Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:17 PM, Tuesday June 14th 2022

Drawabox lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Post with 13 views. Drawabox lesson 1

Hello, this is 3rd time I did lesson 1, my second attemp being 1 year ago. I added it then here for unofficial critique, but I only got about halfway trough 250 box challenge before I stopped. During my previous attempts I was rushing, not really trying my best and I kinda ignored 50% percent rule. But this time it was different and I think it paid off.

And I just wanna say I'm really glad this course exists. I feel like it's just what I need.

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9:19 PM, Friday June 17th 2022

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. My name is Rob and I'm a teaching assistant for Drawabox who will be handling your lesson one critique. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. 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 focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. Your ellipses in funnels are looking fine. I'm not seeing any real issues here. One thing you could have done with these is start with a narrower degree ellipse in the center and then widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel. Please check the example here. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/step3 This helps with practicing different degrees of ellipses. Your ellipses are off to a great start but there's still room for improvement when it comes to accuracy so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. You are getting mostly confident linework here along with a slight bit of wobble creeping back into some of your lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced. Not a big problem for you but just something to think about. You are 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.

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 narrow and consistent. While the rotations here aren't perfect this was a very good effort overall. Nice work! 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 really good. You seem to be comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. Your box constructions are quite solid for the most part and you seem to have a good understanding of how box lines need to converge to vps. The 250 box challenge shouldn't be much of a problem for you.

Overall this was a really solid submission and given that you've worked through this material multiple times now that isn't very surprising. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along quite nicely. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey very well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge. Keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:36 PM, Sunday June 19th 2022

Thank you! Since I first started Drawabox, ellipses were something I always had some trouble with. I include them in every warmup and try to improve my accuracy. And you're right about my lines being wobbly, because I'm trying to be more accurate when drawing boxes. That's something I still need to work on.

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