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6:51 PM, Thursday December 18th 2025

Jumping right in with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, I can see that your ellipses and lines are drawin with a fair bit of confidence, which is helping to maintain consistent strokes and even shapes. That said, when it comes to the side edges, I am noticing an absence of the usual signs that accompany the "planning" phase of the ghosting method (placing start/end points), which suggests that you may need to be a bit more intentional in the complete use of these methodologies. It's tempting to try and streamline the process by dropping aspects of it, but that is very much contrary to their purpose in this course - the goal here is to use the methodology so intentionally and consistently throughout our work here, so that it trains your instincts - that subconscious auto-pilot - so as to make them more reliable when you bring them to bear outside of this course. So, though it certainly is tedious, be sure to take additional care in applying all of the steps involved.

While the above is just something to keep in mind going forward, there is a more notable issue I noticed throughout your work on this section of the challenge. It appears that, for the most part, you are drawing the two ellipses of each cylinder (the one closer to the viewer and the one farther away) as having the same degree, which is incorrect. As introduced back in Lesson 1's ellipses section, and reiterated in the instructions for this challenge here, the farther ellipse must be wider than the ellipse closer to the viewer.

Just like the shift in the ellipse's overall scale, where the convergence of the side edges causes the far end to be smaller overall, the shift in degree also serves to convey to the viewer just how much foreshortening is being applied, and therefore how much of the cylinder's length can be measured directly on the page, versus how much exists in the "unseen" dimension of depth. This also means that the degree shift will be more subtle when the scale-shift is also more minimal (which is generally going to happen as the cylinder comes closer to running perpendicularly to the viewer's angle of sight), and more dramatic when the scale-shift is more significant. Leaving the degree shift out entirely therefore leaves us in a situation where one visual cue is telling the viewer that the cylinder is always running closer to perpendicular to the direction the viewer is looking, even when the intent (and the resulting scale shift) contradicts this.

Continuing onto your cylinders in boxes, it appears that there may have been some instructions you missed, misinterpreted, or perhaps did not give yourself enough time to absorb, here as well. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

The main issue I'm seeing present in your work is that instead of identifying each ellipse's minor axis line separately and extending it back alongside the other line extensions, you appear to be drawing one line extension that is meant to fit both ellipses (and in so doing, fails to fit either correctly, as we see here). Without being able to identify the true alignment of your ellipses, you're left without the ability to judge just how much a given contact point line extension should be trusted and factored into adjusting the proportions of the boxes on your subsequent pages. That's the role the minor axes play - though it's the contact point lines that tell us whether the proportions of the plane were off from representing a square in 3D space (and by roughly how much), it's the minor axes of the corresponding ellipses that tell us whether those contact point lines should be trusted so you're not accidentally working from analysis that was never going to be accurate in the first place.

Additionally, I noticed that a lot of your boxes here were drawn with very limited foreshortening, to the point that many of them look like their lengthwise vanishing point was intended to be forced to infinity, contrary to what's explained here in these reminders.

As a whole, it does seem like you missed some pretty significant aspects of the instructions, and as such, revisions will be necessary to ensure you are equipped to use this exercise effectively in your future warmups. You will find your revisions assigned below.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 75 cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, being sure to apply the degree shift to your ellipses as explained in the instructions.

  • 30 cylinders in boxes, being sure to identify each individual ellipse's minor axis, and also being sure to apply more foreshortening in all three dimensions of your boxes (so as not to artifiically force any vanishing points to infinity).

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:37 AM, Monday January 12th 2026
6:47 PM, Monday January 12th 2026

Your work here is looking much better, and much more in line with the instructions. Just one thing to keep in mind - when adding the minor axis line extension to your cylinders in boxes, remember that we do want to extend it fully alongside the other line extensions, so they can be compared easily at a glance. You appear to have confused it with how we approach identifying our minor axes in the previous section of the challenge, where we only mark it out with a shorter line.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto Lesson 6.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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