Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:06 PM, Friday April 9th 2021

Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Hello, these are my assignments for lesson 1. I think they were quite the challenge, but interesting nonetheless.

The rotated boxes were definitely the toughest to complete and I lost orientation quite frequently. :)

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5:22 PM, Saturday April 10th 2021

Hello and welcome. Let’s take this one exercise at a time.

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are mostly good. They’re smooth, and properly lined up at the start, but not always of a consistent trajectory, so be mindful of that. The ghosted lines/planes are fairly well done, and I’m pleased to see that you’ve not forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of the planes, but be mindful of the automatic reinforcing habit (that of correcting an incorrect line), and of slowing down your speed in the line’s second half. That latter one is particularly important, as it indicates that the student has their priorities backwards. Rather than whether the line hits, or stops at, the end point (accuracy), what’s important is that it’s straight, and smooth (confidence).

The table of ellipses exercise looks great. Your ellipses will sometimes start off a little stiff, and then stabilize in a future rotation (for which problem I’d recommend more ghosting), but the majority of them look good – smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. They maintain these qualities in the planes exercise, too, despite their more complicated frames there. Certainly, the rotations themselves aren’t quite as snug as in the previous exercise, but this is expected, and something that will get better in time. Finally, the funnels are well done. Their ellipses are snug, and properly cut in half by their respective axes.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean – nice job.

The rough perspective exercise shows some significant improvements in its last frame; continue looking at your work critically, as you have been, and experimenting, and improving, as per your findings. A tip: pay attention to the shapes of your planes. Because we’re dealing with 1-point perspective, the front plane (the first one you draw), is identical in shape to the back plane (the one opposite it). If your points suggest that it’s not (like, for example, in page 1, frame 1, right most box – square vs. rectangle), then that’s a good hint to reconsider them.

The rotated boxes exercise looks fantastic. It could stand to be a bit bigger (and, through that newly gained space, be easier to think about), but even as it is, it’s clear that you’ve been mindful of your neighboring edges, causing the resulting boxes to rotate fairly comfortably for it. Their back planes are at times a little flat, as well as their depth lines diverging, but this is not only expected, it’s something we’ll address in the upcoming box challenge. For now, this is more than satisfactory.

Speaking of, the organic perspective exercise is really well done, too, though the lack of points, and the degree of overshooting, leads me to believe that you’ve not plotted start/end points for all of your lines. Please do. Other than that, a solid increase in size, and a consistent, shallow degree of foreshortening makes these boxes flow quite well. Nicely done.

Next Steps:

Solid work on this lesson. I’m marking it as complete, so head on over to the 250 box challenge. Good luck!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:34 PM, Sunday April 11th 2021

Hello Benj,

thanks for the quick feedback.

I'll make sure to make good use of it in the future.

The shallow degree of foreshortening you mentioned was

by accident, but I'll take it. :D

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