Hi Elephant, congrats on finishing lesson 1!

First off, regarding your comment about not having a lot of availability for Drawabox, that’s completely okay, in my opinion the advantage of following this course is also that one can go at their own pace. Please remember to always take your time to complete these exercises to the best of your ability and to follow the 50% rule however, even if it stretches things out a lot.

I don’t have any specific advice for your elbow problem, except to keep experimenting and drawing lines in different directions (turn your sheet of paper as much as you need!). I only ever draw lines in one direction myself now, which is the one I’m most comfortable with. I’m sorry that I can’t help you more, but without seeing you in action it’s kinda hard to give relevant advice haha. Maybe try asking around in the discord server if you haven’t already, someone may have more insight on this.

With that out of the way, I’ll be handling your critique relying on the guide provided here: https://pastebin.com/dYnFt9PQ

My critique will be divided in 3 sections: lines, ellipses and boxes. Let’s get started !

1. Lines section

First off, starting with your superimposed lines exercise, I’m unfortunately seeing some fraying on the first end of your lines. Fraying on the other end is completely ok and will get better with practice, however fraying on the first end can be avoided by putting down your pen carefully at the beginning of the line, so please pay attention to this in future warmups.

In the ghosted lines and ghosted planes exercise I’m seeing dots on the page, which indicates that you used the ghosting method correctly. Starting a line with a starting and ending dot is important and should never be skipped, even in exercises where you’ll be focusing on other things. Your lines look quite confidently drawn in these exercises, good job! Even in the exercises involving boxes you managed to keep them fairly straight despite the added worry about accuracy, so congrats on that. A confident but inaccurate line will always be more correct than a wobbly but accurate one. I also like the fact that you pushed yourself to draw very long lines in the ghosted lines exercise, even if you could have pushed yourself to fill out your page a little more.

2. Ellipses section

I see that you are drawing through your ellipses 2-3 times as instructed and they look confidently drawn for the most part, so good job! They’re sometimes looking a little loose and messy, but as for lines confident but inaccurate ellipses will always be better than accurate but wobbly ones, and your accuracy will get better with practice. In the table of ellipses exercise, I like that you experimented with varying sizes and degrees, you also managed to fit your ellipses snugly against each other.

Your ellipses in planes start to look a little more egg-ish as you struggled to have them reach all sides of the plane, which is completely normal. Something that you can try out is focusing on having the ellipse reach 2 opposite corners of the plane rather than its sides, and trying its major axis with the diagonal of the plane going through said corners. You’ll see that even the thinnest ellipse can easily reach all corners and fit inside a plane that way. See example here: https://ibb.co/album/zhKcZD

Your ellipses are mostly aligned with the minor axis in the ellipses in funnels exercise, though some of them are a bit skewed, so keep paying attention to it in future warmups. Next time you attempt this exercise, please also try drawing more arched lines on the sides in order to have more size variation in your ellipses. You can also try widening their degree as you progress towards the sides.

3. Boxes section

A general comment about boxes, even though hatching is optional I would advise you to always apply it in the exercises where it’s an option, as it makes your submission much easier to read for the person critiquing you. It’s also valuable line practice, provided you use the ghosting method and take your time for hatching as well.

In the rough perspective exercise, you’ve kept your width lines aren’t parallel to the horizon line and the height lines perpendicular to it for the most part, so good job! Keep paying attention to that in future warmups while planning your lines using the ghosting method.

The rotated boxes exercise is a tricky one and the top left corner is pretty messy, as it seems that you got confused with the lines and therefore did not keep your corners close & parallel in the bottom plane of your last box. The bottom corners look much better however, especially the bottom left where you have a good amount of rotation in my opinion, so it seems to me like you’re understood the point of this exercise.

Very good work on the organic perspective exercise, I’m seeing some nice size variation as well as overlap there and it gives off a real 3d feeling. However please be careful of always having the lines of your boxes converge towards the vanishing points, as I’m seeing some diverging lines there.

That’s the end of this critique! It was all in all a solid submission, so I’m letting you move on to the 250 boxes challenge. Above all, stay motivated and committed!?