Hello, and well done on starting DAB. I'm Kotka and I'll be reviewing your submission today.

Everything you have started here are skills that you’ll work on for a while and skills that will help you improve in the long run. With that said, let's break apart your submission - what's good, less good, and perfectly normal in the beginning!

Superimposed Lines

Your superimposed lines show that you have understood the assignment and avoided the first and most common issue: wobbles. Yor lines show confidence and are smooth and are properly lined up at the start. Sometimes their trajectory wander. At this stage, smooth marks are more important than accuracy. A line that’s completely off but smooth is correct. Keep practicing drawing from the shoulder while and your stray lines will tighten up over time because your hand-eye coordination will improve.

Ghosted Lines

For a beginner, it is normal to see misses. I see no wobbles, which is good and proper and tells me that you are working from the shoulder rather than the wrist. You are already past the hardest step!

What about the arcs and misses then? Well, our brain needs to adjust because the joints in our arm—like the wrist, elbow, and shoulder—create an arc rather than a straight motion. This could mean that you might be drawing primarily from your wrist or elbow, whereas you should be using your shoulder more. It’s also possible that your brain isn't making the necessary adjustments.

If you find this to be a persistent problem, I'd recommend paying attention to which joint you're drawing from. Also, if you're already engaging your whole arm from the shoulder, try intentionally arcing your stroke slightly in the opposite direction to counteract the natural curve. This technique should help retrain your brain’s expectation of the movement needed to achieve a straight line. It might require conscious effort at first, but with practice, it should become more instinctive.

Ghosted Planes

Here, I search for new issues that suddenly become visible that were not there before. Your line quality here is in line with previous exercises where which is what I like to see. It means that you probably are not rushing, and are consistent with your line confidence. Well done, keep at it!

Table of ellipses

Your table of ellipses exercise looks good. There’s the occasional stiff ellipse (for which I’d recommend more ghosting), but for the most part, these are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. They’re sometimes a little too same-y (I’m referring here to their degrees/angles), so it would behoove you to be a little more varied in that sense, but it’s nothing too serious. The ellipses in planes show some good improvement throughout the set - I can see that the passes become tighter and do not stray as much as in the first rows. Be careful that you don't do more than three passes! I can see some of your ellipses have four, maybe five passes. Try to avoid it, it's more important to spend longer time on ghosting and drawing once you really decided. There is a danger that one might trick oneself with more passes to compensate for hurried ghosting.

Funnels

Looking good. Ellipses are aligned to the main axis of the funnel, they stay within the funnel, and you are doing at least two passes. Like I wrote for your table pf ellipses exercise, don't do more than three passes here either.

I am happy to see you attempt the optional degree variation. Keep at it, it will become increasingly more important in the upcoming lessons.

Plotted perspective

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean. You have used rules where they were supposed to be used, your vertical lines are perpendicular to the horizon, and all vanishing points try to converge properly. Of course, they don't converge properly, but that is not to be expected at this stage.

Rough Perspective

A nice attempt. This is a very hard exercise to nail and requires lots and lots of training. Like before, your lines are confident and I wouldn't worry about the arcs. It will improve with time and practice.

Rotated Boxes

One of the better ones I have seen on DAB, congratulations on your effort and results. This is a very hard exercise but you followed all the instructions, kept a very consistent distance between each box in both vertical and horizontal directions and your line quality looks good and as before, confident. You didn't miss any box and they actually look very accurate in their convergences. I applaud you! The next time you're doing this exercise, try to add some hatching.

Organic Perspective

Very good. You have kept your strengths throughout the whole submission and it is visible here, too. Confident, strong lines. Some boxes look a little overly dramatic in their perspective, but overall the the boxes are following a convincing path in 3D space. When you use overly dramatic foreshortening - or extremely rapid convergence - in a drawing exercise that involves multiple forms, it can lead to inconsistencies in the sense of scale. I would suggest that you aim for more shallow foreshortening. This means achieving more gradual convergences rather than steep ones.

This doesn't mean the forms should be drawn parallel on the page with no convergence at all. There should definitely be some convergence, considering that the boxes are randomly rotated and not aligned in any specific arrangement that would result in infinite vanishing points. Aim for a fairly gradual convergence to maintain a consistent and realistic scale.