frog

Hello!

Arrows - Looks good! The perspective looks realistic.

Contour ellipses - Some forms have ellipses that are all the same degree so it doesn't look like the form is turning. In the ones that do change degrees, make a more dramatic difference between the ellipses so that you can really see how it affects how the form appears. Even if you can't visualize the form beforehand. Having tighter and smoother ellipses really helps, so practice a table of ellipses beforehand or something.

Textures - There are textures that really look like they wrap around the sausage, like the lettuce - which is great! Keep it up. I think you did a really good job looking at the tiny cast shadows that make each texture unique. You also made good use of the silhouette, especially in the tentacle texture which has a lot of depth. For the strawberry, the cast shadows won't just be full circles around the seed. The silhouette is good but it is difficult to tell what's happening elsewhere since all the seeds look the same. You may want to draw the cast shadows will appear in different spots depending on where it is on the strawberry. You could also try to give the seeds more dimension like in the lesson example, yours look very flat as circles.

Form intersections - Looks good.

Organic Intersections - I would give extra line weight to the lines in front. Good job wrapping cast shadows around the form.

Good job, keep practicing these exercises as warm-ups. Good luck!

Hello!

Arrows - Make sure to add extra line weight to the line on top. This clarifies what your arrow is doing! The perspective looks good though.

Contour ellipses - Most of your ellipses look the same degree. Once you vary the degrees in a sausage, the sausage will have the illusion of turning in space. If you can't imagine the form turning before adding ellipses, just vary the degrees anyway and see how it changes how the sausage appears.

Texture - Remember that texture is basically just drawing a bunch of cast shadows. This means that for the tiger, you wouldn't draw the black stripes, but you would draw the cast shadows of the fur. It also says to avoid shading. I interpreted this as saying we can only use two colors: black and white. There are multiple textures (lettuce, metal, octopus) where you use hatching to transition from black to white. I don't think this is necessary, especially in your pumpkin and lettuce texture. You were able to communicate the texture with your solid black lines. For the pumpkin I don't think you needed to add some hatching to indicate that the form is turning away, you could already tell in the way you adhered to the contours of the surface. It looks like the shading was just decorative, which we are supposed to avoid, since the Drawabox course has nothing to do with light or rendering. I would recommend rewatching the shading video if you haven't. If you try to shade in future lessons it will just distract you from the real purpose of the exercises and you'll progress slower.

Construction - Good job on the form intersections. For the organic intersections, make sure to add line weight to lines that are not blocked to make the image more visually clear. Be aware of how cast shadows follow the contour ellipses of the surface they are projected on.

Good job! Keep practicing contour ellipses especially, I think you're ready for the next lesson.

Hello!

Arrows - I would suggest adding line weight to the lines that are closer to the viewer when it is turning. This helps specify what the arrow is doing. Also, making your arrow more wide gradually will make it look more realistic. If this is hard, ghost your lines and draw them in segments. I also wouldn't overlap them too much.

Organic Forms - Quite a few of your ellipses are tilted, so watch out for that. And make sure you are changing the degree of your ellipses! Imagine these forms turning in space, and if that is difficult, then just start changing the degrees of your ellipses and see how that affects how the form appears.

Textures - Congrats on completing all those texture studies! For the sausages, you should consider the sausage form more and make sure your texture appears to be wrapping around the sausage. I think the bamboo floor is pretty good, but the tiles should be following the contour ellipses of the sausage more, some of them look very straight, even though they are on a curved surface. Same with your rope, the braids of the rope are straight even though they are adhering to a curved surface. I think with the barrel and waffle you did a pretty good job with this. I also encourage you to think more of your textures' silhouette. I can see you did this for icecream, but not for corn or the rope, both of which you would see the individual knots/kernels at the edges of the sausage.

Construction - Form intersection looks great! I think you missed a couple cast shadows in the last organic intersection. Make sure your forms don't taper, they should have a consistent width. I think you should focus more on wrapping your forms around eachother, following the contour curves. Some of your forms don't quite look like they are resting on each other because of this. This goes for cast shadows as well. Also don't be afraid to draw forms that wrap behind another one, so that it is out of view. You can see this in the Lesson example.

Keep practicing contour ellipses and organic intersections especially, but all of these exercises can be revisited during warm-ups.

I hope you found this helpful! Good luck!

Congrats on finishing the challenge! I think you improved a lot!

Your linework looks really good, keep it up! Your line weight as well.

Keep drawing big boxes like you did at the end.

Your convergences look really nice. I think you could do a wider range of orientations though. Here are some ideas.

I think your inner corner improved a lot but this ordering could help you improve further, since it is less accurate with certain boxes (247). It looks really nice overall however.

I think you are ready to try the advanced box exercises.

Make sure to revisit this exercise pretty regularly so you don't lose your skills.

Good job!

Critique guide

Congrats on finishing the challenge!

In the future you'll probably be called out by redoing exercises, as this counts as grinding. A better thing to do would be to pause, look for feedback, think through the problem/critique your own work, and then continue doing the recommended amount of pages. The discord server is a good place to receive feedback on partial submissions.

Convergences - A lot of lines are parallel or diverging, which never happens in 3-point perspective. You might want to practice some boxes that are very foreshortened so you can really tell the lines are converging. You may have also extended the lines the wrong way in some boxes, like in box 241. Always extend away from the Y, add arrows to your Y if you need. Lastly, I want to note that lines that start farther from the VP will have a steeper slope than the line coming off of the Y. Each line has its own slope you have to figure out, so don't make them parallel!

Inner corner - Remember the angles of the inner corner will also be above 90 degrees. The lines that come off the inner corner will also be nearly parallel to the lines of the original Y. Keep this in mind so that these lines don't diverge or converge too quickly. It can be tricky to get the hang of for awhile. This diagram may help. This ordering may also help.

Other - Draw bigger boxes! More like #151. It's harder to see your mistakes on a small box. Also good job with your hatching and linework.

Good job - you can continue improving by adding this to your regular warm-ups!

Critiquing guide

Congrats on finishing the challenge!

Overall - Make sure your hatching lines are not wobbly. It's ok if they fray on one side, but make sure they are smooth. Also, draw bigger boxes! It's hard to see where you made a mistake if you don't have much room to draw.

You also need to make sure all angles of your Y are above 90 degrees. Boxes like 219, 225, or 226 look slanted or have their solidity undermined because the front Y has an angle of or below 90 degrees. I think you should also push yourself to draw a greater variety of shapes and orientations. I would recommend checking out the Y generator mentioned in the lesson for ideas if you haven't already.

Here is a diagram of different box orientations (challenge boxes should always be drawn from imagination though) -> https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX

Convergences - Your convergences improved over the course of the challenge, however a lot of lines still look parallel, especially the ones that are vertical (heading toward the top or bottom of the page). Remember that when you look a box the edges converge in all three directions, including up/down. I think otherwise your convergences are quite nice.

A good diagram -> https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png

Inner corner - Your inner corner is often diverging or converging way too quickly. Compare the slope of your Y line to the slope of the mark you're planning. For the inner corner lines they should be pretty similar, near parallel. Don't draw a line from the inner corner to the center of the Y, this will pretty much always be the wrong slope. Keep in mind the inner corner will also not have any angles below 90. This ordering can help you improve your inner corner quickly -> https://imgur.com/FGdtVwm

I think you're ready for lesson 2. You can keep practicing boxes as a warm-up exercise. I hope this feedback is helpful! Congrats again :)

Hello!

Lines - For the ghosted lines exercise you could've drawn more lines. It's a good idea to fill the page. You should also practice longer lines that are the width or length of the page for this exercise. For superimposed lines really good job fraying on only one end. I think you should focus on making sure your lines are the correct length since they don't wobble much and have consistent trajectory.

Ellipses - Many lines are pretty wobbly. Make sure to ghost, and make sure you make fast and confident marks. Don't worry if they are the wrong size or shape. They will look a lot nicer if the lines are smooth. I think your ellipses consistently have the right shape and size anyway. And good job aligning the minor axis on the funnels exercise.

Boxes - For rough perspective some of the lines are pretty wobbly, so ghost beforehand and make sure to practice linework outside of this exercise. Other than that these exercises look nice. For the organic perspective, a lot of lines are parallel or diverging, undermining the solidity of the box. The boxes in the rotated boxes exercise look more solid because they don't do this. The 250 box challenge will improve this however. Also try to draw a bigger variety of shapes of boxes, they don't all have to be cube-like. You can also make the closer ones bigger, so big they can overlap the boxes behind them.

Overall great job, I think your ready for the 250 box challenge and I think it will help you out a lot. These exercises can now be warm-up exercises. You don't have to do all of them every time but revisit them pretty regularly so you can keep improving.

Good luck!

Hello,

Lines: Good job with only fraying on one side! Keep it up. Some wobbly lines but I can tell you're already making progress!

Ellipses: Biggest thing to think about is wobbly lines. Ghost as many times as you need to (moving the pen quickly) and then seamlessly place the pen on the page. It is ok for now if it is in the wrong place or shape. First you learn how it feels to draw smooth lines, then over time your arm will learn how to place them how you intended. Also only go over your ellipse 2-3 times. Don't keep going until it looks right. Just 2-3 times then do a new one. I think the more you get used to this motion of your arm the tighter your ellipses will be, so you don't need to go over your ellipses until they are tight, it won't teach you as much. Something that helped me is to just get comfortable with one particular ellipse shape then attempt others. Also to draw small ones then big ones right after. And don't be afraid to practice more big ellipses that require lots of motion from your shoulder.

For the funnels really good job aligning with the minor axis! Try that version where the axis lines come out of a corner.

Boxes: It's okay to do the lines drawn with a ruler in pencil. No reason those need to be in ink. Your line quality decreased during the rough perspective exercise, so make sure you are ghosting multiple times for those lines as you would any other. For the next exercise, don't scribble out lines. If it is wrong then you just have to work with it. This teaches you to think carefully about the lines you put down before you make them.

For the last exercise try to make the nearer boxes bigger and the farther boxes smaller. Especially on the last page they all kinda look the same size. Also draw a larger variety of box shapes. They don't all need to look like cubes.

Overall good job, keep it up! Hope this helped!

Best,

Frog

Congrats on finishing the challenge!

I think your convergences improved a lot over the course of the challenge, good job!

In the future I'd recommend drawing a wider variety of shapes and orientations to your boxes. Don't get stuck doing the same Y's over and over. This diagram has some ideas (not to be used to copy from): https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX

Your hatching lines look pretty wobbly. It's okay if it frays on one end as long as the line is smooth and confident.

Your inner corner has improved a lot but to practice it further this ordering might help: https://imgur.com/FGdtVwm

I think you can try the advanced exercises if you want.