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7:49 AM, Thursday February 24th 2022

Welcome (back!) to drawabox, and congrats on completing this lesson. Before I take a look at it, let me address your question. The best way to do it is, of course, whatever way feels best to you, but for me, I like to lift my entire arm, rather than flicking or lifting my wrist. The latter is meant to be locked, anyway, so I’d rather not give my arm any mixed messages. Of course, see what works for you, and decide based on that. But the focus is on what feels right, rather than the result. Obviously, it’ll take some time until you’re able to nail this without overshooting, or stopping short of your mark. I hope that answers your question. Now, onto the submission.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re smooth, all lined up on the left, and of a consistent trajectory. They do seem to fray a little too early in their path, from time to time, so I’d be careful that I’m not drawing with my elbow, but you don’t need to stress about it too too much. The ghosted lines/planes look solid – I’m glad to see that you’ve not forgotten to plot some start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of the planes (most students do!)

The table of ellipses exercise is well done. Your ellipses are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. Regarding your rotations, see if, here too, you can lift your pen off the page at the end of them – it should get rid of those tails. The ellipses in planes do a good job of maintaining the smoothness/roundness of your prior ellipses, and even show some consideration towards the perspective needed of them – nicely done. The funnels, too, look solid, if at times a little misaligned. Do spend a little longer ghosting, to fix that, and consider increasing the size of your ellipses the further from the center you are – it’s a little more challenging, but it’ll take them to the next level.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean.

The rough perspective exercise starts off strong, and shows some solid improvement throughout the set. By the end, your convergences are in a good place, and, though it could stand to improve a little still, the linework is looking good, too.

The rotated boxes exercise is a little small (drawing big is something we heavily encourage – for every exercise, really, but especially for this one – as it’s an effective way of giving your brain some room to think), but its boxes are snug, and properly rotating. They look fairly good around back, too, though, of course, as we progress through the box challenge, and learn about how to go about constructing a box, a lot of the guesswork here will be replaced by some actual knowledge, and informed decisions – look forward to that.

Speaking of boxes, despite a foreshortening that is, at times, a little dramatic, the organic perspective exercise looks good. The boxes themselves are well constructed, and thanks to their sheer number, their overlaps, and their proper increase in size, they do a solid job of communicating the flow we’re after.

Next Steps:

I’ll be marking this lesson as complete, so you may head on over to the box challenge. GL!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
11:05 PM, Sunday February 27th 2022

Thank you!

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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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