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9:33 PM, Tuesday October 17th 2023

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point with all of your wavering at the opposite end. I'm noticing that you are getting quite a bit of wobble in your ghosted lines and planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing improvement with your final exercise but I still want to mention this advice here so you can understand what the problem likely is.

This is the important part we need to be focusing on and the real problem I'm seeing:

You're hesitating as you execute the line, rather than drawing with a confident motion. Finally committing to a mark can definitely be quite daunting, but it's integral that you get used to accepting that mistakes do happen. Things go wrong - you can prepare as much as possible (and you should) but the moment your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid a mistake has already passed. Now you must commit yourself, push through with confidence, and execute your line. It's also worth remembering: we can still work with a line that is smooth and even, but there's not much that can be done with a wobbly one.

What's most likely happening is that you are worrying about accuracy too much while making your mark and it's causing you to slow down your stroke to compensate which is giving you quite a bit of wobble in your lines. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced.

Your ellipses are largely suffering from the exact same issue which really just goes to show that once you fix this problem it will improve every aspect of your drawing and that improvement is very evident with your organic perspective boxes and the line confidence I see there. Your tables of ellipses are coming along okay. You are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and while you seem to be focused on consistent ellipse shape you are getting quite a bit of line wobble trying to be accurate. This is carried over into your ellipses in planes and you are still deforming your ellipses at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/deformed This is likely happening because you are too worried about accuracy and are probably slowing down your stroke to compensate. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory of the motion you build up while ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first. Although accuracy is our end goal it can't really be forced and tends to come through mileage and consistent practice more than anything. Your ellipses in funnels are having the same issues and you are also tilting your ellipses off the minor axis at times. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/18/notaligned This is something you should always consider when drawing your ellipses. There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to your ellipses both in terms of overall consistency of shape and accuracy so make sure you keep practicing these in your warmups as they can take a while to get used to.

The plotted perspective looks great, nothing to mention here. Your rough perspective exercises turned out okay. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some wobble creeping back into some of your lines. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/wobbling This is probably happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. That hesitation because of your concern for accuracy while making your mark is what is reintroducing the wobble into your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up while ghosting your mark and almost make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but will give you consistently smooth and confident linework which is our first priority. Accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced. The other possibility is that you have reverted back to drawing from your wrist for some of these lines. Just something to keep an eye on. You should be drawing from your shoulder for basically every line you draw, even shorter ones. The wrist should be reserved for detail work only. You are doing a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were quite off but that will become more intuitive with practice. One thing that can help you a bit when doing a one point perspective exercise like this is to realize that all of your horizontal lines should be parallel to the horizon line and all of your verticals should be perpendicular(straight up and down in this case) to the horizon line. This will help you avoid some of the slanting lines you have in your constructions.

Your rotated box exercise turned out decently. The main thing that would have helped you here would have been to just draw this bigger overall. Drawing bigger really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent. You are running into a pretty common issue of not actually rotating your boxes in some cases but instead simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/notrotating This is a great exercise to come back to after a few lessons to see how much your spatial thinking ability has improved. Your organic perspective exercises are where I'm seeing the biggest improvement in terms of line confidence. You seem to be more getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. That being said I'm still seeing line wobble throughout this exercise and I'd like to work on this before moving on. Your box constructions are fairly wonky throughout this exercise you need to develop a better sense for how box lines converge to vps so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this was a good submission that showed growth but you have a line wobble issue that persisted throughout all of these exercises that I'd like to work on a bit before moving on . So as a revision I'd like you to do one more page of the ellipses in funnels and one more page of the organic perspective exercise. Remember to fully commit to your marks and focus on confident linework. It's okay if your lines are a bit inaccurate as a confident smooth stroke is more important and accuracy will come with mileage and can't really be forced.

Next Steps:

One page of the ellipses in funnels

One page of the organic perspective boxes

Focus on smooth confident linework for both of these

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:36 AM, Wednesday October 18th 2023
edited at 2:38 AM, Oct 18th 2023

https://imgur.com/a/CHpw7PH

I did the ellipses twice since I felt like I was having a brain fart. The boxes seem to be more like boxes, at least from what I think I’m understanding. My lines are still a bit funky but I think they’re better too. Please let me know what you think and thanks again!

edited at 2:38 AM, Oct 18th 2023
5:52 PM, Wednesday October 18th 2023

These both looks great and it seems you really took to heart the advice I gave regarding confident linework. You're still slightly tipping the ellipses off the minor axis at times and your box constructions are still wonky but the main issue of confident linework is vastly improved. You'll get plenty of practice working on consistent confident linework during the 250 box challenge but keep practicing ellipses during your warmups. I'm going to mark this as complete and good luck with the 250 box challenge!

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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