two notes:
I intend to do future lessons on printer paper but used a sketchbook because filling a sketchbook was my new years resolution for 2025 and my book will be finished soon
I had to start wearing reading glasses midway through and am still adjusting to the right ones and how that works
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 decent 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 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
Also a quick reminder to not draw through your ellipses too much, as you did here quite a few times. 2-3 times is enough. Trying to correct your initial lines with more lines is not a good way to practice your confidence. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/tablesofellipses/drawingthrough
Boxes
The plotted perspective has no problems, you've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective aside from a few skewed lines.
Now with your rough perspective, while you did the ghosting correctly for the marks and largely used rectangular front and back faces for your boxes (which is correct for 1 point perspective), you're not really trying to plot your lines back to the vanishing point, and instead just make these floating boxes with unclear VPs. Remember that you're doing this exercise in 1 point perspective, and thus there are some restrictions that you have to abide by, most specifically is that all lines that go off into the distance converge at the one vanishing point that you established at the start. (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/roughperspective/guessing). Try to reread the lesson instructions again, and refer to the example on how one should create this 1 point perspective.
As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a fine job at doing the rotated boxes. You've used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, but I think you could've rotated the boxes a little bit more. It's very common for students to confuse rotation with convergence of the boxes, like this: https://imgur.com/a/gd10hkK. When rotating our boxes, at least one of the boxes' sets of parallel edges will have its vanishing point move - frequently it'll be two. If our boxes have the same vanishing point, then they're not rotating. (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/notrotating)
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. Also, do not use pencil or any tools other than the fineliner unless specifically mentioned, which includes the hatching marks.
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, while I think you've grasped most of the concepts, I'd still like you to try the Rough Perspective exercise again with the correct 1 point perspective as mentioned above. Again, try to reread the instructions and the example as to not misunderstand anything described in the lesson. Make sure to put it in a new link and reply directly to this feedback so I can be notified!
Next Steps:
One (1) extra page of Rough Perspective exercise.
Be mindful of the characteristics of 1 point perspective.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful feedback. Here is the additional page of rough perspective. i wasnt able to paste a link here but its in my sketchbook
thank you again. This program has been so valuable to me
Thank you for your submitting your revision! Looking at this attempt, I think you're missing a crucial step here. The first step that you need to do in 1 point perspective (after splitting the page into 3 sections) is to determine where the Vanishing Point (VP) is, which will certainly be somewhere in the page on the horizon line (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/roughperspective/step2). After you put down a rectangle, you must put the lines between that rectangle and the vanishing point, and not randomly to anywhere like you'd do with the Organic Perspective exercise. This is because 1 point perspective has only 1 vanishing point, and every box must go towards that vanishing point.
I hope this can clear up your misunderstanding on whether the VP can be anywhere in a 1 point perspective. I'd like you to try another page where you apply this 1 vanishing point correctly (and if you ever feel unsure, make sure to reread the instructions step by step). You can post the new link in the reply to this comment instead of making a new post in your sketchbook too. There's no need to worry, I just want to make sure that you nail this correctly so you can practice them on your own!
Next Steps:
One (1) extra page of the Rough Perspective exercise.
Make sure to only use one vanishing point.
Hello -I tried again and hopefully ive got it now. Thank you!
Michael Hampton is one of my favourite figure drawing teachers, specifically because of how he approaches things from a basis of structure, which as you have probably noted from Drawabox, is a big priority for me. Gesture however is the opposite of structure however - they both exist at opposite ends of a spectrum, where structure promotes solidity and structure (and can on its own result in stiffness and rigidity), gesture focuses on motion and fluidity, which can result in things that are ephemeral, not quite feeling solid and stable.
With structure and spatial reasoning in his very bones, he still provides an excellent exploration of gesture, but in a visual language in something that we here appreciate greatly, and that's not something you can find everywhere.
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