4:06 PM, Wednesday June 1st 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. As you mentioned you are having problems with confident linework and I'm going to spend most of the critique trying to address this. I'm noticing that you are getting quite a bit of line 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 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. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced.
Your tables of ellipses are coming along pretty good. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. While you still have a bit of wobbly linework here and there it's much less pronounced with your ellipses and you seem less concerned with accuracy than when you are drawing a straight line so I suspect it's really a matter of you comitting to your ellipses more and not slowing down your strokes for the sake of accuracy. Your ellipses in funnels is missing from the album and I'll need to see that before I can mark this as complete.
The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some really wobbly lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling As I mentioned previously 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 decently. One thing that would have helped you here would have been to just draw this a bit bigger. Drawing bigger really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You did a good job drawing through your boxes but one of the reasons this exercise started to fall apart on you is because you didn't keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/guessing While your rotations here could definitely be improved you are getting some decent rotations here and there and this will get better with practice. 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 looking pretty good. You seem to be getting more comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. That said I'm still seeing the occasional wobbly line which as I've mentioned before is simple because you're hesitating for the sake of accuracy while making your mark. You do seem to be getting better at committing to your marks as your linework for a lot of this exercise and the second page in particular is much more confident than the lines for your rough perspective boxes. I'm not going to assign a revision because you definitely showed a lot of improvement as you worked through these exercises but confident linework is definitely something you need to keep working on. Remember to always ghost your lines mutliple times and then draw from your shoulder with confidence. All of your thought about accuracy should be done during the "planning" stage which is when you are plotting your points and ghosting your lines. Once you decide to make your mark you need to commit to it and almost do it without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but your linework will be much more consistently confident. So remember to keep working on this during the 250 box challenge. Your box constructions are decent for the most part and you seem to have an okay understanding of how box lines need to converge to vps. That said your convergences could definitely be improved so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.
Overall this was a solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses both need work but are coming along nicely. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well and a lot of your issues are simply a matter of mileage and building up muscle memory. I'll need to see that missing page of ellipses in planes before I can mark this as complete and you move on to the 250 box challenge.
Next Steps:
Missing ellipses in funnels page