Hey there, welcome to Drawabox. I'm sluggy, one of the TAs. So, good news: I don't believe you'll need to start the challenge over BUT you will need to wait two weeks from the 10th before you can submit it.
Don't forget - my students start at lesson 1, and should wait to have a lesson marked as 'complete' before moving onto the next. Additionally, all students are subject to a minimum of 2 weeks before submitting the next lesson's homework.
That said, if there are a lot of consistent issues with your boxes, you may be asked to resubmit additional pages after your challenge is reviewed.
Okay, on to your submission!
Lines
Great work here. Your lines are smooth, confident and consistent. They are also fairly accurate in that you don't over or undershoot your end points too often. There is the barest hint of a wobble in a few of them and an arc, so I'll go over a few ways to smooth those out.
With the wobble, make sure you're utilizing the ghosting technique very deliberately. A wobble is often due to your brain getting in the way of muscle memory and trying to course correct, so you'll want to use the ghosting technique to build up that muscle memory. Once you put your pen down, you'll need to commit. You'll be sacrificing a bit of accuracy in doing this, but that's fine. You can work on that after you nail down the flow, by also using the ghosting technique.
As for the arc, make sure you're using your shoulder as a [pivot]https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/3/pivots). The gradual arc I'm seeing is usually because a student is using their elbow. It's admittedly better than using your wrist, but you'll want to train up on your shoulder before you try and use smaller pivots.
Ellipses
So, you've got a great sense of control on your ellipses in that they're snugly sitting in their planes, tables, and arcs, but there is a very clear wobble. Thankfully, you can utilize the ghosting technique to clear this up in the same way you use it for your lines. And again, you'll be sacrificing a bit of accuracy, but you can start working on tightening them up by drawing through them a few times.
Really nice work with your funnels - you've kept your ellipses pretty well aligned with the minor axis. Although you neglected to add the axis in two of the examples on the side, the other funnels look pretty good. This will be very useful for later lessons when you're working with organic forms.
Rough Perspective
Really nice work on this one, especially in terms of your perspective work. You've kept your horizontals parallel to the horizon and your verticals perpendicular, which helps eliminate unnecessary guesswork. Likewise, your depth lines are fairly accurate, which is a good sign that your sense of 3D is coming along quickly.
In terms of your linework, there is a bit of a step down in quality from your previous exercises, with that wobble becoming a little more prominent. However, I understand that there's a bit of a balancing act going on, between learning a new technique for mark-making and drawing in perspective, so I'm sure this will improve with time. Just consider each box like a collection of ghosted lines and so long as you follow the rules of perspective, it will come together in a solid box.
Rotated Boxes
Very nice work on this challenge! While you didn't get the full 180 degree rotation, your line work has definitely improved and the gaps between each box are consistently sized, which also has the effect of eliminating unnecessary guesswork. The main critique I have is concerning the hatch marks. They seem to be applied to the spaces between the boxes instead of to the inside-facing faces of the boxes. This has the effect of muddying up the image rather than clarifying each form as 3D.
Should you attempt this challenge again - which I do recommend because it's a nice benchmark on progress - if you want to achieve a fully rotation, concentrate on the VPs of each box. If you ensure that it is moving past the VP of the previous box along the axis, you'll cause the box to rotate rather than simply move back in space.
Overall, aside from the hatchmarks, really nice work on the challenge!
Organic Perspective
This is a fairly decent attempt at this challenge! The convergences on a few of your boxes show some errors, but overall, but overall, it's clear your sense of 3D is developing nicely. As for those errors, that's nothing the 250 box challenge can't help with!
Next Steps:
Head on over to the box challenge! During your warm-ups, make sure you give special focus to the ghosting technique in order to iron out the wobble in your lines and ellipses. Good luck!
Thank you for your indepth critique! I really appreciate it. It seems that my wobbly lines are what I need to work on the most.
I was wondering, if I upgraded to the tier with 2 credits, would I be able to also get a critique on my 250 boxes in the next few days?
Thanks again!
all students are subject to a minimum of 2 weeks before submitting the next lesson's homework.
I'm afraid you'll have to wait 2 weeks since 250 box challenge is considered the next lesson ;-)
Here are my 250 boxes :)
https://imgur.com/gallery/qSCtNYM 1 - 117
https://imgur.com/gallery/J4iPeoq 118 - 250
Thanks!!
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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