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6:21 PM, Thursday February 4th 2021

Disclaimer: I try to keep these critiques direct and to the point. It's not my intention to come off as harsh or detour you from drawing. I have a system that gets me to finish a critique in about 90 minutes and I follow it rather rigidly. Keep in mind that like you I am a beginner. These critiques are based of a: widely available critique guide, the lesson plan and its accompanied video companion, and my own experience from completing lesson 1 and revisiting the exercises as a regular warm-up. With that all out of the way LET'S DO THIS!

Superimposed lines: Good. A nice variety of lines with them being confidently put down with minimal to no fraying at the starting point of your lines. All good. We'll work on the fanning and overall accuracy though continued practice.

Ghosted Lines: Solid. The lines are confident with no wobble but we do have some slight arching and waviness. Be sure to rotate that page and focus on straight lines. It's fine to over and undershoot your lines at this stage. That will improve with time and practice.

Table of Ellipses: Solid. We have two properly constructed tables, full of circles and ellipses. They are drawn through twice, have that element of smoothness that we are looking for and are all touching with minimal overlapping. Jus be aware that you drew far more circles than you did ellipses. As you will find out it's much harder to get that even shape and to orientate them to have the same tilt over and over again when they are oblong ellipses. Don't shy away from practicing them in the future.

Ghosted Planes/Ellipses: Good. We got two full pages with a good variety of sizes and angles. I still see some of that waviness. Continue to to rotate that page, ghost your strokes, and from one confident motion from your shoulder put down your lines. Make suer that you plot your points for every single line that you create. The cross that bisects your planes appears to be missing them. The Ellipses are overall good with them being drawn through, smooth and only a couple instances of them bleeding out of the bounds of their plane.

Funnels: Solid. Take special care when setting up your funnel. We need that minor axis to be properly aligned in the middle of the funnel to get the exercise to work properly. Be sure to find a curve to trace whether it be a cup, bowl, or protractor. Again I would recommend to implement more oblong ellipses to the exercises when your revisit it. It's a good deal more challenging but you'll want the practice under your belt.

Plotted Perspective: Very Good. It's completed as instructed. Consider adding hatching to the front face of your boxes, using that trusty ruler next time.

Rough Perspective: Good. The boxes are all drawn through and you used a straight edge to create guidelines back towards the Vanishing Point. Line quality needs some work. No matter how complicated a problem may get be sure to always go back to the basics of creating nice straight lines. Make sure you get your vertical and horizontal lines straighter in the future. There should never be any tilt to those sets of lines. Try to get those horizontal lines to be parallel to the horizon line and those vertical lines to be perpendicular to the horizon line to make sturdier looking boxes.

Rotated Perspective: Solid. The drawing is kind of small and takes away a good deal of the difficulty. Be sure to make it larger next time and keep in mind that we are not meant to succeed at many of these exercises the first time that we attempt them. As for the image itself it's a good effort. The hatching is appreciated and the boxes are indeed rotating. Be sure that you are not using your wrist when creating these small lines.

Organic Perspective: Good. Again another exercise that we are not meant to succeed at. We'll learn more about the "Y" method of constructing boxes and working with 3 point perspective in the 250 box challenge. Be sure to experiment more with overlapping and adding line weight to your boxes silhouette in the future.

Overall Thoughts: Good. The work has been completed and all of the instructions have been followed. Be sure to work on straight lines over accurate lines in the early going.

Next Steps:

  • Continue practicing these exercises by implementing them into a 10 to 20 minute warm-up. Pay special attention to creating straight lines, and working with more oblong ellipses.

  • Complete the 250 box challenge.

  • Consider writing critiques for other students. Use this helpful guide (https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ)

That's all from me. Cheers and Happy Drawing!

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
10:55 AM, Friday February 5th 2021

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this! Some of this I already had figured out, but some of it I definitely hadn't realised (especially what you said about my circles/ellipses, that will definitely be one to work on!).

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