What’s up, AX71. I’m Swampat and I’ll be doing your lesson 1 critique.

Lines

Superimposed Lines

So, your small horizontal lines are generally fine. Most of them don’t fray too much at the beginning and fray more at the end. They’re also pretty smooth, aside from the lines you can visibly see sticking out.

Now, I’m not sure if this is something you also did with the short lines, but I’m seeing that you’re not seeming to use a ruler for the first line of each new set of your longer lines. You need to use a ruler first for each new set so you have a guide and don’t wobble as much. The first page specifically is very messy looking, like your last three sets of medium horizontal lines are VERY messy. Your second page seems to be a little better, but I’m not 100% sure if you used a ruler for the first guideline.

Your curved lines are done pretty decently honestly. They are wobbly and fray out in a noticeable way, but for the most part they’re pretty smooth. That one wavy line isn’t great, but curves are hard to do at this level anyways so it’s not a big deal.

I think you might need to practice moving your whole arm to build more confidence and move your arm a little faster. I would like you to redo the first page using a ruler this time to create a guideline when you attempt to draw each set of lines. Here’s a visual example of what I mean by using a ruler for your first line of each new set: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lessonimages/7f550dbb.jpg. You can also just look back at the video YouTube of Superimposed Lines.

Ghosted Lines

Your lines are pretty smooth for the most part, some lines do miss their mark, but that’s not a big deal at this point. You do have some curved and wobbly lines, though it’s normal to have this happen when you start ghosting lines.

My main issue with this assignment is that I feel like you drew TOO many lines. I’m having a little bit of trouble seeing some of your lines because there are so many on the page. I don’t think you need to redo this, but remember to keep your assignments less cluttered so it’s easier to critique.

Aside from the page being cluttered you didn’t do terribly here, but I’ll give you some advice. When you’re ghosting try to move your arm as many times as you need to until you feel like you’re ready to let it rip and you can rotate your paper if ghosting is uncomfortable. The more comfortable you are, the easier it is to make straight smooth lines and you can even practice ghosting as a warmup.

Ghosted Planes

I’m not sure if you used dots for your squares at all, if you did it’s hard for me to tell. If you didn’t use dots before ghosting your lines, you need to put those down to use as a guide to make wobbling less likely to happen.

Speaking of those guide dots, you need to put dots down the 4 lines of the square plane for those lines that make a + and x. You look like you put a few dots down, but on the outside of the planes.

On your first page, a lot of your planes overlap each other and the lines that form a + and x go into other planes because they’re too long. Having those guide dots for ghosting would help this not to happen as much. Two of your planes on the first page are missing the lines that form a +.

Your second page is once again better than your first attempt, but still has overshooting + and x lines because you didn’t add those dots to help guide you while you ghost.

This last thing isn’t too big of a deal, but you tried to redo some of the lines you messed up on. This isn’t a huge deal (yet), but you should remember to just move on when you mess up on a line. Ignoring those mistakes can help build confidence and it also keeps the page cleaner.

I’d like you to redo the first page and use dots as a guide for ALL your lines. Remember not to try fixing messed up lines and make sure to stay aware of your line placement so you don’t have planes and lines overlapping onto another plane.

Ellipses

Table of Ellipses

The first thing I’m noticing with your ellipses is that they have no real… goal or pattern set (not sure if this is the correct wording). You seem to have just drawn random ellipses and random positions with no real goal in each frame. Here’s an example of what I mean by a pattern/goal for each frame: https://d15v304a6xpq4b.cloudfront.net/lesson_images/7abc3920.jpg.

I feel like you’re making too many small ellipses, which is probably why a lot of your ellipses are a bit too tightly packed into each frame. You don’t need to place as many ellipses into each frame as possible, you just need to have your ellipses touch the lines of the frame you put them in. If you have enough room for some smaller ellipses, then that’s fine, but don’t make most of your frames just small ellipses.

The last thing I can point out is the heaviness of your marks, but it looks like your pen might be failing with this assignment.

I would like you to redo both pages, but this time try to make more organized frames and larger ellipses. When you decide what kind of ellipse you’re going to draw, then stick to that shape of ellipse for that frame and don’t just draw random ellipses, in random positions, with a bunch of small ellipses taking up most of the frames.

Ellipses in Planes

You seem to have redone the planes from your originals. The planes are less messy but you still put some planes too close together which is making certain spots messy looking. Not as bad as before though, so it’s fine I suppose.

As for your ellipses, they’re not done horribly for the most part. Some of your ellipses don’t touch the 4 sides of your planes, but that’s a common mistake for me and others as well. Because some of your planes are too close to each other you seem to have a hard time drawing your ellipses. There is one ellipse on that first page that’s slanted too, but that might be because of the way the plane is shaped.

Some of your ellipses aren’t drawn through, what I mean by this is that the line you draw is a little too spaced out. This is fine, but remember to practice ghosting ellipses as a warmup to make them smoother.

You need to practice doing ghosting ellipses, I’d say to just practice ghosting as a warmup before drawing or doing an assignment until it feels more comfortable. I would still like you to redo the Ghosted Planes assignment from earlier, if you’d like to redo this assignment with the improved planes that’s fine.

Funnels

A few of your funnels look like you tried to redo the curved lines? I’m not sure if you’re rushing those curves, but if you’re using a round object as a tool to create your funnels then you shouldn’t have to try to redraw those lines. You don’t need to rush these at all, if that’s what happened.

Some of your minor axes (line in the middle of the funnels) don’t cut all the way through some of your funnels. It’s a bit hard to see if your ellipses position themselves in the same direction of your minor axes because you didn’t draw them all the way through your funnels.

Try to widen the ellipses the further from the middle you get inside your funnels. You kept some of your ellipses thin no matter how far from the middle you got. Also some two of your funnels have the opposite problem, they stay wide no matter how far from the middle they are.

Your pen seems to really be dying on you or it’s just not great at drawing ellipses. This isn’t really your fault, but you should probably try getting a new pen so you don’t have to attempt to go over your funnels so often.

I don’t think it's required for you to redo this assignment, but if you decide to, remember to use a round object as a tool to create your curves and you shouldn’t have to redraw those curves for your funnels. You need to draw your minor axes through your funnels so you can see what position your ellipses should be. Lastly, remember to keep your ellipses that are closer to the minor axis thin, while getting wider the further you get. You don’t have to do that last thing for all your funnels by the way, just one or two is good.

Boxes

Plotted Perspective

You did good on these. I don't really have any big issues with these, aside from a few of your boxes having lines that overshoot somehow. You don’t really need to add dots for these, but if they help you then it’s fine to use them. You can also add hatching to front faces of your boxes to show what side is facing the viewer.

Rough Perspective

You did good on this too for the most part. The only complaints I have is that you don’t need to try and redraw your messed up lines (your first page on the last frame has this problem the most) and your lines that lead back to the horizon line don’t have to go through the horizon line, they just have to stop on the horizon line.

Rotated Boxes This assignment is supposed to be hard so this’ll be short

I’m gonna be completely honest, because your lines are so dark, with lots of (what looks like?) hatching, and redrawn lines I can’t really see what you messed up on at all.

I really don’t want to have to say this, but I’d like for you to redo this assignment. Don’t make your lines too dark unless it’s the front facing side of a box, your hatching is messy and needs to stay inside of the box you’re drawing them on, and try your best not to redraw messed up lines because messed up lines are better than very messy lines.

Organic Perspective This one is also pretty hard, but this may be a bit longer(?)

It’s hard to tell what’s going on in this one too, but it’s a little better so I’ll just tell you what issues I have with the ones I can see. I’ll reiterate that you don’t need to redo messed up lines, it makes things very hard to see.

The boxes that are getting close to the viewer are too light in line weight and because you tried to redo your lines on a lot of boxes I can’t see the closest boxes that much in some frames, like the second frame and third frame of the first page. Your closer boxes should have darker lines to show that they’re in front of the smaller boxes in space and so it’s easier to see those boxes.

I think you’re overlapping your boxes TOO MUCH. On both pages of your boxes, they’re so overlapped that I can’t see anything in certain spots. Combined with you trying to fix messed up lines and the inconsistent line weight basically makes things almost impossible to see.

*You’re going to have to redo this assignment as well. You need to make sure you don’t try to redraw messed up lines like you’ve done here. Make boxes that are getting closer to the viewer have darker lines to help show where they are in space. You can have boxes overlapping each other, but don’t put too many boxes on top of each other. Basically, most of your mistakes are related to visibility and messiness of your lines. I want to give you more tips, but it’s really difficult for me to even see what I’m looking at. I hope I’m not being too harsh by the way, I’m trying to be as clear as possible.

*

Final Thoughts

You really struggle with feeling that you have to fix your messed up lines. You don’t need to fix your lines when you mess up. Accept your mistakes and move on, that’s how you build more confidence as you get better at doing these assignments and improving in art in general.

Don’t overlap or clutter your assignment pages. It’s going to make mistakes more likely to happen because you can’t see that well and people trying to give you critiques are going to struggle to help you if your assignments are just messy.

Practice moving your arm as a warmup. Do ghosted lines, ellipses, and wavy lines before drawing or doing an assignment. You’ll get used to the movements much faster if you do this.

okay so boxes and perspective are awesome but i think you should try to redo tables of ellipses and ghosted planes exercise just try to put everything organized not randomly but all the other stuff is glorious :)