7:18 AM, Monday May 12th 2025

Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission. Your photos are a bit blurry sometimes which makes the exercises harder to evaluate, so make sure to steady your hands and recheck the photo quality before submitting to us!

Overall you did a great job here, but I do have a bit to mention so let's break them down one by one. I'll write the most important things in bold.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. Ghosted lines look correctly ghosted and confident too. You've also demonstrated the same confidence in your ghosted planes with a great accuracy. The main problem with your lines is arching, which can also be seen both in your ghosted lines and planes. This is a common issue that can have many different causes. At the end of the day, our brain does have to make certain corrections for the fact that all of the pivots of our arm (wrist, elbow, shoulder) result in an arc rather than a straight motion. So, while the pivot you do will most likely result in an arc, you have to correct them consciously so it becomes straight. Make sure that you ghost while pivoting from your shoulder, adjust your speed to be a bit faster, and try to intentionally arc your lines to the opposite direction to counteract the natural curve. This constant correction you make will eventually become natural as you get more practice. Read more here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ghostedlines/arc

Ellipses

Now with the tables of ellipses, you've demonstrated a great understanding of the concept in executing confident ellipses. The ellipses in planes are nice, you drew it confidently and snugly in their respective planes.

The funnels are also looking great; you've managed to fit them snugly and confidently, but somewhat misaligned to the minor axis (remember that you should try to split them equally in half; you can make this easier by rotating the paper as you align the ellipses). I have no complaints here as your ellipses will tighten as you get more practice. Also this is optional, but you can attempt the optional step of varying the ellipse's degrees as you move outwards in your warm ups, as mentioned here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3

Boxes

You've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective in the plotted perspective. I did see some skewed back vertical lines here and there, which is usually caused by an accumulation of human error as you plot more and more lines. I assume that's the case and you understand that every vertical line is straight in 2 point perspective. Even if the points are not aligned correctly, try to find a middle ground and draw it as vertical as you can.

You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. I've noticed that some of the back faces of your boxes are not rectangular. By rectangular, we mean that they should be composed of horizontals that are parallel to the horizon line, and verticals that are perpendicular to it. While this could also be caused by the sometimes inaccurate lines, it's worth mentioning that there should not be any arbitrary guesswork or random angles. Don't forget that these rectangular front/back faces are the unique characteristics of 1 point perspective.

As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a great job at doing the rotated boxes so far at rotating and using the neighboring elements. Only one problem though, is that you forgot to draw in the boxes at the corners (you're missing 16 boxes specifically; refer to the example here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/example). It might not seem much, but we'd like you to finish each exercise to its utmost completion and benefit, especially when the boxes you'll draw here will give you the most challenge.

Finally, organic perspective looks great as well. They look like they belong in the same page and the lines converge as they move farther away from the viewer. There are a few hiccups here and there where there are divergences that results in skewed boxes, but overall they're minor and they look pretty solid.

This will get more relevant as you get to the box challenge, but any hatching from this point on should also be done with the ghosting method. It will make your stuff cleaner and more practice is always good! Try to cover the whole area of the box with consistent spacing.

One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.

Anyway, I think you've grasped most of the concepts, I'd still like you to finish the rotated boxes exercise as mentioned above. Make sure to recheck the example and apply the concepts you've learned. Once you're done with them, you'll most likely be able to move on to the box challenge!

Next Steps:

Finish the rotated boxes exercise (the missing 16 boxes; refer to the example).

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:39 PM, Friday May 16th 2025
edited at 9:39 PM, May 16th 2025

I finished the 16 boxes, i was very confused where do i put the points tho.https://imgur.com/oyRcbSS

edited at 9:39 PM, May 16th 2025
4:46 AM, Saturday May 17th 2025

You've done a decent job at doing the rotated boxes, but I can see you having some trouble with the boxes around the edges. You've mostly used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, but I think you could've rotated them more. It's also very common for students to confuse rotation with convergence of the boxes, like this: https://imgur.com/a/gd10hkK. When rotating our boxes, at least one of the boxes' sets of parallel edges will have its vanishing point move - frequently it'll be two. If our boxes have the same vanishing point, then they're not rotating. (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/notrotating)

I believe you'll be able to improve at this more as you get through the box challenge. Remember to keep working on your lines & ellipses confidence. Congratulations and keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

Move onto the 250 box challenge.

Do the lesson 1 exercises as your regular warmup and don't forget your 50% rule art.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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Sakura Pigma Microns

Sakura Pigma Microns

A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

On the flipside, they tend to be on the cheaper side of things, so if you're just getting started (beginners tend to have poor pressure control), you're probably going to destroy a few pens - going cheaper in that case is not a bad idea.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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