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2:55 PM, Tuesday August 10th 2021

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. 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. I'm noticing that you are getting some wobble in your ghosted lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing improvement with the ghosted planes and as you worked through these pages but I still want to mention this advice here so you can understand what the problem likely is.

This is the important part we need to be focusing on and the real problem I'm seeing:

You're hesitating as you execute the line, rather than drawing with a confident motion. Finally committing to a mark can definitely be quite daunting, but it's integral that you get used to accepting that mistakes do happen. Things go wrong - you can prepare as much as possible (and you should) but the moment your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid a mistake has already passed. Now you must commit yourself, push through with confidence, and execute your line. It's also worth remembering: we can still work with a line that is smooth and even, but there's not much that can be done with a wobbly one.

What's most likely happening is that you are worrying about accuracy too much while making your mark and it's causing you to slow down your stroke to compensate which is giving you quite a bit of wobble in your lines. The other possibility is that you aren't ghosting your lines or you are reverting back to drawing from your wrist on occasion. I can't be entirely sure of which specific thing is happening and it even could be combinations of all of them. So I might normally reassign some pages but since I did see the big improvement with your last exercise I'm just going to leave this in here as some more general advice when it comes to wobbly linework.

Your ellipses are largely suffering from the exact same issue which really just goes to show that once you fix this problem it will improve every aspect of your drawing and that improvement is very evident with your organic perspective boxes and the line confidence I see there. Your tables of ellipses is coming along okay. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and while you seem to be focused on consistent ellipse shape you are getting quite a bit of line wobble trying to be accurate. This is carried over into your ellipses in planes and you are still deforming your ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/deformed This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues. Since I'd like you to to get a little bit smoother ellipses overall before moving on I'd like you to do one more page of ellipses in planes as a revision. Focus on confident linework and smooth ellipses and don't worry about accuracy too much.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. There is a pretty big improvement here in terms of line confidence although I am still seeing a bit of wobble in some of your lines. Once again this is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. The other possibility is that you have reverted back to drawing from your wrist for some of these lines. Just something to keep an eye on. You should be drawing from your shoulder for basically every line you draw even shorter ones. The wrist should be reserved for detail work only. You are 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 although you could have done a bit better with keeping the gaps between your boxes more narrow and consistent. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/guessing You're still struggling with some of the rotations required for this exercise which is perfectly fine given the difficulty but 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. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. Your box constructions could definitely use some work so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a really good submission that showed quite a lot of growth when it comes to line confidence and quality. I think you still need to get there with your ellipses but the organic perspective exercise was showing massive improvement in terms of line confidence. I'd like you to do one more page of ellipses in planes as a revision and then once you get that submitted I'll take a look and you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page Ellipses in planes - Focus on confident linework and smooth ellipses and don't worry about accuracy too much.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:43 AM, Thursday August 19th 2021

Hi Rob,

Thank you very much for your feedback. I will submit the Ellipses in planes shortly.

Have a wonderful day.

Michael

6:48 AM, Tuesday August 24th 2021

Please see link for Ellipses in Planes revision. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba4ato971e5zxb7/Ellipses%20in%20planes.pdf?dl=0

Thanks Michael.

5:41 PM, Tuesday August 24th 2021

Hello, These are a nice improvement overall and are much looser than your original submission. You're still getting the occasional line wobble so keep working on your ellipses during your warmups. I'm going to mark this as complete and you can move on to the 250 box challenge. Good luck!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
12:54 PM, Wednesday August 25th 2021

awesome thanks!

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