2 users agree
8:23 PM, Wednesday July 15th 2020

Hello! Here is my critique. Let me know if I say anything wrong or unclear!

  • Lines Section

For the Superimposed Lines exercise, there appears to be a small amount of wobbliness here and there, but otherwise your lines are fluid and confident. There doesn't seem to be any fraying on the starting points of the lines, which suggests that you took the time to place your pen at the start of the line before drawing. Doing so is also important in preparing for a confident stroke.

Similarly in the Ghosted Lines exercise, your lines appear a small bit wobbly in some places. However, they are mostly neat and straight, which you seem to do a great job of throughout the rest of your work, so well done there! It's worth noting that you have fairly good accuracy as well, and although it is not prioritized over confidence, accuracy will continue to improve with time and practice.

  • Ellipses Section

For the Table of Ellipses exercise, your ellipses appear smooth and confident, and you draw a variety of them with different degrees and slants. You also do a great job of keeping the ellipses close without overlapping one another! There are some instances of overlapping past the boundaries of the frames, but as this may likely be an issue of accuracy, it will improve with time and practice.

Much like in the Ghosted Lines exercise, your lines in the Ghosted Planes and Ellipses in Planes exercises are neat and confident, and you seem to have improved from the small amount of wobbliness before. For the ellipses themselves, most of them appear smooth and confident, however some of them wavered a bit to where their lines weren't closely packed together. If this is an issue of accuracy while still aiming for confidence, then you may improve naturally with time and practice as you become more comfortable with ghosting through ellipses. If it's an issue of confidence however, I suggest practicing ghosting through ellipses a few (if not many) times before putting them down on paper. Doing so may help your arm become more familiar with the particular ellipse you want to draw, and thus allow you to gain confidence in the coming strokes.

For the Funnels exercise, most of your ellipses appear to aligned well to the minor axis (the line cutting through the horizontal middle of the funnel), meaning that they are cut into two symmetrical halves. The ellipses also fit nicely within the boundaries of the funnels, so well done there! Again, the tightness of your ellipses (how close together the lines are from multiple draw throughs of an ellipse) will improve as you become more comfortable with applying smooth, confident strokes.

  • Boxes Section

For the Plotted Perspective exercise, your boxes appear neat and their depth lines converge correctly towards the vanishing points. As of now the only suggestion I have is to add hatching similar to what is seen in the written content for this exercise (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/step8) so that the boxes can be set apart from one another more clearly. Otherwise, I can't seem to locate any mistakes, so well done!

For the Rough Perspective exercise, I notice that you placed a question mark in one of the boxes in the first frame. Based on what I've learned from this course so far, there would not be a diagonal line crossing a face of a box when concerning depth lines. Remember that a box has six faces, each one resembling a quadrilateral with convergences. However, it seems that you understood this for the rest of your boxes. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that although it may be difficult to do, the width lines of the boxes should ideally be parallel to the horizon while the length lines perpendicular to the horizon. Remember that this particular exercise is in 1 point perspective, meaning that two of the vanishing points are so far off that the corressponding convergences for one vanishing point effectively become parallel to one another. But it seems you do a fairly good job of this too, so well done!

On the Rotated Boxes exercise, I would suggest covering the most of the space with your work, so that you take advantage of the full extent of the page. Also, don't be afraid to draw the rotated boxes so that they touch (or engulf) the squares drawn on each end of the axes. The squares themselves are meant to represent a full 180° rotation, so you're unconsciously aware of what you're trying to achieve. Additionally, your boxes appear to have small gaps between them except for the ones near the outer corners. I recommend that you try and keep the gaps consistent so that it is easier to infer the placement of the other boxes in 3D space. (this is also explained briefly in the written content for this exercise: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/guessing).

Finally, for the Organic Perspective exercise, I would suggest making the sizes of the boxes more dramatic in order to better convey the illusion of depth. Also, for the most part, your boxes seem to have shallow foreshortening (the importance of this is explained in good detail here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/G3SI84C/7/foreshortening). Additionally, If you can, I would suggest drawing more boxes in general (for each frame) so that the fluidity of the line guide is followed more clearly. But that may just be a personal preference. It also may be worth mentioning that line weight does not need to be added to entire lines to convey which boxes are in front; it can simply be added near the corners where the lines intersect (this is explained breifly in the written content for the 250 Box Challenge, which comes directly after this lesson: https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/lineweight).

Next Steps:

Well done, and congratulations on completing Lesson 1! Any suggestions I make for improving your work (for example, ghosting through an ellipse several times before putting it down) can be implemented into any warmups, if you so choose.

I recommend that you move on to the 250 Box Challenge. Good luck!

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
7:43 PM, Sunday July 19th 2020

Wow, thank you so much for this in-depth critique! I'll make sure to make the necessary adjustments.

8:26 PM, Sunday July 19th 2020

No problem! If you need any clarification, then don't be afraid to ask.

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This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.

I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.

No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.

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