Hi Xanxan, congrats on finishing the first lesson !

For transparency's sake, this is my very first critique, so I'll be relying heavily on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ

With that out of the way, let's get started :) As is advised in the guide, I'll be dividing my critique in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes.

1. Lines section

First off, I'm seeing some fraying on both ends in your superimposed lines exercise. Fraying on one end is completely ok, but take care to carefully put down your pen exactly at the starting point of the line before drawing it.

For the ghosted lines exercise, I feel like you could have filled out the page a bit more, however I do see dots on the page, which indicates that you planned out your lines correctly before executing them, so that's good ! It doesn't seem however that you did the same every time for the superimposed planes exercise, particularly when drawing the diagonal and middle lines, so please remember to place a starting and ending dot for each line that you draw. Starting a line with a starting and ending dot is important for applying the ghosting method, and this should not be skipped.

It also seems like you went over some of your marks in several exercises, which I totally get because it's tempting, but please avoid doing that in future homework. Draw each line with confidence and never try to repeat it, no matter how off it is (also feel free to correct me if I'm making the wrong assessment here, it's a bit hard to see things clearly in the pictures sometimes).

Some of your lines are a bit wobbly, especially in the exercises involving boxes, where you seem more focused on drawing accurately. Please keep in mind that you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy: a confident but inaccurate line will always be more correct than an accurate but wobbly one, and your accuracy will get better with time.

2. Ellipses section

I see that you are drawing through your ellipses every time, so that's good ! I can see an effort on fitting your ellipses snugly next to each other and within the bounds in your ellipse table, even if you're not always succeeding. I'm seeing nice shapes in the ellipse tables, but in the ellipses in planes exercise they tend to be too close to uneven circles and do not fit in the whole planes. When you practice them in your warm ups in the future, focus on drawing your ellipses from the shoulder and making them fit snugly against the corners of the plane, without being afraid of ending up with more elongated shapes. I'd also advise focusing on the diagonals and fitting the ellipse between two opposite corners instead of centering the ellipse in the middle of the plane.

In the ellipses in funnels exercise, you seem afraid to extend your ellipses all the way to the end of the curve/line on the sides, so as in the other exercises focus on fitting them snugly against the bounds in the future, and don't be afraid to draw bigger shapes from your shoulder. Lastly, take your time to ghost your ellipse and ensure that it is aligned to the minor axis cutting it in half before putting down your pen.

Boxes section

You drew through all of your boxes in the exercises where it was requested. In the rough perspective exercise, you kept your width lines parallel to horizon and height lines perpendicular to it in the most part, so good job on that ! Keep it in mind for the future. You also kept your corners close in the rotated boxes exercise and you have a fairly good amount of rotation in my opinion, even if the outer ones could be rotating more. I think you did a good job on the organic perspective exercise, even if you could have maybe emphasized the changes in size a bit more; don't be afraid to have your boxes overlap !

General comments

As is said in the instructions, you should refrain from doodling on your homework pages. You're explicitly encouraged to draw for fun parallel to following the Drawabox course, but it has to be on its own time and shouldn't distract from the exercises. I'm also seeing some self-critique in the form of little smiley or sad faces when you feel like you did something right or wrong, or written commentary, which I'm interpreting in the following way: you are aware of some of your mistakes and are trying to show that awareness in your submission. It's a totally understandable impulse, as submitting one's work for critique can make one feel very vulnerable, but please also avoid pre-commenting your homework in the future. There's no shame in making mistakes, and you need to let go of the fear of making them (and having others see them) in order to progress :)

Hello Xanxan0303, I hope you are well

Starting with your lines.

Those came out fairly well. In superimposed lines you fry both ends a little in longer strokes. It is normal to fry one end, but frying both, tells me that you don't prepare enough for each stroke. Remember to plan each stroke by positioning your pen on the start of your line, then confidently execute the stroke.

With your ghosted lines I notice that quite often you focus on accurate rather than confident and smooth lines. It is completely normal to miss our mark slighly. We want to take as much time as needed for our ghosting and then put our line confidently. If done well we get a smooth line. It may miss our mark a little as we aren't experienced with the process yet, but that's fine for now, we work here in levels.

Lastly in this section, ghosted planes. There I see that you repeat some of your lines. In future keep in mind to not do that, even if you made a bad line, leave it and treat it as if it was the correct one. We don't want to correct our lines as it starts bad habits and teaches us that we don't have to commit to our lines. Leave your bad line there to be seen. Next time you try to make a line, don't repeat the same mistake you did the previous time. Your 2nd page is way better than the previous one, as there your lines become more straight but there is still the problem of you repeating your bad lines.

Moving to your ellipses.

Your tables of ellipses are quite good. You focus on smooth and confident ellipses rather than accurate ones, which is a proper decision. Additionally you draw through ellipses 2-3 times as supposed to. That said you need to work on your ellipses, because sometimes you do overlap them, even if you know that's wrong.

Next, we have ellipses in planes. Here I notice that you have a bit of trouble placing your ellipses, but that is completely normal for beginners. Keep in mind that our ellipses have to touch all four corners of the plane and also spend more time ghosting your ellipses as some of them lack smoothness.

On funnels, you don't align ellipses to the minor axis. Remember that our ellipses should be cut by the center line in two symmetrical halves if that means you need to ignore the initial curves.

Keep in mind that what we want to gain from this section is a habit of drawing through each of our ellipses and making them as smooth as we can. We ghost every ellipses with as much time as needed then we execute them with confidence.

Lastly your boxes.

This is the hardest section of this lesson for various reasons, but you did a great job with those exercises. I don't see any major mistakes here just a few minor one:

• In organic perspective, remember to overlap your boxes as this creates a feel of depth in your drawing, you could also vary your sizes of the boxes more,

• In rotated boxes, as you wrote yourself. You need to rotate them more to create a feel of a sphere out of them,

• Additionally your line work could be way better. You don't commit enough to lines as they wobble. Remember to be patient with ghosting and take as much time as needed for each line. Then when it feels right, confidently execute the line. Also keep in mind to use your shoulder with a locked wrist.

Conclusion

I will say work on your line work in warmup, you need to be patient with that skill, as it takes quite a bit of time to get good enough.

I don't see any big mistakes in exercises so I will mark this lesson as complete.

Now about your comment. It doesn't have to look good. What we are doing here are exercises to become better, we are practising. We don't create a portfolio/gallery pieces.

"I hope I'm cut out for the rest of the course

To be cut out for this course all you need to do is give your all when doing those exercises and as you said you did that. That's all you need to do. Well remember to not rush it and grind.

Drawabox is a set of free exercise-based lessons that focus on the fundamentals - the skills you'll need to make sense of all the other resources and tutorials out there. First we focus on the basic mechanics of mark making, and how to use your arm. By the end, we develop a strong understanding of form, 3D space and construction.

I won't lie to you - our approach is tough and involves a lot of hard work. It's also structured and gives you a clear path with concise explanations and assignments you can complete and submit for review.

If you have any question feel free to ask me them here or on discord,

Have fun during your journey,