Krissy_Alexander

I think your exercises demonstrate that you really comprehend the material. Kudos to you. However, one small critque I have is on your Plane of Ellipses exercise some of the ellipses do not fit snuggly in the space but that is only for a few of them. Overall I think you did a fantastic job.

Hello and welcome to drawabox, I also finished lesson 1 not too long ago. Your lines seem to be very confident. There are really no wobbly lines, except maybe for the rough perspective exercise. In ghosted lines, some of them go past the point you were drawing towards. It is a hard task but lifting your pen as soon as you get to the point helps (in case you didn't know). You are drawing through your ellipses (at least 2 times) which is a good thing. In the table of ellipses exercise, some of them overlap, which is just something to look out for. In your funnels exercises, it seems like one of them was incomplete because you made it too small. I see that you also decided to switch your fineliner, it's unfortunate that you could not find a black one though. Just like your lines, your boxes are confident which means you are drawing through them and that's a good thing. In rough perspective there are several wobbly lines so be sure to look out for that. Other than that, it is some really good work, good luck with the 250 box challenge!

Hi CertainElf! My name's Flippy and I will be critiquing your submission today. Let's get right into it!

Superimposed Lines Exercise

Your lines are looking good. There is a minor amount of wobbling, but this will go away with mileage.

Ghosted Lines Exercise and Ghosted Plains Exercise

Your ghosted lines and ghosted plains look very on-point with minimal wobbling and barley any overshooting/undershooting. Nice work! The intersections of the plains are especially well-centered. 

Tables of Ellipses Exercise

The ellipses of the largest degree are a bit wobbly at times. Always prioritize confidence over accuracy, as your accuracy will improve over time. Consider ghosting over your ellipses more before committing to the page. Also remember to limit the number of passes over your ellipses to 2-3 times (preferably two). https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/a76a8906.jpg It appears you have already been doing this. Keep it up!

Ellipses in Plains Exercise

This can be a tricky exercise. Some of your ellipses don't quite reach all four edges of the plains, but it's fine. Most of them are well-placed. Keep working to tighten up those passes!

Funnels Exercise

Most of your ellipses fit well into the boundaries of the curves, as well as being evenly centered on the minor axis. In the future, I would encourage (though it isn't required) further experimentation with the shift in degrees between ellipses, starting at the narrowest in the middle and expanding out to a full 360 degrees on the ends. I can see you are already doing this to an extent. Also remember to find a comfortable orientation to the page when drawing ellipses. (Or lines, for that matter!) Good job!

Rough Perspective Exercise

Your rough perspective looks good. There's some deviation from your target vanishing point in your first panel, but then in every panel following your angles are much more precise, so I can see you got the hang of it.

Organic Perspective

Once again, on your first panel, the convergences of some of your boxes are a little wonky, but then in every panel after you really nailed it. Not all of them are perfect, but this exercise is all about estimating convergences toward suggested vanishing points, so good job.

Rotated Boxes Exercise

And finally, the rotated boxes. Now, this exercise is supposed to be difficult, and you did a great job with it. The overall form is slightly off-centered in relation to your guidelines. The shape of the form isn't quite a sphere as in the example homework, but as this exercise is teaching us to go off of the existing elements of a drawing to estimate comparatively how each box's parallels converge towards its own vanishing point, it makes sense that little deviations would compile on top of each other, resulting in a slightly warped sphere, but nonetheless accurate. I also like your use of hatching lines, they came out very clean and make the drawing much more readable and believable. Good work!

Overall

So, for your submission overall: your lines look great; your ellipses are coming along, but could use more practice. I would suggest adding some of the ellipse-based exercises to your daily warmup until you are more comfortable with them.

You're probably sick of hearing me say this by now, but you did a really good job with this first lesson. I noticed you haven't included the Plotted Perspective exercise, and I assume that's because you have already worked through Lesson 1 before (as you mentioned you started over) and understand how to work with vanishing points. If you have not previously completed this exercise, I would advise you do so, and submit it in a reply to this critique.

Good work!

Hello Endxnova, I will be providing you a critique! I'll be using Elodin's guide as well as adding my own observations!

Line Extensions: Starting off, all of your line extensions are great! However you've seemed to forget some sets on Boxes 18, 32, 69, and 80 -- Overall good job!

Divergence/Parallel Line and Inner Corner: For your line convergences, on earlier pages the inner corner seems to be the one that diverges the most. For example: Box 12 on page 1, you can see the inner corner on all 3 sides are either diverging or parallel. Most of your outer lines are good though GG. To help with this issue of the inner corner, you can try out this technique that I saw posted in the Draw-A-Box Discord: https://imgur.com/a/DHlA3Jh. There's also this diagram you can take a look at: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png, it's a bit hard to understand but it covers how you should look at the angles between the lines in each set, instead of in pairs. As I looked at your later pages the inner corner starts to get better at converging, your page 18 with Boxes 108 - 112 is where I noticed major improvement!

Line Hatching: As for your line hatching... there is an issue with some of them where the start of your line isn't placed carefully (Ex: Box 243, page 44). You should place your pen carefully at the start of each line, at least to where it only frays on one end, not both. Otherwise it'll look rushed and incomplete -- Remember to take your time on ghosting them too.

Line Weight: Some boxes have more weight on certain lines of the boxes. I notice this with Boxes 134(page23) and 166(page 29). Then again, I could be confusing that for your line extension marks? Apologies if that's the case. If it isn't however, then this is just a reminder to make sure you're adding weight subtly to the outer lines of the boxes for silhouette.

Wobbly Lines and Repeating Lines: There is your occasional repeating/wobbly line(ex: Box 126 inner corner, page 21) but all of your lines are confident and well executed! Well done!

Similar Orientations with Boxes: You seem to recognize and understand the error at page 28. There isn't much to say other than good job!

Congratulations on completing the challenge! Feel free to reply or ask any questions!

Congrats to complete this challenge.

Well, let's start, as a whole the quality of your box is amazing especially when I look at your first pages, they don't really look like first pages. Your lines extending in the right direction which is exellent, your hatching lines are great and they are on the right face which are facing us. Secondly your lines are rarely diverging and they are also pretty not often parallel so exellent. To conclude with positive point your line are really straight (amazing).

However you should draw a little bit more of variety in your box.

I'm sorry but I don't really have anything to complain about your challenge try and I saw that you was taking some "notes" to don't repeat your miss so it's perfect.

It's was a nice work :)

Good day and congrats for completing the crucible, zat3am! I'm Giuldzap aka Fervent Heroes and i'll be handling the critique for this submission today.

You've done a good job in following instructions! Your lines are very confident, correct line weight applied, decent convergences but not perfect (which is good enough) you extended lines correctly with a few cases where you whiffed it like box 55. It looks like you deliberately read the material and followed it to a T.

One down side is that i do observe most boxes being shallow forshortening and very few cases of dramatic, which, the challenge would've helped you out more by having an equal balance between these two.

Overall a fantastic submission with minor errors. You can now try to elevate your box skills by practicing the additional exercises as warmups for the next lesson, which is...

Hi Triforceslash,

I'll be doing your critique today! I will split it into three sections:

LINES

• Your superimposed lines are nicely done! You've ensured that you start from the same point and drawn a line without any wobble. We value confidence over accuracy so nicely done here.

• Your ghosted lines are looking good! You've marked the start and end points and drawn confident strokes between each making sure not to overlap! Very good!

• Your ghosted planes are of the same quality as the previous exercises so good job! I see a little wobble in some of the strokes so make sure you ghost and take your time in that. Once ready, mark the paper with a confident stroke. Taking the exercise as a whole though, you've done well here!

ELLIPSES

• The table of ellipses looks fine. There is a little overlapping over the borders but it's not too much of an issue to the point where it's actually a problem. Please make sure to keep in mind they they should not overlap the boundaries of the box when you do this exercise during your warm-ups. However, majority of the time you've kept in mind that the ellipses should be touching without any distance from each other so good job there.

• Regarding your ellipses in planes, you've done well with ghosting and drawing over the ellipse 2 times. There is no wobble so good job here! One thing I do want to point out though is that some of your ellipses don't touch all 4 edges of a plane correctly. See how the ellipse sits in the plane here, https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/step2. Notice how the ellipse touches each of the 4 SIDES of it. Some of your ellipses have been drawn in such a way that it only touches two CORNERS of the plane instead of the EDGES. For example, have a look at the 1st page-last row-middle plane. Your ellipse mainly touches the top right and bottom left corner of the pane. I hope this makes sense. Let me know if this doesn't and I'll try to explain it better.

• Your funnels look splendid! You've nicely filled each funnel where the ellipses are touching the borders of the funnel accurately. Good job here! In addition, the main important point of having the minor axis cutting the two halves of each ellipse symmetrically is nicely done here. The only thing I want to point out here is that each of your ellipses are of the same width in the funnel. Have a look at https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/step3 and notice how the ellipses in the middle are 'thinner' than the ellipses at the edge of the funnel. Keep this in mind when doing this exercise for your warm ups.

BOXES

• Your plotted perspective looks fine. All good here!

• Your rough perspective looks good too. There is a little wobble to your lines though so make sure to take your time to ghost. This will greatly reduce the wobble in your lines. One long confident stroke is all that's needed and ghosting will ensure you do this! Otherwise, nicely done here. You've correctly drawn your line corrections to the horizon and not the VP. Good job!

• Your rotated boxes look good! You have good spacial awareness and have kept a consistent distance between each box while retaining the dimensions of the box in perspective. Nicely done. I see a little wobble in some of the lines here too so keep in mind what I said above and how to handle it.

• Nicely done on the organic boxes too! You've kept a sense of rotation as well as perspective in these exercises so good job! One thing I want to point out here is that when you add lineweight, it should be only to the overlapping lines. For example, the biggest box in the last row of the first page doesn't need that line weight at all as it doesn't overlap any of the boxes behind it. Remember when adding lineweight, you must use the ghosting method as well and (in case the line is crooked) don't try to correct it by drawing over it multiple times. I see this a few times of you having drawn multiple strokes to show lineweight.

All in all, well done on completing the lesson. You've done well!! I hope you're proud as you've done really well here! :)

Just a few things I want you to before I mark this lesson as complete.

hi

i'm here to critique you lesson 1 homework. congrats on completing this lesson.

lines

• starting off with superimposed lines, good job in keeping fraying mostly near the end and minimal at the starting point. the longer lines have more arching to them so try to conciously arch to the opposite direction, this is explained here.

with ghosted lines and ghosted planes section you seem to be plotting out the lines first which is good. some lines have the arching issues but you can improve these by following the method mentioned before. also use the shoulder pivot for each lines.

ellipses

• in tables of ellipses section some ellipses are a bit wobbly. we should aim here for even elliptical forms and confident mark making. some of the ellipses are placed snuggly next to each other and nice drawn over 2-3 times so well done.

with ellipses in planes some of the ellipses got a bit deformed as you tried to make them touch the four edges of the planes. the goal here is to get nice even elliptical forms. the funnel exercise is looking pretty good as you managed to keep ellipses aligned with the axis line in most cases.

boxes

• not much to critique in plotted perspective section other than you made some of the boxes a bit narrow and added no hatching lines.

i consider rough perspective one of the toughest to tackle in lesson one. you made the major mistake here with ignoring this rule. we're not suppose to draw the lines exactly back to the vanishing point. instead we should make a rough estimation towards the vp.

in the rotated boxes you're drawing over lines a lot. even if a line turns out a bit off keep it as is instead of trying to correct it, this only make things messier. the hatching lines should be placed using ghosting method and with bit more care. same goes for the lineweight.

in organic perspective section each lines should be plotted out with dots. you seem to be doing this some instances but the smaller boxes are looking free handed. also the same thing goes for the lines here as well, no drawovers.

overall, i'd say your attempt was pretty good. you'll continue to improve as these exercises will be part of the 15 min warmup sessions. so i'd recommend moving over to the 250 boxes challenge. good luck!

LINES:

I notice on your superimposed lines homework you have a lot of arcing of the lines. I do not see the initial straight line that was indicated in the lesson instructions. I think by skipping this step, your lines are confident, but arked. You've done very well at not fraying at the beginning of the line, and drawing confidently so that the lines are smooth. If you do this homework again, I would be sure to make sure the initial strait line is created.

For the ghosted lines homework, I've noticed that you are doing very well with confidence, fewer than 1/3rd of the lines I see have that wobbly look. Your lines are also much straighter than in the superimposed line homework. You seem to be quite solidly in level 2 as described by the introduction of the exercise.

Your ghosted plane sheets shows quite a bit of improvement on your confidence and lack of wobbles over the ghosted lines homework. The lines in this work are in the upper level 2 / start of level 3 of ghosted lines phases as described in the ghosted lines homework.

ELLIPSES:

TABLE:

    The table of ellipses looks nice.  On your later page, I don't see very many cases where the ellipse doesn't touch the edges and the second loop overlaps the first one quite well.  Well Done. You improved quiet a bit during the homework pages.

PLANE:

I've noticed a couple of places where one side of the plane isn't touched, but this is rather rare and your lines tend to be confident and smooth.

FUNNELS:

On your bottom left funnel, I notced that a couple of the ellipses are not fully aligned. But this is the only nitpick I can find. I think this assignment was done well.

BOXES:

Plotted:

There aren't any suggestions on what to look for, so I'll just wing it. Your lines are hitting your chosen vanishing points quite well. It seems like a lot of timeand care went into this assignment.

Rough:

Your following lines are hitting the vanishing point as opposed to just moving to the horizon line following the vanishing lines. This makes identifying where the vanishing point of the boxes actually goes. Your lines in the boxes are nicely confident. I would suggest doing this again.

Rotated:

you are missing 3 boxes per quadrant. Your rotation on the major axes looks good. I would suggest re-doing this assignment.

Organic:

You seem to have lost confidence in your lines here. The boxes are a more wobbly than the previous boxes assignments. The reduction in size as the boxes get further back along the line looks good. I would suggest ghosting the lines a little more as that has worked for you in the past.

Hi Strawberryj_, I see you've submitted your homework over 2 months ago, I hope my critique can be still useful to you. I've divided the critique into three sections: Lines, Ellipses & Boxes, similarly structured to the lesson itself.

Lines: Good job on the Superimposed Lines, the fraying stays on one end, which is what we want. I do see some wobbling going on in the straight lines, next time I'd suggest to draw even faster. This gets rid of any possibility of wobbling. Of course, always draw from the shoulder. Ghosted Lines looks pretty good, some arcing lines but nothing too extreme. The accuracy is pretty high, but remember: high accuracy is only relevant if your lines are executed confidently, meaning no wobbling & no arcing. The Ghosted Planes, on the other hand, sees a huge improvement in terms of line confidence. Almost every line looks as straight as if drawn with a ruler, nicely done!

Ellipses: I see you're drawing a full 2-3 times in the Tables of Ellipses, noice. The way they're drawn looks confidently as well, and they look quite uniform. Great job! I'd only suggest to have more variation with the degree (width) of the ellipses, most of your ellipses look around the 30-ish degree, I'd try to spice it up with some thicker (60 degree) and thinner (10-15 degree) as well. The Ellipses in Planes looks solid as well, some of them look a little egg-shaped but that'll improve with practice. I'd also try to hit all 4 edges, but of course put most of your effort into keeping the ellipse uniform - something that you mostly already succeed at. I see that, in the Funnels, you've achieved keeping the ellipses snugly between the borders, and they're generally pretty uniform. There does seem to be some misalignment with the minor axis, so I'd suggest to ghost a little bit more, but this will also generally improve as you put some of these exercises in your warm up routine :]

Boxes: now onto the boxes! The Plotted Perspective looks perfect, got nothing to add or nitpick on. Rough Perspective however... I'm missing the checking of convergences! After doing a full page you should extend your depth lines (the ones that aren't horizontal or vertical) with a different colour to where they intersect with the horizon line. This way you can see how accurate your estimations were. It's one thing to eyeball your perspective, but it doesn't mean much if you don't reflect on the mistakes you frequently tend to make. Basically; by checking your work you discover pitfalls that otherwise would've slipped through your radar, and you can now focus on consciously avoiding these pitfalls. Other than that, your boxes look good. I see that your horizontal lines are mostly parallel to the horizon line, and your vertical lines are mostly perpendicular to the horizon line, awesome! It's really difficult to eyeball that correctly, so great job on achieving it! There are some arcing lines, but overall you've kept your lines really straight :) I'm seeing a good deal of rotation in the Rotated Boxes exercise, noice! I don't see the rectangles that represent the middle box being rotated 90 degrees, but considering you already have a nice amount of rotation, that's no big deal. Considering the difficulty of this exercise, I must say I'm impressed with your execution! If you ever choose to attempt this again as part of your warmup I'd suggest to start off with the middle box (the squary one) being slightly bigger, so you have more room to make those difficult corner boxes work. And finally, the Organic Boxes. Nice difference in size. Good overlaps, though I'd suggest to increase the lineweighting of the silhouette a little bit to make the overlapping boxes read a little bit better. As they are right now, it's a little confusing at first glance. The biggest box in the bottom frame of the first page (in imgur upload order at least), there seems to be a line missing. Don't forget to double-check your work once you're done, since a missing line can immediately break the illusion of solid form that we're creating. Also try to keep in mind that lines, that go off to the same vanishing point, must never diverge. I know (from experience) that it's hard, but try to keep it in mind when you place your points and ghost towards them. On that note, if you place your point and see that it'd make a diverging line rather than a converging line, you don't actually have to ghost exactly towards that point. You can just use that point as an indication of where you want your line to generally go, and then ghost slightly towards it.

Woah. That was a lengthy one. I figured that, especially since you've submitted this a long time ago, a rather in depth critique is well worth the wait, although I suspect you may have already moved on to other exercises & lessons. Anyway, I hope this essay has still managed to help you out, and I wish you the best on the rest of your journey =]