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6:41 AM, Saturday May 27th 2023

Welcome to drawabox. Having quickly glanced at the entirety of your submission, I’d like to quickly say that you should aim to do all exercises as instructed, rather than changing them. To be more specific, the extra lines in the planes, the ellipses within ellipses, and even the multiple colors in the rotated boxes exercise, are not things we like to see. If for no other reason, than because in changing what’s there, the student risks working on an exercise that has a different goal from the one we’ve presented, thus wasting their time. If the exercises here inspire you to try something new that’s perfectly fine, but please take a note of that, and save it for your warmups. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at your submission.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these look good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. I appreciate how big you’ve drawn your arcing lines, by the way – they’ve come out well as a result. The ghosted lines/planes are mostly confident. The ones that aren’t, I suspect aren’t as a result of their size (it’s hard to engage the shoulder for especially small lines), so no stress. 2 issues, however. First, you’ve forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes. Second, there’s a lot of automatic reinforcing present here. Recall that a line is meant to be drawn once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out. Resist the urge to add more ink to a mistake, if for no other reason, than because that doesn’t really fix it – just makes it stand out that much more.

Onto the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise is a little mixed. Your ellipses are decently smooth/rounded in their second page, but I suspect you could stand to push them a little further. Start by making sure that the outer edges of the of the frame are in the page (rather than the edges of the page serving as the edges of the frame), and then really try to prioritize smoothness and roundness. It’s fine if the ellipse goes over its bounds. It’s not fine if it’s wobbly, or bumpy. By the way, ellipses should have a goal. Specifically, they should touch all available sides of the frame, not float inside of it. The ellipses in planes look good. They’re at times a little bumpy, so you might want to ghost them for a little longer, but it’s clear that you’re prioritizing their smoothness/roundness over their accuracy here, which is good. The funnels, too, are well done, but you should probably ghost these ellipses a little more, also, to nullify their spacing issues (overlaps). Also, properly draw the major axis (from edge to edge), rather than just marking where it is and calling it a day.

For an exercise done with a ruler, the plotted perspective exercise looks quite messy. I suppose you went and added the lineweight/hatching freehand? Even so, you should strive to be clean in your work. There’s no reason these lines should be less confident than your superimposed lines, for example – you’re doing the same thing, after all. The same can be said for the rough perspective exercise. Here, much like in the ghosted lines exercise, all you’re doing is drawing lines, from point A to point B, one at a time. Is there a reason why they’re confident there, but not here? Other than that, there’s automatic reinforcing issues here, too, but we’ve addressed that already. But know that it’s a criticism that applies everywhere, not just where I bring it up. The convergences improve nicely throughout the set, so good work on those. Save for issues to do with confidence, the rotated boxes exercise is – after my eyes stopped hurting from looking at it – nicely done. Your boxes are snug, and do a solid job of rotating. Their far planes aren’t always correct (or even always drawn!), but most of them are looking good, and what issues there are will be ironed out by the box challenge, anyway. Speaking of boxes, the organic perspective exercise is nicely done. The boxes are a little same-y, but due to their size, and foreshortening, do a solid job of flowing as intended, anyway.

Next Steps:

I’ll move you on to the box challenge, but be so kind as to take note of my comments, so as to improve on them during your warmups. Good luck!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:49 PM, Saturday May 27th 2023

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!! I really appreciate all the thought that went into this. Getting this much feedback is reassuring that I didn't waste my money on the credits. I have read through a couple times and found it really helpful. I will definitely incorporate this advice into my warm ups. And try to keep it in mind during the challenge.

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