WendyB

Hi Topless! Congratulations on finishing the 250 Box Challenge. I'm Wendy and I will be reviewing your submission.

Things you did well:

• Your lines are pretty confident and smooth. There is the occasional wobble, but nothing major.

• There is a definite improvement with the perspective of the later boxes compared to the earlier ones.

• On all 3-point perpective boxes, you extended the lines in the right direction consistently.

• You drew your boxes nice and big on the page.

Things you can work on:

• You included a number of boxes in 2-point perspective. It's good that you are experimenting with box angles. However, in this challenge the boxes are supposed to be in 3-point perspective.

With these 2-point perspective boxes, you also run into a problem with the extension lines. In 2-point perspective, by definition you only have 2 vanishing points. That means that you cannot extend the third set of lines, as they are completely parallel and never meet at a vanishing point in either direction.

• On some of your boxes, you try to keep the lines a bit too parallel. At times, this also results in the lines diverging.

• You have a fair amount of variation in box proportions. However, I think you can vary it more still; try making some boxes that are really flat, like a pizza box. Or really long and thin, like a box of tinfoil.

• I think you can experiment with box angles more. Your boxes all have very similar angles, because you placed the vanishing points at roughly equal distances from the box. You didn't include any boxes where one or two of the faces are barely turned.

In order to draw a barely turned box, one vanishing point will be really close and one will be really far away. If that doesn't make sense to you, this awesome visualization may help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkp1xfWJ9n4

• On some boxes, the vanishing points are so close, it results in extreme foreshortening that no longer looks realistic. It's good that you are experimenting with levels of foreshortening. However, going forward it's important for you to find the sweet spot where the box looks like it has dramatic foreshortening, without being pushed so far that it looks misshapen.

• Your hatching is a bit too loose. Make sure that all your hatch lines properly meet up with the boundaries of the plane, and fill it out entirely. Draw steady lines, like you would for the sides of the box, and ghost them if necessary. Don't flick your hatch lines.

• You could try and add line weight to the silhouette of the box.

Conclusion:

While you did make a few mistakes, your boxes are improving nicely. I will mark this lesson as complete. Just be sure to continue doing boxes as part of your warm-ups, and keep the above feedback in mind.

1. Superimposed Lines:

Much cleaner, straighter lines now. Great job!

2. Tables of ellipses:

These are definitely neater. There is still room for improvement with the consistency of the ellipse angles, so be sure to spent some extra time during your warm-ups with this exercise.

3. Organic Perspective:

Your boxes demonstrate a good sense of 3d space.

I see a few doubled up lines. I know it's tempting to try and fix a line that went wrong, but make sure to draw each line only once even if it went askew.

Your revisions show a lot of improvement, so I'm going to mark this as complete now.

Thank you very much for your critique! I will keep these points in mind going forward.

Hi FLX! Congratulations on finishing your Lesson 1 homework. I'm Wendy and I will be reviewing your submission.

1. Superimposed Lines:

On your first sheet, there is the occasional wobble in the lines, but for the most part they are confident and smooth. The longer lines have quite a bit of fraying, but that is to be expected at this stage. It looks like you were struggling with the curved lines a bit more; there is definitely more wobble there.

On the second sheet, the lines are no longer wobbly, the lines are straighter and the fraying is less. The curves are much tighter, too. So, you made good improvement there.

I did notice that there is some fraying of the lines on both ends on the second sheet. It's good that you are drawing your lines more confidently, but you should still make sure to place your pen carefully at the start of the line. Fraying should be seen only on the end, not the start of the lines.

2. Ghosted Lines:

Here your lines are also confident and fairly smooth. There is the occasional waver in the line, but for the most part they are pretty straight. Occasionally, you miss the end point by a bit, but it's good that you are prioritizing your line quality over hitting the exact end point.

On a few of the lines, you didn't place the pen at the starting dot quite accurately enough.

I also noticed that you redrew some of the lines, possibly because the first attempt faded out too much towards the end. Be sure to draw each line only once, even if it's wrong.

Some of your lines have a little hook at the end. To avoid that, try lifting the pen off the paper the second you hit the endpoint of the line.

There is some overshooting and undershooting of lines. This is okay for now, as your accuracy will surely improve as you continue with other exercises.

There are two points on the page that you forgot to draw a line between, near the top-left corner of the page. After finishing a page, it's always a good habit to double-check if you missed any parts.

3. Ghosted Planes:

The same points from the ghosted lines apply here, as well. Overall though, it's a pretty solid effort. Your lines are pretty accurate and straight most of the time, and most of your crosses meet up well in the middle.

4. Tables of Ellipses:

You drew your ellipses confidently. A bit deformed at times, but that will get better with more practice over time.

Some of the time, it looks like you lifted your pen prematurely, and decided to place it back on the paper to continue the same ellipse some more.

Try to avoid this. Be sure to draw through each ellipse two full times, and only then lift your pen. It may be tempting to try and fix an ellipse after you drew it, but try to resist doing that and just move on to the next ellipse.

You managed to keep the degree of the ellipses fairly even across each section. However, the angle of the ellipses tends to wander a bit.

On some of the panels, it looks like you made an effort to keep the angle consistent. In others, the angle of the ellipses is slowly shifting as you get near the end of each section. That's an easy mistake to make. Try and keep an eye not just on matching the last ellipse you drew, but all of the ellipses in the section so far.

On any panels with a curved line running through it, it seems you struggled a lot more keeping the angle of the ellipses consistent, and instead, they tend to go in all kinds of directions. You will want to try and keep these more consistent, like fern leaves sprouting from their main stem.

In your warm-ups going forward, I recommend putting special focus on drawing tables of ellipses with a curved line running through it.

You filled up all the extra spaces with smaller ellipses. These extra ellipses aren't necessary, but I commend you for putting in the extra effort. On many of these, you kept the angle of the ellipses quite consistent, so I'm sure it was good practice.

5. Ellipses in Planes:

These ellipses are fairly well-shaped for the most part. They are more even than your tables of ellipses, so it seems you made good progress with them. They meet up with the edges of the plane fairly well most of the time, as well.

However, I noticed that some of these ellipses have faint, pecky little strokes in them. Perhaps that happened during ghosting? Do make sure that when ghosting, your pen doesn't touch the paper.

Then, when you are ready to draw the line, continue the motion you have been ghosting, while landing the pen onto the paper like a plane.

6. Funnels:

The same feedback from the ellipses in planes applies here as well.

Aside from that, these are some nicely drawn ellipses and they meet with the outer borders well for the most part.

You didn't put as much effort into lining up the ellipses with each other though. In many cases, there is significant overlap. Some of them are even overlaying completely.

Try to draw each ellipse so that it touches the border of the previous one. There should be no overlap.

Lastly, not all of your ellipses are aligning with the minor axis well. You want to make sure that the central line of the funnel cuts each ellipse into symmetrical halves. Some of ellipses are slanting inside the funnel.

One more advanced trick you could try in your warm-ups is to have a very narrow ellipse in the middle, and gradually increase the degree as you go out from the center. This will help you to develop more control over the degree.

7. Plotted Perspective:

By placing the vanishing points so close together, you weren't able to take advantage of the whole panel space. It's better to place the vanishing points on the far ends of the horizon line. That way, you can draw bigger, and that will help with accuracy.

You didn't draw any boxes below the horizon line; all of them are above the horizon line. So, we see all boxes from below, and you don't have any boxes that show the top.

As a result, you drew a lot of boxes crammed very closely together. That must have gotten very confusing with the dense grid of lines.

If you draw some of the boxes below the horizon line, some of them across the horizon line, and others completely below the horizon line, you'll have a lot more breathing space between them, and it will be a lot easier to see what's going on with the perspective lines.

Also, you will have a much greater variety of box viewing angles. It's important that you practice boxes with more than one viewing angle.

Lastly, some of your verticals are slanted. You will want to make sure that all of your verticals are properly perpendicular to the horizon line.

8. Rough Perspective:

On the first page of rough perspective, many of your verticals aren't perpendicular to the horizon line, and many of your horizontals aren't parallel to the horizon line. Keep in mind that in this exercise, the front plane and back plane of the boxes should be nice, straight rectangles.

However. on the second page, the horizontals and verticals are aligned a lot better, so it looks like you made improvement in this area already.

I can see that you redrew a line on occasion. Be sure to draw each line only once, even if it's wrong.

The perspective estimates on some of your depth lines are quite off, especially the ones that are further away from the vanishing points. However, that is to be expected, and things will improve with more practice.

You drew all the boxes quite small. Don't be afraid to draw them bigger, and have some of the boxes overlap. If you draw the boxes bigger, it will be easier to draw them more precisely.

The linework is not quite as confident as with your ghosted planes. It looks like you are a little more worried about accuracy here. Although accuracy is important, don't let that get in the way of drawing with confident, steady strokes.

9. Rotated Boxes:

On the middle horizontal row of boxes, you didn't really rotate the boxes. Instead, they just get thinner, and they just move back in perspective without rotating.

However, on the middle vertical row of boxes, they rotate correctly, and the boxes retain their cuboid shapes. So it looks like you made progress here.

Your boxes are progressively more distorted towards the extreme corners. However, this exercise is very difficult at this stage, so it was to be expected. It could be a fun exercise to try again some months or a year later to see how you've progressed!

10. Organic Perspective:

The sizing of your boxes really sell the effect of boxes moving back in space, so good job on that!

Quite a number of your boxes have diverging lines, instead of receding in perspective. This makes them look like tapered wedges instead of boxes. However, this is a very difficult exercise at this stage, so it was to be expected. You will have a lot more opportunity to practice this during the 250 Box Challenge.

I see a few doubled up lines here as well. I know it's tempting to try and fix a line that went wrong, but make sure to draw each line only once even if it went askew.

Some of the sides on the boxes are S-shaped. Be sure to carefully plot the corner points, and ghost each line before you commit.

Such a great idea! XD

Hi Hielum13! Congratulations on finishing your Lesson 1 homework. I'm Wendy and I will be reviewing your submission.

1. Superimposed Lines:

Your lines are hesitant and wobbly. You may be drawing them too slowly. It's important that you prioritize making smooth confident strokes, even if that means they are less accurate.

I also see some fraying of the lines on both ends. Make sure to place your pen carefully at the start of the line. Fraying should be seen only on the end, not the start of the lines.

2. Ghosted Lines:

Aside from the occasional waver, these lines are straighter and more confident than your superimposed lines. So, there is some improvement here.

On a few of the lines, you didn't place the pen at the starting dot quite accurately enough.

Some of your lines are arcing. This could be due to drawing from the elbow. Make sure to always draw from the shoulder in this exercise. That said, arcing can still happen if you draw from the shoulder. If you find that your lines tend to arc a particular way, focus on arcing them the other way, so that they will even out over time.

I also noticed that you redrew some of the lines. Be sure to draw each line only once, even if it's wrong.

There is some overshooting and undershooting of lines. This is okay for now, as your accuracy will surely improve as you continue with other exercises.

3. Ghosted Planes:

There is the occasional wobble in your lines, and some of the lines are arcing here, too. It's important that you prioritize making smooth confident strokes, even if that means they are less accurate.

In this exercise also, you don't always place your pen at the starting dot fully accurately, so be careful about this.

There is a little bit of overshooting and undershooting at times, but this is fine for now. It's more important to focus on smooth confident strokes.

4. Tables of Ellipses:

Your ellipses are drawn fairly smoothly, a bit deformed at times, but that is to be expected at this stage.

Some of the ellipses are drawn through only one-and-a-half times. Some of the time, it looks like you lifted your pen prematurely, and decided to place it back on the paper to continue the same ellipse some more.

Try to avoid this. Be sure to draw through each ellipse two full times, and only then lift your pen. It may be tempting to try and fix an ellipse after you drew it, but try to resist doing that and just move on to the next ellipse.

You managed to fit your ellipses in snugly most of the time. However, you didn't keep the angle and degree of the ellipses consistent within each panel section. In many cases, you put ellipses in at random angles, and filled up little holes with smaller ellipses.

In a given section, you need to keep the angle and degree of the ellipses the same until you reach the end of the space. I would recommend that you go over the instructions again for this exercise, and be sure to follow all the rules.

5. Ellipses in Planes:

Most of your ellipses are fairly confident and smooth. There is the occasional bumpy one, but nothing too serious. They aren't very tight yet, but this will improve with more practice. Be sure to keep up with your warm-ups.

On some of the planes, you missed the edges of the plane by quite a large amount. I understand that could be an accident. Just be sure to try and make the ellipses touch the borders of the plane if you can, while making sure to keep drawing confidently and smoothly.

6. Funnels:

You managed to fit the ellipses fairly snugly in many cases. They are also fairly well aligned to the minor axis.

Sometimes, there is too much space between ellipses. Be sure to keep them tightly packed together.

In this exercise also, some of the ellipses are drawn through only one-and-a-half times. Be sure to draw through each ellipse two full times. Some ellipses are a little too loose, so keep an eye on that.

On the bottom left funnel, the ellipses started to deviate from the edge more and more as you went out from the center. Also, one ellipse was drawn entirely outside the funnel. Once the curved lines end, there is no need to try and cram in another ellipse, because you won't have the guidelines to work with anymore beyond that point.

One more advanced trick you could try in your warm-ups is to have a very narrow ellipse in the middle, and gradually increase the degree as you go out from the center. This will help you to develop more control over the degree.

7. Plotted Perspective:

It looks like you constructed the perspective correctly. I see a few stray lines though, did your ruler slip? Be sure to try and keep it as clean as possible.

Your ruled lines are not quite as tight as I would expect. One trick you can do is to put the ruler upside down, so that the slanted edge of the ruler is lifted slightly off the page. This will give you cleaner ink lines, because the ink won't bleed under your ruler that way. This also keeps your ruler clean from ink.

Some rulers even have a special slanted edge along the bottom for this very purpose.

The corner dots are quite thick. You don't need to overaccentuate them, just a small dot will do.

My main complaint is that the hatching is a bit too loose. Make sure that all your hatch lines properly meet up with the boundaries of the plane, and fill it out entirely. Draw steady lines, like you would for the sides of the box, and ghost them if necessary.

8. Rough Perspective:

There is some wavering to your lines. In other cases, there is a strong taper to the lines, which makes me wonder if you flicked the strokes. Be sure to prioritize steady, even strokes. Ghost each line carefully and patiently, and don't flick your strokes.

I see a few doubled up lines here as well. I know it's tempting to try and fix a line that went wrong, but make sure to draw each line only once even if it went askew.

A few of your horizontals went askew, but it looks like you are making an effort to keep them parallel to the horizon line.

Some of your verticals are off as well, but most of them are nicely perpendicular to the horizon line.

The perspective estimates on some of your depth lines are quite off, especially the ones that are further away from the vanishing points. However, that is to be expected, and things will improve with more practice.

9. Rotated Boxes:

Your arrangement of boxes came out somewhat symmetrical, and the space between the boxes is nice and tight. The boxes got a little distorted at the far edges, but nothing too serious.

I see a few doubled up lines here as well, so try to avoid that in the future.

Overall though, you did a pretty good job with this difficult exercise, well done!

10. Organic Perspective:

It looks like you forgot to complete this assignment, or at least forgot to submit it. Be sure to go back and do it.

Hi Spookyskelly! Congratulations on finishing your Lesson 1 homework. I'm Wendy and I will be reviewing your submission.

1. Superimposed Lines:

Your lines are confident and smooth. On occasion, your lines are fraying on both ends. Make sure to place your pen carefully at the start of the line. Fraying should be seen only on the end, not the start of the lines.

2. Ghosted Lines:

Here your lines are also confident and smooth. They are also nice and straight most of the time. On a few of the lines, you didn't place the pen at the starting dot quite accurately enough.

There is some overshooting and undershooting of lines. This is okay for now, as your accuracy will surely improve as you continue with other exercises.

3. Ghosted Planes:

You have nice and straight lines here also, and the crosses tend to meet up in the middle.

Sometimes, you lines overshoot by quite a bit. Try lifting your pen off the page the moment you hit the end point.

You also didn't get very adventurous with the shape of the planes. Many of them are simple rectangles, especially on the first sheet. In your warm-ups going forward, try to include more slanted planes. It's also great to try some larger planes, as those will be a little more challenging.

4. Tables of Ellipses:

Your ellipses look confident and smooth. Most of the time, you also managed to keep the angle and degree of the ellipses fairly even across each section.

Generally, you managed to fit the ellipses in snugly and accurately. There are a few cases where your ellipses didn't meet with the frame borders, and you filled in remaining spaces with extra little ellipses. The extra ellipses are unnecessary.

In some cases, the angle and degree of the ellipses is slowly shifting as you get near the end of each section. That's an easy mistake to make. Try and keep an eye not just on matching the last ellipse you drew, but all of the ellipses in the section so far.

Some of your ellipses aren't very tight yet, but this will surely improve with more practice. Be sure to keep up with your warm-ups.

5. Ellipses in Planes:

Here as well, your ellipses are confident, smooth, and generally well-shaped. They also fit inside the planes snugly and accurately most of the time. There are a few mishaps on the planes that are really thin and slanted, but that is understandable.

6. Funnels:

Well-drawn ellipses here, as well. You managed to fit the ellipses in snugly and accurately most of the time, and aligned them to the minor axis quite accurately, as well. You also created a nice degree shift out from center. No complaints here!

7. Plotted Perspective:

These are drawn well for the most part. In the first section, I see that some of your verticals came out slanted at first, and you corrected them. I think you may have gotten confused with the many crossing lines here. That said, you should make a point of never redrawing a line, even if it's wrong.

On the remaining two sections, your verticals are all correct, so you clearly understand the concepts.

8. Rough Perspective:

Most of your lines are quite clean and straight here.

Some of your verticals went askew in this exercise, particularly on the back planes of the boxes. When plotting the corner points for your back plane, make sure that they are properly rectangular.

I can see that you redrew a line on occasion. Be sure to draw each line only once, even if it's wrong.

The perspective estimates on some of your depth lines are quite off, especially the ones that are further away from the vanishing points. However, that is to be expected, and things will improve with more practice.

Your correction lines are quite thick, which makes things less clear. You could try sharpening your colored pencils more and see if that helps.

9. Rotated Boxes:

Your arrangement of boxes came out fairly symmetrical, and the space between the boxes is nice and tight. Some of the boxes don't seem to quite rotate. Instead, they just move back in perspective without rotating.

Overall though, you did quite a good job with this difficult exercise, well done!

10. Organic Perspective:

Your boxes demonstrate a good sense of 3d space.

I see a few doubled up lines here as well. I know it's tempting to try and fix a line that went wrong, but make sure to draw each line only once even if it went askew.

There is some significant overshooting of the lines at times. Be sure to plot out corner points, and ghost carefully before drawing your line. You want to try and draw steady lines, and not get too loose and sketchy with them.

I also noticed you didn't draw the overlapping boxes through. To help establish the shapes in space correctly, it's always a good idea to draw them through. That said, you managed to draw the boxes quite convincingly even without drawing through, so I don't think this hurt your execution of the exercise much in the end.

Yes, I'm WendyB on there, as well.

Yes, I practice drawing every weekday for 2 hours, and every weekend day for about 5 hours. I have done this since the start of 2020.

The main way I have practiced my line quality is by doing master studies of my favorite comic book pencillers, and really work on matching their line weight and strokes.

Also the rock studies themselves helped a lot. Doing a lot of this tight hatching, I had a lot more control near the end of the rock challenge than in the beginning.

I had nice handwriting before I started drawing, though. XD

Hi PotatoSoup! Congratulations on finishing your Lesson 1 homework. I'm Wendy and I will be reviewing your submission.

1. Superimposed Lines:

Your lines are confident and smooth. However, your lines are fraying on both ends. Make sure to place your pen carefully at the start of the line. Fraying should be seen only on the end, not the start of the lines.

I also noticed that some of your lines have a little hook at the end. To avoid that, try lifting the pen off the paper the second you hit the endpoint of the line.

2. Ghosted Lines:

Here your lines are also confident and smooth, and quite straight most of the time. On a few of the lines, you didn't place the pen at the starting dot quite accurately enough.

Also, don't be afraid to draw across previous lines. In two cases, I can see that you lifted the pen before you made it to the ending dot, stopping right in front of a crossing line, only to pick up the line again later. Be sure to draw completely from one dot to the other, and not have any gaps in the line.

There is some overshooting and undershooting of lines. This is okay for now, as your accuracy will surely improve as you continue with other exercises.

3. Ghosted Planes:

Once more, your lines are confident and smooth. The crosses also meet up in the middle fairly well most of the time.

However, in this exercise also, you don't always place your pen at the starting dot fully accurately. It also looks like you are maybe not always drawing starting and ending dots for every line.

I would make sure to put extra focus on this exercise in your warm-up routine, and put extra attention and care into where you place your pen at the beginning of each line.

4. Tables of Ellipses:

Your ellipses look pretty confident and smooth most of the time. A little deformed at times, but that is to be expected at this stage.

You also managed to fit your ellipses in snugly most of the time.

However, you didn't keep the angle and degree of the ellipses consistent within each panel section. In many cases, you put ellipses in at random angles, and filled up little holes with smaller ellipses.

In a given section, you need to keep the angle and degree of the ellipses the same until you reach the end of the space. I would recommend that you go over the instructions again for this exercise, and be sure to follow all the rules.

5. Ellipses in Planes:

The ellipses look confident and smooth. They aren't very tight yet, but this will improve with more practice. Be sure to keep up with your warm-ups.

You are missing the edges of the plane on some of the ellipses, but I can see you are making an effort to try to hit them.

Be sure to draw through each ellipse two or three times. In one case, I saw your drew through the ellipse only one and a half times. In two cases, I saw you drew through your ellipse four times, which is definitely too much and just makes it look unnecessarily messy.

6. Funnels:

You managed to fit the ellipses fairly snugly most of the time. Most of them are also fairly well aligned to the minor axis, but sometimes it looks like you may be focusing more on fitting them snugly inside the curves then on aligning the minor axis. Some ellipses are a little too loose, so keep an eye on that.

One more advanced trick you could try in your warm-ups is to have a very narrow ellipse in the middle, and gradually increase the degree as you go out from the center. This will help you to develop more control over the degree.

7. Plotted Perspective:

Pretty clean job here! My only complaint is that the hatching is a bit too loose. Make sure that all your hatch lines properly meet up with the boundaries of the plane, and fill it out entirely. Draw steady lines, like you would for the sides of the box, and ghost them if necessary. Do not use quick flicking strokes, keep it controlled.

8. Rough Perspective:

Your lines are pretty confident most of the time, but I can see that you redrew a line on occasion. Be sure to draw each line only once, even if it's wrong.

A few of your horizontals went askew, but it looks like you are making an effort to keep them parallel to the horizon line.

Some of your verticals are off as well, but most of them are nicely perpendicular to the horizon line.

The lines have a strong taper to them, which makes me wonder if you flick the strokes. You may need to slow down your lines a bit, and make it an even, steady stroke.

The perspective estimates on some of your depth lines are quite off, especially the ones that are further away from the vanishing points. However, that is to be expected, and things will improve with more practice.

9. Rotated Boxes:

Your arrangement of boxes came out fairly symmetrical, and the space between the boxes is nice and tight. Some of the boxes don't seem to quite rotate. Instead, they just move back in perspective without rotating.

Overall though, you did quite a good job with this difficult exercise, well done!

10. Organic Perspective:

Your boxes demonstrate a good sense of 3d space.

I see a few doubled up lines here as well. I know it's tempting to try and fix a line that went wrong, but make sure to draw each line only once even if it went askew.

Be sure to plot out dots for all the corner points, and then draw steady lines in between them. It looks like you are using quick flicking strokes for these, and like you don't always bother to put down points.