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10:12 PM, Friday September 18th 2020

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Your superimposed lines are off to a good start. You are keeping a defined starting point on these and while you have more significant wavering on longer lives and curves that is pretty normal and will get better with mileage. I am noticing a bit of wobble in some of your ghosted lines which seems to be improved with your ghosted planes so that's good. Just make sure you keep using the ghosting method and drawing with your shoulder to get that smooth confident linework.

Your table of ellipses is coming along nicely. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and you are really improving on your overall confident ellipse shapes as you worked through these pages. This is carried over well into your ellipses in planes. I think you are drawing through a few too many times though. Try and limit your draw through's to 2 - 3 times max. 4+ drawthroughs tends to make things look a bit messy. You are however starting to distort your ellipses a bit in the ellipses in funnels exercise. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed Try and focus on getting a smooth ellipse shape consistently over accuracy for now. Accuracy is the end goal but being able to nail a smooth confident ellipse shape consistently is your first priority. Your ellipses are on the right track so keep practicing them during your warmups.

Your plotted perspective exercise was done without using a straight edge or a ruler so just so you follow directions a little better I'd like you to redo that page. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/video Your rough perspective exercise turned out decently although I'd like to discuss your added line weight and hatching a little bit. You appear to still be using the ghosting method for your original linework but you are going over it with added lineweight that is making your line appear feathery. This is probably happening because you are adding the lineweight using your wrist and it's adding some significant wobble and feathering out the line a lot making your overall result look very sloppy. My recommendation for students working through these lessons is to just stick with your initial line that you draw using the ghosting method. If you have to add line weight try and do it the same way you would as any other line and use the ghosting method and draw from your shoulder with confidence. The same goes for your hatching. If you want to add hatching use the ghosting method and draw from the shoulder. Also try and have your line touch both sides of the plane you are hatching in and not have them just floating in the middle. You did a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations off but that will get better with practice.

Your rotated box exercise was a good attempt. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. However, you ran into a common student problem of not actually rotating your boxes. Please check the lesson notes here. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating You are also still having that line weight problem I was describing earlier. This is a nice exercise to come back to after the 250 box challenge to see how much your spatial thinking has improved. Finally, your organic box exercise is looking decent. At times it feels a tad rushed and at other times it looks like you have used the ghosting method and are getting some decent linework. A bit of a mixed bag overall. Your box constructions are pretty decent for the most part though.

This was a pretty good submission overall. I think you are doing a good job understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey. I'm going to have you redo the Plotted Perspective exercise and follow the directions and do it with a straight edge or ruler please. After you get that submitted I'll mark this as complete and you can move onto the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One Page Plotted Perspective - Use a straight edge or ruler

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:22 AM, Saturday September 19th 2020

Thank you, Rob, for the prompt and thorough critique. I have one question.

When you say I'm not rotating my boxes in the rotated boxes exercise, do you mean I'm not rotating enough, or not rotating at all? I'm looking at my submission, and it's clear that overall it doesn't look as spherical as in the example, but the outer boxes are not parallel to the inner boxes. I think the issue I have here, and would watch out for in the future, is that my middle ring of boxes have their vanishing point too close to the whole construction. In addition, they are too long (the plane facing us isn't square). This left me not much room to bring the vanishing points for the outer box in any closer without making them completely sideways. Does this sound reasonable? Or am I still way off?

Here is the link to my redone plotted perspective exercise: https://imgur.com/a/qHuNoUl

2:29 AM, Saturday September 19th 2020

With the rotated boxes it's a mix. For example the boxes at the top are more moving back in perspective whereas the one on the far right just isn't rotated enough. You'll get a better feel for these things once you develop your spatial thinking a bit more.

Okay the redo looks good. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the next challenge.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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How to Draw by Scott Robertson

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