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6:47 PM, Monday April 24th 2023

LINES:

 Your superimposed lines look pretty good! You do have a bit of wobbling, mostly on the longer lines, where it seems your pen slipped off course and you tried to bring it back to the original line, whereas it would be better to just let the line go where it wants to go as long as you keep it smooth and consistent. It’s not a big deal and I did the exact same thing starting out - it’s just something to be aware of.

 Your ghosted lines look fantastic! They’re almost all very straight and smooth - a couple of them seem to arc a little bit which is normal when first starting out. It’s subtle enough to where I can guess that you’re probably still drawing from your shoulder like you’re supposed to, so it may be that your hand just naturally tries to draw in a slight arc, which can be corrected by trying to consciously arc just very slightly in the other direction than the one your hand wants to go naturally. Your composition is extremely thorough and filled-out, although I would recommend experimenting with longer lines since most of these seem to be more-or-less the same length.

 Your ghosted planes look really good too - although it looks like you may have forgotten to place reference dots for the ends of your internal lines (specifically the ones that don’t go from corner to corner). It’s the exact same mistake I made when starting out, but it’s important to make sure you put those down so you can gauge your ability to connect the two dots instead of drawing a line with no specific goal points that it’s trying to reach. Also similarly to the ghosted lines, a lot of your planes seem to be similarly shaped, most of them falling into a basic square or diamond shape, so I would definitely recommend trying out more varied shapes with those.

ELLIPSES:

 Your table of ellipses is filled very thoroughly, but the biggest problem I see that that a lot of your ellipses seem to be thrown in fairly at random, rather than attempting to draw the same ellipse several times in one box. For example, the second box down on the right side of the first page has lots of different varied shapes and sizes of ellipses, whereas it should be filled with about four of those bigger ellipses you have in there, nestled side to side. It’s important to know what kind of ellipse you’re trying to draw in each box so that you can gauge how well you’re executing your goal. The same problem occurs several other places like the top-left and bottom-right boxes in the second page, so it would definitely be a good idea to try again, this time with the intent of filling each box as full as you can of the same size and shape of ellipses (not the same size and shape in every box, obviously, but all of the ellipses in any given box should try to match each other, with the exception of the smaller ones you draw in the extra space after the big ones are already done). A similar principle should be employed with the ellipses drawn in the wavy-line boxes - it’s okay to do different sizes there because the box the ellipses are going in is irregularly shaped, but you should still strive to keep your ellipses at the same angle and degree in any given box. And finally, again it would be good to experiment with some more variation - a lot of your ellipses seem to be facing up and to the right, and have a similar width across several different boxes. Not all of them, obviously, but it’s always good to try out with different angles, degrees, and sizes in different boxes (although again, these things should aim to be consistent in any one given box).

 Your ellipses in planes do seem to suffer from a fair bit of distortion and stretching to try and reach every side of the plane. It’s a super common problem, and I had a bit of distortion in my first ellipses in planes, too. It’s important to remember that touching all the sides is not as important as drawing a smooth, consistent ellipse. It can be confusing to try and figure out how to touch the sides and still draw a symmetrical, smooth ellipse, so sometimes it helps to step back and rotate your page around to see if there’s a better way to draw the ellipse than what you originally planned. Obviously you should try to keep your ellipses even and symmetrical and touching all four sides, but remember that if your ellipses do go outside the lines a little bit, that’s still not nearly as serious of an issue as if your ellipses grow or shrink at one end to fit inside (making a sort of weird-egg-shape) or if they stretch and distort to try and reach every side (making a weird shape more akin to a quadrilateral than an ellipse). This is one I struggled a lot with too, but like Uncomfortable said, it’s really just a lesson in calming down and analyzing the page to find the best option.

Your funnels aren’t bad at all, but a lot of your ellipses do seem to be the same width at the starting point and at the edges - remember that as your ellipses get bigger, they should get wider too, as if you were directly scaling them up in something like photoshop. If you want to experiment with different degrees as you go out from the starting point too, that’s always useful but not required. Just make sure that if your ellipses get taller, they should get wider too! And don’t get me wrong, you have done this some, but it would be a good idea to make the width differences a little more noticeable because they’re a little too minor at the moment.

BOXES:

 Your plotted perspective looks great! I don’t really have anything to add here. Great work! It does look like you forgot to draw a couple of the back lines on the top of one of the boxes in the lone section on the left of the page, but it’s not really a big deal since you clearly understand 2-point perspective and know why you should be going for. Just make sure to double check your boxes and ensure you’ve drawn all the lines!

 Your rough perspective looks pretty good - it’s normal to miss the vanishing point, especially with boxes further away from it, so it helps to make sure that you’re ghosting your lines all the way back to the vanishing point even if you aren’t actually drawing them that far. It helps keep you on track and sort of writes the path to the VP into your short-term muscle memory. A lot of your boxes do seem be a similar depth though, so it would be good to experiment with making your lines (the ones that aim back towards the VP) longer so can try to work with deeper shapes, instead of all of boxes having the same length of depth lines.

 Your rotated boxes are okay, but I would recommend squeezing them in more tightly to one another. It’s tempting to try and separate them further so you can see what you’re doing better, but it results in a box that doesn’t really line up with the others. A good example is how your three boxes on the left-most side of the page align with one another - the center box should be furthest left with the boxes directly above and below it angling slightly more towards the center. It’s very important to keep your boxes squeezed in tightly, so that you can gauge the directions that the lines should be going in relation to the lines that are right next to them - I won’t ask you to redo it because nobody expects you to get Rotated Boxes right the first time, but make sure to incorporate it into your warmups going forward so you can keep practicing, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to use Uncomfortable’s example homework page as a reference for what you should be aiming for. It does also look like you may have forgotten to draw a box on the bottom right of the page, so be sure that (not counting the squares as the ends of the page) your page that 25 boxes when you’re done. Your depth lines also seem a little inconsistent, which is perfectly normal starting out, but something helpful to remember is that the depth lines (the ones that seem to go “back” deeper into the page) should be aiming for a hypothetical vanishing point at the very middle of your center box in the middle of the page.

Your Organic Perspective looks pretty good! It looks like you got a little mixed up in the top set on the second page, where your boxes form more of a peanut-shape instead of having the path intersect line in your line behind them. It’s not a huge deal because you clearly know how your boxes should behave and what path they should go, but make sure to check and see if your boxes are following the right path before you draw them, because in that set it seems like the boxes that are closer to the viewer are all at the bottom, whereas if they followed the line you drew there would have been some closer boxes at the bottom left and top right, and some boxes further away at the bottom right and top left. Again it’s not a big deal because this is the only set where it seems that happens, but it’s something to be aware of.

Next Steps:

All in all I think you’ve gotten off to a great start! Your biggest point of struggle right now seems to be ellipses, and that’s okay because ellipses are confusing. But just to make sure you understand what you should be going for, I’m going to assign you a couple of revisions:

Please complete:

1 more page of Table of Ellipses

1 more page of Ellipses in Planes (making sure to put those reference dots down for your internal lines)

1 more page of Funnels

After you’ve completed those, reply to this comment with a link to them and I’ll let you know what I think!

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:22 PM, Sunday May 7th 2023

Hey so sorry abt the late reply???? but thanks a bunch 4 taking the time to critique my lesson 1 i rlly appreciate it! You definitely pointed out several things I missed ll make sure to do those revisons. Thanks again^^

1:08 AM, Tuesday May 9th 2023

Sure thing! I’m sorry you had to wait SOOO long for a critique on lesson one!! Just reply to this thread with the revisions when you’re done and I’ll check them out!

10:51 PM, Wednesday May 10th 2023
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Staedtler Pigment Liners

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These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

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