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2:06 PM, Saturday March 15th 2025

Welcome and congratulations on finishing the first lesson of Drawabox! I'm Mada and I'll be taking a look at your submission.

Overall you did an excellent job here, but I do have a bit to mention so let's break them down one by one. I'll write the most important things in bold.

Lines

Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking good. Ghosted lines look correctly ghosted and confident too, and there are barely any arching. You've also demonstrated the same confidence in your ghosted planes with a great accuracy. Nothing much to say except keep up the good work!

Ellipses

Now with your ellipses, I still see some wobbling there, especially with the bigger planes, and it's still apparent in your funnels. This is relatively common and can result from hesitation or a limitation on your pivot (like using your wrist instead). A confident execution leads to an evenly shaped ellipse, whereas hesitation leads to wobbling and uneven shapes just as it does for our lines. Be more confident, and make sure you're allowing yourself to draw from your shoulder(https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/ellipsesinplanes/deformed).

Boxes

You've shown a good understanding of how to make 2 point perspective in the plotted perspective. I did see some skewed back vertical lines here and there, which is usually caused by an accumulation of human error as you plot more and more lines. I assume that's the case and you understand that every vertical line is straight in 2 point perspective. Even if the points are not aligned correctly, try to find a middle ground and draw it as vertical as you can.

You've applied the ghosting method and lines extension correctly for the rough perspective, but try to use a different colored pen for the extensions so you can differentiate them easier from the original lines, which you will do a lot during the box challenge. I've also noticed that some of the back faces of your boxes are not rectangular. By rectangular, we mean that they should be composed of horizontals that are parallel to the horizon line, and verticals that are perpendicular to it. While this could also be caused by the sometimes inaccurate lines, it's worth mentioning that there should not be any arbitrary guesswork or random angles. Don't forget that these rectangular front/back faces are the unique characteristics of 1 point perspective.

As the notoriously most difficult exercise in this lesson, you've done a great job at doing the rotated boxes. You've rotated them pretty well (while making sure to move the converging lines) and used neighboring elements to deduce the next orientation of boxes, which is the whole purpose of this exercise. Only one problem though, is that you forgot to draw in the last 12 boxes at each corner (refer to the example here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/21/example). It might not seem much, but we'd like you to finish each exercise to its utmost completion and benefit, especially when the corner boxes will actually give you the most challenge!

Finally, organic perspective looks great as well. They look like they belong in the same page and the lines converge as they move farther away from the viewer. There are a few hiccups here and there where there are divergences that results in skewed boxes, but overall they're minor and they look pretty solid.

This will get more relevant as you get to the box challenge, but any hatching from this point on should also be done with the ghosting method. It will make your stuff cleaner and more practice is always good! Try to cover the whole area of the box with consistent spacing.

One last thing I want to mention is do not correct your lines by going over it with more lines. This will make your mistake stands out even more with how bold it is, and generally is against the concept of executing planned confident lines throughout this course. Unless it's waaaaay off the trajectory, accept the mistake and trust your muscle memory that it will get better with time and practice.

Anyway, while I think you've grasped most of the concepts, I'd still like you to finish the rotated boxes exercise before moving on. I'd also like you to try doing another go at the ellipses by focusing more on pivoting on your shoulder and creating non-choppy ellipses with an additional page of Tables of Ellipses. Make sure to reread the instruction if need to and always prioritize confidence over accuracy. Once you're done with them, you'll most likely be able to move on to the box challenge.

Next Steps:

  1. Finish the rotated boxes exercise (the missing 12 boxes, refer to the example).

  2. One (1) extra page of the Tables of Ellipses exercise.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
10:06 AM, Monday March 17th 2025
11:57 AM, Monday March 17th 2025

Great job! I can already see an improvement with how you handle ellipses. For the rotated boxes, remember that you have to keep using neighboring lines to deduce the next orientation of boxes, which you might find a little bit challenging at this point. Nevertheless, it's good that you've finished them so you can start applying these concepts. I believe you'll be able to improve more throughout the box challenge.

Next Steps:

Move onto the 250 box challenge.

Do the lesson 1 exercises as your regular warmup and don't forget your 50% rule art.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:22 AM, Tuesday March 18th 2025

Thank you for such great critique

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