Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes
11:01 PM, Thursday January 15th 2026
Eager and really pumped up to keep this going!! ????
Ready for Critique, ready for any homework assignments necessary to move into the "250 box challenge"!!
Hello, I'll be taking a look at your work today.
Lines
The superimposed lines exercise looks good, showing a smooth motion and fraying on only one side, although the accuracy is a bit lacking (this aspect tends to improve overtime). The ghosted lines exercise show good planning and confidence, with barely any arching (except for the longer lines). Given that the strokes are tapered, it usually means that the lines are drawn pretty fast. If that's the case, I personally suggest to slow down, so that you're able to get more control over your strokes. The ghosted planes exercise shows a greater level of confidence and accuracy than the ghosted lines exercise, so good job on that.
Ellipses
With the tables of ellipses, you're definitely prioritizing smoothness and confidence over accuracy (which is correct). They're also fit snugly against the borders inside the table, which is good. For the warmups, aim towards tightening up the ellipses a bit more. The ellipses in planes look smooth and confident, although some ellipses tend to not touch the edges of the plane at all, so watch out for that. The funnels exercise is also looking great, you've managed to align them to the minor axis (most of them), fit them snugly against each other and also making them touch the funnel.
Boxes
The plotted perspective looks fine, you've shown a good understanding of how to make two point perspective, although the second frame has a box that's missing its back edge. Also, try to keep the vertical edges perpendicular to the horizon line, some of them are not. The boxes in the rough perspective have the front and back face rectangular, which is correct for one point perspective. You've also applied the lines extensions correctly and used the ghosting method, noticing a big improvement of this in page 2. Be careful of putting the vanishing point of one point perspective way off to the side, as you risk skewing the boxes further from the vanishing point (where two vanishing points is more suitable for these boxes). As the most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a pretty good job at the rotated boxes. They don't converge towards the same vanishing points and you've drawn through them; although, some boxes have missing edges (especially the ones furthest back), and the bottom left corner wasn't executed pretty well. Finally, organic perspective shows good use of the ghosting method, however, many boxes have diverging sets of lines, and other boxes have sets of lines that tend to converge in different VPs. Keep in mind that the parallel sets of edges have to converge to the same vanishing point. Some of the Y's arms' angles between them are less than 90 degrees, leading into some particular distortion in some boxes. I'd like you to revise the Y method, to address both the angle issue and the convergence issue. Also, to avoid confusion, I advise to not overlap many boxes on top of each other. For a final touch, you can optionally decide to fill one face on each box with hatching, to show the face that's closest to the viewer. If you do so, remember that every line you trace has to be done with the ghosting method.
Next Steps:
Overall, I think you've grasped the concepts of the whole lesson. However, I would like to see another page of the organic perspective exercise, keeping in mind that the sets of parallel edges in 3D space have to be represented by sets of fairly gradual converging lines in 2D space (and not having them diverging or converging to different VPs). Try to maintain clarity by separating the boxes a bit more from one another, and keep the Y arms' angles between them more than 90 degrees (for all of the boxes).
A lot of folks have heard about Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" - it's basically a classic at this point, and deservedly so. It's also a book that a lot of people struggle with, for the simple reason that they expect it to be a manual or a lesson plan explaining, well... how to draw. It's a reasonable assumption, but I've found that book to be more of a reference book - like an encyclopedia for perspective problems, more useful to people who already have a good basis in perspective.
Sketching: The Basics is a far better choice for beginners. It's more digestible, and while it introduces a lot of similar concepts, it does so in a manner more suited to those earlier in their studies.
We use cookies in conjunction with Google Analytics to anonymously track how our website is used.
This data is not shared with any other parties or sold to anyone. They are also disabled until consent is provided by clicking the button below, and this consent can be revoked at any time by clicking the "Revoke Analytics Cookie Consent" link in our website footer.
You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.