Hi! I'm Junnie! Welcome to Drawabox and congratulations on finishing Lesson 1! Thank you for waiting! I'll be giving you feedback regarding your work now.

1. Lines

Superimposed Lines

• Fantastic growth from page 1 to page 2. Fraying (especially at the end point) is significantly less apparent in the second page of your exercise!

• Some minor fraying at the starting point which may cause issues down the line when using superimposed lines for adding line weight. Don't forget that it's okay to take as much time as you want to place the tip of your pen as our goal is to make all of our lines (and movement) intentional! (Just don't overthink too much or else you will lose your concentration)

• Fraying towards the end point is fine and to be expected at the start! Our goal at this point is straight, confident lines and I think you have that down! So now all that's left is to practice and get better. One technique that helped me get better is looking at the end point instead of the tip of my pen while drawing. Looking at the line makes me consciously correct my line trajectory which results in wavering (which is also present in your lines, mostly the longer ones).

• Your superimposed lines, in general, are very impressive! When you do it again for your warm-ups, I suggest adding more line length variation so your practice can be productive!

Ghosted Lines and Planes

• There's a lot more wavering and signs of course correction in your lines. A couple of lines also show undershooting. These could happen when you're focusing more on hitting the desired end point, which shouldn't be our priority at our current level. Remember that there are three different levels for ghosting (level 1: straight lines; level 2: straight lines that pass through the end point but overshoot; level 3: straight lines that end exactly at the end point). There's no need to rush to level 3 as you'll naturally reach that point with more practice. It's better to have our mistakes be seen than to hide them, since mistakes are part of the learning process.

• I also see a lot of light marks because of ghosting! This was most definitely unintentional but I do think it was worth pointing out!

• Great variety of line lengths! Keep that up! I also love how you maximized your paper space for the ghosted planes exercise!

• There's a bit of variation in your line weight, as well. If it isn't intentional, it could possibly mean two things: (1) your fineliner is running out of ink or is defective, or (2) you're subconsciously applying uneven pressure to your pen while drawing. I hope you can figure out the reason for that as it might impact your future exercises that place a bit more importance on line weight!

• I also like how you improvised a new exercise by doing superimposed lines on your ghosted lines! This will be very helpful for exercises that require line weight addition such as the 250 box challenge!

2. Ellipses

Table of Ellipses

• Your ellipses are great! You did an excellent job drawing through them smoothly and confidently! There are still some issues with symmetry but that should improve through practice (there's actually a subtle improvement from page 1 to page 2, I think)

• Most of your large ellipses were drawn within their set boundaries so there weren't many issues with undershooting and overshooting. However, the same can't be said for your smaller ellipses. Quite a few of them don't touch edges they should be touching. Drawing smaller ellipses with your arms might be a bit more difficult because most people's arms aren't used to making smaller, precise movements, but this should get better with practice! Don't forget to stretch regularly and loosen up your arms before drawing! I suggest using more of the empty space in the other frames to practice!

• Another point for improvement is the variety in ellipse degrees! You did a good job varying the sizes by dividing the page unevenly, but the ellipse degrees you drew were more on the thicker side. Try to draw narrower ellipses, as well. In general, draw narrower, big ellipses, more varied small ellipses, and a lot more big circular ellipses.

• I noticed you tried to vary your degree rotation, too, but in the end there were only a few that went past 45 degrees. Try to be more mindful of variety when doing exercises, so you don't accidentally neglect some areas for improvement!

Ellipses in Planes

• Your ellipses are still really good, overall! However, deformation (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/deformed) is a lot more prevalent in this exercise. This is what the TA said about deformation in his critique of my own L1 homework: "This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything."

• Try visualizing the ellipse you want to dry and tracing over it during the ghosting step. This might help you improve your accuracy! Just make sure that the muscle memory guides your motion during the drawing step, not your eyes.

• I love that you marked your own mistakes. That shows your ability to give yourself feedback, which will be vital in your personal growth! However, don't forget that being too critical of yourself is also a bad thing. You can always post on Discord to ask for other's critique and get a second opinion. I also suggest using a different color to mark those things so they don't obscure the mistake.

Ellipses in Funnels

• I think your ellipses here are looking a lot more consistent and better! Great job!

• However, your funnels have very minor misalignment (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/notaligned) issues. Try to be more mindful of this as you visualize the ellipse you're trying to draw while ghosting. For reference, I think the only funnel without any noticeable misalignment is the second one to the left rotated at around 35 degrees.

• The misalignment might also be because of incorrect curve alignment. I'm not really sure because there's no center line. Try to draw a center line perpendicular to the funnel length and align the highest points of your curves there. The center line will also as a reminder for you to vary your funnel widths. Doing so would let you practice drawing ellipses of more shapes and sizes!

• I think you're already doing a great job with the standard exercise so I suggest trying the more advanced version Comfy showed. You can start varying the ellipse degrees within a funnel from smaller degrees and smoothly progressing to larger degrees as you move away from the center line.

• Overall, like your lines, your ellipses are actually really great, but still have some room for improvement!

3. Boxes

Plotted Perspective

• Excellent work with this exercise! It's very clean and legible, mostly due to the line quality and line weight consistency! I think in the future, you can choose to add some line weight to the edges of the boxes, too, to improve their visibility and ability to convey a 3D shape!

• This is a very small nitpick but there are vertical lines that aren't perpendicular to the horizon line, but that really doesn't matter in the long run as we won't be using rulers so much!

• I also think you could have added more variety to your box configurations, such as making more pizza box-like boxes or more thin, tall boxes. Try to keep variety in mind when you do all of these exercises again in the future (either as warm-up or as a re-visiting of this lesson)

Rough Perspective

• Same issues with your ghosted lines as before but since the lines are shorter, overshooting is more prevalent than undershooting (which is actually better). Refer to my comments in the ghosted lines section (particularly, the one about the different ghosting levels)!

• It's good that you draw through all of your boxes, meaning you drew the back face, as well! Drawing the back face will help us visualize the boxes as 3D objects in space instead of just a set of lines on a 2D surface!

• Your estimations are all pretty good! Some are even spot-on! All that's left is to practice this even more!

• I like how you added variety to vanishing point and box positioning! I think you could still draw even more box shapes, but other than that, you did an amazing job with this exercise!

Rotated Boxes

• I think you did a great job conveying an overall spherical shape! You also did an amazing job keeping the corners of the boxes close together.

• The left side boxes became deformed/longer. Carefully plotting each corner point with their VPs in mind should help with this. Don't worry about taking too much time as our goal is to execute each line to the best of our abilities (as I mentioned before). Partitioning the page in your hand during the plotting process could also prove to be useful for making a more symmetrical shape!

• The boxes just look like a set of lines instead of actual 3D shapes. I think this might be because of the lack of variation in line weight (the external edges aren't thickened).

• I think your hatching lines are also looking good, but because the edges aren't thickened, they all just mesh together to form black space instead of representing faces of boxes. Take a look at this image and take note of how they used line weights and hatching lines (https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/9a2db6a0.jpg)

• You're lacking four boxes in each corner. I assume you didn't draw them because of the perceived lack of space but do try to complete the exercise no matter how bad it might look! Try to carefully plan your rotation progression to avoid issues like this when you're doing this exercise again in the future!

• I think you made a lot of effort to complete this exercise so no revisions are necessary. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. If you plan to do it again, make sure to keep the above points in mind.

Organic Perspective

• I like how much variety there is in line paths for this exercise! As usual, your work looks very clean!

• Try to experiment more with using box spacing and sizes to convey depth and distance better!

• Some frames lack variation in box rotations, but the others are really good (especially the second page, middle frame)

• Your boxes actually look really nice but I'm sure they'll get even better as you do the 250 box challenge!

Overall, I think this is a very solid submission! Your lines and ellipses are no joke! In that sense, I think it's even a bigger challenge for you to improve, but don't give up and always strive towards more consistency! Most of the mistakes I pointed out are very minor so make an extra effort to keep them in mind moving forward! I'm more than happy to mark your Lesson 1 as complete! I hope to see more of you around in the Discord server! Don't forget that you can ask the rest of us for some advice/critique while you're working, and that you're not in this alone!

Welcome to draw a box! you have done a really good job. There are almost no mistakes, and those made were corrected.

Keep up the good work!