Now_Its_Orange

First of all, nice job actually follwing through and improving your skill. These are a big improvement, The main thing I was worried about was your line confidence, and it seems to have gotten a bit better although it could still be improved. Also, I told you that the transition from your light to dark textures could be smoother in the texture analysis exercise, they are an improvement but I can still distincly see where the line of dark ends and starts.

Other then that, Nice work, and make sure to do the 250 box challenge if you still havent.

These are a big improvement from youe last submisson, it looks like you have pretty good sense of perspective after all this work. The line checking method is correct this time, so nice job there.

You lines are looking significanty better, although I agree with you and think that aren't quite perfect yet. They could be much straighter. You won't get to practice drawing straight lines in the next couple lessons, because they require rulers for their assignments. Because of this, I reccomend that you keep up with your freehand line practice while you are working through the lesson six and seven material. You should be doing about 15 minutes of warmup exercieses before starting each lesson anyway.

If you having trouble drawing from the shoulder, just keep practicing it and eventually it will get easier, like working out a weak muscle. Eventually you won't even think about it, it should just become automatic whenever you draw a line.

Drawing straight lines is very fundamental to all forms of drawing, and its one of the core tenants of drawabox so its imporant to get it right.

For now, move on to lesson 6!

Hi again, happy to help out. These latest revisions are a great improvement, you did everything I told you too very well! Nice work.

Move on to lesson 6!

Thanks for the critique, its very helpful and I will do my best to improve my texture and make sure to stop using outlines and form shadows.

Thanks again!

Oh, I didn't know that they even made colored fineliners. You don't need to get a black one then, the colored one will do just fine, especally if you already got the go ahead from uncomfortable (although you can get a black one if you want.)

Happy to help!

Hi Niels, I will be offering some critique for you today.

First off, to me it looks like your did all of these boxes using a ballpoint pen because they look blue. If you did do it in ballpoint pen, now would be the time to get some of the appropriate draw a box pens: https://drawabox.com/recommendations/

As for the actual boxes, you did pretty good here! I can see that you are getting a feel for the way the boxes are constructed in 3d space and as time goes on, less and less drastic mistakes occur. There are a couple things to look out for though. There are some cases where the lines of your boxes do not converge, and instead they stay parallel (14, 24, 33, 42, 49, 50, 68, 81, 85 and more). This happens often enough to be a pretty big problem. When the lines don’t converge, it undermines the point of the exercise, which is to gain an understanding for how boxes operate in perspective and to understand the relationships between converging lines. Do not repeat this in future exercieses and Re read this section of the exercise: https://drawabox.com/recommendations/

Next, lets talk about your hatching lines. They are not bad, but they could be much cleaner. Remember that every single line you draw in drawabox needs to be planned, ghosted, and executed with the same amount of care as every other. Do your best to make every line, even the hatching lines as clean and well executed as possible and never rush it. It is okay for the hatching line to fray (go off its intended target) on one end, but it should not go off target on the other end because you will always have complete control of where you start the line. Just like in the lesson one ghosted lines, you start your line in one spot so it can only fray on one end.

In a few boxes, you tried to redraw some lines (namely boxes 21, 23, 27, 29), which is something you should never do. Instead of redrawing lines, you should just move on with the exercise and seek to not make the mistake in the future. You did not do this very often, so It seems you already understand to not redraw lines. I just thought I would point it out to you just in case.

Other then that, you did this exercise very well! Nice job, I know that it take a lot of dedication and patience. You are ready to take on lesson 2, have fun!

Hi 4kthom, I will be critiquing your post today.

Lets start with your cylinders constructed around a minor axis, and I have to say, nice job. I can’t see anything wrong with these. I appreciate how you drew them in a variety of angles, even having some where the ellipses overlap, which is not something everybody remembers. The forshortening is correct on these with the further ellipse being wider in the vast majority of the cylinders. The only thing I might recommend in the future is to practice some cylinders that have very drastic forshortening, where the lines converse much more then any of the cylinders you have drawn in this exercise. You could push the perspective much more for practice, but overall the variety you present here is sufficient.

As for the cylinders constructed in boxes, you also did amazingly here! I have no complaints (except for the fact that the blue pen you use for error checking in a little hard to see- maybe use a darker one?). You seem to have a very good grasp of perspective, and your lines look like they are pretty much spot on to the vanishing point a good amount of the time.

Overall, very good work! Now get working on lesson 6!

Hi VerdanChanger, I will be offering up some critique for your submission.

Lets start with your cylinders constructed around a minor axis. They are pretty well executed, my one concern is that you don’t vary the foreshortening on the cylinders very much. You either have very, very subtle line convergence to the point where it looks like they are perfectly parallel (which should be avoided) or a small to medium degree of convergence. I would like to see some cylinders that converge more drastically, and especially some ones where the ellipses of the cylinder are much closer together and even overlapping each other, sort of like in this image:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/365180330103013388/981605040991109120/Untitled.jpg

Also, I want to point out that the degree shift on most of your cylinders is incorrect. The side of the cylinder that is further away from you will always have a wider degree then the one that is closer. For most of your cylinders, you did the opposite. This is pretty important for you to get correct, so make sure you understand it:

https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders/1/degree

Lastly, let’s talk about your cylinders constructed in boxes. The cylinders in boxes are for the most part well executed and you seem to have a decently good understanding of perspective, your lines converge pretty well. You forgot a couple important lines in the error checking stage of you cylinders, though. In every cylinder, you forgot to extend the sides of the cylinder into the distance, and you sometimes forgot to extend the minor axis that runs through the direct center of the box into the distance as well.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders/1/stage2check

Unfortunately, this undermines the purpose of the entire error analysis, and thus the exercise as a whole. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

If however you neglect, one, two, or half of the lines that we're extending, then you leave places for those errors to hide and go unnoticed. Thus, the growth and improvement we seek to gain in the assigned work, specifically in honing our estimation of those proportions, is limited at best.

Don’t worry to much, this is a common issue that even I fell victim too when doing the challenge and I have seen other students do the same. Try your best to carefully read the instructions and make sure you are following every step in the future to avoid problems like this, especially for challenges that are so repetitive.

Because of these concerns, I am going to ask for some revisions. Start with 30 cylinders constructed around a minor axis, with much more variety in your forshortening and perspective in each one, and that the degree shift on the further ellipse is correct. Then, do 40 cylinders constructed in boxes, while taking extra care to make sure you apply every error checking line required.

Hi Mechacatfish, I will be offering some critique for you today.

First off, my major concern is with your line quality, especially in the ellipses constructed around a minor axis. Alot of these lines have a significant amount of wobble and shakiness to them. Every single line you draw in drawabox should be drawn using your shoulder, and the ghosting method. Draw quickly and confidently to make sure it always is straight.

Maybe you never completely grasped how to make straight and confident lines in the first place, or maybe you simply forgot after doing lesson one so long ago, but line confidence is very important. I would recommend re-doing the lesson one material until you straighten those lines out.

Aside from the line quality issue, your ellipses are well executed. You understand how to constructed them well and have a good sense for how they work in 3d space. There is one problem in the error checking method for the ellipses constructed in boxes, though.

In cylinders 167 and onward you forgot to draw the lines at the contact points where the ellipse touches the sides of its enclosing plane that extends towards its vanishing points. These lines serve the purpose of helping students understand how to better create circles that exist accurately in 3d space, and by forgetting them, it undermines the work you've done and the point of the exercise. Without the proper error checking methods, any errors you make in constructing the circles go unnoticed, and it limits the amount of improvement you can make in the exercise.

Because of these concerns I am going to request that you firstly review lesson 1, while taking special care to create confident, smooth lines in every drawing and . After that, I am going to ask for 70 more cylinders constructed in boxes, with all error checking lines included.

Hi, Hopefully I can offer some helpful critique today.

Lets start with your ellipses constructed around an arbitrary minor axis. First of all, many of your ellipses are constructed with a vanishing point that goes into infinity, with both sides of the ellipse being perfectly parallel on the page. Sometimes the lines even diverge, getting further apart. The purpose for this exercise is to understand how foreshorting works through practice so failing to apply forshortening undermines the work you did. For more info, re-read this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders/1/reminders

The other main issue is that you often forget to increase the degree in the ellipse that is further away from the viewer. In many of your ellipses the further ellipse has a degree shift that is much shorter then the closer ellipse. This is a big issue, and breaks the illusion of depth on the page.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders/1/degree

You really like to jam in as many ellipses as humanly possible on one page. By placing too many ellipses on a page, you are limiting your brains capacity for spacial reasoning as you have to contend with a limited space for you to draw the next cylinder In. I personally would aim for 3-6 cylinders per page at most. Only when one drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it. This is also a huge issue with your ellipses constructed in boxes as well, as those pages are so dense with cylinders it is hard to imagine you not limiting your capacity for spacial reasoning.

The other point about your ellipses with minor axis was that you extended the sides of each cylinder using the perspective checking method. This was not required in the exercise, and I am not sure why you did this. Maybe you thought it would help you improve the accuracy of the cylinders or maybe you misread the instructions. Whatever it was, I don’t think it was a huge issue at the end of the day, but don't continue to do that in the future. Instead, stick to the two minor axis lines for the corrections, like outlined in the instructions of the challenge.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/250cylinders/1/stage1check

Now lets move on to the ellipses constructed in boxes. The boxes themselves are a big improvement compared to the mistakes in the minor axis cylinders, however, there is one big oversight you made and it has to do with the error checking method.

You only extended the lines of the cylinders on one axis, while forgot to also extend the lines of the rest of the box, and the contact points where the ellipses touch the enclosing planes into their vanishing points. Unfortunately, this undermines the purpose of the entire error analysis, and thus the exercise as a whole. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

If however you neglect, one, two, or half of the lines that we're extending, then you leave places for those errors to hide and go unnoticed. Thus, the growth and improvement we seek to gain in the assigned work, specifically in honing our estimation of those proportions, is limited at best.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason - and that may be something for you to reflect upon and identify - you did not follow the instructions here as closely and as carefully as you should have. I would guess that given the repetitive nature of the challenge, you may not have gone back to review the instructions, to make sure you were applying everything correctly, and may have gone into auto-pilot as a result of the monotony. Even I've done it while I was doing the challenge.

Because of these concerns I have, I am going to request a revision of 100 cylinders total, 50 constructed on a minor axis and 50 constructed in boxes. Make sure to apply all the criticism I have offered here, making sure your lines converge every time, making sure the further cylinder has a larger degree shift, only drawing 3 cylinders per page, and making sure to apply the error checking method as thoroughly as possible. Once you do these correctly, you should be ready to move on. Also, make sure to thoroughly re-read the challenge instructions at least one time and maybe a couple more during the challenge to make sure you don’t miss anything and go on auto mode again.