Hi Candyheartlia, my name is youenoh and I will be critiquing your Lesson 1 assignment.

If this is your first time here, welcome aboard! I am fairly new as well so I am excited to contribute. Let's get started:

Superimposed Lines

Your lines look confident and fairly consistent, however I'm seeing some occasional wobbling and, interestingly, consistent wobbling, which suggests to me that you're probably still getting used to drawing from the shoulder. Make sure you are not relying on your elbow, and if you notice consistent arcing try to correct by arcing the opposite direction, as the lesson recommends. Eventually you will see straighter lines.

I would like to see more consistent lengths in your line segments so it's clear whether or not you are hitting your established end points. I see your starting points are clean and you're only fraying on one end (this is very good, and the fraying is minimal), but make sure to take your time to set up the start and end points so you know you're getting the length you want in your lines and not just the direction. This will be very, very important when you get to more complex objects. You may have just set up a lot of variety on your page - and that's great - but it's difficult for your reviewer (and your future self) to determine if these end points are accurate once you're done with the exercise.

Ghosted Lines

I'm seeing more wobble in these lines than in your superimposed lines, which tells me you're lacking confidence without the previously drawn lines to help guide you. Your accuracy of the superimposed lines was quite impressive, even when the lines weren't straight, but the point here is to be confident even in your mistakes. Pick a good rhythm for your ghosted lines. I like to say "one, two, three, four, five, SIX" in my head and only drop the pen the sixth time every single time. That rhythm should make it easier for you to do a nice, swift, clean line that has no wobble, even if it strays from the endpoint a bit. Once you're more comfortable with this, you can reduce the number of ghosted strokes you need to make that confident line (and you don't have to use six, how ever many feels right to you). Don't forget to draw from the shoulder!

If this was an official critique I would have you do this exercise over again. It's the basis for almost every single exercise after this, and if you don't fix it now, those wobbles will appear in everything you draw. In addition, there's plenty of room on your page to get more ghosted lines in. Please consider, at the very least, doing another, fuller page of ghosted lines before moving on to the 250 box challenge, and use this (or ghosted planes) as your warm-ups for a while.

Ghosted Planes

It looks like you put just as much effort into your lines here as you did in the previous exercise. That's great! I'm seeing some improvement here already as well.

I noticed with your midpoint lines you didn't always place starting and end points and this is extremely important. We need to establish those points and work through the planning phase before every line. I am also seeing a lot of planes with only one midpoint line. We need those in both directions, as it's very important for placing our ellipses. When we set up ellipses in future exercises (and cylinders as well), we will need to use these midpoint lines to locate the tangents of the ellipses (the four points where the edge of the ellipse touches the edge of its corresponding rectangle). These look good in general though and you filled the pages nicely.

Everything I said in the ghosted lines review applies to this exercise as well! I still highly recommend doing another page or two of ghosted lines and/or planes before moving on. Don't forget that planning phase!

Tables of Ellipses

Ellipses look pretty smooth and confident compared to your ghosted lines. You are drawing through the ellipses 2-3 times in almost all instances so excellent work there. There are a good number of "floating" ellipses that aren't snug with the tables themselves, however for the most part you are keeping the ellipses snug with each other and that's great. In the future, try to work on getting your ellipses correct in both directions (major and minor axes), so that you are snug on all edges. This will come in extremely handy in future exercises and it is important to develop early.

I like the idea you had in your last table of doing a variety of ellipses in sort of a "rock formation" if you will, but remember the core idea of this assignment is to be able to create ellipses in a predetermined set of bounds. It's very important to be able to set up a space for your ellipses and then fit them perfectly into these bounds.

Other than the last couple tables, your second page looks wildly better than your first when it comes to keeping the ellipses snug and consistent, so you should be very pleased with your improvement. Just don't lose sight of the point of the exercise and make sure you stay diligent on that planning phase!

Ellipses in Planes

To start, it looks like you fixed those midpoints I mentioned in the ghosted planes review, so nice work there. Again, don't forget to set up your dots before drawing any ghosted lines.

Ellipses look great here as far as confidence goes. You're drawing through the ellipse a couple times and they are very smooth. However, similar to the ellipses in tables exercise, you need to keep the ellipses snug in both directions. You need to hit ALL FOUR midpoints of the planes when you're constructing your ellipses or they will look very wonky and weird in more detailed drawings. The planes/rectangles we set up here are often used in perspective to make accurate ellipses and if you don't correct this now, it will be a very tricky habit to break. Along with your ghosted line planning/confidence, I would say this is a top priority when it comes to warm-ups and any additional practice.

Funnels

I'm seeing very snug ellipses in both directions and pretty great alignment with the minor axis in each case, so excellent work there. This is a tricky exercise so you should feel really good about this one.

Two thing I noticed that have room for improvement:

1. There is very little variation in the ellipses when it comes to their "height" (size of major axis), and while your ellipses are snug and mostly accurate, I would like to see if you can maintain that accuracy when the ellipses grow and shrink through the funnel. If you do this exercise again, or as a warm-up, try creating more extreme funnels (deeper arcs) to fit your ellipses into.

2. The ellipses in the bottom-right corner aren't drawn through and aren't snug at the ends of the funnel. Was this your first or your last attempt? If it's your last attempt, don't get lazy! If it's your first attempt then that's great, just make sure you're developing consistency with these ellipses. You've done well on this exercise so I want to make sure you're reinforcing good habits.

Plotted Perspective

These look fairly good, although there's a few points where your box edges are not going to the vanishing points at all. This exercise should have zero guess-work and you're allowed a straight edge so there should be no mistakes. I also see some wobble in the box edges and some of the vertical edges tilting. I wouldn't say you necessarily need to redo this exercise, but you could really benefit by going over your original drawings with a red pen and straight-edge to correct your errors so you can see where you went wrong.

Rough Perspective

This is the one exercise I think you should absolutely do over. Here's why:

• Your perspective lines are going directly to the vanishing point This is exactly what the lesson asked you not to do. When you draw your red perspective lines, you need to follow the box edges that you drew to see where they would land on the horizon line. You need to see your errors very clearly so you know how to correct them in the future. Use your straight-edge! if your lines are wobbly, do your best to follow them anyway. Remember, these perspective lines don't need to return to the vanishing point, just the horizon line. It's okay if they wind up too far to the left or right. Check the example in the exercise explanation (about halfway down the page).

• Your lines are wobblier than any of your previous exercises. Be confident! It's okay if your lines are off as long as they are clean and straight. This will become more and more of a glaring issue when you start working on more complex objects (and a lot more boxes) so it's imperative you get this right early. Try to keep this in mind at all times, no matter how advanced the exercise is.

• Your boxes are in the same position in every frame Try some variation. Lift the boxes up above the horizon line, drop the boxes down below the line, you'll get a better understanding of how your boxes work in 3-D space and you'll be able to draw from any angle, high or low (and how sweet will that be?)

Rotated Boxes

This exercise is really tough, but I see that you have drawn through all the boxes and have a rather good understanding of your boxes in 3-D space. The only major problem I can pinpoint is a lack of rotation and depth. We're using the edges of the boxes we've already drawn as hints for the edge of the new, adjacent boxes (you did that very well), but as we get further from the center point of the drawing, we need to push that far edge further. We want the two opposing edges of the front face of each box to be drastically different in length to get more extreme rotation and depth. Don't forget, the boxes will also shrink as they move away from the viewer.

I can tell from your organic perspective exercise that you have a good grasp of these concepts, so hopefully the above comments are just reminders. This is all much easier to see when the boxes are isolated and not crammed together in a nightmare sphere. Great attempt on this overall!

Organic Perspective

I see a lot of improvement in the ghosted lines here but I want to echo what I said before just because it's so important: Take your time with every line. There's still a bit of wobble and hesitation here and it will hurt to break this habit down the road.

Otherwise, these look pretty darn good. I can tell you have an understanding of 3-D space and depth, especially with the relative size of your boxes. I did notice in some instances that your box orientations are very, very similar. Especially in the first image you posted on imgur. If you're having trouble with variation, try the "Y" method offered in the exercise explanation, but rotate that "Y" so it's upside-down, sideways, etc. and experiment with the length of each leg of the "Y". Make one really stubby, make one really long, make two really long, etc. and you'll start seeing a lot of new orientations and new shapes. Remember, boxes don't have to be perfect cubes.

Also, (and this technically wasn't required per the exercise explanation) I think it would benefit you to draw through these cubes. Most of these are close to making spatial sense, but when you draw through the boxes to show all 12 edges, your understanding becomes so much deeper, and you can start to construct all kinds of interesting shapes rather than go into autopilot with the boxes (and orientations) you're already comfortable with.

- RECAP -

Overall, great work! There is also clear improvement as the exercises progress.

Key points:

• Redo the Rough Perspective assignment with correct perspective lines. I highly recommend reviewing some examples to get a better understanding of how the finished product should look.

• Work on your ghosted lines. Focus on confidence, not accuracy. Work on drawing from your shoulder if it feels off to you. There are a lot of drawabox students (and other folks) that have posted to youtube with questions or tips regarding drawing from the shoulder.

• Fit your ellipses into all four sides of their corresponding planes. This will be very important in the future.

This critique came out a lot longer than I expected so I apologize for the lengthy read, but I think those three points above should be your biggest takeaways. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions regarding the review above, additional advice/tips, or heck, just to chat. Stick with it, your work shows a lot of promise and I look forward to seeing your progress!

Cheers :)

• youenoh