Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

4:48 PM, Thursday August 11th 2022

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4:24 AM, Sunday August 14th 2022

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines I'm already seeing some line wobble as you are slowing down your stroke to try and accurately go over your lines. The same issue is happening in your ghosted lines and planes. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling This is also quite present in some of the later exercises although I am seeing improvement with your final organic perspective 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 evident with your organic perspective boxes and the line confidence I see there. There is another major issue I'm seeing with your ellipse exercises which is that you didn't draw through your ellipse shapes at all which is a very specific and important instruction given during the table of ellipses exercise. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/12/drawingthrough Please take your time when going through these lessons and make sure you read everything and watch the videos entirely as this is a crucial instruction that is reiterated numerous times through the ellipse exercises. You need to be drawing through EVERY SINGLE ELLIPSE you draw for all of these lessons without exception. Even if you feel like you got it right the first time. You are getting quite a bit of line wobble through these table of ellipse exercises 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/1/12/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/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always consider when drawing your ellipses. Since there is pretty significant issues with line wobble and deformed ellipses along with not drawing through your ellipses I'm going to have you redo a few of these pages. I'd like you to redo one page of the table of ellipses, one page of the ellipses in planes, and one page of the ellipses in funnels. Make sure you draw through all of your ellipses and don't worry too much about accuracy and focus more on getting a consistent smooth ellipse shape.

The plotted perspective looks good but it appears as though you added line weight without using a ruler which introducing wobble into your confident linework. Your rough perspective exercises turned out pretty good. You are getting a mix of confident linework here along with some wobble creeping back into some of your lines which is a solid improvment. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/wobbling You are still getting line wobble through though and as said previously it's happening because you are more concerned with accuracy now that you are constructing boxes and you are slowing down your stroke to compensate. It also appears as though you didn't extend the depth lines back correctly on one page but fixed it on your second. 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. I like that you drew this nice and big as that really helps when dealing with complex spatial problems. You also did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps narrow and consistent for the most part. One of the reasons this started falling apart on you a bit more towards the corners is because you didn't keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent there. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/17/guessing 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/1/17/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 looking pretty good. You seem to be getting comfortable using the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder for confident linework which is great. That said there is still line wobble here and there so line confidence is definitely something you need to work on during the 250 box challenge. Your box constructions are a bit of a mixed bag. There are some decent constructions along with a lot of wonky ones so the 250 box challenge will be a good next step for you to develop a better sense of how box lines need to converge to vps.

Before moving on though I'd like you to do a few more pages of the ellipse exercises as you need to get used to drawing through your ellipses and also get more confident with your strokes. Don't overly concern yourself with accuracy at this stage and commit to your marks more. All of your thinking about accuracy needs to be handled when you place your dots and when you ghost your lines. Once you go to make your mark you need to commit fully. After you get those revisions submitted I'll take a look and you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page of the table of ellipses, one page of the ellipses in planes, and one page of the ellipses in funnels. Make sure you draw through all of your ellipses and don't worry too much about accuracy and focus more on getting a consistent smooth ellipse shape. Focus on confident linework while doing the planes as well.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:27 PM, Sunday August 21st 2022
edited at 8:28 PM, Aug 21st 2022

Thanks so much for the critique, I genuinely appreciate your time and will definitely try to keep these painpoints in mind throughout my studies.

I've completed the exercises you've asked, making sure to keep in mind drawing through ellipses, the minor axis issue and the mark making issue.

https://imgur.com/a/h5uen8u

Thanks in advance and have a great day!

edited at 8:28 PM, Aug 21st 2022
11:21 PM, Sunday August 21st 2022

Okay so you are doing a much better job with drawing through all of your ellispes here. That said with your ghosted planes and ellipses you are still running into issues with wobbly linework so keep practicing on confident linework during your warmups and during the 250 box challenge. 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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