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11:41 PM, Monday March 14th 2022

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. I'm noticing that you are getting quite a bit of wobble in your ghosted lines and planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing significant improvement with your final exercise but I still want to mention this advice here so you can understand what the problem likely is.

This is the important part we need to be focusing on and the real problem I'm seeing:

You're hesitating as you execute the line, rather than drawing with a confident motion. Finally committing to a mark can definitely be quite daunting, but it's integral that you get used to accepting that mistakes do happen. Things go wrong - you can prepare as much as possible (and you should) but the moment your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid a mistake has already passed. Now you must commit yourself, push through with confidence, and execute your line. It's also worth remembering: we can still work with a line that is smooth and even, but there's not much that can be done with a wobbly one.

What's most likely happening is that you are worrying about accuracy too much while making your mark and it's causing you to slow down your stroke to compensate which is giving you quite a bit of wobble in your lines. Seeing as how this problem persists through pretty much every exercise I am going to end up assigning some revisions to see if we can work this out before you move on to the 250 box challenge. Onto your ellipses.

Your ellipses are largely suffering from the exact same issue which really just goes to show that once you fix this problem it will improve every aspect of your drawing and that improvement is very evident with your organic perspective boxes and the line confidence I see there. Your tables of ellipses is coming along okay. You did a good job drawing through your ellipses on the first page but I've noticed in a few places on the second page that you didn't draw through your ellipses. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/drawingthrough So this is just a reminder that you need to draw through EVERY single ellipse you draw for all of these lessons. Even if you think you got it right the first time. The ellipses in planes are largely suffering from the same wobbly line issue and also you are deforming your ellipses here for the exact same reason. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed Once again this is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Our first goal is to get smooth and confident linework. We will worry about accuracy later. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues and you are also tilting your ellipses off the minor axis at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always consider when drawing your ellipses. On the plus side you did actually draw through all of your ellipses for this exercise which is great. There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape, smoothness, and accuracy. Also since you were having some consistency issues with drawing through your ellipses for both the table of ellipses and ellipses in planes I'm going to have you do one more page of the table of ellipses. Once again don't worry so much about accuracy and really just focus on getting a smooth ellipse shape. Also make sure you draw through all of your ellipses.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out decent. There is definitely some improvement here in terms of line confidence although I am still seeing quite a bit of wobble throughout. Once again just to reiterate because this is so vastly important and is the main issue I'm noticing that this is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. You are doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be perpendicular(straight up and down in this case) to the horizon line. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. While the rotations here aren't perfect this was a good effort overall. I'm also definitely seeing improvement in terms of line confidence as you work through these exercises but there is still some line wobble present. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are where I'm seeing the biggest improvement in terms of line confidence. You seem to be getting more comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. That said there is still line wobble throughout this exercise and I'd like you to do one more page of these as a revision. Another thing I am noticing is that you are redrawing lines on occasion and this is a habit you should try and get out of. Try and stick with the initial line you put down even if it's a bit off. Adding more lines just makes things messier and harder to read. Your box constructions are pretty solid for the most part but there are a few wonky ones here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall you definitely showed improvement when it comes to line confidence but I want you to try one more page of the organic perspective exercise with all of the advice I've given before moving on as that line wobble persisted throughout all of the exercises. Your ellipses also still need a lot of work and I'd like you to do one more page of the table of ellipses and this time make sure you draw through all of the ellipses as that is something you will need to do for every ellipse you draw for all of these lessons without exception. Once you get those submitted I'll take a look and you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page table of ellipses - Make sure you draw through all of your ellipses

One page organic perspective boxes. - Make sure you are ghosting your lines and drawing from your shoulder with confidence. Don't concern yourself with accuracy too much as that hesistation while you are making your mark is what is causing all of the line wobble issues. Also no redrawing lines this time. Put down a line and stick with it

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
7:51 PM, Sunday March 27th 2022

Thanks for the feedback. It is appreciated. I will work on the ellipses and organic perspective boxes.

6:19 AM, Monday April 11th 2022
edited at 11:38 PM, Apr 11th 2022
edited at 11:38 PM, Apr 11th 2022
11:38 PM, Monday April 11th 2022

(https://imgur.com/a/B7fo5X0)

In response to Lesson 1 homework. One page table of ellipses and one page organic perspective boxes.

11:46 PM, Monday April 11th 2022

Alright these are looking a lot better. I think you understand the points I was trying to make. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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