared to the others.

• At the beginning, I saw that you are having trouble with the convergence for boxes with shallow foreshortening. But as time went on, I can see a better convergence on them even if some of them are out of the canvas / paper. I also appreciate the variety of the boxes, though you seem to really like narrow tall boxes a bit more :D

• I know that decorating your assignment make things prettier, but please minimize this in future exercises. The on paper boxes had this weird grey outline which could be distracting. As for the digital, please don't do what you did on boxes 38-44, which was to cover the whole screen with the number of the boxes.

• If you are doing hatching, please make sure on end hits the other end and don't leave it hanging. Try to make sure it is as straight as possible (ghosting might not be needed, just make sure it's confident)

Other than that, I think you did a pretty good job! Congratulations! Good luck on the next lesson / exercise!

Good revision! Glad to see that the minor axis had gone through and while the cylinders isn't all perfect, I think you have grown the intuition for drawing it. Congratulations! You can move on to the next lesson!

Hi hi! I'll be critiquing your submission for the cylinders! Overall you did a good job with cylinders!

150 Cylinders

I think the main critique for this section is that you should draw your ghosted minor axis through the ellipses, that way you can plan ahead before making the ellipses and hopefully make it so that the minor axis cut the ellipses into two equal symmetrical parts. I think having the ghosted minor axis inside the ellipses makes it harder to decide whether the ellipses that you draw is correct or not. You can see it here on the example: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders/1/stage1check

Other than that, I think some of the lines that connects the two ellipses would not connect, either it were too short or sometime missed the mark by a few degree. I suggest taking your time when ghosting it so that you could hit both edges of the ellipses so that they look connected.

Other than that, I can see that as the exercise progresses your ghosted minor axis was getting closer to the corrected one, which mean the purpose of this exercise was successful in making you uncomfortable at drawing ellipses and getting better at it :D

100 Boxed Cylinders

I think making boxes that is short and wide might make it hard for you to see the degree shift between the ellipses that are close and further away from you. So, this is a feedback I have gotten in the past and it happens when the boxes you make are more of a rectangle rather than boxes (one side is too long, for example cylinder 216). This would cause the cylinders to feel a little bit flat, as the angles made the two ellipses similar. So I think it's best if you try to make each side of the box more or less similar to avoid this issue, though obviously I'm not expecting a perfect box (even I can't do that), but it's something to keep in mind if you feel like the cylinders feel "off". I can link you to the original feedback where I receive this, it starts at paragraph 5 (https://drawabox.com/community/submission/56QGGA73). I'm not saying to avoid this type boxes entirely, but I think it's a bit harder to draw the ellipses compared to regular boxes.

I personally couldn't seem to see what you did wrong on the first 30 cylinders boxes, from what I see (in between the many lines) is that you seem to be trying your best to see if the minor axis and the convergence of all 3 angles would connect in a way. At the very least you usually got 1-2 angles of the convergence correctly, while the third times would sometime be way off. But occassionally, you get that perfect boxes that would have all three angles converge together. Unlike the previous cylinders, most of the corrected minor axis do go through the ellipses which :D

Conclusion

Congratulations on finishing this exercise! Overall, I think I'm pretty impressed with the overall confidence of your ellipses. I might request a small revision for the 150 cylinders by making you draw a bit more cylinders with their ghosted minor axis going through the ellipses. That should hopefully make it easier for you to find the middle of the ellipses so it can cut symmetrically.