12:04 PM, Friday February 11th 2022
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.