Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:20 AM, Tuesday March 25th 2025

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Hello, this is my second time doing lesson 1 of Draw a box. A couple months back I quit during the tail end of the 250 Box challenge due to something personal coming up. I decided to come back through lesson 1 this time with official critique. Every exercise was just as I had remembered and fairly simple except for the Rotated Boxes which I do not remember having as much trouble as I did this time. Let me know if there is anything I should have done differently or still need to improve on.

2:54 AM, Thursday March 27th 2025

Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.

Overall you did a great job here, but I do have a bit to mention so let's break them down one by one. I'll write the most important things in bold.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. Ghosted lines look correctly ghosted and confident too, and there are barely any arching. You've also demonstrated the same confidence in your ghosted planes with a great accuracy. However, I noticed that you sometimes didn't put the start and end points when you bisect the planes horizontally and vertically. This results in floating lines, like this: https://imgur.com/a/Ud2O6tR. Do not forget to always plan your lines first when ghosting, even though you already kind of know where they should be.

Ellipses

Now with the tables of ellipses, you've demonstrated a great understanding of the concept in executing confident ellipses. The ellipses in planes are nice, you drew it confidently and snugly in their respective planes.

The funnels are also looking great; you've managed to fit them snugly and aligned to the minor axis and carried the same confidence as in previous exercises. I have no complaints here as your ellipses will tighten as you get more practice. Also this is optional, but you can attempt the optional step of varying the ellipse's degrees as you move outwards in your warm ups, as mentioned here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3

Boxes

You've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective in the plotted perspective. I did see some skewed back vertical lines here and there, which is usually caused by an accumulation of human error as you plot more and more lines. I assume that's the case and you understand that every vertical line is straight in 2 point perspective. Even if the points are not aligned correctly, try to find a middle ground and draw it as vertical as you can.

You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. I've noticed that some of the back faces of your boxes are not rectangular. By rectangular, we mean that they should be composed of horizontals that are parallel to the horizon line, and verticals that are perpendicular to it. While this could also be caused by the sometimes inaccurate lines, it's worth mentioning that there should not be any arbitrary guesswork or random angles. Don't forget that these rectangular front/back faces are the unique characteristics of 1 point perspective.

As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a great job at doing the rotated boxes. You've rotated them pretty well (while making sure to move the converging lines) and used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, which is the whole purpose of this exercise. Only one problem though, is that you haven't draw in another layer of boxes on the left side (you're missing 10 boxes specifically; refer to the example here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/example). It might not seem much, but we'd like you to finish each exercise to its utmost completion and benefit, especially when the side and corner boxes will give you the most challenge!

Finally, organic perspective looks great as well. They look like they belong in the same page and the lines converge as they move farther away from the viewer. There are a few hiccups here and there where there are divergences that results in skewed boxes, but overall they're minor and they look pretty solid.

This will get more relevant as you get to the box challenge, but if you wish to do so, any hatching from this point on should also be done with the ghosting method. It will make your stuff cleaner and more practice is always good! Try to cover the whole area of the box with consistent spacing.

One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.

Anyway, while I think you've grasped most of the concepts here, I'd still like you to finish the rest of the rotated boxes exercise as mentioned above. Remember to always prioritize confidence over accuracy, and reread the material if need to. Once you're done with them, you'll most likely be able to move on to the box challenge!

Next Steps:

Finish the rotated boxes exercise (the missing 10 boxes; refer to the example).

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:49 PM, Thursday March 27th 2025

https://imgur.com/a/TBttX2G

Here it is. It still felt a little off though. Please let me know how I can improve it.

4:39 AM, Friday March 28th 2025

You're doing well so far! But you haven't drawn in the last boxes in each corner, which will actually make the rotated boxes look like an ellipse! Keep using the neighboring elements to deduce the boxes as you place these last ones.

Next Steps:

Fill in the remaining boxes (the missing 4 corner boxes; refer to the example).

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:17 AM, Friday March 28th 2025
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