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1:31 AM, Saturday November 20th 2021

Thanks for the thorough critique! Here are the revisions https://imgur.com/a/d1QKxSv

For ghosted planes, I thought back to the basics of ghosting and drawing from the shoulders, and achieving smooth lines. I think I am and have been drawing from the shoulder, it's a little hard to tell sometimes, but I try to consciously focus on using my whole arm. When ghosting I tried to execute the mark without pause between the ghosting and the execution, this led to a line here or there being started late. It didn't seem to improve my smoothness, so I've gone back to taking as short a pause as possible to make sure I'm starting my line from the mark I placed.

For ellipses, I did forget to try different starting points and drawing counter clockwise. I'm left handed, so drawing an ellipse clockwise is what I naturally did when I started, and is what I'm comfortable with. I'll definitely try to draw ellipses in different ways to see if there might be a better way. It felt easier to do smooth ellipses, where I wasn't going completely off on the second rotation, when they were smaller. The bigger they were the more off I was, I felt like. Not sure if this is a big issue, or if it's just my inexperience.

For rough perspective, I started to really see the benefit of your advice of placing more marks. It can be hard to visualize what I'm intending to draw sometimes, so placing the marks, and then taking a step back to see if it seems right is definitely a big help.

For rotated boxes... the first time I tried this exercise I think one of my big mistakes was looking at the reference page on the lesson instructions way too much. I tried to mimic it instead of focusing on my own page and as a result it ended up as a big mess. After going through the instructions and video again, I also realized that the reference page's space between the boxes is a bit bigger than when Uncomfortable draws in the video, or in the step by step instructions pictures. So I tried to make the space between the boxes smaller than the first time, and instead of having a reference picture open the entire time, I tried to take a good look at it and then just focus on my own page. I think I did a little better at rotating, but the top boxes got a little squished and ugly, and I still found it very hard to rotate the corner boxes the way I wanted.

Thanks again!

3:38 PM, Saturday November 20th 2021

About ghosted planes and rough perspective, I think it's good enough if you are already seeing where you need to improve. You still need more practice on straight lines, there is a lack of confidence and accuracy in your lines that should come with time. My "method" was just a guideline you have to adapt it to how you draw, it's a personal thing and everyone has their way of executing lines. If you remember that smoothness > accuracy, time will do the rest.

Now, with your ellipses. There is a big problem (from my perspective at least), your ellipses are more accurate than smooth. Maybe drawing some ellipses without limits that enclose it could work. You have to work on your ellipses in warm-ups from now on and should be a thing to look to improve.

The rough perspective was almost the same as the previous attempt. The lines of the boxes that are rotated have a similar length as boxes that are closer to the viewer and that's why your boxes never pass 45º of rotation. There is a thing with an easy fix that I previously mentioned in the critique when a box is next to another one, the common side will be almost equal. In your attempt, lines that should be equal, appear diverging one from another which is the opposite of what you should be aiming at. Also, there is no big problem with observing a reference and trying to study it, the problem is that if you try to mimic it without knowing how all it works, you are going to make a big mess because you will make mistakes and those will add on top of each other. Knowing how a reference is built helps to adapt to what you drew.

Verdict

I'm tempted to request another revision because your ellipses aren't smooth nor precise, your straight lines suffer a similar problem and I'm not sure you grasp how you should be rotating boxes... But I also think that grinding the same exercise is not going to help you that much and the 250 box challenge is intended to help you in multiple of those problems. Moving on is part of the drawabox process too after all.

I suggest you work in those areas in warmups. And it could be helpful to keep working on these exercises while you wait for future critiques.

Good luck with the challenge. Don't rush it. I always recommend to do 5-10 boxes a day, because most of what you will learn will happen while sleeping. Also playing around with ellipses, or drawing freely could help you more than doing some extra boxes a day. Good luck!

Next Steps:

Continue with 250 box challenge.

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