sillysnek

Good day!

Your arrows should compress. Here's a quote from a teaching assistant:

The arrows need to get bigger and bigger as they go towards the viewer. Both in size, and the spacing between each fold.

https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg

https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/0f7c806c.jpg

Leaves are pretty good overall, initial form is respected and details are great.

Branches are a bit wobbly but you got the gist of the exercise. When you add them to warmups you will improve in those in no time (your plant construction branches have visible tails, so make sure you do those in warmups if you don't do it already).

Another thing I wanted to note is that you have a rather thick outline around objects. That shouldn't be done. Usually it's fine to keep the outline as it is but if you want to add more emphasis, one extra line is usually good enough, you want to keep it subtle.

About branches in your plants. I noticed that you don't have too much branches and most of them are rather straight. I noticed you have that one mushroom with a big loop which is a bit inconsistent in width. The way I keep sharp turns nice and consistent is I add extra ellipses there (in this case I might add 1 or 2). It may feel weird to have a lot ellipses in 1 place but if that helps you to be more accurate, it is well worth doing.

Good day!

Arrows are pretty convincing, though there are some which are a bit wobbly or uneven. Leaves are also rather nice although some leaves which have black blobs look scratchy because it's not completely covered in black (you can use brush pen for that). Branches: Keep each branch consistent in width - no tapering. Also when you make branches you should keep them as thick as the base branch.

Royal Candles Speedwell - edges look zigzagged. Put detail with care (https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/zigzag)

Passor Flower(?) - on the right side you have your leaves merged. You should construct them individually just like you did you leaves exercise. See https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/a1c758e3.png for a good example on how to do this. This is also a good way to construct oak leaves.

Catnip, Elephant ears - zigzagged edges

Overall you did a good job. Your plants have definitely improved in quality and you are ready to move on. Make sure you add these exercises (arrows, leaves, branches) to your warmups to keep improving!

Good day!

You have done a great job overall. Textures and dissections are rather good and while I don't recognize the textures, dissections are rather recognizable and you have done a great job. Textures and dissections is a lot of time and staring, so you are not the only one spending much time on it. Sausages and form intersections are also well done.

So here are some things I'd like you to pay attention to: Your arrows should compress in width to really show that depth. See https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/0f7c806c.jpg and https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/011d064f.jpg . Your second page has some nice arrows but some of them are not compressing. So try out more of those in your warmups, paying more attention to the gaps between folds.

Intersections are rather fine. Your pyramids can be improved if you imagine that the line that comes from the center is perpendicular to the base planes but they aren't as bad as you make them to be. It would also be nice if you would add lineweight to both forms that intersect (I often see that you do this only for 1 form).

Your sausages are floating but they should be sagging, so lower those ends. Also as you have noticed yourself, your shadows are indeed too attached to the casting form (see https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/516f8d4f.jpg). Don't be afraid of making them long! Refresh your memory https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/organicintersections and notice how saggy those sausages are, they look like water balloons.

I believe you can move on. Add these exercises to your wamups and you should be fine!

Good day!

Indeed you have improve a lot in this challenge - hatching and lines are not wobbly anymore and they are now straight and precise. Boxes' converging points are becoming more accurate as well. I've noticed that you often have some problems in the inner corner. I had the same problem and when I started drawing boxes like https://i.imgur.com/vYLKKwe.png my boxes became better, so be sure to try that out!

There is still room to grow, so add boxes to your warmups and move on to the next lesson!

Good day!

Overall you've done a really good job. While there is still some irregular convergences here and there, you've grown a lot since your first box - line quality, hatching and lineweight are excellent. It's also great that you have gone through the whole challenge, quite a few people find it difficult to go through it so congrats. Remember that a little every day is better than something big just once, consistency will let you go through more strugglesome parts. Don't forget the 50/50 rule and take breaks when needed.

One thing I've noticed is that most of your boxes have more dramatic foreshortening and it would be important to also practice more subtle foreshortening so that you get to practice less dramatic views. Just include more of those boxes in your warmups.

Good luck!

Don't squish multiple exercises on 1 page.

Lines

Quite a few of your lines are a little wobbly. Remember that confidence > accuracy for now. It's important to start drawing lines straight even if you can't make them as accurate. You will get accuracy with time. See https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling for more on that.

Funnels

Your circles in funnels should change their width and also be symmetrical to the axis you have drawn. Reread this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/funnels

Rotated boxes

You have to rotate your diagonal boxes a little more. See https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/d73eea49.jpg

Boxes on organic perspective are rather off but don't worry, you will learn more about that in the 250 box challenge.

The skill will come with practice, see https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/tails to deal with that better. Your branches were reallly wobbly at first and at your new attempt they are shaping better and if you will do them in warmups then you'll have them better.

With the leaves exercise I wanted you to try out different leaves and petals that you didn't make as smooth in your plant drawings. As with branches, if you want to improve them, just add them in warmups. One tip with that maple leaf is that I would personally make 3 small leaves inside and then add detailed edges on those little leaves like https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/skipping

Arrows

It's hard to see because the page is a little blurry but it seems that the shading is kind of patchy, I recommend to shade with a bunch of ghosted straight lines.

I'd also recommend to vary your arrows' widths more so that you get a better feel of arrows.

Leaves

Overall there is good confidence in your lines.

• Might be a little personal preference but I would advise you to focus more on the outline of a leaf rather than detail because (as you know from L2's dissections) silhouette is a pretty powerful tool to use.

• The middle leaf (with ???) actually makes sense, you just added a lineweight to a wrong lines

Branches

• Keep them constantly wide. If you feel like a stroke is too big for you to achieve, you can add another ellipse in between.

• Also keep in mind that if you are struggling with maintaining nice branches, you don't have to do forking branches.

Plants

• The mushroom (page 1) seems wobbly. To avoid this, draw a straight line first and then ensure that ellipses are centered to this line. (since your other plants don't have this problem, I guess it's not an issue anymore)

• The pitcher plant (page 2) lines are unconfident. Don't be afraid to add as much ellipses you need to make sure that you follow your form well.

• Bottom plant (page 2) has scratchy outline on the leaves. Make sure that you work additive (you add on top on existing forms, not cut in) and that you execute your marks with confidence and don't do it randomly (https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/zigzag explains this point)

• In 7th page your branches are oddly connected, you should make a ball in the intersection and then branch off that ball (just like in the branch exercise)

In conclusion

• I believe that you definitely need to do some more branches. Add them to your warmup.

• To make your leaves more 3d, it helps to add these leaf veins.

• Try to work additive and don't zigzag your edges https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/zigzag

Your leaves' exercise was done well but this didn't translate so well in the plants you drew because they were less confident and there appeared some mistakes that I've mentioned before. I suspect that this might be due you not wanting to ruin your image but keep in mind that you are here to learn, not to draw pretty pictures and also confidence >> precision.

Since I also started a critique, here are additional points:

Keep the lineweight in the arrows subtle, 1-2 superimposed lines are good enough. I put more lineweight in areas that have intersecting lines and can cause confusion, in this case I would put some lineweight on overlap to emphasize what is in front.

Lesson 1's super imposed line exercise also includes curved lines, so you could also add that to your warmups to train skills needed for better arrows.

Also, to give you a better idea of how cast shadows work imagine this scenario: I have a sausage IRL on a table and if I take a spray can with red color and spray over the sausage with a fixed angle then you could see that some spray goes on the table, some of the sausage but you can also notice that there is this area where there isn't any color. That is the equivalent of a cast shadow in essence.

Arrows

In general they are rather clean but I would recommend trying varying the width more and try some new shapes to get a better understanding.

Sausages

Always draw through your ellipses twice. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/drawingthrough

Some of your contour lines are pretty shallow, most notably the ones in the bottom left https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/5/shallow

There are also mistakes of curves not being parallel to sausage's main line. Here is my tip on how to think about curves: imagine that these curves are fragments of ellipses. Therefore if you make your curve as an ellipse (in your mind) it should make sense.

Textures

The transitions are not so smooth because it's easy to notice the black bar. Other than that it seems to be pretty fine because this exercise is rather hard.

Dissections

• There are a lot of missed opportunities of breaking the silhouette.

• Textures are rather simple, it seems like you haven't spent enough time at looking at your reference and simplified it in rush.

Intersections

Boxes are wobbly and there are almost no actual intersections. Spheres also have to be drawn twice because they are ellipses.

You shouldn't hatch curved surfaces.

Organic intersections

I would say they are good, though it would be nice to add some lineweight to intersecting lines to make the drawing more legible.