Liia

Congrats on completing Lesson 1! I'm Liia and I will be critiquing your work today. I see it's been some time since you submitted this, so let's just jump into it and get started!

Lines

Superimposed Lines - The most important thing here is that you draw your lines smoothly and confidently. These are nice and smoothly done, so that's a pass! General notes about it: sometimes there is fraying on both sides, you want to make sure you take that extra second to place the pen correctly before starting a stroke. I like that you tried long lines and curved lines. The curved lines tend to wobble a lot compared to your straight lines. This might happen because the mind is trying to accurately follow the curves instead of prioritizing the confident stroke. Always prioritize the confidence over accuracy during this course.

Ghosted Lines - Overall these are nicely done! There is some arcing with the lines, but it seems to be due to getting used to drawing from the arm. This will improve with mileage, generally, your lines are fluid and confident.

Ghosted Planes - Again, nice work here! You took the time to plan out each stroke, even remembering the dots for your bisecting lines (a lot of us forget that step haha). You experimented with different sizes and angles. Solid work here.

Ellipses

Tables of Ellipses - Your ellipses are drawn with a confident stroke and fit snugly together. Each ellipse is drawn through twice. The spheres tend to be a bit more misshapen than the ellipses, but overall you are on the right track. And again, you correctly prioritized confidence over accuracy which will get better as you progress through this course.

Ellipses in Planes - You have nice confident linework here, and tried to get each ellipse to touch all four sides. The ellipses tend to come out a teeny bit squished. Overall, drawing confident ellipses is a challenge, and you've done well with it.

Funnels - Your ellipses are drawn through twice, and touch the sides of the funnel and each other. They also align pretty well to the center line (central minor axis line). Just a note for when you do this exercise in warmups, usually the center line doesn't go through the center of an ellipse, we usually put an ellipse on either side instead.

Boxes

Plotted Perspective - You used a ruler here and kept track of all those lines :) The hatching is well done as well, although try to keep them from overshooting outside the box.

Rough Perspective - Your linework here has improved a lot since the ghosted lines at the start of the lesson! Your boxes look solid and are extended correctly to the horizon line. I've only seen it twice so far, but try not to redraw a line if you did it incorrectly the first time. One thing that might help improve these boxes in future warmups, is to keep in mind that the square you draw for the back of the boxes will always have perpendicular or horizontal lines and will match the shape of the box in the front. You've generally done well with this, but some of the backs of your boxes got a bit wonky.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/roughperspective/guessing

Rotated Boxes- Well done here! We have all the boxes in the set drawn and your gaps have been nice and consistently tight. Your boxes are rotating, and been drawn through. Only thing here is that you might have missed the back corner line for the box at the top far right

Organic Boxes - These are well done. The boxes gradually get smaller as they go back in space, and you have nice shallow foreshortening here. Take your time with the hatching and don't rush. This chart might be helpful going forward with more rotations you can experiment with. https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX

Overall, really well done! I'm going to mark this lesson as complete and send you off to the 250 box challenge! You can go ahead and get started right away, although if you wanted to badge for this lesson, you'll need two other community members to agree with this critique. Also be to ask if you had any questions or needed clarifications on anything :) Congrats and good luck with boxes!

Hi there!

Just adding a few thoughts :) You line confidence is great for both lines, ellipses, and planes, and boxes. However, you are missing a few boxes in the Rotated Boxes exercise. Also for the Organic Boxes exercise, once you execute a stroke, try not to go over it again, even if you made a mistake.

Go ahead and hop on over to the 250 box challenge!

Hi there! I'm Liia and I will be critiquing your work today :) Let's get started!

Lines

Superimposed Lines - You have some strong markmaking here. The lines are drawn confidently and smoothly without hesitation. One thing to note here is that some of the lines have fraying on both ends, so try to give yourself one more second to set the pen correctly at the starting point before starting the stroke https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/superimposedlines/fraying

Ghosted Lines - Again, these look smooth and confident. There is a tad bit of overshooting, but the important thing is that once you start a stroke, you commit to it with a confident stroke. It would have been nice to have the page filled in a bit more, with a wider mix of both long and short lines. Overall, I'm not sure what size page you're drawing on, for some reason it looks on the small side (if a page is too small, it makes it difficult to draw from the arm).

Ghosted Planes - Both of these pages look excellent. Each stroke looks well planned out and confident. There is a bit of arcing on some of these lines, but I'm guessing that might be your page warping in the photo.

Ellipses

Tables of Ellipses - Your ellipses fit snugly into the place allocated for them. Something to note for future ellipses in this course, preferably you draw through your ellipses twice, mayyybe three times, but no more than that. Try to aim for twice!

Ghosted Ellipses- These got a little trickier! Keep prioritizing a smooth even shape of the ellipse over accuracy. Just like with lines, we want to prioritize the confident stroke over accuracy. Eventually your accuracy will improve with mileage (warmups)

Funnels - Yes! Your ellipses are drawn through twice, and align nicely to the central minor axis line. Some of your long lines in the middle were off which made the whole thing look off kilter, but it was just the center line.

Boxes

Plotted Perspective - Looks good here. In the last frame, it looks like you redrew two lines. It's good you were aware of it, but in this course, we try not to redraw lines, not just because it tends to draw unnecessary attention to the place, but also it negates the effectiveness of learning from the mistake.

Rough Perspective - These are pretty good. The main thing to keep in mind for this in future warmups, is that the box you draw in the back will always have perpendicular and horizontal lines. Some of the boxes in the back have lines that slant

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/roughperspective/guessing Other than that, it would be nice to have your line extension stop at the horizon instead of going past. This keeps things cleaner and helps make it easier to keep track of things.

Rotated Boxes - You followed the steps and not only drew all the boxes in the set, but you also drew through all of them. The gaps are fairly tight and consistent and your boxes are rotating. Nice work! Also, don't redraw lines even though you made a mistake :)

Organic Perspective - This is some solid work overall. A few of your parallel edges are diverging a tiny bit as they move away from the viewer, but you'll get a lot of practice on this in the box challenge. Also, nice hatching!

Congrats on completing Level 1! This has been a really nice, solid, and thoughtful body of work. I'm going to mark this lesson as complete and send you off to the 250 box challenge! (Also, you can now critique other students level 1 work hehe) You'll need two agrees on this critique in order to get the badge for Level 1, but you can go ahead and get started on the 250 box challenge right away. If you have any questions, be sure to ask!

Of course :) Be sure to check in the discord if you have any questions. You've shown a lot of dedication by getting through Level 1, now go conquer those boxes one at a time!

Hi there!

First off, a huge congrats on completing Level 1! I'll try to make this brief so you can move on asap :)

Lines

Superimposed Lines - Your lines look good! Good meaning that the stroke was confident and smoothly drawn without hesitation from the start to finish. I will note that in the second page, you have some fraying on both ends of the stroke, so I would recommend you take an extra second to line up your pen before you start your stroke in warmups. Fraying on the far end is okay, but not on both ends. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/superimposedlines/fraying

Ghosted Lines - Generally speaking your lines here are solid. There is a bit of wobbling and arcing on some of them, so something that could help with that, apart from just more mileage, is to consciously try to arc your lines the opposite way. But always remember that a confident stroke comes first, after that we can work on our accuracy.

Ghosted Planes - Even when we bumped complexity up a bit, you still took the time to ghost each stroke and also try out both long and short strokes. Nicely done! Here there is also a bit or arcing in the lines, so for warmups you might want to try the suggestion above in ghosted lines.

Ellipses

In general, your ellipses have some wobble to them. This is hard and something I personally still struggle with as well. We should always prioritize having a smooth stroke and even shapes over the accuracy. So confident markmaking first, then how snugly they fit :) This is one of the core fundamental skills we are trying to learn in DaB - how to make thoughtful and confident marks, which generally will make your artwork more convincing than an accurate, but kind of wobbly art. That said, in your Ellipses in Planes homework, and Table of Ellipses, you drew through your ellipses twice, they generally fit pretty snugly, and you tried out different sizes! This is definitely a pass! Oh, I forgot Funnels xD Your funnels line up nicely to the central minor axis line. The ellipses themselves will improve in warmups!

Boxes

For your Plotted Perspective, you used a ruler, and show a solid understanding of the lesson. Here for your hatching, the lines don't always reach the end, so that might be something to look out for.

Rough Perspective looks clean. Your boxes in the front and back are rectangular and they are plotted back correctly to the vanishing point.

Rotating Boxes - You followed the steps and completed and drew through ALL the boxes. Nicely done!

Organic Perspective - Your boxes are rotating here. Some of them looked a bit rushed in terms of hatching and some lines look redrawn. Some of the boxes have a bit more dramatic foreshortening, which we want to avoid because it takes away from the illusion of them gradually getting farther away from us. All in all, nice work and see if you can give your hatching a bit more time, we're in no rush here :)

Congrats again on completing Lesson 1! I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions about any of this :) Also, good to see you in the Discord, it's a valuable place to get help from other boxers :)

Dropping an agree here so you can get that badge once you complete revisions! Also just remember that even though the Rotated Boxes looks intimidating, just give it your best shot, try to complete all the boxes to the best of your ability. It's okay if they don't end up looking great, the point is that you tried :)

Hi! Just adding an agree on this, to help with earning that badge when you complete revisions :)

Also would like to quickly add some comments of my own:

The main thing I see is that for your markmaking, in both your lines and ellipses, you did correctly in prioritizing confidence over accuracy. Keep focusing on that, and your accuracy will improve down that line! For your boxes, you followed instructions and did everything correctly, even getting all the boxes in for the rotated boxes exercise.

Can't wait for you to complete that last page of organic perspective so you can move on to the box challenge!

Agree with the critique! Can't wait for you to earn earn your badge once you complete revisions :)

Hi there!

Just dropping an agree on your critique so you can earn your Level 1 badge!

Your homework looks great! The one thing I really want to reinforce is that you must draw through all your ellipses twice for all your DaB homework! Other than that, don't forget to also do the 250 box challenge :)

Hi there!

Just dropping an agree on your submission so you can earn your Level 1 badge :)

I would like to reinforce what Memoriesofblue said in that you are missing the bisecting lines on your ghosted planes homework. And it's also easy to miss, but you are also missing the four corner boxes of your Rotated Boxes exercise.

Just a note, so you can incorporate that into your warmups as well as Memoriesofblue's other useful critiques!