Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

8:45 PM, Monday May 13th 2024

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Hello! Submitting the homework here (Obviously), i want to clarify why the first page of Rough Perspective has the first two sections with dates. I started Drawabox earlier this year, up to that exact part and exercise (January 17th), but frustration due to setting up unnecessary quality standards imposed by myself, made me avoid even trying to continue past that point. And i quit.

But since learning how to draw is something I will do no matter what, recently, at the end of April, i started the course all over again, now taking the mindset talked about in the lessons seriously, and so, i marked the date in which i arrived again at the Rough Perspective part (April 30th).

So this means all the homework except the first Rough Perspective panel is done recently. I hope this is not a problem and that it could maybe help identify any mistake i was doing, (or that i am still doing) by comparing the old panel with the new ones. Thank you very much for creating this course, i will continue accordingly to any correction. And once again, thank you.

10:51 PM, Monday May 13th 2024

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. My name is Rob and I'm a teaching assistant for Drawabox who will be handling your lesson one critique. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes turned out well. You are using the ghosting method to good effect to get confident linework with a pretty decent deal of accuracy that will get better and better with practice.

Your tables of ellipses are coming along well. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on a consistent smooth ellipse shape. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes although you are deforming some of your ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/deformed You are compromising your overall ellipse shape by adjusting for accuracy midstroke. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues with deformed ellipses shapes but otherwise seem okay. One thing you could have done with these is start with a narrower degree ellipse in the center and then widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel. Please check the example here. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3 This helps with practicing different degrees of ellipses. Your ellipses are off to a good start but there is room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape and smoothness so make sure you keep practicing these in your warmups as they can take a while to get used to.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. It's great that you are keeping up with the confident linework on these. You are also doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be perpendicular(straight up and down in this case) to the horizon line. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. While the rotations here aren't perfect this was a good effort overall. The more you draw and develop your spatial thinking ability the easier these rotations are to handle. I can see that you were a bit perplexed by the corners but please don't just leave something blank if you don't understand it as you will be assigned revisions in the future for doing so. A big part of learning how to draw is getting used to working outside of your comfort zone so at least attempt to put something down even if you don't fully understand it. I am noticing that you are redrawing lines on occasion and this is a habit you should try and get out of. Try and stick with the initial line you put down even if it's a bit off. Adding more lines just makes things messier and harder to read. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are looking pretty good. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. Your box constructions are fairly wonky throughout this exercise and you need to develop a better sense for how box lines converge to vps so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a solid submission that showed a good deal of growth. Your line confidence improved as you worked through these exercises. Your ellipses are still a bit stiff and misshapen at times so keep practicing those during your warmups. Otherwise, I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
11:38 PM, Monday May 13th 2024
OMG HOW DID I NOT SEE THE CORNERS WERE A PART OF IT TOO I AM SO BLIND!!! anyway excuses aside,  will practice ellipses and continue forward.  thank you very much!
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