Hello!

Congratulations on getting through your first lesson!

First of all, to answer your question, I would look at the workspace. For example is your table too high? If your work surface is too high it will already limit your shoulder movement. Try to make it so that you can move your shoulder freely. Other thing is that if you are working on sketchbook you will probably limit your range of motion to not fall of the page. So i would suggest laying a flat piece of paper on a table and seeing how that feels. On that notion, if your workspace is crowded you might be subconsciously trying to avoid bumping into anything and tense up? Also is the surface how smooth? I like to have a glove or a smooth piece of copy paper under my hand when drawing to avoid friction between my hand and table as I have found that to be really distracting. It could also be that you are afraid of making mistakes which makes you tense up? For that, you would probably need to over any mental blocks you might have such as fear of failure? For that do keep in mind that no one is expecting perfection from you! We are all here to learn so mistakes happen.

However, as I am not professional, take these things with a grain of salt. I would suggest for you to test out different things and just draw smooth, straight lines on a paper without any pressure of anyone else seeing it to see how it goes.

Now to the critique:

Lines: In the superimposed lines there shouldn't be fraying on both ends instead the lines should start from the same place. Your lines also seem wobbly at times which is most likely from you tensing up. The lines seem to be accurate though in most cases, so remember to prioritize smooth and confident over accuracy. Accuracy comes later as you practice more but shouldn't be anything to worry about now. In the ghosted lines you have also drawn very short lines which are really hard to draw while using your shoulder.

Ellipses: Ellipses should be smooth and keep their shape. Your tables of ellipses exercise looks overall good, but in some cases and later on there seems to be a slight wobble to them. It would seem that this too is because of you tensing up. In the ellipses in planes, ellipses should be touching all sides of the plane and in funnels the minor axis should cut the ellipses into two symmetrical halves. These, however, should not be anything to worry about now as the accuracy improves overtime. This is just to keep in mind as you move further along.

So the biggest thing for you is to be able to draw confident and smooth lines and ellipses using your shoulder. For now accuracy should not be a priority. In case you think it might be helpful I would recommend going back to the drawabox videos and texts in lesson 1 concerning drawing ellipses and lines.

Boxes: Overall the exercises look really good! You have done a great job with plotted and organic perspective! Little things to keep in mind are: In the rough perspective make sure that width lines are parallel to the horizon and height lines perpendicular to the horizon and in the rotated boxes remember to rotate the boxes further back enough. These exercises were meant to be hard though so I wouldn't worry about as you will learn more about boxes in perspective in the 250 box challenge.

Overall I think you understood the concepts taught in this lesson really well! On that note I think you are ready to move on to the 250 box challenge. However it would be good to solve the problem with you tensing up your shoulders as the 250 box challenge requires for you to be able to draw smooth and confident lines. As said before I would suggest testing different things to see if it helps. You can also ask in other places such as drawabox's discord server or subreddit to see if anyone else would be able to provide you some advice. Moving on, the things I pointed out can be addressed in your warm ups.

Great job on finishing your first lesson!!! Drawabox is not easy course so be proud of yourself for making it this far! :D