Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

3:03 AM, Thursday January 25th 2024

Lesson 1 Homework.pdf - Google Drive

Google Docs: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14aifJXJihqbHCkNxlbpdt2TpRtmBmHPV/view?usp=sharing

Thank you for taking the time to give me critique!

This is my first time committing to learning drawing fundamentals. Please let me know how I can improve!

I'm sure you know this, but the Ghosted Planes/Ghosted Ellipses sheets here are the same sheets.

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9:47 AM, Thursday January 25th 2024

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 an excellent 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. However, ghosted lines look a bit wobbled here and there, and this is also apparent in your planes and boxes. This usually suggest that you're not executing your marks confidently, and instead allowing the fear of inaccuracy to take precedence. Focus only on the end point and draw confidently enough not to allow their brain to steer the stroke. While you do get better with the lines, I think this lack of confidence is the weakest link in your submission.

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 also nice. There are a few hiccups with uneven shapes, especially with the full circle ones. But, these are generally minor and they will tighten as you get more practice.

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. 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

The plotted perspective has no problems, you've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective.

You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. You also drew the front/back faces rectangular, which is correct for 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. However, you haven't yet finished the boxes at each of the corners in your rotated boxes, which I'm not sure whether you forgot about it or not, but I want you to finish it before moving on.

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.

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.

Overall, while I think that your line confidence still need a lot of catching up, you've demonstrated quite an improvement throughout the exercise. I think you've grasped the concepts of the whole lesson and ready to put them into practice in your warmups. However, I need you to complete the missing corners of your rotated boxes, and you'll be able to move on to the box challenge. Remember, be confident.

Next Steps:

Finish the rest of the rotated boxes exercise (the missing 4 corners).

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
7:14 PM, Thursday January 25th 2024

Thank you so much for your critique!

I completely agree with your points, and I appreciate you taking the time to write up such a thorough review. I think I overlooked those final boxes in the corners, so I went ahead and finished up the exercise and uploaded it here.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vm772aTqIUZbsn9PFurbLTdG-CeVh3IQ/view?usp=sharing

Extra thanks for the super quick turnaround!

3:38 AM, Friday January 26th 2024

Very nice! I like how the boxes turned out. Still a bit wobbly there, you might want to experiment on your speed and how you look at your pen/paper to just make a clean, straight line. Otherwise I have no complaints, have fun on the box challenge!

Next Steps:

Move onto the 250 box challenge.

Do the lesson 1 exercises as your regular warmup and don't forget your 50% rule art.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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