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3:37 PM, Friday August 12th 2022
Welcome to drawabox, and congrats on completing Lesson 1. Let’s take a look at it, shall we?
Starting off, your superimposed lines look great. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. I’m glad to see that you’ve attempted some arcing lines, too, though they should be a little bigger, to properly ensure that you’re using the shoulder for them. The ghosted lines/planes look quite confident. I notice, however, that you’ve not plotted any start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes. Please do. All lines need these, because all lines are drawn using the ghosting method (which requires start/end points to ghost to and from).
The table of ellipses exercise looks fantastic; there’s a lot of confidence on display here. Your ellipses are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. You might consider a greater variety of degrees/angles, for your next attempt, however. Similarly, try to draw through your ellipses a full 2 times, rather than settling for 1 and change. The ellipses in planes look great. They do a good job of maintaining their prior smoothness/roundness, despite these more complicated frames. Keep that up! The funnels, too, are well done. You’ll struggle a little, sometimes, but that’s almost certainly due to the size of your ellipses. The smaller a mark, the harder it is to engage the shoulder for it, so consider drawing a little bigger.
The plotted perspective exercise is well done, though you should’ve used a ruler for the hatching lines.
The rough perspective exercise starts off a little lacking, but it doesn’t take long at all for it to improve. By the end, your convergences are on-point, and, save for that one instance of automatic reinforcing, your linework is solid, too.
Nice job on the rotated boxes exercise. It’s a little small, but its boxes are snug, and they do a good job of rotating. I’ll add, by the way, that drawing big here is not only so that you can be a little more confident, but also so that you can give your brain some proper room to think through its problems – particularly important with complicated exercises like this one! The instinct, when you’re overwhelmed, is to draw small, but you should be doing the opposite.
The organic perspective exercise looks good. The automatic reinforcing habit is a problem here, too, but not so much as to harm the actual flow – just my eyes… I also notice that you’ve not drawn start/end points for all of your lines, here. Please do. It’s hard to think of both the angle, and the length of your line, as you’re drawing it. As such, we commit the first 2 to a point on the page, and then can focus all of our efforts into ghosting, and executing confidently.
Next Steps:
I’ll be marking this lesson as complete, so you may head on over to the box challenge. GL!
Ellipse Master Template
This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.
I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.
No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.