Hello, and welcome to drawabox. A big congrats on finishing lesson 1 – I’ll be looking through it.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these look solid overall, though they tend to start off a little shaky. As you draw more and more of them, you start to get into a rhythm. Be sure not to spend so long lining up your pen that you lose it; though the former is important, so is their flow. The ghosted lines/planes demonstrate two extremes. The lines are a little wobbly – here, you’re overly concerned with accuracy, and your confidence suffers as a result. The planes take things too far in the other direction: they’re too loose. Though it’s good that you’re able to do this, that is to say, to overcome that fear of failure, it’s important to note that confidence does not come without its preparation. In this case, I think the issue is that you’re drawing a little too fast. This is not to say that you’re not spending enough time ghosting, though certainly, it could be that too, but rather that the actual speed at which you’re drawing your lines is too fast. What I’ll recommend, then, is grabbing a separate sheet of paper, and drawing lines of different speeds, on there. See if you can start slow, and up your speed after each consecutive line. You’ll want a full range, from clearly-too-slow, to clearly-too-fast. Then, look at them critically, to decide which one is drawn at your ideal speed. It’ll be the one that’s the most accurate, while still being smooth, and straight.

The table of ellipses exercise started off a little sloppy, but looks a lot better in its second page. Still, there’s a few things to point out. First, be sure to draw a full frame within the page, rather than have its edges serve as the edges of the frame. Second, don’t move from the ghosting stage to the execution stage unless you’re ready. If you start drawing before you’re confident in the built-up motion, this’ll be reflected in your line confidence. Even worse, your ellipses won’t be snug, nor of a consistent degree/angle in a frame, which they should. The ellipses in planes exercise looks solid. Your ellipses are smooth, and rounded, despite the more complicated frame. To tighten their rotations up even further, see if you can spend a little longer on the ghosting stage. The funnels seem a little rushed, unfortunately. They start off promising, but seems to fall apart the further they get from the major axis (in regards to how snug they are, with the frame, as well as in regards to the number of times you rotate around them). Ellipses are fast to draw, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of rushing. Try to remind yourself that every single mark you make needs to have thought, and intent behind it, and you’ll be fine.

The plotted perspective exercise looks good, though, having been done using a ruler, there’s really no reason for your lines to overshoot – be a little cleaner, please.

The rough perspective exercise is… not great, but it’s a good start, nonetheless. Let’s start with the good. Though both of these aspects need further work, both the confidence, and the convergences of your lines are a lot better in page 2. In regards to the former, try to remind yourself that what you’re doing here is in no way different from what you were doing on earlier exercises of this kind: you’re just drawing a bunch of lines. Try to make them confident, and only draw each one once. As for the latter, remember that there’s no need to guess. Rather than relying on prior knowledge (‘a box consists of 3 sets of 4 parallel lines’), to decide how your lines should behave, rely on your points, instead. And don’t rush! Plot one, check it, adjust it, then plot the rest, checking and adjusting each one, the look at them in their entirety, make any necessary adjustments, and then commit to them.

The rotated boxes exercise is a little hard to look at. Regarding line quality, leaving aside the aforementioned issues (line confidence!), I’ll also remind you to use your shoulder, always; it seems like you’ve used your wrist for your hatching. As for the exercise itself, you’ve seen it through to the end, which is most of what we look for, though there are a couple of things you could be doing better. For one, drawing bigger, and drawing each line once, would really clean things up a little, and make them less visually confusing. Also, taking your time, considering the way each line should behave, with reference to the example, as well as your own neighboring lines, would’ve helped with some of the more obvious flatness/divergence issues, but these sorts of things are expected. We’ll be getting more into how boxes work, as we move on to the challenge, so feel free to revisit this exercise then.

The organic perspective exercise demonstrates a lot of these same issues, especially in regards to the linework (lack of planning, being the most important), but is mostly well done. Though there’s the occasional divergence, you’ve been mindful of your foreshortening, and the increase in size is solid as well.