Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

12:47 AM, Tuesday September 7th 2021

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Thank you so much. I'm really enjoying the course so far! I'm grateful for all you do.

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10:42 PM, Tuesday September 7th 2021

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 well. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on a consistent smooth ellipse shape. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes although you are deforming some of 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. 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/1/13/step3 There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape and accuracy so make sure you keep practicing these in your warmups as they can take a while to get used to.

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. That said I do want to discuss your added line weight very briefly. Adding line weight is fine but try and treat it the same as every other line you would draw for these lessons and ghost it multiple times and then draw from your shoulder with confidence. I can't be sure but it seems like you are reverting back to using your wrist for line weight which is reinstroducing some wobble into your linework. Just something to keep in mind. 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.

Your rotated box exercise turned out pretty well. 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 but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/notrotating 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 and notice how much cleaner your linework overall is with this exercise compared to your rough perspective boxes. 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 really solid submission that showed a nice deal of growth. Your line confidence and ellipses are both coming along nicely but keep practicing those ellipses during your warmups. 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. Keep up the good work!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
2:25 PM, Friday September 10th 2021

Thank you, Rob, for this detailed critique!!!! Really appreciate it. I will continue to do these warm ups (forever) and have begun the 250 Box Challenge. SO HARD. Yes, you were right about this:

2:45 PM, Friday September 10th 2021

"I can't be sure but it seems like you are reverting back to using your wrist for line weight which is reinstroducing some wobble into your linework. Just something to keep in mind." yes, I was doing that.

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