Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

1:07 PM, Friday April 3rd 2020

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I did all the assignments with a 0.5mm fine liner, but some may look like I used ballpoint pen because the pen was starting to run out of ink. (Or I'm pressing too hard, still learning how to handle them correctly)

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2:18 AM, Monday April 6th 2020

Hi I'll be handling your Lesson 1 critique.

Fineliners can be tricky to work with but well worth it once you get them under your control. Like anything though there are occasional duds.

Starting off in the Lines section your super imposed lines as well as your ghosted lines and planes are looking good. They're smooth and confident showing that you're applying the ghosted method correctly and making sure to let your muscle memory take over rather then letting your brain course correct the line as you create it. You're not always hitting your intended stopping point but with more mileage your accuracy will improve, right now smooth straight lines are your priority and you're nailing it so far.

Moving on to your Ellipses, I'm happy to see that in this exercise as well as your planes exercise you aren't afraid to experiment with shapes and sizes. By doing this you'll help your understanding of space and how these shapes behave inside of it. Overall your ellipses in the table exercise are looking nice and smooth, they do loosen up a bit in the planes exercise as you try and fit them in the boundaries you created but they will tighten up and you'll get more accurate as you practice this exercise as your warm up. In the funnels exercise I can tell you're trying to keep the central minor axis dividing the ellipses equally, great work you're not too far off and it's a very common mistake for people to forget this idea while doing this exercise.

On to your Boxes, it's clear you're understanding the concepts being introduced to you in the lesson so far. Your rough perspective boxes are converging in the general area of the vanishing point and your horizontal and vertical lines are laid down correctly. You're getting a little bit of wobbling here but it's normal for people to slip up on some of the previous techniques when working with new ones, just keep in mind that you want to make confident lines after ghosting always. These last 2 exercises are meant to be challenging for students and introduce some tricky concepts but you managed to get some good results. Your Rotated boxes have a nice amount of rotation and you're managing to keep them evenly spaced, I feel like the boxes up top could be rotated a bit more when you get towards the corners. In the organic boxes exercise your line quality does start to suffer a bit but you covered the reasons for that so no worries. It's good to see that you're making distant boxes smaller, and closer boxes larger, be careful when putting more rectangular boxes close to less extended boxes as it can make some areas look a little flat.

Overall you did a great job and I think you showed a good understanding of what was being asked here. I have no problems marking this lesson as complete and I'm sure you'll refine your construction process in the 250 Box Challenge.

Good luck!

Next Steps:

Move on to the 250 Box Challenge before heading on to Lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:07 PM, Monday April 6th 2020

Thanks Nihlex! I'm 60 boxes into the 250 box challenge, and already seeing some improvement I think. I should be ready to submit in 2 weeks.

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