AzureTestament

Hello kabachuha, its me again! I'll take a look at your revisions.

Branches

As far as the ellipses are concerned I see some improvement, and i can see even more of it on your plant constructions later on; of course, some of them are still wonky , but they're not meant to be perfect , that's to be expected at this stage of the course and will improve with time.

The lines, in the branch exersice itself are not very confident : sometimes they're just a little wobbly , other times they end up very much so; this is not so much an issue of skill, its more likely due to focusing too much on those lines being accurate and hitting their mark, rather then being confident even if they overshoot.

This isn't an issue on most of your plant constructions later on, so it shows you had a great deal of improvement in that regard, but do keep it in mind.

Leaves

You've handled the leaves pretty well, although there's a couple of things i'd like to call out on a few of these.

• Cretan maple leaf: the only issue i could see here is in your edge detail ; the way you've drawn it makes the leaf appear as if there's "three separate leaves" instead of one; try to observe your reference after every stroke , as its easy to miss these kinds of details,but aside from that this looks pretty good i'd say.

• Fatsia: You've handled this one very well, there's only one thing i'd like to say , and that's try to work additively, as cutting into your forms can flatten your drawings (this is not a much of an issue for lesson 3, but it's VERY IMPORTANT for lessons 4 and 5).

• Nettles: I admit that i emphasized the use of shadow shapes in texturing in my critique, however these were not used for texturing , they were used for defining the relationship between the leaves (which i can see as clearly being in the reference),which was a point in my older critique that you've adressed; The problem here is that the leaf that is casting said shadow isn't actually present in the drawing so it makes said relationship unclear, that being said you've handled the leaf itself fairly well along with its edge detail.

• Lime: the only real issue here is that you skipped a constructional stage, more specifically , you drew the "spike" at the end of the leaf and the main leaf shape at the same time; Be sure to just draw a simple shape for the leaf first , then add smaller parts of the drawing ,like said spike, and finally move onto edge detail.

Plant constructions

Moving onto the plants , this is where the greatest deal of improvements seem to have been made.

Your lines and ellipses , as said , have shown the biggest improvement over time, as long as you keep this up and warm up you'll go a long way.

Your leaves on the dragonfruit and lily have a very good sense of flow, you're not afraid of letting the lines overlap with each other and with other leaves , very good job.

You've spent a great deal of time observing and drawing the Engleria,along with the same improvements as the previous plant, which is great to see.

As far as the Cloudberry goes , be careful about little instances where you slip and forget to draw the center line of leaves, like the 2 side leaves on the bottoms; while they're part of the same leaf, those lines are a fundamental part of construction , so try not to forget them.

On the same note , always observe your reference; this is as, if not more important then the ability to draw itself , i notice your edge detail frequently ends up looking very uniform , and completely different from your reference.

This mostly comes from our tendencies to auto-pilot , which emerges because we are aware that we'll need to draw a LOT of edge detail, which overwhelms us and causes us to make marks that look very similar to each other; every time you notice this happen, try to take back control, and while in most cases you'll continue to auto-pilot(which is normal), eventually this will increase your ability to stop it and be more careful with observation.

Obviously, there's things you could improve on, but overall i see you've improved over the course of your revisions, so as long as you keep these points in mind and keep practicing , you're good to go.

If you have any questions , feel free to ask them, whether here or on the discord channels dedicated to them.

I'll mark the lesson as complete; keep it up , and good luck on your journey!

As always , thank you for the very extensive critique!

Here are my revisions: https://imgur.com/a/Pl0YDEE

I've tried to spend more time on these , but frankly , I couldn't figure out what i was doing wrong with head and feet constructions until i got started on the very last drawing( and either way, you'll be the judge of that).

Thank you for your time.

Hello Kabachuha, congrats on completing lesson 3, I'll critique your homework.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows , you've generally handled these pretty well, they're drawn with confidence and you're not afraid to let them ovelap.

Leaves

The confidence is still shown here, you let most of the leaves move and wrap around believably , you're also drawing every single piece of edge detail as its own separate stroke and a single trajectory, aside from a couple of cases in the taro leaf where the edge detail end up a little more jagged and wobbly.

You've skipped a stage when drawing the storax leaf (always start by making the most basic leaf shape you could possibly do), but you've rectified that with the fern leaf and stuck fairly well to the premise of drawing the leaf in separate stages, being careful to define their relationship, good job!

As far as texture is concerned, be careful not to Copy your reference, specifically when drawing the veins of the leaves; try instead to imply its presence by drawing the shadows they cast on the leaf itself , it helps to outline the shape of those shadows first and then fill them in ,no matter how thin they are.

Branches

Moving onto branches, aside from the first one,I see you're applying the segments as highlighted in the lesson notes, good work.

I noticed that your lines sway a little at at times, but what i'm most worried about is your ellipses, which often end up wobbly.

Be careful about the principles of markmaking of lesson 1, and remember to keep up with warmups, it will improve with time

Plant constructions

Starting off with the first plant ,the mushroom:I can't be sure unless I could see the reference, but I'll remind you of this lesson 1 paragraph.

In this case the relationship of the ellipses seems inversed, I say seems because if (in the reference)the cap were pointed away from the viewer or simply bent in a specific way, your approach would be entirely correct , but if it were facing towards the viewer it would look off; you can look at the mushroom demo from drawabox if you wish to expand on this topic , as its shown quite well there , notice as the ellipses get wider and wider as they approach the bottom of this mushroom in said demo.

Moving on,what I noticed is that the leaves had a prominent drop in quality, which is understandable due to the drawings being a good 2-3 weeks away from the exercise itself, but do be careful about this.

The hibiscus,lavander, potato plant and lilac are fine as far as the main leaf shape is concerned, they have a sense of flow and movement to them, the other plants' usually feel far more static, sometimes even flat.

What I see in all of them however, is that you're not adding any edge detail, at all.

While textures are optional, edge detail is not, as it's a key component in showing how the leaf sits in 3D space.

This isn't much of a problem , you've shown that you are capable of drawing the leaves well, and I'm sure you just need to give the drawings and the instructions a little more time in order to make full use of your abilities.

Keep in mind that you don't need to finish a page the same day you started it and you're encouraged to give as many sittings/days to a drawing as it needs; I'm aware it's difficult at first , and frankly I'm struggling with giving drawings more time myself, but it's good to keep in mind and take back control of our focus when it inevitably slips away from us.

I've also noticed you are not drawing the branches as instructed in some plants, the Spruce being the most obvious case where you draw the entire length of the branch in just a couple of strokes, I'd also reccomend using this method in order to draw forking branches, instead of just making an ellipse and extending another branch from the original one; if you struggle with this, try to draw a few more ellipses to delimitate your branch, if you use too few of them and too far apart from each other , it makes drawing the segments a lot more difficult.

However , you do a good job of observing your plants, you've drawn the rose using a pentagram as a guide , which shows a good deal of experimentation, and you're still adhering to drawing in steps , you've also drawn ellipses for all leaves to use as guides and drawing them in their entirety, which is great.

The last thing i want to mention is in regards to cast shadows, specifically the potato plant and lilac; it's easy to get the wrong idea when watching the demos , but you're not meant to fill the darkest and deepest areas of the plant in black , you should aim to use said shadows to define the relationship between the leaves and/or branches, which I can see a hint of you doing in your hibiscus demo.

Now, this is my second critique ever, my apologies if it sounded harsh at times, but I truly believe that you can knock this lesson out of the park with a few revisions, as most of the mistakes in your work are either because of a lack of time ,a misinterpretation of the instructions, or simple forgetfulness.

As such , I'll be assigning some revisions below.

Feel free to take as much time as you need on these, and if you have any questions feel free to ask them.

Thank you for the critique!

I do have a question related to critiques,if it's not too much trouble.

Is It fine to share the demonstrations you post on your critiques,either in the discord or in critiques of my own? I feel like they are extremely helpful.

I've already shared one before,but wanted to make sure it's ok.

I definetly rushed ahead too quickly.

I'll give the observation and markmaking more time,as you said.

That's all; as always,Thank you for your time.

Hello BRADDRAWSSTUFF! Congratulations on finishing lesson 1, I'll critique your work.

Lines

1. Superimposed Lines

   You have done a pretty good job with these. Your lines are confident and there's only some fraying at the end of the line, which will get better with practice.

Having said that, I have noticed that the last couple lines on the second page did have fraying on both ends; try not to get impatient and be careful to give yourself as much time as needed, always start at the same point for each line of the exercise.

2. Ghosted Lines

   These are also pretty good, you have plotted starting and ending dots for each line and they're by and large very confident and smooth.

However , you have a tendency to repeat your lines, especially when they don't go exactly as you want them to go.

This is a pattern that can be seen in some the next exercises too , and could lead to some counter-productive habits like chicken scratching.

Drawabox as a course is not asking you to be perfect in your execution of the exercises or make them look pretty, but to try to complete the exercises to the best of your current ability.

To improve upon this , plan your strokes carefully with the ghosting method (which , judging by your lines, you are doing just fine) then consciously try be OK with whatever happens next and don't repeat the line, treat it as if it is correct,no matter how bad the end result gets; I can understand how hard it could be to just let mistakes be at first, but i'm sure you can handle this.

3. Ghosted Planes

   Overall , i'm very happy with how you've handled this one.

Almost all of your lines are confident, the ones that are slightly wobbly aren't very noticeable and you've only repeated your lines a couple of times, good job!

Ellipses

1. Ellipses in planes

These are by and large very confidently made, i'm pleased to see you've drawn each ellipse twice.

They're pretty accurate too, Although the priority is always confidence over accuracy; either way , great job!

2. Tables of Ellipses

These are also pretty smooth! Most of them fit snugly close to each other and barely overlap, they've been drawn over twice and are confident.

Not much else to say in regards to them , keep up the good work.

3.Funnels

I feel like the ellipses here fit the corners of the funnels pretty well, however, some of them aren't actually aligned with the minor axis.

I'd like you to try and change the ellipses degrees during your warmups in the future,start with a narrower ellipse at the middle of the funnel and gradually increase it as you move outwards , like seen Here

Boxes

Before i start with the boxes , i'd invite you to read the instructions more carefully.

You were meant to do one page of plotted perspective and two pages of rough perspective , not just frames; you were also supposed to post two pages of organic perspective , not one.

I'll critique the ones you have uploaded for now.

1. Plotted perspective

These you've done pretty well, you've drawn through your boxes and even used the ghosting method for the hatching lines, although admittedly you could've added a 1 or 2 more boxes in it.

2. Rough perspective

You've managed to guess the position of the lines fairly accurately in relation to their respective vanishing points,along with drawing width and height lines parallel to the horizon , so no problems there!

Your tendency to repeat lines is heavily present here , refer back to the lines section for those.

3.Rotated boxes

This is a very difficult exercise, so you're not expected to do this well, but the way you've handled this is actually pretty good aside from the repeated lines, which are heavily present here, moreso than any other exercise.

Your boxes fit snugly together with their corners fairly close to each other and most of them rotate fairly well in space, however the ones on the side do not do so .

This is a good exercise to come back to later on , to see how much you improved.

4.Organic perspective

These have gone fairly well, you're plotting starting and ending points for your lines (aside from a couple of cases, as far as i can see at least), and your boxes are moving in space believably , rotating and getting smaller as the distance gets greater.

All in all this lesson has gone very well, the most important thing here is your tendency to repeat lines, keep an eye on that.

As such , I'll require you to post the missing page of rough perspective (3 frames) and a single frame of organic perspective, i'd like you to put as much focus on doing a single confident stroke for each line in these revisions as you would anything else, no matter how off it ends up getting.

Also keep in mind that you probably don't need to do the entire 250 box challenge if you've already done it once, 50 should suffice (that's how it usually goes at least , feel free to move on in the way you find most appropriate).

That is all, good luck in your journey.

Thank you for the very extensive critique Uncomfortable!

I've taken note of my mistakes and will try my best going forward.

Thank you for the in-depth critique!

Here are my revisions , i also have a couple of questions, if its not much trouble.

https://imgur.com/a/FTNdpUO

The 250 box challenge i've made a while ago has some... doodles on a few of the pages.

While the boxes and lines are still visible , is it safe to assume i should redo the pages that have drawings on them?

The hatching lines for the boxes were all made in pencil , should i redo said lines using ink?

I somehow made a box that has 2 different bottom planes on the rough perspective exercise.

I highlighted the line that i did by mistake with a red "no" , I figured too late that it would count as a self-critique, wouldn't it?

That is all, Thank you for your time!