Hi Perkfever, I’ll be critiquing your submission relying on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ
As advised there, I’ll be dividing my critique in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes.
1. Lines section
First off, I'm seeing some fraying on both ends in your superimposed lines exercise. Fraying on one end is completely ok, but take care to take your time and carefully put down your pen exactly at the starting point of the line before drawing it, and do not rush.
For the ghosted lines exercise, I see dots on the page which indicates that you planned out your lines correctly before executing them, so that's good! It doesn't seem however that you did the same every time for the superimposed planes exercise when drawing the diagonal and middle lines, and neither for the exercises involving boxes as far as I can see, so please remember to place a starting and ending dot for each line that you draw. Starting a line with a starting and ending dot is important for applying the ghosting method, and this should never be skipped, even in exercises where you’ll be focusing on other things.
Another thing that seems to happen often is that you aren’t extending your lines all the way to the ending dot; please always draw your lines until the end, even if it means that they’ll be way off. There also are two planes where you didn’t draw the middle lines.
Your lines are still quite wobbly, especially when drawing boxes, and to me it looks like you’re not quite drawing from your shoulder and are trying to correct your aim as you go. Try to focus on drawing from the shoulder and refrain from correcting the direction of a line that you feel is off. Please keep in mind that you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy: a confident but inaccurate line will always be more correct than an accurate but wobbly one, and your accuracy will get better with time.
2. Ellipses section
I see that you are drawing through your ellipses most of the time, but some of them could use some more passes (remember that 2-3 passes is the optimal amount, so don't be afraid to go up to 3), especially in your ellipse tables where some ellipses are unfinished.
Your ellipses in planes are often quite egg-shaped, with one side visibly wider than the other. One piece of advice that might help you is to focus on having the ellipse reach 2 opposite corners of the plane rather than its sides, and to align its major axis with the diagonal of the plane going through said corners. You’ll see that even the thinnest ellipse can easily reach all corners and fit inside a plane that way.
It looks like you did your best trying to fit your ellipses snugly together in your ellipse tables, however as I said before do draw through them several times. Also experiment with different ellipse degrees in future warm ups, as the ones I’m seeing here are quite homogenous.
You did a good job aligning the axis of your ellipses with the middle line in the funnels exercise as far as I’m seeing. Keep focusing on drawing your ellipses confidently and aligning them in future warm ups, and incorporate some degree variation whenever you start feeling more confident.
While drawing your ellipses in the future take your time planning and ghosting them, experimenting different shapes, and focusing on drawing them from your shoulder in a fluid motion rather than on having them reach the points you want them to reach. Same as with lines, confidence should be your primary goal, and your accuracy will get better with time.
3. Boxes section
You did not draw your perspective lines all the way back to the vanishing points in the plotted perspective exercise, so don’t be afraid of having many lines overlap in the future (trust me, it’ll happen often) and do commit to your marks until the end. I’m guessing that that’s also the reason why you didn’t draw a lot of boxes in the second window. Also try experimenting with different heights for your horizon line in the future.
You drew through all of your boxes in the exercises where it was requested. In the rough perspective exercise, you kept your width lines parallel to horizon and height lines perpendicular to it in the most part, so good job on that! Keep it in mind for the future.
You also kept your corners close in the rotated boxes exercise and you have a fairly good amount of rotation in my opinion. However, you neglected to draw the last box in each corner, which I’m again interpreting as a fear of having too many overlapping lines.
I think you did a good job with the changes in size in the organic perspective exercise, however in some sections the boxes are not taking up enough space to my liking. Again, don’t be afraid to have your forms overlap! Also, some lines are not converging.
Next Steps:
I'll request revisions that'll hopefully help when it comes to applying the ghosting method and drawing overlaping forms:
First, please add the missing boxes in the corners (using the ghosting method) in your rotating boxes exercise. Look at the picture in the exercise description again if you're not sure which boxes I mean : https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/rotatedboxes . There should be 25 boxes total, not counting the 4 squares you drew at the beginning at the ends of each axis (which I'm just now noticing you actually haven't drawn either, so add that to my critique of this exercise).
I'll also ask you for one more page of the organic perspective exercise. Try to have several boxes overlap, and most importantly use the ghosting method there as well. Take a look again at the instructions for this exercise and follow them closely when constructing your boxes, in order to avoid diverging lines.
Finally, definitely include some ellipses in planes in your warm ups, you can try out the method that I described if you want (but you don't have to show me those).
My final general comment would be to not rush. Next after this lesson is the 250 boxes exercise, and you're not going to get the most of it if you don't take your time using the ghosting method.
I hope I'm not being too harsh (but you did request a harsh critique after all), above all else stay motivated and committed!
Cheers, and good luck on the rest of your drawing journey
Thank you for replying!
Sorry for the late reply, I was doing the 250 box challenge and hadn't checked-in in a while. Kinda wish I did this before I did the challenge, but I'm just thankful that someone replied.
So, firstly, I made sure to apply the ghosting method for each line. Second, I'm practicing putting in more ellipses for warm-up. Third, I put in four addition boxes ???? in the rotated box section, and the corner boxes. Fourthly, I added the organic perspective with overlaying boxes. I believe that were all the instructions given and completed.
I definitely see what you mean by using the ghosting method to get more confident lines. It definitely seems better, if only by slightly. I definitely need to draw more ellipses, but at least I'm drawing through them now. I've looked a bit into lesson 2 since I finished the 250 box challenge and I kinda see why you wanted me to draw over other boxes in the rotated box excercise. Drawing is about giving the illusion of depth, and by overlaying the boxes we are achieving this. This was a good warm-up for what is to come.
Moving forward, I gotta make sure I draw confidently and get some ellipses practice in. I also gotta post my 250 box challenge cause I haven't don't that yet.
But yeah, thank you so much for helping me on my journey to being a good artist. Again, I'm sorry this reply is so late. I'm bad with notifications. Also, I do believe that this was pretty harsh, but this was literally, genuinely, exactly what I wanted. Overall, this review has helped me tons, and I'll be sure to look to the community for help in the future.
Thanks a ton!
Perkfever.
Hey again Perkfever,
Good work on these revisions ! One optional additional thing I'd advise you to do is to apply some subtle lineweight to the silhouette of your boxes (in both exercises) as well as hatching (in the rotated boxes exercise) to add more clarity & to show which boxes are in front of others, but I'm not going to ask you to submit a second revision for that.
It looks like you've understood the point of these exercises, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Congrats !
Cheers
Lef
Next Steps:
Since you've already completed the 250 boxes challenge, you can also add 1-2 boxes to each of your warmups.
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