Starting with your cylinders around arbitrary minor axes, when it comes to the aspects of this exercise itself - that is, considering the degree shift from one end of the cylinder to the other, ensuring variation in the rates of foreshortening, and being sure to check on the minor axis alignment consistently and fastidiously, you've done a great job. You've applied all of the instructions well, and so you've done a good job when it comes to all that this exercise focuses upon.

Where I am seeing issues however is in the application of instructions from earlier in the course - specifically in regards to markmaking. Currently it appears that your markmaking generally is quite hesitant. This isn't actually as obvious as it is for many students, but what I'm seeing is actually the very subtle wavering that comes from a student who has practiced drawing slow-and-steady. They achieve great accuracy as a result of their practice, but tend to still fall short on confidence, resulting in the kind of slight wavering that will still have a negative impact on the solidity of the forms you construct. This is also present a little more noticeably in your ellipses, where it results in a struggle to maintain an even shape.

Remember - as stressed in Lesson 1, every mark we freehand throughout this course must be executed using the ghosting method, which specifically means breaking the process down into three distinct phases:

  • Planning, where we identify the nature of the mark we wish to make, plot out start/end points if they're relevant (in the sense that for an ellipse we wouldn't do that, but we'd still hold to the spirit of identifying the specific kind of mark we wish to make), and rotating the page to a comfortable angle of approach for that mark.

  • Preparing, where we actually ghost through the drawing motion so as to get comfortable with it and allow our arm to familiarize itself with the action it is going to have to perform. You can think of this step as passing the "marching orders" from command (the brain) to the soldier (the arm).

  • Execution, where using a confident stroke, we make the mark we've prepared. Keep in mind that it is not the soldier's responsibility to concern himself with whether the orders given were correct or not (setting the geneva conventions aside for now). It is his responsibility to execute - and so the second our pen touches the page, we push through and execute the stroke, allowing any mistakes in our preparation to result in a mistake on the page.

This can be reviewed here, but I expect I've gone somewhat overboard already - you probably just needed a reminder that the ghosting method should be applied to each and every freehanded stroke.

Ultimately the same overall critique applies equally to your cylinders in boxes - you've done a great job in applying the instructions for the exercise itself, but your linework definitely needs a review of the concepts from Lesson 1. This exercise is really all about helping develop students' understanding of how to construct boxes which feature two opposite faces which are proportionally square, regardless of how the form is oriented in space. We do this not by memorizing every possible configuration, but rather by continuing to develop your subconscious understanding of space through repetition, and through analysis (by way of the line extensions).

Where the box challenge's line extensions helped to develop a stronger sense of how to achieve more consistent convergences in our lines, here we add three more lines for each ellipse: the minor axis, and the two contact point lines. In checking how far off these are from converging towards the box's own vanishing points, we can see how far off we were from having the ellipse represent a circle in 3D space, and in turn how far off we were from having the plane that encloses it from representing a square.

In applying those line extensions as consistently and fastidiously as you have here, you've ensured that you were armed with ample information by which the adjust your approach for the next page's worth. It is through this that we hone our instincts and rewire the way in which our brains understand proportion on the page, as it relates to proportion in 3D space.

I will leave you to review the linework/ghosting stuff, but will go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.