Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:26 AM, Tuesday November 10th 2020

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First of all thank you for your time for looking into my submission.

I have dabbled in these lessons as well as posted a bit of my progress and now decided for the official way.

Tools: 0.5 Staedtler pigment liner

Hopefully everything is well visible.

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11:06 AM, Wednesday November 11th 2020

Hi! Let’s see~

Your superimposed lines look great. Smooth, properly lined up on the left, and of a consistent trajectory. You’ve filled your pages to the brim with these, too- well done. Your ghosted lines/planes look great, too. They’re confident, and quite accurate, too. One issue I notice is the amount of ink, and occasionally altered trajectory, as they approach their end points, indicating to me that you’re slowing down, hoping to have the line stop at the correct place. This is not necessary, and, in fact, if it causes these problems, something we don’t like. It’s far more important for your lines to be smooth, and dynamic. See if you can lift your pen off the page at the end, instead.

The ellipses in planes exercise looks fantastic. Your ellipses are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. They’re of a consistent degree/angle in a frame, and you’ve experimented with a bunch of them, too. The ellipses in planes exercise looks great, too. Your ellipses maintain their confidence, despite having to touch all 4 sides of the plane (and they do a good job of that, too!) Finally, the funnels exercise is well done. Your ellipses are snug, and properly cut into two equal, symmetrical halves by the minor axis. Nice work on this section.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean. The rough perspective exercise, of which there’s only 1 page, by the way (the requirement is 2), has a lot going for it, but a lot we need to talk about, too. One issue I notice is that, as your lines get shorter, your confidence dips, too. This is not exactly uncommon (small lines are difficult from the shoulder), but it’s important to remember that this is no different from a ghosted lines/planes exercise. You’re doing the exact same thing here, drawing a line from point A to point B, so it follows that the results should be the same, too. Try not to get overwhelmed by the big picture, if you can help it. As for the convergences, though they’re quite good, they could be a little better, still. I notice that you’ve gone with a lot of your first guesses, but this is not necessary. Once you’ve got a point down, don’t assume that it’s correct- check it, and re-check it. Pay attention to the shapes of your planes, too. Because of the rules of 1 point perspective, the near/far planes of your box need to be of the exact same shape. If we take the rightmost box of frame #3 as an example, you may notice how off its lines are. If you take a look at its planes, you’ll notice that the near one is a horizontal rectangle, whereas the far one is a vertical one. That can serve as a hint, if you know to look for it. The rotated boxes exercise looks great. It’s not quite as big as we’d like (we recommend drawing big, for these lessons, as it gives your brain some room to think), but the gaps between the boxes are narrow, and the boxes themselves rotate nicely, too. Finally, save for a misunderstanding (a box that overlaps another shouldn’t hide its lines; draw through your boxes, always), the organic perspective exercise looks nice. I’m not sure how exactly you went about planning these boxes, as I don’t see any points down (especially in the overlaps), but they look good. Their increase in size is believable, and their foreshortening consistently shallow. Nice work.

Great work on this submission. Feel free to move on to the box challenge.

Next Steps:

250 box challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
7:23 PM, Wednesday November 11th 2020

Thank you for the extensive critique.

  • Yes I tended to slow down towards the end of lines, will work on fixing it as well as the short lines.

  • With the rough perspective I forgot to upload the second page it seems (fixed it now)

  • On organic perspective I got sloppy and didn't use the dot ghosting method. Will use it always from now on. Instead i went straight into the Y with lines and then eyeballing other lines from the endpoints.

Again thank you for your time.

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