Hi Will_Thomp, congrats on finishing lesson 1! I’ll be handling your critique relying on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ

First, to answer your question: don’t take my word for it, but I don’t really see any downsides to using bigger paper than what’s recommended, especially since you’re making full use of all the space that you have. I think using smaller paper would be more of a problem.

With that out of the way, my critique will be divided in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes. Let’s get started!

1. Lines section

Starting with the superimposed lines exercise, I am unfortunately seeing a lot of fraying on both ends of your lines. Fraying on one end is completely ok and will get better with practice, fraying on both ends however indicates that you didn’t properly take your time to carefully put down your pen at the beginning of the line, so definitely pay attention to that in future warmups.

I want to congratulate you on your ghosted lines exercise though, because your lines look confidently drawn, the dots I’m seeing indicate that you planned them correctly using the ghosting method, and because you really pushed yourself to fill the entirety of your page with a lot of lines, playing with different lengths and drawing some very long ones, so very good job on that!

Your lines do get wobblier in the ghosted planes exercise as well as in the exercises involving boxes, so please remember that confidence should always be prioritized over accuracy. A confident but inaccurate line will always be more correct than a wobbly but accurate one.

2. Ellipses section

In the table of ellipses exercise, your ellipses look confidently drawn and are nicely symmetrical for the most part, good job! You also did a good job fitting them all snugly against one another, you also have some nice degree variation there.

Your ellipses get significantly wobblier and less symmetrical in the ellipses in planes exercise, so as for lines keep in mind that confidence will always be more important than accuracy. It also seems like you drew through some of them more than 3 times, so please keep in mind to not do more than 2-3 passes. When doing this exercise in the future, something you can try out is focusing on having the ellipse reach 2 opposite corners of the plane rather than its sides, and trying its major axis with the diagonal of the plane going through said corners. You’ll see that even the thinnest ellipse can easily reach all corners and fit inside a plane that way. See example here: https://ibb.co/album/zhKcZD

Some of your ellipses aren’t very well aligned with the minor axis in your ellipses in funnels exercise, so try to pay attention to that in the future. I think that you’re also definitely ready to try varying the degree of your ellipses in this exercise as well, so feel free to experiment with that in future warmups!

3. Boxes section

In the rough perspective exercise, you kept your width lines parallel to horizon and height lines perpendicular to it in the most part, so good job on that!

Good job on your rotated boxes exercise also, however it looks like you made the mistake of not drawing through all of your boxes (that is, drawing each of the 3 sets of parallel lines that constitute the box, even the lines that would not be visible if the box was solid).

Very good job on your organic perspective exercise, as for the ghosted lines exercise I like that you really pushed yourself to fill out your page as much as you could, there is also enough variation in size and a lot of overlap, which succeeds in conveying the illusion of 3D.

That’s the end of this critique! It was all in all a very solid submission, which in my opinion shows that you have understood the point of these exercises, so I’m going to mark this lesson as complete and let you move on to the 250 boxes challenge. Feel free to reach out for any questions, and congrats again!