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5:56 AM, Tuesday March 1st 2022

Hello and welcome to drawabox. My name is Benj, and I’ll be taking a look at your Lesson 1 submission today. Or at least I’d like to. You see, currently, said submission looks like this...

Next Steps:

If you would be so kind as to upload it again – the images a little bigger this time – I’ll be glad to take a look at it.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:51 AM, Tuesday March 1st 2022

Oops, my bad! I accidentally upload the thumbnail instead of the actual image. Here's the new link: https://imgur.com/a/dcmCQJL

7:44 AM, Wednesday March 2nd 2022

No worries! Let’s take a look at it, then!

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking solid. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. I’d have liked to see some arcing ones, too, but that’s alright. Your ghosted lines/planes look quite confident, also, and I’m glad to see that you’ve not forgotten to plot start/end points for the non-diagonal center lines of the planes (most students do!), but, you’re sometimes a little too conscious of said points. In particular, I notice that you always slow down, as you approach your end point, in an effort to not stop short of it, or overshoot. That causes your lines to become wobbly, however (or, at the very least, to change their trajectory), so it’s not something that we encourage. After all, what we recommend is that you prioritize confidence over accuracy, not the other way around.

Moving on to the ellipse section, the table of ellipses exercise looks mostly good. I say mostly, because though your ellipses are smooth, and generally rounded, they have some spacing issues. Make sure to ghost until you’re ready, and then commit, rather than ghosting an arbitrary number of times, or until the mark is ‘close enough’. Further, remember that you’re meant to be ghosting an ellipse that touches all available sides of its plane – the ones in page 2, row 5, column 1, for instance, are incorrect, because they float inside of their frame. By the way, the reason I said that your ellipses are generally rounded, is because it’s not always the case that they are. In particular, I notice that some of your thinner ellipses tend to come out a little pointy. Likely, you’re, without intending to, switching to a lesser pivot, to handle those sharp turns. Always check back, to make sure that you’re not. The ellipses in planes are well done, in both of these respects (in other words, they properly touch all available sides of the frame, and are rounded). Do see if you can lift, rather than flick, your pen off the page at the end of your rotations, however – it’ll get rid of those tails at the end of your ellipses. The funnels are mostly good. Their ellipses are a little stiff, from time to time, but I expect that that’s due to their size (some of them are quite small, and it’s difficult to engage your shoulder for especially small marks). So, see if you can draw a little bigger, next time.

The plotted perspective exercise looks clean.

The rough perspective exercise is a little mixed. The convergences start off a little lacking, but improve nicely throughout the set – as expected. The issue comes from the linework – there’s a lot of automatic reinforcing present, here. You’ll recall, from the ghosted lines text article, that you’re encouraged to draw each line once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out. Fixing your mistakes in a separate stroke – in other words, automatically reinforcing them – is not something we encourage. For one, it doesn’t fix your mistake – just makes it easier to spot. Beyond that, however, it encourages the thinking that a mistake is a problem. It’s not – it’s just an indication as to what you need to work on next.

The rotated boxes exercise is well done. Its boxes struggle to rotate, but that’s entirely expected. What matters is that its big, it has been seen through to the end, and you’ve been careful to keep its boxes snug. Further proficiency will come as you progress through the box challenge, and learn just how one goes about constructing a box. Until then, this is more than satisfactory.

Speaking of, your boxes in the organic perspective exercise look quite good. Their lineweight is, at times, a little much (a single superimposed line is usually enough to communicate dominance), but it has been applied correctly. Beyond that, the boxes flow well, as per their size, and foreshortening. Nicely done.

Next Steps:

I’ll be marking this lesson as complete, and moving you on to the box challenge. Good luck!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:52 AM, Wednesday March 2nd 2022

thank you for such a detailed critique! Really appreciate it!

7:46 AM, Wednesday March 2nd 2022

Hey Benj, can I ask you something ? Will I have to wait for 14 days to get my lesson 1 critiqued ? And in the meantime, should I start doing the 250 boxes challenge or just drawing for fun ?

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