paperhat

That's nice to hear, thanks!

Thank you! (:

Hey!

Glad I could help you! Good luck on your drawAbox journey (:

Oh, yeah, you are right! I think my thought processes was like "There's a circle at the front, so after that it has to be a slight circle and not a full one and so on". But looking at the picture again and thinking more about it, I know understand why my thought-process was wrong and the picture is right. (Figuring that out felt like a revelation :D)

Thank you for poiting that out! And thanks again for your detailed and helpful critique! (:

Hey Beckerito!

Thank you for another of your very helpful critiques! I learned a lot reading it and will try my best to successfully integrate it into the next lesson. I'll also definitely try doing the lobster and shrimp demos before heading onto lesson 5, thanks for the tip (:

As for the revision, here is the link: https://imgur.com/a/pxYI1Vo

I tried very hard to keep the ends of the sausages the same size. Sometimes that worked better than other times. I also tried using less contour curves and using the more meaningfully, that also worked better some times than other times ^^

First up: Those look great!

Your lineweight is better and your convergence shallower. Sometimes you still have the problem of a line set converging in pairs rather than as a set (e.g box 264). You also could have experimented a bit more with the shape and especially angles of the boxes.

However, when you do some boxes in your warm-ups I am sure you will become more confident and thus experimental with your boxes.

All in all, as said in the beginning, this looks great and I will mark this challenge as complete! Wish you the best for lesson 2 (:

Hey Fillipix! I am paperhat and I will be doing your lesson 1 critique.

My critique will be divided into three sections:

Lines

• Super-imposed lines: Your lines are only fraying on one end and not on both, that is great! Your lines are also generally confident looking. Even your longer lines stay confident, only just a few are arching just a little. Arching might happen if you are not using your shoulder pivot. However, it might also happen if you use your shoulder pivot. In that case try to consciously arch in the opposite direction. Try to pay close attention on which pivot your are using.

• Ghosted Lines: Here your lines are again generally confident looking. Here and there it looks like you were trying to correct your line in order to be more accurate. But remember: confidence over accuracy. One other thing I can notice, which you also do in the upcoming exercises, is to place very big dots. The dots for ghosting are really jsut meant to be dots and not circles, keep them tiny and discrete going forward.

• Ghosted Planes: Your lines are generally confident, but sometimes a bit more arching than before. Watch out for that, especially because I can also spot some arching on your "new" work. You remembered to always put at dot at the beginning and the end of each line, this is crucial for the ghosting method. Great job!

Ellipses

• Tables Of Ellipses: Most of your ellipses are smooth (confident) looking, however, some of them are quite wobbly. Probably because you tried to not under-/overshoot too much. However, same as for the lines, confidence over accuracy. You also repeat the ellipses 2 to 3 times, which is perfect. As for your "new" work, here your ellipses look more smooth and quite accurate. Nice improvement!

• Ellipses in Planes: Your ellipses are over-/undershooting here and there, but that is totally fine. Especially because they are quite confident and smooth looking.

• Funnels: You placed the minor axis correctly, cutting the ellipses in two halves! Here your ellipses look mostly confident and do not over/undershoot a lot. It seems that you have had most problems with the smaller, narrower ellipses. Be sure to also include such ellipses in your warm-ups in order to get more practice on them, you'll need them going forward (:

Boxes

• Plotted Perspective: You draw through your boxes which is very good. Your hatching looks really neat and ordlery. Overall this is very nice looking!

• Rough Perspective: You draw through all your boxes and use the line correction method. You keep the width lines are parallel to the horizon and height lines perpendicular to the horizon. Especially with this task your lines are quite archy. Really make sure your using your shoulder pivot and not your wrist and/or elbow.

• Rotated Boxes: : You keep the corners between boxes close and try to rotate the boxes. However, the rotation is not enough. Your "cross" in the middle looks fine, but the rest is not nearly as rotated as it should be. Take a look again at this https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/step7 and at this picture https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/step8 . The difference you might notice is that your furthest corner is not "pressed down" enough and you have to "push it" further behind. You might also want to try some hatching and lineweight to make your boxes more prominent.

• Organic Perspective: : You have a variety of box sizes and angles, which is great. You also tried overlapping some boxes. You could have used some lineweight in order to make more clear which box is in front of which. These images might help you with that: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb, https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/980a575e.jpg.

Overall your work is really solid and looks quite well! The only task you really struggled with, as most people do, is the ortated boxes one. I would like you do give that one another try before continuing with the 250 box challenge. Good luck!

Hey Ferask! I am paperhat and I will be doing your lesson 1 critique.

My critique will be divided into three sections:

Lines

• Super-imposed lines: Your lines are only fraying on one end and not on both, that is great! Your lines are also generally confident looking. Just a few of your longer lines are also arching. Arching might happen if you are not using your shoulder pivot. However, it might also happen if you use your shoulder pivot. In that case try to consciously arch in the opposite direction. Try to pay close attention on which pivot your are using. It also looks like you a trying to correct the direction in order to stay on the line. Be aware that this makes your lines less confident and only a little more accurate. Remember: Confidence over accuracy!

• Ghosted Lines: Your lines are again generally confident looking. Here and there it looks like you were trying to correct your line in order to be more accurate. This might be on purpose or your brain just does that, because that's what brains do. Either way try to resist that urge to correct your line in order to have it look more confident. accuracy will come with time and practice.

• Ghosted Planes: Your lines are confident and quite accurate. You also remembered to always put at dot at the beginning and the end of each line, this is crucial for the ghosting method. Great job!

Ellipses

• Tables Of Ellipses: Your ellipses look smooth (confident) and are nicely touching. They over-/undershoot a tiny bit here and there, but are overall very accurate as well. THe only thing I can notice is that you repeat each ellipse a bit too often. Some are repeated 3 times (which is within the bounds), but some seem to be repeated more often. Be sure to stick to repeating them 2 to 3 times (2 times is prefered).

• Ellipses in Planes: Here some of your ellipses look less confident than in the exercise before. This is probably because you tried to not over-/undershoot too much. However, same as for the lines, confidence is more important than accuracy. The majority is still confident/smooth looking though.

• Funnels: You placed the minor axis correctly, cutting the ellipses in two halves! Here your ellipses look mostly confident and do not over/undershoot a lot. One thing to note: Your funnels have an ellipses on the middle line diving the funnel into a left and a right half. This is not how it is supposed to be, the line in the middle is an ellipses itself. The ellipses you draw into the funnel should be kind of mirrored at this axis. This mistake might have happened because you did not change the degree of the ellipses much, try that when using this exercise as a warm-up.

Boxes

• Plotted Perspective: You draw through your boxes which is very good. Your hatching looks a bit rushed here and there, but overall fine.

• Rough Perspective: You draw through all your boxes and use the line correction method. Your lines are mostly confident and you keep the width lines are parallel to the horizon and height lines perpendicular to the horizon.

• Rotated Boxes: : You keep the corners between boxes close and rotate the boxes quite well. Your hatching and lineweight looks neat and orderly and makes your boxes pop. very well done!

• Organic Perspective: : You have a variety of box sizes and angles, which is great. You also tried overlapping some boxes and applying lineweight. Here your lineweight looks messy though. It is important to also use the ghosting technique when applying lineweight. These images might help: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb, https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/980a575e.jpg.

You have done really well here! I am going to mark this submission complete and let you go onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to remeber doing your warm-ups before each session of drawing. Good luck!

Hey ZNorb! I am paperhat and I will be doing your 250 box challenge critique.

My critique will be divided into four sections:

Lines

• Your lines are generally drawn with confidence. They are straight and not arching.

• Your hatching has also straight, confident lines and looks very neat. You also always hatch a side that is facing the viewer, which correctly done. Good job!

• The biggest problem I can see with your lines, however, is your lineweight. It looks mostly scratchy and is not applied properly. Just to mention some boxes where this is the case: 1-5, 17, 34, 36, 40, 46, 66, 96, 155, 248. Over the course of the challenge it definitely gets better, but can still be improved further. This is especially a pity, because it gives your boxes a messy look. Now onto how to improve this issue. First, have a look again at those pictures visualizing how to apply lineweight correctly: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb, https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/980a575e.jpg. As you can see it is very important to ghost all the lineweight lines! It also should be enough to add one more line as lineweight, it does not have to and should not be extremely dark in order to be noticeable (box 240 is quite dark for example, box 238 not as much but the weight is still noticeable). Be sure to include some superimposed lines (and of course more boxes :D) in your warm-ups in order to improve with your lineweight. One last thing that you did correctly is only applying the lineweight to the silhouette of the box!

Extension Lines

• You extend all your lines correctly. The only thing I noticed is that for box 26 you forgot a pair, but other that that everything is great!

Convergences

• Your lines are all converging and not diverging or staying parallel, that is very good! Your convergence also noticeably improves over the course of the challenge, especially the inner corner. That is awesome!

• Sometimes your lines are converging in pairs rather than sets (eg. 6,9,24,27,44,48,54,169,193). This picture shows what I mean by that: https://imgur.com/KSHwTwo . It might help if you think about the relationship of the lines of a set within terms of the angles the form respective to their vanishing point, see https://imgur.com/8PqQLE0 .

Orientations

• The orientations of your boxes are generally pretty similar and you do not really experiment with it (as far as I can see). This image shows the variety of orientations out there: https://imgur.com/Kqg6uMX

• Your boxes are also all of similar size and generally quite small. Especially around box 200 they get even smaller. Use the space the page gives you!

• The foreshortening rate of your boxes also stays quite the same. Especially at the point where your boxes get smaller (around box 200) it is extremely similar for each box. It is important to also practice boxes with very shallow foreshortening whos VPs are outside of the page and whos lines are close to parallel.

All in all you have done a great job here! However, I would like you experiment a bit more with differently sized, shaped and oriented boxes. So I am going to leave you a little bit of homework, this is also a great to get some more practice for lineweight. Good luck!

Hey Beckerito!

Firstly thank you very much for your detailed critique. The points you covered really help me to understand my deficits better and how to work on them.

In the time between this submission and your critique I have started the 25 texture challenge and have definitely become more confident with it. I would have come in hand to make this "jump" earlier, because the palm tree would really not have been such a chaos and I would not have needed to drawn sooo many leaves. But well, I'm here to learn I guess :D I'll make sure to add texture to at least three bugs (now that I have set a number I'll have to do it^^)

Thank you again for taking time out of your day to critique my work, I highly appreciate it!

Have a good day! (: