Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

9:15 PM, Tuesday May 19th 2020

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Hi, thanks very much for the critique. Would it be possible to have my previous posts deleted?

Regards,

Evil Bob

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8:56 PM, Saturday May 23rd 2020

One quick thing before I begin your critique. If at all possible, when you take photos of your homework in the future, try to uncurl the paper as much as possible so that it is easier to see and examine your lines.

For your super-imposed lines I can see you did a good job of keeping your lines pretty straight and consistent. There are a couple areas where your lines fray on both ends, so you want to be sure that you take your time lining up your pen and that you do not rush once you begin to make your mark. In your ghosted lines I can see that your lines are fairly straight and smooth. Towards the end your lines start to trail off and you appear to struggle with getting them to end near the plotted point. One thing you can do to help with this is to try lifting your arm off the page when you want to end your line, rather than trying to stop the motion of your arm. This should help you maintain that smooth consistency throughout the entirety of your mark making.

Your planes are well constructed. I can see that you were careful about where you placed your lines and that you tried to execute them accurately. Accuracy is something that you will work towards more as you continue to practice ghosting, so it is important to keep in mind what I have said above and make sure that you are preparing and taking your time as you move forward.

You did good work with your table of ellipses. You drew through your ellipses correctly and for the most part they are evenly shaped. There are some areas where you could have spent more time planning your placement so as to have all your ellipses fit more snugly in their alloted space. Overall these ellipses do look good and your accuracy will improve as you continue to practice ghosting through your ellipses. I can see in your ellipses in planes that you struggled a bit to make your ellipses with confidence and an even shape. Planning and ghosting are very important steps in Drawabox and one thing to keep in mind is that once your pen hits the page, there is no more time to make changes or correct your course halfway through your mark making, as explained more in depth in this comment made by Uncomfortable. Most of what I said above also applies to your funnels. In general the shape of them improves here, though I still see signs of hesitation in a few of them. I also see some of them are slanting along the minor axis. If you find your ellipses are slanting you can try turning the page until they line up correctly.

Moving onto your rough perspective boxes I can see that you tried to get your boxes to line up correctly. The horizontal lines are largely parallel to the horizon and your vertical lines are relatively perpendicular to the horizon. Your mark making still has some issues, which I mentioned above but you will have plenty of opportunity to work on that more in the box challenge. One thing to point out is that your line extensions are dotted instead of straight, consistent lines. In the future you do not want to do this and it would also be preferred if you used a different color pen (or pencil or whatever you have) for the extensions, if you have one. Your boxes do converge near or on the plotted vanishing point which is very good and you will work on that more in the box challenge as well.

In the rotated box challenge you get some good rotation along the major axes. The gaps between your boxes do not stay very consistent though. This can cause the extremities of your rotated boxes to become inconsistent and distorted. As you move forward in Drawabox and being constructing more complex forms it is important to take your time and make sure that you are putting in as much effort as required with every mark you make, as explained here. Overall your rotated box homework is not bad. Just keep in mind what I have said before and you should continue to improve.

You did well with your organic perspective boxes. Here, it looks like you took your time more with your mark making. Your boxes do a good job of trying to have your sets of parallel lines converge consistently towards their shared vanishing point, which is something you will work on more in the next steps.

Next Steps:

Continue to the 250 Box Challenge!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:02 PM, Saturday May 23rd 2020

Thanks very much for the critique Scylla, I kinda did rush through the lesson in a day so I compromised on quality, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again.

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