MechaCatfish

Hi Orange. Thanks for your critique, and I'm sorry for the delayed response. I figured it was better to wait until I'd completed the supplemental assignments, and I'm a pretty slow worker.

You can find the new work at the same Google Drive link as the original submission under the names Scan 56-83.

I think my linework is somewhat improved, though still far from perfect. Drawing shorter lines accurately from the shoulder is quite a challenge. I am very confident, though, that I have at least followed the instructions for the constructed cylinders this time. (I wound up taking an extended break during my first attempt, and it looks like I forgot some of what I was supposed to be doing when I came back to it.)

Let me know what you think.

Hu Yuyusai, welcome back. Let's get right into the critique.

Lines

It looks like you've really retained the basic principles of markmaking; your lines are all smooth and confident, without any noticeable arcing, and you're consistently ghosting them out. No notes. Thanks for making my job so easy.

Ellipses

These are definitely harder than the lines, so I'm not surprised to see more errors here, but they are very minor, and you are still following all the basic principles. For example, your lines are smooth and confident, and you are ddrawing through each ellipse twice just as instructed. There are a few places where your ellipses are overlapping or not quite sitting flush with the frames, but I can see improvement in that as you go along, so you are clearly getting the hang of it. The minor axes on your Funnels cut the ellipses in half about as neatly as anyone can expect while working freehand. The one point for improvment there is that it would be nice to see the overall angle of the ellipses increasing so they're more circular as they get further from the viewer. Overall, though, this was sterling work.

Boxes

Again excellent across the board; your linework is consistently good and you have clearly understood and followed the instructions for each exercise. You even performed very well on the Rotated Boxes exercise, which gives a lot of people trouble. Some of the linework in yoru first Organic Perspective exercise is a little rougher than elsewhere, but you visibly improved as you went along. Even the overall perspective work on the boxes is quite good. Again, it seems like you already have the basic principles behind all this fully internalised, so I have no meaningful criticisms to make.

You don't need top resubmit anything, but it might be worth incorporating some of these drills into your regular warmups, or paying extra attention to linework principles while you work on the 250 Box Challenge. You'll have no shortage of lines to draw on this course, so you should use them as a chance to drill the principles of markmaking into yourself; it's easier to form good habits than to break bad ones.

Hi Moonyoung. Welcome aboard, and congratulations on getting this far. I'm going to divide up this critique in the same way as the lesson, so let's get right into it.

Lines

I'm seeing a fair amount of wobble in your linework in general, especially in the first couple of exercises. The good news is that this means you are already starting to overcome this. The bad news is, it means you still need to take the core principles of markmaking to heart. For now, even though it might be quite time consuming, focus on ghosting out your lines as many times as it takes for you to comfortably make a quick, smooth motion along the right trajectory. When the time comes to actually draw. Confidet strokes are better than accurate ones for now, and accuracy will come with time. The starting points of your Superimposed Lines are also a little frayed, which we want to avoid (after all, the starting point is the one part of the line you really can take time over). On the other hand, I'm not seeing a lot of arcing in your lines, which is a good sign, and you have clearly performed the exercises as instructed. While you might benefit from more practice over time, you did fine in this section overall.

Ellipses

You are drawing through your ellipses twice, which is good. Again, I see signs of insufficient ghosting in the shape of a fair few of these, and many of the ellipses in your Ellipses in Boxes overlap one another, or the boundaries of the frame. This latter problem is an issue of accuracy, but still speaks to a lack of time spent before putting pen to paper. Your Funnels look quite good, though it might be nice to see a little more differentiation in the angles of the ellipses from centre to side, and they could be positioned a little better relative to the minor axis. Remember it should cut them neatly in half. I know this just reads like a series of flaws, but atteding to those is how we improve. You have again completed the exercises correctly and show clear growth as you go on.

Boxes

First of all, I can see that you are properly drawing through your boxes everywhere you were instructed to do so. Good work. You also applied the line correction method properly in your Rough Perspective exercise. I can see where you've gone wrong on your Rotated Boxes; it's important to keep the corresponding corners close to those of the adjacent boxes. Don't be afraid to draw 'behind' things you've already drawn, in just the same way as you draw 'inside' boxes when you draw through them. These exercises are to help you begin to understand how forms relate to each other in 3D space, so it's common for the drawings to get very busy, and this is nothing to worry about. You also have some sides not slanting 'away' from the viewer as they rotate away from them as seen in this image: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/d73eea49.jpg). This is something to bear in mind in the future. Your grip on perspective overall is not quite there yet, but fine for this stage. I can also see that you've opted to add some line weight to show lines at the front, which is good, but the same points about line confidence I madde earlier apply here. Overall good work again.

Hi FlamingCheeto. Good job making it this far. I'm going to split this critique up by task, so let's launch right into it.

Organic Arrows

Unfortunatelty, it looks like you haven't been applyin everything you learned in lesson 1, as quite a few of these lines show the wobble that occurs when lines are drawn without confidence. Remember that the ghosting techniques you learned in lesson 1 are to be applied to every line you draw for exercises. This takes time, but I promise your patience will produce results. The compression of your arrows is less consistent than I would like as well; sometimes it's very clear and the illusion of 3D space is created well, bat at other times it's very hard to make sense of your arrows as 3D objects. This isn't helped by the fact that your shadow crosshatching isn't always on the right side to show how the parts of the arrow overlap (though this does improve as you go on). The core skills are in place in this exercise, but your work could be improved a lot with a little more care.

Orangic Forms with Contour Lines

Some of the same issues as before are present here; many of your contour lines show the same symptoms as on your arrows, with a certain amount of wobble that tells me you could be ghosting them much more carefully. On the other hand, you have drawn through all of your ellipses twice, which is good. The positioning and angle of the contours also give a good sense of how the object works in 3D space with only a couple of minor mistakes. I do notice that you haven't stuck to the simple, consistent organic shape the exercise calls for, which seems to have caused you some trouble. You also haven't 'hooked' the contour lines on your second page (see https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/77f2ca1c.jpg for an illustration of the problem here). Again, you seem to be grasping the basic principles behind the exercise, but not taking the time to reflect them properly in your work.

Texture Analysis

Your transitions from light to dark are decently smooth, though the areas of total black and white stand out a bit more than they ought to. Your marks do, however, feel quite deliberate in just the way that we want to see in this exercise. The pockmarks in the second example felt a little less deliberate, and more intentional spacing and shaping there could have helped sell the transition, but overall this was satisfactory.

Dissections

First of all, you were quite consistent about wrapping the textures around the form. This is really good, and one of the key things to take away from this exercise. You also broke the silhouette to help sell some of your textures. Again, really good, though I would have liked to see a little more of it in places. Ice cream, for example, is rarely flat enough to be as smooth as it appears on your first page. There were also a couple of minor issues with 3D perspective (should we be abke to see the tomato? and is the cap at the bottom of the same form in front of or behind the ice cream?) but this is looking fairly good overall.

Form Intersections

Unfortunately, I'm seeing a lot of basic line issues here. Some are quite confident, but many show wobble or signs of redrawing. Remember, put confidence before accuracy. Accuracy will come with time but confidence can only come with purposeful movement and proper ghosting. It's also easier to sell the idea that these objects all exist in the same space if you stick to roughly equilateral shapes with fairly shallow foreshortening, as this is easier to keep consistent. The actual intersections are clear enough in some places, and less so in others, but certainly not at a level I would consider a problem at this stage.

Organic Intersections

Ah, the big ol' stack of weenies. This is an exercise that you seem to have become more comfortable with as you did it, and I want to praise the clear wau your shadows wrapped around the 3D forms. Regrettably, it wasn't always clear exactly what was casting those shadows, especially on your first attempt, and there were places on the second where a shadow seemed appropriate but was mysteriously absent. Your forms are nice and stable-looking, and they have a certain amount of weight to them. Again, a more consistent thickness for a nice, simple shape would have helped you (I'm looking at you, top right/centre sausage on page 2) but a decent attempt overall.

Hi there. Welcome to Drawabox. I'll be breaking the critique down section by section, so let's get right to it.

Lines

Your Superimposed lines show some common errors. The biggest of these is wobble. It's not too severe, but noticeable enough. I do note, however, that this is less prevalent in the arcing lines you drew, and mostly ironed out by the time you get to the Ghosted Lines and Ghosted Planes exercises, so good work there. There is also a little more fraying at the origins of your Superimposed lines than the ideal. Remember that, while we're prioritising confident strokes, the starting point of a line is the one place you can take time and be sure of full control, so bear that in mind. Again though, I see improvement as the exercises go on, so good work, and keep at it!

Ellipses

You seem to be very comfortable with curved lines, as the linework on your ellipses shows a lot of confidence. You are properly drawing each one twice through, and they all fit fairly snugly in your tables with little to no overlsp. Good stuff! There are one or two spots in your Ellipses in Planes and Funnels exercises where you lose consistency and confidence though, so these might be good exercises to work into your warmups or regular practice until you feel more comfortable with them. Some of the minor axes in your Funnels exercise are a little off-centre, meaning that they don't cut each ellipse into two symmetrical halves like they should, though the majority are fine. For this issue, I can only recommend taking your time to plot your lines when that kind of precision is required. (Confidence is still key, and it doesn;t need to be perfect, but it the halves should at least look symmetrical at a glance.)

Boxes

Your lines are still fairly confident here, though not always exactly in proportion, especially on the Organic Perspective exercise. Again, it's okay to take all the time you need to plot your lines carefully, and this should help push your results to the next level of quality. You are properly drawing through your boxes, and on the Rough Perspective exercise you have done a satisfactory job keeping the lines either parellel or perpendicular to the horizon line. The prespective is not bad for this stage, and hopefully using the line correction method has given you more of a sense for this, which will help you in future exercises. It would have been nice to see some crosshatching on the appropriate faces in the Rough Perspective and Rotated Boxes exercises, but this is not required. I can see that you tried to give some lines extra weight by going over them again, which is good, but again I'd recommend taking more time to plot those lines as they aren't overlapping enough to create the sense of space you're going for. I's also like to congratulate you on applying fairly consistent rotation to your Rotated Boxes; this is hard and many people struggle on their first attempt.

Hi, Beckerito. Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed critique, and sorry it's taken me this long to reply.

I've done the extra drawings requested (you can find them here labelled as Scans 18-22. I tried to build out the forms more organically in line with what was shown in the demo you recommended, though I'm still finding that my proportions often come out a little skewed, though I think I'm getting a little better in that regard.

Let me know what you think of the new drawings.

Thanks again!

Hi Wyvernall, and welcome aboard. Good job reaching the end of Lesson 1 and working up the courage to submit your work for critique. It sucks to have your mistakes pointed out, but it's also necessary for growth. Since the lesson comes in three parts, I'll deliver my critique in the same way.

Lines

Your Ghosted Lines are looking pretty good; your linework is fairly confident and I'm not seeing much fraying at the starting point, so you're clearly taking care as well. There's a little bit of wobble in the lines but you'll iron that out with practice (and based on your later work, this is already coming along nicely). Your Plotted Lines and your Ghosted Planes are looking good, with lines that are both smooth and accurate, and no sign of repeated lines.

Ellipses

Your Ellipses in Boxes are quite good as well. Your linework is very smooth and, while there are places here and there where your ellipses overal or spill out of their boxes, you've clealry grasped the basic principles and should be able to eliminate these minor flaws with practice. You're also drawing through all of them two or three times, which is exactly what we want to see. (Twice is best, so doing that consistently is a more advanced goal to work towards.) All the same stuff applies to your Ellipses in Planes and your Funnels, though for the latter I would add that a more pronounced movement from wide to narrow ellipses would be good, so this exercise might be one to practice in your own time. Remember also that the minor axis should cut each ellipse neatly in half (you've done this well here but it could be perfect with a small adjustment, so it's really something to bear in mind if you take another stab at this exercise).

Boxes

Your Plotted Perspective is okay, though it might have been nice to see the hatching lines on the latter two frames as well. I also notice that your correction lines don't converge as neatly as they might, so it's not 100% clear where your vanishing points are. It's important to take your time over every line, even when working with a ruler. Your Rough Perspective excercise is quite competent; I'm seeing more of that nice, smooth linework and you've done fairly well keeping all the sides of your boxes parallel/perpendicular to the horizon. Your Rotated Boxes don't show quite the same level of care in that regard, and there are some repeated lines (although if these are supposed to show depth that's fine, but the addition of some hatching on the faces that aren't pointed directly at the viewer might help more) but you've done well tackling the core challenge of the exercise. None of your boxes are rotated wrongly and you've kept the spacing nice and tight as instructed. Lastly, your Organic Perspective is looking pretty good; you've plotted your lines and drawn them carefully, and your perspective is where we would expect it to be at this stage. You could add a sense of depth by thickening the lines where one box is in front of another, but this is still very good overall.

All in all this is a good effort with no major misteps, so well done.

Hi Nobody. Welcome to Drawabox, and congratulations on completing the first lesson. Since the Lesson is split into three parts, I'll deliver my critique in the same way, starting with...

Lines

I'm seeing a little bit of wobbling and arcing in your early Superimposed Lines, but these both improve as you go along, and by the time you get to your ghosted planes the lines are looking a lot more confident. I still see the tiniest bit of arcing here and there, so if you notice this happening in future work try aiming for a line that curves in the opposite direction to cancel it out, but overall this is very good. What's less encouraging is that there's some fraying at both ends of your Superimposed Lines, and this actually worsens over time. Our focus is on confidence over accuracy, but the starting point of a line is something you have full control over, so we really shoulding see fraying at those ends. Still, you performed very well in this section overall; you have been properly plotting your lines out and drawing through mistakes rather than trying to redo things, so you're applying the approach as instructed, and there is definite improvement as you go.

Ellipses

Your ellipses are nice and smooth, which means you're drawing with confidence, and that's very good. It would have been good to see less overlap between ellipses and ellipses spilling out of their boxes in the Tables of Ellipses, but this too shows some improvement over time (though not so strongly as your overall line quality has). Dilligent practice is the only solution here; use these exercises to warm up and you'll develop the right kind of control over time. Your Funnels have room for a little bit of improvement in how exactly the minor axes bisect the ellipses and how clear the change from wide to narrow ellipses is, but these are minor refinements and the overall quality is quite high.

Boxes

You've followed the instructions properly on your Plotted Perspective exercise and produced good work. Your Rough Perspective is looking okay but the line quality isn't as good as you've produced elsewhere. Remember to fully ghost out every mark even on longer exercises. It would also help to take a little more care over placing the corners of each box; remember each side should be either parallel or perpendicular to the horizon line. You have made proper use of the correction method, though, so good work there. Your Rotated Boxes are looking good, though some of what I've already said about line quality applies, and it would have been nice to see some hatching lines on the sides that are visible but not directly facing the viewer, just for a touch more visual clarity. There is also just obe face that hasn't rotated properly (in the top left corner) but the fact that it's just one on an exercise that is intentionally challenging is actually quite encouraging. Lastly, you Organic Perspective exercise is looking fairly good as well. Adding some extra line weight with ghosted lines where boxes overlap to make the front one pop out a bit more would have been good, but the core skills are one display, you have avoided any dramatic forshortening, and your perspective is quite good for this stage (though you'll learn more about how to improve it as the lessons go on.)

Overall this is all looking quite satisfactory, and as long as you keep up your practice you should see your results steadily improve. I think you're ready for the next step/

Hi Solonegociosserio. Thanks for the thoughtful critique.

The demos were very helpful, and I think I can already see how to bring more three-dimensionality to the forms I add onto the basic construction.