Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

2:53 PM, Friday January 14th 2022

Draw a Box - Lesson 1 - Album on Imgur

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Hiya!

I'm sorry for the shadow in the images, I'll try have a better light-situation set up for next time

This is actually my second atempt at Draw A Box, first time I tried was about a year ago I was still at Uni working on my Master. Working on both my degree and the Draw A Box lessons at the same time was too much for me, so I chose too stop the lessons for a time. Now that I'm working, I have more time to give these lessons the attention they require.

The organic perspective and rotated boxes lessons certainly where the most technically requiring, but for me it was the rough perspective that took the longest in terms of actuall time.

Once I've taken some time and drawn things for myself outside the of lesson plan, I will move onto the 250 box challenge! >:)

Kind regards,

Strifer

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6:39 PM, Saturday January 15th 2022

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. My name is Rob and I'm a teaching assistant for Drawabox who will be handling your lesson one critique. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. Your ghosted lines and planes turned out well. You are using the ghosting method to good effect to get confident linework with a pretty decent deal of accuracy that will get better and better with practice.

Your tables of ellipses are coming along pretty good. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. Your ellipses in funnels are having some issues with tilting off the minor axis. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/notaligned This is something you should always start considering when drawing your ellipses. One thing you could have done with these is start with a narrower degree ellipse in the center and then widen the degrees of the ellipses as they move outwards in the funnel. Please check the example here. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/step3 Your ellipses are off to a great start but there's still room for improvement when it comes to accuracy so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. It's great that you are keeping up with the confident linework on these. You are also doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be perpendicular(straight up and down in this case) to the horizon line. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out decently. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. You are running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes in some cases(mainly the top and left side you are getting at least some rotation on the right and bottom) but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/notrotating While you didn't nail all of the rotations perfeclty this was a good attempt overall. This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are looking pretty good. While your linework here is confident for the most part I can see a bit of line wobble creeping back in here and there. So this is just a reminder to always ghost your lines multiple times and then draw from your shoulder with confidence. Don't concern yourself with accuracy too much at this stage as that will lead to hesitation while you make your mark which is what tends to cause line wobble. Try and rely a bit more of the muscle memory your build up ghosting your line and almost make your mark without thinking. Your box constructions are decent for the most part but there are some wonky ones here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along nicely. I think you are understanding most of the concepts these lessons are trying to convey quite well. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
7:47 AM, Sunday January 16th 2022

Hi Rob, thank you for the critique. Going back and looking at my work I definitely can see the things you've pointed out. I'll try to keep it in mind for the future.

// Strifer

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