Hi, ksbedi! I recently finished the 250 Box Challenge and am on to Lesson 2. I’m also a Patreon supporter and receive official critiques from TAs, so I can offer you some advice based on what I’ve worked through so far and the suggestions that have been given to me. Get ready for a buncha words.

Your submission looks really good at first glance so let’s see if there is anything I can offer that you aren’t already aware of.

Starting off, your superimposed lines are looking really good! There isn't much tapering in them except for on the far ends which is completely normal. Your lines are looking really confident and it’s clear that you have met the point of the exercise. Next time you do this one, maybe in your warmups, I would suggest trying to gradually extend the length of one or two of your lines to fit the full page. I’ve found that this helps me to build confidence in a majority of my shorter lines and I’ve seen a really steep improvement since.

Ghosted lines are looking excellent as well. Your trajectories are very accurate for the most part and I can visibly see the confidence in your strokes! Be careful not to overshoot your endpoint; however, this issue will resolve with time. You've got some arcing in your lines here and there but overall these are really well done. Good job!

I can see the ghosting method is working in your favor with your ghosted planes as well. You are getting some really accurate trajectories and I think you nailed this exercise in terms of lines. Your ellipses on these pages look pretty good and it looks like you are using your shoulder to draw through them completely. Try not to think of the planes as the almighty determiners of your shapes. Rather, they should guide the overall size of your ellipse (I like to think of the vertical and horizontal lines in the planes as major and minor axes) and give you a general sense of their placement. Yes, one of your goals should be to fit the ellipse within the boundaries of the plane, but your primary focus should be on maintaining a smooth and even shape first-- even if it means your ellipse falls a little outside of the lines. This will improve with time and you will be better off in the future if you can keep consistency within your shapes.

Your tables of ellipses are looking good though you might do well to add some variation in the degrees of your ellipses. There is always room for improvement, so make sure you add these into your warmup routines for extra practice.

Funnels look great and I don’t see any glaring mistakes so moving on. Same with your plotted perspective. Nice job!

Rough perspective was our first big challenge with 3D space. Your trajectories are looking good for the most part and you can definitely see how plotting your lines back to the VP helps to identify mistakes. Your lines look a little less confident here (but not bad!) so make sure you are still practicing the ghosting method in warmups!

Honestly, your rotated boxes exercise looks better than what I turned in and I really don’t think I will be able to give you any useful critique with this. I think you did really well with this one, which was extremely difficult!

Organic perspective looks nice! Great job with sizing. You are having some minor convergence issues which I am 100% certain will be improved with the 250 Box Challenge. Good luck with the challenge and congrats on finishing Lesson 1! You are awesome. :)

Hello! This is my first critique here, so let me know if I say anything unclear or incorrect.

• Lines Section

Overall, you seem to grasp the concept of confident, fluid strokes very well!

For the Superimposed Lines exercises, your lines appear smooth and neat. You also seemed to place your pen carefully at the start of each point, which is an important step in preparing for a confident stroke and for avoiding fraying at the start point. Like the written content for this exercise suggests, I recommend beginning with smaller lines before gradually building up to longer lines and eventually the full width of the page. The idea in this case is to build up confidence as you move forward.

You did a great job in maintaining smooth, confident strokes in the Ghosted Lines exercise and Ghosted Planes with only a small amount of overshooting on some lines. While overshooting is not considered a big deal at this point in the course, if you have trouble with it, the Ghosted Lines page has a section that recommends you "Try lifting your pen off the page the second you hit that end point." You may want to try this, however you may also improve with this naturally over time. It's worth noting that you have pretty good accuracy, which, although not prioritized, will continue to improve with practice over time as well.

• Ellipses Section

For your Ellipses in Planes, you seem to prioritize confidence over accuracy; well done! There is a small amount of wobbliness in some your ellipses, but you may improve over time as you seem to grasp the concept of confidence well and are not expected to draw every line perfectly. It's also possible that there was some external factor that caused a sudden wobbliness (like accidentally bumping your arm when drawing a line). It may help to use the lines drawn to the midpoints of the planes as a guide to draw your ellipses— try hitting each of the midpoints rather than focusing on hitting the boundaries of the plane as a whole.

For the Tables of Ellipses, if you didn't use a ruler to plot the table itself, I would recommend doing so in the future so that you have straight lines to rely on as boundaries. The lines for the ellipses themselves don't appear to be closely tied together (minimal gaps between them), but that is an issue of accuracy which again will improve over time. You seem to have done a decent job of keeping the ellipses within the bounds most of the time, however they tend to overlap a bit much in some places. Additionally, some of the ellipses don't quite touch the boundaries, but then again that may be more of an issue of accuracy rather than confidence. Your ellipses also tend to be more even and circle-shaped, so I would recommend creating ellipses with varying degrees and slants in the future.

For the Funnels exercise, you did a good job of drawing the ellipses so that the minor axis (the line cutting through the horizontal middle of the funnel) cuts them into two symettrical halves. There are a couple of instances where it seems the first line of an ellipse does not touch the boundaries, so the second is aimed towards touching the boundaries— but I'm not entirely sure if this is an issue of accuracy or confidence. However, I am leaning towards it being an issue of confidence simply because it seems like the second draw through is 'course-corrected.' This is similar to wobbly lines resulting from trying to correct the direction of a line being drawn. In this case, I would recommend prioritizing confidence and smoothness where the lines of the ellipse are aimed towards being tightly held together, rather than going directly for accuracy in touching the boundaries of the funnel. Again, accuracy will improve over time.

• Boxes Section

On the Plotted Perspective exercise, the written content asks that, like the rest of the exercise, a ruler or straightedge should be used to convey the hatching (diagonal lines over one of the faces). Overall, however, your boxes are neat and follow through to the vanishing points correctly.

For the Rough Perspective exercise, your lines seem to be slightly less confident than your previous exercises, but not by much. Additionally, I would recommend only extending the depth lines to the horizon and no further, just so you can see more clearly how far off you were from the vanishing point. But that may just be a personal preference. Also, similarly with the tables on the Table of Ellipses exercise, I would recommend using a ruler to plot out the frames so that it may be less confusing when orienting your work. If it didn't affect your work, however, then, again, that may just be a preference. Additionally, its worth mentioning that although it may be difficult to do, the width lines of the boxes should ideally be parallel to the horizon while the length lines perpendicular to the horizon. Remember that this is because the exercise is done in 1 point perspective, where two of the vanishing points are so far off that the corressponding lines or convergences for one vanishing point become effectively parallel to one another.

For the Rotated Boxes exercise, you did a pretty good job at using the paper to its full extent, where the exercise fills most of the page. The gaps between the boxes are also fairly consistent, so well done there! Some of the boxes, however, don't seem to actually be rotating, but instead follow a convergence toward the same vanishing point (I may be incorrect here). This mistake is also explained in the written content for this exercise: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating. However, mistakes on estimating perspective and convergence is normal, and doing so will become easier through time and practice and when you tackle the 250 Box Challenge.

Finally, for the Organic Perspective exercise, your boxes follow the line guides nicely. As in the Rough Perspective exercise, your lines appear to be a bit less confident as compared to the rest of your work, but not by much. I would recommend making the sizes of the boxes slightly more dramatic (particularly the bigger ones in the front) so that the illusion of size is stronger, but you did a good job of this in most of your frames. For the boxes themselves, some of the closer ones appear to have repeating lines. Unless you were trying to add line weight to convey which box is in front of which (in which it would be an issue of accuracy rather than confidence), I suggest simply drawing one line and moving on. Even if you make a mistake drawing it, it is recommended that you accept and learn from that mistake rather than trying to correct it. This will help when drawing future lines, since it will build a sharper skillset that can ultimately lead to more accurate lines to begin with. It will also help in avoiding habits that try and correct mistakes and in doing so worsen the outcome.