Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

6:36 AM, Wednesday November 10th 2021

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Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/7xTjXPd.jpg

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These exercises were completed around March 2020. I have completed lesson 1, the 250 box challenge, and am currently almost done lesson 2. I plan on following the critique-exchange channel instructions for posting and receiving feedback on my past exercises.

I apologize for not utilizing the Drawabox website more for critique, although I had been using the Drawabox discord lesson channels for feedback.

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2:34 AM, Thursday November 18th 2021
edited at 2:41 AM, Nov 18th 2021

Hi, i'll be the one critiquing you for today, hopefully i'll be able to provide a on-point critique,

it would've been better if this was done much more recently so that you can apply some of this points while progressing, but as what you said you've received feedback from your past exercises so i probably am just repeating what they said or not, but atleast you've gotten some critique in the discord server which means that you aren't working on a bubble, anyways onto the critique.

Starting off with your superimposed lines, i can see confidence in each stroke, there's variation for each of the superimposed lines that you did, and there's also no fraying in both ends which means that you've followed the instruction here by heart, so great work!

next up is your ghosted lines exercise, there are some very very subtle s/ c curved lines, which means either there's very little hesitation still happening or that you may have worked with your elbow rather than your whole arm, for the subtle s curves one thing that you can try is to experiment with speeds wherein you'll maintain confidence while not overthinking that much that you'll hesitate and lose confidence in your line-work, you can try this while you're doing your warm-ups, and for the arching/ c-curved lines, you can try conciously arch the other side of the line,

finally the last exercise in the lines section is the ghosted planes, it's a big improvement from the ghosted lines exercises as there is very little s/c curved lines, most of your lines are also smoothly done so greatwork!

moving onto your ellipses section(the table of ellipses, ghosted planes w/ ellipses, funnels), most of the time your ellipses are smoothly done and kept within the range of drawing through it 2-3 times, although there are times where there are some parts which is much darker and compacted so it's a bit hard to see whether or not you kept it within that range, for your funnels, there's degree change as it goes away from the center and you've also kept the centerline in the middle part of the funnel which makes the ellipse when cut in half, symmetrical in both sides, so wonderfully done.

lastly is your box section

starting with your plotted perspective, well you've mostly done everything that was instructed, so nice. one thing that i'll direct your attention to is the 1st and 2nd panel of your page, in which some of your hatching were sloppily done, if you remember the lesson page for this exercise it said that hatching lines shouldn't be rushed or sloppily done, and should be done with tight, consistent, parallel hatching lines (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/15/step8), if you'll free hand hatching lines it'd be better if you ghost them first.

for your rough perspective i don't have anything to say, since there isn't anything to point out. for the rotated boxes exercise, that's a pretty nice attempt for the first time, one thing i'll direct your attention to is that the plane facing the viewer, the line-weight for each side of it isn't uniform, as much as possible we'd like to stick with atleast 2-3 lines for line-weight, image for line-weight (https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb)

lastly onto your organic perspective, orientation and rotation of your boxes isn't a big problem to me as you've also done a great job here, one thing that i'll point out tho is in the first panel of your organic perspective it seems like you were trying to hide your mistake by superimposin the sides of one plane of your box making this thick line-weight that gets the attention of the viewer, there are also some instances wherein you were repeating a line, you should avoid repeating a line since it'll either hide your mistake or make it much more visible it's also a bad habit, and goes against the point of doing it in pen, one principle of drawabox is that whenever you make a mistake don't hide it, instead try to work around it.

anyways that's it, be sure to include some of these exercises in your warm-ups and hopefully i'll see you progress this course.

Next Steps:

move onto 250-box challenge

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edited at 2:41 AM, Nov 18th 2021
7:23 PM, Friday November 19th 2021

Thank you for taking the time to critique my Lesson 1 Assignment. I had been mainly using discord for receiving critique, although I found it became harder to get feedback as I entered into the further lessons (due to less and less people on each lesson).

I do agree that line confidence is something I struggle with. I found that I worried too much about accuracy over confidence, when confidence should take priority (applies to adding line weight and doing ghosted lines in general). Accepting where I made mistakes is a problem I had for a while during the lessons, and it is definitely something I can improve on.

I will make sure to keep all of this in mind as I do warmups and as I progress through next lessons.

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