YourAlly

On second thought, I looked a bit closer and can see that there are boxes that are coverging towards the same vanishing point.

Thank you for such a detailed critique! I did not understand what you meant by, "I can see that you caught the mistake a few times". It was referring to the rotated boxes exercise. All my boxes seem to be rotated to some degree. Do you mean I should rotate them more?

Hey there! This is going to be my first critique but I'll give my 100% while writing. Before starting, let me just mention to warm-up for a few minutes before each session.

The first exercise is superimposed lines (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/superimposedlines). For the second page of those lines, make sure to take your time placing the pen down at the starting point. There are some lines on the second page where there is fraying on both ends which is a mistake mentioned in the link.

Checklist:

Smooth Lines: Yes

No Arching Lines: Yes

No Fraying: No

The second exercise is ghosted lines (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/superimposedlines).

There are 3 levels to this exercise (mentioned in the link). 99% of your lines are passing level 1 as they are executed in 1 straight stroke. Some of them pass level 2 as they are passing through both points. None of them pass level 3 which requires you to hit both points without overshooting or undershooting. That’s fine, as executing a straight line is more important than where it lands as that will improve over time. A few of your lines have this curve at the end which is may have happened because you were pulling the pen back as your brain said it was finished, but your hand didn’t move the pen of the paper. Make sure you are using your shoulder to draw instead of your elbow or wrist as that is a common reason behind curved lines. When using your shoulder, make sure your arm can rest on top of the table with a 90° angle at the bend.

Checklist:

Smooth Lines: Yes

No Arching Lines: No

No under/over shooting: No

The third exercise is ghosted planes (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ghostedplanes).

Take your time ghosting through the lines. Something that was mentioned in Uncomfortable’s video was that people usually spend less effort on each line as the exercises progress. In exercise 1, all you had to do was draw single lines that counted as 1 unit of accomplishment. But when you start drawing planes, you have to now draw 8 lines for 1 plane. Your mind looks at 1 plane as just 1 unit of accomplishment so you spend the same amount of time on a plane, as you would on 1 line. This causes less time to be spent on 1 single line for later exercises. Draw through your ellipses 2-3 times (preferably 2). Narrowing the gap in the ellipse lines is something that naturally comes with practice.

Checklist:

Smooth Lines: Yes

No Arching Lines: Yes

Plotted points(dots): Yes

No under/over shooting lines: No

The ellipses don’t look like squares with soft edges: Yes

Smooth Ellipses: Yes

Ellipses fit in the plane: Yes

Draw through ellipses at least twice: Yes

The fourth exercise is table of ellipses (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/tablesofellipses).

I would recommend making a horizontal border just like your vertical border instead of using the edge of your paper as a boundary. A lot of your ellipses are within the bounds but some are going out so that’s something to work on. Some of your ellipses are not leaning at exactly the same angle but I’ll still put a check as it is minor. Some of your ellipse sizes are not the same on the second page. Again, I’ll give a checkmark as I only spotted 2 with that issue.

Checklist:

Ellipses are not going outside the Table Boundaries: No

Ellipses are leaning at the same angle: Yes

Draw through ellipses at least twice: Yes

The angle of a set of ellipses is the same: Yes

Ellipses are snuggled in without any gaps: Yes

Ellipses are the same size: Yes

The fifth exercise is funnels (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/funnels).

An ellipse has 2 parts, the major axis and the minor axis. The minor axis is the small line and the major axis is the big line. For 3 of the tunnels, your major axis is slightly off-center, meaning it doesn’t cut all the ellipses into 2 even halves. The minor axis is supposed to bisect the center ellipse. 2 of your tunnels don’t have the center ellipse bisected in 2 even halves and the other tunnels with an even number of ellipses (so no center ellipse) don’t have their minor axis exactly in the middle of two ellipses. There are some ellipses that are tilted at an angle which means some of your ellipses in the tunnels aren’t aligned with the rest.

Checklist:

Smooth Ellipses: Yes

Aligned Major Axis: No

Aligned Minor Axis: No

Ellipses are not going out of the Tunnel Lines: Yes

Ellipses are Aligned: No

There aren’t Big Gaps Between Ellipses: Yes

The sixth exercise is plotted perspective (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/plottedperspective).

Not a lot to say as this exercise is just there so you have an idea of what perspective looks like.

Since you made no mistakes to explain, I’ll explain what could have gone wrong. If you had boxes outside the 2 vanishing points, then they would have gotten very distorted. To understand why, use the link here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/G3SI84C/7/distortion

Checklist:

Boxes are Within Vanishing Points: Yes

The seventh exercise is rough perspective (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/roughperspective).

All of your box width lines aren’t perfectly aligned horizontally but I’ll give a check as it was clear that you knew what you were aiming for. The same goes for the box height lines. You had plotted some dots for some of the lines to help you know exactly what you are going to do. Try to do that for all the lines (especially the ones representing the back of the boxes). Reducing the guesswork will create fewer situations where you realize you have a line not going where you want it to. Plotting dots more often will also make sure your horizontal and vertical lines are straight and not tilted.

Checklist:

Smooth Lines: Yes

Draw Hidden Portions of Box: Yes

Width Lines are Parallel to Horizon: Yes

Height Lines are Perpendicular to Horizon: Yes

Draw another set of lines to see how far off they were from the vanishing point: Yes

Plotted Points(dots): No

The eighth exercise is rotated boxes (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/rotatedboxes).

The reason your boxes aren’t combining to form a sphere is because your boxes are not close enough and a lot of them aren’t rotated as much as they should be. By having your boxes be close together, it allows you to use the lines from the center boxes as a reference for the outer ones. This will reduce the amount of thinking you have to do to only the very outer lines. To make a box look rotated, you need to have the lines converge more each time. This is a difficult thing to understand, so you should go to the link I put for this lesson and re-read the part with the animated box gif.

Checklist:

Smooth Lines: Yes

Boxes are Close Together: No

Draw Hidden Portions of Box: Yes

Boxes are being Rotated: No

The ninth exercise is organic perspective (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/organicperspective).

Again, plotting points before putting the pen down will avoid having lines not be where you want them. Some of the boxes have the lines converging the wrong way. For example, look at the big box on the left side of the second section on the second page. Two of the lines representing the top face are converging towards the viewer when they should be converging away from the viewer. That would have worked if that shape was a trapezoid, but we are working with boxes. Now on to why your shapes don’t have “reasonable foreshortening”. Objects with a lot of foreshortening signify that the object is very big and/or close while subtle foreshortening means the object is human-sized and/or far away. Some of your closer/bigger objects don’t have any foreshortening while some at the back have a lot of foreshortening. The drawabox article talking about this can be found here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/7/foreshortening. Something you can do when boxes are overlapping is drawing another stroke for the lines representing the box closer to you. That will make the closer box have thicker lines.

Checklist:

Smooth Lines: Yes

Plotted Points: No

Reasonable Foreshortening: No

Lines are Converging the Right Way: No

Smaller Boxes Farther Away: Yes

Congrats on finishing lesson 1!