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5:27 AM, Friday April 25th 2025
Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.
Overall you did a great job here, but I do have a bit to mention so let's break them down one by one. I'll write the most important things in bold.
Lines
Starting with your superimposed lines and ghosted lines, they did look a bit hesitant and choppy here, but you've demonstrated an improvement in confidence in your ghosted planes with better accuracy (still, you tend to overshoot your lines a lot, so that's the next step you should be working on). The main problem with your lines is arching, which can also be seen both in your ghosted lines and planes. This is a common issue that can have many different causes. At the end of the day, our brain does have to make certain corrections for the fact that all of the pivots of our arm (wrist, elbow, shoulder) result in an arc rather than a straight motion. So, while the pivot you do will most likely result in an arc, you have to correct them consciously so it becomes straight. Make sure that you ghost while pivoting from your shoulder, try to intentionally arc your lines to the opposite direction to counteract the natural curve. This constant correction you make will eventually become natural as you get more practice. Read more here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ghostedlines/arc
Ellipses
Now with the tables of ellipses, you've demonstrated a great understanding of the concept in executing confident ellipses. The ellipses in planes are nice, you drew it confidently and snugly in their respective planes.
The funnels are also looking great; you've managed to fit them snugly and aligned to the minor axis and carried the same confidence as in previous exercises. I have no complaints here as your ellipses will tighten as you get more practice. Also this is optional, but you can attempt the optional step of varying the ellipse's degrees as you move outwards in your warm ups, as mentioned here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/step3
Boxes
You've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective in the plotted perspective. I did see some skewed back vertical lines here and there, which is usually caused by an accumulation of human error as you plot more and more lines. I assume that's the case and you understand that every vertical line is straight in 2 point perspective. Even if the points are not aligned correctly, try to find a middle ground and draw it as vertical as you can.
You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective. I've noticed that some of the back faces of your boxes are not rectangular. By rectangular, we mean that they should be composed of horizontals that are parallel to the horizon line, and verticals that are perpendicular to it. While this could also be caused by the sometimes inaccurate lines, it's worth mentioning that there should not be any arbitrary guesswork or random angles. Don't forget that these rectangular front/back faces are the unique characteristics of 1 point perspective.
As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a great job at doing the rotated boxes. You've rotated the center boxes pretty well (while making sure to move the converging lines) and used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, but I can see you're having trouble in this with the boxes at the sides and corners which ended up in arbritarily placed boxes. Remember to use the neighboring elements as additional info to deduce the placement of a box rather than guessing, as you will do so repeatedly when it comes about drawing things in 3D space (https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/rotatedboxes/guessing).
Finally, organic perspective looks great as well. They look like they belong in the same page and the lines converge as they move farther away from the viewer. There are a few hiccups here and there where there are divergences that results in skewed boxes, but overall they're minor and they look pretty solid.
This will get more relevant as you get to the box challenge, but any hatching from this point on should also be done with the ghosting method. It will make your stuff cleaner and more practice is always good! Try to cover the whole area of the box with consistent spacing.
One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. I really, really need to stress this since you've been doing it too much throughout the box exercises, resulting in these scratchy and distracting drawings. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.
Anyway, while I think you've grasped the concepts of the whole lesson and ready to put them into practice in warmups, you have to put in more work in your lines confidence as it's one fo the weakest parts of your submission, especially when you're trying to cover them with extra lines. Otherwise, congratulations and keep up the good work!
Next Steps:
Move onto the 250 box challenge.
Do the lesson 1 exercises as your regular warmup and don't forget your 50% rule art.
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Sakura Pigma Microns
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
On the flipside, they tend to be on the cheaper side of things, so if you're just getting started (beginners tend to have poor pressure control), you're probably going to destroy a few pens - going cheaper in that case is not a bad idea.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.
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