benj

No stress! The missing paged whose siblings I'd seen look good (though please try not to doodle in the pages (or whatever is happening in your superimposed lines page, I'm not sure :P)). As for the rotated boxes exercise, it's looking solid. You might think that you've messed up, what with the box not being fully round, but we're happy to see the student try different things with each quadrant - it shows that they're willing to be bold, and experiment, rather than stick to the safety of what they know. It is a bit of a shame that those quadrants are such that you're missing some boxes, but given how much space the ones there have taken, that's understandable. The rest of your boxes are snug, and rotate comfortably, so it seems you've absorbed what you need to from this exercise, anyway.

Happy to have you here! Let’s take this one exercise at a time, then!

Starting off, your superimposed lines are looking great. You’ve got some very ambitious lines here, and I’m happy to see how lightheartedly you’ve approached them! Your marks are smooth, properly lined up on the left, and of a consist trajectory. Your ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, too, and I’m happy to see that you’ve filled your pages with them. The start/end points in the ghosted lines exercise are a little big, but you’ve spotted this and improved it by the ghosted planes exercise, which is good. Remember, a perfect line is meant to swallow them both.

Onto the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise looks great. You’ve got a good variety of ellipses here (referring to their degrees/angles), and they’re all smooth and nicely rounded. Regarding their rotations, you’ll sometimes stop short of 2, so be mindful of that. Recall that the recommendation is 2-3 times, always. It’s important, especially, to agree on a number beforehand, rather than adjust the ellipse according to how it’s coming out (students tend to lean towards more rotations if the notice the ellipse has issues, and fewer if not). The ellipses in planes do a decent job of maintaining that same level of quality, despite their more complicated frames, though they will occasionally deform in an effort to fill as much of the plane as possible, so be mindful of that. As for the funnels, they could definitely benefit from being a little bigger – small marks are much harder from the shoulder! Aside from that, however, they’re confident, snug, and properly cut in half by their axes, so keep up the good work.

The plotted perspective boxes could also benefit from being drawn a little bigger, though you’ve gotten all you should from this exercise, so no stress in that regard. It’s just helpful to draw big to give your brain some room to think. (I’m guessing the rough perspective exercise pages are out of order? Either that or you started off strong, and steadily got worse, ahah.) Looking at what I assume is the last frame of your rough perspective exercise, your convergences are on-point, and your linework confident. This last I was particularly worried about, because I noticed some automatic reinforcing in your previous page, but it seems like you’ve also spotted thar yourself, and amended it. I definitely appreciate the critical eye with which you’ll observe each page, before moving on to the next one – keep that up! The rotated boxes exercise is well done. It’s big, its boxes are snug, and they make a decent attempt at rotating. They don’t always do so as well as we’d like, but that’s no issue – in this exercise we’re more interested in seeing if the student sees things to the end, to their best ability, than succeed. I appreciate your patience in applying the lineweight/hatching too, btw! Finally, the organic perspective exercise is well done. Your compositions here are interesting, and flow well as a result of the construction, size, and foreshortening of your boxes. Great work.

Oh hey! I also looked at your old Lesson 1 submission! (So hopefully you didn’t resubmit cuz you didn’t like the TA in charge of it, ahahah.) Jokes aside, let’s take this one exercise at a time.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re all smooth, properly lined up on the left, and of a consistent trajectory. Your ghosted lines look quite confident also, and I appreciate that you’re lifting your pen off the page at the end of them – makes them look nice and dynamic! Obviously you’re missing your end points by quite a lot at times, as a result of this, but it’ll get better as you keep practicing, so don’t get discouraged! Save for those occasional accuracy issues, your planes are also looking solid. I’m glad to see so many of them on your page, too! Good attitude!

Onto the ellipse section, your ellipses are looking good. They’re a little same-y (so you’ll want to vary their degrees/angles a little more, moving forward), but in terms of their smoothness/roundness/rotations, they’re looking good! You will flick your pen off the page at the end of them, sometimes, which leads to some ugly tails, so consider lifting it as you did in the ghosted lines exercise (or at least, trying to do so consistently!) Also, see if you can’t force yourself to stick to a maximum of 2 rotations moving forward. You’ll find it much easier to spot your own mistakes like this. The ellipses in planes do a good job of maintaining that same smoothness/roundness despite these more complicated frames. The funnels, too, are looking nice and confident, but they do have some spacing issues, so you might’ve benefitted from ghosting each ellipse a little longer. Try not to be arbitrary about the amount – be deliberate: ghost until you feel ready!

As for the box section, the plotted perspective exercise starts things off well. You should’ve used a ruler for your hatching lines here, but it’s minimal. The plotted perspective exercise starts off strong and shows some good improvement throughout the set. By the end, your convergences are on-point, and your lines are confident and dynamic. Your rotated boxes exercise looks great! It’s big, its boxes are snug, and they rotate nicely. They rotate a little too quickly, which is why there’s less of them than you might’ve wanted near the edges, but that’s not an issue~ What’s important is that even like this, you’ve correctly identified and used the neighboring edges. On the subject of boxes, the organic perspective exercise looks great. Your boxes here are well constructed, and they flow well as a result of their size/foreshortening. The occasionally sloppy (I suspect you drew these lines a little too fast) hatching does distract sometimes, but it’s a minor thing in the whole scheme of things.

Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’m TA Benj, and I’ll be taking a look at it for you. Right off the bat, there’s quite a few pages missing here, so I’ll judge the ones that you have here as-is, and then request that you upload the rest, before I send you off to the box challenge. In the future, please confirm that everything is where it should be – we have a checklist for a reason, after all.

Starting from your superimposed lines, these are looking solid. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. Your ghosted lines look confident, too, as do your planes, but be careful that you’re not so conscious of your end points that your line ends up wobbling as it approaches it, or, worse, stops short of it, and then limps to the finish line. We want to become comfortable with our mistakes!

The table of ellipses exercise looks good. Your ellipses here are smooth, rounded, and showing a good variety of degrees/angles; however, they’re a little inconsistent in their rotations. Remember that you’re meant to be rotating around them 2-3 times, always, and ideally, this number should be decided on before-hand, rather than being a knee-jerk reaction to how the ellipse is turning out. Again, mistakes are perfectly fine! The ellipses in planes look fantastic. This is especially impressive considering how ambitious your planes are! The funnels, too, are well done (save for the rotations), but I suspect you’ve drawn these a little faster than you might need to, so be careful that you’re not confusing speed with confidence, right now. You don’t want to draw arbitrarily ‘fast’, you want to draw at a speed that is ideal for you. So, consider spending some time figuring out exactly how fast that is.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean. The rough perspective exercise looks mostly good. Your convergences are strong, with minimal error, and your linework is confident. However, I notice a few instances where you’ll redraw a line that has come out wrong, so be mindful of that. Finally, the organic perspective exercise looks great. Your boxes here are well constructed, and they flow well as a result of their increase in size, and consistent, shallow foreshortening. Good work, all around!

Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’ll be taking a look at it for you.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are well done. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. I do suspect you might be drawing your arcing lines a little too fast, so see if you can’t experiment with a few speeds, to see if the one you’re currently at is your ideal one. Your ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, also, but you’ve made your start/end points a little too large. Remember that the idea is for a perfect line to swallow them both.

Onto the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise looks good. Your ellipses are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through, if a little same-y. See if you can’t have some more variety when it comes to their degrees/angles. The ellipses in planes are well done. You’ve correctly prioritized their smoothness and roundness here, too, rather than stressing about how well they fit into their frames, and ending up with deformed ellipses. Finally, the funnels are great. There’s the occasional wobble during those sharp turns, for which I’d recommend trying not to stress too much about it. What’s likely happening there is that, as you’re approaching it, you’re becoming aware of how difficult of a task it will likely be, and switching to a lesser pivot for the added control that it would give you. Rather than do that, simply try to not let it get to you. If it’s indeed difficult, and you mess it up, that’s perfectly fine! Our goal isn’t to be draw perfectly, it’s to draw correctly!

The plotted perspective exercise starts the box section off well. You should’ve used a ruler for the hatching lines here, however. Your rough perspective exercise shows some good improvement throughout the set. By the end, your convergences are on-point, but your linework is still a little stiff. Remind yourself that what you’re doing here is really no different from what you’re doing in the ghosted lines exercise; you’re just drawing lines, one at a time, from point A to point B. They’re adding up to a different big picture here, sure, but that doesn’t mean that they’re drawn any differently, or are anything more than simple, lowly lines. So don’t let the big picture overwhelm you! The rotated boxes exercise looks great! I love how big your boxes are, and I especially love that you’ve seen this through to the end, as you started to lose sight of how the lines should behave. We’re more interested in seeing that, than we are a perfectly done rotated box, if I’m honest! The rest of the boxes are well done, by the way! They’re nice and snug, and rotate comfortably both up front and in the back. On the subject of boxes, the organic perspective exercise is well done. Your boxes here are well constructed, and they flow well as a result of their size, and foreshortening. Nice work, and consider this lesson complete!

Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’m TA Benj, and I’ll be taking a look at it for you.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are well done. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. Your ghosted lines are quite confident, also, but for your planes, I notice that you’ve not potted the start/end points of their non-diagonal center lines, as instructed. Please do, moving forward. If you take a look at those lines, you’ll notice that you’ll often stop short of the usual end point. That’s because, on top of drawing the line (which is complicated enough as it is, from an unfamiliar pivot), you’re now also having to think about its length. Where, prior to this, you would decide that beforehand, in an entirely separate step.

Onto the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise shows a good start. Your ellipses are perhaps not as varied as we’d like them (it’s mostly the same 3 ellipses over and over), and you’ll sometimes settle for ‘1 rotation and change’, when we ask for a minimum of 2, but these are minor things. What matters is that your ellipses are smooth, and rounded. The ellipses in planes maintain these qualities, also. There is the occasional deformed ellipse, so I’ll remind you that accuracy is not a concern of ours in this course, but as that happens to be the exception, rather than the rule, I won’t linger too much on it – it seems you understand. The funnels, too, though a little same-y, show a solid grasp of what we’re trying to impart here. Their ellipses are confident, snug (mostly), and properly cut in half by their axes. Do be careful not to go on autopilot, however; that bottom left funnel could’ve used a little more time on the ghosting stage. Not having all of the funnels follow the same orientation might help, to that end.

As for your boxes, the plotted perspective exercise starts things off strong. Your boxes here (and in general) could be bigger, but they’re well done. The rough perspective exercise starts off a little lacking, but looks good by the end of the set. There, your convergences are on-point, and your linework is confident, and clean. I will mention, just to be safe, that the issue before was that you’d draw a line, discover it to be incorrect, and then redraw it. This is not something we encourage. As explained in the ghosted lines section, each line is to be drawn once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out. Resist the urge to ‘fix’ a mistake by adding more ink to it. The rotated boxes exercise looks great. Its boxes are big, snug, and they do a good job of rotating for the most part. Their back sides, and the ones furthest from the center tend to struggle, but this is something we’ve come to expect, so no stress. We’ll go deeper into those as we begin the box challenge. On the subject of boxes, the organic perspective exercise is well done. With the exception of those occasional dirty lines, and the fact that some of your boxes are a little dramatic in their foreshortening, the boxes look good. They’re well constructed, and flow well, as a result of their carefully-monitored increase in size. Nice work, and consider this lesson complete.

Looks good! Still not quite perfect, but given how ambitious these planes are, that's understandable.

If you're referring to the box challenge, you should submit them through the usual system, as you submitted this lesson. The responses here are only for revision requests, as this one.

I did catch myself squinting a little :P, but no stress! Let’s take this one exercise at a time shall we?

Your superimposed lines look great. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. Practicing some arcing lines would’ve helped you, too, since the motion would have been good prep for the ellipses, but that’s alright. The ghosted lines look nice and confident, too, though their start/end points are a little large. They’re in a much better place in the planes exercise, though I notice that by page 2 they turn to lines, almost. I usually see points as small lines when the student is rushing their work, so be careful not to fall into that trap! Anyway, beyond that, your work is confident, so no stress.

The table of ellipses exercise looks good. There’s not a great deal of variety to your ellipses, and there’s the occasional spacing issue, too, so you’ll want to ghost for a little longer, but the ellipses themselves are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through, so you’ve got most of it down. The ellipses in planes, too, are quite confident, and I appreciate how boldly you’ll miss your frame, sometimes! It’s more important for us that our marks are confident, than accurate, so it’s good to see that you’re one that same page – keep it up! Do, however, be careful not to go around your ellipses any more than 3 times; that’s the max. Nice work on your funnels! There’s some spacing issues here, too, but the ellipses are properly upright, and cut in half by their respective axes, so the bulk of the exercise is looking good.

The plotted perspective exercise is nicely done, though you should’ve used a ruler for your hatching lines. Also, be careful that your back lines are perpendicular to the horizon, as per the rules of 2 point perspective. If your points suggest that they’re not, that’s because of the accumulation of small errors, so the best thing to do then is to simply estimate the position of your back lines. The rough perspective exercise is well done, though it seems like you stuck with a lot of your first guesses here (which, though close, could be better if given a chance to be improved, so try not to be in too much of a hurry). Good work on the rotated boxes exercise. The hatching here is a little sloppy (I’m guessing wrist?), but the boxes are snug, and they rotate quite nicely – both up front and in the back! – so the bulk of this exercise is looking well. Save for the overshooting (it seems that you’ve figured out the direction of each line, but not where both of them intersect, so each extends arbitrarily, hoping to meet the other), the organic perspective exercise is well done. Your boxes here are properly constructed, and they flow well as a result of their size and foreshortening, too. Good work.

You should definitely use the shoulder more. Movement from the elbow should be to compensate for the shoulder, rather than to lead any kind of motion. It’s not unusual that the upgrade from the wrist to the elbow would lead to good accuracy, and more confident marks than you’re used to, but it is still, as we describe it in the lessons, the ‘path of least resistance’, so I’d try to get myself accustomed to the shoulder the sooner the better. I will judge the submission as-is though, so no stress.

Starting from your superimposed lines, these are well done. I’m sure you can see, however, that you’re running out of the natural range of the elbow with the page-width lines. Notice how they struggle a little at the end? Beyond that, however, they’re smooth and properly lined up at the start and of a consistent trajectory, so nicely done. The arcing lines would benefit from being a little bigger, but they’re not looking too bad like that, either. The ghosted lines/planes look good, and I’m pleased to see so many of them, too! I also appreciate that the overshooting issue in the lines seems to have been fixed by the time you reach the planes, though this may have come in exchange for some confidence, as the line now will sometimes wobble near their ends. Be mindful of that! It’s more important for us that our marks are confident, than accurate.

The table of ellipses exercise looks good. Your ellipses here are a little samey (their angels/degrees), but they’re mostly smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. You’ll want to push these aspects of them still (their roundness in particular, since there’s the occasional bumpy/pointy ellipse), but you’re on the right track. There’s more of this in the ellipses in planes unfortunately, so I’ll remind you, as before, that confidence is our #1 priority. Quite simply, an ellipse that is smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through is correct no matter what – even if it completely misses its frame. One that adheres to it, but is wobbly, or bumpy, is not particularly useful to us, because in so being, it doesn’t convey an illusion of solidity. The funnels too, are not very varied, and the size of the ellipses certainly hasn’t helped you draw them very confidently, but they show a good start, so no worries.

Onto the box section, the plotted perspective exercise is well done. The back lines, which were causing you some trouble in the first 2 frames, look quite a lot better in the 3rd, so good on you for always trying to do better – that attitude will serve you well in this course. The rough perspective exercise is well done. It’s honestly good from the start, but it manages to improve a little throughout its lifetime. I will say, some of your boxes here are a little too stretched towards the horizon (makes things a little easier), but no reason for stress, either way; the basics are the same regardless. Great work on the rotated boxes exercise. It’s a little small, but its boxes are snug, and they do a good job of rotating, both up front and in the back. You’ve forgotten to draw through some of them, I notice (the 4 diagonal ones), but that’s a small thing, in the whole scheme of things. Save for the last frame, which is a little sloppy (eager to finish, I suppose?), the organic perspective exercise looks good. I certainly love seeing so many unused points on the page – evidence of proper planning! – and though the boxes are a little dramatic in their foreshortening, their construction and size makes it so that they flow quite well, too.

Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’m TA Benj and I’ll be taking a look at it for you.

Starting off, your superimposed lines are well done. I’m happy to see your page filled to the brim with them, and they all appear to be smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. Your ghosted lines/planes are quite confident, too, and I’m especially pleased to see that you’ve not forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes, as most students do. Do try to be less conscious of them, though, if you can. I notice that you’ll sometimes curve as you approach your end point, which is not something we like to see. It speaks to your brain’s involvement in the act of drawing, of which there should be none! – we’re just relying on our muscles, executing the motion that was built up during ghosting.

Onto the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise is well done. Your ellipses here are smooth, rounded, and mostly properly drawn through. I say mostly because you’ll sometimes stop short of the minimum 2 rotations, and settle for 1 and change. Try to hit that minimum please. Beyond that, however, and the occasional bumpy ellipse (same advice as prior – limit involvement of your brain), this section is well done. The ellipses in planes, too, do a good job of maintaining that same degree of confidence. I notice here that you’ve paid some attention to their position in space, too, which is not required at this stage, but great to see. Keep that up! Finally, the funnels are well done. Do be careful, however, that no ellipse is lacking a (visible) minor axis. This is to say, if the straight line of your funnels doesn’t extend far enough to justify another ellipse, either don’t add one, or extend it in a separate stroke, then add it.

For the box section, the plotted perspective exercise looks good, though I see that you’ve drawn your hatching lines freehand (you should’ve used a ruler for this particular exercise), and sometimes applied them to the wrong plane (this is not a huge issue right now, so no stress.) The rough perspective exercise is strong throughout its length. I’d perhaps make the boxes themselves a little bigger (easier on the brain, as well as the arm!), but beyond that, their lines are confidently drawn, and their convergences on-point. Your rotated boxes exercise looks clean. You’ve done well to see it through to the end, despite having somewhat lost track of what each box is supposed to do near it, and that your work is nice and clean despite that is quite the achievement. Your organic perspective boxes, too, show a lot of promise. They’re well constructed, and their increase in size, and consistent shallow foreshortening make it so that they flow quite well.