Starrbazzle

Of course! I'm glad to hear you've made it through most of the challenge, and that my advice helped.

Hello again Vazu,

thank you for resubmitting your work! They look much cleaner than your previous attempts. The ellipses of your funnels look much more even than your first submission, as well.

I still struggle with ellipses, too, but I feel that the line quality for my boxes has improved tremendously after 250 boxes. I'm hopeful that my work will get better as I continue draw a box, and I'm positive that the same will turn out for you too!

Good luck with the 250 box challenge!

Thank you for your critique, Tofu! I'll keep in mind what you pointed out about converging pairs and my lines diverging as I continue.

Your lines look much smoother than your last attempt, very well done! One thing I want to point out is that it looks like you forgot to draw through a couple of your boxes in the middle on the far left. Another thing is the boxes at the very ends of your paper could have been drawn closer to the center to make them more helpful as a reference for your rotations. No need to fix these though, and your otherwise did a good job at keeping your boxes snug together and showing some rotation. As you work through the 250 Box challenge, be sure to take your time and think through the placement of your target points well.

I suggest you find a black fineliner for your 250 boxes, too. A colored pen might be a bit confusing to use after a while. The Drawabox pens are actually pretty good, but there's also microns (05 or 08 I think are good sizes) or sharpie fine point pens (0.4mm) that I recommend trying.

Thank you for your resubmission and good luck with the challenge!

Hello Itsjustg. I'm Starr and I'm here to give you some feedback.

I'll start by evaluating your work by lines, ellipses, and boxes, and then give you some tips for improvement.

Lines

• Superimposed Lines: You have little to no fraying at the beginning of each line, which shows you thought about and prepared the placement of your stroke, good work! However, your lines are very wobbly, showing you did not draw quickly or with confidence.

• Ghosted Lines/ Planes: Your lines are also pretty wobbly in these exercises, but I do notice some smoother lines in your planes exercises. Also, I feel some of your target points are a bit large, especially on your planes. Try to keep your points as small and simple dots so that you have a more precise target to aim for.

Ellipses

Similar to your lines, you ellipses are also quite wobbly. Though, your ellipses do improve slightly in shape and line confidence. You did well at drawing through your ellipses the recommended 2-3 times. I notice, in your Ellipses in Planes especially, your ellipses are warped to fit within the planes.

Boxes

• Plotted Perspective: Your work is good overall. However, your hatching could be cleaner. Hatching should be made of continuous, smooth lines that go across the entire plane of the box.

• Rough Perspective: You did well at keeping your boxes to one-point perspective. Your lines are still a bit wobbly and it seems you have tried to redo some of your lines. Do not try to correct any mistakes you make. Accept your mistakes and move on to the next stroke. You forgot to trace your lines back to the VP with a different colored pen/pencil on your first page, but you did it on your second page.

• Rotated Boxes: First of all, your line weight is inconsistent and way too strong on the ones on the left side. Create line weight with the same fineliner as the rest of your lines and only add line weight with 1-2 strokes following the original line. I also notice you did not draw through some of your boxes, some boxes are missing lines.

• Organic Perspective: Although you redrew a few of your lines, you line quality is much better in this exercise. There is still some wobbling, but they are still smoother than the one in the rotated boxes and rough perspective exercises. Good work!

Overall, your line confidence needs some work. I suggest re-reading through the information given in the "Lines: Markmaking" section of Lesson 1 on the website, to make sure you're following the advice to the best of your ability. I notice some of your lines in the Ghosted Lines and Planes exercises came out quite smooth. Perhaps you tend to move your arm too slow, or you're not ghosting through enough times to reduce your hesitation? You can try ghosting your lines more times before you make your mark and move your arm faster through your stroke (using your shoulder) to see if that helps.

I will ask you to redo your Rotated Boxes exercise. Be sure to focus mainly on making a smooth and confident stroke rather than on accuracy. Try using subtle line weight around the silhouette of at least the first two rows of boxes, which helps keep track of your lines a bit as you work.

I also suggest adding those colored lines to your first page of Organic Perspective. You don't need to resubmit it, but you'll be doing that sort of thing a lot in the 250 box challenge and it's an important step not to forget.

Nice! I believe you need 2 others to agree to my critique to officially move on, but I think you're all set for the 250 box challenge otherwise.

Good Luck!

Hello Kiras! I'm Starr, and I'm here to give you some feedback.

I'll start by evaluating each exercise and then give you an overall summary with steps for moving forward.

Lines

• Superimposed Lines:

Some of your lines show some slight course-correction/ wobbliness, especially the longer ones. However, a lot of your lines are pretty smooth, and you did well at not fraying at the beginning of each line.

• Ghosted Lines/ Planes

Your ghosted lines are very smooth and I can tell you took the time and effort to prepare for each stroke. You did well at starting your marks at their intended points, though your lines seem to mostly overshoot and miss their 2nd point slightly. I also notice some slight arching. These are only things to keep in mind and will improve as you practice.

Ellipses

• Tables of Ellipses

Your ellipses are very smooth and you go through most of them 2-3 times. The ellipses where you went through 3 or more times look kind of messy, so I suggest drawing through each one only twice. Most of your ellipses have a nice, even shape. Though, there are some that are egg-shaped.

• Ellipses in Planes

Again, your ellipses are very smooth, good work! I still notice some egg-shaped ellipses, but most are pretty even. It looks like you tend to undershoot your ellipses.

• Funnels:

Your funnels are very neat and made with a straight/ round edge, as per the instructions of the exercise. You improved at making your ellipses an even shape, nice job! And you did will at making sure they were split evenly down the minor axis.

Boxes

• Plotted Perspective

Your lines and hatching marks are clean and you kept the converging lines hitting very close to the vanishing points. Good work!

• Rough Perspective:

Your lines are still pretty smooth, however I notice more wobbling than what you had in your previous ghosted lines/ planes exercise. You did well at maintaining one-point perspective with your boxes. One thing I see is that you tried to correct a line in your exercise by marking it out and redoing it. Do not correct any mistakes, once a line is made, you can only move on to the next one.

• Rotated Boxes:

I still notice some wobbling in your lines as with the last exercise. Otherwise, your lines stay neatly and snuggly together, and you have most of your boxes rotating properly. Your hatching lines are also very neat, good work. However, you forgot to draw the boxes in the far ends of your exercise. If you look at the example exercise at the bottom of the "rotated boxes" part of lesson one on the website, the outer rows should have five boxes instead of three. These are a bit trickier, so please complete your exercise by drawing these in.

• Organic Perspective:

Your lines are much smoother than the ones of your previous boxes exercise, very nice! Some of your lines diverge from one another, but you started your boxes with the correct Y-shape. Your boxes also correctly get smaller as they recede into the distance. As I mentioned earlier, do not try and correct your lines, as I see you tried to mark out a line on the 2nd page of your exercise. It is also recommended to not leave notes on your exercise.

Overall, you showed to make your lines smooth with a quick and confident stroke using your shoulder, which is a main point of these exercises! You followed most of the instructions thoroughly, though I suggest not correcting your lines or making notes on your exercises. Your ellipses are done pretty well overall.

A suggestion that has helped me is to intentionally ghost my ellipses a little wider on the thinner end of the ones that turn out egg-shaped. This helps balance out the shape more. The shape will also just improve the more you make ellipses if you pay attention to it.

The lines of your boxes exercises tended to be more wobbly. Personally, I found these exercises more overwhelming at first, so my lines tended to be more wobbly as well. I suggest putting more focus on ghosting, which helped me slow down a bit and think through my lines more.

For your comment on organic perspective, don't worry about it being so challenging. The 250 box challenge gives you plenty of practice with converging lines and your ghosting as long as you take your time and do it to your best ability.

Hello Vazu! I'm Starr and I'm here to give you some feedback on your submission.

Lines:

• Superimposed Lines:

Your superimposed lines are very well done! There is very little fraying at the beginning of your lines, meaning you did a great job at properly setting up each stroke. While there is some wobbling in your lines, you kept most of your strokes pretty smooth, which shows you drew confidently with a quick motion. Your lines also show very little fraying at the ends, which is great!

• Ghosted Lines:

Here I notice your lines seem to wobble more. A couple of them also severely undershoot and taper off.

• Ghosted Planes:

Your lines look a bit smoother in these, but I still notice the same problem with wobbly lines as in your ghosted lines exercise. You also tend to overshoot your lines, but this will improve as you practice. It's just something to keep in mind.

Ellipses

• Tables of Ellipses:

You did a good job at drawing through your ellipses 2-3 times. Some of your ellipses are wobbly, but others are drawn quite smoothly. A lot of them are egg-shaped (thinner at one end). Some of your ellipses are also floating and don't hit their boundaries very well, and you could have filled in the empty areas in your pages more with ellipses.

• Planes of Ellipses:

First off, you are missing ellipses in the two planes in the top left corner or your first page. be sure to double check your exercises to make sure you have everything completed. Your ellipses share the same problems as your ellipses in tables. I also notice your ellipses tend to warp to fit within the plane.

• Funnels:

While it looks like you made most of your long and short axes with a straight edge, the lines in the corners or your page and the rounded edges of your funnels look freehanded, which is against the rules of the exercise. Your ellipses are very wobbly and I notice similar problems as with the previous exercises. Because of this, I want you to redo this exercise.

Please use a rounded edge of an object to make your funnels, and a straight edge for your lines.

Boxes

• Plotted Perspective:

Your work for this exercise is very clean, made using a straight edge, and your hatching lines are neat. However, you could have added more boxes to your exercise, especially in the top frame, which only has a few boxes. Notice how the example exercise in the plotted perspective part of the website has 5-6 boxes per frame.

• Rough Perspective:

You did all the parts of the exercise, but your lines are pretty wobbly.

Rotated Boxes:

You followed the directions of this exercise well, and you seem to move your intended vanishing points for your rotating boxes. Your hatching is also very clean. However, you still have a problem with wobbling lines.

• Organic Perspective:

First of all, the frames of your first page were not done with a straight edge, and your lines are also extremely wobbly in both parts. Because of this, I want you to redo this one.

In your lines exercises, you showed that you prepared well before your making your strokes. Although you had some wobbling in your ghosted lines, you showed improvement in your planes exercises. Your ellipses and boxes exercises, however, seemed to have the same problems with uneven ellipses and wobbly lines throughout. As it states in the lesson, focus on confidence and creating a smooth stroke, even if it means your lines don't hit their intended targets.

Perhaps try ghosting your lines for longer and use a quicker motion to avoid hesitating when making your lines. For helping with the unevenness of your ellipses, I find that intentionally making my ellipse wider at the point where it tends to be thinner when ghosting through it helps balance out its shape.

You can redo your funnels and organic perspective exercises and post them as a reply to this thread.

Hi Iceteacitron! I'm Starr, and I'm here to provide you some feedback.

Lines:

Lines start off wobbly, but they do improve a bit throughout the lines exercises.

You do a good job at starting at the same point on your superimposed lines and making your ghosted lines hit their initial target points. Meaning, you're doing a great job at thinking about and preparing for your lines! It looks like you mainly struggle with undershooting and missing your second points slightly, but you do seem to improve a bit on these through your exercises. And this will improve more as you continue to practice.

Ellipses:

You did a nice job on these exercises. You consistently drew through your ellipses 2-3 times and your funnels are split relatively evenly by the minor axis. However, many of your ellipses are wobbly. While I do notice some smooth ellipses in your tables of ellipses, this is something that needs work. It also seems that you freehanded some of the curved lines of your funnels since some are wobbly. Don't try to freehand parts where it specifically states in the exercise to use a utensil (such as a ruler/straight-edge or rounded edge) to draw.

Boxes:

The main things I notice are that your lines are still a bit wobbly, and it looks like you try to correct some of your mistakes in your rotated boxes and organic perspective exercises. Though it may be tempting, don't try to correct any bad strokes. You have to move on to the next stroke even if you notice a mistake in your previous one. Another thing to note is that it looks like you did not draw the very back line on some of your boxes in plotted perspective. It gets tricky keeping track of your lines in the exercises/challenges, so keep in mind to double-check your work to make sure you don't miss anything.

Overall, you followed the lesson pretty well. The main thing I suggest for you to focus on is your stroke confidence. A lot of your lines/ellipses are wobbly, meaning you might draw your lines too slowly or you're not drawing from your shoulder. As you continue, make sure you prioritize making a quick, confident stroke, moving from the shoulder and not the wrist. Your line quality and accuracy will improve as you practice this.

Thank you for sharing your work! I struggle with sharing my work too, but it's the best way to improve. I hope to come across more of your work in the future!

Hello! I'm Starr and I'm here to give you some feedback.

Lines:

You did well at starting your superimposed lines at the same point, and your lines are smooth and confident!

The same can be said about your ghosted lines and planes exercises. You did well at establishing your start and end point and aiming your lines to their intended targets. Your lines seem to arch a bit, but this will improve as you practice.

Be sure also to fill your pages and do only the amount that is specified by the exercise. I don't think the 3rd page of superimposed lines was necessary and you could have added more to your ghosted planes exercise.

Ellipses:

Great job at maintaining a confident stroke and an even shape in your ellipses! They are really well done. You seem to overshoot your ellipses slightly, but that's something that will improve over time. Please keep in mind though that you are only supposed to draw through each ellipse 2-3 times (2 being the most encouraged), no more and no less. Also, do not draw ellipses within ellipses.

Boxes:

Again, good job at keeping your freehanded lines smooth and confident. One thing I would like to point out is that you should keep your hatching simple and going in one direction, no cross-hatching. I see also that you used white-out on your plotted-perspective exercise. Do no try to fix your mistakes, either by redoing them or trying to cover them up. Simply move on and continue to the next step.

Overall, great work! You followed the exercises very well and i believe you're ready to move on.