kittensmittens

Superimposed lines:

I see you've tried a variety of lines (lots of curvy ones too!) and I think they're good for the most part. A bit of fraying here and there, but I think we all started that way and it gets better the farther you go in the lessons!

Ghosted Lines:

Good points, the line confidence could use a bit of work. Don't worry if you miss it, draw in one confident smooth stroke. The wobble indicates slow, meticulous drawing, whereas we're aiming for confidence here. Some of the longer lines arc a little bit so remember to draw from the shoulder to the best of your current ability (I struggle with feeling like I have no control when I'm drawing from the shoulder, but it gets better with time!)

Planes:

Nice use of space! Again, try for as even and as smooth of a line as possible. There's some wobble and a few of the diagonal lines arc (I know it's hard to keep perfectly straight especially with long ones!) and end up crossing off-center. If you're nervous about missing the dots or worry that you'll over/undershoot you could open a random page and do some shoulder-led lines to work up confidence (helped me a lot with the box challenge).

Ellipses:

Nice! You've drwan through well and the circular/round/curved shapes seem to suit you - these look a lot more confident! Overall good job making them snug!

Ellipses in planes:

They are very precisely touching all sides - good job on that! Just make sure you're not slowing down to achieve that and making the ellipse wonky, it's okay to do more than two passes and get a bit closer or looser with them. All I can nitpick is a slightly smoother pass/bit more confidence in your strokes.

Funnels

They look awesome! Good job, I can see that you got the right idea and the small spaces where they aren't snug are no big deal.

Plotted perspective

Looks very neat, nice cross-hatching, well done!

Rough perspective

Lines a bit unstable, but you did well. The bottom third of each paper has boxes with curving vertical lines, so remember to ghost from point to point, as many times as you need to, to feel confident in executing a straight (as straight as you can) line from one point to another. These look like you might've gone slowly to make sure you hit the point, rather than confidently, not worrying even if you overshoot.

Rotated boxes

The left side (looking at the paper) looks great in the upper corner, a bit more unstable down. Try to get the lines as straight and parallel to the guiding lines around them. All in all, good job, this is a very hard one.

Organic perspective

On the first page, the top third has a few boxes at the far end that are as big as the boxes in the middle when they should be getting smaller gradually. Also the boxes at the front are almost the same size. I think you nailed it around the middle, just try to keep that gradual. The second third starts great but has a same-y middle and I think you nailed in on the third, great job! I can see you fixed it up on the second page, so I'm sure you saw it yourself, but I thougth it'd mention it just in case.

All in all, I think you're doing well! A bit more confidence and making sure to draw from the shoulder and you're set :D

Hello, I'll be critiquing your work today.

Your lines are pretty good. In the Superimposed Lines section, there is confidence in the marks, with little wobbling. However, there is some arching in the first page, but this is largely absent in the second. This shows that you are drawing from the shoulder, which is excellent. The Ghosted Lines are strong, but I see some repeated lines. Given that they are few, it is not an issue here, since these lines are still confident. Overall, off to a great start, and there will be time to correct the weaknesses.

Onto the ellipses, the foremost issue I see is that some of them are drawn over more than 3 times, in both the Table of Ellipses and the Ellipses in Planes exercises. The majority of them are drawn over 2 or 3 times, so this is not a big problem. Otherwise, they fit snuggly within their boundaries and are mostly confident. Excellent work, especially in the funnels and Ellipses in Planes.

Finally, the boxes. The Plotted Perspective exercise is on-point; the hatching is done with a ruler, and there is no distortion. The Rough Perspective boxes is where there are some issues, but this is normal given the difficulty of the exercise. There are a few width lines that aren't parallel with the horizon, but your height lines are vertical. There are many lines that have been repeated and there is some wobbling, moreso than the previous exercises. It is difficult to juggle the vanishing point estimations and drawing straight lines, but there is plenty of time to practice this, so don't worry. In your Rotated Boxes, some of the boxes—most notably in the top-right corner—are not rotated correctly. This may be fixed by ghosting your lines thoroughly towards the new vanishing point, which helps you see if the box is rotated or not. Finally, your Organic Perspective boxes are confident and show that you are becoming more comfortable with handling perspective.

In summation, your work is excellent. The issues are not glaring, and your understanding of the exercises is present. Good luck on the next challenge.

Hi, Dandus! I'm Keisari and I'm here to critique your submission for Lesson 1. Before we get into it, congratulations on finishing Lesson 1! Drawabox is a long and tough journey, but having the inititiative to get started is half the job done.

Lines

Generally, your lines look pretty smooth and confident! There's barely any wobble and you did a good job prioritizing confidence over accuracy. The main issue really seems to be some arching here and there, but as long as you're engaging your shoulder that should get better with practice. One thing I'd like to mention is that overshooting is preferable to undershooting, and if you're having trouble with that you might even want to try intentionally overshooting. I'd also like to suggest you use the same pen for your lines as you're using for your ellipses and boxes, as that blue ballpoint looks pretty faint, which makes it a bit harder to critique. Other than that, great job!

Ellipses

You're doing amazing with those! You're drawing through them 2-3 times smoothly and evenly and doing a great job with the confidence-over-accuracy principle. Some deformation is visible here and there though, specially in the Tables of Ellipses exercise, and for that I'd recommend you ghost your ellipses a little more thoroughly, and perhaps experiment with drawing them with greater speed.

Boxes

Your line quality here seems to have decayed quite a bit, with a lot more wobble and hesitation to be seem. The markmaking principles you abode to in the first part of the lesson are still to be followed here and through ALL of Drawabox. Confidence is still more important than accuracy and you should still be engaging your shoulder as well as plotting your lines. For the boxes themsleves, over you did a pretty great job! Your boxes are good enough, and you've shown proper understanding of the information and concepts presented throughout the lesson. Ther perspective on your Organic Boxes exercise is a bit wonky as many of the parallel lines are diverging rather than converging, but you'll have lots of time to work on that on the next part of Drawabox -- the 250 Box Challenge! Best of luck.

Great job on completing this challenge! Here is your feedback:

Extending lines:

you extend your lines into the right directions and all sides are complete, so that's looking very good!

Convergences:

Foreshortened boxes: I can see a very big difference between your shallow perspective and extreme perspective. Good job on varying it and a nice balance of different perspectives! I can also see that your convergences improve a lot as you draw more of these boxes. You use the dot method to plan out your lines (https://imgur.com/3zoQA65) also, so that is very good.

Shallow boxes: I noticed that most of your convergences go parallel (as in box 252) or some diverge (as the cyan side of box 249). Note that all sides will always converge, even at shallow perspective. Lines may look parallel at first sight, but they have to point just sliiiighlty together anyway. Because all lines have to eventually come together in a vanishing point, whether that is close by on the page, or very far off the page, try to imagine where the vanishing point is, even if it is very far away.

Hatching & confidence: your hatching is very clean. Your lines are confident in the hatching as well as on the boxes. Great job!

Line weight: it looks like you've put line weight only on the silhouette and not inside the boxes and it's very subtle. Nice!

Orientations: it looks like you've got many different orientations, so that's looking good. If you ever need inspiration, you can refer to this image: https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX

Inner corners: if sometimes your back corner goes off to do its own thing, as in the cyan side of box 180, or the red side of box 142, this could be because of the order in which you draw your lines. Using the order that is in this image could help with this: https://imgur.com/a/DHlA3Jh .

All in all, you did very well on this challenge, but I think your shallow perspective may need some more attention. I would like you to draw 15 more boxes of shallow perspective where you make sure that the lines will eventually meet: use a subtle convergence. Avoid parallel/diverging lines, and then post your pictures in a reply to me and I will mark this challenge as complete!

Hi, I'll be reviewing your lesson 1 homework.

Lines

The superimposed lines are confidently drawn, some look wavy, however. The ghosted lines look fine, but there is a bit of overshooting and undershooting, and some lines miss the end point. The ghosted planes are good, but the lines look a bit wobbly.

Ellipses

For the tables of ellipses, the ellipses seem to be drawn though two or three times (which is good). However, some ellipses are drawn out of bounds, and are not touching the closes edges, and/or each other. For the ellipses in planes, some look deformed and, again, some aren't touching all of the edges and some are drawn a bit out of bounds. And for the funnels, I don't think there's anything wrong going on.

Boxes

The boxes in the plotted perspective exercise look nice. For rough perspective, some converging lines are off, but that's expected. The lines look wobbly and and not all of the horizontal lines run parallel too the horizon line. The rotated boxes look great and the organic perspective boxes look fine.

Overall, I think you did a pretty good job. You just got to work on the smooth flow of your marks. Try not to make your mark too slow and work on the ghosting method.

I'm new to critiquing, so I hope this helped.

Hello Akakunari, I hope you are well,

Yes it is never said that we are not supposed to use fingers and pen to our advantage. I personally used dots but after realising I don't need them I stuck to just ghosting and imaging a line going to a vanishing point in my head. That's what I believe we are aiming here for to draw a box without any tool that is good enough for our needs, but I don't believe we are able to achieve it with just 250 boxes. Even if we did double that I think we still wont get that skill. We need to draw other things during our “fun” time using boxes to get used to them. In conclusion, I think it is fine what you are doing.

Moving onto your boxes, there aren't any major mistakes to them. You are properly extending the lines back to vanishing point and you vary your distances of VP. What I want to point out here is that your lines sometimes become wobbly. As if you didn't take enough time for them. But I can say for sure that you can make straight lines with confidence. Always take as much time as needed for each time. I know that this is a long and tedious challenge, but what we want to gain from it is a foundation of perspective, a simple box that lets us build everything if we master it. We also want to get used to drawing straight lines, so keep in mind to be patient.

There is also a problem of repeating lines, which occurs sometimes. Always aim to make a good line with things I said previously and even if we make a bad line, leave it. Don't try to hide your mistakes behind the curtain. Keep it so it becomes a reminder that we have to do certain stuff to make a good line.

Lastly your lineweight could see more work. Sometimes I can see your lines splitting which tells me you are not taking enough time while applying it. What we want is a line on top of the previous one, we don't want to make it wider. https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb

Overall you did a great job on this challenge. So I will mark this challenge as complete. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Have fun during your journey,

Hello, Alma! It's been a while. Hope you're doing well. So, let's start with the critique:

Lines:

• Jesus, I have to say, your linework is fantastic. They almost look like they are made with a ruler! I like how complete the boxes look, and honestly the hatching is good. Maybe the outer lines could use a biit of lineweight, but other than that, great.

Convergence:

• Okay, here is the difficult bit. Lots of the boxes have good convergence, but there is a lot of them that are parallel lines or diverge slightly. Both of those things are mistakes, since in three point perspective, the line should always converge, even if its slightly. I also think that the pages had too many boxes, so that kinda impeded the lines to be seen to their full potential.

• Also, in one box, you made the lines go towards the viewer, so be careful about that. They should always go away from the viewer.

Personally, I think the boxes look fantastic, but the convergence worries me a bit.

Hi Vega,

It's me again,

Okay, wanna start out by saying that it really looks like you got the point of this challenge, your lines are looking confident, the line weight is really tidy, and your convergence really gets better over the lesson.

I do see that you are struggling a bit with the back corner of your boxes (welcome to the club) so here is something that will help you with that: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/725744395718230146/725745452691095643/How_draw_a_box.png

Try it out whenever you are gonna warm up with some boxes!

Also, in the future try to make bigger boxes, they do get bigger as you progress through the lesson, and there is also the fact about how much space you have in one page, but I hope you get the idea. Bigger boxes=Bigger confidence.

I'm gonna mark this lesson as completed, Keep it up! Also I see that you've upgraded to goodle drive, nice!

Hi Perynia,

I've checked your submission!

Okay, I really like the enthusiasm that is seen in your lesson, every page is full and it really looks like you are really trying and making an effort! However, I see that you are making one major mistakes all through out the lesson.

You are not making confident marks. Now, there is a rule (when it comes to Draw a Box) that I recommend you drill into your brain; Confidence>Accuracy. You have to strive to make your marks look confident over anything else, if you miss or overshoot, don't worry, that gets better with time, but confidence doesn't get better if you don't apply it! But, how do you do this? The ghosting method. Confidence in your marks should come from you ghosting and repeating until you feel ready to draw something. Always ghost and take your time doing it, don't rush learning.

Now, this that I'm telling you applies to everything: lines, ellipses, boxes (which are basically an organized group of lines). So keep that in mind for what comes next.

I'm gonna mark this lesson as completed, keep it up!

You've done a good job overall. Congratulations on finishing lesson 1!

• Superimposed and ghosted lines look good. Some arching on a few, but it seems that you managed to correct it on following exercises;

• Your planes look good and confident, with a good deal of variation on its forms. The same goes for the planes with ellipses;

• In all the ellipses exercises, it seems you have drawn over more than 2-3 times. Remember to keep ideally at 2 times, more than that gets a bit "muddy" to look;

• On the funnels, most of them seem good regarding the minor axis and symmetry. A few are off, but nothing to worry about;

• Plotted and rough perspective look good, but you could have used the page better and filled it with more boxes to practice more. Remember to take it as an opportunity to improve;

• Organic perspective have some perspective issues, which is normal at this point. Also could have done a few more boxes each page to practice more!

Well done! You can keep going in the course!