Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:15 PM, Wednesday November 4th 2020

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Thank you in advance for your guidance :)

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9:07 AM, Thursday November 5th 2020

Hello, and welcome! I’ll be looking through your submission today~

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. The ghosted lines exercise is… missing, but I suppose I’ll look at your planes. These look confident, for the most part, though I notice that you’ll sometime course-correct near the end. Remember that it’s far more important for our lines to be smooth, and straight, than it is for them to stop at the correct point, or even head in the right direction; so try to be a little less conscious of your end points, if you can.

The table of ellipses exercise looks good, save for a few minor issues. The first is that your ellipses will occasionally start off a little stiff, before stabilizing in their second rotation. This is usually an indication that a student is committing to a mark before they’re ready, so be sure to ghost until comfortable before doing so. If you go to soon, it’ll be reflected in your marks. The second is the occasional pointiness of your ellipses. This means that a lesser pivot (usually elbow/wrist) is getting involved, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. Eventually, you won’t have to do this nearly as much, but for now, try to check back every now and again. The ellipses in planes exercise has a similar issue. It seems like you’re more concerned with hitting all 4 sides of your plane, than you are with your ellipses coming out smooth, and rounded, but that’s having your priorities backwards. The funnels exercise looks alright, thought the aforementioned problems still stand. The only thing I’ll add is that you should be a tiny bit more mindful of their degrees- they’re supposed to either remain consistent, or increase as they move away from the center.

Looking at your box section, I notice that you’ve missed the advice about splitting your page into compositions, and framing them. This isn’t a deal breaker for us, but you’ve cheated yourself out of a lot of necessary practice. Anyway, let’s look at these as-is. Your plotted perspective exercise looks clean- well done. The rough perspective exercise has some minor issues, in regards to line confidence, and convergences. The former is likely as a result of you getting a little overwhelmed by the big picture. It’s important to remember that what you’re doing here is no different from what you were doing in the lines section: drawing a line from point A to point B. If it can be confident there, it can be confident here, too. The second one is easily fixed by spending a little longer on the planning phase. Don’t feel obligated to stick to your original points. Check, and re-check each one, assuming that it’s incorrect, and you’re bound to find out that they are- we’re only human, after all. Though it has much of the same issues in regards to confidence, and some new, automatic reinforcing ones, the rotated boxes exercise looks good. The rotation itself is a little slight, and your far planes are at times a little flat, but the gaps between your boxes have been kept narrow, and you’ve seen the exercise through to the end, even taking the time to apply some hatching- well done. Save for a (admittedly, fairly serious) misunderstanding, that a box that’s overlapping another should hide its lines, the organic perspective exercise looks good. Your boxes properly follow the flow line, increasing in size as they do, and maintaining a consistent, shallow foreshortening. Some lineweight would’ve really helped clarify their dominances, but that’s not necessary, and you’ll have plenty a time to practice that in the 250 box challenge, anyway. Speaking of, head on over to it.

Next Steps:

250 box challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
11:03 PM, Monday November 9th 2020

Thank you so much for your guidance! I don't have much to say because everything is pretty straightforward and explained well. I'll move on keeping this in mind, many thanks :)

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