Uncomfortable

2016-10-30 18:21

Pretty nice work! Your lines and ellipses sections are really solid. Very confident linework, smooth strokes, even ellipses. All very well done. Your boxes are generally okay, but one thing that really jumped out at me was that your linework isn't nearly as good as it was in the previous section. This isn't uncommon, but it is something to be aware of. It's easy to put lots of focus into drawing individual lines, but when we look at drawing a box, the definition of what constitutes the "whole task" expands from one mark to eight, nine or more. As a result, we're used to putting a certain amount of effort into one "task", and so the same focus and time that may have gone into a single mark is now spread out over many. Of course, this is all just in our heads - it's important to force yourself to recognize that a line is a line is a line, and you can draw it extremely well if you give the time that line requires. Yes, a box will take significantly longer to draw, but it's important to develop that kind of patience. You're already most of the way there, as most people have great difficulty forcing themselves to just draw a single line with any degree of focus. Just push a little harder.

There's just two more things I wanted to mention:

Firstly, in your rotated boxes exercise it looks like you skipped the early step about drawing the farthest boxes on the top/bottom/left/right. Don't skip steps!

Secondly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well. This exercise was included here to give students a chance to struggle a bit with the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. It's not expected that anyone would nail it this early on. You're doing reasonably well, about where I'd hope for you to be at this stage.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete. I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge, both to get more practice with constructing freely rotated boxes in 3D space, and also to help bump up your line quality when drawing larger forms rather than just individual lines. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-01 20:13

Very nice work! And I'm glad that you enjoyed it more the second time around, and that you took the time to correct the things you noticed on the self critique resources page.

Your lines are exceptionally well done - they're confidently drawn and quite precise. Your ellipses are also very smooth and even, without any significant signs of wobbling.

For your boxes, there's just a couple things I want to mention - they're minor points for now, just things to be aware of as you move forwards. Firstly, for your rough perspective boxes, I noticed here and there a little bit of deviation in the alignment of your horizontals - I'm sure that you're fully aware of this already, but I want to stress the importance of keeping your horizontals as close to parallel to the horizon as you can manage, and keeping your verticals perpendicular to it. Obviously this will improve with practice, so keep up the good work.

For your rotated boxes, as you get further out to the sides, you'll notice that the boxes there have to rotate a little further each time - so the far left and far right boxes aren't quite pushed as far as they should. I am glad to see though that even though you placed your extremities out too far, you didn't stretch your boxes out to meet them. I actually placed mine too far out when doing the examples, but luckily I was working digitally so no one will ever know! :D

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well. Admittedly this exercise was included to give students the chance to get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is particularly difficult, and I by no means expected students to nail it this early on. You're doing a decent job, though I am noticing that you do have subtle issues like some far planes coming out larger than near planes. Keep an eye on that.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and will also make issues like the near/far plane problem more noticeable.

Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable

2016-11-02 22:07

Looking great! Your line quality's quite nice, and I especially like your ellipses. They have a strong sense of confidence, which leads to very smooth strokes and even shapes. Your boxes are also quite well done. Good use of line weight, leading to some very solid forms that convey the illusion of weight quite well.

I have only one thing I'd like to point out - in your organic perspective boxes, you have a tendency to apply somewhat overly dramatic foreshortening on your boxes. This causes the sense of scale overall to become rather inconsistent. Your second page is better on this front, but swings a bit too much in the opposite direction in terms of many of your boxes now having far planes that are larger than their corresponding near planes. These are very common mistakes, and are by no means unexpected at this stage.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through the notes there, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and ultimately improve your ability to identify areas where your near/far plane relationships fall out of whack.

Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable

2016-11-03 21:20

Pretty nice work! Your lines are looking smooth and straight, and your ellipses are confident and evenly shaped. In general your boxes have also been executed quite well. In your rough perspective boxes, I can see some signs of needing to work on your use of the ghosting method, but the last few slips, arcs and uncertainties should fade away with practice.

For your organic perspective boxes, I do want to point out that this exercise was really intended to be a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, with no real expectation of students nailing it this early on. In that sense, you're doing great - definitely a little ahead of my expectations. That said, you still do need some work in this area, as I'm seeing some issues with your near/far plane size relationships here and there, and a few skewed angles. Again, this is totally normal.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. It's that in particular that should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, ultimately allowing you to identify mistakes with your near/far planes and the general angles of your lines more easily. Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable

2016-11-04 21:55

Excellent work! Your lines are looking fantastic - very smooth and straight. Your ellipses are also well done, exhibiting a lot of confidence in your approach with no visible sign of wobbling or unevenness. Your boxes are generally strong as well, though I do have a few recommendations in that area:

• For your rough perspective boxes, something I recommend to everyone - be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here

• For your rotated boxes, note that with each successive rotation, the actual rotation of the box is going to start to feel more extreme. So while the actual rotation itself is going to be consistent (lets say 30 degrees per box), what you're going to see is that those further out from the center will feel like they've rotated more. Right now your far left/right look to be more or less parallel with the boxes beside them (as though they're both heading towards the same vanishing point.

• Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well - I do want to point out that this exercise was included as a means for students to get their feet wet with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. It's not an easy thing, and I don't expect anyone to be submitting perfect work here. There are plenty of things you can work on with this, and you'll be given that opportunity. One thing I'm noticing a lot of though is extreme foreshortening, which is causing your scale to feel inconsistent.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get some more work in on that last bit. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-07 20:40

Really great work! I have just a couple of points I'd like to raise, but generally the quality of your work is quite high. Here's the two major things I noticed:

• Just a minor thing - work towards tightening up your ellipses. The way you approached them is totally fine right now, but as you move forwards and practice them, you'll want to gradually shift towards getting those multiple passes (from drawing through them) to start lining up more closely. Of course, the confidence of your stroke is most important - so just thinking about tightening them up, with no additional conscious changes to your approach should be enough to get you to move in that direction.

• Your organic perspective boxes' line quality is reaaally messy. You should be applying the ghosting method to each and every mark you put down, and you should absolutely avoid any kind of chicken-scratching or reflexive correction/reinforcing as you draw. Every mark should be the result of planning and consideration. I do fully understand that this exercise is challenging in nature, and it's easy to fall back to particularly bad habits when overwhelmed by something - but you've made it very clear through the rest of your work that you're completely capable of thinking through these challenges more than you have here. That said, I do like the fact that you drew through your boxes (which is usually something I introduce people to after completing this lesson, looks like you're ahead of the curve).

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through all of the notes. In this case, you're primarily going to be focusing on applying the ghosting method to each line, and generally thinking through and planning your approach for each problem.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-14 23:02

Really solid work! Your lines are looking smooth and well planned, your ellipses are even and confidently drawn with no sign of wavering or wobbling, and your boxes look and feel solid. I'm especially pleased with how carefully and closely you followed my instructions throughout the lesson.

There's a little bit of weakness in your rotated and organic perspective boxes, but you're still exceeding my expectations as far as this lesson goes, and the weakness is the sort that simply comes from not having enough practice with rotating boxes freely in 3D space at this point. And you're not meant to - those two exercises are just there to let you get your feet went and get used to the challenges involved.

The 250 box challenge is definitely a good idea, and it is what I was going to recommend as your next move. There are some additional notes on that challenge page, and while I'm sure you'll read through them as carefully as you have done here, it's especially important to look through the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, ultimately helping you pin down those near/far plane issues that you were experiencing here.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep up the great work.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-18 20:46

Sorry for the late response, I've been pretty swamped at work. Your homework is generally looking pretty good. Your lines are confident and well executed for the most part, but watch out for the tendency that you have to arc your lines.

For your ellipses, across the board it looks like you missed my instructions stressing the importance of drawing through your ellipses. This is something I want you to do for each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons.

Most of your box exercises are well executed, and I'm pleased to see that you applied the double checking method to your rough perspective boxes. The rotated boxes are also quite well executed, so keep up the great work there.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along okay - they are on the weaker side of your submission, but this is completely normal. This exercise was included to let students get their feet wet with the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. It's not an easy thing to do, and it's expected that students would fumble around quite a bit.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to submit one more page of the table of ellipses exercise, this time drawing through each and every ellipse as instructed. Once that's submitted, I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice with those freely rotated boxes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-20 18:55

Despite your struggles, you've definitely done a lot of great work here. Your lines are quite well executed, and they're rather confident. Your ellipses are even and smooth, and your boxes are generally quite solid.

Always keep in mind that when something is difficult, it doesn't mean it's necessarily the wrong way for you to be doing it - so, even if it's challenging, try and push through it, and fight against the urge to go back to your wrist. You mentioned that you draw with your elbow supporting your weight against the table - I definitely advise against this. Instead of resting on your elbow, let the side of your hand rest slightly on the page to stabilize it. Both are technically not-great-habits (because they behave like anchors, making it more likely that you're going to go back to drawing from the wrist rather than the shoulder). Resting your hand on the table is simply easier to deal with than resting on your elbow. Either way, you need to constantly be vigilant, catching yourself and correcting yourself whenever you go back to drawing from your wrist.

Back to your homework - the only section where you demonstrated any significant weakness was with the organic perspective boxes, and this is totally expected. This exercise was included to let students struggle and get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is very difficult, and I have no expectations for students to be nailing it this early on. That said, you've done a pretty solid job regardless, and while there's definitely room for improvement, you're making good headway.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I do want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice with rotating boxes freely in 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-27 23:43

Nice work! It looks like you've followed most of my instructions quite well. Just a couple things to note - for your super imposed lines, make sure you take the time before each stroke to line your pen up at the correct starting point. Also, I noticed that later on you stopped drawing through your ellipses. Yours look pretty solid despite that, but I still must insist that you draw through each and every ellipse you draw for my lessons, just to be sure to get lots of muscle memory. Just one extra round of the ellipse should be perfectly fine.

I can see that you definitely struggled with the rotated boxes exercise, but I think you did a great job by the end of it. Nice work toughing on through.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. I also would like you to give the notes over at the 250 box challenge a read. You're not required to complete the challenge, but the notes should be pretty useful, and it'd be good to apply the "drawing through your boxes" bit a handful of times, as it's a useful technique that helps you get a better sense of how your boxes sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-27 23:59

The first thing that jumps out at me is that there's definitely a lot of stiffness/wobbling to your lines. This is happening because you're not quite letting yourself draw with a confident pace - you're relying on your brain's willingness to micromanage and course-correct while you draw, which manifests as wobbling in the stroke itself. Don't worry so much about nailing every line with perfect accuracy - that's what's causing you to stiffen up. It's much easier to practice away inaccuracy through the development of your muscle memory (through repetition) than it is to smooth out a wobbly line. I talk about this more in this comic but really just remember to apply the ghosting method. Plan out your approach, ghost through the motion as much as is necessary to feel comfortable and confident with the motion, then execute it in a single, confident stroke that is just quick enough that your brain doesn't have the opportunity to try and take control. You should be trusting entirely in your arm's muscles. If you don't nail it (which is normal), it's no big deal. It all takes practice.

This applies both to your straight lines as well as your ellipses - somewhat more so to your ellipses really. Drawing through your ellipses really only ends up being effective if you're doing so with a confident pace - it's meant to help sure up the little inaccuracies that come from drawing at a quicker pace.

Oh, and overall - make sure you're drawing from your shoulder. Drawing from your wrist is inevitably going to lead to some wobbling when drawing lines of any significant length, so you've got to make sure that your wrist remains locked and that your arm is moving only from your shoulder joint. It'll feel awkward and unfamiliar at first, but this is largely because we don't use our shoulder in this way when writing, so those muscles tend to be underdeveloped.

For your boxes exercises, there's a few little instructions you seem to have missed, so be sure to give this a good read:

• Not Framing Compositions

• Guessing, Instead of Knowing

• Lines Not Lining Up With Vanishing Point

What you submitted for your rotated boxes exercise obviously doesn't come close to following the actual instructions, but I did see the other attempts you'd made. I still think that your biggest source of trouble is following instructions closely, but I won't dwell on it. You'll have the opportunity to continue working on freely rotated boxes in 3D space in a bit, but we'll leave this particular exercise alone for now.

So before we fuss on the boxes, I'm going to ask you to do one more page of the lots-of-ellipses exercise. Make sure you draw from the shoulder, and that you draw each one with a confident pace so as to maintain evenly shaped ellipses and smooth lines. Once you've finished and submitted that, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. At that point you should move onto the 250 box challenge (I'm mentioning this now in case I forget when I review your additional ellipses). Before starting the challenge, read through all of the notes on that page thoroughly, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. There's also a video on drawing boxes, so give that a watch or two.

As with all of my lessons, there's a lot of material to digest, so go through it at your own pace, but make sure that you absorb it all. It's common to need to look at these things multiple times, watch/read them over and over, and have only portions of it sink in each time.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-30 23:19

Pretty nice work! You're generally doing quite well, though there are a couple things I'd like to call out. The first thing that jumped out at me was that, while you did [draw through your ellipses]() for the table of ellipses exercise, you neglected to do this for the other ellipses exercises. Make sure you apply this method to every ellipse you draw for my lessons without exception. This will ensure that you maintain a confident pace, keeping your ellipses even and smooth, and will give you the benefit of some additional muscle memory development.

Next, I noticed that in some of your box exercises, you didn't draw in the horizon. It's very important that you keep it in there, as it is the first and most significant visual clue you'll have when drawing a scene. Additionally, try to stick to my instructions as written - don't add additional vanishing points to a scene or try to spice the exercises up by complicating them in other ways. While you've done fine here even with the added complication, it can lead you to focus less on the main purpose of an exercise in the future.

Oh, also for your rough perspective boxes exercises, be sure to apply this double checking method upon completion.

For your rotated boxes exercise, I noticed that you missed one important thing - if you look at my examples, you'll notice that I'm drawing all of the lines of each box, including those on the far side of the forms, as though I have x-ray vision. This, which I refer to as "drawing through your forms" (not to be confused with drawing through ellipses, which i really should have labelled differently BUT IT'S TOO LATE NOW OH NO) helps one better understand how each box sits in 3D space. Since this exercise is very much about understanding that about a box, and then how this changes as the box is rotated, it's definitely important to apply. That said, you did a pretty solid job with this exercise, and seem to understand their rotation pretty well.

Your organic perspective boxes are reasonably well done too, though I do think there's a bit of room for growth here. This is pretty standard, as for this exercise I generally toss students into the deep end without much training to let them get acquainted with the challenges involved on their own before giving them additional advice. You're doing quite well considering that.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge for more practice with those freely rotated boxes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms - which is what I mentioned in regards to the rotated boxes exercise.

Uncomfortable

2016-11-30 23:32

Pretty nice work! There's a few things I'll point out, but generally you're doing well and moving in the right direction.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that your ghosted lines waver a little bit - this definitely improves as you move through the lesson, especially in the boxes themselves, so just keep working on maintaining a confident, smooth, straight stroke. Another thing I noticed was that your ellipses in general tend to be rather stiff - much like the straight lines, it's important to maintain a confident pace when drawing so that the execution relies more on your muscle memory than any conscious intervention (after the planning and preparation is done) by your brain. Basically any stiffness, wobbling, or mid-stroke change of trajectory is the result of your brain trying to course-correct as you go. Don't be too afraid of making a mistake and being inaccurate. It happens, and it'll improve with practice. What is most important is that you draw just quickly enough to keep your brain from interfering, so regardless of where the ellipse is, how big it is and at which angle it's set, it feels smooth and even. I talk about this concept in this comic.

Next, jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes - just make sure you put a little more attention and effort into the hatching you use here. Those lines aren't mandatory, they were added by your own decision. This doesn't make them any less important though, and effort should be put into keeping them straight, consistent, parallel and ensuring that they stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Don't let them fall short or float in the middle of a plane.

Next, I'm really pleased to see how you struggled with, and ultimately overcame the challenges of the rotated boxes exercise. Your last page looks quite good, and demonstrates a greatly improved sense of 3D space. This carries over into your organic perspective boxes as well. There is definitely still improvement to be had, but you're making great headway.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete. You may want to move onto the 250 box challenge next before moving onto lesson 2 though, but I will leave that decision up to you. Regardless, I would like you to read through the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-03 00:13

It's definitely a solid start. Your linework's a little bit wobbly, and your ellipses are a little stiff, but overall you're doing well. These two issues are actually coming from the same source - when drawing a mark, you need to invest all of your time during the preparation and planning phase of the ghosting method, then execute with a smooth, confident stroke, quick enough to avoid having your brain course-correct while you draw. The wobbles come from letting your brain do that. You need to trust in your muscle memory. I talk about that a little here.

It's perfectly okay that you're not going to be 100% accurate at the beginning. This will improve with practice. What is harder to fix through repetition and ultimately has to be tweaked in terms of your actual approach, is this stiffness and wobbling. We naturally are fixated on the idea of maintaining accurate lines, so we tend to slow down to compensate. Just make sure that you work against this natural urge while you practice.

Another thing I'd like to recommend is that you go over your completed rough perspective homework as described here. It helps to double check your work afterwards when the exercises are heavily focused on estimation, so you can track where you tend to make your mistakes.

Aside from that, you've done pretty well. There's definitely room to grow in your organic perspective boxes, but this is par for the course. I threw that exercise in largely to let students struggle with the idea of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, and to let them acquaint themselves with those challenges. You've done a solid job of it all things considered.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge, both to practice smoothing out your lines and drawing more confidently, and also to help you further develop your sense of 3D space. Be sure to read through the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular helps one better grasp how each box sits in space.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-03 00:22

Pretty nicely done! Just a few recommendations:

• Don't forget to frame your compositions as instructed for the box exercises

• I noticed you did the second page of rough perspective boxes with a ruler. Don't do that. The first page was a great example of following the instructions (freehand, double checked afterwards), but don't stray from that on your own.

• Your rotated boxes were done pretty well, though be more mindful of your linework here. Apply the ghosting method to every line, don't draw anything by reflex (immediately reinforcing a line after drawing it due to a lack of confidence). It's important to get control of your instincts early on so that everything you put down is the result of planning and intent.

• Your first page of organic perspective boxes shows a lot of overly dramatic foreshortening. Your second page is better, but it I see a few boxes that are a bit too extreme.

You've generally done a solid job, so just keep these things in mind as you move forwards. I'll mark this lesson as complete. I do believe that it would be a good idea to move onto the 250 box challenge next - be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular helps one better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-03 19:27

It looks like you're doing a solid job so far. I really don't have much to say about this, since you're applying the ghosting method pretty well, so your lines are fairly straight and smooth. When submitting a lesson's homework, you should be completing the entire thing, rather than just one section at a time. So for example for this lesson, submissions usually contain the lines section, the ellipses section and the boxes section.

As for your question, you absolutely need to plan and prepare before every mark you put down, applying the ghosting method in each instance. This means placing little points where you want the line to begin and end. It's all about separating processes into different stages, so you tackle only little challenges one by one, rather than trying to tackle multiple challenges all at once. In this case, doing so without planning means trying to nail your alignment and achieving a smooth, straight, confident stroke all at once. The more you try to do together, the less likely it is that it will come out well.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-06 22:17

Your lines and ellipses sections are solid - the lines are smooth and relatively straight, and your ellipses are looking confident and evenly shaped. It does look to me though that when you moved into the boxes section, you didn't carry over the same techniques - this isn't abnormal, as people tend to get more overwhelmed when having to deal with drawing entire objects composed of multiple lines, but it is very important that you keep pushing yourself to apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down. You may want to reread the breakdown of the ghosting method. You should also give this comic a read.

That said, your general sense of space is progressing nicely, and aside from the wobblier, wavier lines, your understanding of what you should be aiming for is pretty good. I'm also glad to see that you applied the double checking method for your rough perspective boxes, and that you went through all of the steps as instructed for your rotated boxes.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, both to help you put the ghosting method into practice and to improve on that front, as well as to further develop your sense of space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which comes into play with things like the organic perspective boxes exercise.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-11 21:56

So I looked at your work earlier in passing, and only one question came to mind when I saw your exercises for the lines section: are you a robot?

There's barely any deviation in your super imposed lines, even with the long ones that basically everyone struggles with. It's insane. I genuinely don't believe you're human. It's like the little hiccups here and there where the line veers off slightly and returns are red herrings! I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, YOU WON'T FOOL ME ROBOT.

Okay. It's fine. I've regained my sanity. So needless to say, great work there. As for your question on the matter of ghosting, the direction doesn't matter so much (there's some who argue that 'pushing' vs 'pulling' a line is better for straights or curves, I honestly don't remember which is which, and you'll find as many people arguing the opposite). As far as I'm concerned, if you're comfortable doing it and there's no immediate averse effects, you should be fine to continue doing so. My bigger focus is that students focus on ghosting with the motion they're going to be drawing in. So for example, ghost A-B very deliberately, then lift your pen and move it back to A, and repeat. Rather than A-B-A-B-A-B.

As far as I can see, your smaller ellipses are fine, so the only thing I'd want to recommend is just continuing to practice them. I don't see any big signs with your tables of ellipses that suggests any issues with your technique. That said, with your ellipses in planes, you are exhibiting the fairly common stiffening of your shapes. This is normal because when people see the plane shape, they focus perhaps too much on getting their ellipse to fit perfectly within it, sacrificing the smoothness and evenness of the elliptical shape. Remember that precision is always a second priority to the integrity of the ellipse - so always force yourself to draw just quickly and confidently enough to avoid any of the micromanaging behaviour of your conscious brain. So long as you maintain a confident pace, it won't be able to course-correct as you go.

Your plotted perspective boxes are well done. Your rough perspective boxes are solid, though I do recommend an extra step of double checking your perspective estimation as described here.

Your rotated boxes are coming along, though one thing I'm noticing is that your corner boxes aren't rotated quite as drastically as they should be. The first cause of this is that your outer boxes in the horizontal/vertical lines don't quite rotate far enough or drastically enough, so you'll want to work towards exaggerating this. Furthermore, give this page from the demo another read. It's important that you try and keep the gaps between the boxes fairly tight, so you can use neighbouring lines as hints towards figuring out the angle and orientation of new ones.

Keep in mind though, both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely as a means to throw you into the deep end of the pool to see how you'd do, and to give you the opportunity to get a little bit of water in your lungs. It helps for students to get familiar with the challenges they face before giving them all of the additional training, so that the training itself is a more contextually appropriate when given. Basically, I don't expect anyone to nail these two just yet.

On that note, your organic perspective boxes are meeting my expectations, though there are some issues with far planes being larger than near planes, which is normal.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work - you'll find that there's notes about line weight, but there's also an important tip about drawing through your forms which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-12 23:45

Your observations are correct. As I mention in the lesson, I ask only for the absolute best you can do right now - that doesn't mean I'm asking for perfect work, but what I'm asking for is inherently very difficult for most people to produce. By its very nature, the best you're capable of requires you to be patient and to be willing to put in as many hours as it takes to put your full attention towards the task at hand. Furthermore, working in an uncomfortable posture will affect your mindset, and will only push you to be sloppier.

Two hours simply isn't enough, and trying to do it all in one sitting is something I very clearly advise you against in the lesson itself. The work you've submitted is not the best you're capable of right now. Given a little more patience, and a little more care, there are a lot of issues here that you can get around. So I will be asking you to do a significant chunk of this lesson again. This is as much to force you to be patient, as it is to give you the opportunity to prove to yourself that you can do much better.

Here is where you can improve:

• Your super imposed lines are okay. It's normal to feel that the arcing/wavy lines aren't great, but this is more or less what I expect to see, as it's quite tricky and will take further practice to hone and perfect.

• Your ghosted lines are a little wobbly and wavy. You need to get used to separating your approach to drawing into the stages of the ghosting method. This means first marking out the start/end and identifying the most comfortable angle of approach (rotating your page as needed), then ghosting through the drawing motion required as many times as necessary until you feel comfortable and confident in the stroke. The execution of the mark is driven at a confident pace through the muscle memory developed through ghosting - you're repeating the same thing you've practiced, and are maintaining a quick enough pace to avoid your brain's natural desire to course-correct as you draw. These course-corrections are the wobbles that manifest there, as most people prepare less and decide they'll just take more time when actually drawing the mark. I explain this further in this comic.

• Your ellipses don't suffer from this wobbling, but they do suffer from a distinct lack of preparation and ghosting. As I mention in the lesson, you should be applying the ghosting method here and everywhere else mark making is necessary. That includes beyond this lesson - it is a tedious, time consuming habit that you must force upon yourself, forcing yourself to separate the thinking/preparing stage from the actual execution of a mark. When drawing your ellipses, focus on the ellipse you're drawing - don't think ahead to the next one. All of your attention must be on the present, on what you're doing right this second.

• Your plotted perspective boxes are well done.

• Your rough perspective boxes show similar issues to what we see in your ghosted lines. Applying this ghosting method as intended will allow you to create smoother, straighter lines, which will in turn help solidify your boxes and convey the illusion of weight and form that we're after. Additionally, when you're done, double check your work as described here.

• Your attempt at the rotated boxes exercise is pretty decent, though incomplete. One area where you can improve is to push yourself to rotate the boxes on the extremities further. Our brains like to have things to exist on grids, so it actively fights against us when we try to rotate forms off those grids. Because of this, you often have to force yourself to exaggerate beyond what your brain is willing to accept. Additionally, there's no reason at all not to complete the exercise (you left the corners out, for instance). You may have done so in order to preserve the fairly nice drawing that resulted, thinking that adding the corners would ruin it. Yeah, it might - but it doesn't matter. We're not after pretty drawings here, these are all just drills that could just as well be torn up and thrown away upon their completion. Ideally, you'll be doing a lot more of these even after the lesson is marked as complete.

• Also, I do want to mention that with the rotated boxes and the organic perspective boxes exercises, I'm pretty much throwing you into the deep end before properly teaching you how to swim. As a learning exercise, it helps to drown a little bit - both to get comfortable with the inevitability of failure, but also so that you can get more accustomed with the challenges that lay before you, so that when I ultimately do explain the finer points of those issues, you'll understand what I'm talking about. Long story short, you're not expected to nail these two exercises, or come remotely close to it. You're doing pretty well on that front though, despite that.

• Your organic perspective boxes are actually pretty well done on all fronts. The box constructions themselves are pretty decent (there's some room for improvement of course, but you're doing great relative to my expectations). More importantly, your lines are much straighter and much more confident. It appears that you are demonstrating considerable improvement with the ghosting method, so I think your second pass at this lesson should be much easier for you.

Now, while I want you to redo the lesson, I'm only going to ask for one page of selected exercises. One page of super imposed lines (straight/arc/wavy together), one page of the table of ellipses (you can leave the ellipses in planes and funnels aside for now), one page of rough perspective boxes and one page of rotated boxes. You can leave the organic perspective boxes out, though we will be coming back to the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space - when you resubmit the exercises I've listed above and I've marked the lesson as complete, I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. I'm mentioning this all now because I may forget later. Make sure that when you move onto it, you read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Back to the chunk I'm asking you to redo - make sure you take your time, and break this up between multiple sittings. The more you try to do at once, the more tired and sloppier you'll get, resulting in work that is not your best - and ultimately I'll send you to redo more. Additionally, make sure you reread the description of each exercise right before you do it. The lessons are quite dense, so it's natural that you'll miss out on parts if you don't revisit them frequently.

So, get at it. As I mentioned, I can see improvement, but I tend to have a very good eye in terms of identifying when a student is giving me their best, and when they're capable of much more.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-13 00:12

So there's definitely some areas that we can work on. Overall I think you might be a little overconfident, having done these exercises on your own before.

The first thing that jumps out at me is your use of the ghosting technique. As you probably have read from the lessons, this method is intended to be used on every single mark you draw. It consists of breaking the mark making process into three distinct steps. First you mark out the start/end point of your intended line, and you identify the most comfortable angle of approach, rotating your page as needed. Then you proceed to prepare to draw by ghosting through the drawing motion repeatedly (pivoting from your shoulder only, not your wrist or elbow), as many times as is necessary until you feel comfortable and confident in the motion. The point here is to give your muscles the chance to get familiar with it, and store it away in their muscle memory. Finally, when you execute the mark, you do so with a smooth, confident pace, just as when you were ghosting through it. It's important to ensure that you're drawing just quickly enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you draw.

It's very common for beginners to spend too little time preparing, too much time executing, or more often, a combination of the two. It's also fairly common to slip back into drawing from your wrist without realizing it, especially with shorter lines. Looking at your work, you're likely doing any number of these things, so your lines tend to waver and wobble here and there. This extends into some of your ellipses as well. Some of them are quite smooth and well executed, while others wobble more, or miss the intended target in ways that a little more preparation and ghosting would improve.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, your lines here are pretty shaky as well, so again, make sure you apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down. Additionally, I noticed that you did one there with two vanishing points - try to stick to my instructions as written. Often times when students try to make the exercises a little more complex (usually due to boredom), they tend to miss the main focus of that exercise. Lastly, make sure you go over your rough perspective exercises as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective strays.

For your rotated boxes, I am going to have to ask you to complete it in full. Pushing the exercise to completion, regardless of how well it goes, is as much part of the exercise as anything else. I'll admit that with this and the organic perspective boxes exercise, I'm very much dropping you in the deep end of the pool before properly teaching you how to swim. This is both so you can get a little bit of water in your lungs (getting familiar with the sting of failure that is ultimately more a frequent companion than an enemy when it comes to learning how to draw), but also so you can get familiar with the challenges that go into rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This way when I actually do explain those matters (in the 250 box challenge), you'll have a better grasp of what I'm talking about and why the points I raise are important.

The main thing here is that it's totally fine to have difficulty in this area, and it's completely expected. Just make sure you push all the way through, and that you read through the exercise description closely, following each step as I've instructed. I'm noticing instructions that are more half-followed, so make sure you go step by step and do it all.

So before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one more page of the tables of ellipses, one more page of rough perspective boxes, and one page of rotated boxes. Take your time with all of them, and do not rush. Looking over your work, one thing that's very clear to me is that you are capable of much better, you just may have overestimated yourself and rushed through as a result. Once you submit that, I'll mark them as complete - then I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Make sure you read through all of the notes, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, as this will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

As for your question, I find that defining that Y shape pretty much determines how the rest of the box is going to go. Don't just start with two points - I mention this in the new video, how starting with a Y gives you a clear picture of each of the dimensions of the box, where two lines would only give you two dimensions, and two points would pretty much only give you one dimension. Constructing the Y does require some amount of previsualization, though not a whole lot - but you likely should be aiming more towards previsualizing your boxes, and really any marks you put down, rather than shooting from the hip and seeing how things go. A lot of the content here is very much about thinking before every mark you put down, and planning things out, so that falls very much in line with this manner of thinking.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-14 21:02

Everything's looking really sharp so far - you're taking your time with everything, planning your lines and executing with confident strokes. There is one thing I'd like to mention though - you should be submitting an entire lesson's worth of homework together, rather than submitting them part by part (I mention this in the homework section). That's pretty much why this critique's pretty sparse - there's little to be said about lines, aside form the fact that you're doing them well.

As for your questions:

• My biggest concern with lined paper is that for many people, it tends to contribute to sloppiness. Generally when students used lined paper, it's because they're in that mindset of grabbing whatever they have on hand, doing it in a rush, etc. It's less about the lined paper itself, but rather the mindset that can lead to its use. I don't see this from you at all, as your work has plenty of signs of being well thought out, but generally I would say that using blank paper is ideal. Even printer paper would be perfectly fine.

• It's not really about quantity, but it is about building up a certain degree of comfort and building muscle memory. It can be difficult to tell when you're actually comfortable, but I'd still be wary of suggesting an actual maximum. Whatever you're doing now is working for you, so stick with that.

Keep up the good work, and I look forward to seeing the rest of your work for this lesson.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-17 21:15

Excellent work! It certainly makes my job easier. Your lines are straight and smooth, your ellipses are evenly shaped and confidently executed, and your boxes are the result of clear forethought, planning, and following my instructions to the letter. All things I love to see.

The last two exercises - rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes - were my attempt at throwing children into the deep end of the pool before teaching them much about swimming, so they'd get some water in their lungs. You know, to make them strong. Or possibly kill them. This way when I get into explaining the concepts, they're more familiar with the context and the challenges involved, and therefore are more likely to understand.

That said, you did a really solid job with the rotated boxes, and did pretty well at the organic perspective boxes. With the latter, there are some inconsistencies, so you should probably move onto the 250 box challenge, but I won't make it a firm requirement as you're already doing pretty well. Just make sure you at least read through all of the notes on that page (especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space), and do a few to make sure the concepts are clear.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete so feel free to move onto lesson 2 when you feel you're ready!

Uncomfortable

2016-12-18 21:09

Excellent work! Your lines are looking straight and smooth, and your ellipses are evenly shaped and every confident. Your boxes are also well done - you've clearly put a lot of time into reading (and perhaps rereading) my instructions, so you seem to have hit all the important points head on. I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking approach to the rough perspective boxes.

One thing I do want to mention is that for the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises, my plan here is largely to throw students into the deep end of the pool before teaching them how to swim - this is so they can both demonstrate what they already know, and also so they can get accustomed to the challenges they face when trying to rotate boxes freely in 3D space. This way when I do actually explain certain concepts, they can understand them more easily by relating them back to their recent experiences.

So basically, I don't expect students to be able to do particularly well at these two exercises just yet - but that said, you did a fantastic job with the rotated boxes exercise, and are doing pretty well at the organic perspective boxes as well.

For the organic perspective boxes, you're doing better than I would have expected, but there is still room for improvement. I'll be marking this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each of these forms sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-18 22:53

Nice work! You're doing really well so far, I have just a couple of things to point out to help keep you on the right track and ensure that you get the most out of these lessons and exercises.

So your lines section is coming along well. Your lines waver a little bit, so keep pushing yourself to apply the various steps of the ghosting method to prepare, before executing your line with a confident stroke just quick enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you draw. The little wobbles are basically signs that you're second-guessing yourself. When we do this, we slow down and let our brain control our hand as we go. Instead, we want our brain to be involved in the preparation stage only, ultimately trusting in our built up muscle memory (from ghosting) to control our drawing motion.

I'm very glad to see that while in your first page of ellipses you seem to have forgotten to draw through your ellipses, you corrected yourself and did a pretty good job of it from then onwards. Here and there I do notice a liiiittle bit of stiffness in some of your ellipses (not all of them, many of them are really well done). When your ellipse starts to feel stiff, it's the same thing as what I mentioned above for your lines section - it's all about confidence. Trust in yourself. You may end up making mistakes in terms of accuracy, but the biggest priority we have is being able to make consistently smooth and even lines and ellipses. The second priority is then to be able to control them and draw them where and how we want them, but ultimately we need to get drawing them confidently down first.

This stiffness actually becomes more noticeable in the ellipse-in-planes and funnels exercises. This is completely normal - we tend to stress ourselves out when trying to fit them into those awkward shapes, so we slow down. Just keep pushing yourself to be confident and you'll do fine.

Moving on, your boxes are looking great. The plotted perspective boxes are excellent. Your rough perspective boxes are well done too, though I do want to recommend that you try applying the double checking method described here after you've completed the exercise.

I'm very pleased with your rotated boxes exercise. This one, as well as the organic perspective boxes, were assigned largely with the expectation that students would struggle a lot with them (since I purposely never fully explained how to deal with arbitrarily rotating boxes in 3D space). This is because I feel that if a student is given the chance to get accustomed with the struggles involved (even if, and especially if that involves failing a few times), they tend to understand the later instruction much better. It basically gives those future instructions more context.

So while my expectation is generally that students will have a lot of trouble in this area, you've done a great job. My only recommendation is that along the edges (the far top, far left, far right, far bottom) you kind of ease up on your rotation of those boxes. This is because our brains naturally like to keep things in grids - when we rotate these boxes, we're actively fighting against our natural tendency to keep things parallel to one another, so we really need to push ourselves to exaggerate that rotation.

Your organic perspective boxes are decent, but as expected there's definitely room for improvement. One thing that I'm seeing a fair bit of is that you've got some pretty dramatic foreshortening applied to many of the boxes - this inherently makes the perspective of the whole scene feel kind of inconsistent. I go into this issue in greater detail in these notes.

As you've demonstrated a strong understanding of the concepts covered in this lesson, I'll be marking it as complete. I would like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next - be sure to read through all of the notes on that page before starting the work, especially the tip about 'drawing through your forms'. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable

2016-12-19 21:23

Nice work! I have to admit, while self-critique and making your own observations is super important, I generally don't read them when students include them in their submission. Reason being, I don't want my own view of the work to be tainted by thoughts of "oh but they know this already". I prefer just to present my view on its own, whether that overlaps or not.

Anyway, you're doing pretty well. Your lines are solid and smooth. For your ellipses I did notice some stiffness, especially in the ellipses in planes exercises (which is normal since we tend to get a bit stressed when having to fit ellipses into awkwardly shaped planes), but I did notice it in your tables of ellipess at times. You did have one particular page which was much smoother and more confident though, so aim more towards that. The main point is that you need to draw your ellipses with a more confident pace, not allowing yourself to slow down and let your brain course-correct as you draw. All of that should be handled in the preparation stages, building up the muscle memory so you can eventually trust your arm more when actually drawing.

Moving forwards, you did quite well with your box exercises. I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method to your rough perspective boxes, and you seem to have done a solid job with the rotated boxes. There is of course room for improvement here and with the organic perspective boxes, but I fully expected that going in. I generally use that as a gauge for whether or not I want a student to move onto the 250 box challenge - which you already seem to be doing. I definitely think that's the right path to take, as it should help you better develop your ability to rotate boxes freely in 3D space. Make sure you read through all of the notes on that challenge page before starting the work - especially the tip about drawing through your boxes, as this should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Anyway, keep up the good work and consider this lesson complete.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-19 21:29

Really, really solid work. You've done an excellent job through the lines section, your ellipses are all smooth, confident and evenly shaped, and your boxes feel solid and tangible. You even really blew away the rotated boxes exercise, which was largely included as a challenge that I expect most students to do fairly poorly at - like I'm throwing them into the deep end of the pool before teaching them to swim.

This is largely because I find that if a student has the chance to get accustomed to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space (even if they have some catastrophic results) they tend to grasp the actual explanations much more easily once they're given, since they understand the context for it all.

The organic perspective boxes falls much into the same category, and I'd say that this is an area where you could definitely use some more work. You're still doing pretty well, and as far as line weight and cohesiveness goes your forms feel solid - they just don't match up quite right with perspective.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get some more work on this area. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which in turn will work towards fixing some of the awkward angles and near/far plane size relationship issues that are currently showing up in your more arbitrarily rotated boxes.

Keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable

2016-12-20 22:27

Looking good. There's definitely room for improvement, but for the most part you seem to understand the concepts and are working towards applying them correctly.

Your lines are coming out well - they'll improve with practice (becoming straighter and more solid as you train in the use of the ghosting method), but right now they're generally pretty straight and smooth, and you're taking the time to prepare for each one properly. Your ellipses are much the same - they start out a little bit stiff, but I can see signs of improvement as you push yourself to draw with a more confident pace, relying less and less on your brain course-correcting as you draw. When doing the funnels though, take a little more care in drawing the line down the middle, and keep in mind how each ellipse must be aligned to this line as its minor axis - so the line should cut each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension. Additionally, work on expanding the degree (width) of each ellipse as it moves away from the center of the funnel. Right now they are mostly pretty much the same degree.

Your plotted perspective boxes are solid. Your rough perspective boxes are coming along well too, though I do recommend that you go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. Since this exercise is all about estimating, it's natural for there to be discrepancies, so we need to take the time to identify them, so we can ultimately learn from them.

Now the thing about the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes is that I've pretty much thrown my students into the deep end of the pool before reaally explaining to them how to swim. Essentially, I'm letting you drown a little (just a little!) so you can get some water in your lungs and understand how it tastes.

In doing so, there's a few benefits - firstly, you're getting acquainted with the specific challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when you do actually receive instruction on this front, you'll understand it in its proper context, so it'll make more sense. Secondly, you learn to face failure head on. Failure is an inevitability, and it's entirely necessary for growth, so it's important that you work towards growing to be at least somewhat comfortable with it. Without failure, we can't really learn from our mistakes.

Long story short, I expect students to struggle a lot with these two, and you're no exception.

For the rotated boxes exercise, there's two points that would help considerably. Firstly, try not to leave big gaps between your boxes - think of them as more of a grid with very small gaps between each box. They're tied to one another, and as demonstrated here, we use neighbouring marks as hints when drawing a new line.

Secondly, draw through your boxes. As shown here, I draw all of the lines of the box - including those that I cannot see directly. This exercise is very much about understanding how your box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as it rotates, so drawing your box in its entirety is important in order to gain a full understanding of how it occupies space.

With the organic perspective boxes, there's some examples of the two major common issues I outlined in the lesson:

• Far Planes Larger than Near Planes

• Inconsistent Foreshortening Between Boxes in the Same Scene

Additionally, I noticed a lot of little corrections drawn in while you were drawing each box. Corrections are important, but they can also lead to a bad habit of immediately correcting your mistakes as soon as you make them, which results in messy linework. Corrections should be something entirely separate, done to a completed exercise in order to identify and learn from your mistakes. Conversely, as you'll see in later lessons, we put a lot of importance on learning how to deal with one's mistakes - to work around them, to diminish them, and to compensate for them.

Anyway, I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next for more practice with these freely rotated boxes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page before starting the work, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This is directly related what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes exercise, and will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. In turn this will help you avoid some of the more common mistakes you made in the organic perspective boxes exercise. Lastly, when doing the challenge, make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every line, so that every mark you put down is the result of clear and conscientious planning rather than any kind of reflexes or instincts.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-22 01:59

Nice work! I definitely did notice the heavy use of red pen there, circling every little mistake and noting things down. It's perfectly fine - and perhaps important - to be aware of the mistakes you're making so that you can work towards correcting them in your next attempt, but I do want to make sure that you do understand that it's perfectly okay to be making those errors. I'm sure you do already get that, but it's important for me to state it - don't go so far with pointing out your failures that you don't get the chance to appreciate your successes. It's a great way to burn out.

One great thing that I've seen across your work is that you tend to draw with a very confident stroke - your lines and ellipses generally come out with a very smooth, even stroke, with very little in the way of wobbling or stiffness. It's this that makes me figure that you probably understand that mistakes are inevitable. This confidence will serve you well.

Your box exercises are generally done quite well, so I'll skip on over to the organic perspective boxes. It's clear that you struggled with this one - and to be honest, that's how I designed the lesson. For this exercise, I purposely drop the student into the deep end of the pool without really teaching them how to swim. This way they get a sense of the challenges faced when trying to rotate boxes freely in 3D space, so that when I do ultimately explain how to deal with it, they can understand those instructions with greater context.

So, I'll be marking this lesson as complete - I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read the notes and watch the video there on that challenge page - especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which will in turn help you understand some of the mistakes you were making when trying the organic perspective boxes exercise.

Keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable

2016-12-24 20:36

Sorry for the late response - I usually try to get critiques in within a day, but I was working on new lesson material for drawabox and ended up coming down with a fever last night.

Looking at your work, I see a lot of things I've seen from some other students, and I'm very confident in saying that you can certainly do much better. As a rule, what I ask for is not perfect work, but rather the best a student is capable of at this moment, and I've become pretty adept at spotting when students are hitting their personal limit, or when it's really just a matter of requiring more time and patience. Yours is falling under the latter category.

Firstly, try to work on blank paper - I've seen a trend in the use of lined or graph paper corresponding to a somewhat sloppier mindset, leading to more rushing and less care taken when completing the exercises.

As for the specific exercises:

• Super imposed lines. This is generally looking good. For the most part, you're taking the time to line up your pen at the correct starting point.

• Your ghosted lines are roughly where I'd expect them to be. There's a bit of wavering here and there, but I think that's more of a matter of requiring more practice (which is totally fine and expected) than incorrect technique.

• Things start to get a little sloppier with your planes. There's two issues - I feel that more and more you're becoming lax in terms of applying the ghosting method. When you start out, you seem to be applying it reasonably well, but as you push through you probably try and take less time with each line, resulting in sloppier work. Additionally, don't immediately correct or reinforce an incorrect line. This is a bad habit to develop, and if you do it while working on a proper drawing, you'll end up drawing more attention to your blunder. Instead it's best to leave it be for now. Corrections are a good way to reflect upon your work, but those should be entirely separate from the process of actually drawing the lines in the first place. Basically, if you want to do corrections, come back later to do them once the whole page is complete. That way you get the benefit of reflecting upon your work without the development of the bad habit.

• With these ellipses, it's very clear to me that you've gotten somewhat overwhelmed with the prospect of drawing quite so many - your mind has simply given up and aimed for quantity over quality. It's true that I'm asking for a lot, but for this reason you should take ample breaks whenever necessary and spread the work over as long a period of time as is necessary. A lot of students take over 8 hours to complete just this first lesson, so don't feel that you need to rush at all. When drawing these ellipses, focus on each individual one - ghost through the drawing motion required, and make sure you're drawing from your shoulder. Once you've completed an ellipse, then you can shift your brain to drawing the next one. Here it seems to me like you didn't draw them with much planning or forethought, and that your mind was continuously directed more to the next ellipse rather than the one you were drawing at the time. Don't get me wrong though - when you actually draw the ellipse, your motion should be confident and quick. What's important is that you put all of your time into the planning of it.

• When it comes to your box exercises, pretty much across the board I'm noticing varying line quality, and large chunks of work where you stop applying the ghosting method. This ghosting method is key to all of these lessons - you must build a habit of it, of patiently planning and preparing each mark before executing it, rather than trying to do all of this at once.

• Additionally, for the rough perspective boxes exercise, you should go over your completed work as described here to check for areas where your estimation is off.

Now, I want you to try to go through this entire lesson once again. In terms of technique, I could simply ask you to redo a few specific exercises and then push you onto the 250 box challenge, this is more than just technique. It's about patience, and developing the ability to focus on what you're doing at a given moment, rather than thinking too far ahead and rushing through it all to reach the finish line.

Redo all of the exercises and submit them to me again. Take as much time as you require, and be sure to break it up over several sittings. Once you're done - and I'm sure that it will have vastly improved - I will mark this lesson as complete. At that point I would like you to move onto the 250 box challenge to help further develop your sense of 3D space and your ability to rotate boxes freely. At that point, I'll want you to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. I'm mentioning this now, in case I forget to mention it later.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-24 20:52

You've done a pretty decent job. Your lines are quite smooth and confident, which helps keep them straight. Your ellipses vary depending on the exercise - there's a bit of stiffness regardless, but your ellipses in tables are considerably stronger than the ellipses in planes and the funnels. The main thing is that above all, you need to try to keep the shape as even as possible. Beyond the preparation stages, your brain won't help you much - you've got to draw from your shoulder and trust that your muscles understand the task at hand. If you let your brain drive your drawing motion, it will course-correct as you go, resulting in some stiffness.

Alternatively, relying entirely on your muscles will undermine the accuracy of it all. This is a secondary priority (so the evenness of the shape is most important), but you can compensate for the decrease in accuracy by applying the ghosting method in order to build up the correct muscle memory. This is where your brain should be focusing.

For the funnels, keep in mind that the minor axis line should be going down the middle (use a ruler if necessary), and that each ellipse needs to align to it such that it cuts each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down its narrower dimension.

The issue with the ellipses in planes is more or less the same stiffness problem, but it's fairly normal to see it here. We tend to get a bit overwhelmed with the need to fit our ellipses into this awkward shape that we let our brains take the reins. Fight against that urge, and push yourself to ensure that the ellipse is as smooth and even as possible.

Your plotted perspective boxes are solid. As are your rough perspective boxes, though I do recommend that you go over your completed work for this exercise as described here.

Your rotated boxes are coming along decently. Your organic perspective boxes do have issues, but these are more or less expected. I know you mentioned that you were going to move onto the 250 box challenge, and I definitely recommend that route to further develop your sense of 3D space. Make sure you read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Additionally, one thing you should read over again in terms of your organic perspective boxes, is the issue of overly dramatic perspective.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the 250 box challenge when you're ready.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-27 19:47

Not bad! Your lines and ellipses sections are looking good - your linework is fairly confident here, and shows signs of forethought and preplanning. Your boxes are generally well done too, though I noticed in your rough perspective boxes you didn't apply the ghosting method quite as carefully as you could have. Remember that you want to invest all of your time into planning and preparing for each mark, then execute it with a smooth, confident stroke. Don't try and put less time into planning and more time into execution, as this will give your brain the opportunity to try and course-correct as you draw, resulting in wobblier lines. Additionally, be sure to double check your work for this exercise as described here.

Your rotated boxes are well laid out - I just have one little thing I want to point out. As your boxes rotate further out to any one side, you want to make sure you exaggerate that rotation more and more. Our brains like things to exist parallel to one another, fitting into neat little grids, so they'll actively fight against us when doing an exercise like this, making things feel like they've been rotated when they haven't (or at least not by much). As a result, you need to push yourself further outside of what you feel is comfortable. Where we want to hit a full 180 degree range of rotations on any one axis, yours are hitting something more like 90.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be - I'll admit that I throw students into this exercise much like tossing children into the deep end of the pool without teaching them how to swim. It's largely to get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when I do explain the concepts involved, you'll understand the context into which those instructions fit.

I'll be marking this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, and watch the two videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is especially important, as it will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2016-12-28 18:06

It's not bad, but there definitely a few things I can point out.

First and foremost, it looks like you're using the 'drawing' preset on your scanner. This generally ramps up the contrast resulting in this sort of extremely harsh approximation of your work, throwing out any of the nuance of your lines. The 'photo' presets are generally much better, as they'll more or less capture your work as it is.

Your ghosted lines are looking okay - there's a bit of wavering here and there, which pushes me to remind you to draw from your shoulder, and to push through with a confident pace quick enough to avoid your brain from course-correcting as you go. This inherently reduces your accuracy, which you can in turn compensate for by spending more time on the ghosting/preparation phase. Overall though the issues I see here are very minor.

Your ellipses suffer from pretty much the same problem, but as they are ellipses it tends to manifest a little differently. Here and there we can see a degree of stiffness to them, where you can see that the flow of your drawing motion has shifted slightly (likely due to your brain saying "no you're going off track, we need to adjust our course or all is lost!" Our first priority is always the evenness and smoothness of the stroke. Our second priority is accuracy - so a smooth ellipse that is slightly off from our intended target is better than one that is stiff but more precise. This may seem counter-intuitive, because when you're actually drawing something, being off by a bit can be catastrophic. Keep in mind - these are exercises and drills, so our mindset is not that of creating a perfect image. It's merely to train our bodies and minds, and this particular set of priorities will help us achieve both smooth lines and accuracy more easily in the long run.

Your plotted perspective boxes are well done. Your rough perspective boxes are good as well, but I see one issue. It's hard to tell due to the scan quality, but it looks like you were plotting lines back to the vanishing point. If you did this while drawing, don't. You are meant to eyeball it completely, and visualize those lines as opposed to drawing them. If you did them afterwards to double check your perspective, this is something you should be doing (and if you didn't I definitely recommend it as described here) but do not plot them back to the vanishing point. Instead, extend them back to the horizon line to see how far the intersection point is from the VP.

Your rotated boxes don't seem to follow the step-by-step instructions I laid out for the exercise, so definitely give that a good read. I'm guessing that you did these before I put up the more detailed set of instructions (the previous ones weren't really detailed enough).

You don't seem to have included your organic perspective boxes.

So before I mark this lesson as complete, I want to see:

• 1 page of the tables of ellipses

• 1 page of rotated boxes

• 1 page of organic perspective boxes

Uncomfortable

2016-12-28 18:32

Your lines and ellipses sections are pretty solid - I'm quite pleased with your ellipses in particular, they're quite confident and smooth. Once you get into your boxes though, I think there's a lot of work to be done. Not so much in the construction of the boxes themselves, but rather in your process for drawing each line.

Firstly, in the plotted perspective exercise, this one was meant to be done with a ruler in its entirety, but it seems like you drew the boxes themselves freehand. Don't stray from my instructions - there are times where I choose to make certain things easier, and that is always because that component is not the focus of this exercise. By making it more challenging for yourself, you become distracted from the main purpose of the exercise.

Looking at your rough perspective boxes onwards, your use of the ghosting method isn't great. Your lines are rather wobbly and unstable, which makes me think that on top of not using the ghosting method, you've probably fallen back to drawing from your wrist at this point, instead of drawing from your shoulder.

Another point that you actually noted down is quite correct - fixing your mistakes draws attention to them. When you make a mistake, leave it alone. The habit of immediately correcting a blunder is a very bad one. Instead if you want to reflect upon your mistakes, do so after you've completed the whole thing. Additionally, I recommend double checking your alignment with the vanishing point as described here.

Your rotated boxes aren't bad - they're cluttered to be sure because you keep trying to correct your mistakes rather than putting the time into applying the ghosting method and drawing from your shoulder, but the construction of the boxes is mostly correct. One image from the exercise description that I want to draw your attention to is this one (as you seem to have gotten lost in terms of aligning your boxes in the top left there.

As for your organic perspective boxes, they're not great, but that's more or less expected. To a degree with this exercise and the rotated boxes one, I throw students into the deep end of the pool before teaching them to swim so they can grow accustomed to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. That way they understand the later instruction, having already been exposed to the context of it.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but you'll have the chance to further practice your ghosting method and your free-rotation of boxes by moving onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page and watch the two videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is particularly important, and will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-02 19:00

Very nice work. Your first two sections are coming along very well - your lines are straight and solid, and your ellipses are confident, smooth and evenly shaped. I did notice though with your funnels that you tend to have a lot of ellipses floating in between the funnel lines, rather than snugly between them - that is of course something you'll want to work on. That said, the evenness of the shape and the confidence of your stroke is the primary priority, with accuracy sitting a close second - so you're nailing that first goal, and need to now try to improve on the second whilst maintaining the first. Applying the ghosting method to your ellipses (as you should for all marks made) will help you improve on this front.

Your boxes are generally coming along quite well too, though I do have a few recommendations. For your rough perspective boxes, go over your completed work as described here to help reflect on where your estimation of perspective tends to be somewhat off. This is quite normal.

Jumping ahead to your organic perspective boxes, it's perfectly normal for your ability to construct arbitrarily rotated boxes to be quite weak at this point - I included this exercise (and the rotated boxes one) not with the expectation that you'd be nailing it, but rather to give you the chance to fail a little, while getting familiar with the particular challenges involved in freely rotating boxes. It's not an easy thing to do, but having experienced it here, you'll be able to digest the later instruction more easily and put it to better use, since you already understand the context of it all.

I did want to point out though that I am seeing a tendency to correct your mistakes immediately after making them. This is not recommended, as it tends to become a bit of a bad habit, where you immediately reinforce lines you've just drawn out of reflex rather than with planning and forethought. Additionally, correcting a mistake will only draw more attention to it, while leaving it alone tends to give it the best chance of disappearing amongst the other marks. As we move through the lessons, we'll gradually learn to incorporate those mistakes into our actual drawings, but for now it's best to leave them alone.

Correcting itself is not a problem, but it's when it becomes a knee-jerk reaction. So instead, if you wish to reflect upon your mistakes in this manner, you can do so once the drawing is complete.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'm glad that you want to do the 250 box challenge next, as that is exactly what I was going to ask you to do. This is to improve your sense of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-02 19:38

Nice work with the lines. The ellipses are also looking quite good, though here and there you tend to get a little more stiff. Keep in mind that the first priority is maintaining a smooth, even shape. We achieve that by drawing our stroke with a confident enough pace to keep our brains from micro-managing and course-correcting us as we draw. Accuracy is certainly important, but it's a (close) second priority - so first focus on ensuring that your ellipses are smooth and even, then apply the ghosting method to improve your accuracy.

As I mentioned though, some of your ellipses are well done. You tend to demonstrate more stiffness in the ellipses in planes (which is totally normal since we tend to get distracted by the awkward shapes the planes give us), and only a touch of stiffness in the tables of planes.

For the boxes, you're doing a pretty good job. Your plotted perspective boxes are fine. Your rough perspective boxes are coming along well, though I want to recommend two things:

• Aligning the tops/bottoms of so many boxes to the horizon is a great way to waste the opportunity to practice your estimation of perspective more. There's really no point, and you're only causing yourself to lose out.

• Go over your completed work as described here to identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

Before I move on, I want to mention that the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are both here with the expectation that students will struggle with them. I haven't fully explained the concepts involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space at this point, so I am by no means expecting to see perfect work. I'm merely giving you the opportunity to get used to struggling and failing a little, while also getting you accustomed to the challenges involved in constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes in 3D space.

With your rotated boxes, there was one issue that I noticed that did contradict some of the notes in the instructions, however. If you look at this, you'll notice that the red lines denote the given vanishing point for the lines you drew, and the green lines denote where the vanishing point for those lines should actually be as per this diagram. You can read more about this concept in these notes.

Your organic perspective boxes are more or less where I'd expect them to be. There's plenty of room for improvement, but we'll deal with that next.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete - I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, and watch the videos. Focus particularly on the tip about drawing through your forms, as this will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-02 20:50

Very nice work! Your lines are looking good, though I did catch your longer ghosted lines arcing a little bit. This isn't an uncommon issue - here's a way you can try correcting it. Overall though it is perfectly normal for longer lines to give you more trouble. This will improve with practice.

Your ellipses are generally looking good as well, especially the ellipses in tables. They're smooth and quite even, and you're doing a good job of keeping your lines tight whilst drawing through them a couple times.

Your plotted perspective boxes are very solid. Your rough perspective boxes are looking good as well, and I'm glad to see that you're applying the double-checking method from the self critique resources. Just one thing - when applying hatching lines as shading, make sure that you're not half-assing it. This is an optional detail you chose to add, but it will still impact the overall presentation of an image if you aren't careful with it. Take your time, make sure your lines are consistent, parallel and stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely to give you the chance to get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating forms freely in 3D space. It is not something that is easy, and I don't expect anyone to be nailing either of these exercises this early on. It's mainly there so that when we get into more in-depth explanations on how to tackle arbitrarily rotated boxes, you'll understand it in context because you'll have already dealt with those challenges before.

That said, you did a pretty solid job with your rotated boxes, so keep it up. Your organic perspective boxes do need work, but we'll deal with that soon enough.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work with those freely rotated boxes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page and watch the two videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is particularly important, and it should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-03 00:21

Pretty nice work! Your lines and ellipses are looking confident and smooth, which is definitely good to see. Your boxes are coming along well, though I have a few points to remark upon:

• For your rough perspective boxes, watch the angle of your horizontals and verticals relative to the horizon line. Horizontals should run parallel to the horizon, verticals should run perpendicular to it. Yours are off by a slight margin here and there, though enough to catch my eye. There's more information on this here

• Also for the rough perspective boxes, don't forget to double check your work as described here.

Your rotated boxes are looking good, and your organic perspective boxes do have plenty of room for improvement, but that's expected. Both of these exercises were included here to get you familiar with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, not so much with the expectation of your nailing both of them.

As far as the notes I included in this lesson, I did catch some overly dramatic foreshortening in your organic perspective boxes, so watch out for that.

I'll be marking your lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice with freely rotating boxes in 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page and watch the two videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is particularly important, and should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-05 01:33

I applaud your decision to start again from scratch. It certainly has been a little while since your previous submissions, so this is definitely a very good idea.

Your linework is looking very confident, so that's good. Your later pages of ellipses are better - mainly the ones where you start drawing through them - but I notice that you keep shifting between drawing through them and not. It's important that you do this for every single ellipse you draw for my lessons, and that you do so with a confident pace. This is how you'll avoid any sort of stiffness or wobbling.

Your plotted perspective boxes are looking good. Your rough perspective boxes are also fairly well done, though I have two recommendations:

• Make sure that your hatching lines, should you choose to add them, stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle. This will keep your work from looking sloppy.

• Go over your completed work for this exercise as described here to help double check your estimation of perspective.

Your rotated boxes are looking quite well done. Your organic perspective boxes do however demonstrate a lot of issues with inconsistent foreshortening, as described here. It's best to keep your foreshortening fairly shallow for exercises like this, rather than exaggerating how quickly they decrease in size with perspective.

I'm glad that you'll be moving onto the 250 box challenge again, as it certainly will help you continue to solidify your understanding of 3D space. Don't forget to draw through those boxes as mentioned in the tips section - though since you've already completed it once, I'm sure you were aware of that.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Also one other thing I wanted to mention - at the moment I'm really swamped at work (pulling lots of overtime to meet deadlines), so my critiques may trickle in slower than usual.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-07 19:59

Firstly, I'm really sorry for the delay here. Usually I try to get my critiques done within 24-48 hours, but unfortunately this past week I've been buried in overtime at work, and next week will likely be more of that. Didn't even leave the office last night til 1AM.

Anyway, your lesson 1 work here highlights some key underlying issues that definitely had an impact on the work you submitted previously. The biggest thing that I can see is that your linework is somewhat wobbly and shaky. In some cases it's more obvious, in others it's more subtle, but basically the core problem is that you're not drawing at a confident pace. You're focusing far too much on precision and accuracy, and are sacrificing the flow and smoothness of your linework.

Remember the methodology I talk about here. You want to invest all of your time into preparation - ghosting, getting used to the drawing motion, and so on - and then you execute with a motion just quick enough to keep your brain from course-correcting as you go. If you happen to be a little off the mark, that's fine. Accuracy is important, but it's secondary to smoothness and flow, and it will improve with practice and adjusting how you ghost through beforehand.

This principle stands for y our ellipses too - for the most part they have a touch of that stiffness that comes from being overly careful and overly stressed with nailing your accuracy.

Skipping on down, your rotated boxes are very wobbly - don't forget to apply the ghosting method to every single line you draw.

Looking at your organic perspective boxes, in general there's a lot of signs that you should definitely tackle the 250 box challenge again, being sure to draw through each box as recommended in the tips. Go ahead and reread the notes on that page as well, and rewatch the videos. One of them was added more recently, so you likely haven't yet seen it. Be mindful especially of issues where your near planes end up smaller than your far planes. When doing the challenge, it helps also to fill in one face that is oriented towards the viewer with some tight, consistent hatching in order to serve as visual cue. Otherwise it can be difficult to tell afterwards which side of the box is which, since we're drawing through the whole thing as though we have xray vision.

Anyway, I'll mark this lesson as complete, but be sure to continue practicing your linework in the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-07 21:44

Pretty nice work! Your lines and ellipses are looking confident and smooth, and your boxes are generally well constructed. There's a few minor issues in the rotated and organic perspective boxes, but this is by no means unexpected - you're definitely doing better than most here, so those two months of practice definitely show.

The issues I noticed were:

• For the rotated boxes exercise, you tend to be quite timid as far as rotating the boxes themselves goes - our brains like things to exist on grids, so we need to fight against our basic nature when we want to rotate forms. When doing an exercise like this, try and exaggerate those rotations, otherwise you'll end up with situations where your boxes merely shift enough to compensate for basic linear perspective, rather than sliding its vanishing points far enough to constitute actual rotation. For example, take a look at your top most box, the one below it, and the center. If you were to track the positions of their lower vanishing point, you'll see that it actually stays either around the center of the two axes, or slightly above it. As shown here, it needs to actually slide further downwards as the box rotates.

• Your organic perspective boxes just show a touch of overly dramatic perspective at times, and a bit of near/far plane issues, though both are probably more unintentional slipups (that we can't really correct since we're working in ink). Overall you're demonstrating a well developing sense of space.

As for your question, you should be drawing those marks with your shoulder. Keep in mind that we aren't here to draw pretty pictures - we're here to become better at the things we aren't yet comfortable with. The only exercise that is truly ruined is one where you've robbed yourself of an opportunity to learn something.

Your line weights are generally okay, though there are those corners where things get a touch too heavy. Pressure control will develop with time and practice, and you'll grow accustomed to more subtle variance in pressure and weight as you go.

I do certainly advocate for your decision to move onto the 250 box challenge next, so feel free to do that. I probably wouldn't have forced you to do so (for most students, I do), so you're also free to move onto lesson 2. But of course, the extra practice is always well worth it.

As for the rest of it, ultimately the material from lesson 1 and 2 should eventually become part of a warm-up you do at the beginning of each sitting, doing two or three of the exercises for 10-15 minutes. Don't worry about focusing more on one over others, as you don't want the others to get forgotten. Just make sure that you cycle through them regularly so that everything gets a good deal of practice. While later exercises allow you to build up your understanding of how objects are constructed, the exercises from lessons 1 and 2 are the kind that will have the greatest long-term impact, so long as you continue to do them.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and congratulations on completing this lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-09 23:13

It looks like you've grown a lot over the course of this homework. Your lines initially started rather wobbly and uncertain. By the box exercises, they've much improved. Here and there they still show a bit of wobbliness, but for the most part you're taking your time with your ghosting/preparation, then executing them with a confident stroke to maintain the smooth flow of the line.

Your ellipses also show similar improvement. Initially they're generally a bit sloppy and loose, though still at times a bit stiff and awkward. By the time you hit this page, they've improved considerably, both tightening up and becoming considerably smoother and more evenly shaped.

Your boxes are well done, and though you struggled considerably with the rotated boxes one, you came out victorious at the end. I do want to let you know that I by no means expect students to nail the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises at this point. I'm giving them the opportunity here to do two things: first and foremost, to get acquainted with failure (which as you've learnt through the course of this lesson, happens a lot, and we merely have to get back up and learn from the mistakes we've made), and also to get acquainted with the particular challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space.

Despite this, you've done a very good job, and have developed a strong sense of 3D space.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one. Before you do though, I'd like you to go through the notes on the 250 box challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. I'm by no means requiring you to complete the challenge, but the notes should help you continue to improve your sense of 3D space, and your understanding of how the boxes you draw sit within it.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-11 01:40

The first thing I want to recommend is actually two recommendations at once - try not to work on paper that isn't blank (it has a tendency to make us somewhat less focused, and therefore a little sloppy at times), and make sure that the pages you work on give you enough space to work through spatial problems.

Anyway, your exercises for the lines section are looking pretty solid and smooth. Your ellipses are also generally quite well done, for the most part. I do see a touch of stiffness here and there, so I just want to remind you that the evenness of the shape is your top priority. It's normal for us to want to slow down for the sake of accuracy, but this will lead to stiffness and wobbling - so execute your mark confidently, and compensate for the decrease in accuracy by spending more time ghosting your mark (which we do for every single mark we draw, be it straight, curved or elliptical).

Your rough perspective boxes are decent, though your use of hatching there is beyond sloppy. If you choose to add hatching lines, make sure they stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge, rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle. Also, make sure you go over your completed work as described here to check your estimated perspective (this will help you identify mistakes, which you can compensate for the next time you attempt the exercise).

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are both included here largely to give you the chance to acquaint yourself with the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space - not so much with the expectation that you'll do them well, so that is definitely something to keep in mind. That said, you didn't do particularly badly as far as the usual mistakes I see go, but we will definitely be able to work on them and push them further.

One thing I definitely want to point out however is with your rotated boxes, you're demonstrating a particular... lack of focus as far as the instructions go. Your understanding of space is decent, but you're skipping steps outlined in the instructions that would have greatly improved your results. It's very important that when completing my exercises, if there's step-by-step instructions, follow them to the letter. It kind of jumps out at me that you didn't even really complete the second step entirely.

The one that would have helped considerably though is this one. When keeping your boxes fairly tightly together, you can use neighbouring lines as hints for how a given line should behave. This helps especially as you go out towards the corners.

Of course, it's also worth mentioning that your use of hatching here is sloppy, as it was in the rough perspective boxes exercise.

Anyway, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, as this will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. There's also two videos that should be helpful.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-12 23:01

So looking through your work, there's one reaaaally clear issue that comes up across the board - your lines are wobbly. This isn't an uncommon problem, but it is something we'll need to sort out sooner rather than later.

Your first exercise, the super imposed lines, suggests why they are so wobbly. Looking at those lines, they tend to start off tight, waver considerably over their length, then end tight again. This suggests that you're taking your time as you draw, going slow and steady, with your brain controlling the whole way, and course-correcting when you fall off track.

That's not the approach we're after. I talk about this specifically in this comic. Basically, your brain should not be guiding the motion of your hand - it should help plan things out, but when the time comes to execute the mark, you should be trusting in your muscles. All the time you spend on drawing the mark should instead be spent preparing, applying the ghosting method, and so on. This applies to everything - straight lines, curved lines and ellipses.

Skipping on down to your rough perspective boxes, I'm seeing a lot of guesswork in terms of the behaviour of your lines. Give these notes a read, they should help. Additionally, upon completing this exercise, it's best to go over your completed work as described here to double check your estimation of perspective.

I think it would be best for you to try the homework for this lesson again. Give the lesson another read through, and make sure you go through each exercise description carefully before tackling it. There's a lot of information here so it can be quite dense - there's also a lot of work involved, so take your time and don't rush.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-14 01:15

Nice work with your lines - definitely nothing bad going on there, you seem to be following the instructions quite well. Your ellipses are generally okay through the first exercise in that section, though I noticed that in the funnels you seem to get a little too loose. Remember that there's two things we want to pin down - the confidence of the ellipse to keep it evenly shaped (you're doing this well), and the accuracy of it. That is, keeping it within the bounds we set for ourselves (in this case snugly set between the two sides of the funnel), and keeping the ellipse as tight as possible. Confidence and smoothness are your first priorities, but you don't want to let things get so loose that the ellipse ends up having no clear definition. That is definitely something you'll want to work on.

Moving ahead to the boxes, it seems that you did not continue to apply the ghosting method to your mark-making (this is likely also a major factor in your ellipses, since ghosting/preparing your marks is what helps increase your accuracy before laying down a confident stroke). As a result the lines in your rough perspective boxes, rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes aren't straight for the most part. The work is definitely quite sloppy, and I know for a fact that you're capable of doing much better than this.

While I certainly don't ask for, or expect perfect work (and you'll find that here and there I assign exercises that are purposely beyond a student's ability at that time), I do always want to see work done to the absolute best of your ability at that moment. This means taking the time to apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down - be it straight, curved or elliptical - even though it will take a considerably larger investment of time. It is this kind of work that allows me to give you helpful critiques that will ultimately push the boundaries of your abilities.

Going back to the specific exercises, I also have a few things to point out:

• You have a tendency to guess the behaviours of your rough perspective boxes' lines, rather than taking a moment to think about how they should be drawn. These notes describe this tendency and how to overcome it.

• Also for the rough perpsective boxes, after completing this exercise be sure to go over your completed work as described here to identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

• You didn't really follow the instructions for the rotated boxes exercise - I've set out specific steps in the exercise description, so give them another read. Focus on things like drawing through your boxes (something I mentioned for your box challenge as well) and also keep your boxes closer together so you can use neighbouring lines as hints.

Both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are included in this lesson not with the expectation that you'll nail them by any stretch, but rather to give you the chance to get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating your boxes freely in 3D space. This is a particularly difficult thing to get your head around, so I like to have my students jump in head-first before receiving the additional instruction available in the 250 box challenge. This way the instruction is received with more contextual understanding.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do the following:

• One more page of funnels

• One more page of rough perspective boxes

• One more page of rotated boxes

Once you've submitted that and I've marked this lesson as complete, I'm going to want you to try your hand at the 250 box challenge once more. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the page and watch both videos. The tip about drawing through your forms is very important, as I mentioned in my critique of your previous attempt, as it helps you to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every mark as well.

This can (and is) quite tedious, but I assure you that it will help. By forcing yourself to push at your limits, you will find that you will produce work far better than you're used to.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-15 17:25

Definitely a decent first attempt. There are a few things that I'd like to point out though:

• Your super imposed lines are looking pretty good, though try and take an extra moment before starting to line your pen up right at the correct starting point. It's completely normal to see fraying/separation of the lines towards the other side, but seeing even a little bit of it on the beginning side implies that you're rushing a little too much.

• Your ghosted lines are coming along well. There's plenty of room to grow, but you're going in the right direction. Make sure you draw from your shoulder and that you spend plenty of time preparing/ghosting before each mark you put down, and you should see considerable improvement on this front.

• You definitely get a little sloppier with your planes - your lines tend to wobble more, you're drawing with less confidence, and there's more wavering here for shorter lines than there were for your much longer ones in the previous exercise. This tells me that you're probably applying the ghosting method less stringently. Keep in mind that the ghosting method should be applied fully for every single mark you put down (be it straight, curved or elliptical), and while it may take considerably more time, it will result in significant improvements to the quality of your work. Over time it'll become second nature, and you'll gain speed, but right now you need to be taking all the time you need.

• Your ellipses aren't bad. There's a little bit of stiffness and unevenness in some of them (probably coming from not drawing from the shoulder) but for the most part these are coming along well. What you always want to keep an eye on is keeping your elliptical shape even and symmetrical, and the best way to do this is to trust in your arm muscles, and draw from muscle memory. Of course, as always, it's important to ghost before hand as well.

• Your ellipses in planes do get more stiff, but this is actually something I see a lot. People tend to get a little overwhelmed by the challenge of fitting their ellipse in an awkwardly shaped plane, so they tend to stiffen up. Just remember that accuracy is important, but it's a secondary priority. Evenness of your shape is your first priority.

• Through a lot of the boxes exercises, I think you've started to draw a lot more, and perhaps read a lot less (of my instructions). From the looks of it, you're interpreting things too much, and end up straying from how the exercises are meant to be performed. For example, the plotted perspective boxes exercise, there are step-by-step instructions of how to approach it, but somehow you ended up drawing three vanishing points when the exercise only calls for two. Because of this mistake, the results end up being very inconsistent and don't make a whole lot of sense.

• Similarly for your rough perspective boxes exercise, you're putting down one vanishing point but many of your boxes seem to be implying another vanishing point elsewhere. This often comes from an issue I like to call "guessing instead of thinking/knowing". Each line in a given perspective system (1 point, 2 point or 3 point) has a very specific behaviour that will tell you how to draw it. I explain these here, definitely give them a read.

• Additionally, it helps considerably once you're done the rough perspective boxes exercise to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

• Now the next two exercises (rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes) are extremely challenging, and were included here largely to let you get acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. There's no expectation of you nailing these two, but rather I've assigned them so when I do actually go into more detail on how to deal with this challenge, you'll be able to relate it back to what you dealt with here. Basically it gives the instruction greater context, making it easier to understand at that time.

• That said, especially for the rotated boxes exercise which has a step-by-step breakdown of how to approach it, what I want to see is a clear attempt at following those instructions. Again, you've kind of gone and done your own thing here based on the final result shown in the lesson. There are some things you're doing well (like keeping boxes tightly together so you can use neighbouring lines as hints), but the biggest problem is that you're not drawing through your boxes at all. This exercise is all about figuring out how a box sits in 3D space, then trying to figure out how that changes as it is rotated. By only drawing the lines that would technically be visible, you don't get a sense at all of how each box occupies space, and therefore you don't have enough information to work with to properly rotate it. It's best to draw your boxes as though you have x-ray vision - that is, drawing each and every line that makes up the box, whether it is blocked by something else or not.

• For your organic perspective boxes, the only thing I want to point out here is that you didn't start out by defining a specific flow for those boxes, so a lot of your compositions ended up being quite formless and disorganized. It's not a big issue, but it does go back to not really reading the instructions.

So before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to redo the following:

• One page of plotted perspective boxes

• One page of rough perspective boxes

• One page of rotated boxes

Read the instructions carefully immediately before attempting an exercise (and reread them as necessary to refresh your memory). Once you're done, you can resubmit them as a reply to this critique, and I'll mark the lesson as complete.

At that point, I will want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work in on the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the material there (especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which is what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes), and watch both videos.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-16 22:14

Your lines are looking quite solid. They're smooth and straight and generally well executed. Your ellipses are alright, but I'm catching a little bit of stiffness on the initial ones, which becomes much more significant as you start tackling the ellipses in planes (granted this is totally normal, people tend to get overwhelmed with the prospect of fitting ellipses inside of those awkwardly shaped planes). The thing to keep in mind is that you need to get used to drawing those ellipses with a confident pace, enough so that your arm muscles are driving the motion, not your brain. We tend to start out by wanting everything to be exact and precise, so we rely on our brains to course-correct when we fall out of alignment. This causes stiffness and wobbling. Always remind yourself - draw confidently, trust in your muscle memory. If you happen to be off the mark, that's not the end of the world. Ultimately it's easier to practice away inaccuracy than it is to practice away an unconfident line.

As I said before though, the stiffness in most of your ellipses is slight - so just keep this in the back of your mind as you approach your ellipses, rather than trying to make any massive changes.

Moving onto your boxes, again, generally good work. I do want to point out though the importance of following my instructions to the letter - meaning, if I say you should use a ruler for the entirety of an exercise, do so. I get that you may feel it to be an opportunity to further practice your ghosted lines, but there is always method to my madness. Or at least, there usually is. So stick to things the way they're written and don't stray or interpret.

Your rough perspective boxes are looking pretty good. Just be sure to go ver your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

For your rotated boxes, you've missed a major element of the instructions. This exercise is all about grasping how a box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as the box is rotated. By neglecting to draw each box in its entirety, you miss out on this overall grasp of how the box occupies space, and end up loosing a lot of the value in the exercise. Don't concern yourself with drawing a pretty image - remember that these are all exercises with a purpose to them, they're meant to train something. As such, draw each box completely, including the hidden lines on the opposite side of the form, as shown here.

You'll also want to check the behaviour of your boxes' vanishing points - if you were to extend them back to the axes, you'll find that the vanishing points in your drawing slide in the direction of the box (meaning as the box rotates towards the left, the vanishing points slide towards the left as well). If you look at this animated diagram, you'll find that the expected behaviour is the opposite - the vanishing points should slide in the opposite direction. You can find a more in-depth explanation of this here.

For the organic perspective boxes, there's definitely room to grow, but the point for this exercise (and the rotated boxes one) is to expose you to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. The target here isn't so much to produce perfect work, and I have no expectation of that. Instead now that you've encountered this challenge, you'll better grasp the instructions on how to deal with it when that comes in a bit.

Before we get to that though, I'd like you to do one more page of rotated boxes. Give the instructions another read through before attempting it. There's a lot of information there and it can be quite dense, so it's normal to not quite absorb all of it in just one pass.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-16 22:26

Excellent work. I honestly love seeing work laid out and structured like this - it goes hand in hand with the mindset I want to promote in my students. It also makes my critiques relatively painless to write!

So you're generally doing great. Your lines are straight, your ellipses are fairly confident and smooth, your boxes are well constructed, you've even done a great job at the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes - both of which were included in the lesson more to give students the chance to tangle with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, rather than to actually produce correct work. The usual plan is to send those students over to the 250 box challenge to get more practice on this, and while I thoroughly encourage you to read through the notes (if you haven't already, though I suspect you may have), I don't think it's necessary for you to go through the actual work there.

So overall, you're doing great. Keep it up, and consider this lesson thoroughly complete. Of course, I'm sure you'll continue doing these exercises as warmups (the usual recommendation is for students to pick two or three exercises from lesson 1, and eventually 2 once that's completed, to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each sitting so that they stay sharp on those basic technical skills).

As for your question, it's not one I've given a whole lot of thought to, but I do have two recommendations, and you can figure out which works best for you. Firstly, I'm thinking focusing on the center of the ellipse may help, as it is the point you're building it around. Secondly, and perhaps more likely to be useful, focus on one of the points that you want your ellipse to touch. So for example, in the funnels exercise, you've got two points of contact, one on each side of the funnel. Focus largely on one of them while ghosting, to ensure that you hit it. Ultimately when actually executing the mark, you probably don't want to focus too hard on any such thing so as to avoid having your brain course-correct, but it is probably a useful thing to do when ghosting through the motion and building up that muscle memory.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-17 21:25

Definitely a really good start! And I can see a clear improvement between your practices and your main homework. I do have a few recommendations to make though:

• I noticed in your super imposed lines that you've got a lot of fraying/separation on the far side of your lines (which is totally 100% normal), and a liiiiittle bit on the starting end. This last bit is a sign that you should take a little more time to line your pen up with the starting point before starting to draw, as described here.

• Your ghosted lines aren't great, but when you apply that same method to your planes, I think you really start nailing it - those lines are looking solid and straight.

• When you started out on your ellipses, they were a little on the stiff side, but I can see your confidence and the general smoothness on that front improve a fair bit. Keep that up - your ellipses in planes are pretty smooth, though things get a little stiff again in your funnels.

• I think you get a little too relaxed in terms of applying the ghosting method to your rough perspecitve boxes - they tend to arc a little too much, and based on your work on your planes exercise, you're capable of much better. Just take the time to focus on ghosting through each one.

• Also for the rough perspective boxes exercise, when you finish it, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is a little off.

• Your rotated boxes are coming along well. Your organic perspective boxes do definitely still need some work though, but that's expected. Both of these exercises were included largely to get you acquainted with the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, rather than expecting you to nail them right away. We'll do more work on this front in a bit.

So I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. That in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. Also be sure to apply the ghosting method on each and every line.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-18 22:33

Pretty nice work! Your lines are looking excellent - very smooth and well executed. Your ellipses - at least up until the end of the table of ellipses exercise - miss the mark somewhat, largely because you're not drawing through those ellipses much, and the result is quite stiff. Things improve as you get into your funnels, but keep the following in mind:

• Apply the ghosting method to your ellipses - this means putting all of your time into the preparation phase, then executing with a confident pace, enough so that you keep your brain from course-correcting as you go.

• By drawing through your ellipse once more before lifting your pen, you can help sure-up some of the inaccuracy that comes from drawing confidently. Over time you'll get used to balancing your pace out and developing your muscle memory so this becomes less necessary, but I want you to draw through each and every ellipse you draw while doing my lessons.

Your boxes are generally well done - I'm glad to see that you're applying the double-checking approach to your rough perspective boxes, and your rotated boxes are very well executed. It's clear to me that you've read through those instructions quite thoroughly.

Your organic perspective boxes do need some work, but this is entirely expected. This exercise, along with the rotated boxes exercise, were included largely to expose students to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, with no expectation of perfect results (or anything near it). By being exposed to this challenge now, when we go over the instructions on how to deal with these challenges, you'll better grasp them due to your previous encounter.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-19 19:55

Very nice work! Your lines are generally very smooth, well planned and well executed. You've got a lot of confidence to your strokes, and it comes through quite strongly in your work. Just a couple things I wanted to mention:

• For your super imposed lines, you tend to have wobblier lines that start together, separate, then end together. What you should be aiming for are lines that start together, and gradually separate towards the end - what this means is that you're not course-correcting as you go, so that the deviation in your trajectory compounds through the length of the line. It leaves your lines less accurate, but it achieves greater smoothness and consistency. Practice will decrease the separation, but you should be able to maintain that smoothness throughout. Luckily I didn't see any other significant signs of wobbling/course-correction elsewhere, so I'm thinking this was more of a problem brought on by the specific parameters of the exercise.

• Be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here

• Your rotated boxes are looking very nice.

• Your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be, though they could definitely use some more work. This exercise is more of a first introduction to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This will take time to develop, and we will explore that further in a bit.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how those boxes sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-19 20:57

Pretty well done. Your lines and ellipses are generally looking pretty good - I do want to recommend though that you continue to push yourself to execute your lines (be they straight, curved or ellipses) with a bit more of a confident pace, after applying the ghosting method. You're doing a pretty good job of it already, but I'm catching just a touch of hesitation, that leads to your brain course-correcting ever so slightly as you go, which in turn manifests as stiffness to the lines or wobbling. It's very subtle, but I can see that there's still a little bit of room for you to push yourself further as far as confidence goes.

Often times when trying to learn a skill, we think in terms of being somewhat timid and strategic - crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run, move step by step towards a visible goal. Think of it instead as though you're trying to hit a target with a catapult, and start out by overshooting your target, rather than trying to fall short. Be perhaps overly confident, then rein yourself back. Ultimately it's easier to practice away inaccuracy than it is to practice away stiffness and a wobbly line.

Of course, all of these things I'm talking about with rather large metaphors are exaggerations. As I mentioned, it's subtle and almost unnoticeable in your case, so keep the need to be confident in the back of your head, and hopefully it should be enough to gently coax you in that direction - rather than any conscious attempt to change how you're doing things.

Moving ahead to your boxes, be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

For the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes, both of these exercises were included largely to let you get a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, with no real expectation of having you nail either of them. As far as this goes, you're doing just fine. Your rotated boxes are actually pretty well done all things considered, though towards your lower right quadrant the gaps between your boxes tend to expand. It helps a lot to keep them close together as you did for the rest of the boxes, as it allows you to use neighbouring lines as hints.

For your organic perspective boxes, you're also doing okay, but there's definitely some room for improvement. And we'll get to that.

I'll be marking your lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-23 03:13

Really nice work! Overall, your line quality is very smooth and confident, your ellipses are evenly shaped and your boxes demonstrate a solid grasp of 3D space. It looks to me like you've got previous experience - in which case, good on you for deciding to go back to the basics. Paying more attention to the fundamentals is always a worthwhile endeavour.

For now, I've got only one little tip to offer. For the rough perspective boxes exercise, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to double check for any areas where your estimations of perspective stray. This is perfectly normal, and reflecting upon your work in this manner will help you maintain an awareness of where those weaknesses tend to lie.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, but before you do, give the material on the 250 box challenge a once over. No need to do the challenge itself, but some of the tips there (such as the drawing through your forms one) can be quite helpful in terms of continuing to develop one's grasp of 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-23 03:21

Looking pretty good! I do have just a couple things to point out, but overall you're demonstrating really solid line quality, and confident ellipses. Your rotated boxes also show a well developing grasp of 3D space.

One thing that jumped out at me a little was that in your funnels, you don't seem to be trying to align the ellipses to the central minor axis line. If you remember from the lesson on ellipses, the minor axis cuts an ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves through its narrower dimension. This comes in very handy later on when dealing with cylindrical objects, so it's important to set your mind to aligning them correctly in this exercise.

Moving onto the rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This helps to identify areas where your estimation of perspective tends to be a little off.

As I mentioned before, your rough perspective boxes are pretty impressive. There are some issues, but this exercise is really meant to be a first exposure to the challenges of rotating box forms in 3D space, and you are by no means intended to nail it.

One recommendation I have here is to keep the gaps between your boxes small and uniform. As you can see demonstrated in this image, you can use neighbouring lines as hints.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge to get some more work in developing that sense of 3D space. Be sure to read through the notes on that page and watch the videos - the tip about drawing through your forms will be particularly helpful in terms of your grasp of how each box sits in space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-24 21:41

Pretty nice work. Only one thing stood out to me, and it doesn't have anything to do with the use of the medium, but it's rather the overly dramatic foreshortening on your organic perspective boxes exercise. Give these notes another read. You also may want to draw through those boxes, as discussed in the 250 box challenge. I don't mention this in the lesson itself because I like to show my students what happens when you do something one way, then what the better approach would be - but since you've already completed this lesson in the past as well as the 250 box challenge, that's something you should generally apply to any exercise of this sort.

Anyway, keep up the good work. Your line quality is solid, your ellipses are smooth and even, and you seem to be handling your hardware quite nicely.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-27 00:01

Really solid work! Your lines are confident and smooth, your ellipses are evenly shaped and quite accurate, and your box exercises show a lot of patience and a well developing sense of 3D space.

I'm very pleased to see how well everything has been laid out, and how much of the space on each page you put to good use. It's definitely a good sign of the mindset with which you approached each exercise, which is easily far more important than the execution of exercises themselves.

Looking over your work, I have only one thing to point out, and it's a minor point. For your organic perspective boxes, I noticed that your forms have foreshortening applied to them that's perhaps a little more dramatic than it ought to be. This tends to imply an inconsistent scale across the entire set, as it is described here.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You may feel free to move onto the next lesson, or you may want to take a look at the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-29 00:27

Your lines and ellipses are generally looking pretty good. There's still room to grow as far as finding a good balance between a confident stroke and accuracy, but that will come with further practice and doesn't require any changes to how you're approaching them.

Your boxes are generally okay, aside from the rotated boxes exercise. Before I get into that though, I do want to highlight one point - the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are there to introduce you to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. They are by no means expected to be done particularly well this early on - of course I wouldn't tell anyone that before they actually do the exercises, so they put their full effort into it.

Looking through your attempts at the two exercises, I see two issues that I will address - and they both likely are rooted in your response to frustration:

• You stopped following the instructions for the rotated boxes. The exercise description includes very strict, step-by-step instructions on how to tackle this exercise, and I see a few signs that you didn't really digest them. For example, your axes and the 'extremity' boxes are completely missing throughout.

• You demonstrated a habit in your organic perspective boxes of reflexively 'correcting' yourself. This is a bad habit, and you should work to nip it in the bud as soon as possible. If you draw a line, and it is incorrect, leave it be. Correcting it will only draw attention to your blunder, since the most noticeable, darkest, heaviest parts of your drawing will be those where you got frustrated and tried to fix your mistakes. Reflecting upon your mistakes is definitely valuable, but do it separately, once the exercise is over. Doing it in a differently coloured pen helps too.

With your rotated boxes, I can see two more points that could help - again, this exercise is tough and often times overwhelming, so I'm not surprised that you missed these points. As far as instructions go, the ones I mentioned before as being missed are low hanging fruit, whereas these are more easily missed due to the state of mind one reaches in their initial attempt at slaying this beast:

• Firstly, keep the gaps between your boxes small. This allows you to use neighbouring lines as hints and guidelines. This isn't a trick limited to this exercise, but in much later lessons (6 and 7) you'll find plenty of opportunities to use it.

• Secondly, take a look at this animated diagram. Notice how, as the box rotates towards the left, its vanishing points slide towards the right. Looking at your attempts, it seems like more often your vanishing points move in the same direction as the rotation. There are more notes about this here.

Now, one last thing - this one about your rough perspective boxes. Just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

Anyway, I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, thoroughly. Pay special attention to the tip about drawing through your forms, as this should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. There's also two videos there that should help.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-29 00:34

Lovely work! Your lines are smooth and confident, your ellipses are evenly shaped and well executed, and your box exercises are looking solid. I'm especially pleased with how you laid things out, maximizing the space in each page, and clearly milking each exercise for as much as you could get. That rotated boxes page is especially impressive.

I have just a couple of minor recommendations:

• Always remember that with your ellipses, you want to draw through them at least one more time before lifting your pen (which you almost always did, but I caught you experimenting with just going around once in a few places in your funnels and figured it was worth mentioning). This goes for every ellipse you draw for my lessons.

• Also keep in mind that the confidence of your stroke is paramount - accuracy is important, but it comes in second. So in places like your ellipses in planes, don't let the awkward shapes you're trying to fit those ellipses into distract you from that main priority of a confident, even, smooth ellipse. They tend to get a little more distorted when we focus too much and let our brains drive our hand motion as we draw.

• For your rough perspective boxes, after you're done, it helps a lot to go over your completed work as described here to identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

• Similarly, for your rotated boxes, if you were to extend the lines of the boxes towards either side back to the horizon line, you'll notice that your vanishing points don't reflect the behaviour demonstrated in this animated diagram. Notice how as the box rotates towards the left, the vanishing points slide towards the right? Now, this is by no means unexpected - your work for this exercise exceeded my expectations, as this exercise is here largely to give students a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is just something to keep in mind.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I would however like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, as I noticed that you did struggle a little with your box forms in the organic perspective boxes exercise. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-30 00:57

Pretty solid work! I just noticed a couple things that I'd like to point out:

• Your superimposed lines and ellipses are generally well done, but they both show some amounts of stiffness, where you're focusing too much on accuracy and the smooth, even flow of your lines suffer for it. One good sign of this in the super imposed lines at least is when you have them start and end together in a nice, neat point, but have them waver and wobble back and forth through their length. It may be a little surprising, but having lines that start together and gradually (but consistently) grow slightly apart through their lengths to be quite frayed by the end is better. This implies that you're trusting in your muscle memory more and focusing more on producing smooth, consistent strokes. After all, imagine what each stroke would look like on their own - the wobbly ones would be just that, wobbly, whole those that stray a bit would still be smooth and confident. That's what you want for now - your accuracy will otherwise improve in general with practice.

• Be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective could use some work.

• Your rotated boxes are coming along nicely. It does help to keep the gaps between your boxes fairly tight (you do this properly in some areas, and less so in others) so you can use neighbouring lines as hints and generally keep things consistent.

One thing to keep in mind is that you're expected to struggle a fair bit with both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises. These were included here to function as a first exposure to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, and there's no expectation that you'd nail them this early on. That said, you've been doing pretty well.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move on to the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-30 01:07

There is some noticeable improvement, but you're still showing fundamental issues with how you execute your marks. You're still giving your brain the opportunity to drive the motion of your hand, rather than trusting fully in your muscles and giving yourself the opportunity to make mistakes.

The first thing I want you to do is go back and reread the critique I gave you previously. I know you've already gone through it once, but it's important to let the ideas of drawing with confidence, valuing flow and smoothness over accuracy really sink in.

Once you've reread that critique, I want you to take two pieces of paper. On one, draw straight lines. No criteria, no goals, no targets to hit. Just draw lines and execute each one as fast as you can. I don't mean that you should be drawing as many lines as you can in a short period, but rather I want your pen to touch the surface of the page for as little time as possible. Think of it like a master swordsman slashing a training dummy. Pause and wait all you want between strokes, but the stroke itself should be swift.

On the next piece of paper, I want you to do the same thing, but with ellipses. Draw through those ellipses, but don't slow yourself down. There's no criteria to hit here either, just draw freefloating ellipses all over the page.

Show me these when you're done, and we'll move on from there.

As for the critique for this set, I see that your rough perspective boxes have definitely improved after reading the notes about guessing/knowing. I do still want you to go over your completed work as described here though to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

Additionally, I noticed that in your funnels, you neglected to add the central line going down the middle of the funnel. This is important, as it represents the minor axis line to which all the ellipses are to align themselves. This becomes more important later on, so it's important that you get used to considering it.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-31 01:15

Lovely work. Your lines are smooth and straight, your ellipses are confident and evenly shaped, and your box exercises are looking quite solid. I'm pleased to see that you were mindful of the different issues I raised in the lesson itself and in the self critique resources (double checking rough perspective boxes work, maintaining consistent foreshortening in the organic perspective boxes, etc.), and while you may have struggled with some parts initially, you definitely improved on them over each exercise.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Looking at your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes, I'm going to give you the OK to move onto lesson 2, but I do want you to give the notes over on the 250 box challenge page a read, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular helps students to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. You're not required to complete the challenge as your progress with freely rotated boxes is looking solid, but that is an option I leave to your own discretion.

Uncomfortable

2017-01-31 01:34

You're doing quite well! I definitely see a lot of steady improvement with each exercise. Definitely room to improve with your lines and ellipses and so on, but you're heading right down the right path.

As you apply the ghosting method to the lines you draw, always remember that while you are encouraged to take as much time as you need to prepare and plan the mark out, when you execute it you must do so with confidence. That means trusting in your muscles, drawing quickly enough to keep your brain from micromanaging. This is where the wavering and wobbling comes in - of which there isn't too much in your work, but it is something you'll want to continue working on.

Your ellipses are coming along well, and as you continue to work on them you'll want to focus on tightening them up (so the multiple lines start overlapping each other more) while maintaining that confidence and smoothness that keeps the shapes even. Certainly trickier than it sounds, but you'll get there.

For your boxes, I'm pleased to see that you applied that double-checking method to your rough perspective boxes. What you're seeing there is very common, and completely expected. It is by applying this manner of reflection that we become aware of those mistakes, and gradually learn to compensate for them.

Lastly, your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be. That is, you've got a ways to go, but neither of these exercises were included with the expectation that students would nail them immediately. Rather, they're there to expose you to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when I do actually explain that material to you, you'll have some context for it all.

So, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-02-01 21:22

Nice work! I noticed early on in your ghosted lines that your lines were wavering slightly (a common sign of a lack of confidence behind each stroke), but this improved considerably as you got into the planes exercises. There in particular your lines seem to be much smoother, better planned and generally more purposeful. This carries on into the boxes, which is definitely good to see.

Your ellipses are generally pretty solid - they're looking confident, even and smooth. I'm glad to see that you're drawing through each ellipse, but still managing to keep those lines fairly tight. You'll continue to improve as you practice these, so keep at it - but you're definitely plodding down the right track at a good pace.

Your boxes show a pretty decent grasp of 3D space - your organic perspective boxes leave a little to be desired as far as near/far plane size relationships go, but this is entirely expected. I included the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises largely to give students the experience of facing the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space head on - and more than likely falling flat on their faces. You did a solid job with the rotated boxes though, so be proud of that.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I do want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next though to continue developing your sense of 3D space. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-02-01 21:39

Not bad! You're doing quite well, especially considering that this is your first foray into drawing.

With your lines and ellipses, I did notice that your lines are a tiny bit on the stiff side. It's quite minor, but one good example of this is with your super imposed lines. Your lines have a tendency to meet neatly at each end, and wobble somewhat through its length. Surprisingly enough, what would be preferrable is if you had lines that started neatly at one end, but then gradually separate as they move towards the opposite end.

Basically, wobbling is bad - even if precision is off, you want more than anything to draw lines that are smooth and consistent. If they go off ever so slightly in the wrong direction, that's okay as long as it continues down that path. This kind of wobbling/stiffness is a common problem students run into, because they have a tendency to let their brains control their hands as they actually execute the marks. You don't do this too much, and you're well on your way to relying fully on your muscle memory, but it is something to keep in mind.

Give this comic a read if you haven't already.

Skipping on ahead to the boxes, you're doing pretty well here as well. Plotted perspective boxes are solid. Rough perspective boxes are coming along well - first page shows a little bit of deviation with your verticals (they tend to stray a little bit from running straight up and down) but the second page is better. Your rotated boxes are coming along well, and your organic perspective boxes are so-so.

The thing about the last two exercises is that they were included largely to let you expose yourself to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This isn't an easy thing to do (and a lot of people struggle immensely with the rotated boxes), and it's really so you have context for when I actually get into how to deal with those kinds of challenges.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Edit: I just did a couple more critiques for other students, then remembered that you'd mentioned you were planning on embarking on the 250 box challenge. So.. :D Good plan! Sorry to repeat what you'd already mentioned.

Uncomfortable

2017-02-01 21:54

Your lines and ellipses are really solid. They're smooth, confident, consistent, and your volume of work is really impressive. One thing that I did notice though is that when you get into the boxes, things turn a little... sloppier. I think it coincides with the gradual death of your pen.

Your plotted perspective boxes are solid, no problem there. Your rough perspective boxes are okay as well, but I see places where you've immediately reinforced a line with another stroke to fix a perceived mistake (this is a common habit that you should really fight against). Basically we make a mistake, and we want to fix it - but by fixing it we pile more ink onto that area, making the darkest, heaviest parts of our drawing.. and therefore also the most visible, drawing everyone's eye to our blunders. It's generally best just to leave those mistakes alone.

Whenever you want to correct mistakes for the sake of learning, do so separately after you've finished - and even better, with a different coloured pen. That way it's completely separated from the process of creating the drawing or doing the exercise.

It's clear that you're struggling with the rotated boxes exercise, but this is totally normal. This exercise, and the organic perspective boxes one, were both included to allow students a chance to expose themselves to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This is quite difficult, and I don't expect people to nail these exercises this early on. By being exposed to it now, you have context for when I explain how to tackle these kinds of problems later, making those instructions easier to digest.

What I am noticing that is relevant right now however is that your use of hatching tends to get much looser and more erratic. This likely aligns with your frustration with the spatial problems, which is normal, but it is something you need to try to rein in. Don't scribble, and plan all your strokes. Make sure your hatching lines stretch all the way from edge to edge.

And make sure you continue applying the ghosting method! It's very important, and it will help you develop good habits as you continue on.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which will ultimately help develop your sense of 3D space.

Oh, and.. maybe a new pen would be in order. The lessons may be free, but sadly they demand many pens be sacrificed!

Uncomfortable

2017-02-02 20:53

The first two sections are reasonably well done. Your super imposed lines are fine and your ghosted lines are decent (though not particularly numerous, you didn't really go too far into filling the page). Your planes exercises are a little shoddier, as you've stopped putting as much effort into ghosting through each and every line, resulting in wobblier marks. Keep in mind that this method should be applied to every single mark you draw in order to separate the planning/preparation (identifying the line you want to draw, ghosting through the motion several times to build up muscle memory, etc. which ultimately improves the accuracy of your mark) and the actual execution of the mark (with a smooth, confident pace). By separating these two phases, we reduce our tendency to fall into the trap of drawing too slowly and carefully, having our brains guide our hands as we actually draw the mark, which always results in a wobblier, stiffer stroke.

As far as the boxes go, as you pointed out yourself, they're not particularly well done. That said, this has nothing to do with your technical ability to draw. The boxes are a mixture of two challenges - being able to draw straight and smooth lines that start and end where you want them to (which is part of the technical skillset explored in previous exercises of this lesson), and leaning on an as yet undeveloped sense of 3D space. The latter is something you don't have yet, and you're not really meant to have it. Both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely to get you to have your first encounter with that particular challenge, so that when I do actually get into explaining how to deal with it, you'll be able to relate it back to your own experiences, and therefore digest the information more easily.

The problem with your boxes is ultimately one that you brought to the table yourself - you're impatient. This isn't entirely uncommon, and it's something I've seen from plenty of students. Here's a few signs of this:

• Instead of applying the ghosting method (as discussed above), you tend to be more loose and sketchy, drawing and then reinforcing marks to compensate for their inadequacy. From here on in, you absolutely must force yourself to stop and think before each and every stroke. That's what the ghosting method is about. That means putting the time in to plan each mark, but also no longer allowing yourself to immediately reinforce a line by reflex. Reflexive drawing is a bad habit, and correcting mistakes will generally simply draw more attention to them. Going back and finding where you went wrong and marking out the correct lines is fine, but it must be a separate process from the drawing itself, and better yet, with a different coloured pen to make the distinction clear.

• You're pretty loose about following my instructions, and the rotated boxes exercise is the best example of this. As I mentioned before, I don't expect you to nail this exercise at all, but I do expect you to demonstrate that you have gone through each and every step as I have outlined them. In your attempts, you do not draw the axes (step 1), you do not draw the boxes at the far extremities to the top/bottom/left/right (step 2), and you don't draw through your boxes. This exercise is very much about wrapping your head around how those boxes sit in 3D space, and how that changes as they rotate - by only drawing the lines that are visible, you are only understanding those boxes as 2D drawings on a page. You must draw each and every line that makes up each and every box, as though you have x-ray vision.

Now, I'd like you to do the boxes section again. Do not deviate an inch from my instructions, and take your time with the execution of each and every line, planning and preparing before drawing with a confident pace driven by your muscle memory.

Once you've completed that - and I'm sure it will be vastly improved, as it is clear to me that you are capable of much better (if you invest the time and focus) - I will mark this lesson as complete and ask you to move onto the 250 box challenge. At that point, be sure to read through all of the notes on that page, especially the tip about drawing through your boxes (which is more or less what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes exercise and x-ray vision). This helps us to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which will help you move closer to that goal of being able to turn a box freely in your head. I'm mentioning the 250 box challenge thing now, in case I forget later - so for now, just focus on redoing the boxes section of lesson 1.

Oh, and in regards to the rough perspective boxes exercise - be sure to go over your completed work for that exercise as described here.

Uncomfortable

2017-02-02 21:04

Pretty nicely done! Just a couple things I caught worth mentioning:

• For your funnels, you marked out the 0-80+ degree range, but the ellipses themselves are actually pretty consistent for the most part. It is actually a little tricky to get around modifying the degree as you increase the size of the ellipses themselves (since the ellipse will naturally get wider as it gets bigger, so you need to exaggerate that expansion of its width in order to actually change the degree).

• For your rough perspective boxes exercise, just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

As for the rotated boxes exercise, it certainly is a difficult one, but there's no reason for that to stop you from completing it. Ultimately I have no expectation that students will be able to do this exercise (or the organic perspective boxes exercise) particularly well at this point. It's more about forcing you to face the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when I get into the explanation of how to deal with that, you have the contextual knowledge of having faced it before to allow you to digest the information more easily.

So, I am going to ask you to try that exercise again. Read through the instructions carefully and try to replicate each step to the best of your ability. As it gets difficult, push on through - it's fine if you make mistakes, and it's fine if it doesn't look pretty, but just be sure to get all the way through it.

Submit those to me when you're done, and I'll mark this lesson as complete. Then I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-02-03 23:54

Not bad, but I did find a few issues to point out:

• Your lines are coming along decently, but one thing I'm noticing is that there's a bit of stiffness to them - this is both your section 1 lines, as well as your ellipses. One good case study for this would be the super imposed lines exercise. Many of yours can be seen as starting cleanly, getting a little wobbly through its length, then meeting up with its template by the end. This shows me that you're guiding your hand a little too much with your brain, rather than trusting in your muscle memory. What we should be seeing is the lines starting cleanly at the same point, and separating slightly from the template as they move towards the other side, resulting in a slightly frayed look. This result would show that your line deviated slightly, but maintained the same smooth flow (since your brain was not involved during the execution of the mark, and instead you were trusting in your muscle memory). Accuracy is ultimately your second priority - producing smooth, confident linework comes above all else, and can be achieved by executing your marks with a pace just quick enough to keep your brain from interfering. This will throw off your accuracy, but as covered in later exercises, the ghosting method is a great way to reel that back for any mark making, be it straight, curved or elliptical.

• I noticed in your ellipses in planes, you didn't draw through the ellipses. Make sure you do this for every ellipse you draw for my lessons. You'll find that you'll benefit more from it as you shift towards drawing at a more confident pace. I'm glad to see that you did draw through them for the other exercises.

• In your rough perspective boxes exercise, I noticed that your use of hatching lines tended to be a bit sloppy. Make sure you draw parallel, consistent lines that stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. No scribbling, no half-assing this. Should you choose to put a mark down on the page, it ought to be planned and thought out.

• Also for the rough perspective boxes exercise, make sure you go over your completed work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

• Looking at your rotated boxes exercise, I noticed that you skipped step 3, which was drawing boxes at the top/left/right/bottom to help establish the scope of your range of rotation. Make sure you follow the instructions more closely in the future.

• Your linework in the organic perspective boxes exercise is a little shoddy. Always remember to apply the ghosting method to each and every line you draw, ensuring that your lines are straight and smooth, and avoiding gaps between them. Also refrain from correcting mistakes right on the spot, as it's a bad habit to get into. When you correct your mistakes, you end up making them the darkest, most noticeable part of your drawing. It's often better to just leave them alone.

Now the thing about the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises is that as far as the ability to construct the boxes themselves, my expectation is that most students will struggle at this point. These two exercises were included here to give you the chance to get familiar with the challenge of rotating boxes freely in 3D space, so that when I get into the explanations of how to deal with them later on, you'll have some context for those instructions.

I'm going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This is both to help further develop your grasp of 3D space and your construction of arbitrarily rotated boxes, but also to give you the opportunity to get more work in on your use of the ghosting method.

Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. That in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.