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8:54 PM, Saturday March 28th 2020

Starting with your lines, your work here is really solid. You're executing your marks with clear confidence, not hesitating at all, resulting in lines that maintain a very consistent trajectory throughout their length. You then go on to reinforce this with the ghosting method to imbue them with additional control without sacrificing that excellent flow. Very nicely done.

Your ellipses aren't quite as strong - they're still reasonably well done, but there's a visible tendency to slow down and hesitate as you draw them, which suggests to me that you're generally ever so slightly more preoccupied with nailing your accuracy - that is, getting them to fit snugly within their allotted space. Remember that the principles of the ghosting method (and the use of it) applies with all the marks we draw, ellipses included. It means we invest our time into the planning and preparation phases, which is where we establish the nature of the mark we want to make, then execute with a confident pace in order to keep the trajectory consistent. The result, in the case of ellipses, is that we achieve a smooth, evenly shaped ellipse with no wobbling or rigidity to it. Once we're able to achieve that, we can adjust our first two steps to improve the accuracy, but ultimately that confident execution is paramount.

I do think that you improve upon this throughout this section though - once you hit the funnels, you're doing visibly better at keeping them evenly shaped.

Skipping down to your rough perspective, you're generally doing pretty well but I think what's missing is that you need to take an extra moment at the beginning of each individual mark to determine the specific behaviour you're looking to achieve with a given mark. That is, each line in this exercise falls into one of three possible categories, each with its own specific behaviour. Horizontal lines run parallel to the horizon, vertical lines run perpendicular to the horizon, and lines that recede into the distance converge towards the vanishing point. This last one is the obvious focus of this exercise, but it's easy to slip up a little with the first two categories, resulting in lines that slant slightly and undermine the solidity of the boxes themselves. I explain this further in these notes.

You definitely took a good swing at the rotated boxes, though I think a similar issue gave you trouble here. Towards the center and the main axes, you did a good job of both keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent (so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork), and you also did a pretty good job of covering the full range of rotation along each axis. as you drift towards the corners however, the gaps become less consistent (resulting in more guesswork), and as a whole I think you struggle to keep your lines entirely parallel/perpendicular to the main axis lines, resulting in slanting that throws off the set as a whole.

Now, of course this exercise is intended to be extremely difficult at this stage, and merely exists to introduce students to the challenges involved in starting to more freely rotate their boxes in space. This is the same with the organic perspective exercise which takes this concept even further. You've similarly had a good start with these, though there's plenty of room to improve your ability to get your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

Jumping back to the rotated boxes though, I did want to point out that you neglected to draw the boxes at the far diagonal corners. Remember that regardless of whether or not an exercise turns well, your responsibility is merely to complete it to the best of your ability. In this case, you made a conscious decision to fall short of that. That is the only real mistake you made, because it was entirely within your control. Remember that as you move forwards - your responsibility is not to do the exercises well, or to impress anyone. It is merely to do them, and to put forward your best effort.

So! All in all, you are doing pretty well, and based on what I'm seeing, I believe you'll have ample opportunity to improve as you move forwards. So, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto the 250 box challenge next - this will give you ample opportunity to work with freely rotated boxes, and will also give you the opportunity to apply the ghosting method to every line you draw. You demonstrated exceptional capacity for this in the lines section, but I think you ended up investing less time into each individual mark through the boxes section. So to that end, use this as an opportunity to get used to investing as much time as is needed for each and every stroke, rather than giving less depending on how complex the overall thing you're drawing is.

A line is just a line, whether it exists in isolation, is part of a box, or is part of a vast drawing, and it will always require as much time as it does to be drawn to the best of your current ability.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:37 AM, Monday March 30th 2020

thank you for the very thorough critique! I admit I do feel I guessed more in the rotating boxes exercises as I moved out towards the corners. I will keep in mind to invest as much time needed for each stroke in the 250 box challenge. the last two perspective homework were really challenging and I think I let my impatience and frustration get in the way!

thanks again ! I Will keep these points in mind as I move on to the 250 box challenge!

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The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

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