Hi there, TA Meta here to look over your work. Before we get started, I want to address the bleed through - if this is a problem for you then it may be better to only use one side of the paper as it's very distracting to try and critique. If you're worried about wasting paper in your sketchbook, then you could use printer paper or draw on the other side with pencil in your 50% fun sessions.
Let's start with your superimposed lines. You've done a good job here lining your pen up with the starting point which has minimised fraying, unfortunately you've focused far too much on accuracy and as a result, your lines are wobbly. Make sure you're fully engaging your shoulder and executing with confidence, not allowing your brain to micromanage your strokes.
Next, your ghosted lines are fairly straight and confident though there is a little bit of arcing going on that you'll want to work on counteracting. In addition, I noticed you only stuck to fairly short lines, so make sure that you're also practicing longer strokes, as this is a good way to ensure you're using your shoulder. Your ghosted planes are at a similar level of confidence and whilst they have the same arcing problem, are generally quite well done.
Next, your tables of ellipses are off to a good start with lots of ellipses packed in there. You are getting a little loose with the ellipses however, so make sure you're trying to keep them in the space they're allotted while trying to keep them butted up against one another. Make sure that you're also ghosting out your ellipses and executing them confidently - this doesn't mean executing them as quickly as possible, just as fast as you need to eliminate wobble, you may need to experiment with your pace to achieve this.
Onto your ellipses in planes and whilst you've correctly prioritised flow over accuracy here, it does feel like you have somewhat rushed the execution, again, this may be something you need to experiment with your pace to tighten up.
Finally, your funnels are actually quite well done for the most part, notwithstanding the previously mentioned issues. There are some instances where they're skewed off and you've gotten a bit loose with the spacing. However, several of your funnels are quite well aligned to the minor axis.
Your plotted perspective is looking pretty good, though you've missed a couple of the rear verticals, and in some cases drawn the vertical down to a different converging line to the rest of your box, so just keep an eye on that.
Onwards to your rough perspective and you've made an effort to get your verticals perpendicular and horizontals parallel to the horizon line, which is good to see. I did notice quite a lack of confidence in your lines here and in some cases, reverting to chicken scratch. Every single line that you draw in Drawabox should be planned, ghosted, and executed with confidence. If you're starting to feel your focus slipping, make sure you take a break rather than push on and risk being less thorough with your work.
Next, your rotated boxes are really quite hard to read as you seem to have drawn them entirely from your wrist (judging by the heaviness of your line weight here). You've also drawn it extremely small, we encourage students to draw as large as possible in order to give their brains space to work through the kinds of problems we're presenting them with. From what I can tell, you've tried to keep the gaps between your boxes consistent, which is good to see, but I honestly can't really offer any further comment.
Finally, your organic perspective is showing some promise in terms of conveying depth in the scene by varying the scale of your boxes. You might have missed the instruction here to draw frames like you did in the rough perspective exercise, this is a good way to block out your composition and create a restricted space in which to explore the 3Dness of your boxes. Again, I'm seeing signs of rushing and chicken scratching here - remember that each line of your box is an individual line that needs to be planned out and correcting mistakes as a kneejerk reaction is something we heavily discourage as these corrections are rarely planned out as the original line was. It is particularly important to learn to live with our mistakes, as correcting in this way can undermine the solidity of our forms and draws attention to the mistake we made in the first place.
Next Steps:
Before you move on, I want to see:
One more page of rough perspective - Try to keep those lines confident.
One more attempt at the rotated boxes - Draw large and confident!
One more page of organic perspective - Make sure you draw out your frames and vary up the size of your boxes.
Thank you for the critique. The only question I have is will I use up another credit when redoing the homework?
No, you will not use up another credit, but make sure you post that additional work as a reply to the critique where Meta assigned it. Don't post it as a new submission, and don't post it as a reply to me.
Here's my second attempt. I have to admit I'm getting worse at the rotated boxes every time I do it. This is the 3rd attempt and probably the worse looking. I changed pens as well to avoid the bleeding.
I'm glad to see the rotated perspective is larger - we're not looking for you to nail this, I was looking for improved line confidence because I know you can do it, that much is evident from your ghosted lines and planes in the original submission. There's less chicken scratching in this version which is good to see, but I did notice a lot of reinforcing of your lines, which is drawing attention to your mistakes and making your work look needlessly messy. Before you draw any line in Drawabox, you need to stop, plan what you're going to do (with dots if need be), ghost that line until the line feels natural, then and only then, execute it with confidence.
Confidence does not necessarily mean speed, however for beginners, a faster speed usually enables them to execute confidently as it doesn't give their brain time to micromanage the muscle movements - this is part of the goal of ghosting our lines, to give our muscles an idea of what to expect before we do it for real. Your lines definitely won't be accurate at first, nor should you expect them to be, because for now a confident lines is far more workable than a wobbly, inaccurate one.
I'm glad to see you've drawn the frames around your organic perspective compositions. It does seem like you were afraid to overlap the boxes though, which is one of the ways we can convey depth in this exercise. That said, you've got a good amount of variation in the size of your boxes which is starting to approach this sense of depth. Whilst the lines on this are much less wobbly, it does feel like you've rushed to draw the boxes. The best piece of advice I got when I first went through lesson 1 was to treat each line of your box like their own exercise - that is, putting the time and planning into them that I needed to make them straight and to figure out where the next line should go in order to create the convergences.
Finally, your rough perspective is actually the best one here. There's still significant amounts of arcing in your lines but this is muscle memory that you'll be able to work out in the 250 box challenge. It is because this last exercise is so much better executed than the others that I'm going to allow you to move onto the 250 box challenge with the warning that you take your time to draw your boxes. Whilst we encourage students to draw at their own pace, I thought it might be important for you to know that even though I've done my 250 boxes and have a good idea of how they work, I still take 5-10 minutes to draw each one.
Next Steps:
As stated, you need to take your time to slow down and think through your lines. Feel free to move onto the 250 box challenge.
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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