Hello, I’m Kavel, and I’ll be handling your Lesson 1 critique today. Congratulations on finishing Lesson 1!

Superimposed Lines

To start, your superimposed lines are looking pretty good. Your shorter lines are very confident and have no fraying at the start and minimal fraying at the ends.

Your longer lines, especially on your first page, seem to get pretty wobbly near the center. This is completely fine and can be minimized by speed and confidence. Speed requires us to focus less on landing on a specific mark and, instead, going in a direction without altering course. When we slow down, we tend to wobble as to overcompensate for accuracy. Confidence is improved by ghosting and experience, which you’ll get with the 250 box challenge :). Your curved lines are pretty decent, but could benefit from having more passes and being longer.

Recommendations: Try to do some longer straight lines during your warmups, attempting to minimize wobbling. For curves, attempt to increase the length, curvature, and number of passes.

Ghosted Lines

Next, let's talk about your ghosted lines. Good work! There is minimal wobbling, and most are level 2 or level 3. A very small number of these lines curve at the end to reach the end of the dot, but it is so rare that I think you’ve broken that habit.

Ghosted Planes

Next, ghosted planes! Once again, pretty good stuff! Your longer lines (either on the diagonals or just the generally larger planes) do sometimes bow or wobble near the end, as either to compensate for inaccuracy or a byproduct of your arm’s circular motion. Following, many of your planes were very orthodox and rectangular, feel free to experiment with sharper/more exotic planes in the future!

Recommendations: Make planes with more awkward angles. When drawing the longer lines of planes, do not slow down near the end to compensate for accuracy.

Tables of Ellipses

Ellipses time! This assignment catches many off guard, but it looks like you got the hang of it pretty quickly. Most of your ellipses have at least two full passes, but I can see a few that have only had 1-1.5. In the future, make sure you’re a bit more generous with these, despite how intimidating it can be.

Your smaller ellipses demonstrate that, beyond physical skills, your understanding of ellipses is pretty solid. Most of the remaining skills will come with practice. Many of these ellipses are near the 45-degree mark, so I’d recommend experimenting with some larger degrees in the 60-90 range.

Recommendations: Try more ellipses with smaller and larger degrees beyond 45. Emphasize doing 2-3 passes, but what you’ve done here is pretty fine.

Ellipses in Planes

Next, ellipses in planes. This one is a bit tougher due to the expectation of touching the tangents of the ellipse. Generally, you have done a great job at gracefully touching the sides of the planes with your ellipses, however, this has come at the cost of some wobblier ellipses in your earlier page, but was largely fixed in the second.

Given that your planes were pretty rectangular/square-like, many of your ellipses have a very large degree. In the future, try to experiment with polanes that have more awkward angles.

Recommendations: Make less rectangular (more chaotic/sharp) planes to vary the degree of your ellipses.

Funnels

Next, the funnels assignment. Good work! All of your ellipses fit snugly in the funnel and show a good deal of control. Some ellipses do not have a fully two full passes, so make sure you finish 2-3 of them. Following, while not strictly necessary, try to use variations in the degrees of your ellipses, as many of these range around the 45-degree mark.

The most pressing thing to note about your funnels is the alignment of the minor axis. When you drew the lines representing the sides of the funnels, they were not completely even. As seen in this image, your funnels are not evenly spaced about the minor axis (as highlighted in green). The minor axis of your ellipses (in blue) is pretty darn parallel with it, which is good, but they’re off the mark because of the funnels and human error.

Recommendations: For warmups, ensure the funnels are evenly spaced about the minor axis, and attempt to vary the degrees of the ellipses a little more.

Plotted Perspective

Next, plotted perspective. You’ve used a ruler, been pretty accurate with the VPs, and everything is pretty coherent. Some of your vertical lines aren’t completely perpendicular to the horizon line, so I’ve highlighted a couple in this image. It looks like these decreased as you went along, so just always make sure your ruler forms a pretty 90 angle with the horizon line. You can also use the top/bottom of the page or the frames to help find it.

Recommendation: Continue ensuring the vertical lines are perpendicular to the horizon line.

Rough Perspective

Onto rough perspective, this one is humbling. You’ve done a great job drawing through on your passes. You’re pretty accurate all things considered, and the only times you frequently miss the VP are for shallower/flatter planes, or on boxes that are far away from the VP/horizon line.

Recommendation: Attempt to draw boxes that have top/bottom planes that are relatively flat/do not experience much foreshortening (as they’re closer to the horizon line). Put the VP away from the center and try to draw boxes further away from the VP.

Rotated Boxes

Next, rotated boxes. You really destroyed this one (in a good way), this is a very difficult assignment but you’ve nailed practically everything necessary. My only comment is about the boxes on the edges- they’ve become less square and more rectangular.In this image, you can see how they’ve become cereal-box shaped. This can be fixed by foreshortening one of the edges to make that axis deeper/longer, creating an actual square-esque box.

Recommendations: I’m not mean enough to assume you’d do this assignment for a warmup, but when rotating boxes, make sure to account for foreshortening.

Organic Perspective

Finally, organic perspective. It seems you’ve continued to use the ghosting method, but sometimes your lines come out a little wobbly. Make sure to keep practicing it, as it’ll give you some super cool arm muscles to impress all the other Drawaboxers (and your lines will be pretty cool, too). While arduous and not required, I do personally recommend ghosting more on the hatching. It gives you a good opportunity to improve these skills.

While the angle of these boxes does vary, in the future, let's try to experiment with some more dynamic foreshortening. As boxes get further away on this line, try to draw them getting gradually smaller and smaller, as many of them remain the same size. Following, don’t be afraid to push their VPs closer, as many have relatively shallow foreshortening.

Recommendation: Experiment by pushing foreshortening- move VPs closer and, as boxes get further away, attempt to draw them decreasing in size.

To conclude, you have some pretty solid work and only some minor recommendations for improvement. I’ll be marking this as complete, congratulations on successfully completing Lesson 1! While you are not on the official track, I recommend going to the 250 Box Challenge before beginning Lesson 2. Best of luck!