Rivgar

Hi Xanxan, congrats on finishing the first lesson !

For transparency's sake, this is my very first critique, so I'll be relying heavily on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ

With that out of the way, let's get started :) As is advised in the guide, I'll be dividing my critique in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes.

1. Lines section

First off, I'm seeing some fraying on both ends in your superimposed lines exercise. Fraying on one end is completely ok, but take care to carefully put down your pen exactly at the starting point of the line before drawing it.

For the ghosted lines exercise, I feel like you could have filled out the page a bit more, however I do see dots on the page, which indicates that you planned out your lines correctly before executing them, so that's good ! It doesn't seem however that you did the same every time for the superimposed planes exercise, particularly when drawing the diagonal and middle lines, so please remember to place a starting and ending dot for each line that you draw. Starting a line with a starting and ending dot is important for applying the ghosting method, and this should not be skipped.

It also seems like you went over some of your marks in several exercises, which I totally get because it's tempting, but please avoid doing that in future homework. Draw each line with confidence and never try to repeat it, no matter how off it is (also feel free to correct me if I'm making the wrong assessment here, it's a bit hard to see things clearly in the pictures sometimes).

Some of your lines are a bit wobbly, especially in the exercises involving boxes, where you seem more focused on drawing accurately. Please keep in mind that you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy: a confident but inaccurate line will always be more correct than an accurate but wobbly one, and your accuracy will get better with time.

2. Ellipses section

I see that you are drawing through your ellipses every time, so that's good ! I can see an effort on fitting your ellipses snugly next to each other and within the bounds in your ellipse table, even if you're not always succeeding. I'm seeing nice shapes in the ellipse tables, but in the ellipses in planes exercise they tend to be too close to uneven circles and do not fit in the whole planes. When you practice them in your warm ups in the future, focus on drawing your ellipses from the shoulder and making them fit snugly against the corners of the plane, without being afraid of ending up with more elongated shapes. I'd also advise focusing on the diagonals and fitting the ellipse between two opposite corners instead of centering the ellipse in the middle of the plane.

In the ellipses in funnels exercise, you seem afraid to extend your ellipses all the way to the end of the curve/line on the sides, so as in the other exercises focus on fitting them snugly against the bounds in the future, and don't be afraid to draw bigger shapes from your shoulder. Lastly, take your time to ghost your ellipse and ensure that it is aligned to the minor axis cutting it in half before putting down your pen.

Boxes section

You drew through all of your boxes in the exercises where it was requested. In the rough perspective exercise, you kept your width lines parallel to horizon and height lines perpendicular to it in the most part, so good job on that ! Keep it in mind for the future. You also kept your corners close in the rotated boxes exercise and you have a fairly good amount of rotation in my opinion, even if the outer ones could be rotating more. I think you did a good job on the organic perspective exercise, even if you could have maybe emphasized the changes in size a bit more; don't be afraid to have your boxes overlap !

General comments

As is said in the instructions, you should refrain from doodling on your homework pages. You're explicitly encouraged to draw for fun parallel to following the Drawabox course, but it has to be on its own time and shouldn't distract from the exercises. I'm also seeing some self-critique in the form of little smiley or sad faces when you feel like you did something right or wrong, or written commentary, which I'm interpreting in the following way: you are aware of some of your mistakes and are trying to show that awareness in your submission. It's a totally understandable impulse, as submitting one's work for critique can make one feel very vulnerable, but please also avoid pre-commenting your homework in the future. There's no shame in making mistakes, and you need to let go of the fear of making them (and having others see them) in order to progress :)

It's not helpful to think in terms of how long will it take. Everything about it can be so varied and arbitrary. What you need to do is trust the process and be happy when you have one of those moments where you notice there has been a significant positive change in your ability. These may happen after a few days, a month or two or even a year of diligent practice.

As far as doing it right, the best way is to go the official critique route. You probably can tell if some things are right by yourself but nothing beats feedback from an expert.

It appears Rivgar has already given you a critique righ after I have finished mine, I'll post it anyway in case you are interested in reading it, lucky, you get two instead of one! :p

I also noticed that there is some conflicting information between both, so take at heart the critique that you believe has the issues covered. Specifically, the funnels exercise, I do not think the issue with the minor axis is truly present, as I do believe you did managed to, although imperfectly, align them. But again, up to you on this one. Take care and good luck on the box challenge!

{Start of critique}

Congratulations on getting through lesson 1. I will be the one reviewing your work today and provide some feedback on each individual exercise.

Your lines exercises show that you are getting comfortable with the ghosting method and are utilizing your whole arm to draw your marks. Using your whole arm will yield smoother, more consistent line-work by relying on muscle memory alone. Your superimposed lines exercise shows a good start of this, with most of your lines being kept mostly continuous and drawn confidently without much wobbling. There is a clear starting point with fraying only on one end of the line, something that will lessen over time with enough practice. The ghosted lines exercise is done well with not much wobbling aside from some flukes. The thing that I do notice is the small wobbling at the end of your mark, this is happening because you are slowing down right before you are about to hit the end mark. If over shooting is your main concern, you can try to lift the pen up from the page without any slowdown to ensure that the wobbling at the end doesn’t happen, and you ameliorate the overshooting. Just remember to not slow down your pace while you are drawing your line. The same applies to your ghosted planes exercise. Please note that you should never prioritize accuracy over confidence in your mark making as this is considered a mistake, this wobbling is present subtly but visibly in your exercise. Keep this in mind for your warm-ups later on.

Your ellipses are coming along well with smoothly draw ones and drawn through on most of your exercises, and with a good understanding of the ellipses minor axis, keeping them symmetrical on both sides where it folds the ellipse. For your table of ellipses there are a few problems, you have not drawn through your ellipses through in a few occasions, stopping midway or not drawing through at all. Keep in mind that to get smoothly draw ellipses with confidence, we must draw through them at least twice to maintain that confidence, and don’t draw through more than 3 times to avoid a messy one. Throughout the cell, you kept the angle consistent and kept them within bounds of it. You should avoid what you did on the cell at the second page on the fourth row, first column, you are not utilizing the entire cell’s space and ignoring its boundaries. You have done well in the ellipses in planes exercise with keeping them tangent to the plane’s edges and ensuring that they remain smoothly drawn. Same with your funnels, you have managed to keep them within the bounds of each funnel, snugged against one another, and also aligned well with the minor axis. I see very issues present, all that is needed is practice. If you are having troubles with symmetry and are struggling to remove some bends or tips from the major axis, you can try to draw your ellipses starting and ending on the minor axis, being this vastly more important than the major, you can try focusing on it more this way to ensure you construct two symmetrical halves.

For your boxes, you have a strong understanding of perspective early on, which will be refined even further on the upcoming box challenge. Your plotter perspective is done well, nothing else to state here. Your rough perspective is starting out strong, with a good amount of accuracy on your guesses for each line converging towards the vanishing point. The thing to mention is the subtle wobbling and bending on your lines, so what I said in the lines exercises applies here as well. If you are having troubles with arcing lines, you can try consciously bending them in the opposite direction to cancel it out. You have done an excellent job on your rotated boxes, keeping them close to the neighboring boxes with a good deal of rotation on all, you have taken advantage of the surroundings to nail down the perspective. There are some minor mistakes like not much rotation in your upper left corner, but with practice, this will become easier to manage. Finally, your organic perspective is done well, there is depth to the scene and plenty of different orientations on your boxes. Keep the angles of the initial Y greater than 90 degree to avoid distortion, don’t worry if these boxes are a little wonky, you will have plenty to practice with on the 250 box challenge.

Very good on your first lesson, you have shown a strong grasp of the concepts and overall this is a good submission. I believe you are prepared to begin the 250 box challenge with all the knowledge you have gained from lesson 1. Congratulations on completing lesson 1 and best of luck on the challenge ahead. I will be marking your lesson as complete.

Hi there,

congratulations on finishing lesson 1 and thanks for submitting, I'll be reviewing your homework. I hope my feedback helps you.

Superimposed lines

Your lines are straight and confident. It also looks like you repeated them 8 times and drew from your shoulder. Good job. Some lines, especially on the second page are fraying on both ends, so make sure to really take your time and line up your penn crrectly.

I'd add this exercise to your warmup to improve accuracy.

ghosted lines

Nicely done. Your lines are straight and confidently executed.

ghosted planes

Good job. You took your time and drew confident and not-wobbly lines. It also looks like you ghosted them thorougly and drew from your shoulder. I'd also add this to your warmup to increase accuracy.

tables of ellipses

You drew confident lines and drew through your ellipses twice. Your ellipses vary in size, orientation and degree. Good job. Your ellipses aren't always snnugly next to each other/touch the borders. Try to do that in your warmups, so you have a point of reference where exactly your ellipse should be.

I'd add this to your warm up as well to improve accuracy.

ellipses in planes

Your ellipses are smooth and have an even shape. They don't always touch all the borders, the same problem as described above. Exept for that nicely done. I'd also add this to your warmup.

funnels

Your ellipses are nicely aligned to the minor axis and most of them fit snugly inside the funnel. You even varied their degree. Good job.

plotted perspective

Your boxes aren't distorted and it looks like you understand the concept of horizon lines and vanishing points. Well done.

rough perspective

You used one point perspective and all the lines that go off into the distance converge towards the vanishing point. Make sure all horizontal lines run perfectly parallel to the horizon and all vertical lines run perfectly perpendicular to the horizon. Good job. I'd also add this to your warmups to improve accuracy.

rotated boxes

Your boxes are snugly next to each other, you drew through them and actually rotated them. Well done.

organic perspective

Your boxes are freely rotated in space and get smaller the further away you get. It also looks like you ghosted your lines. Good job here als well.

Note for the warmups: You don't have to do all the "marked" exercises in every warm up. Do 2-3 in one warm up and in the next one switch them around and do others.

You did a really good job completing this lesson and I think you understood all the concepts. Feel free to move onto the 250 box challenge.

I wish someone had reminded me of this back then, so here's some (rather general) stuff I learned. I hope it helps you in some way:

• Remember the 50% rule. This challenge takes a lot of time and effort and you'll burn out/lose motivation if you don't do something for yourself as well.

• You didn't do this, but I still want to mention this: don't erase wrong lines/draw correct ones over top. If your line is incorrect, mark the correct ending point and draw the rest of your lines correct (you don't learn anything correcting lines, so it just wastes time)

• Try to not leave a mark when you ghost your lines. I know it just happens sometimes, but try to avoid it.

• Take your time with the exercises, especially the box challenge. You'll learn a lot more if you take your time. DaB in general is a marathon and not a sprint. It really helped me to set my goal to "draw x minutes each day" instead of "draw x boxes a day". The amount of boxes you manage during that time will increase the further you get. It also helped me to do DaB at a specific time slot each day.

Good job on completing the lesson.

Here are the things I want to point out.

Super-imposed lines and Ghosted lines: Your lines look confident for the most part. I can tell you are using your whole arm, so good job on that. There are some issues with accuracy so make sure you keep ghosting your lines before you execute them. This way you will improve.

Ellipses in planes, tables of ellipses, funnels: There are a couple of issues with this exercise. The main thing i want to point out is that you didn't draw through your ellipses like it is instructed in the lesson. It is really important that you do this to build confidence and improve accuracy. I will also point out your ellipses aren't fit properly for the most part, and some of them aren't connected.

Rough perspective, rotated boxes, organic perspective: The mistakes you did on these excercises are pretty much the same as most people when they reach this part of the lesson. I also noticed that you overshot your lines on the organic perspective excercises. If you include ghosted lines as warm-ups, this will improve. I also noticed some lines that looked like you were chicken scratching, so make your you correct this by using the ghosting method. Otherwise, this will become a bad habit.

I hope I didn't sound too harsh. Also please follow the instructions for each excercise, and don't feel discouraged. With time and practice you will improve.

I know what you mean.. the last 3 also kicked my ass. Honestly though, for being new to drawing your stuff looks really nice! My only suggestion would be to add some shading and line weights to the boxes to make them stand out more clearly.

Hello Ff7! Overall you've made a good attempt, but there are a few things I want to cover. Let's go section by section!:

Starting with your lines they're pretty confident and accurate overall, and I can see that you aren't afraid of committing to them even if they're going to miss the ending dots, which is great! The only issue I can see is that you have fraying on both ends on some superimposed lines. Make sure you place your pen carefully at the start of each line before drawing them so it doesn't happen.

Moving onto your ellipses they start a bit wobbly and get more confident as you go through the exercises. Just like with lines try to always make them as confident and smooth as you can make them. Accuracy is secondary.

On the tables of ellipses make sure you always aim the ellipses to be within bounds, to touch top and bottom lines and the ellipses on their sides without overlapping.

On the ghosted planes you somtimes seem to try to change the shape of the ellipses so they touch the contact points, but don't do this. The ellipses have to be symmetrical, so you can't change their shape so they fit where you want, as they would stop being symmetrical and thus stop being ellipses.

Lastly on the funnels make sure you're aiming for the ellipses to be cut in 2 symmetrical halves by the middle line, I know it's hard but make sure you always keep it in mind.

Finally in your boxes a few things:

-Here your lines are mostly confident too, but I can see you hesitate at times and draw some wobbly lines. Your first priority with lines on boxes as well is to make them confident and straight, so focus on that first and don't worry if you need to sacrifice accuracy to achieve it.

Here's one example, top line is a level 1 line, and bottom line is a level 0 line. This is because a confident line will always be better than a wobbly line in these exercises.

-Sometimes you repeat lines that were off. But no matter how off a line is, don't repeat it, keep going as if it was correct, as drawing them will make the drawing messier.

-On rough perspective you have some good guesses on the perspective, good job! But you seem to have trouble at times keeping height lines perpendicular to the horizon line, and width lines parallel to it. I know it's hard, but make sure you always are aiming for it. You can check if the starting and ending dots are correct or not, and if you find that they aren't you can change them. You can put down as many dots as you want as long as it's before drawing the actual line.

-On rotated boxes you're doing a pretty good job rotating most of the boxes and keeping them close together. They could be a little closer though, so try to make them closer on future attempts!

-On organic perspective your lines get a little bit wobblier overall, which tells me you might starting to rush a bit. Try to always take as much time as you need on every line. If you need a break, take it. There is no need to do an exercise in one sitting, they're hard.

The perspective on the boxes has some issues, but that's not a problem as you'll work on that on the box challenge.

That said, I think you're doing a pretty good job, but I want to make sure you know how to draw confident lines on boxes so you practice them well throughout the box challenge. So I want you to do one more frame of organic perspective (1/3 of a page) before moving on. Try to make all lines at least level 1, focus on confidence not accuracy. Good luck and keep up the good work!

Superimposed lines:

+Overall looks pretty good,the fraying are a bit substantial but that's something you'll get better with time no worries.

Ghosted Lines:

+One thing to keep in mind here is that smooth confident flow are the main priority here,once you execute a mark you'll have to commit to it,no hesitation,no second guessing yourself,take your time ghosting and just do it with confident,hitting the mark is secondary.

Ellipses in planes+in table:

+I goto say,these are some nice ellipses m8,however you're more focus about fitting them inside the planes than executing a clean stroke confidently,as mention above fitting them inside the planes is not as important as maintaining a smooth elliptical shape.

Funnels:

+Make sure the degree of your ellipses are shifting outward from the center.

Boxes:

+All four of your exercise on this sections are really good,nice box with good line quality,no common mistakes,the only thing i'll point out is that you're doin clean up passes on some of your boxes,this is why they look wobbly and hesitant.

+when applying line weight you should always treat those lines the same way as with any other line,taking the time to prepare using the ghosting method.

+Also be subtle with your line wieght,some of them are really thicc when compared to the rest.

Hi Itsseajay, I've checked your submission,

Starting out by your organic arrows, I'm liking how you are making them flow through the page, I see some issues in some of them where you didn't really make the lines cross, though don't worry, I understand it's just some hiccups. Remember to make them smaller as they get away from the viewer and make the spaces between turns bigger as they get closer to the viewer, this will help you sell a better illusion of depth.

One last thing, I'm seeing you haven't applied any line weight at all, remember that it is a very important communication tool. Also whenever you are doing some hatching, do it in a consistant way. Here is a quick demo explaining where you need to apply line weight and cast shadows!

Moving on to you organic forms, I like the how you are varying the degrees of your ellipses, though you are doing it pretty randomly, here is a little demo to help you with deciding the degrees of your ellipses! Another thing regarding ellipses, whenever you are doing them go through them twice, not more nor less.

On to your texture exercises, I'm really liking what I'm seeing. In the first page of your dissections you started drawing your textures explicitly, which was a contrast with the great work you did on you texture analysis, though you then realize this and redeem yourself with some implicit textures in your second page of dissections. Remember to always draw your textures implicitly, with the use of cast shadows and transitions from dark to light, if you still have some questions about this topic, check out Uncomfy's video from the lesson which is great, and if you still have questions, ask me in a reply!

The first thing that caught my eyes in your forms intersections is that sometimes your lines go really wobbly, remember to always take your time to ghost them, I know that there is some tricky lines in the intersections, though you still have to ghost those. Other than that, remember that whenever there is two boxes intersecting with each other, the intersections will rune parallel to one of the boxes lines.

Organic intersections looks pretty good, though remember to be more subtle with your cast shadows and that cast shadows follow the form they are being cast on. Also, whenever you are applying line weight, you also need to be using te ghosting method and try to do it as confidently as possible, it's just like a superimposed line.

Okay, I'm gonna mark this lesson as completed! Keep it up.

Hi, Zakinithos! I'm JoaoSiilva and I'm here to take a look at your submission today. =)

Before starting, I would like to thank you in advance for the critiques that you've written! By writing critiques, you've helped the community and I'm pretty sure that you've learned something new too!

Let's begin!

Extended Lines

At the start of the challenge, you were often extending the lines in the wrong direction. Remember that the initial Y tells you in which direction you should extend the lines. It's always away from the center of the initial Y. After this "rough" start, you were always extending the lines in the correct direction and the lines were long enough to check the convergences (or divergences).

I noticed that you didn't extend all the lines for the boxes #159-162, and #179-182 too! Excluding that and some boxes from the the beginning of the challenge that weren't extended correctly, you did a good job.

Just in case, here's a diagram that shows you how to extend the lines.

Divergences and parallels

Another problem that occurred often is that you had lines diverging. Usually it was due the inner corner that messed up the box but there also are boxes like #113 or #173 that have entire sets of lines diverging. By the end of the challenge you almost never did this mistake.

Like it was explained on the website, you're aiming for boxes with shallow perspective and some boxes with a more dramatic perspective here and there to get a better grasp at how the vanishing points influence your boxes.

And about the inner corner that I mentioned before, one tip that personally helped me a lot was to draw the inner corner a bit earlier. That way, there's a higher chance that your box will look solid! Here's a little guide on that.

Hatching

While optional, it is a great way to improve the quality of your lines as you're doing the challenge. I'm glad that you hatched one side of each box but I need to point out that it sometimes looks rushed and the lines themselves were arcing or were wobbly. Remember that you can always ghost them.

Line-weight

You did not add line-weight to your boxes. You should have done another superimposed line on the silhouette of the box like it was explained here on the website.

When adding line-weight, remember that confidence is more important than accuracy (as always).

Lines in general

You overshot many lines and your lines sometimes were a bit wobbly or arcing. Like I said on the previous point, always aim for confident lines.

Distorted boxes

Finally, some boxes like #180 and 243 look distorted because one the angles of the initial Y was smaller than 90°. If the box has 3 visibles sides, then all 3 angles of the Y should be bigger than 90°. Here's a diagram about the angles of the initial Y for boxes with 2 or 3 visible sides.

By the end of the challenge, your boxes were starting to be consistently good but I feel like you should do a few more. The very last page that you did now (Feb 2021) looks quite good if we ignore the lines that were arcing or that you overshot.

So, I'm going to ask you to do 5 extra boxes. Keep in mind everything that I said and reply to this critique with your revision. And remember, DO NOT rush to do them. Take your time.