e_yagami

1 or 2 plants per page is reasonable. You don't want to do them too small as you it won't test your line drawing as much and the detail will be fiddly.

Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 1 homework-

Lines

-The superimposed lines are off to a great start, as you have always started at a clearly defined point and kept all of the wavering on one side. I do catch some slight wobbliness, remember to prioritize confidence over accuracy and engage your whole arm with a locked wrist, there is the expected fraying at the ends, but this tends to disappear with more mileage and practice.

-Moving on to the ghosted lines, you are doing a great job and they are drawn with a good deal of confidence, the only thing that I want to call out is that your lines tend to make a slight arc, this means that you probably need more time to get comfortable while drawing from your shoulder. One thing that you can do is try to draw your lines a little bit faster to avoid any chance of hesitation.

-The ghosted planes are no different from the ghosted lines, here your linework is looking solid and confident.

Ellipses

-Starting with the tables of ellipses, these are looking very tidy rather than rushed and even though they are difficult to draw you are already doing a good job. Overall I see that you kept in mind the alignment, degree, angle and spacing of the ellipses, while the spacing seems a little off at times, accuracy will come with practice and can't really be forced now.

-The ellipses in planes are turning out well, I just want to give you a quick reminder. You might be thinking that the center of the ellipses is the same as the center of the planes or that you should modify the elliptical ellipse shape so it touches the contact points, but this is not the case. Ellipses have to be symmetrical and have the same shape regardless of where they are, so the only things you can change is how wide the ellipse is and which position it is in.

-The funnels are turning out well and I can see that the ellipses are fitting snugly within the boundaries and don’t spill out, you are also doing a good job when it comes to the alignment of the ellipses to the minor axis as they are cut in equal halves by it. There aren’t any major issues here, so keep up the great work.

Boxes

-Starting with the rough perspective, the first thing that jumps at me is that your linework has got wobbly and hesitant on some parts, try to draw confident lines and do not be afraid of overshooting them, right now you want to get used to drawing lines that follow a consistent trajectory. Another issue, but on a lesser scale, is the tendency to repeat your lines, if you make a mistake don't try to correct it by drawing on top of it, as it only makes it stand out more. Lastly, you are doing a great job aligning the sides of the boxes to the horizon line, and your estimations to the vanishing point are good and they will get better with practice.

-Your rotated boxes are turning out well, as you have kept the gaps between them narrow and consistent, and you have clearly thought about the rotation. The only thing that I want to call out is the linework, I can see some parts where it gets scratchy and sketchy, especially the hatching, you want to be more tidy with it and don’t use a single stroke. One thing that can help you is to use as much space available on your page as you can, this way your marks will be accurate while maintaining good confidence as it will be easier to engage your whole arm when drawing .

-Finishing with the organic perspective you are doing an excellent job, your linework is looking more confident, which has helped your boxes look more solid and believable and you are already making some good attempts at the perspective of the boxes, I only have one minor suggestion: don’t be afraid to overlap your boxes and you can add lineweight to the parts of outer lines that overlap with other boxes to clarify which ones are on top and which behind, so give it a try next attempts you have at the exercise.

Before you move on to the next challenge, I want to leave you some additional work, I’ll leave it below and I look forward to seeing your work, good luck.

Hi Monomyth, congrats on finishing lesson 1! I’ll be handling your critique relying on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ

My critique will be divided in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes. Let’s get started !

1. Lines section

First off, I want to congratulate you on your superimposed lines exercise because I’m seeing absolutely no fraying on the first end of your lines, which shows that you have executed this exercise with a lot of patience and care. Your lines do get tighter on your second page, but I’m also seeing a lot of wobble, so please remember to always prioritize confidence over accuracy: diverging straight lines will always be more correct than closely superimposed but wobbly lines.

I’m also always seeing the dots on the page which indicate that you plan out your lines correctly before executing them, so that's good! Starting a line with a starting and ending dot is important for applying the ghosting method, and this should never be skipped, even in exercises where you’ll be focusing on other things, so this is a good habit that’s going to be useful to you in each of the coming lessons.

My comment about prioritizing confidence over accuracy also goes for your ghosted lines & planes exercises, because these lines do show some wobble (which is perfectly normal). In future warmups, you can try experimenting with different speeds when tracing lines, going a little bit faster might help get rid of some of the hesitation. I also definitely prefer your first page of this exercise, where you experimented with different plane shapes a little bit more.

2. Ellipses section

Good job on drawing through your ellipses and keeping them very tight like you did. However, they are all very uniform when it comes to their degree, which is especially apparent in the table of ellipses exercise, so in future warmups I want you to push yourself to vary the degree of your ellipses more (that is, making them wider or narrower). This is something that you can integrate next time you attempt the ellipses in funnels exercise in future warmups.

It is also something that can help for your next ellipses in planes: as it is, some of them are quite egg-shaped, and it looks like you let your concern over accuracy take precedence over your confidence. When doing this exercise in the future, something you can try out is focusing on having the ellipse reach 2 opposite corners of the plane rather than its sides, and trying its major axis with the diagonal of the plane going through said corners. You’ll see that even the thinnest ellipse can easily reach all corners and fit inside a plane that way. See example here: https://ibb.co/album/zhKcZD

All in all, when it comes to ellipses and as for lines, remember that confidence should always take precedence over accuracy, and to draw from your shoulder using the ghosting method. For ellipses in funnels, always pay attention to carefully align your ellipse with the minor axis.

3. Boxes section

You drew through all of your boxes in the exercises where it was requested. In the rough perspective exercise, you kept your width lines parallel to horizon and height lines perpendicular to it in the most part, so good job on that! Keep it in mind for the future.

Congrats on your rotated boxes attempt, you kept your corners close and you have a good amount of rotation in my opinion.

I also like your progression in the organic perspective exercise, your first attempt shows way too little variation in box sizes and also too little overlap, but you’re definitely showing improvement by the last attempt, which succeeds much more in conveying the feeling of 3D space.

So again, congrats, this was all in all a very solid submission, I think that you’ve understood the point of these exercises so I’ll be marking this lesson as complete and let you continue on to the 250 boxes challenge.

Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 1 homework.

Lines

-The superimposed lines are off to a great start as you have always started from a clearly defined point and kept all of the wavering on one side only. I do catch a very light wobbliness so make sure you are engaging your whole arm with a locked wrist. There is the expected fraying at the ends but this will disappear with practice.

-Moving on to the ghosted lines, these are also drawn with a good deal of confidence and I can see that you are using the ghosting method to good effect, as your lines are smooth while maintaining good accuracy. It is great to see that your lines follow their trajectory even if they are going to miss the ending dot.

-The ghosted planes are no different from the ghosted lines and overall you have kept up the good work, just remember to draw the initial end ending dots for all your lines, as it is very important to apply the ghosting method correctly.

Ellipses

-Starting with the tables of ellipses, these are looking very tidy instead of rushed and I can see that you have kept in mind the degree, angle, spacing and alignment of the ellipses, they are also looking very symmetrical and well rounded. Overall this is a great start, so keep up the good work.

-The ellipses in planes are tuning out nicely, and it is great to see that you are not overly concerned with having the ellipses touch the four sides of the plane and are instead aiming to draw symmetrical ellipses, which you should always do.

-The funnels are well done too, your ellipses have not stiffened and they are still very confidently drawn, you are also doing a good job when it comes to aligning the ellipses and having them cut into equal halves.

Boxes

-Starting with the rough perspective, your linework is looking confident which has helped your boxes look more solid and believable, the main thing here is that you are repeating your lines, remember, if you make a mistake leave it like that and do not try to correct it by drawing on top of it as it only makes it stand out more. Lastly you are doing a great job aligning the sides of the boxes to the horizon line and your estimations to the vanishing point are good and they will get better with practice.

-Your rotated boxes are turning out well, as you have kept the gaps between boxes narrow and the rotation is clearly there, one thing that can help you on your future attempts at this exercise is to use more of the space available in your page, this way you will have an easier time ghosting and drawing your lines, so they end up more confident while maintaining good accuracy.

-Finishing with the organic perspective, you are doing an excellent job with the linework and you are already making some really good attempts at the perspective of the boxes, thus your boxes feel very solid and share the same 3D space. I can still see that you are correcting some of your lines so try to get rid of this habit, and lastly, remember that you can add lineweight to the parts of outer lines that overlap with other boxes to clarify which ones are on top and which behind, so give it a try next attempts you have at the exercise.

That is it for now, overall you did a great job on this lesson so I’ll go ahead and mark it as complete, now move on to the box challenge.

Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 3 homework.

Arrows

-Starting with the arrows, these are drawn with a good deal of confidence, which helped you to capture their fluidity and the way they move through space. As I raised on the critique for your lesson 2 you have some parts of the ribbon that do not overlap, whenever the arrow makes a turn, you want to have an overlap there. These parts that do not overlap make your arrows read as a flat shape. When it comes to the foreshortening you are doing a good job.

Leaves

-This fluidity carries over to your leaves, and you are doing a good job drawing them confidently. When it comes to adding the little bumps and cuts, I think you let yourself go on autopilot, so remember to look closely at your reference and add each bump according to the information that you can distill from it. Lastly, taking a look at the leaf on the bottom center, you cut into the silhouette of the leaf, always add the additional details on top of the edge but never cut into it.

Branches

-The branches are turning out very nicely and I can see that you have extended each segment fully halfway to the next ellipse and they are overlapping, but try to have them overlap a good bit more. Main thing here is the degree shifts. Some of the ellipses in your branches look more or less consistent, so try to exaggerate them more.

Plant Construction

-You have done a good job here, you are starting dead simple and building your way up to the more complex details, I don’t really see that you are skipping any constructional details, thus everything maintains a clearly defined relationship with its preceding structure. I have only a few things to call out.

-On this plant, you have added a minor axis to align your ellipses, which is good, but remember that the pot is not paper thing and you should add another ellipse to convey the thickness of the edges. Another thing here is that the edge detail has a very different weight from the edges of the leaf. Maybe you used different pens for the additional details, anyway the important thing is that you should try to have every mark with the same weight. Also remember that lineweight should only be used on the overlapping parts as shown here

-On the peaches and the apples I can see that you are trying to draw organic forms, but remember that they do not hold the characteristics of being geometric, in the apple for example, this form reads as a cylinder which is a geometric form not as an organic. You want to think about organic as the combination of tubes and spheres, this will come more into play in the next lesson. The main thing that you want to take from this is that you should stop thinking in terms of geometric forms and try to approach all of your constructions with combinations of organic ones.

So that is it for now, as I have already said you have done a good job and I have no doubt you are ready to move on to lesson 4, so I’ll go ahead and mark this as complete.

Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1! Let’s see how you did.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. The arcing lines are a little more hesitant, in comparison, but this is likely due to their size, more than anything else (it’s hard to engage the shoulder for small movements). So!, consider drawing a little bigger. The ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, save for 2 issues (one of which improves by the end of the submission). That one is that the start/end points are a little too large. You’ll recall that the idea is that a perfect line swallow them both. The one that doesn’t, is that of automatic reinforcing. In other words, your habit of redrawing a line that you judge to be incorrect. This is not something we encourage. For one, because it doesn’t actually fix your mistakes – just makes them easier to spot. More than that, however, what we’re trying to do here is develop a tolerance for our own mistakes – an understanding that they’re a normal, and necessary!, part of our learning. So, leave your incorrect lines be!

The table of ellipses exercise is a little hard to judge – both pages are blurry. They do seem to be a little wobbly, however. Remember that our priority here (and everywhere) lies not in the accuracy of our ellipses, but rather their confidence. In other words, an ellipse that is smooth, and rounded, but overshoots (or stops short of) its frame, is correct. The opposite, is not. As such, remember to ghost until ready, and when you do commit, to do so confidently. Beyond that, I’ll remind you that ellipses are meant to touch all available sides of the frame, rather than float inside of it. So something like in page 1, row 3, column 2, the upper left half, is incorrect. If there were any doubts about the confidence issue (as per the photos being blurry), the ellipses in planes/funnels exercises confirm this – though they themselves do show some improvement between them. It also seems like you’re drawing through your ellipses a little too much, and pressing a little too hard, too. Remember to draw through them no more than 3 times (ideally, you’d stick to 2), and to relax – stiffening up will only hurt your confidence.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean.

The rough perspective exercise starts off strong, and shows some solid improvement throughout the set (though it does seem like you relaxed a little too much during the last frame). Linework is, as always because of the automatic reinforcing, hard to judge, but it seems alright. As for the convergences, they’re good enough for this stage, but if you’d like to push them even further, of course, spend a little longer checking and altering your points, before committing to them.

The rotated boxes exercise looks quite good. You struggle to rotate along the axes, but do a solid job at it over the diagonals, likely because of how careful you’ve been that your boxes be snug. Even the back side – a common sticking point – looks mostly solid, and the depth lines of your boxes converge more often than not, too. Of course, the box challenge will clarify, and improve on all of these, but it’s good that the foundation is already there somewhat.

Speaking of which, aside from a misunderstanding (that a box that’s overlapping another needs to hide its lines – this is not the case!), and the ever-present automatic reinforcing issue, the organic perspective exercise looks good. As per their size and foreshortening, your boxes flow quite well.

Hello Kaneki

I'll review your submission today.

Before starting, you have switched pens through out the lesson, now I'd don't know what kind of blue pen that was, but you should stick to fineliner pens.

Anyway onto the critique

In general you did a splendid work!

Arrows: they have a good flow, and are consistent in size. Well done in making them bigger as they get closer to the viewer's perspective!

Organic forms: Good working in drawing simple shapes, the forms are also consistent in their size for the most part, although a few of them have a smaller "back/rear" end compared with the other ends. So next time try to consciously make them even in both sides.

About the degrees of the ellipses you have also done well in general, although maybe try to accentuate this the next time you draw them.

Good work in hooking the lines too!

Texture: I'm very impressed by your texture exercises!

In the analysis exercise you did particularly well in drawing the transition from dark to bright, I think it is most well done in the analysis of the wood, anyhow other than that you also focused on drawing cast shadows which came out very well!

Good job!

On the dissection part: good job in keeping the forms consistent, here you also improved by making the ends of both sides even in size! well done!

Good job also for wrapping the texture around the forms and in breaking the silhouette!

From intersections:

Great job! the forms are well drawn, and intersect well with one another.

Organic intersections:

Good work! the forms are simple, and wrap well on each other, good job also with the cast shadow!

Hello I’ll be handling the critique for your lesson 2 homework.

-Starting with the organic arrows, these are drawn with a good deal of confidence which helps you to capture the fluidity with which they move through space, but there are areas where you can improve. First remember that the negative space between the zigzagging sections of the ribbon has to decrease as it moves further away, you can see it exemplified here. Secondly there are some cases where you don’t let your arrows overlap, take a look here, so don’t be afraid to have them overlap more on those twisting sections.

-Moving to the organic forms, always aim to have your sausages with equally sized ends, most of yours do and you only made this mistake on a few instances, but it is important to keep it in mind.

• When it comes to the contour ellipses, you have done a good job fitting them snugly within the sausage, but it is very important that you keep working on the degree shifts, you are already moving in the right direction but there is still room for improvement.

• Your contour curves are turning out nicely and they hook around the sausage as it should be, but take more time to think about how these curves wrap around the surface they are sitting on, here the degree shifts are not as distinguishable as they were on the contour ellipses. One thing that can help you is to draw fewer contours, remember that a few well placed curves can do a better job than many.

-On the texture analysis I can still clearly see the initial bar filled with ink, so make sure you integrate it more seamlessly to the gradient so you can achieve a smoother transitions from dense to sparse, overall you are off to a great start when it comes to texture.

-Moving to the dissections I can clearly see that you have focused on cast shadows rather than outlines and all of your marks look firm and purposeful, I just want to quickly show you this image which shows which shows that when we're working with thin line like textures if we outline and fill the shadow we will create a much more dynamic texture than simply drawing lines. .

-On the forms dissections I can see that you drew many dots, probably because you wanted your box's perspective to be as good as possible but this may have distracted you from the focus of this exercise. Another minor observation is that whenever you are drawing balls, try to add poles to it, if you don’t do this your ball will just read as a flat shape.

I can see that you are definitely thinking about the intersections and pushing yourself to understand how these forms relate to one another in the space they are sharing. This is a useful exercise to do in your warmups and is just meant to get you acquainted with how to think in 3D.

-Finishing with the organic dissections, I think that the main thing affecting your work is that you are adding each additional sausage as if you were just stamping it on top of the others, so try to change your approach and really push yourself to think how these sausages bend and sag under the force of gravity, try to think of them as balloons filled with water. For example, don't leave them floating in the air like this, as it leads to a lot of questions. You would also try to apply the same approach to the cast shadows, remember to keep a consistent light source. Drawing simple sausages definitely helped you here, but you can still push a bit further, so I’ll have you do some revisions