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1:48 PM, Tuesday February 16th 2021

Hi Ksilenomen! Hopefully my critique can be of some help to you.

I know it's fine to use a ballpoint pen starting out, but I really do recommend using fine liner/felt tip going forward. It makes a difference. And it makes a difference in how much you'll learn and be able to take away from these lessons, so not using the recommended materials can be considered a bit of a waste of your own time. Just a reminder, now onto the real stuff:

Lines

For the most part the superimposed lines look confident, but make sure you line up your starting point so you don't get "fraying at both ends". I see some wobble, and arching in the superimposed lines, but that looks a lot better in the ghosted lines. Same for your ghosted planes, overall confident lines but a bit of wobble and arching here and there.

Ellipses

Good job! You're drawing through them 2-3 times and no big problems of shakiness. The major issues I can see concern alignment/angle. Practice this by trying to keep the angle of all ellipses in a panel of your table consistent.

For the funnels: make sure that ellipses are properly aligned with the minor axis going straight through, cutting them in two equal halves, with the major axis perpendicular.

Some of the ellipses in planes seem shaky though, remember: confidence > accuracy.

Boxes

Rotated boxes: you did too many :) There should be 5 horizontally and 5 vertically. Not a big problem but always try to make a point out of following the instructions exactly. What I do think is a problem here is that you're making them quite shallow and in the extreme corners boxes start facing away from us.

In the rough perspective your line start to look a bit less confident, but you seem to follow through and not re-draw lines that much, good job! About re-drawing lines to fix them: don't. It doesn't fix a line, it only makes for a messy drawing. What we want is a clear drawing, where we can see our own mistakes.

Overall your lines do look better in the ghosted lines and planes than in for example the organic perspective or rough perspective. This is not that odd since when you start drawing boxes you're not drawing lines. Try to separate these concerns. Every line must go through the three stages:

  1. Planning (making dots, deciding where the line should be drawn),

  2. Ghosting (going through the motion, preparing yourself physically) and

  3. Executing (actually making the planned and prepared pen stroke).

Your only place to decide wheter the line will be confident or not is in step 1 and 2. As soon as the pen hits the paper in step three all you can do is follow through on that trajectory and be confident you made the proper preparations. No backsies!

All in all: Great job!

Next Steps:

Conquer the 250 boxes!

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.
1:47 PM, Thursday February 18th 2021

Hello! Thanks a lot for the critique.

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

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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