6:19 PM, Monday April 5th 2021
Hello, and welcome to drawabox. I’ll be looking over your lesson 1 submission today.
Starting with your superimposed lines, these are looking solid. They’re smooth, properly lined up at the start, and of a consistent trajectory. The ghosted lines/planes, on the other hand, aren’t quite there. My best guess is that you’re going a little too fast/slow, for which I’d recommend experimenting with a bunch of speeds, and going for the one that gives you the most accurate lines, that are still fully straight/smooth, but just to be safe, you may want to try increasing your ghosting time, also.
The table of ellipses exercise is a little mixed. Your ellipses are snug, but neither smooth, nor rounded. This is usually a hint that a student has their priorities backwards, and is prioritizing accuracy, instead of confidence. Do the opposite. Also, be mindful of your pivot, when you draw. Looking at some of these pointy ellipses, I’d guess that you’re periodically reverting back to your wrist, without meaning to. These issues are even more pronounced in your planes, so please take some time to re-read the material, and remind yourself of our goals here. A smooth mark, however inaccurate, is of use to us, as it communicates an illusion of solidity. A wobbly mark, regardless of how accurate, is useless, as it does not. Looking at your funnels, the good news is that every other aspect of your ellipses in this section is correct, so so long as we fix the confidence issues, we’ll be clear to move on.
The plotted perspective exercise looks good, though you should’ve estimated the location of the incorrect back lines, rather than doubling down on your measurement error. Also, you’ve shaded a far plane in one of these, but that’s alright.
The rough perspective exercise looks better in (what I assume to be) its second page, though there’s still a few issues to address. First: the linework. The confidence itself is fine, but the automatic reinforcing habit is a problem. Remember that each line is drawn once, and only once, regardless of how it turns out. Second, in regards to the convergences you don’t consistently have 2 sets of lines that are parallel/perpendicular to the horizon, nor 1 that converges towards a point. Fixing this is as simple as taking your time, plotting each point. And after you’ve got it down, don’t stick to that original guess. Check it, and if it’s incorrect, alter it.
The rotated boxes exercise is missing 10 boxes (5 at the top, 5 at the bottom).
For the organic perspective exercise, you’ve robbed yourself of an opportunity to practice, by not splitting your page into frame compositions. The boxes themselves, however, look fine, as a result of a solid, if subtle, increase in size, and some consistent, shallow foreshortening.
Next Steps:
Before you move on to the box challenge, I’d like to see 1 page of each ellipse exercise, 1 page of rough perspective, and the completed rotated boxes exercise. Good luck!