H_R7

Hello Jojo, this is Canoe from the discord server. I’d be happy to take a look at your lesson 6 submission.

Starting with your form intersections exercise, for the most part they look alright. Mostly it looks likw you struggle with the intersections of the round forms like spheres and cylinders. For example, the cylinder intersection on the bottom right of your first page, the come intersection on the bottom right of your second page, and the cylinder intersection on the top left of your third page. There’s also in instance where a cone clearly pokes into a box on the bottom right of your third page that you didn’t mark as in intersection. If you need an example, feel free to write in the lesson 6 channel and I’ll see what I can do about giving you something more concrete. For now, though, I think your understanding of this exercise is sufficient.

Moving onto the real focus of this lesson, I’m happy to say that your understanding of how to construct objects has really developed over time. I’ll use the rest of this critique to talk about some of the things to keep an eye on for the upcoming lesson 7 and 25 wheel challenge, as well as highlight some of the things you’ve done well.

One things I would really like to see you implement going forward is an increased precision in your orthographic studies. For the first six objects, you often seemed to place features like buttons, curves, and indents based off of observation. This is fine for lessons 3 through 5 because organic forms generally don’t conform to any specific design. However, when dealing with man made objects, they’re often manufactured en masse in a way that each item will be exactly the same as the last one. That means we need to be exactly as precise when constructing these objects. What I mean by this is that each feature should be placed with a specific subdivision. There’s a great example of this here in the discord: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871313231708172/1364641711904526579/PXL_20250422_1953044822.jpg?ex=68d02a21&is=68ced8a1&hm=eb140dced19d16a689c891190672028aaec7f62ca56125febbc6b77cc8843129&

Doing so helps offload the tricky bits of thinking about where these features go in the final construction, because they're based off of objective subdivisions, and leave our brains free to process how the object actually occupies 3d space. This will be especially important for lesson 7, so it's best to hammer it home here.

Second thing to look out for is faming your cylinders in boxes like you did for the last 100 cylinders in the 250 cylinder challenge. This applies to every cylinder you would include in your object, even if the object itself isn’t mostly a cylinder. For example, the camera lens for your third object could have been constructed within a box to help you place it and get its degree relative to the rest of the camera consistent. You can apply this practice to lenses, buttons, holes, and anything roughly cylindrical. This can also include wheels and headlights later on for the cars.

The final thing I would like you to look out for, and this is definitely something that you improved on over the course of your lesson, is to try and use your bounding box more efficiently. For example, your fourth object had a lot of unnecessary space for your bounding box. This is admittedly something that isn’t too big of an issue, especially since lesson 7 so heavily uses proportioning along with orthographic studies (you’ll see what I mean when you get there). However, efficiently using your bounding box does reflect better preparation on your part and overall really forces you to consider every mark you’ll be making for your constructions.

So to summarize, I’d like you to be more specific with your orthographic studies and their use of subdivisions, frame your cylinders in boxes, and cut the unnecessary sections of your bounding box.

Overall though, like I stated in the beginning of this critique, I believe that the last two objects show enough understanding of how objects are constructed that you’re ready to take on the cars in lesson 7. Keep these tips in mind, as well as any tips you may have gathered from the discord server, and you’ll be alright. Of course, if you have any questions, please feel free to write them in #lesson6 and I’ll get back to you in more detail.

So congratulations! Before moving onto the cars, you must first tackle to great cylinders upon which they stand.

Hello ZENLISZT! I'll be reviewing your work today.

Lines

1: Superimposed Lines

• Your lines are smooth and confident which is very good.

2: Ghosted Lines

• Once again your lines are quite smooth and lack any wobbling. The next thing to work on is trying to have your lines end at the right point rather than overshooting or undershooting.

3: Ghosted Planes

• Same as ghosted lines, very good smoothness and confidence, work on your lines ending at the right spot.

Ellipses

All of these exercises are done correctly so ill just mention some things you can think about improving when you do these exercises as warmups.

4: Table of Ellipses

• Attempt to draw through every ellipse 2-3 times (ideally 2). Currently, some of yours have more, some have less.

• Try your best to make each cycle similarly shaped as you drawn through the ellipse. I've linked two of your ellipses, one that does this well and one that does it poorly, to show what I mean https://imgur.com/a/5s7BM2z. Its totally normal that you don't have this perfect yet, just something to think about when drawing ellipses.

5: Ellipses in Planes

• Same point as above, try to make the cycles similarly shaped.

• Try to have each ellipse touch the sides without breaking free or coming short.

6: Funnels

• Same as above, draw through each ellipse twice, try to keep cycles similar, and try to keep ellipses touching the barriers.

• Make sure all the ellipses are correctly oriented in relation to the bisecting line, some turn away from it slightly.

Boxes

5: Plotted Perspective

• This one is done very well.

6: Rough Perspective

• There are a few line extensions missing here.

• Your lines begin to wobble a bit more than before here, make sure you're putting in the same thought/effort you did for the ghosted planes to these lines.

• Try to make the back plane ( the one closer to the VP) fully rectangular. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/roughperspective/guessing

7: Rotated Boxes

• The distance between your boxes vary and are sometimes non-existent. Aim for consistently small gaps between boxes.

• Overall you could have made everything decently larger, this makes most part of the exercise easier to understand and achieve, including making even gaps.

8: Organic Perspective

• Some of your boxes have overly rapid convergence, otherwise your boxes are quite good.

Overall great job on this Lesson. Good luck on the 250 box challenge!

First of all i will say to you brother congratulations !! for completing the first lessen and i hope you will keep moving forward after this :-). I am going to critique you work today.

Now, Let's go through you work submission

Superimposed Lines

you starting looks good in the smaller lines these is nearly no wobble but in the longer lines is the a little bit of wobble and i am observing a bow like shape it is not a big problem you will improve as time goes and as you do these exercise on the daily bases.There is fraying on only one side that's good ,overall i will say you have done a great job brother.

Ghosted Lines

hay these once look good.i can tell you have used ghosting method and there is practically no wobble i can see them in 1 or 2 places ,some lines are overlapping the points but they are not that big a problem.i will say this one is executed perfectly.

Ghosted Planes

you have used ghosting method lines look clean ,nearly all quadrilateral are closed shape. soo good job :-)

Table of Ellipses

you have drawn through your ellipses two full times buy i am seeing some which have been done more then 2 times like 4 or 5 times i will not suggest you to do that. but i will say that you have layed you ellipses so they fit snugly against the borders of the table.some ellipses are not made with confidence i can tell that because i can see a lot of wobble so to improve that i will say you can try to do more ghosting before drawing the ellipse.

Ellipses in Planes

this is known as perfection you haven't even done a single mistake on this one you have drawn through your ellipses mainly all of them are touching all the sides they are made with confidence and ghosting is used properly. well done :)

Funnels

same mistakes at the "Table of Ellipses" lack of confidence use more ghosting brotherrrrr use it i will help a lot, other then that every thing looks good ellipses are centered and touching the wall of funnels and are evenly shaped. :-0

Plotted Perspective

this one looks better then what i did :-) you have used ruler for your linework that's good you have used 2 VPs and horizon also looks good and you have correctly plotted your horizontal edges back to the vanishing points.

Rough Perspective

one VP is used ,the front and back faces of the boxes are rectangula.you have applyed the line extensions correctly. but i think due to lack of confidence you lines are getting wobbly.there is not need to worry this is a common mistake it will stop happening if you keep practicin.

Rotated Boxes

brother you have done it this looks perfect. gaps between the boxes looks good lines work need some work but boxes are rotating , you have missed 4 boxes of the corners :( other then that i think you have followed every step soo well done again :)

Organic Perspective

first i will answer our question no these is no specific way the boxes are looking but they will follow a path (that is the line you are drawing ).

you have used ghosting here lines look clean and boxes look like they are getting bigger as they go away from us soo that's good. you have used dramatic foreshortening in the first panel but in the last panel there is no foreshortening.not a big deal but this exercise was to intriduce you to dramatic foreshortening. but no worry you have done it right.

soo i will say it again you have done it brother the lessen one of drawabox is complete yesssssssssss

now i have critiqued it your work but you need 2 agrees from other people in the server to mark this as complete and remimber to only ask for critique and agrees on the critique exchange channel and also read the pinned message there to on the critique section .

Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.

Unfortunately you haven't allowed access to your Google Drive, so it'll help if you can allow anyone with a link to access it. I look forward to seeing your submission.

Hello, I'm Joxmarf and I will be reviewing your lesson 4!

I want to start by saying that your submission is really well done. There's nothing to comment regarding the quality of your lines. I can see that you are adhering to the principles of lesson 1. Regarding the textures, you didn't adhere to an important rule, which is to capture only cast shadows, but texture isn't the priority at all in this lesson, and that may have been added at a later point than when you did lesson 4 since... it was three years ago. Now, these are my comments on what could have been improved:

1. Some of your forms don't look 3D. On some cases you recur to flat shapes (example: spikes in your haverstman construction). Remember that all of what we are capturing exists in 3D, so we must construct it. Using 2D shapes breaks the illusion we are trying to create. Your owlfly larva feels particularly flat (but to be honest, that's not on you... that insect is just like that) and one of the reasons is that instead of an additive construction for the head, you cut into your forms.

2. There are forms that could have started out simpler. For example, in your construction #4, you used a conic shape for the head and the thorax. You could started with a ball and added forms until getting the desired shape.

3. In your sausage with ontours exercise, the sausages should be uniform. They also should have been uniform for the legs of your insects.

Overall, your constructions are very well done! Congratulations :) You had suggested to give you revisions given that your submission is old, but I'm hesitant to do so given their quality! Still, I will assign two constructions so you can apply my feedback.

Hello, congratulation on finishing lesson 1. These homeworks also took days for me to finish and frustrating at times. But hey, you finished it, so big applause for your effort. I read your notes, so ok, I understand the situation, but I can't agree with the idea of rushing it, also don't redo the exercise unless you're asked to do so. Think of this course as a marathon. Rushing will make you burnt out faster. Now let's discuss your homework.

1. Superimposed Line

• The lines are straight and confident, but fray on both sides. The way I see it, could be because you rushed because most lines in the first page are done perfectly but you got sloppier as you go. Take your time to carefully put the tip of your pen at the starting point.

• For this exercise, you need to draw a guideline first using a ruler, and do the superimposed line using the guideline. You can check the instruction in this link https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/exercise

2. Ghosted Line

• Good, for this one you carefully planned the lines as the lines start from the marks. The lines also straight and confident.

3. Ghosted Plane

• You did well with this one. The lines are straight and confident.

4. Table of Ellipses

• You draw them 2-3 times in the first page, good.

• The ellipses fit snuggly inside the border and you fill the empty space as well.

• The concern is by the end of the next page, you draw the ellipses too many time. Please avoid to do this in the future. Just 2-3 times is enough.

5. Ellipses in Plane

• In this exercise you also draw the ellipses too many time. I understand the struggle, ellipses are hard indeed, but overdoing it will not give you a better result.

6. Funnels (I'm sorry, it seems the funnels is not attached)

7. Plotted Perspective

• You use ruler as instructed. Good.

• The horizontal lines are perpendicular to the horizon. Good.

• The edges plotted toward the VPs correctly.

• Also good job with the hatching. While hatching is optional, I highly recommend you to do it whenever you have the option to. If you decide to do it, make sure you plan the lines carefully, execute the lines using you shoulder and ghosting method. This will help you improve faster.

8. Rough Perspective

• You follow the given instruction, good.

• You estimate the edges accurately as most of the extention lines heading toward the VPs.

• You lines are confident.

• I notice you redraw some lines. Even when the lines didn't come as how we expect, please do not redraw them.

9. Rotated Box

• You nailed this one!!

• You followed the given instruction. Good.

• The gaps between the boxes are tight and consistent. Good.

• Also good job with the hatching.

10. Organic Perspective

• You did good with this one.

• Also need to remind you not to redraw the line. If you make a mistake, let them be. If you hesitate to draw the line, ghost several more times.

I need you to resent the funnel exercise because I can't find it, and I'm gonna request revisions on superimposed lines (1 page) and table of ellipses (1 page).

This time, do not rush them. Take as much time as you need, carefully plan the lines, and do just as much as required.

Here I drop the link of the instruction for superimposed line and table of ellipses

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/exercise

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/step1

If you find any of this unclear, you can ping me (@izebeq) in lesson 1 channel.

Hi Aki, I'm ageth and I'll try give you some feedback today. I hope it helps :D .

Arrows

• Line: Your arrows have a nice flow but there are some lines that doesn't follow the rhythm as they should, remenber ghosting using all your arm practicing the duplicate line before executing it, bucause these are big and complex lines.

• Foreshortening: Your foreshortening is correctly more dramatic than shallow, but I suggest you to experiment more with transitions exagerating; making the arrow head enormous with a really tiny tail or reverse so you can relate more with the espace.

• Line Weight: Your arrows are lack of line weight, Line weight is not just a detail, but a tool that can contribute making some of our 3D forms look closer and others look farther in contrast. so I really suggest you to start using it and since it's a useful tool that we'll be employing frequently in the course. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=treOc3Pp-aE

Organic Forms

• Form: Some of your sausages aren't following the correct form of 2 identical balls connected by a tube of consistent width:so you can try plot with a few dots the general sausage shape, so when you ghost you'll have a few guidelines that can help you not to lose track of the ghosting.

• Ellipses: Your ellipses are nicely done, you drawn through 2-3 times and you're making good attempts for them to fit correctly. Now you could try vary the degrees more as the angle of the sausage faces the viewer. https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/degree

• Contours: Your contour lines are not accelerating as they aproach the edge, executing it this way is important so we can define the surface correctly. When you're drawing contuor lines try ghosting an ellipse and just executing it where the visible part is. https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/shallow

Texture Analysis

• Paper: Well executed with the sahdows and the trnasition keeps gradual.

• Wood: This one looks a little like hatching due to the amount of lines instead of just cast shadows and the transition happens too quick. Remenber we have just two colours black and white which we'll be employing to make a transition with cast shadows.

• Fish Scales: This texture is well executed too especially the black part, but the transition to white is also to quick. Remember you're getting pure white just when you are almost finishing the panel and in the middle part you are gradually losing the gradient.

Dissections

• Terture: Your texture is wrapping correctly around the form but again the transition happens too quick. So keep in mind that you need to reduce the gradient gradually as you get closer to the middle of the form.

• Silhouette: There are some cases when you correctly break the silhouette but most of the it keeos flat or it shows up too shy. You can try exagerate the ellements of the texture so it can be more visible and manifest its particular appearance. https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/4dd5336a.jpg

Form intersections

• Forms: Your forms are great as they keep shallow and equilateral but I insist with the lack of line weight.

• instersections: This is a secondary issue so it's not a big deal, Most of your intersections are well done, but just for some boxes i suggest you to consider the space that is ocupied by the form when you're intersecting.

Organic intersections

• Forms: I like how you execute the contour lines here overshooing the curves, well done. As for the forms, most of them are decent sausages but others have weird forms. So maybe this is something we need to reinforce.

• Shadows: Your shadows should follow the contour on the form they are being reflected you can use the contuar lines you drew previously as a guide to draw you cast shadows, and always draw a clean space for the shadow so it doesn't look scribbled.

• Stability: Stability is important bucause it gives us the sensation that the object has weight and it is solid. Always when you draw a sausage make shure it is supported by another, don't make it look like it is about to fall, sticked or floating. I tell you this specially for one sausage on the second image on the right side.

Hello Cornball, this is Canoe from the Discord server and I'd be happy to take a look at your lesson 7 submission.

Starting off with your form intersections, there's nothing about your decisions that strike me here as wrong, or at least wrong enough to warrant a draw-over. This is something you can expect to continuously improve on as you keep doing this exercise for your warmups. Overall, you show a good understanding of how these forms relate to one another in 3d space. You've also done a good job employing extra line weight to emphasize which edges go where. This greatly helps the readability of your intersections and shows a solid understanding of this exercise's purpose.

Your cylinders in boxes are similarly well done. You're employing the correction method according to the lesson and are placing care on how you put the ellipses into the box so that they line up with all three vanishing points. The only one that stands out would be the cylinder in the bottom right corner. The ellipses for that one should be much narrower than what you've drawn. However, I'm assuming you're using an ellipse guide here, so getting it "close enough" is fine for this lesson. Better than shelling out a boat load of cash for a set of master ellipse templates...

Speaking of boat loads, let's move on to the meat of this lesson: the vehicles.

Your form intersection vehicles do a good job of sticking to the principles of this exercise. You've stuck to basic geometric forms which you could then theoretically use as buidling blocks for a more complex construction. This isn't what we ask you to do specifically in this exercise, but it's an important step in the construction process that often gets overlooked for more of the finer details. You do get a little fancy with the rear view mirrors on the F150 and the Accord (AKA the greatest car ever made), but given that those are an essential part of what makes cars look like cars, I can understand why you did it.

I'll quote uncomfy here for why we do this step before the construction proper because his description of the exercise's purpose is far better than mine: "With our more detailed vehicle construction demos, it's easy to get the impression that we've turned the process on its head and changed it completely, from building things out from simple to complex, to laying out a forest of lines and connecting them into a concrete result only at the last step. This exercise helps us remind ourselves that we're still working from big to small - instead of building something out of toothpicks, we're still whittling down a block of wood, piece by piece, into something more detailed and complex."

Finally, let's get to the constructions themselves and frankly, there's not much for me to point out! You've done excellent work leveraging your orthographic plans in your constructions. It's especially notable that you use very specific subdividing in order to determine where a feature will go in your orthos so that you can more accurately transfer it to the finished construction. This is escepcially apparent in both the locomotive and the Toyota Camry. It's important to stick to our orthographic studies because it forms an integral part of this exercise, namely the sense of solidity we build up in our heads and how these objects exist in 3d space as we grapple with transferring our observations into our constructions. Sure, you can wing it and make adjustments on the fly in order to get a better image. But that's not the point of this exercise. Doing so ends up undermining that sense of solidity and, thus, the true prupose of this exercise.

To that end, I do have some very minor notes. There is a slight mismatch between your orthos for the Chevy Impala and the final construction. Your orthos show the hood sloping slightly upwards towards the cabin, while the hood in your final construction is flat. I recall you asking about the Impala in discord, so our best bet is to chalk this up to a small oversight.

Another area would be for the boat. I think what got you was having two different measuring systems for your orthos vs. the final construction. I noticed in your orthos that you seemed to use a bounding box for the whole thing a la lesson 6. However, the final construction uses the proportion measuring technique from this lesson. I can see you placing ellipses at the front corner of the bounding box and subdividing those in order to get the proportions correct. Because you didn't use this technique for the orthos, that it most likely what led to the poor boat getting a bit squished. Admittedly, it's hard to use the wheel proportioning technique on something that doesn't have any wheels. This is an instance where you would have to give your best guess on how many squares long vs how tall something is. I like to use definable areas like the height of the motor or the distance between the water and the top of the orange side as a base unist of measurement (and since we're using a square, the height will be the same as the width if you catch my drift).

One final note I have is something we both did for our submissions. It has to do with filling large areas with black. Uncomfy addresses this, but I think the real value of this quote are his thoughts on how this applies to the "rules" of drawabox:

"The only other thing I wanted to nitpick at is to remember that within the bounds of this course, we want to try and stick to reserving our filled areas of solid black for cast shadows only (another thing my demos don't stick to completely, as this is a slight shift in direction we've made over the last few years, with the demos for this lesson being several years older than that). The thing to avoid is simply defaulting to filling in predefined spaces with solid black, without actually going through the spatial thinking of determining the actual shape of the cast shadow (or at least whether the shape would encompass the entirety of that particular surface). A cast shadow's shape defines the relationship in 3D space between the form casting it and the surface receiving it. It is very easy to fall into the trap of filling things in just to differentiate between a surface oriented one way versus another (which is more akin to form shading), and we mainly want to ensure that when drawing as intended for this course, that they stick as much as possible to what brings their thinking back around to 3D spatial reasoning.

One exception - although we use some rather tenuous means to make it adhere consistently with our 'rules' and frame them as cast shadows anyway - is the interior of the car. Here we argue that being on the interior, the external structure casts shadows onto all of those surfaces, but this isn't strictly true since the window glass is transparent. Ultimately it just helps bring the construction together and flattens out the interior in a way that helps - but usually that's something we want to avoid (for example in wheel wells and in the gaps of the bumper area).

At the end of the day though, that's just how we approach our drawings for this course - outside of the course, you can make those decisions for yourself, as long as they are kept consistent within a piece (or as long as you have a particular reason for breaking that consistency). It's remarkable how many 'rules' we adhere to can be validly broken as long as you've thought about why you're doing it, rather than doing so without consideration."

But with all that out of the way, your work here shows a great understanding of this lesson, and I have no doubt in my mind that you're well on your way to doing great things! You've certainly entered an exclusive club not many can say they are a part of. I look forward to seeing what you come up with moving forward and hope you stay with us over on discord. To that end, I'll be marking this lesson, and the course as a whole, as complete. Congratulations on completing drawabox!

Hi there! I saw your submission in the queue so I figured I'd take a look.

Form Intersections. One of my favorite exercises. Let me just start by saying that a vast majority of these intersections are truly excellent, at least along my own experience. You give each form great care and thought to how those forms interact, and you choose some bold positions that I have yet to attempt. I did take a page to nitpick a little where there were some slightly off intersections, but I genuinely believe you have a strong understanding of this exercise and will continue to improve as you continue to work with these forms. Incidentally, Comfy made a diagram in a review that I found extremely insightful and might be useful for you to have on-hand in case you need a refresher. It's a breakdown of how a round form only interacts with the flat plane that it aligns with; kind of interesting to look at from time to time.

Objects. Okay, so the way I understand it, this lesson is all about planning. From the way one sets up their orthographic study to the way they carefully carve out their object within the box, every step is considered strongly before a mark even hits the page. Planning is a big part of DAB's curriculum, it seems. To that end, I believe you have done an excellent job with how you set up your work. You clearly have a deft understanding of how to utilize the techniques introduced in this lesson, as there's plenty of subdividing and mirroring in your preparations, and that work matches what you set up in the xyz drawing. This truly shines in your more complex work, like your desktop speaker (I used to own a set of those!) and the hand mixer.

If I had anything that I might recommend you do for future works, I'd advise strongly in favor of drawing through your forms as much as you can. It's not required in the lesson as far as I can tell, so there's no demerits or anything from me, truly. It can be useful to bring some clarity to forms that are not expressly clear in the final product(Your hole punch has a intake ramp of sorts, and in the xyz drawing it doesn't quite read well). I also believe the speaker's connection to base with that conical form should have been plotted. That said, it's a small part of the drawing, and it's kind of hard to set up without a real nest of lines. At the end of the day, it's going to be one of those decisions that you make when you set up your plans.

Really though, I believe this is a well-done submission, and I'll mark this as complete.

Hello! I’m Joxmarf and I will be reviewing your lesson 4.

First of all, congrats for finishing this lesson. The purpose of the insect constructions is to create the illusion, through the use of forms and contour lines. I would say you achieved this!

For your sausages with contours, remember to keep them uniform and to draw the contours mindfully respecting the minor axis, taking into account how the sausage turns in 3D space. Please keep this in mind when doing them for warmups.

One thing that diminishes the illusion, is that you don’t use enough contour lines. A notable example is your tick. You added a center line and a few texture lines, but the lack of contour lines makes it look flat. Now, the solution isn’t to add contour forms thoughtlessly. Remember to always be extremely mindful of every mark you put down on the page. Regarding your lea, there are some additional forms that look flat. Don’t worry, as you will see it better in lesson 5. About the legs, remember that the sausage forms should intersect. This will help you better understand how they are positioned in 3D space. It may be more challenging to add forms onto a simpler one, but it is more adequate to convey a sense of 3D sense. When you modify the silhouette, always do so keeping in mind that it must be 3D.

Also, remember to avoid chicken scratch. I recommend you to review the informal lesson 4 demos nefore moving onto the 5 one, many concepts explained there will be of help for lesson 5.

https://imgur.com/a/1W1SjcD Here are some drawings I made, I hope they help understand my review :)

Good job!