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1:51 PM, Saturday February 15th 2020

Hey hey, TA qzhans here to give you your critique!

First, superimposed lines. You’ve in general kept a good grip on those finicky horsetails, but I see a few where there’s fraying at both ends. Remember, no matter how long it takes, slowly and precisely place your pen before making that line. I also think that you're not being quite as confident as you can be here, and I'm seeing multiple places in your lines where you try to undulate back to the guideline. Once you've began your stroke, that angle is law, and you have to follow it through, even if it means you careen way off into another line above or below. If that makes your page look like a bunch of japanese fans, so be it!

Your ghosted lines look much better in terms of confidence. My only nitpick here is that you could've done some especially long ones, just to really challenge yourself. Something to think about for warmups.

The confidence issue crops up again in your ghosted planes. Remind yourself that accuracy is a secondary goal at this point; right now we're focusing on drawing straight lines.

Moving onto your ellipse tables, I like that you're keeping your ellipses tightly packed within the bounds that you've set. For the spaces you've left however, you can draw smaller ellipses; basically anything that will fit. Additionally, you've consistently drawn through all of your ellipses as well. The issue here again is the confidence; take as much time as you need to prepare your line/ellipse, and once you’ve decided to do it, blaze through it with almost reckless abandon. If you’ve done the preparation, you’re allowed to!

I see some improvement in the past regard in ellipses in planes. However, I am seeing a just a little bit of deformation of your ellipses to hit those bisection points on the edges of the planes. Opt instead for a confident, smooth ellipse, caring only that it generally fits within the bounds. Remember that the bounds that we set at the beginning are just a goal; don't let that goal hinder your confidence, it is merely a tool to help you evaluate yourself.

Next, your funnels generally do a good job of aligning to the minor axis that you've set and I have no complaints.

No problems with plotted perspective in terms of technique. However I do notie that you skimped out on the amount of boxes you needed for the 2nd and third. Try to do follow the examples in terms of the amount you need per page/per panel in any DaB exercise.

For your rough perspective, I’m pleased to see that you are applying the error checking method correctly, extending your lines parallelly back to the horizon line instead of directly to the vanishing point. I do see a few places where the line don't quite reach the horizon, so take your time with the ruler lines and make sure they're neat enough to help you. I also I see a few issues with keeping the verticals perpendicular to the horizon line and the horizontals parallel to it, so watch out for that. One last thing: on your second page, you divided your panels with a line, but you actually put a box on the wrong side of the line and also forgot to apply the error checking method to it. It never hurts to double check your work before sending it in to catch mistakes like these!

And now, the one you’ve been waiting for: rotated boxes. Before anything, I wanted to congratulate you on its completion; it's not something you're supposed to be ready for. The first thing I notice is how you've kept the gaps between the boxes relatively consistent, which helped you out a lot in terms of keeping the perspective in check. However, I still do see the problem of not enough rotation with the boxes. Keep in mind that as the boxes rotate, the vanishing points slide along the horizon line, so the two sets of parallel lines that aren't parallel to the axis of rotation will get new vanishing points. Thus, for example, all vertical lines on a row will have the same vanishing point by virtue of rotating around a vertical axis. My final advice here would be to draw bigger! Take up as much space as possible on the page so that you can draw long, confident lines and have more breathing room for error. I know it presents difficulty in linework, as you're forced to draw longer lines, but that is valuable practice as well.

Finally, onto organic perspective. In general, your boxes do a good job of shrinking and growing as they move through space, but I would've liked to see more overlapping here and there. There's work to be done in getting those parallel lines to converge to their shared vanishing point, but you can iron that out with the box challenge. My main cause for concern is how you've strayed from the exercise example quite a bit, with a large majority of your boxes straying from the centerline you drew.

In general, it's quite clear to me that you understand the purpose behind the lessons for the most part. I do get the feeling that you did not apply the proper diligence when you were doing these exercises however, with a lot of missteps that can only be attributed to haste. Without proper diligence, lessons 6 an 7 will be absolute hell, so it's better to develop patience earlier rather than later. I'm going to mark this lesson complete, but I'd like to have you do an extra page of ellipses in planes and rough perspective, being as clean and confident as you can. I won't be looking at them, so it's up to you to be able to apply the necessary diligence even if no one will ever look at it. After that, I hope I will see your 250 box challenge soon!

Next Steps:

1 pg Ellipses in Planes

1 pg Rough Perspective

250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
7:53 PM, Saturday February 15th 2020

Thank you for the critique! I really appreciate it!

You are completely right with the confidence and patience issues, and it is apparent in most of my submission now that I am looking at it again. I will work on those points for my future submissions and take more time on my work.

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Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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