Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:08 PM, Monday January 18th 2021

Lesson 1- Draw a Box - Album on Imgur

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This one took longer than expected especially when I started going though the boxes.

i tried following all the instructions to the best of my ability xD.

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1:00 AM, Wednesday January 20th 2021

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with pretty minimal wavering throughout. 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 you seem to be focused on getting a consistent smooth ellipse shape. This is mostly carried over into your ellipses in planes very well although I am seeing that you are slightly deforming some of your ellipses. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This is likely happening because you too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are decent but you are having some issues with tilting your ellipses off the minor axis at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always consider when drawing your ellipses. Your ellipses are off to a good start but there's still room for improvement when it comes to accuracy so keep practicing these 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 like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps fairly consistent. You are running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes in some cases but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective(Most noticeable on the top two boxes). 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 really 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!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:02 AM, Thursday January 21st 2021

Hey Rob that was fast :).

Thanks for taking the time appreciate it!.

While I was waiting for the official critique I went ahead and started the 250 box challenge, at my 75th box I went back looking at my organic boxes and can't help but noticed those wonky boxes that you mentioned as well ( thinking I was fairly good while doing it). But in reality those boxes are having self identity crisis Hahaha xD.

Thanks again! :)

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