Lines
Super Imposed Lines:
Your super imposed lines are off to a fine start. You've done a good job of placing your stylus down carefully at the start of each line so they are only fraying at one end, well done. There are a couple of lines that get a bit wobbly, especially the longer ones, but if you keep practicing drawing these confidently from your shoulder this should improve.
Ghosted Lines:
It looks like you're showing a good understanding of this exercise. You have some smooth, straight confident lines here, well done. You do also have some lines that show signs of hesitation (wobbling) In drawabox you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy. A wobbly line is a mistake, no matter how accurate, and a confident line will be correct, as with practice the accuracy will get better.Please check out the information on this from the lesson note here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/10/wobbling
Ghosted Planes:
These are similar to the prvious exercise, and the above feedback applies. Also, don't forget to place dots for the final two lines cutting accross your planes. This is part of the planning phase of the ghosting method. Having a visual aid for where your aiming to place your lines is important here.
Ellipses
Tables of Ellipses: The main problem here, and unfortunatley it persists throughout your ellipse exercises, is you're not drawing through them. you should be drawing through every single ellipse you draw for these lessons. That is, draw around the ellipse two or three times before lifting your pen. Please read the explanation on why here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/drawingthrough
You've done a decent job of keeping your ellipses orientation and degree consistent within each section of your tables, and have shown an understanding of keeping your ellipses snug against each other and the boundries of the table.
Ellipses in Planes: As above, not drawn through. You've done well at getting your ellipses to hit the target points at the edge of the planes, but it is actually more useful to draw them smoothly at the expense of accuracy. Just like with your lines, use the ghosting method and draw these confidently, from your shoulder. Some of these ellipses I see you actually broke down into two stokes, making pointy ends to your ellipses, you want to draw them with one continuous movement, all the way around twice before lifting your stylus. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/deformed
Ellipses in Funnels: Your ellipses are well aligned and snug against each other, which is good. All the above comments on your ellipses being hesitant and not drawn though apply here as well.
Boxes
Plotted Perspective: This is excellent, great job!
Rough Perspective: Well done keeping your horizontal lines parallel to the horizon and your verticals perpendicular to it. You have managed to maintain your line quality too, good job. Sometimes you don't extend the depth lines that you drew, but rather, place a line that corresponds to what you should have drawn. https://imgur.com/a/vYrqOBn see this image where I've extended some of the lines for you. It looks like you only experience this problem with boxes that are above the horizon line. When a box is above the horizon line, all 4 depth lines will recede downwards towards the horizon, because that is where the vanishing point is located.
Rotated Boxes: Good work! You've got all the boxes in there and you've drawn through them all. They're rotating well and you've mostly managed to keep the edges of your boxes lined up close to one another, well done. It looks like you got a bit confused about where to place the hatching lines, but that's just a nitpick really.
Organic Perspective: You've done a good job of varying the size of your boxes to give a sense of depth within your scenes. I'm a little concerned that you drew all your boxes at the same orientation though, you're supposed to be exploring drawing them at different rotations as they move through space. That's not too big of a deal though, as you'll get plenty of practice with that in the 250 box challenge. What is a big deal is the noticable drop in quality on the second page. You start chicken-scratching and scribbling your lines, and your last panel only has two boxes in it. You can do better. While there is no expectaion to nail these exercises or do them perfectly, you are expected to complete them to the best of your current ability
Unfortunately you've missed some key instructions for some of these exercises so I'll have to ask you for some revisions before marking this as complete and sending you into the box challenge.
(edit made for typos)
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
1 page of the Tables of Ellipses exercise. Draw through all your ellipses 2 full times before lifting your stylus.
1 page of Ellipses in Planes. Use dots to plan all your lines, draw through your ellipses. Prioritize confidence ofver accuracy.
1 page of Rough Perspective. Extend the depth lines you draw, not arbitrary extensions. Be mindful of how you draw boxes above the horizon line.
1 page of organic perspective. Don't rush. Use the ghosting method to draw each line with one clean stroke. Try drawing boxes in a variety of orientations.
Horrible I know; I'll probably have to redo these all again won't I? I'm prepared I'm not moving onto box challange until probably these are redone over and over until I'm at the standard and level that's needed.
Hi, thank you for replying with your revisions.
Before I get into critiquing your work I have a couple of more general points that may help you with your mindset.
First: Don't worry if you think your homework looks "horrible". Drawabox exercises aren't exactly designed to look good. They are tools to help you learn and improve, like doing reps at the gym, or practising your golf swing. As for getting to a certain standard or level, that's probably much less of an issue than you think. I'm not here to gatekeep and make you grind away at these, just to make sure you understood and followed all the instructions to the best of your current ability. Redos are not a punishment, they are to make sure you're getting the most out of a lesson and are showing the knowledge prerequisite for the next lesson.
You get to "keep" all these exercises as warmups anyway, so once you're set up with an understanding of them, you pick 2 or 3 exercises to practice for a total of 10-15 minutes at the start of your drawing sessions. So you'll continue to practice and improve these on your own.
Now, on to your work.
Your table of ellipses is showing a huge improvement. You've drawn through all your ellipses and you've also done a better job of getting them to touch their neighbours and the edges of the table too, great work! Sure, some of them are still wobbly, but ellipses are tricky and it took me months of warmup practice before I was satisfied with mine so I'd be kind of amazed if you suddenly perfected them in like a week. Another little note while I'm here- you've mostly done a good job keeping a consistent degree and alignment within each section of the table but the lower left section has ellipses of all different shapes, remember to stick to one type for each section. Gives you something to aim for.
Ellipses in Planes: I'm really happy to see that you drew through your ellipses here too, good job! I think you're heading in the right direction, you have a few ellipses that are coming out smoother and more even, with a few that still look quite hesitant and wobbly. When you're practising these in warmups you can try varying your speed (there's usually a sweet spot) sometimes drawing these faster can help them come out smoother. Remember to ghost them (if you're not already) as well as rotating your tablet/canvas to the most comfortable angle. You can also try switching up between drawing clockwise/anticlockwise to see if that helps you.
Rough perspective: You had me worried with that first panel, but the second and third are much better The first panel you still seemed to struggle with boxes above the horizon but I'm glad to see that you figured it out as you went. First panel also has a couple of missing back edges on your boxes. Second panel you forgot to extend the lines on one of your boxes. I don't know if you're already doing this or not, but it's a good idea to just double-check your work against the instructions and example homework to make sure you haven't missed anything before handing it in. I know there's a lot to take in on some of these exercises, but objectively checking your work is a form of self discipline that will help you with many tasks, not just Drawabox.
A note for your extensions- I can see that you're trying to make them in the same direction as your freehanded box lines, but sometimes they’re not touching your box, or going off in a different direction. Doing your extensions correctly becomes a really important error checking method for the 250 box challenge and you'll need to do them accurately to help hone your perspective estimations as you go through that, so I have a couple of suggestions that may help. It's easier to line up your extensions if you draw them over your initial line all the way through, instead of just pulling them from one end. I think perhaps you may be worried about your extensions covering up your initial box lines, but if you do your extensions on a new layer set to multiply that should keep your black lines visible.
Organic perspective: This is showing improvement too. You've made better use of the space available and your line quality is generally a bit better. You appear to be struggling a little bit with those smaller boxes. I don't know if this is a mechanical issue with making tiny marks on your tablet using your shoulder, or a bit of impatience. I'll trust that it is the former. I should point out that no matter how off a line is, a student should never repeat it, they should keep the line as it if were correct and move on. Going back over your work with short choppy strokes will make it look messy and confusing.
You've shown significant improvement with these exercises, and are now following the instructions that you missed the first time so I'm going to mark your homework as complete, congratulations!
When you go through the 250 box challenge please make sure you're posting pages for feedback in the basic-challenges channel regularly. The channel gets busy so you might not get feedback every time you post, but it won't hurt. (Remember that the Discord is a community that runs on give and take, being friendly and helpful will increase your chances of getting helpful feedback from other students) 250 boxes is a long slog and it would be such a waste to go through the whole set on your own only to be told you missed a key instruction and have to do a bunch more.
On that note, 250 boxes is tedious at best so please please please try to mix in some personal projects (50% rule) as you go. Lesson 0 is important. And yes, I know drawing "for fun" seems silly and it's hard to do your 50% I've been there. Do it anyway.
Good luck on your drawing adventures!
Next Steps:
Feel free to move on to the 250 box challenge.
Use these lesson 1 exercises as a pool of warmups to practice for a total of 10-15 minutes at the start of a session.
Gonna just show and get more feedback this way (And yes box 5 I realized hatching is on wrong face): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/365180330103013388/941856479785402378/Practice_48.3.jpg
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
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