Hello, Haerezis:

Welcome to drawabox! Don't worry about ghosted planes, it's more important the quality of the images (even better if scanned though). Let's see how you can improve:

Lines

In the superimposed lines, some attempts have fraying on both ends. Keep in mind that even if drawing the same line is difficult, starting the attempt in the same is not. This exercise practice the motion needed to apply line weight and in those situations, you will need to start and end where you want. Try to at least, initiate the stroke at the starting point you marked.

You have improved a lot the smoothness of your lines through the lesson, good job on that! As an additional tip, try to treat the ghosting method and the final stroke as the same motion. It should feel as if someone pushes your hand down while you are ghosting. This may help you to achieve better lines.

Planes

I don't see too many marks on your planes. You should be placing marks for almost every line you put on the paper, that includes the lines crossing the ghosted planes. Don't be afraid to repeat a mark if the one you used was off too. Mark as much as you can so you can separate the planning phase from the execution phase.

Ellipses

You draw 2 times over your ellipses, that's good.

You only did one funnel exercise even that your ellipses have bumps and are far from smooth. I feel you have the need to rush and that's one of the habits you have to get rid of. Patience is key in a drawing. The better the drawing the greater amount of time you will need to invest in it.

Your ellipses are not smooth. You have to ghost more or find how you approach your ellipses. The previous tip for ghosting applies here too, treat the final stroke as part of the ghosting as if someone pushes your hand down. Another thing that worked for me was to find a sweet spot between speed and control, maybe doing them faster or slower makes them smoother. Try changing the orientation (clockwise or anti-clockwise).

Boxes

You didn't extend completely your lines to check the perspective. That's the whole point of these exercises. In the rough perspective, you didn't even draw extended lines to see how you were doing. You should be reading carefully each exercise, you don't want to work for nothing or reach a critique that tells you to re-do an entire exercise just for not paying attention.

Some lines in your boxes feel smooth and others too wobbly. Try to treat every line as a critical part of the drawing and ghost it as needed. There is no reason to finish it quickly. Even more, if this is your first drawing course.

You didn't draw the corners of the rotated boxes exercise. Again, try to be patient. There will be a lot of instances through drawabox where you will have to draw things that are behind others. This is an example of it, the corner boxes are almost hidden behind the rest, but you are supposed to draw the anyways to train your brain to place things in space even if they are not visible. This will come in handy in future lessons when you have to build forms on top of other forms that are not visible.

Organic boxes were okay but It would be cool if you have tried to draw through them.

Verdict

I think you got the fundamentals right but because you didn't complete the funnels exercise as it was explained in the lesson (multiple funnels not just a big one) and because you skipped some of the content of the lesson, I'm going to request a little revision so you have an extra practice on those areas.

Also, I feel that you are not prioritizing quality over precision. Remember that is more noticeable if a line is wobbly than if the line is tilted wrong or if it doesn't join 2 points perfectly.

• 2 pages of the table of ellipses exercise. Try to apply the advice I have given to achieve smoother ellipses.

• 1 page of the funnels exercise. Try to fit more funnels so I can see if you can align them while drawing smooth ellipses.

I hope my critique was useful to you. Feel free to ask me any doubt and respond to this post with your revision when you have it.

Hello, Thedigeridontt:

Welcome to drawabox! Let's see where you can improve:

Lines

You started with a lot of wobbliness but your progress is undeniable. I'm going to tell you some tips so maybe you could find them useful. Try to keep the ghosting and the final execution as one single phase. It should feel as if someone pushes your hand down when he notices that you are ghosting well enough.

I didn't see arching anywhere so you are drawing from the shoulder correctly or the wobbliness hides the missing arching. If you find yourself in the second situation, try to draw imaginary lines and forms in a wall while standing in front of it with your arm fully extended. That's how you can identify the muscles needed to draw from the shoulder. From there you can pinpoint where your problem is.

Planes

You did mark the corners but not the middle lines. This is a problem because every line you want to put on paper should be planned and marked before doing it. This serves a double purpose, it lets you assess your progress on execution, and the reviewer assesses what you planned to do even if you miss the line. This will come in handy in future lessons when you should plan forms that are hard to execute but easy to mark.

Ellipses

There are more to comment on here. Great job drawing 2 times over the ellipses (believe it or not, is not that common to see that on lesson 1 submissions). I see that you struggle a bit making them smooth (although you get it a couple of times). The thing that worked for me was finding the sweet spot between speed and control. You need enough speed to not be course-correcting mid-action and enough control to draw both ellipses on top of each other. Also trying if clockwise or anti-clockwise is worth it.

You also have to improve in matching the minor axis of ellipses where you want. It's an awesome skill to learn before reaching lesson 2 where organic forms start to gain importance. Warm with the funnel exercise to polish it.

Boxes

You have some horizontal lines not aligned with the horizon in the rough perspective but is a problem of execution so I'm going to leave it as it is (see the importance of marks for reviewers).

Rotated boxes were perfect. I know the execution could be better but you got the point of the exercise, rotation respect a pivot point that is outside the form you are rotating. If you try this exercise on your own, try to make the boxes bigger. That should be easier, giving you more space to work with.

The organic perspective was good too. You didn't follow the recommendation of drawing through boxes there and as advanced student advice, try to do every recommended thing you read because that is how you will get most of your journey. It is a bit more grindy but you will have time between submissions to rest while waiting for critiques.

Verdict

You got all the fundamentals of lesson 1. You still need the practice but don't worry that's one of the reasons the 250 box challenge exists. I recommend you to do it slowly and take your time to review a couple of lessons 1 so you can reflect on other students and apply that knowledge to your own before reaching lesson 2.

I hope my critique was useful and good luck with those boxes!

Hello, Joaz:

Welcome to Drawabox! Let's see what you can improve.

Lines

Your superimposed lines are great, lines start from the marked point and there is fraying on the other end but that's normal. We are not machines after all.

Now comes the important misconception: you are prioritizing accuracy over smoothness.

Before every mark, you are going to draw you should follow the 3 phase process. Plan, mark and execute. Each of the steps is focused on a field completely different from one another. Planning is related to how many things you know about what you are going to draw. Marking is related to how you organize that knowledge and communicate it to the viewer. Executing is related to how you join the marks you marked.

Each step is dependent on the previous one. If your planning is bad, you can't make good marks. If you fail while marking, your execution isn't going to communicate what you planned. But on the final step occurs something curious, if you don't match your marks exactly but you did a smooth execution it's going to be good (although you probably communicate another thing or use a style you didn't plan).

Your planning and marking are good (at least in the lines exercises). The problem is the execution. Now that we know which phase you are struggling with we should know what problems you have.

• Your lines are wobbly. So you are trying to correct the line as you draw it but there isn't that much hatching so I think you are trying to apply the process but you didn't understand it well enough.

• Your lines arc outwards sometimes. So you are drawing from the elbow instead of drawing from the shoulder.

We have 2 problems and luckily we have solutions for both:

• To achieve better smoothness in your lines you need to make the line as if you weren't looking. Everyone can make a smooth line randomly, so you are perfectly capable of it. The thing is you want some accuracy, that's when ghosting comes in. Ghosting is a process that affects your muscle memory, but the long-term memory is not going to make you an artist just by ghosting 8 times a stroke. You have to exploit short-term muscle memory, which happens just after you did the first stroke. It should feel like the superimposed line exercise but with the pen lifted all the time. You start to iterate joining your marks as explained in the ghosting method section and when you feel that you are reaching good enough accuracy, you put randomly (it's important to do it randomly, to trick your brain) your pen down. There should be no pause between ghosting and doing the final execution. It should be as if someone presses your hand down while ghosting. The less your brain can modify the smoother the line would be. Every motion tends to be smooth if it's not altered midway. You can check a more visual explanation in this comic. You have to avoid course corrections at all costs. Remember, smooth over accuracy.

• To avoid arching you have to draw from the shoulder. This is exaggerated in the lesson but you have to do it as much as you can. If you are drawing on a table in A4 format you are going to draw with your elbow by instinct because you don't need that much reach. The thing is you will. To avoid that situation when you need it (and that's where the arc forms) we use our shoulder as the pivot point of each stroke. That's a problem because we are not using that muscle rarely on a day-to-day basis. The drawabox course is intended to be drawn that way so you can train that muscle. The problems (myself included) a lot of us have is that we don't even know how that muscle feels so it's hard to use it when you don't know how to use it. I recommend you an exercise that worked for me. Stand up and go next to a wall. Extend your arm fully extended and place your hand almost touching the wall. Now ghost some imaginary lines on the wall. Play around a bit. Try to draw some lines, ellipses, plains, and boxes. Take note in your mind how the shoulder muscle feels, and how the elbow is almost not used. But as you will see you need some elbow intervention to draw. The important thing to know is that we need both motions, the shoulder, and the elbow but we can establish the pivot point on each of those. If you use the elbow as the pivot, you will not be able to use your shoulder motions (that's a third of your arm potential set of motions). Sit facing the table again, lift your elbow a bit in the air, and try to not rest too much of your arm's weight on your hand, play around drawing freely some forms on the paper. Try to balance which muscles you rely most of your efforts on.

If you achieve these 2 improvements you probably will make two of the most important steps this course is designed to teach.

Planes

Good planning and marking. Nothing much to say. Your lines here suffer from the problems mentioned above.

Ellipses

You have a similar problem with smoothness with your ellipses but even if it's similar I would treat it as different. Organic lines are harder than straight ones because there are more complex motions involved. You did well drawing over your ellipses 2 times, keep doing that in future lessons, you will need that extra practice.

To achieve smoothness with ellipses you have to discover your sweet spot for the ghosting of organic lines. I can't discover that spot for you, but I can tell you what you want to be looking for. That sweet spot is a balance between speed and control. You need enough speed to avoid course correction and enough control to rely on the muscle memory built on the ghosting phase. Also try both orientations: clockwise and counter-clockwise. I had to speed up my ghosting and execution a bit to teach my muscles how ellipses are and then I slowed down a bit to gain some control. I'm still struggling with ellipses but at least now it's more uncommon to find potatoes in my drawings (ellipses with random bumps).

Boxes

This is the point where your line fundamentals could not support enough stress and fell off. Don't worry we can play around with it but sadly some of your errors were not only execution-related but also planning and marking. These are easier to assess because marking the corners of a box is easier than drawing it.

I think you marked well for your current level and you will get there with time but currently, you made some mistakes that could be easily fixed with more planning. Look at your bottom attempt in rough perspective. There are a lot of lines that are not parallel to the horizon and that's an impossible situation without rotating or deforming the box. That's why those boxes feel distorted because they are. That could be fixed by changing the marks. And here comes the correction: Don't be afraid of putting another mark on the paper if your marks were a bit off. There is a statement of "don't attempt a line twice" in drawabox, but that only applies to lines, as they are execution phase. You can attempt a couple of times more while marking, especially if you are drawing something that you are not familiar with.

Rotated boxes have near no rotation. The size of the boxes was really good! This exercise is easier if you make them big. There are gaps between the boxes too big to let you rotate them as the exercise told you to. Some lines don't match each corresponding neighbor reference and here is where all your problems aggregate one on top of each other and explode. BUT this is the exercise intention. It's a reflection of what you know about lesson 1. The more you grasp the better this exercise becomes. It's a quality gate that isn't expected to be a perfect boxy sphere. In your case, it is a grid of boxes that don't curve along any axis. The goal of this exercise is to rotate the boxes but have the pivot point where both axis cross. You rotated some boxes but had the pivot point inside of them. That's where you have to improve.

Organic perspectives suffer from the same problems as the rest of your boxes. The lack of the backlines just exacerbates them all. Also have in mind that when Uncomfortable says that something is optional, he means that you should improve a lot more by doing it but you won't need that improvement at that moment... but you will eventually. So I recommend that every time you show some sort of statement like that, follow it as an order, it will multiply your results. As a reviewer, I saw that the students that get the better improvements are the ones that follow all the recommendations even the optional ones. But that's your decision after all.

Verdict

I will ask you for a revision. You need to improve that line confidence with the tips I gave you. Re-read the lesson, play around a bit until you grasp or figure out some of the problems I mentioned earlier and try to overcome them in the following exercises (in the mentioned order if possible):

• 1 page of ghosted planes. Focus on smoothness on every exercise not only on this one.

• 1 page of the table of ellipses. Try to find that sweet spot and don't stress too much if you get out of the limits. If you make a smooth ellipse but you miss the target will be good for me.

• 1 page of rough perspective. Try to spend more time when planning. Image how your lines will extend while you place the marks and try to correct them if you detect something off.

• 1 page of rotated boxes. I'm sorry to have you attempt this again as it is a bit grindy. But this is the only exercise that lets you grasp a good concept about rotation and I think you can learn a lot after fixing all the previous problems. You need to show you here all your progress so I recommend you to start one corner at a time, so if you mess up one corner you can learn from it for the next one. I just want to see a good enough result, nothing has to be perfect, focus on rotating the boxes compared to the central box.

I hope it helps. Keep working on it! Fundamentals are one of the most important parts of drawabox to the point that Lessons 1, 2, and 3 have 80% of the knowledge (according to the Pareto principle). From that onwards is just delivered practice.

Hello, Oscarivan:

I've seen that you are posting 2 submissions per lesson. Please, stop. Drawabox is already overflowed with too many submissions, adding more just makes the problem worse.

Now with your lesson:

Arrows

I don't know how you got to this lesson without fixing it but you have to improve those lines. All arrowheads are constructed poorly: no marks and no straight lines. There is also no hatching to shadow the bendings of each arrow which is useful to recreate the illusion of 3D. You were afraid to pass over other arrows, remember that these are exercises, not final drawings, you can play around and mess them a bit.

Branches

Ellipses were misaligned with the main flow line. You didn't even try to branch out some of the main branches and when you did with the cactus, you didn't use the sphere approach o wrapping an ellipse over the main cylinder. Drawabox focuses on a construction approach to drawing, if you skip it you are not paying enough attention to the lessons.

Leaves

You followed the flow line better here. There were a couple of leaves with good twists and good results. But as with the rest of your submission, your wobbly lines drain of the quality you are giving to the drawings through the construction. That's why lesson 1 is so important to get clear.

Some leaves have repeated patterns on them to the point that I guess some of them were added automatically. This is a recurrent problem because you need intention behind every line you make on paper so it feels more real.

Flowers

You follow the flow line but you try to make the contour of each leaf in small segments or with wobbly lines. Use the ghosting method. You have to train your short muscle memory before committing to a stroke. Also, you didn't add detail to the flowers and they feel somewhat conceptual rather than complete flowers.

Verdict

I felt like your foundational skills are somewhat weak but after checking your previous work I ended on another conclusion. You are rushing through the lesson. You know how to do the ghosting method and draw from your shoulder but you are not doing it. All the concepts you learn in previous lessons should be present in future ones. The first thing told in drawabox is to go for smooth confident lines over accuracy and precision. You are doing the complete opposite, you are prioritizing fitting the leaves in the big ellipse rather than focusing on making smooth petals.

You tried multiple times to re-attempt your already made lines without the intention of adding weight line. This is a horrible habit to take because will worsen your drawings and because it makes it harder to critique. Aim for clear lines as much as you can.

You didn't use marks. This is one of the things you are told in earlier lessons and you are supposed to do it as much as you can so reviewers can differentiate what you planned to draw and what you executed.

I request a revision to do the following in this order. Re-read lesson 1 and use it for the first requirement. Reread the rest of the lessons you have passed and continue with the rest of the requirements.

• One page of the ghosted planes with ellipses exercise from lesson 1

• One page of branches. So you can practice the alignment and the sphere method.

• One page of arrows. Play around with the recommended hatching and weight lines.

• Two more pages of plant drawings.

Focus on smooth, confident lines for every single line you draw in each of the exercises. Your lines do not have to be 100% precise, but they have to be as smooth as possible.

In case you had too much trouble with lesson 1 topics we will focus on that but first I want to confirm that you don't have that problem just because you want to do the lesson quick.

Hello, Chiara:

Welcome to drawabox! Let's see how you can improve:

Lines

There is fraying in both ends of the superimposed lines exercise. It's common to have it on the end of the line but not at the starting point. Try to start your lines where you mark them. Every step in the execution must try to mimic what you planned beforehand. The easier to achieve that is to start from where you want.

Your lines feel confident and smooth and that is a good sign. One of the critical things to grasp in the first lesson is to prioritize smoothness over accuracy and precision. You did great there.

Planes

You used your marks correctly and all the lines seem as confident as previously. Keep in mind that marks are very important, don't stop using them in future lessons and exercises. It will help you draw better and help us to critique you with more information.

I think some of your lines arc a bit when they are long enough. That's a sign of not drawing from the shoulder. You should try to lift your elbow. It's not a matter of locking it but relying less on it as the main axis of rotation in the motion you perform. You can practice against the wall, just with your hand as if you were holding a pen, playing around with the motions as if you were construction lines and planes. Try to remember how it feels in your body so you can differentiate which muscles work in a shoulder motion and which ones with the elbow. In practice, you are going to use a mix of both, but as explained in the lesson this is an exercise and we try to force the use of the weakest part (usually the shoulder) so you can improve the most.

Ellipses

Ellipses look good to me. Confident and smooth.

You struggle a bit aligning the minor axis. The solution to this is practice, so try to warm up using the funnels exercise so you can start working on that. It's not a priority but will come in handy for lesson 3 and organic drawing in general.

Boxes

I think you rushed the rough perspective exercise and that's the reason why those lines seem worse than the rest of the submission. Don't rush through the exercises, training patience is part of this course. The lessons will become longer and longer the more you move forward. Also letting your mind rest between exercises is the only way to let that knowledge sink in. We learn the most while we sleep.

Rotated boxes are great. It's usually one of the toughest exercises and you made it excellent.

Organic perspective boxes have less quality than what you are capable of. It was optional but you didn't draw through your boxes here, which would be useful for the following challenge.

Verdict

You have a good foundation to continue to the 250 box challenge. Try to not rush through it. Make some time to review other students' lesson 1 so you can learn from others along the way.

I hope my critique was useful to you and good luck with those boxes!

Great job! I think you got the point. You can also use line weight on lines that cross over others to communicate with line is on top. That is a useful skill you will use in the future.

Good luck with lesson 2 and keep that hard work! Don't worry too much about the time it takes to complete the material, you will have to let it sink while you sleep anyways. There is no hurry when learning.

Hello, Photon:

Let's see what can I see from your work.

Arrows

I have nothing bad to say here. You got the fundamentals and execute them perfectly. There are some instances where the lines seem more stiff/hesitant but I feel that is because you tried to execute long thing sections that are too complex for one single stroke. If you want to make structures that complex it could be better if you try to construct them with multiple strokes. This way of constructing organic shapes is introduced later in the lesson when drawing branches.

Shadows were applied correctly in most cases and the flow is correct too.

Leaves

Your leaves felt too plain and I think that here you restrained yourself. Most of them are plain or slightly bent. You didn't overlap as much as you did with your arrows and here is the most powerful tool you had to create a 3D illusion.

Here you could have benefited more by using line weight in multiple cases. For example, the outer silhouette of leaves constructed with multiple intermediate steps or in the lines where the bends happen (not only the edges as you did).

In general, you did a great you here too.

Branches

Some of the branches' inner ellipses have abrupt changes in their length being a bit confusing to tell what orientation is facing. I think that's not completely your fault because that kind of twist should be better constructed with other techniques, but maybe you can alleviate that problem by keeping a predictable pattern in the rotation of each section.

You did experiment with changes in width and as you probably figured it out, is a similar case to the dramatic foreshortening we saw in the boxes lessons. If you push it too much, appears to be extremely large, far or cartoon.

You joined well the sections between them and kept them aligned so good job!

Plants

I think I won't be able to help you much here. You did an excellent job. The point here was to apply the branches, leaves, and arrows sections and use them to help you construct your plants. Maybe you could improve (even more) those drawings by adding more twists, bends, and overlaps on your forms.

Verdict

You are prepared for the next lesson. Good luck with those insects!

I'm a complete beginner like you. Check my profile to see my progression through this year. I improved a lot in the first couple of months but now the improvements are little by little. I think it could take a year of constant practice to improve to a decent level on the basics but every person is an entire case of study of its own.

The best way to check how are you doing, is to compare to your past-self. Save some drawings and redraw them months/years later. Compare how you approach different skills like texture observation, structure composition, stroke smoothness or precision, and so on.

Receiving feedback from others can get you a grasp of your current level but you are the best judge of yourself.

About the textures. The things you ink are always shadows or darker areas, which happens in all examples you linked. The thing is that depending on how you use them, you can generate different effects. For example, inking the inside of a mouth is a representation of complete darkness but the shadows in a shell that is completely exposed to light communicate that even the light should reach there, it isn't reflecting the light in the viewer's direction. That's why you can confuse it with reflections.

Knowing how and when to use the shadows well comes from experience and I struggle a lot with it too so maybe you can get more tips from other students on discord. Also remember that this course's focus is on construction and general structure, texture, and details are a world on their own. Don't worry too much about it, just try to apply the little things that you can, the rest will come with experience or another course you could try in the future.

About the hatching. The problem is not the hatching on its own, is what you communicate with it. As described in the notes you linked, when you use shadows in organic shapes, they should follow the form they are wrapped on. The problem with the hatching in the grasshopper is that you are using a hatching pattern thought for planes in a cylinder shape. It could work in flat shapes like the face of a box or the surface of an arrow (where you probably saw it before) but as it is a flat surface shadow if you use it on an organic surface an inconsistency for the viewer will arise between the 3D form the sausage is suggesting and the 2D form the hatching is suggesting. That's the problem I see with it. In general, hatching is not recommended (just on specific exercises) to avoid this kind of confusion.

About the wings, you have to take in mind that light passes through transparent materials but it would have problems passing through veins, rigid structures, and so on. Those kinds of things are the patterns you see in the wings of some insects. Play around with them, try some that you guess they won't let the light pass through them, and see if that works.

It's difficult sometimes to tell a "good way" to draw something and you are going to have to investigate and research how could you make it work for you. Also, you can check how other students approached it and see if you could replicate something they are using in your drawings.

I hope it helps. Don't worry about being slow, drawing takes time, and having constant pacing will benefit you in the long run.

I have checked it and it's great progress! The results are smoother, especially on the ellipses is where I can see the awesome improvement. Although is not perfect and you need more practice, I think you got the point.

Your rotated boxes are better now. They still have errors to point out like the corners being too visible. They should be almost covered because of the rotation they should have to give the illusion of a 3D sphere. Also, there are boxes whose back faces are not wrapping the imaginary ball that is in the inside of the structure.

You still have to work on your lines because they feel not as smooth and straight as they should. Maybe increasing the speed could help but you have time to find out in the 250 box challenge.

I think you are ready now to move on. I think you have not mastered the fundamentals enough but the 250 boxes are a long challenge to finish and you will have time to practice. I recommend you to make only a couple pages of the challenge each day to let your brain sink the experience slowly. The majority of the progress happens while we sleep, take that in mind.

Also, warm up with the exercise you had trouble with. Practice the smoothness of your lines and remember to prioritize line quality over accuracy.

I wish you luck in your journey. Don't let that boxes defeat you ;) !