Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:42 AM, Wednesday January 5th 2022

Drawabox Lesson 1 HW - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/Ouvoa6Y.jpg

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Some of the pages got a little crumpled when my cat decided they'd be a nice bed. Thanks in advance =)

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6:54 AM, Thursday January 6th 2022

Welcome to drawabox – both you and your cat! – and congrats on completing Lesson 1. Let’s take this one exercise at a time, shall we?

Starting off, your superimposed lines are looking good. They’re smooth, and properly lined up at the start, but not always of a consistent trajectory. I’d have also liked to see some arcing lines, but they’re optional, so no harm done. The ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, save for some slight hesitation near their ends. Try to be a little less conscious of the end point. Rather than slowing down as you approach it, in an effort to not stop short of it, or overshoot, see if you can maintain the same speed; after all, our #1 priority isn’t for our lines to be accurate, but rather for them to be confident.

The table of ellipses exercise looks good. You’ve got a lot of ellipses here, and while that’s normally a good thing (practice makes perfect and all that), it has backfired a little in this case – because your ellipses are so small, it has been a lot harder to engage your shoulder for them, resulting in them being a little wobbly at times. You do have your priorities straight though, I can tell. 2 more minor things. First, aim for a minimum of 2 rotations, not 1 and change. Second, see if you can lift, not flick, your pen off the page at the end of your rotations – it’ll get rid of those tails. The ellipses in planes look quite good, and, as expected, you’ve had a much easier time on these bigger boys. You’ve done a good job of keeping them smooth and rounded, too, despite them being far more difficult as per their frames. The funnels, too, look quite solid – their ellipses are snug, and properly cut into two equal, symmetrical halves.

The plotted perspective exercise looks good, if a little inconsistent in its lineweight.

The rough perspective exercise shows some nice improvement throughout the set, until the last frame. I’m guessing this was a different day, or something? If so, remember that the recommendation is to re-read the instructions (and of course, warm up), before jumping right into things. Anyway, your linework here is solid, and your convergences fairly on-point, so all is good.

The rotated boxes exercise is quite solid, also. Here, especially, it’s important to draw big, to really give yourself some room to think, but you’ve done fairly well, even at this size. Your boxes are snug, and comfortably rotating (if slightly). The far planes are a little flat, and there’s the expected issues with the depth lines, but we’ll address all of that in an upcoming challenge, so no need to stress about it now.

Finally, the organic perspective exercise looks great. Your compositions are quite dynamic, and aided in their flow as a result of the boxes’ increase in size, and consistent, shallow foreshortening.

Next Steps:

I’ll be marking this lesson as complete, so you may head on over to the box challenge. GL!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
1:22 PM, Thursday January 6th 2022

Awesome, I really appreciate the feedback, I'll keep that in mind moving on to the box challenge!

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