11:15 AM, Monday December 6th 2021
Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on getting past the hurdle that is Lesson 1. Let’s take this one exercise at a time, shall we?
Starting with your superimposed lines, these are… not quite there. They’re properly lined up at the start, but this seems to have come at the cost of their confidence. Recall that more so than sticking to the guideline, what these lines need to do is be smooth, and straight. If they end up missing the guideline as a result of this, that’s perfectly fine. Your ghosted lines/planes show some improvement in this respect, though they’re still not quite there. Mostly, though, it seems to be the non-diagonal center lines of the planes that struggle, likely because you’ve not plotted any start/end points for them. Remember: all lines need start/end points, because all lines are drawn using the ghosting method. Also, remember that each line is drawn once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out. In other words: resist the temptation to correct an incorrect line.
The table of ellipses exercise is not great. It’s a little hard to tell, because of how diligently you’ve filled even the smallest of gaps, but your ellipses seem to start off fine, then lose the little confidence they have, in their second rotation. Likely, you’re drawing the first one freely, then feeling the pressure during the second, and trying to stick as close to it as possible. As with the lines, however, this is not necessary; what is, is that the resulting mark ellipse is smooth, and round. Ghost until you’re ready, then commit (and when you do commit, do so confidently – moving on to the execution stage is akin to saying ‘I’m ready’, so there shouldn’t be anything to hesitate about, anymore). Also, see if you can lift, not flick, your pen off the page at the end of your rotations – it’ll get rid of those tails at the end of them. The ellipses in planes/funnels are more of the same, unfortunately; though this just pertains to their confidence. As far as the understanding of the individual exercise itself, it’s solid in both, so as soon as this confidence issue is taken care of, you’ll be good to go.
The plotted perspective exercise is nicely done.
The rough perspective exercise shows little improvement throughout the set. Leaving aside the linework (both of its issues (lack of confidence, and automatic reinforcing) having been brought up in prior sections), the convergences don’t seem to make an effort to head to the vanishing point, it seems. Re-reading the exercise might be in order. Remember that what we’re asking you to do is plan your convergences using points. So you’d ghost a line from a point, to the vanishing point, and place a point in the path of it. You’d then check this point, and alter it as needed; only when you’re convinced that it’s correct, should you move on to the next one, repeating the process from scratch.
The rotated boxes exercise is missing 4 boxes (the diagonal ones), but it looks good otherwise. The boxes are snug, and, though slight, the rotation is there. This is not necessarily the case in the back, but that’s perfectly fine – you’re expected to struggle here. What matters is that you see the exercise through to the end, to the best of your ability; you have.
Finally, though you seem to have missed the instruction about splitting your page into framed compositions before you start, the organic perspective exercise looks solid. As per their increase in size, and consistent, shallow foreshortening, your boxes do a solid job of flowing through the page, carrying the intended illusion with them.
Next Steps:
Now, before I have you move on to the box challenge, I’d like to see 1 page of lines (split it in half, 1 half being superimposed lines, the other one ghosted lines), and 1 page of ellipses (again, 2 halves, 1 of the table of ellipses exercise, the other an ellipse exercise of your choosing (either ellipses in planes, or funnels). GL!