Lesson 1: Lines, Ellipses and Boxes

3:29 AM, Tuesday January 5th 2021

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First attempt at lesson 1 on drawabox.com.

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4:02 AM, Wednesday January 6th 2021

Hello and congrats on completing lesson one. I'll be taking a look at your submission today. Starting with your superimposed lines these are off to a fine start. You are keeping a clearly defined starting point although I do think you are getting a tad bit of wobble because you are too focused on accuracy. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/8/wobbling This is carried over into your ghosted lines and planes. Now your lines are confident for the most part and I do think you are ghosting and drawing from your shoulder. However, I think you are slightly slowing down your stroke to compensate for accuracy and it's introducing a slight bit of wobble in your lines. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up ghosting and almost try and make your mark without thinking. This will be less accurate at first but should lead to an overall smoother line.

Your tables of ellipses are coming along well. You still have a ways to go in terms of accuracy but you are doing a good job drawing through your ellipses and focusing on consistent smooth ellipse shapes. This is carried over nicely into your ellipses in planes. It's good that you aren't too focused on accuracy with these as that tends to destroy line quality and confidence. Although accuracy is our end goal it tends to come more with mileage and consistent practice and can't really be forced. Your ellipses in funnels are having some slight issues with tilting off the minor axis. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/13/notaligned This is something you should always start considering when drawing ellipses. Your ellispes are coming along well but there's still plenty of room for improvement so keep practicing these during your warmups.

The plotted perspective was supposed to be laid out 3 exercises on a page like the example here. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/14/example I'm not going to have you redo this page as the exercise you did looks fine but make sure to pay better attention the to assignments in the future as you will have to redo them. Your rough perspective boxes have one page with the same issue of only having one exercise on the page. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/15/example So I am going to have you redo one page of these as I think you could use some more practice with it anyways. I do want to discuss your added line weight and redrawing lines for this exercise. In terms of redrawing lines it really destroys the initial line confidence you had. With adding the line weight you are getting the same result because you are likely doing so by using your wrist and creating a heavier but wobbly or feathering line. If you are going to add line weight treat it the same as any other line and ghost it multiple times and draw from your shoulder with confidence. Even on short lines. You did a good job extending the lines back on your boxes to check your work. As you can see some of your perspective estimations were a bit off but that will become more intuitive with practice.

Your rotated box exercise page is missing as well so I'm going to need to see that too. Your organic perspective exercises turned out okay. Your have good amount of confident lines here which is an improvement for sure. You are still destorying it on occasion with redrawn lines and added lineweight. I also want to discuss your added hatching a bit. If you are going to add hatching once again treat it the same as every other line and ghost it and draw from your shoulder with confidence. Also don't just have the lines floating in a plane make them connect end to end. Your box constructions definitely need improvement so the 250 box challenge will be a great next step for you.

Overall this a decent submission. I think your ellipses are coming along fine but you could do a bit better with getting more consistently confident linework which I hope I'll see in your redo page. Once you get those both submitted I'll take a look and you can most likely move on to the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

One page of rough perspective exercise make sure it is laid out correctly like the example homework

Missing rotated box exercise page

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
6:30 AM, Friday January 8th 2021
8:51 PM, Friday January 8th 2021

This rough perspective page is definitely an improvement. You have a mix of very confident linework here along with some lines with a bit of wobble still. The wobble is likely happening because you are slowing down your stroke to compensate for accuracy. Try and rely a bit more on the muscle memory you build up ghosting and almost make your mark without thinking.

The rotated box exercise was decent. You did a good job drawing through your boxes and keeping your gaps fairly consistent. You are still struggling with the rotations which is perfectly fine given the difficulty of this exercise. In some cases you aren't really rotating your boxes at all but are simply drawing them moving back in perspective. https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/16/notrotating

I think you are ready to move on to the 250 box challenge. Keep practicing your linework and get it a bit more consistently confident. Good luck with the 250 box challenge.

Next Steps:

The 250 Box Challenge

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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