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9:37 PM, Thursday November 19th 2020

Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!

From what I can see your line work is well done and your boxes are coming along well. When I compare your early work to your final boxes I can see you made some good progress with the quality of your mark making. Your lines are steadily looking straighter and more confident. You also do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points!

I do notice that in some areas you still have a bit of hesitation show in your marks, likely due to prioritizing the accuracy of your marks instead of creating a smooth, confident looking line. Just remember that the confidence of the stroke is far and away your top priority. Accuracy is something that you will improve on as you continue working through Drawabox and practice ghosting. Once your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid mistakes has passed, so all you can really do is push through. Hesitation serves no purpose. Mistakes happen, but a smooth, confident mark is still useful even if it's a little off.

Now, while it is important that you use the ghosting method of each mark you make while doing Drawabox one thing you can try to help with ending your marks closer to where you want them is lifting the pen off of the page rather than stopping the motion of your arm. You can also try varying the speed you use to create your marks. Some students find that going at a slightly slower speed works better for them.

I would also encourage you to start adding extra line weight to your boxes. When you go to add weight to a line it is important that you treat the added weight the same way you would a brand new line. That means taking your time to plan and ghost through your mark so that when you go to execute it the mark blends seamlessly with your original mark. This will allow you to create more subtle and clean looking weight to your lines that reinforces the illusion of solidity in your boxes/forms. You can also read more about this here. Something to keep in mind as well, when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes.

Finally while your converges do improve overall I think this diagram will help you further develop that skill as you continue through Drawabox. So, when you are looking at your sets of lines you want to be focusing only on the lines that share a vanishing point. This does not include lines that share a corner or a plane, only lines that converge towards the same vanishing point. Now when you think of those lines, including those that have not been drawn, you can think about the angles from which they leave the vanishing point. Usually the middle lines have a small angle between them, and this angle will become negligible by the time they reach the box. This can serve as a useful hint.

Congrats again and good luck with lesson 2!

Next Steps:

Continue to lesson 2!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:29 AM, Friday November 20th 2020

SCYLLASTEW, thank you for your critique and tips :)

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Ellipse Master Template

This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.

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No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.

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