Sevey13

Thank you so much for your critique. One thing I wondered if someone would pick up on is the fact that I was using a cardboard box as a flat surface, making my lines extra wavy (at least to me). I struggled with organic perspective, which is to be expected. I specifically had a hard time really getting those boxes built and not looking Picassoesque. Hoping that the 250 Box Challenge will help with that.

Awesome, best of luck with your 250 boxes :D

I agree with this critique. A few of your ellipses in the funnels missed the guidelines and lost their shape. You did a really nice job filling the various exercise pages with as many boxes as possible, not much white space. Watch those ellipses and good luck with your 250 box challenge.

Hello. I disagree with some of this critique, but not enough to not mark it as agreed. It don't think you were grinding with the ghosted planes; it looks like you took a photo of your assignment right away when you finished it, before you added the ellipses, and then added the ellipses and took another set of photos. I say this because I see the plane in the corner of one of the pages appears to be the same. I've seen other folks on here do this. It's not necessary and adds confusion for the people critiquing, because we have to check and see if you did the assignment twice (which is incorrect).

On your rotated boxes, the boxes on the fringe didn't rotate, they just moved away from the camera. Something to watch for in the future.

You did a really good job packing as much as you could onto the page. You filled the perspective frames, for example, with as many boxes as possible.

Good luck on your 250 box challenge.

I agree with this critique. A few additional comments: your boxes looked great! However, some of your exercises had a lot of empty space where you could have added more. The plotted perspective is the most obvious example of this. Make sure you're filling the page to get the most out of the exercise. You did a much better job with the organic perspective exercise filling-the-box wise. Similarly, in your line-drawing exercises and your plane exercises, most of the lines were the same length. Work on challenging yourself by varying up the lines. It's great if you can draw one length of line really well, but how do you do with tiny lines? Or really long lines that cover most of the page? Look for ways to vary it up that way you are sharpening multiple skills at once.

Best of luck with the box challenge.

I agree with this critique.

One question for the submitter though...I'm wondering if you're using the correct-sized paper. It looks like you're using a mix of two different notebooks, and looking at the scale of the notebook pages with the keyboard in the back it appears that you might be using a smaller sketchbook as opposed to the required A4/8.5x11 paper. If you are using smaller paper, you won't be able to fill the page as SCYLLASTEW mentioned in their critique. Using incorrect tools might be OK in lesson 1, but as you progress you will likely be told to repeat the exercise all over again correctly (and that goes for following the instructions on how to set up the exercise, again as SCYLLASTEW mentioned).

What size paper are you using?

Agree with the completion marking.

Some additional comments and emphasis:

I appreciate the confidence demonstrated in many of your lines.

Beware the doodles. Even on page one you start getting doodl-y with your arrow off the R. The instructions are pretty clear about not doodling on your assignments. That's why you are to spend at least 50% of your time drawing for pleasure in conjunction with Draw A Box. It can be repetitive and drab, so you can get those doodles out on other pages and keep your learning time focused on the concepts in the lesson.

Also, most key, as the critique pointed out follow the instructions. Your work looks pretty good, but it's also not really what was asked for which means if you continue to do it you won't really be working on the skill the assignment is meant to sharpen.

Best of luck, and I hope you also share some of your 50% work. Your doodles are nice so I'd love to see your other work. They just don't belong on the assignment page.

Agree with the critique. Crisp lines drawn confidently. My only additional critique would be to watch out with the crosshatching, try and keep the illusion of depth by not crosshatching behind a solid object. You did this well with the rotated boxes, but in the plotted perspective you 'broke' the illusion pretty consistently. Not a big deal in something that's practice, but just keep an eye on it.

Agree! The ellipse tables especially stood out as being very well done, and the rotated boxes looked relatively flat with a little variance in the corners.

I'll echo the other critique about the table of elipses. Good job holding a consistent shape and direction, but they were also not tightly packed. Something to keep an eye on for the future.

Also, a technical critique, not a technique critique, but for your rough perspective you had as few as four boxes in some frames. Uncomfortable encourages us to try and pack as much as we can into the various exercises to get the most out of them. If you feel that four or five in a frame is sufficient for you, then good on you, just make sure you're watching out for those "ugh, I wanna quit" moments where any artist, even the best ones, might start cutting corners. It sure is tempting with the repetition of some of these exercises.

Keep at it and good luck with the 250 challenge!