Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

11:39 AM, Monday March 24th 2025

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Im struggling with the rotated box exercise, im not completely sure how to find the back corners so some guidence on that would be helpful.

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2:23 PM, Wednesday March 26th 2025

Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.

Overall you did a great job here, but I do have a bit to mention so let's break them down one by one. I'll write the most important things in bold.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. However, I can still see some wobbling and curviness in your ghosted lines and planes. You might still be hesitating here, or limiting your pivot for some reason (usually by unconsciously using your arm or wrist as the pivot instead of your shoulder). Do keep reminding yourself to use your shoulder, and prioritize confidence over accuracy. They will get better as you get more practice, but you do need to keep conscious of what you're doing right/wrong and tweak it accordingly on your next attempt. (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ghostedlines/wobbling)

Ellipses

Now with your ellipses, while it's not too bad, I also can still see some wobbliness in how you execute the ellipses, especially with the bigger planes, and it's still apparent in your funnels. This is relatively common and can result from hesitation or a limitation on your pivot (like using your wrist instead). A confident execution leads to an evenly shaped ellipse, whereas hesitation leads to wobbling and uneven shapes just as it does for our lines. Be more confident, and make sure you're allowing yourself to draw from your shoulder (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ellipsesinplanes/deformed). Also this is optional for the funnels exercise, but you can attempt the optional step of varying the ellipse's degrees as you move outwards in your warm ups, as mentioned here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3

Boxes

You've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective in the plotted perspective. I did see some skewed back vertical lines here and there, which is usually caused by an accumulation of human error as you plot more and more lines. I assume that's the case and you understand that every vertical line is straight in 2 point perspective. Even if the points are not aligned correctly, try to find a middle ground and draw it as vertical as you can.

You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. I've noticed that some of the back faces of your boxes are not rectangular. By rectangular, we mean that they should be composed of horizontals that are parallel to the horizon line, and verticals that are perpendicular to it. While this could also be caused by the sometimes inaccurate lines, it's worth mentioning that there should not be any arbitrary guesswork or random angles. Don't forget that these rectangular front/back faces are the unique characteristics of 1 point perspective.

As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a decent job at doing the rotated boxes. You've used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, but I think you could've rotated them a little bit more. It's very common for students to confuse rotation with convergence of the boxes, like this: https://imgur.com/a/gd10hkK. When rotating our boxes, at least one of the boxes' sets of parallel edges will have its vanishing point move - frequently it'll be two. If our boxes have the same vanishing point, then they're not rotating. (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/notrotating)

Finally, organic perspective looks great as well. They look like they belong in the same page and the lines converge as they move farther away from the viewer. There are a few hiccups here and there where there are divergences that results in skewed boxes, but overall they're minor and they look pretty solid.

This will get more relevant as you get to the box challenge, but any hatching from this point on should also be done with the ghosting method. It will make your stuff cleaner and more practice is always good! Try to cover the whole area of the box with consistent spacing.

One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.

Anyway, I think you've grasped the concepts of the whole lesson and ready to put them into practice in warmups. While you've improved quite a lot throughout the lesson, remember to keep working on your lines and ellipses confidence as they are one of the weakest points of your submission. Again, congratulations and keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

Move onto the 250 box challenge.

Do the lesson 1 exercises as your regular warmup and don't forget your 50% rule art.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
0 users agree
12:00 AM, Thursday March 27th 2025

Dropped in to give an agree and I just would like to remind you ghost your lines well. Most of the wobbling and arching and missing the end points can be avoided by it. Try and mainting the same speed when ghosting the line and actually making a mark. And don't forget to engage your shoulders. Remember these.

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