Hello Elias,

Congratulations on finishing Lesson 2! In my opinion it's one of the most difficult lessons ( so far :) ) but you did well and managed to complete it, I hope my critique will help you when you decide to tackle the next lessons and exercises.

Starting off with

Thinking in 3D

Arrows

Most lines flow smoothly across your page, but there is some visible wobbling at the edges of the page. I'm assuming this is because the spirals, holes and little level between the sketchbook and table you use make it uncomfortable to draw in those areas.

I recommend that you draw your arrows, and similar exercises, more contained within the center of the page, this way you'll be able to move your hand more comfortably, and you would use more of your page and leave less blank spaces this way.

If you rest your hand on the page, you can also try not doing it at all and using the hover hand method instead.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/2/hoverhand

It'll create no friction or drag, so it might be easier to make confident lines at the edges of the paper this way, but keep in mind it can make you tired more easily.

Onto your actual arrows, you clearly understood the purpose of the exercise and how arrows move in a 3D space, but you forgot to close the edges of some arrows like the bottom right one on the second page. You have minor problems with size consistency of your arrows, more noticeable at the overlaps, and a hard time with shading the overlaps. For example, at the top left arrow on the second page the shading looks like it's on both sides of the overlap, which makes it confusing as to how the arrow is turning in space.

Always shade only one side of the overlap. You also have no reinforced lineweight at the bends.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/4/step4

If you have trouble remembering which part of the arrow is in front, you can try using lineweight before the shading to decide what side is closest to the viewer.

Nitpick of the time is that your arrows are very similar, try some arrows that overlap more, with minimal to no negative space on their overlaps during your warm ups, it's really difficult to understand at first but it'll improve your sense of 3D space greatly.

Organic Forms/Sausages

Good job on keeping your sausages mostly like... Sausages. You also did a great job keeping your ellipses and contours within your organic forms. Some of your sausages face some deformity and elongated ends or pointy ones that you tried to fix, and seeing that you have stray lines that don't connect completely makes me think you're trying to ghost your sausages already.

That's great, but some people get worse results when they try this, so in your warm ups you can try both ways, ghosting and no ghosting, and see which one works better for you. It can also be simply a case of more practice needed, so just keep practicing and experimenting.

Your minor axis and lines wobble a bit, remember they should also be confidently drawn, don't forget that you're allowed to ghost as many times as possible before making a mark, and you can try drawing faster if you're going too slow.

Some of your sausages don't have variation of ellipses' degrees. You do try some sausages with both ends facing away, and I think this is where you have the best ellipse variation, but in other types of sausages not so much. Although I have to point out that I believe you improve upon this in your second page, even though you have sausages with ellipses there, I'm not sure why.

Also I think on some ellipses you drew more like 1.25 instead of two times or something? Remember to draw twice through ellipses.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/drawingthrough

I believe a visual reference is always better than a simple explanation, which is why I've gathered some photos that might help you understand sausage rotations a bit better than my rambling.

https://imgur.com/rXLBxSg

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871234269741066/790354487055351818/QTEqgJa.png

Photos by user 'Slate', and often linked by Optimus.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426350154426220545/IMG_5771.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426350217726656522/IMG_5772.JPG

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/368871256067670027/426350263884972032/IMG_5773.JPG

Texture and Detail

Texture Analysis

Really good work, especially on your last texture. You clearly are starting to understand the purpose of cast shadows. But remember that cast shadows must be completely black, they can't have white spots like your crumpled paper does, otherwise it breaks the illusion of these being single solid shadows.

Your gradient shifts too harshly too fast, it's very easy to spot the black bar and white bar on the last column of your work, this type of harsh transition wouldn't be possible in the real world with the type of "lightsource" we're trying to apply to this study.

And you actually forgot to finish one of the gradients.

Just to finish, it's recommended to approach shadow shapes like this, it creates more dynamic shadows this way, instead of by drawing just lines, which you do a lot for your textures.

https://m.imgur.com/M9JJfr4

Texture Dissections

You're off to a good start by trying to apply light and shadow to a cylindrical shape, by diminishing the amount of detail at the center, and also by breaking the silhouette. You don't go that extra mile though for every texture, some textures like the broken concrete or bricks, would have benefited from this greatly.

It's hard to ignore that cast shadows in this exercise get sidetracked, and you end up relying more on drawing outlines and negative space to convey your textures, which is why it gets dificult to create a nice gradient and focal points of detail. You also have trouble wrapping textures around your forms. Ones that stand out the most to me are drywall + plant cells and "sack(?)".

I believe you would have benefited more from taking more time with each individual texture, since many feel rushed and could use more polishing, right now many of them feel unfinished.

Here, if you scroll a bit through this page you will find some renders of tree bark on spheres and a cylinder, you can also search more on your own and find more resources of textures rendered on spheres and cylinders.

https://www.vertexlibrary.com/hypertrees-bark-pinewood

Construction

Form intersections

One thing I notice right away is that your line confidence seems to drop a bit, and you don't draw through your ellipses. This makes me believe you didn't ghost as many times as you needed, and instead rushed the exercise just wanting to get all the forms done with and jump into the intersections.

But remember that just like in ghosted planes in L1, every single line has to be confidently made and thought through before you put your pen to the paper, don't focus on the entirety of the form and try to get it over with as quickly as you can, we need to give each line the same amount of time and care before doing it.

Continuing, I believe your biggest problem when approaching this exercise is that you draw forms that are stretched out, this is especially true for your pyramids and cylinders. But you have clear divergences on your boxes as well.

This breaks the illusion that all of these forms exist within the same plane, it's best to stick to forms that are equilateral to avoid this problem.

Try adding pyramids, cones and cylinders to your warm ups, for your pyramids don't try to guess where the center line is, do it like ghosted planes by connecting both diagonals, that'll give you the center and where your line should be so you can connect the sides of your pyramid more accurately. And for your cylinders remember that the ellipse that's furthest away from the viewer has to have a wider degree.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/5/cylinders

https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/5/degree

For your intersections I'll simply link you Optimus' handy guide for intersections.

https://imgur.com/a/6Inx5Bz

Organic form intersections

I commend you for understanding the purpose of this exercise and making your sausages wrap around each other in a believable way, but while you start out well, as you go on your shapes start to become too long and complex, especially at the top of your pile.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/9/complicated

You're also having trouble with your shadows, and not having them follow the form of the sausage they're being cast on to.

https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/9/shadows

Your page is very crowded, while that in and of itself isn't a terrible thing, it quickly makes your homework page very difficult to analyze, and clearly it confused you too, as it's difficult to tell what's going on with so many lines.

In the future, when you tackle this exercise in your warm ups and in next lessons, remember to keep your forms simple, and don't crowd the page, you'll get more out of it if you can tell what's going on.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think you understood the purpose of these exercises and tried your best, but you could have gotten much more out of it if you had been more patient and given each exercise the time it needs. If it takes you 20 minutes, it takes you 20 minutes, if it takes you 6 hours, it takes you 6 hours, if it takes you a month, it takes you a month.

Don't try to rush, it'll only hinder your progress.

I won't be passing you onto Lesson 3 just yet since one exercise is unfinished. I feel like revisions might be unnecessary since even if you committed mistakes you understood the purpose of the exercises. And your revisions for boxes will already help with the problems you face in form intersections.

Please reply with your finished page of the Texture analysis exercise.