Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:27 AM, Saturday June 5th 2021

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/rx6OXc3.jpg

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I completed lesson 1 on my first attempt at DrawABox!

I'll admit that was a lot tougher than anticipated, with the ellipses being obnoxiously hard to draw. On the rough perspective assignment, a lot of my lines turned out really wobbly and I think it's because I keep freaking out that I'll miss my target and hesitate. Heh...

I'm using a 0.4 fineliner. I know 0.5 is recommended, but I couldn't find it anywhere at the local store. If I absolutely need to use 0.5 I'll get them online. And sorry if the image size seems inconsistent; the scanner is bigger than the page, and it would show an extra amount of blank space that I had to crop. I can take pictures in the next lessons instead if that's an issue. Paper size is US letter. (I think)

I appreciate anyone's feedback!

1 users agree
6:50 PM, Saturday June 5th 2021

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 pretty good. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. You also could have done a bit better of a job trying to keep your ellipses tangent to the 4 sides of the plane. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/floating Your ellipses in funnels are having some issues with tilting off the minor axis. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always start considering when drawing your ellipses. 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/1/13/step3 Your ellipses are off to a fine start but there's still room for improvement when it comes to accuracy so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspectives 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 straight up and down. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well.I think one thing that would have helped you here would have to just draw this a bit bigger. Drawing bigger really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. You are running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes in some cases (very noticeable on the right side) but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating 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 decent for the most part but there are some wonky ones here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along nicely. 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.
11:32 PM, Saturday June 5th 2021
edited at 2:20 PM, Jun 18th 2021

Thank you!

edited at 2:20 PM, Jun 18th 2021
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