joetothethird

Hello! I'll be critiquing your 250 Box Challenge this afternoon.

Early in the challenge, I noticed that you did a few boxes in one-point and two-point perspective. It was only a handful, but I just wanted to comment that this challenge is meant primarily to test creating boxes in three-point perspective, although you will find two-point perspective especially useful lat into the course.

I also noticed that some boxes tended to distort as you tried to place vanishing points. Look at box 8, for example. After drawing out your initial Y, you should attempt to draw all edges as converging, so try to route them back to your initial Y to reduce the divergence on the external faces. This is also present, albeit to a lesser extent, in some later boxes, as well. For instance, box 44 has some issues with divergence too for similar reasons.

I would also reccomend to draw boxes larger when you are drawing them as warmups. This will allow you to activate your shoulder and make longer, more fluid lines. Don't be afraid if your error-checking lines overlap with your other boxes! It's worth letting there be a bit more clutter if in exchange you get to practice more fluid, confident markmaking. It's also reccomended to put a little bit of line weight on the edges of the box that compose the sillhouette, since it makes the form more solid and readable.

I noticed that you began to nail general convergence at around box 110, whereby now you tend to have each set of parallel lines converge to two distinct vanishing points. This is good progress—now, your goal should be to push these vanishing points together and to hit more uniform convergence. You tended to do this more consistently with boxes that had a medium level of foreshortening.

Make sure to keep in mind the size of each face of the box in relation to its perspective. For example, the green convergence for box 151 can be understood in two different ways. First, convergence to a single vanishing point. This can be especially hard for this sort of a box, since the standard VP set by right two green lines would cause the opposite face of the box to be crushed a bit and for the lines to get closer. However, this would make sense proportionally, since this face in perspective would get smaller as it falls away from the viewer. However, I would like to give kudos to the other two sets of lines on this box, along with the convergence for the other lines on this page—they are all very well done. This trend is kept up later into your box challenge, as well, with regular convergence of three lines to each vanishing point.

It seemed that late into the box challenge, such as for box 213, you struggled most with convergences for boxes with shallow foreshortening. This makes sense, since these sorts of boxes may have lines that look comparably more parallel than other sorts of three-point perspective. It could be helpful focusing on these sorts of boxes for your warmups.

Overall, solid work with the 250 Box Challenge! I noticed considerable improvement from the first page to the last. The main issue with your final boxes tended to be the internal corner, but that isn't a large concern for this course.

Hello! I will be critiquing your 250 Box Challenge this afternoon.

Throughout your boxes, I noticed that you didn’t add lineweight over the silhouette of the box. It’s not strictly necessary, but it helps to emphasize the form, and you’ll be using lineweight extensively throughout the rest of the course. Plus, it’s another opportunity to practice effective mark making!

I noticed that you started the Box Challenge by making your boxes in an orthographic projection—that is, the angles between your initial lines are approximately 120 degrees, and the way you drew your lines does not converge. Oftentimes you used the back lines to bring about convergence, but all sets of parallel edges must converge to the vanishing point. This tended to lead to more divergence than convergence, such as on box 14 or 25. Even though convergence may be minimal, it’s necessary for all boxes, even those with shallow foreshortening.

As you moved through the Box Challenge, I saw a trend of you breaking out of the orthographic projection and into perspective, mainly at about box 75. However, many times your perspective was stunted because you drew your boxes pretty small, like for box 87. When practicing, try to draw boxes at a medium or larger size, like for box 84. It will not only help you practice mark making from the shoulder, but it will give you more control for plotting points where your lines should be. I also noticed that your edges began to consistently converge, even though they would converge to two vanishing points. This is a good step in the right direction—now that you understand how edges converge, you can work on wrangling the edges’ convergence together to a single vanishing point. Throughout the rest of the challenge, I noticed significant improvement and you started to hit some solid convergences, like for the red lines in box 142 or the blue in box 145.

I noticed that you tended to revert closer to orthographic projections when attempting to draw boxes with shallower foreshortening. Although the orientation of the corner does have some bearing on how the box foreshortens, note that it is primarily the convergence of the edges which leads to the effect. Oftentimes it can be helpful to draw one converging edge of the box and using its intersection with the initial Y to plan your foreshortening instead of visualizing the VP first—you’ll get to a point where you can intuit where a VP will be placed in space based on the foreshortening, itself. I also can’t really tell by the resolution of the images, but I would recommend starting to place points when planning lines. You’re allowed to palace as many points as you want (within reason, of course) and it can be especially helpful when determining convergence from several edges at once, such as the back corner.

I do have a few points that you should look for when practicing boxes as warm-ups. First, try to vary the angles in the initial Y more. Though there was more variation later in the exercise, you tended to revert back to a sort of 120-120-120 scheme. In line with this, try to practice more dramatically skewed boxes with highly extreme foreshortening. You practiced many planes and boxes, but I didn’t see too many long “toothpaste boxes,” which can be a challenge in and of themselves. Finally, I would advise practicing some shallow foreshortening, since you tended to revert to orthographic projections as opposed to perspective in these instances.

Ultimately, I noticed considerable growth throughout your Box Challenge! This is especially apparent when comparing the first few pages with the last few, going from minimal or no convergence to rather consistent convergence and an understanding of three point perspective, along with increased confidence when constructing boxes and giving yourself room to explore the form freely. Wonderful work!

Hello! I'll be critiquing your 250 Box Challenge this morning.

I noticed that many times when you tried to work with shallower foreshortening, some set of edges would end up parallel or diverge. A good example of this is box 166. I see some subtle convergence between the sets of red parallel lines, but the ones on the very left and very right exhibit slight divergence from the two in the center. Many times this is due to the position of the inside corner (which is to be expected) but sometimes is just due to how your edges are stationed in space.

For boxes that are closer to two point perspective, such as box 18, you tended to converge to two vanishing points as opposed to one. For instance, by extending the blue convergence lines out into space, we can see that we get two different vanishing points that are across from one another. This occurs with many different boxes during the exercise, and it's a common issue across many people's work. Just try to push those vanishing piints closer together, or do some rough eye measurements when plotting lines to work towards proper convergence.

Moreover, when you tried to push towards more dramatic foreshortening, you ended up squeezing some angles down to being less than 90 degrees, like for box 73. This will cause a fair bit of distortion and may make finding vanishing points a bit more difficult.

However, I noticed that many times you drew in two-point perspective or one-point perspective. Some culprits included boxes 39, 46, 47, 53, 54, 95, 106, 132, 139, 141, 148, 151, 156, 173, 177, 204, and 211 for one-point perspective and 20, 26, 25, 31, 34, 75, 79, 102, 163, 181, and 200 for two-point perspective. Practicing these other forms of perspective is great, but the aim of the 250 Box Challenge is to draw boxes whose lines all converge (https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/reminders). I would like you to draw 25 more boxes in three-point perspective to remedy this. Keep in mind that the model for three-point perspective is a corner that faces the viewer, while two-point is an edge and one-point is a face.

I'd like to add, though, that when you drew in three-point perspective, you did great! Lines were confident and thoughtfully placed, and I noticed pretty regular convergence to a vanishing point. Overall, great work—I just want to make sure that you've had enough practice with three-point perspective and can really nail it.

Hello! I'll be critiquing your Lesson 1 material this morning. I'm going to divide it up pretty generally into Lines, Ellipses, and Boxes, which roughly corresponds to the sections in the lesson material.

Lines:

I noticed only a minor amount of fraying on the starting point for your Superimposed Lines, but this is corrected as you move on to your second page. The curves have a bit more fraying, and I noticed that you tend to make your curves flatter as you draw over them. Still, the curves will be tougher to superimpoe than the straights, and you still submitted some pretty solid work.

Your Ghosted Lines are pretty accurate, but there's some slight wobbling in them. Make sure that right now, you're prioritizing confidence over accuracy—we want to make our marks straighter and more confident before we work back and make them more accurate. I noticed that some of your more confident marks (i.e. the lower left) only were slightly inaccurate, and that your lines were largely confident with some wobbling and course correction as you approached the endpoint. Try to free yourself up a bit and allow yourself to miss that second point. In fact, when extending the confident parts of your lines, you would've still been pretty darn close to the second endpoint, so I can say with certainty that if you let yourself make more confident marks, your accuracy won't take much of a hit.

Many of those same points carry over to your Ghosted Planes. Like last time, there was still some subtle course correction at the end of your lines, but your line confidence substantially improved.

As a note for when you use this exercise for warmups: try to plot the endpoints for the lines that span the horizontal and vertical distances of the plane (not the diagonals.) It's only a minor detail, but it gets you in the habit of ghosting all of the lines that you put down and drawing them consciously.

There was a bit more wobbling as you worked on your Rough Perspective, but you corrected much of it as you got through the rest of the box exercises. I assume that you were more focused on convergence to the vanishing point, which is normal. Try to treat the act of plotting the point that convergences to your VP and drawing a clean mark as separate tasks.

In general, your markmaking was strong and only took a dip as you readjusted to new concepts within the course. Just try to keep confidence in the back of your mind as you work through the rest of the course material. It will improve with time, especially with the load of boxes that you must draw for the 250 Box Challenge.

Ellipses:

Your ellipses are drawn smoothly and are well-bounded. Great work! You made a lot of progress during your Tables of Ellipses, and they tended to get tighter as you moved through the lesson.

I noticed that you tended to err on the side of making your ellipses larger as opposed to making them smaller, and this is especially evident during your Ellipses in Planes. This is better than drawing them too small, since you're still practicing drawing them in relation to the plane and using it as a guide. I also noticed some slight deformation (mostly on the first page) as you tried to fit the ellipse in the plane.

Finally, you continue to improve your ellipses as you work through the Funnels exercise. I noticed that your ellipses had some slight skewing about the minor axis, but apart from that they lined up quite well.

Overall, though, your ellipses were drawn extrodinarily well, especially at this part of the course!

Boxes:

The biggest thing I noticed for your Rough Perspective was the markmaking, as outlined in the Lines section. Don't stress the convergences too much at this point, since you'll improve a ton during the 250 Box Challenge.

Your Rotated Boxes are done well! They rotate properly and adjacent edges stay relatively parallel. Again, it's just some shaky line confidence here and there, but nothing too major. Also, good work with your Organic Perspective. I got a good feel for the perspective in each frame, and the added lineweight also helps.

Congratulations on completing Lesson 1! You made quality work across the board.

Hello! I'll be critiquing your Lesson 1 work this afternoon. I'll be tackling this pretty generally in Lines, Ellipses, and Boxes, which'll roughly correspond with each section of Lesson 1.

Lines:

Good work with your Superimposed Lines! There's some slight fraying at the beginning, especially as we move into page two, but it's effectively negligible. Just try to line up your pen at the starting point as best you can.

You're pretty accurate with your Ghosted Lines, but you tend to have a fair bit of course correction as you make your mark, resulting in some subtle S curves. It's better right now to build confidence in your markmaking than to focus on accuracy. Indeed, some of your most confident lines only barely miss the second endpoint, which tells me that if you worry a little less on your accuracy, you'll have an incredibly confident line that's still pretty accurate.

Your Ghosted Planes actually have the best of both worlds, maintaining a balance of confidence and accuracy. Again, just work on prioritizing the confidence first—you can build accuracy later.

I noticed a dip in line confidence through your Rough Perspective and Organic Perspective when you worried more on line accuracy and convergence to a vanishing point. In these situations, it's helpful to first estimate the endpoint, and then ghost the line several times until you are completely confident in hitting the mark.

Fortunately, you'll gain a lot of skill with confident markmaking as you move through the 250 Box Challenge, so you're bound to see more improvement soon.

Ellipses:

In general, your ellipses are drawn smoothly and are well-bounded. You also have a tendency to overshoot the size of the ellipse as opposed to undershooting it. This is a good thing—it's better to err on the size of a larger ellipse than a smaller one. Still, it's something to keep in mind as you work on drawing more confident and tighter ellipses.

There's some slight deformation of ellipses in your Ellipses in Planes. It can help to visualize the largest ellipse possible that can sit in the frame before ghosting it and sketching it out.

Finally, great work with your Funnels! I can only notice a subtle skewing of ellipses about the minor axis, but this seems to be more due to your two bounding lines not being perfectly perpendicular as opposed to issues with how you're constructing your ellipses.

Boxes:

Your Plotted Perspective is very clean! Just a minor note for the 250 Box Challenge, though, try to only add line weight to the edges of the box that comprise its sillhouette. It makes the form a tad more readable. Still, great work!

As mentioned in the Lines section, just try to plot the endpoints of lines when constructing your boxes. It doesn't appear that you did it 100% of the time for Rough Perspective and Organic Perspective. Plotting endpoints helps your lines be more accurate (since you know where the line should end up) and cleaner (since you can ghost the exact line several times over.)

Overall, though, great work with your boxes! You've got a good grasp of convergence right now, and it'll only be refined as you work through the 250 Box Challenge. Many forms are clean, too, especially those in your Rotated Boxes.

Congratulations on completing Lesson 1!

Awesome! I looked through it, and it looks like you're all set to move on.

IMPORTANT:

Please submit the following so I can give you credit for Lesson 1. Please let me know when this is done so I can give you credit for Lesson 1 as soon as possible.

• One frame of Plotted Perspective

• One frame of Organic Perspective

Good morning! I'll be critiquing your Lesson 1 work today. I'm going to divvy this up into Lines, Ellipses, and Boxes, which roughly corresponds to the Lesson 1 material.

Lines:

I noticed a bit of fraying on your Superimposed Lines, especially with the longer lines. This is to be expected when working with lines of that length, but it's something to keep in mind. However, I observed noticeable improvement between the two pages, and your lines continued to grow in confidence as you continued through the lesson. I'd also like to mention that your superimposed curves were very well done—great work!

Your Ghosted Lines are straight with only subtle arching. I'd say to start to focus on line accuracy between the two points. Since you tend to come up short more than you overshoot the line, you may be able to see more improvement in accuracy if you attempt to draw the line slightly longer than what feels "right."

Finally, your Ghosted Planes have confident lines, with only a bit of arching. One thing of note, though, is that you should be plotting endpoints for the vertical and horizontal (not diagonal) lines that span the plane. It's not a major detail, but it does help get you into the habit of ghosting every line that you draw.

Ellipses:

I would like to note that you should aim to draw the ellipse in only two to three revolutions, not more. I can't tell for certain, but it appears as though in your Tables of Ellipses you're drawing them in more revolutions than necessary. By drawing fewer revolutions, you're training yourself muscle memory to ghost the ellipse more accurately and rely less on course correction. Apart from that detail, though, your Table of Ellipses are well done and well-filled. Just try to make some ellipses totally bounded by neighboring ellipses and the sides of the panel; you have a few ellipses that "float."

Your Ellipses in Planes are well-bounded and stay elliptical while sitting in the planes. Again, just aim to do two to three revolutions maximum per ellipse.

The only critique I have with your Funnels is that your ellipses tend to drift and slant about the minor axis. However, this isn't a major concern; on the whole, they're drawn confidently and are bounded.

Boxes:

Please try to draw a frame whenever you are asked to do so in this course. Though you made sure to frame your Tables of Ellipses, you neglected to do so for Plotted Perspective, Rough Perspective, and Organic Perspective.

Your Plotted Perspective is drawn well. However, you still need to submit one more frame of this work to complete this part of the assignment.

Your Rough Perspective is also drawn confidently, and your lines tend to fall towards the vanishing point correctly. Don't stress about convergences too much right now, as it will be drilled a lot in the 250 Box Challenge.

It appears as though for your Rotated Boxes, the edges between boxes vary significantly in their angle. Remember that edges adjacent to one another will be nearly parallel. However, your rotation across the vertical and horizontal axes are well done.

Similarly, good work with Organic Perspective. Farther elements should have slightly weaker foreshortening, but on the whole it is done rather well. Note, though, that you still need to submit one more frame of this work to complete this part of the assignment.

Overall, well done! Please submit the needed work, and I'll critique and give you credit for this lesson.

Hello! I'll be critiquing your Lesson 1 work today. I'm going to divide your work pretty generally into linework, boxes, and ellipses, which will roughly correspond to the Lesson 1 material.

Lines:

Your Superimposed Lines improved significantly between your two pages, becoming tighter and the arching waning. However, I noticed a bit of shakiness during your Ghosted Lines. There are a few lines that have dramatic bending in them, which you can improve through drawing the line faster and with more confidence. Again, at this stage, we're trying to build line confidence over accuracy. Fortunately, you built up a great deal of line confidence into and through the ghosted planes exercise, so kudos to you for that!

One minor detail for the Ghosted Planes: the cross that spans the sides of the planes (not the one that spans the corners) should have plotted endpoints. Make sure that, in the future, you explicitly plot the endpoints of each line you draw when you're ghosting it.

Overall, as you moved through the lesson, I noticed significant line improvement. Expect more improvement as you chip away at the 250 Box Challenge. Drawing consciously like you did throughout this lesson will serve to amplify the quality of your markmaking during this course!

Ellipses:

Though I can you caught yourself early on, I just want to remind you that all ellipses should be drawn through twice, not once.

Your ellipses in the Tables of Ellipses are well done, though you tended to err on the side of drawing them too large. This is especially true when drawing medium-sized ellipses next to larger ones; try to constrain the size of the smaller ellipses so that they don't overlap with their larger neighbors.

Meanwhile, for your Ellipses in Planes, I noticed that a lot of your ellipses "floated" in the middle of the planes. Remember, you're trying to aim for your ellipse to touch all four sides of the planes. Try to visualize the largest ellipse possible that can sit in the plane so that it's just barely small enough to fit. Moreover, I noticed that a few of your ellipses were a bit egg shaped, which was usually a product of them sitting strangely unnaturally inside the plane. By viewing your ellipses as space-filling, it'll help resolve both of these issues. However, I will remark that your ellipses, especially in the Ghosted Planes exercise, look very clean!

Finally, for the funnels, just make sure that the ellipses' minor axis is aligned with the perpendicular line governing the center of the funnel. There's a little bit of drifting, so keep that in mind.

Boxes:

Overall, your boxes look solid. A lot of the perspective issues you'll work to correct in the 250 Box Challenge, so don't sweat it too much.

Your frames were visible for Rotated Boxes, but I will note that the dense hatching makes it a bit difficult to see. When you do hatching for the 250 Box Challenge, I would reccomend making it lighter so that the lines composing the box are more visible.

Apart from that, though, your perspective work at this stage is where we'd expect it to be at this point in the course. Some of your boxes in Organic Perspective are very well done!

Congratulations working through Lesson 1! Good luck with the 250 Box Challenge and the rest of the course!

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this critique! I didn't think about considering the rate of convergence in conjunction with the position of the vanishing point, so thank you for sharing your perspective. This helped a ton!

'Sup! I'll be critiquing your Lesson 1 work. I'll be dividing this into lines, boxes, and ellipses.

IMPORTANT:

It looks like your Rotated Boxes are missing. Because of that, I can't mark your lesson as complete. Once you get it done and submit it, please let me know so I can give you credit for Lesson 1.

Remember that you must extend your convergences in Rough Perspective. This will give you vital information to improve your perspective as time goes on.

Lines:

As is stressed many times throughout the course, prioritize smooth, confident lines over accuracy. There's a fair bit of wobble in your superimposed lines exercise, but that's to be expected. It's pretty apparent in your Ghosted Lines and in your Rough Perspective, but I'm happy to say that it improved significantly once you hit Organic Perspective. Don't worry—your line quality will continue to improve significantly as you go through the course, and especially after hours upon hours of boxes in the 250 Box Challenge.

Now, let's go into specifics. You showed significant improvement when working through Superimposed Lines, with your marks getting tighter and tighter as time goes on. I also didn't notice any significant fraying at the start of your lines, which is great!

Again, with Ghosted Lines, make sure that you are executing your lines with confidence. As you work through the course, a lot of the kinks in your lines will get ironed out, but some of the more apparent wobbling can be reduced by drawing your line quickly and confidently.

Apart from wobbling lines, your Ghosted Planes are quite solid. Note, though, that it's recommended that the cross intersecting each line from the sides is plotted from points and not drawn arbitrarily.

Ellipses:

On the whole, your ellipses are pretty solid. Make sure, though, that you're drawing through your ellipses two to three times maximum. This issue wasn't present in your Funnels, but it's still something to keep in mind.

In your Table of Ellipses, make sure that your ellipses are touching your borders. Your larger ellipses are bounded better, but some of the smaller, more circular ones tend to be "floating" in the corners.

Your ellipses are well-bounded and more confident in your Ellipses in Planes. Again, just make sure to draw through your ellipses two or three times and not more.

Your ellipses improved considerably when working on the Funnels, becoming much tighter—good work! Just make sure that, for your ellipses, the minor axis bisects them. This is more of an issue with your ellipses on the right half of the page. On the whole, though, your work is pretty solid!

Boxes:

Although it isn't required, I would recommend adding some lineweight to your Organic Perspective. It helps a bit more with conveying your forms' locations in 3D space.

Your Plotted Perspective is done very well! Not much I can say here.

Apart from some issues with wobbling lines, in Rough Perspective, make sure that your vertical and horizontal lines are parallel to the edges of the frame. There's just a subtle tilt in some lines, but keep it in mind as you're plotting your points and ghosting out your lines.

I also mentioned it above, but I'll say it again: make sure to extend your convergences for this exercise! It's required, but it also helps you understand where your vanishing points lie and how you need to improve.

Finally, your Organic Perspective is also done quite well! It looks like some lines have been drawn over, so if it wasn't to add lineweight, please remember that you should not be redrawing lines. Just go with the flow and know that, over time, your accuracy will improve.

Congratulations on getting through Lesson 1! After completing a few revisions, you should be set to go on to the 250 Box Challenge. Good luck!