InfernoDnB

Hi, sorry I guess your comment slipped under my radar. Thanks for the reminder. It's looking good, I'll be marking your lesson as complete :)

Hi chogi, I'll be critiquing your work. First of all congratulations on finishing lesson 1! Not everyone manages to push through something as hard as this so you're already awesome! My critique will be structured similarly to the actual lesson's structure.

Lines

Your superimposed lines look great, I can see your marks are executed confidently, and you've kept your fraying on one side. The few curves you've attempted also look pretty solid, a few miss the mark a bit more than with the straight lines, so when doing this exercise as a warmup I'd suggest to do a few more curves as well!

Ghosted lines: your lines look generally fairly straight, which is great considering this is the first exercise where that's being developed. Sometimes I see a little bit of arching towards the defined dot, which suggests to me that you're focusing a little more on accuracy than on straightness & confidence, your priorities should be flipped. This can be helped by executing your marks a little bit quicker, or by keeping your eyes fixed on the dot you want to ghost towards, allowing your arm & shoulder to freely do the work. Overall, great attempt.

Ghosted planes: I can see your line confidence has improved here significantly. To combat the overshooting I'd suggest to ghost a little bit more slowly (I know I said to ghost a little quicker in the previous exercise, there's basically just a small margin of ghosting speed that is ideal, and you need to figure out that exact speed by trying out different speeds consciously. This is only relevant once your lines are consistently straight, otherwise you're tackling too many problems simultaneously). I do see that your lines are not only drawn confidently, they're also really accurate, good job!

Ellipses

Tables of ellipses: You've fit them snugly within the defined borders, the orientation & degree within each cell is consistent, you've experimented with a wide range of degrees, you've drawn through your ellipses multiple times. Noice. The confidence at which you've drawn your ellipses varies a bit, ghost more for each ellipse and don't forget to engage your entire arm when doing both the ghosting motion and the actual mark making. The ellipses also don't always have the right shape. This is fine for now but try to really feel a somewhat circular motion in your shoulder when ghosting, and maybe vary the speed a little bit (around the edges faster than around the elongated part, if you get me)

Ellipses in planes: the confidence is starting to develop there, noice. It's good that you've not gone for touching all four sides yet since the ellipses themselves should first get in shape, maybe you can try going for the four sides with the advice that I've given for the previous exercise.

Funnels: Your ellipses are getting more consistent in shape, and you've generally kept in line with the minor axis of the funnels, noice! When you choose to do this one as a warmup, I'd suggest to play a little bit with the degree of each ellipse relative to its position in the funnel.

Boxes

Now onto everyone's favourite part!

Plotted perspective: looking good! Pay a little more attention to keeping your vertical lines exactly perpendicular to the horizon line, you can do that fairly easily with a ruler. That will get rid of the somewhat misaligned backside.

Rough perspective: first of all: don't try to get rid of your failed marks, shapes or forms. You're always your harshest critic, and someone critiquing you will point out your mistakes and how you can improve upon them. Every mark you make is a commitment, and trying to erase these marks by scribbling (for the lack of better word) over it just diminishes the value of these commitments. I can see the problem with the top right one, the leftmost vertical line isn't exactly vertical. That's fine, next time you just need to place the dots like you always do, and if you notice one of these dots is off, you can just place another dot and ghost towards that one! Dots are much less of a commitment than actual lines, so this method is perfectly fine. Your boxes look fairly decent, and it's great that you've checked all of the convergences :] one thing I do want to note is that the depth lines that are close to the horizon line, but far from the vanishing point, will converge much more extremely than you'd expect, so don't be afraid to try out some real extreme convergence with these!

Rotated boxes: I ain't seeing a lot of rotation going on. Let's zoom in on the middle horizontal boxes, starting in the middle (the initial box that's essentially a square with a smaller square within). The one to the right is done correctly, you can clearly see the convergence of the lines going to the right vanishing point is different between boxes. Now if you go another box to the right, the convergence to the right doesn't change, meaning the vanishing point hasn't shifted and thus there's no rotation. The outermost right box should converge a lot more extremely than the one before it. And this applies to each direction; the closer you get to the edge, the more extreme your convergences should be. I suggest looking closely at what Uncomfortable is doing in the video for this exercise, and maybe look into Scyllastew's video as well.

Organic perspective: noice, some boxes look a little wonky but that's to be expected when being unable to draw through your forms. Again, f'd up boxes still need to exist, don't try to erase them. You'll get an improved spatial reasoning by doing the 250 box challenge.

I see you've done a second attempt of Rotated Boxes, don't do this. It's a hard exercise so no one expects you to nail it the first time, but since it has been asked of you to hand in 1 page, don't hand in 2. One more thing I can add as feedback on the exercise itself however, is: keep the lines of adjacent boxes close- and parallel to each other. As an example: if I number the boxes 1-25 from left to right, top to bottom, boxes nr 14 & 19 (directly below each other in the lowerright quadrant) should not have their adjacent edges diverge, they should stay parallel.

In general, great attempt, you're ready for the box challenge

Congratulations on finishing this hell! Your convergences generally look pretty great! If you haven't checked out Scyllastew's video on how to draw a box, I'd suggest watching that video as well, it may give you some new insights to further improve your convergences. tldw; it basically boils down to plotting every point/dot (corner) of the box after drawing the initial Y, and you can put down multiple dots if you see that your initial dot would result in an inaccurate convergence (when ghosting). I see you sometimes overshoot your lines. For now it's perfectly fine, but one piece of advise I can give you (besides that you should read one piece), is to execute your mark a little more slowly, and keep your eye fixed on the dot you want to reach. You can try this out in a warmup so there's no pressure of needing to achieve perfect results. This method has not only helped me get straighter lines, it also resulted in me not overshooting as often.

I also noticed that you tend to draw over your already executed marks at many times. The whole idea of using a pen instead of pencil is to commit to your marks, and once you f up, you need to act as if the mark is correct. It'll force you to ghost more, but also to face your failures much more. I know it's difficult and frustrating, but every time you notice wanting to correct your mistake, put your pen down and take a break!

I think your submission all in all is really solid, your lines are basically always straight as an arrow, super dope!

Hi fuzziest of dunlops, congratulations on finishing lesson 1! I'll be critiquing your work, and it'll be structured similarly to the lesson itself. I may seem a little harsh at times, but don't take any of it personally. I want you to improve as much as possible :)

In regards to ghosting, I'd advice you to try out different speeds of mark execution when doing warmup exercises. I had noticed with my own work that I sometimes ghost too quickly, which is why I overshot lots of my lines. Keep on experimenting with these kinds of things :]

Lines

Your superimposed lines look great! I can see you've drawn confidently and put in the effort to keep the fraying generally on one end, but it could become even better if you take the time to place your pen at the exact same starting point each time. But in general, noice!

Ghosted lines: most of your lines look very wobbly, which is fair in the beginning since this is the first time you're actually ghosting. But try to consciously convince yourself that your line will hit the mark, and execute your mark quickly and from your shoulder so that your mark is as straight as possible. Also force yourself to first focus on getting your lines as straight as possible, and later focus on accuracy. It's no problem if you can't get your lines to hit the mark yet, this will all come with mileage in all these different exercises and will continue to improve in the 250 Box challenge. Overall, a decent attempt!

Ghosted planes: I can already see a great improvement in your line confidence, great job! I do see that you're curving your lines quite visibly at times, don't forget to rotate your paper as much as needed, and keep on ghosting! You've gone wild with varying the shapes, love it. Again, confidence > accuracy. Accuracy will improve over time.

Ellipses

Tables of ellipses: you've drawn through each ellipse multiple times, great! Your ellipses do look generally quite wobbly, are you using your shoulder for these? If not, you should definitely use your shoulder. It might ache a lot in the beginning because the muscle hasn't been developed for this kind of motion yet, but keep at it and take regular breaks to prevent strain. I do really like the amount of variety you have with your degrees and orientation, noice! They're also mostly fitting snugly within the given borders, and each cell stays consistent with the orientation & degree of each ellipse. The actual shape of the ellipse is decent, maybe try to consciously feel the motion of your shoulder when ghosting, and I'd advise you to ghost ~5-10 times at the very least (especially in the beginning) for each ellipse.

Did you skip the ellipses in planes exercise? Or did you just forget to upload it?

Funnels: The orientation of your ellipses is quite good, it strays a little from the minor axis of the funnel but that'll fix itself with time (especially with lesson 2's exercises). All the feedback from Tables of Ellipses applies here as well, but don't worry too much about it. It's really tough to nail ellipses and any kind of circular motion. Attempting these exercises at all already makes you much more awesome than the many people who give up because it's too hard.

Boxes

Now to the fun part. Plotted perspective: Amazing. It's not the hardest exercise in this lesson, but it can still get somewhat confusing with all these lines going to vanishing points. Don't forget to take your time when plotting out the vertical lines, some are a little bit at an angle. All in all, great job!

Rough perspective: I can see by the dots you've put down that you've taken your time to try to keep your x & y lines as horizontal and vertical respectively as possible (I hope you can understand this sentence lol). The execution leaves some room for improvement, but that's fine because we're only at the prologue of the beginning when it comes to dealing with boxes. Try to think of your lines not as part of a box, but as what they are; lines. Treat each and every line equally, ghost each and every line until you feel like you can nail the motion, and fearlessly execute the mark. If you f up the trajectory, that's fine. We're here to learn and to make mistakes. What's important is that you don't try to be accurate by slowly executing your mark if it results in a wobbly line. Do a little bit of superimposed lines to gain a little more confidence and then try these again when doing warmups. It's great that you check each and every convergence, and while the differences are definitely visible, I can guarantee you that the untrained eye will still very much view them as boxes. Not perfect boxes, but still boxes. So in that sense, achievement unlocked :]

Rotated boxes: I'm not seeing enough rotation. When looking at the horizontal row of boxes, from the middle to the one to the right you've done it correctly, but from the first to the right to the outer box there's no rotation. The outer box' "horizontal" lines should convergence more extremely than the one left from it. Basically, the more towards the edge of the entire drawing you are, the more extreme you'll need to converge your lines. It's a tough exercise and you've done your best to attempt it, you've also drawn through your forms so I won't ask you to complete it again. But if you ever feel like attempting it again, look through submissions from other students, watch Uncomfortable's video again, and also watch Scyllastew's video. She has videos on her going through basically all of lesson 1 & 2's exercises, it might be helpful. You've done your best and it's pretty good, but specifically the rotation of your boxes can you some work.

Organic perspective: A decent variety in size, nice! Don't forget that you can overlap your boxes as well. The bigger one (which would be the one in front) would have a little extra lineweight around the intersecting points. Overlapping boxes will create an even bigger sense of scale. Also, your boxes need to be all in 3-point perspective (I personally missed that requirement as well. It's no big deal, just pointing it out). Your boxes definitely look a lot more confidently drawn than in Rough Perspective, so I'm already seeing a good deal of improvement, love it :].

All in all, pretty solid submission, I can't mark it as complete yet until I've seen your Ellipses in Planes. But with all the others you're on the right track! :)

Aah that makes sense, I'll keep this in mind and basically only think about it when a given drawing is already finished.

Didn't expect the legend himself to respond, thanks!

Thank you for your feedback Natt! I have my reasons for sticking with digital even though I know going traditional is recommended for this course haha :)

I'll definitely practice cutting & twisting boxes, thanks for the recommendation!

I'm still busy doing lesson 2 lol, it'd be cool if you could critique my box challenge :D

The reason I didn't have a badge for lesson 1 (until today apparently) is because the one who critiqued me didn't have 2 people agreeing yet, which is the official requirement for finishing a lesson and moving on to the next lesson!

No worries, I wanted to get to it earlier but wasn't able to haha. Good luck on the rest of your journey, I'm right there with ya!

Hey, it's been a while since you've submitted this so I hope this critique will still be useful for you.

Lines

Superimposed lines: nice job keeping the fraying on one end. I see you're brave enough to try very long lines as well, though they have some wobbling going on. It may be a good idea to draw this lines a little faster, even if they don't adhere to the trajectory you want them to.

Ghosted lines: Lots of curving & wobbling going on, which is understandable since you're only this far into the course. What I do see is that you tend to go for accuracy first rather than confident, smooth strokes. Having confident, smooth strokes (whether they're straight lines like in lessons 1 & the box challenge or curving lines like in the rest of the course) is something that DAB puts heavy focus on, so get used to ghosting a lot and executing your mark confidently without being concerned about messing up. We're all here to learn =]

Ghosted planes: there's already a good deal of improvement when it comes to your linework, nicely done! At times I do still see your lines curving while they're still smooth & confident, so I suggest you try to make a conscious, slight curving motion in the opposite direction to try and compensate for the natural curving. Other than that, great attempt!

Ellipses

Tables of ellipses: nice variety of degrees attempted, your ellipses also look generally smooth & confident! Your ellipses aren't really uniform unfortunately, ghosting more, focusing on a somewhat circular motion with your shoulder, could help. Besides that, you'll just have to practice this a little more, possibly just focusing on one degree at the time (so start off with a page filled with only 15 degree ellipses for example).

Ellipses in planes: difficult exercise, but you've done pretty well. Your ellipses still look smooth, I guess the feedback of the previous exercise applies here as well. Once you've gotten that down, it'll be time to start gunning for touching the 4 sides of the plane!

Funnels: you've done a great job fitting the ellipses snugly between the edges of the funnels :). In general you've kept your ellipses fairly perpendicular to the funnel's minor axis :]. Next time pay special attention in keeping the minor axis line exactly in between the edges of the funnel, especially the upperleft horizontal funnel suffers because of this. Besides this, previous feedback applies.

Boxes

Plotted perspective: Greatly done, you know how to rule(r)! It'd be cool to have your boxes interact/overlap a little bit and only do hatching on the visible parts when they overlap to further increase your understanding of 3D space :)

Rough perspective: Noicely done, I do see your lines curve a lot more than in the lines exercises. This is perfectly fine, and also something that will most likely see improvement as you draw a bunch (250) boxes. Good job keeping your horizontal lines fairly horizontal and your vertical lines quite vertical, that's not an easy thing to do so early on in this course!

Rotated boxes: Amazing job! You've gotten a great deal of rotation, even the boxes in the corners (the hardest ones in this exercise) look quite readable. Your lines are also starting to look much straighter than before, good job on your ghosting in general =]

Organic perspective: Great job! I see a big scale difference, no extreme foreshortening with small boxes etc. Do keep in mind that you're not supposed to go over a line multiple times, unless you're applying lineweight. In case of lineweight: apply only on the silhouette of an object, and on an overlap when multiple objects interact (which will be useful from lesson 2 onwards).

All in all, noicely done! I hope you're still willing to continue on with this course (if so, I'd heavily recommend critiquing other people's work, it allows you to learn as well). If not, I still wish you the best of luck in your art journey!

Hi, first of all: congratulations on finishing this challenge! You've done great!

There are multiple ways of going about drawing boxes, the y-method is just the one that gets used and explained in this course.

Do keep in mind that the angle between each line of the 'y' should be greater than 90 degrees, nr 25 is a great example of how not to do it. Beyond that I see that you're definitely experimenting with the lengths of each dimension, as well as the angle between each dimension (which, as long as it's > 90 degrees, is good), noice!

In the beginning your lines were curving quite often, which is understandable. I see a lot of improvement as the challenge goes on. Around the 170 mark, I already saw barely any curves so nice job. Every once in a while a curving line still happens (e.g. 180 bottom 'horizontal' line), but consider this challenge a way to improve your marksmanship. Your lines were never going to be absolutely perfect after drawing 250 boxes, but there is a great deal of improvement, and that's what counts.

Convergences: their accuracy steadily increase, meaning you've improved your spatial reasoning as the challenge went on. It's perfectly fine to create a perfect box every single time after this challenge, what matters is that you've gotten considerably better, and that you hung in there.

It was advised to stick to 5-6 boxes per page, you've done 8 lots of times. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but if you were to do this challenge again in the future (e.g. you feel like your marksman skills are getting rusty) I'd try to really stick to the 5-6 recommendation. It gives you more space per box =]

All in all: good job, you're ready for lesson 2!