Tygerson

Congrats on getting through the 250 boxes, and good call to get feedback along the way. These look great!

Your lines are confident. You varied the size, shape, divergence, and orientation of your boxes. I thought it was interesting how in a few cases, you drew sets of related boxes (e.g. 87-89, 156-158, 186-188m 216-218). I haven't seen that before in this challenge, and really liked it. Through this, one could see how a box would change as it moved through space.

If I had to nitpick, I'd say to try to make hatching not go beyond it's bounds, as it did run over or under the edges a bit. It was pretty minimal, though.

Overall, really nice work, and good luck with lesson 2!

Great job completing lesson 1! I see you already got some feedback on this, but I'll add something on line confidence. Keep doing these things as warmups before you draw. I like to play a song (5-ish minutes) and warm up until it's done.

Lines: When my lines start to get wobbly, I "reset" myself by just drawing a bunch of loose lines (not superimposed or dot to dot--totally free) over the paper. Then I do some superimposed lines, and then I go back to whatever I was trying to do.

Ellipses: For ellipses, similar thing. First, draw a few quick super loose ones (not in a table or anything), then a few aligned with a minor axis (like this: https://imgur.com/a/FVVPp6Z ), then constrained ellipses (like one or two panels of a table), then I go back to the real task.

That said, you have the idea of drawing through the ellipses 2-3 times, and have some variance in ellipse degree and angle. It can help to look at different degrees to get a feel for them, like this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/5/degree You can even print them out and trace over them to start getting your arm used to moving through the shape.

Boxes: Again, you'll improve your lines with practice. The boxes here are a good start. You have the idea of the 3 kinds of perspective, and your execution will improve. There are some diverging lines, but doing the 250 box challenge will teach you to correct that. Make sure you get some feedback along the way on the discord before you do all 250.

Ah, thank you!

Thank you very much for the feedback, diagrams, and markups! I can see I'll have to do a lot more orthographic planning, especially on the vehicle lesson.

Are there any more diagrams out there that explain form intersections? Despite doing okay here, I still feel rather shaky on them.

I agree with the previous feedback, but think this should be marked complete.

Some boxes in the organic perspective have diverging lines, but you'll work on that in the 250 box challenge. You'll work on that a lot.

It would take me about an hour to get through a page of 5, but that varies. What do your boxes look like? (Also, you can get a page of them critiqued in the "basic challenges" channel of discord, so you can see if you're on the right track before plowing through 250.)

Here's another way to look at drawing boxes: https://imgur.com/a/CP1JmaB

Step 2 (which takes up 2 slides) and step 3 are the most critical to understand.

Congratulations on completing lesson 3! These are looking good.

Arrows: Good line confidence, and the spatial logic is solid.

Leaves: You have a nice variety, and understand how to twist and bend the leaves.

Branches: Again, it looks like you have the idea here.

Plants: These look good as well. I particularly like the construction of the bell shaped hyacinth and trumpet vine flowers. On occasion, the ellipses don't quite line up with the axes (see the bird of paradise stem), but overall it looks like you understand how to put these things together.

I have two main pieces of advice.

1. Draw bigger. Fill the page as much as you can with your subject. Your constructions look good, but the small size does make them a little hard to read. Drawing bigger lets you use your arm more as well.

2. If you want your work critiqued a LOT faster, go to the critique exchange on the discord server. You can do 5 critiques, then request that your work is added to a spreadsheet that gets priority. (You can read more info of the nuts and bolts of how it works on the pinned post.)

Hey, no worries, this isn't a race, and no one is checking how long you took! Congrats on getting through lesson 3. It's great that you're also drawing other things! Also, drawing in un-ideal conditions is better than not drawing. Now, on to critique.

Arrows: You're starting to get the idea here, but it's not quite there yet. One thing that helps me is after I draw the first line, I put down dots about where I want the second line to make turns. Also, you'll want the hatching to be vertical. I explain better with an image here: https://imgur.com/hlpb31I

Leaves: Good attempts at leaf turns and feeling the volume. As you can see here, I struggled with bending leaves, but found it helpful to visualize a leaf on a sheet of paper and bend that, like so (the bottom of this image): https://imgur.com/a/RB3jDGp

Branches: It looks like you have the idea here, following the minor axis, and using at least a bit of variation in degrees.

Plants: I see you have used ellipses to create the bounds of some of your flowers, and to fill the stems with volume. You have some leaves and petals that fold, although it appears that you still struggle with this. Some of the plants (such as the Golden chain) may be constructed properly, but it's diffucult to tell because they are small and there is a lot of detail. The mushrooms and cactus look very solid! Question: did you draw along with the demos? In them, you'll see more of how to construct all these plants.

One more thing that will actually make your life easier, that applies to the next units (insects, animals, etc): you only need to do ONE drawing per page. In fact, definitely don't do more than one. One plant, or one bug, or one animal. This will encourage you to use your whole arm, and will allow for more clear drawings where you can see the structure better.

Congrats on completing lesson 3! It's looking good--I honestly don't know that I can offer anything helpful here!

Arrows: Good variety, taper, and added line weight/hatching. Your lines look confident.

Leaves: Again, a good variety, and some twist added in. The texture looks like cast shadows.

Branches: There's a bit of pinching and fraying in a few of the stems, but overall it looks like you have this down as well.

Plants: Again, these are solid and volumetric. The texturing is top notch. A minor note--when you do lesson 4, you may be advised to do one subject per page--it allows you to use your arm more as you draw. Overall though, really nice. I like how you constructed the chunky bonsai trunk and plant next to it, and the fruit shadows follow the forms well!

Congratulations on getting through lesson 3! On to the critique...

Arrows: This is a great start! You have smooth, swooping lines, and follow well with the second set of lines. You also have some good tapering going on. This exercise does need 2 more elements, though. First, you need to clarify your overlaps. Second, you'll need to add hatching where it belongs. (Like so: https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/4/step4 ) Both of these things, in addition to the taper, help the viewer "read" what is in front of what more easily.

Leaves: These look good, with some nice variety and dimensionality added in.

Branches: This one is challenging to do accurately, but it looks like you've got the ellipses varying and following the minor axis line.

Plants: You have a nice variety--bells, leaves, paddle shapes, as well as containers. I can see you are thinking through the forms. On page 4, it might have helped to have those petal lines curve all the way up to the stem, following the bell shape, so they feel more connected to the bell. You used texture really well on the sunflower, and planned the petal placement well.

I notice that you often drew 3 plants per page (one one of the plants, it meant that you didn't have room to do the ellipses in the stems). Don't worry about this for now, since you got enough solid plants in, but when you do lesson 4 (bugs), keep it to one bug per page so that you have plenty of space to feel out the forms. This also makes it easier to use your whole arm while drawing, which is one of the skills Draw a Box aims to develop.