Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:17 AM, Friday March 14th 2025

Drawabox Lesson #1 - Album on Imgur

Imgur: https://imgur.com/a/drawabox-lesson-1-zBTkglh

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Thank y'all for working with me! This is the first time I've given drawing a go so super open to all feedback. Looking forward to any help y'all can provide and working with y'all in the future!

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3:43 AM, Monday March 17th 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 a great 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. You've also demonstrated the same confidence in your ghosted planes with a great accuracy. The main problem with your lines is arching and curving, which can also be seen both in your ghosted lines and planes. This is a common issue that can have many different causes. At the end of the day, our brain does have to make certain corrections for the fact that all of the pivots of our arm (wrist, elbow, shoulder) result in an arc rather than a straight motion. So, while the pivot you do will most likely result in an arc, you have to correct them consciously so it becomes straight. Make sure that you ghost while pivoting from your shoulder, try to intentionally arc your lines to the opposite direction to counteract the natural curve. This constant correction you make will eventually become natural as you get more practice. Read more here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ghostedlines/arc

I also noticed that you didn't put the start and end points when you bisect the planes horizontally and vertically. This results in floating lines, like this: https://imgur.com/a/Ud2O6tR. Do not forget to always plan your lines first when ghosting, even though you already kind of know where they should be.

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 aligned to the minor axis and carried the same confidence as in previous exercises. 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 a few 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, but try to use a different colored pen for the extesions next time so you'll be able to differentiate them from the original lines more easily, as you will do so a lot during the box challenge. 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.

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 if you wish to do so, 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.
11:32 PM, Tuesday March 18th 2025

Hey Mada, thanks for reviewing my work! I appreciate the feedback and will keep working on intentional planning and line confidence, hope to reach back out with more work in the near future!

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