Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

11:59 PM, Wednesday April 23rd 2025

Draw a box lesson 1 - Google Drive

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nOk_lXxfO9-GzanvFnHxpnLkf1z5YvRM?usp=sharing

I have a question about the location of vanishing points differing between different axes of the box. Typically if one axis has a close vanishing point is it more common for the other axes to also have a rapidly converging vanishing point or is it more common for the other axes to have gradual vanishing points? What does it mean in perspective terms when you have one or two sets of lines on an axis that rapidly converge and the others gradually converge?

5:14 AM, Friday April 25th 2025

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 an excellent 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, and there are barely any arching. You've also demonstrated the same confidence in your ghosted planes with a great accuracy. Nothing much to say except keep up the good work!

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 confidently, but somewhat misaligned to the minor axis (remember that you should try to split them equally in half; you can make this easier by rotating the paper as you align the ellipses). Otherwise, I have no complaints here as your ellipses will tighten as you get more practice. Also this is optional, but you can attempt the optional step of varying the ellipse's degrees as you move outwards in your warm ups, as mentioned here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3

Boxes

You've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective in the plotted perspective. I did see some skewed back vertical lines here and there, which is usually caused by an accumulation of human error as you plot more and more lines. I assume that's the case and you understand that every vertical line is straight in 2 point perspective. Even if the points are not aligned correctly, try to find a middle ground and draw it as vertical as you can.

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. I'm assuming your question above was mostly about the changing axis of a rotating box. When one axis is rapidly converging, the other sets will naturally converge less rapidly to compensate in perspective, otherwise you'll end up with skewed boxes. I believe this GIF will visualize it better, but feel free to ask if you have any more questions: https://imgur.com/uXuWEfx

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.

One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.

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.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:21 PM, Friday April 25th 2025

Thank you so much for the feedback and the explanations!

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