Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

11:51 AM, Monday March 13th 2023

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hi there

here's the homework for lesson 1

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8:56 PM, Tuesday March 14th 2023

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 a bit of wobble in your ghosted lines and planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing improvement with your final exercise 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. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced.

Your tables of ellipses are coming along pretty good. I've noticed in a few places you didn't draw through your ellipses. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/11/drawingthrough So this is just a reminder that you need to draw through EVERY single ellipse you draw for all of these lessons. Even if you think you got it right the first time. You are doing a good job focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's great that you aren't overly concerned with accuracy and are instead focused on getting smooth ellipse shapes. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come with mileage and consistent practice more than anything else. Your ellipses in funnels are looking fine. I'm not seeing any real issues here. 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/1/14/step3 This helps with practicing different degrees of ellipses. Your ellipses are off to a great start but there's still room for improvement so keep practicing them during your warmups.

The plotted perspective looks great although I have a quick note regarding added hatching. If you want to add hatch marks to the front plane of a box that is fine but make sure the hatch marks connect from end to end of the plane and aren't just floating in the middle. Also treat each hatch mark like any other line you would draw for these exercises and plot them out and ghost them multiple times. You should never mindlessly be putting down lines for any of these homework pages. Your rough perspective exercises turned out okay. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some wobble creeping back into some of your lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling 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. So you skipped extending the lines back on your boxes on one of your homework pages completely and on the other page you did it incorrectly. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/step6 As it explains here you are not plotting lines back to the VP but instead you are supposed to extend your depth lines back to the horizon line. This gives you a better understanding of how off your box constructions were. So as a revision I'd like you to extend the depth lines back on the page that you skipped doing it on completely. You are also having some issues with slanting legs on your boxes so 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 did a good job drawing through your boxes but one of the reasons this exercise started to fall apart a bit towards the corners is because you stopped keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/guessing Keeping the gaps narrow and consistent really helps with inferring information about neighboring boxes rotation and proportion. 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 exercise is looking pretty good but you are missing a page. I'll need to see that before I can mark this as complete. You seem to be getting more comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework. That being said I'm still seeing a bit of line wobble creeping through here and there so try and keep in my the advice I gave earlier and fully commit to your marks. Line confidence is something you definitely need to keep working on during the 250 box challenge. Your box constructions are fairly solid for the most part and I can see you are developing a sense for how box lines converge to vps. There are still some wonky convergences here and there so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a pretty good submission that showed a good deal of growth. I do think that you perhap rushed through some exercises a bit as you clearly skipped a few steps here and there. I would recommend spending a little more time going over the lesson materials before starting the homework. Once you get that revision submitted along with the missing page I'll take a look and you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge. Good luck!

Next Steps:

Extend your depth lines back to the horizon line on your rough perspective exercise page

Missing one page of the organic perspective exercises

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:18 AM, Wednesday March 15th 2023

Hi there thank you for the critique!

here are my revisions

https://imgur.com/a/pORTc4L

although one thing about the 250 box challenge is that i have already done it,

i've posted both lesson one and the 250 box challenge for the community feedback, (with the ok to move foward from lesson 1) the question is do i have to do them again?

12:23 PM, Wednesday March 15th 2023

I'll leave Rob to look over your revisions, but to answer your question, the standard rule for official critique is that students must wait to have a lesson or challenge marked as complete before continuing on. We do allow an exception for the box challenge however where you are allowed to submit work done previously along with an additional 50 boxes done after your Lesson 1 work is marked as complete.

So, once Rob marks your work as complete, you'll do another 50 boxes to the best of your current ability, and you can submit them along with those you completed beforehand together.

3:44 PM, Wednesday March 15th 2023

Okay, these both look good. 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.
3:59 PM, Wednesday March 15th 2023

great thank you very much!

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