That’s all we can ask for! Welcome to drawabox and congrats on completing Lesson 1. I’m TA Benj, and I’ll be taking a look at it for you.

Starting off, your superimposed lines aren’t bad. They’re smooth and properly lined up at the start, but not always of a consistent trajectory, so be mindful of that. I know that it seems counterintuitive, but even if a line is completely off, it’s okay to continue with that same trajectory, rather than adjust. We want to be able to trust our muscles (and the built up motion that comes from ghosting) in cases like this, rather than let our brain guide our line. Your arcing lines look good by the way – good work with those! Your ghosted lines/planes do a good job of maintaining that same level of confidence. It’s a little hard to tell because of your ellipses, but in your planes, you’re plotting start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of your planes, correct If not, please do moving forward. Every mark you make needs start/end points. And try not to be overly conscious of them, also. Sometimes your lines will arc a little as you approach them, but as before, it’s perfectly fine to miss your end points provided this comes from the pursuit of a smooth, straight line. (A wobbly one will be incorrect, regardless of how accurate it is.)

Starting off the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise is interesting. You actually did well enough in the beginning (a little wild perhaps, but certainly confident!), and then I suppose you saw the issues with accuracy, and decided to pivot in the other direction. From that point on, your ellipses are stiff and wobbly, and this is affecting their roundness, too. I’ve mentioned this in the previous section so I won’t linger on it too long, but for us, the most important thing is confidence (and the least important, accuracy). A confident mark is able to convey an illusion of solidity (something we’re after), and any issues with its accuracy that come from the pursuit of this confidence we can ignore, or try to work in to our work. A wobbly mark will never be able to read as solid, however, and all the confidence in the world won’t save it then. And anyway, accuracy is something that improves over time, whereas confidence is something we have full control over right now. So, prioritize accordingly! Of course, this is not an excuse to be completely wild. You want to properly ghost your ellipses, and then commit to their motions, and if they end up lacking accuracy, that’s perfectly fine. It might help you to draw some ellipses on a separate piece of paper, as fast as humanly possible. Don’t worry about frames, etc. for this, simply draw some free form ellipses, and see how confident you’re able to be when you’re not worried about fitting into a frame. That’s what we want from you, even when trying to fit into it. We’re not asking for the skill to be able to make that happen, and still be accurate; merely the boldness to do it, despite the resulting inaccuracy. (I did, in fact, end up lingering here too long… ahah.) Your ellipses in planes are much better in this respect, particularly in the second page. Amongst other things, this is because of the size of your planes here. Drawing big is very useful, because it gives your brain a chance to breathe, so it’s another thing that you can (intentionally, now) do if you’re struggling. The ellipses in funnels go back to their previous state (likely because of how small they are), but no stress, now you know what to do. And anyway, both here and in the planes exercise your ellipses do a good job of respecting the rules of each exercise, so it’s really only the matter of confidence that’s holding you back.

The plotted perspective exercise starts the box section off nicely. We tend to prefer out hatching lines to be a little closer together, but that’s alright. What matters is that your boxes here are well constructed and their back lines proper. The rough perspective exercise is a little mixed. Your convergences here aren’t bad (except for that last frame, but I assume you were either eager to finish, or it was a different day (not an excuse, of course, but I’ll take it for now!)) The issue comes from the linework, which is very wobbly. It’s a little overwhelming, I know, but if you take a step back you’ll notice that what you’re doing here is really no different from what you were doing in the ghosted lines/planes exercises. You’re drawing lines, from point A to point B, and tackling them one at a time. If they were confident there, there’s no reason they can’t be confident here, also. So try not to let the big picture overwhelm you, if you can. Good attempt at the rotated boxes exercise. It’s certainly been a bit of a struggle for you, but you’ve stuck with it, and that’s all we can really ask. I do suspect you’d be able to do better if you were more patient with it (perhaps if you drew along with the video, pausing it, drawing one line, resuming it, drawing the other, and so on), but it’s alright either way. We’ll be discussing boxes in the upcoming box challenge, and the issues that you encountered here, and your inability to understand how they’re meant to be rotating from imagination, should be fixed after that point. On the subject of boxes, the organic perspective exercise looks really good. In the second page, particularly, I love all the unused points on your page – it tells me that you really took your time with this! Your boxes here are well constructed and of a consistent foreshortening, which is appropriate. Their increase in size is a little inconsistent, and their linework is a little lacking, but it’s a good start, and one that can only improve from here.