2 users agree
12:59 PM, Thursday April 21st 2022

Hi, I'll be critiquing your work, I hope you'll get something useful out of it. As I'm critiquing each exercise individually, I may seem a bit harsh on the first exercises of a given subject, but keep in mind that the advice I'm giving will also apply to when you're doing the exercises as a warmup (even if certain issues are visibly solved during the next exercises).

Lines

Superimposed lines: Good effort, fraying is generally on one end, of course we eventually don't want any fraying but that's for the future. I also noticed that you only attempted the curves twice, which is fine for now but when you do your warmups I suggest you also try your best shot at doing curved superimposed lines.

Ghosted lines: I see you're arching your lines to meet your endpoint, which is something I'd like you to avoid. The goal here is to get your lines to be straight and confident first, and then focus on accuracy. I see some of your lines being a bit wobbly as well, so I'd advice you to make your marks a little quicker, so your mind has no opportunity to try and 'fix' the trajectory (which causes wobbling).

Ghosted planes: your lines are generally getting straighter meaning your confidence is going up, which is a good thing! There are still a decent amount of arching lines, but I already see a great improvement in general. Something that is definitely not a good thing is drawing a new line to make up for your failed line. The moment you draw a line that doesn't go the way you want, you treat it as if it's a good line and work from there. However all in all, it's a good execution of the exercise.

Ellipses

Table of ellipses:

Good job drawing through your ellipses 2-3 times and good job fitting your ellipses snugly within the boundaries & next to each other. I also appreciate you trying out many different degrees of ellipses! While in your first page your ellipses still look kinda wobbly and not uniform, I'm seeing that you're solving these issues steadily in page 2, keep it up! This is probably one of the best exercises to keep in your warmup routine for a while.

Ellipses in planes:

Good attempt, it's a difficult exercise. I do see you're trying to hit all four sides of the plane. That's good, but it's advised to first have your ellipses be a uniform, elliptical shape before you try to hit all four sides. Also, keep ghosting! your ellipses start to look wonky again which is something we want to avoid.

Funnels: looking pretty good, the bottom right one looks fantastic! Keep in mind that you want to align your ellipses' minor axes to the minor axis of the funnel! The orientation of your ellipse looks good enough, but your ellipse's widest point should be when the minor axis line of the funnel gets crossed. Ghosting a little bit more may help with this, and of course doing this exercise as a warmup every once in a while will do wonders.

Boxes

Plotted perspective: use black for each of your lines. Are you using a ruler for the hatching lines? Because in this exercise every mark you make should be done with a ruler! Beyond that it looks good.

Rough perspective: your lines are getting a bit wobbly again. understandable, since this is the first 'real' box exercise, but keep on ghosting and making quick marks to get rid of these wobbly & arching lines. Also, you should keep your horizontal lines horizontal and vertical lines vertical. You're doing that for the most part, but I still see a lot of instances where your backlines are really veering off course. Of course, I see you're making your mark by ghosting towards your dot, which is good. BUT! You can put down another dot if you see that your dots will make your line veer off course! A single dot is much less of a commitment than a line, so you can sometimes just ignore a dot and put down a new one.

Rotated boxes: Very difficult exercise, but in general you nailed it! Only your corner boxes are a bit off, try to keep the lines near your neighbouring boxes to be close and parallel to the neighbouring lines. I see a good deal of rotation, so for the most part it's a great attempt! :)

Organic perspective: I see a decent amount of size difference, but try to make the boxes in front HUUUUGE. Also, I made this mistake as well but apparently all of the boxes should be in 3-point perspective. Your boxes look pretty solid, it shows you already have a good understanding of 3-D space. Of course drawing through your boxes will elevate that, but that's where the 250 box challenge is for :'). In terms of the lines themselves, they look fairly straight, still some curving going on but I think the mileage you'll get in the next challenge will do wonders. Finally, when drawing overlapping boxes try to give your box in front a little more lineweight (of course after ghosting).

All in all: nice work! Good luck and move on to the next challenge.

Next Steps:

Pick 2-3 exercises and do them as a warmup for 10-15 mins before each drawing session

Continue on towards the 250 box challenge. And remember: it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. Take regular breaks, keep up that 50% rule, and keep on having fun with drawing (boxes)!

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
2:46 AM, Friday April 22nd 2022

Thank you so much for these very informative critiques. I appriciate a lot.

By the way, would you mind take alook in my 250 boxes challenge submittion ? You can see it in my sketchbook section. I posted a long time ago but no one sees it.

8:18 PM, Thursday April 28th 2022

You're welcome, yeah sure. I'll critique it soon when I have time, either tomorrow or sometime next week haha

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