Hello, and welcome to drawabox. Let me address your questions in order! Stopping a line where you intend is a skill that you’ll work on for a while. While it’s good to keep it at the forefront of your mind (sometimes when students hear that it’s not something that you’ll be able to improve overnight, they just stop stressing about it entirely, which is too far in the other direction!), it’s not something to have too great of an expectation from at this stage in the course. Keep trying for it, but don’t stress if you don’t see visible results. Similarly, short lines are meant to be difficult from the shoulder. It’s tempting to use your wrist for them, and you’ll be able to get some control back, but what we’re interested in isn’t super accurate lines anyway, it’s lines that flow smoothly. And that is achieved from the shoulder. So similarly, I’d say keep working on it, but without expecting it to click anytime soon. If by question 3 you’re referring to the rough perspective exercise (the correction lines in it), then it doesn’t especially matter. Personally, I prefer it to connect to the point (since that’s really what we’re testing here, but I’ve seen other TAs ask for the opposite, so whatever is most convenient for you, I suppose. I hope I’ve cleared everything up, let me know if I misunderstood anything. Until then, let’s take these exercises in order, too.

Your superimposed lines show a good start. They’re mostly smooth, and properly lined up at the start, but their trajectory will sometimes waver. I’ll remind you again that it’s more important for us for our marks to be smooth, than accurate. As such, a line that’s completely off, but smooth, is correct. One that is accurate, but wobbly/of a changing trajectory, is not. So be mindful of things like that. Your ghosted lines/planes are well done, and honestly the amount of overshooting is well within what we expect from a beginning student – hearing you earlier I thought it’d be crazy bad! What is a bit of a problem is that you’ll slow down as you approach the end point of your line, and wobble as a result. As you might expect (from my earlier bit about confidence and accuracy), this is not something we like to see. Try to be bold, in cases like that. It’s perfectly fine to not be perfect, I promise you.

Your table of ellipses exercise looks good. There’s the occasional stiff ellipse (for which I’d recommend more ghosting), but for the most part, these are smooth, rounded, and properly drawn through. They’re sometimes a little too same-y (I’m referring here to their degrees/angles), so it would behoove you to be a little more varied in that sense, but it’s nothing too serious. The ellipses in planes show some good improvement throughout the set. I could tell that you were struggling between filling the plane, and being confident, in the first page, and I’m pleased to say that you went in the right direction in the second. Do be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that drawing quickly means drawing confidently, however. It’s very much the case right now, but as you get better, you’ll find that you’ll be able to draw just as confidently when you draw a little slower. So don’t always book it! Though, on that subject, the funnels are perhaps a little too slow! :P Your insecurity is showing a little here, though it’s just as likely that you’re either not ghosting enough, or stressing too much about all the things you’re asked of, in this exercise, when it comes time to commit. I’ll remind you again that results don’t matter, so you really need not.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean, though you should’ve used a ruler for your hatching lines. The rough perspective exercise shows fantastic improvement throughout the set. By the last frame, not only are your lines confident, and properly parallel/perpendicular to the horizon, but their convergences are on-point, as well. Great work here. The rotated boxes exercise looks quite good too. I can tell that you’re a little bit stressed here, from how hard you’re pressing down on your pen, but the results are pretty solid! Up front, your boxes are snug, and do a good job of rotating. They’re not quite as good in the back – they’re a little flat here – but that’s entirely expected, and nothing to stress over. We’ll be discussing techniques regarding how to do that better in the box challenge. Your organic perspective exercise also shows some great improvement throughout the set. I was prepared to give the go-ahead to the first page, where the boxes looked good, if a little diverging at times, but you improved them nicely by page 2! They are a little too cube-like, which is not necessary, but perfectly acceptable, nonetheless. And more to the point, the fact that they’re converging now means that they flow quite a lot better. It’s worth being proud of this performance!