Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
9:00 AM, Saturday December 6th 2025
My Ellipses in Planes submission is built on top of my Ghosted Planes pages.
Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.
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. The main problem with your lines is arching and waving, 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, 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
I also noticed that you didn't put the start and end points when you bisect the planes horizontally and vertically. This can result in floating lines since you don't have a more concrete end point when you ghost, like this: https://imgur.com/a/Ud2O6tR. Do not forget to always plan your lines first when ghosting, even though you already kind of know where they should be.
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 aligned to the minor axis and carried the same confidence as in previous exercises. I have no complaints here as your ellipses will tighten as you get more practice. This is optional, but you can attempt the extra step of varying the ellipse's degrees as you move outwards in your warmups, as mentioned here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3
Boxes
The plotted perspective has no problems, you've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective.
You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. You also drew the front/back faces rectangular, which is correct for 1 point perspective.
As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a great job at doing the rotated boxes. You've rotated them pretty well (while making sure to move the converging lines) and used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, which is the whole purpose of this exercise.
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.
Anyway, I think you've grasped the concepts of the whole lesson and ready to put them into practice in warmups. Remember to keep working on your lines & ellipses confidence. Again, 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.
When it comes to technical drawing, there's no one better than Scott Robertson. I regularly use this book as a reference when eyeballing my perspective just won't cut it anymore. Need to figure out exactly how to rotate an object in 3D space? How to project a shape in perspective? Look no further.
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