Meta

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. Next, your ghosted lines and planes are looking pretty confident as well - there's a few minimal wobbles here and there but they seem to clear up by the end of the lesson so I suspect it was just a matter of mileage.

Ellipses

Onto your tables of ellipses and these are off to a great start. Your linework is confident for the most part, you've selected a good variety of shapes and sizes of ellipses to practice, and you've kept them squeezed up tight against each other. I did notice that on one of the pages, you didn't draw through all your ellipses 2-3 times, though the other page and the future exercises seem to have addressed this.

Next your ellipses in planes are looking good, you've made clear attempts to hit the four sides of the plane while remaining confident and not over-focusing on accuracy. Finally, your funnels are off to a good start - you're getting them quite well aligned to the minor axis and it's good to see you're starting to vary the degree of the ellipses. On the "advanced" page, you definitely tended to wobble a bit more though, possibly because you've added another priority to the mix - you'll get the hang of it as you work on it through your warm-ups.

Boxes

On your plotted perspective - you may have noticed some of the back lines of your boxes are not vertical - this can happen when there's slight inaccuracies in the lines used to plot the front of the box not going back to the exact vanishing point drawn. Something to keep in mind, as you will encounter this again.

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a pretty normal margin of error. I did notice a few instances where you've gone back over your lines - try to resist the urge to go back over lines to "correct" them as this lends more visual weight to the mistake and goes against the concept of careful planning that Drawabox tries to reinforce.

Your rotated boxes are off to a good start - you're keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. You didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course.

Finally, you're getting a good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise which is starting to create a sense of depth in each frame, though if you wanted to push it further, you could play with the scale between the smallest and largest boxes as well as trying to overlap the ones closest to the viewer. The boxes themselves are diverging a bit in places, however like the previous exercise, this one is simply an introduction to the concepts you'll explore in depth in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. This confidence translates through to your ghosted lines and planes as well with only a very minor amount of arcing present

Ellipses

Onto your tables of ellipses and these are off to a great start. Your linework is confident for the most part, you've selected a good variety of shapes and sizes of ellipses to practice, and you've kept them squeezed up tight against each other. There's a few little wonky/deformed guys in there but nothing to be too concerned by.

Next your ellipses in planes are looking good, you've made clear attempts to hit the four sides of the plane while remaining confident and not over-focusing on accuracy.

Finally, on your funnels, the central ellipses are quite well aligned whilst the outer ones tend to skew off significantly. It's good to see you've tried altering the degrees of the ellipses as they go out from the centre. Make sure you keep this exercise in your warmups as being able to align ellipses to a minor axis will become more and more important as you progress through the course.

Boxes

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a pretty normal margin of error. There is a little bit of wobbling in your lines present here, however this is pretty normal as it's the first time students are asked to take these ghosted lines and turn them into boxes - make sure you just take the time to plan and confidently execute each one and you'll be in good stead.

Your rotated boxes are off to a good start - you're keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. You didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course. I did notice you added line weight to the corners of the front faces of the box - while line weight is mentioned in the exercise as a good way to establish a hierarchy of lines, do make sure you're reinforcing the entire line, not just the corners. There are places where you might want to only clarify one section of overlap later in the course, so don't take this as a hard rule for all line weight.

Finally, you're getting a good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise which is starting to create a sense of depth in each frame. I'm especially loving how bold you've been with overlapping the boxes. The boxes themselves are diverging a bit in places, however you'll have plenty of time to explore this in depth in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. This confidence translates to your ghosted lines and planes which are looking nice and straight for the most part with only a few little wobbles here there.

Ellipses

Onto your tables of ellipses and these are off to a great start. Your linework is confident for the most part, you've selected a good variety of shapes and sizes of ellipses to practice, and you've kept them squeezed up tight against each other. On your first page, there are a few little wobbles here and there that seem to clear up through the second page and into the next exercises.

Next your ellipses in planes are looking good, you've made clear attempts to hit the four sides of the plane while remaining confident and not over-focusing on accuracy.

Finally, you're doing a good job lining your ellipses up with the minor axis on your funnels however your line confidence definitely faltered here with significant wobbling present, possibly due to focusing on trying to get your ellipses accurate rather than on a smooth and accurate ellipse. Accuracy will come with time and mileage through your warmups. I also noticed a little section of correction tape on this page, which is definitely a no-no. Remember that these are just exercises and a small errors here and there are to be expected and worked with.

Boxes

On your plotted perspective - you may have noticed some of the back lines of your boxes are not vertical - this can happen when there's slight inaccuracies in the lines used to plot the front of the box not going back to the exact vanishing point drawn. Something to keep in mind, as you will encounter this again.

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a pretty normal margin of error.

Your rotated boxes are off to a good start - you're keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. You got pretty close to capturing the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down on the extreme boxes. This exercise is intended as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course, so any kind of success here is a win.

Finally, you're getting a good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise which is starting to create a sense of depth in each frame, though if you wanted to push it further, you could try overlapping the boxes closest to the viewer even more. The boxes themselves are diverging a bit in places, however like the previous exercise, this one is simply an introduction to the concepts you'll explore in depth in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're generally doing a good job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently, though there are a couple, particularly in the first page where they fray at both ends, so make sure you take the time to line up with your starting point.

Next, your ghosted lines are generally confident however I did notice you went back and "corrected" in several places in your ghosted planes. We actively discourage students from doing this as it can be a kneejerk reaction to getting the line wrong and generally isn't as well planned as the course requires.

Ellipses

Onto your tables of ellipses and these are off to a great start. Your linework is confident for the most part, you've selected a good variety of shapes and sizes of ellipses to practice, and you've kept them squeezed up tight against each other.

The ellipses in planes are looking good - managing to hit the four sides of the plane without sacrificing confidence for the most part. Your linework is a little bit loose here, so you might need to experiment with the speed at which you execute these to get that second pass landing a little closer to the first.

Finally, your funnels are off to a good start - you're getting them quite well aligned to the minor axis and your linework tightens up a little bit here. If you want to push this exercise to the next level, you can try to vary the degrees of the ellipses as they move out from the centre as mentioned in this section

Boxes

A quick note on your plotted perspective - you may have noticed some of the back lines of your boxes are not vertical - this can happen when there's slight inaccuracies in the lines used to plot the front of the box not going back to the exact vanishing point drawn. Something to keep in mind, as you will encounter this again.

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a fairly reasonable margin of error. As previously mentioned in this critique, you appear to have gone back over your lines to correct them.

You're doing a good job keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent on your rotated boxes, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. It appears you might've used a ruler to draw the centre box - other than the axes (which should've been extended all the way to the boxes) and the boxes on their poles, the exercise is intended to be done freehand. One last note is that you missed the outermost layer of diagonal boxes, so make sure you're comparing your homework to the examples to make sure you're hitting all the required points. You didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down and elongate your boxes, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course.

Finally, you're getting a good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise, if you really wanted to push the perspective more, you could exaggerate the difference between the smallest and largest boxes and more heavily leverage the overlapping that you're doing (which is great to see). The boxes themselves are diverging a little bit in places and you're offsetting the corners of your boxes in places, however this exercise is simply an introduction to the concepts you'll explore in depth in the 250 box challenge.

Your linework tightens up here as well and I only see a couple of instances of redrawing over your lines. I had considered assigning revisions to drive this point home but given the final exercise exhibits much less of this behaviour, I'm going to pass you onto the 250 box challenge but please ensure you're planning and executing each of your lines with care and not trying to correct - this will become more important later in the course where you'll need to work with your errors instead of fight against them.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started. For future submissions, it doesn't matter whether the photos are cropped or not as long as the work can clearly be seen.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently, that said you are getting significant fraying at the end, which might mean you need to experiment with your speed to get these tightened up - slow enough not to wobble, but fast enough to remain confident.

Next, your ghosted lines and planes are looking pretty confident and are a bit more accurate than the superimposed lines were, which suggests you found a speed that works for you.

Ellipses

Your tables of ellipses are looking nice and confident - it's good to see you're going around your ellipses the requisite 2-3 times as well as squishing as many shapes and sizes of ellipses as possible into the space you've got. They were definitely looser on the first page but tightened up significantly on the second, so I think much of this is just a matter of mileage.

The ellipses in planes are looking good - managing to hit the four sides of the plane without sacrificing confidence for the most part.

Finally, you've done a good job lining the ellipses of your funnels up with the minor axis. You've once again fallen into the looser linework that suggests you might need to slow down the speed you draw these at.

Boxes

A quick note on your plotted perspective - you may have noticed some of the back lines of your boxes are not vertical - this can happen when there's slight inaccuracies in the lines used to plot the front of the box not going back to the exact vanishing point drawn. Something to keep in mind, as you will encounter this again.

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions on the second page, with the first being a bit hit and miss. Your lines start to wobble a little bit here but this is fairly common and just a matter of taking your time to plan and execute each line with confidence - similarly, resist the urge to go back over lines to "correct" them as this lends more visual weight to the mistake and goes against the concept of careful planning that Drawabox tries to reinforce.

You're doing a good job keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent on your rotated boxes, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. You've captured quite a bit of rotation here, not the full extent as your inner boxes tended to be bigger to cover most of that range, but it is a good effort anyway. This exercise is intended as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course so any level of success here is a definite win.

Finally, your organic perspective is off to a good start with a variety of different compositions. It's good to see a wide variety of orientations and sizes. You've gone mostly for boxes with more extreme foreshortening and they do exhibit a bit of divergence however this is something that you can work on in the 250 box challenge, which will also push you to draw boxes with shallower foreshortening.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a good job of lining up your pen with the starting point and keeping it generally confident throughout your line, though there are some wobbles here and there. Your ghosted lines exhibit the same little wobbles but these resolve themselves in your ghosted planes for the most part so I think all it took was a little bit of mileage.

Ellipses

Onto your tables of ellipses and you're doing a pretty good job with line confidence on these and drawing through them twice as required. On the first page you didn't quite manage to get them all set up against one another or to put it another way, it felt like you weren't drawing with a goal as much as you should have. The second page is somewhat an improvement though some of them are still a bit loose.

Next your ellipses in planes are looking pretty well done - they're smooth, confident, and do a pretty good job hitting the four sides of the plane without sacrificing the former points. However on your funnels, you tend to prioritise accuracy more than the smoothness/confidence we've seen up till this point - so remember, whilst the goal of this one is to get the ellipses lined up on the minor axis (which you've done a good job of), it is more important to keep a smooth, confident stroke (door knockers aside :p).

Boxes

A quick note on your plotted perspective - you may have noticed some of the back lines of your boxes are not vertical - this can happen when there's slight inaccuracies in the lines used to plot the front of the box not going back to the exact vanishing point drawn. Something to keep in mind, as you will encounter this again.

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a fairly reasonable margin of error. Your lines start to wobble a little bit again here but this is fairly common and just a matter of taking your time to plan and execute each line with confidence.

Your rotated boxes are off to a good start - you're keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. You didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course.

Finally, you're getting a good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise which is starting to create a sense of depth in each frame, though if you wanted to push it further, you could play with the scale between the smallest and largest boxes as well as trying to overlap the ones closest to the viewer. The boxes themselves are diverging a bit in places, however like the previous exercise, this one is simply an introduction to the concepts you'll explore in depth in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

On your first question, it is not unusual to feel this way and put more pressure and expectations on performing to a particular standard when it comes to the exercises. The only suggestion I have is to remember that they are just exercises and it's the job of the TAs and Uncomfortable to judge whether you're understanding the content, not whether it's up to a particular "standard".

The second question is a bit harder. If you can only sit down and concentrate for half an hour, then that's better than sitting for two hours and being unfocused for over half the time. As long as you're coming back to it within a day or two, it's not going to affect your progress at all and in fact might help since you'll be fresh and attentive each time you come back.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. This same level of confidence persists through your ghosted lines and planes and I don't really have any points of critique to offer here - keep up the good work.

Ellipses

Moving onto your tables of ellipses and the confident linework persists here, which is fantastic to see. You've done a good job keeping the ellipses tight up against one another and placed a good variety of shapes and sizes within.

Next, your ellipses in planes continue the trend with confident linework and you've done a good job getting them to hit the four sides of the plane in most cases.

Finally, your funnels are off to a good start - you're getting them quite well aligned to the minor axis and it's good to see you're starting to vary the degree of the ellipses. There is a little bit of deformation in the outer (wider) ellipses so you could definitely spend some time practicing various degrees of ellipses in your warm-ups.

Boxes

Next, you've done an excellent job in your rough perspective of keeping your horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line as well as correctly applying the line extensions (though it is best to stop at the horizon line, as this is less visually confusing) and your perspective lands in a very respectable margin of error.

Next, your rotated boxes are off to a good start - you're doing a good job keeping the gaps between the boxes consistent for the most part, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one and you've almost captured the full range of rotation on these with the exception of a couple of the diagonals peeking very slightly out. This is great to see.

Finally, you're getting a pretty good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise which is starting to create a sense of depth in each frame. I particularly liked the instances where you overlapped the boxes, which pushed that sense of scale more. Your line confidence here is also looking excellent as always here. There's a few minor issues with divergences in the boxes themselves however this can be worked on in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. This confidence persists through your ghosted lines and planes - my only comment here would be that it would've been nice to have seen the ghosted lines page filled up a little bit more.

Ellipses

Onto your tables of ellipses and these are off to a great start. Your linework is confident for the most part, you've selected a good variety of shapes and sizes of ellipses to practice, and you've kept them squeezed up tight against each other.

Next, your ellipses in planes are doing a good job of hitting the four sides of the plane - arguably, too well, because your ellipse has ended up deformed in this pursuit of accuracy. Remember that we are aiming for confident linework above all, with accuracy being a secondary goal and often resolved by mileage.

Finally in this section, your funnels are off to a good start in terms of getting the ellipses aligned with the minor axis however the same issue of being overly focused on accuracy persists here. Make sure that you keep practicing ellipses in your warmups to build confidence and trust that the accuracy will come with it.

Boxes

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a fairly reasonable margin of error. There are a few confidence issues here and there but this is fairly common and just a matter of taking your time to plan and execute each line. Keep in mind when we put down dots to plan our lines, they don't need to be super bold - in fact, it's better if they're not so that they can be absorbed into the finished lines.

You're doing a good job keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent on your rotated boxes, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. I noticed you missed the extreme diagonal boxes, so make sure you're completing the exercises to the best of your ability, even if you don't think it will come out well. You also didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down and elongate your boxes, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course.

Finally, your organic perspective is off to a good start with a variety of different compositions. It's good to see a wide variety of orientations and sizes, though it would've been great to have seen your push the sense of depth with a wider range between the smallest and largest, or overlapping boxes. The boxes themselves exhibit a bit of divergence however this is something that you can work on in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. Next, your ghosted lines and planes are looking similarly confident. It would've been good to have seen a few more longer lines in the ghosted lines, but they're coming out well, with only very minor wobbling in the planes.

Ellipses

Next, your tables of ellipses are looking good. The ellipses themselves are smooth and confident for the most part, and you've done a reasonable job of getting those ellipses sitting tight up against with each other in a variety of shapes and sizes, though you do tend to end up with them overlapping somewhat and a few spots where they're coming out a bit lumpy and uncontrolled. You may need to experiment with the speed at which you draw them to find a balance with executing confidently while remaining controlled.

Your ellipses in planes are coming along well - you've done a good job keeping them confident for the most part and made clear efforts to have them touch the four sides of the plane. The control issues from the previous exercise persist here and there are a couple of instances I can see where the ellipses have ended up deformed.

Finally in this section, your funnels are off to a good start in terms of getting the ellipses aligned with the minor axis - of course there are occasional spots where you didn't quite nail it but I would say in general, the issues with controlling your ellipses does improve here.

Boxes

Onto your rough perspective and you've made fairly successful efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a fairly reasonable margin of error. There are a few confidence issues here and there but this is fairly common and just a matter of taking your time to plan and execute each line.

You're doing a good job keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent on your rotated boxes, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. I noticed you missed the extreme diagonal boxes, so make sure you're completing the exercises to the best of your ability, even if you don't think it will come out well. You also didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down and elongate your boxes, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course.

Finally, your organic perspective is off to a good start with a variety of different compositions. You didn't quite capture a sense of depth as there isn't a lot of variation in the sizes of your boxes but it's good to see a lot of variation in orientation. The boxes themselves exhibit quite a bit of divergence however this is something that you can work on in the 250 box challenge.

Hey there, I'm Meta and I'll be your TA today, so let's get started.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, you're doing a great job lining your pen up with the starting point and executing your lines confidently. Next, your ghosted lines and planes are looking similarly confident. It would've been good to have seen a little more variation in the lengths of the lines you chose for ghosted lines, but they're coming out well, with only very minor arcing.

Ellipses

Next, your tables of ellipses are looking good. The ellipses themselves are smooth and confident, and you've done a good job of getting those ellipses sitting tight up against with each other in a variety of shapes and sizes. You're occasionally going around the ellipse more than the requisite 2-3 times, which makes them look somewhat visually 'heavy', so try to stick to twice.

Your ellipses in planes are looking pretty good - you're doing a good job keeping them confident and touching the four sides of the plane for the most part. There are a couple of instances I can see where the ellipses have ended up deformed.

Finally in this section, your funnels are off to a good start in terms of getting the ellipses aligned with the minor axis - of course there are spots where you didn't quite nail it and I can tell you got into your own head a little bit as the ellipses are less confident that the ones you drew up till this point.

Boxes

Onto your rough perspective and you've made clear efforts to keep the horizontals parallel and verticals perpendicular to the horizon line. You've correctly applied the line extensions and your perspective lands in a fairly reasonable margin of error. There are a few confidence issues here and there but this is fairly common and just a matter of taking your time to plan and execute each line.

You're doing a good job keeping the gaps between the boxes tight and consistent on your rotated boxes, which has given you good cues about where to place the next one. I've never seen a student start with such a large centre box, which also looks like you might've used a ruler? Other than the axes and the boxes on their poles, the exercise is intended to be done freehand. You didn't manage to capture the full range of rotation, tending to follow the vanishing point of the box you previously put down and elongate your boxes, however this exercise is intended only as an introduction to certain concepts you will explore further throughout the course.

Finally, you're getting a pretty good amount of variation in the size and rotation of your boxes in the organic perspective exercise which is starting to create a sense of depth in each frame. It's good to see you've crammed in as many boxes as you can and your line confidence is not too bad for the most part, though it does seem like you struggled a little on the smaller boxes. This is pretty normal however as smaller lines from the shoulder tend to require more fine control over the muscles that you may not have necessarily built yet.