Uncomfortable

2017-05-12 00:05

In general, you did quite well, and you definitely demonstrated a great deal of patience and focus throughout the lesson. There's only one issue, and while it's one that's pervasive through the entirety of the lesson, it's also fairly common and one that merely requires a change in your approach to overcome.

Long story short, you're drawing too carefully. This may sound like one of those "well my greatest weakness is that I just work too hard," deals but in this case it's a legitimate issue. When drawing, we have two major priorities. We want our lines to be accurate, and we want our lines to flow smoothly. Your first priority is currently the former - you're really focusing on staying on-track, going from point A to point B. You're also pretty good at it, all things considered, but in a good deal of your linework, there's a subtle yet noticeable wobble, and a sort of stiffness that speaks to the second priority being left a little by the wayside. Your lines don't flow particularly smoothly.

This occurs when you take too long during the actual execution phase of the drawing process. Remember that the ghosting method breaks the mark making process into three phases.

1. Find a comfortable angle of approach, rotating your page as necessary, and set down the point on either end of the mark you'd like to draw.

2. Prepare to draw by ghosting through the drawing motion, building up muscle memory and effectively giving your arm its marching orders.

3. Execute the mark.

That last step should receive the smallest time investment - each mark should be executed with a confident, persistent pace, just quick enough to keep your brain from interfering and attempting to guide your hand as you draw. When we draw slowly, this hesitation allow our brains to course-correct as we go, which effectively manifests as a wobbly line. Drawing more confidently helps us avoid this. Over time you'll find that you'll be able to shut your brain off at slower speeds, but for now you're likely going to want to draw fairly quickly.

To compensate for the inevitable decrease in accuracy, we invest our time in the second step - preparation. We do whatever we can to give ourselves the best chance of drawing the mark correctly, and once our pen touches the page to start execution, we've committed. Any mistake that will occur from this point on effectively has already happened, so it cannot be avoided. Therefore there is no sense in hesitating. If you do happen to have a mistake, it's not that big of a deal. These are all just exercises - even the drawings in later lessons are just exercises. You'll always have another opportunity to do better.

As I mentioned before, this issue is quite common - so much so that I also provide a similar explanation in comic form.

Aside from this issue - which impacts all of your lines, ellipses included - you're doing great. So, I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This will give you the opportunity to get used to executing your marks more confidently, and will also let you further develop your grasp of 3D space. Your organic perspective boxes were reasonably well done, but you definitely will benefit from getting more time in working through the challenges of constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes

Uncomfortable

2017-05-18 01:36

Definitely a good start, but I've got a lot of things to point out that should help you stay on track:

• For your super imposed lines, you're drawing those lines confidently which is good, as it helps you avoid wobbling. That said, before actually putting the line down, you should absolutely take the time to line the tip of your pen up with the starting point of the line rather than just striking at the page and hoping for the best. I talk about this a little more [here](Fraying/Separation on Both Ends). I actually do see examples where you do line your pen up more carefully, so just be sure to do this for every case.

• When ghosting your lines, you are not quite carrying over that same sense of confidence, and as a result your lines have a tendency to waver somewhat. This occurs with pretty much all of your linework (ellipses included), and it happens because you hesitate when you execute the mark. You're afraid of making a mistake, and as a result you slow down so your brain has the chance to guide your hand. Every time your hand goes off track, your brain course-corrects, which is visible as a wavering or wobbling of your line. Instead, you should invest all of your time in the preparation phase of the ghosting method, then execute the mark with a smooth, confident, persistent pace. You want to trust in your muscle memory and shut your brain off somewhat. Ultimately you will make mistakes, but the smooth flow of your lines is more important and should be a higher priority than your accuracy. Accuracy will improve with practice, but a wobbly line must be dealt with by changing your approach. This is a common issue, and I even talk about it in this comic.

• As I mentioned above, the same issue hits your ellipses, and it causes them to become quite stiff and uneven. You'll find that the whole 'drawing through your ellipses' thing that I stress so much may not feel entirely useful until you start drawing them more confidently. Drawing through your ellipses helps you recover somewhat from drawing without your brain guiding your hand. During the first round, your muscles get familiar with the resistence of the paper against your pen, the shape you're after, and so on, and the second pass allows your muscles to self-correct somewhat without losing that flow and smoothness. If you draw slowly, that second pass has no value, and either way your shape ends up stiff and uneven.

• In some places I did notice that you drew through your ellipses a fair bit (and in other places, you didn't draw through them at all). I recommend keeping it to two full rounds of each ellipse - no more, no less.

• For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off. This is totally normal, and expected, of course. By identifying where you make mistakes, you'll learn where to focus your attention.

• Also for the rough perspective boxes exercise, some of your hatching there is a little bit sloppy. In some cases it's okay, but generally you want to make sure you draw each line purposefully, keeping them parallel and consistent and ensuring that they stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Sloppiness will just bring the overall presentation and quality of your drawing down, merely because you didn't put in as much time as you could have.

• You made some pretty solid attempts at the rotated boxes exercise. This exercise and the organic perspective boxes exercise were really meant to be quite challenging, and beyond the capacity of the students at this stage, because I haven't gone in depth into rotating boxes freely in 3D space. One recommendation I have for this exercise though is to keep the gaps between your boxes small and consistent - you did a decent job of this, but generally where things started to fall apart, it was where your gaps got large. We keep them small so we can use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines, as explained here.

• Your organic perspective boxes do need work, but as I mentioned above, that's totally expected. One thing I did notice however that is worth pointing out now is that you seem to have attempted to add line weight (which is good), but you did so with very small chicken-scratchy lines. Always avoid chicken scratching like this. You want each line to be made up of a single, well-planned mark, resulting from the use of the ghosting method. Hairy lines like this severely undermine the solidity of your forms, and they generally look really bad.

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 get you more practice with rotating boxes freely in 3D space, and also to let you work on your use of the ghosting method. Make sure you continue practicing the exercises from this lesson as warmups however, picking two or three exercises at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes. Once you move past lesson 2, you'll also include those into the pool of exercises you choose from for this warmup. In particular, you should definitely focus on those ellipses in order to make them smoother and more confident.

Before starting the 250 box challenge, make sure you read through 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.

Oh, one last thing: ease up on all of those self-deprecating notes. Students, especially younger ones, will often do this as a means of protecting themselves from the sting of critique - even if they don't realize that this is the reason. Yes, your work isn't fantastic - it's not supposed to be. You're just starting out. So there's no need to point out the things you didn't like, or whatever else. Just leave the commentary out and focus on the exercises themselves.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-25 01:35

It's always a good idea to revisit the earlier lessons, and you've generally done a really solid job. Your lines and ellipses are confident and evenly shaped. Your boxes are generally well done too, just a couple things worth pointing out:

• Make sure you go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here

• For your rotated boxes, keep the gaps between the boxes narrow and consistently spaced. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines and generally keeps things lined up nicely. You ended up losing the general structure of what you were drawing as you reached the corners because you were relying too much on instinct and guesswork rather than the information that was already laid out in front of you.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-25 02:12

I ended up getting off work an hour or so earlier than I'd expected, so I figured I'd work through the critique backlog before it ended up overwhelming me.

Overall your work is looking pretty solid! You're working through all of the exercises quite patiently, and exhibit a good sense of 3D space through the boxes section. You even do a pretty solid job when dealing with the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises, which were intentionally included here without any expectation of success from students. They're really meant to give students the opportunity to be exposed to the struggles of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. You seem to have a pretty good grasp of this, however.

There's only one thing that I noticed throughout the lesson that you'll want to work on. It's on the subtler side of things, but it's quite pervasive and impacts just about everything - your lines show signs of the slightest hesitation. When you draw, just before you execute your marks, you slow down. It's a common thing, and it's usually the result of a student being a little worried (consciously or unconsciously) that they're about to make a mistake. As a result, they draw a little slower so their brain can help guide their hand as they go, and course-correct if necessary. This of course results in a line that is a little stiff or wobbly, and it impacts all of the marks one makes. This includes straight lines, curves, even ellipses.

In your case, it's almost unnoticeable, but it is there - so you'll want to continue pushing yourself to apply the ghosting method. That is, investing all of your time in the preparation phase, and then accepting the possibility of making a mistake. This means drawing with a confident, persistent pace, which MAY result in a line that veers off slightly, and accepting that risk. What is always more important is that your lines flow smoothly, and this can only be achieved by drawing with confidence.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2. Before you do though, I recommend that you give the notes on the 250 box challenge page a read through, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, which is especially important when you need to figure out how different forms relate to one another.

Uncomfortable

2017-05-25 02:17

Quite well done! Your linework has a strong sense of confidence to it, which helps to maintain marks that are smooth and ellipses that are evenly shaped. This is something that will definitely help as you continue to move forwards, as hesitation and wobbling is one of the most common issues I see from students at this stage.

Just a couple recommendations for the boxes section:

• Be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here. This will help you identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off.

• In the rotated boxes exercise, keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. This will help you use existing edges as hints when drawing new lines. This was mainly an issue in your second attempt. I also noticed that you skipped the first couple steps (laying down squares to represent the boxes on the top/left/right/bottom sides to help establish your range of rotation. Reading through the instructions for each exercise in their entirety and following them to the letter is definitely key and will save you some headaches down the line.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along quite well, though I think you'll benefit from a little extra practice in this area. So, 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 challenge 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

2017-05-26 23:26

Very nicely done! Your lines are well thought out and executed, your ellipses are confident and evenly shaped, and your boxes demonstrate a well developed sense of 3D space. You've clearly taken your time with all of these, and it's paid off. I also appreciate the careful attention to my instructions.

To be honest, there isn't a whole lot of critique I have to offer. I noticed that your minor axes in your funnels exercise didn't always go all the way through all of the ellipses (which could hinder your ability to align your ellipses to that line, which is a significant part of the exercise), but that's honestly minor at best. So, I'll give you your next steps instead.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but next I want you to read through the notes over at the 250 box challenge. Your current understanding of 3D space is coming along great, so I am by no means requiring you to complete the challenge. There's just some information there that should be quite helpful - most importantly the tip about drawing through your forms, which should help push arbitrarily rotated boxes like the organic perspective exercise up to the next level by giving you a better grasp of how each box sits in 3D space.

You're welcome to move onto lesson 2 whenever you feel ready.

thomas1244

2017-05-27 20:36

Thank you Uncomfortable for your critique. It is truly motivating :)

Uncomfortable

2017-05-28 15:14

Pretty nice work! You've definitely got a lot of clear confidence to your linework. There's a few areas where we're actually going to reel this back a bit, but in general this is a very good thing. It ensures that your lines are smooth, that your ellipses are evenly shaped, and more importantly, that nothing is ever stiff or wobbly.

So the areas where we need to pull this back are:

• You're drawing through your ellipses a bit much. Drawing through your ellipses two-to-three times is good, but any more than that and you're going to lose the ellipse itself in a mess of hairy lines. Since you already have a fairly natural confidence to your linework, I'd recommend trying to stick to two full rounds of the ellipse and no more than that.

• It's imperative that you stop yourself from drawing by reflex - that is, putting down any marks that have not been explicitly planned out and preceded by forethought. For example, there's a lot of cases in your organic perspective boxes where you've not been happy with your lines and have immediately followed them up with additional strokes, resulting in some pretty messy linework. The ghosting method - which needs to be applied to every mark you make - is all about planning out each individual stroke, and having the patience to stop yourself from drawing automatically. Also, when it comes to correcting mistakes, it's generally best to leave them alone. Otherwise you end up piling on more ink to your worst areas, which will only serve to draw more attention to them.

Additionally, for your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off and could need work, so you know what to focus on in your next attempt.

Overall you're doing pretty well, so I'm going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, as I believe you'll benefit from some additional attention to those freely rotated boxes. 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

2017-05-28 15:31

Overall, you're demonstrating a lot of care and patience in your completion of these exercises. The biggest issue that I'm seeing however is one that is pervasive and impacts all of your linework - and while it's an important thing to solve, it's also a very common problem that can be mostly fixed by a change in one's approach rather than 'practice practice practice'.

The issue is that your lines are stiff and wobbly. This is a sign that you're hesitant, worried about making a mistake when drawing, and as such you slow down and trust in your brain to guide your hand as you go, as your brain can course-correct if you happen to go off track. This happens when we prioritize accuracy over the smoothness and flow of our lines. Both are definitely important, but what you really want is for smoothness to take the top spot.

When making any of our marks, we apply the ghosting method. This means all of our preparation, all of our careful planning and patience goes into the first two steps - laying down our planned start and end of our line, then finding a comfortable angle of approach and ghosting through that motion to build up muscle memory. Once that's done, the execution of the mark must be performed with a confident, persistent pace. The brain no longer plays a role, as it has already passed its orders down to your arm - it is your muscles that you must trust in.

This may, and in fact will result in you making mistakes. You'll miss the mark every now and then, more frequently near the beginning and less so later on. This is perfectly fine. Mistakes happen, but what matters most right now is that your lines are smooth and flow well. If your line takes off at a slightly inaccurate trajectory, you must maintain that trajectory rather than change it mid-stroke.

This applies to all of your marks - straight lines, curves, waves, and even ellipses. You will find that my insistence upon drawing through ellipses will make more sense as you draw more confidently, as it tends to help keep them in check, with the second time around being an opportunity for your muscles to apply what they messed up with during the first.

As a side note to that, also make sure that you're drawing from your shoulder. Drawing from your wrist can also be a factor that results in wobblier lines.

Aside from that, you're doing quite well. The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes seemed to be the only areas where you struggled much, and both of those were intended to be that way. I do however have a tip for the rotated boxes:

Try to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent - this will allow you to use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines, and will generally maintain the overall structure.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, both to give you more practice with the challenge faced with the organic perspective boxes, but also to allow you to practice executing your lines more confidently. 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

2017-05-31 22:00

Your lines section is looking really solid. They're smooth and generally quite confidently executed. Your ellipses are okay, but there is definitely a notable amount of stiffness to them, where you're not quite allowing yourself to trust in your muscle memory. Your linework in this case isn't wobbly, but the shapes are thrown off as a result of you letting your brain drive your hand. Remember that the ghosting method involves investing all of your time into preparation, ultimately leading up to an execution with a confident, persistent pace. The flow and smoothness of the stroke is always going to be more important than your accuracy, so loosen up a little bit and allow yourself the room to make mistakes and achieve smoother lines. Your accuracy will improve again with practice, but that confidence is really the first thing we want to achieve.

Mind you, the stiffness I'm mentioning isn't to any major degree (in case my wording makes it seem like a giant thing), and it's a common issue. It's just definitely something you need to be aware of as you move forwards.

For your rough perspective boxes, I highly recommend going over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off. This way you'll have a better idea of what to focus on the next time you attempt this exercise.

You made a pretty solid attempt at the rotated boxes exercise - if I had to recommend one thing, it'd be to make those boxes a little deeper. Right now they're quite thin, which in turn can make it a little more difficult to get a sense for how exactly they're sitting in 3D space. A more cube-like (not looking for perfect cubes or anything, just more towards that proportion) form will give you a more solid sense of how it occupies space, and will both make the exercise a little easier to relate to, while also giving your brain more of a spatial challenge.

You also made a solid attempt at the organic perspective boxes, though you'll certainly benefit from some additional practice in this area. 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

2017-05-31 22:21

Thanks for pledging, and I'm glad to hear that drawabox has drawn you back into the frey. So far you look to be doing reasonably well - your lines are coming out fairly smooth (keep pushing yourself to execute those lines confidently to continue to improve on this point, invest all of your time in the preparation phase of the ghosting method and then execute without hesitation).

When submitting homework though, make sure you complete all sections of the lesson - you seem to have only included part 1 here, so the ellipses and boxes still remain. I look forward to seeing the rest when it's completed!

Uncomfortable

2017-06-03 17:51

It's a good start, though there are certainly some issues I'd like to iron out before we move onto the next lesson.

The biggest issue is a somewhat common one that impacts pretty much all of your work - you're stressing too much about accuracy, and as a result your lines are stiff and wobbly, rather than smooth and confident. The super imposed lines exercise is a good place to demonstrate why.

Basically, if you look at each of these, you'll see that your lines often wobble back and forth over the original mark. You're stressing over matching it accurately, so you end up drawing slowly and carefully, and every time you catch yourself off track, your brain redirects and course-corrects your hand. I talk about this issue in this comic and in these notes.

Ultimately, of these two priorities (accuracy and flow), flow comes first. When you execute your mark, do so with a confident, persistent pace, just quick enough to keep your brain from micromanaging your hand. Once you've started drawing a line, and have achieved a particular trajectory, don't change that trajectory - our muscles are very good at this. So, you want to trust in your muscle memory, which is what you end up relying upon by drawing a little faster.

On the flipside, this will reduce your accuracy, so that is where the ghosting method comes in. We invest all of our time into preparation and planning, ghosting through the mark we want to make to build up muscle memory, and ultimately improve the likelihood of our hitting our goal. Once you move onto the execution phase, you're pretty much set. If a mistake is going to happen, there's nothing you can do about it beyond here - and if you TRY to do something about it (by hesitating, slowing down, etc.) you will stiffen up and your line will wobble. It's best to just accept the inevitability of mistakes at this point, and realize that it's not the end of the world. Just let them happen - there are plenty of opportunities to do better later on.

So this applies not just to your straight lines, but also to your arcs and to your ellipses, and as such, the ghosting method should be used for every single mark you put down. Especially with ellipses, you'll find that my insistence upon people drawing through them will make a little more sense if you're drawing more confidently.

Your lines in your ghosting exercise are generally pretty well done - likely because you're applying the method purposely there. Elsewhere however - in your rough perspective boxes, rotated boxes, and so on you definitely stiffen up to varying degrees.

Moving on from this, there's just a couple other things I want to point out. Firstly, for your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you can focus more of your efforts there in the future.

For your rotated boxes, it's a good start, but you definitely need to push and exaggerate the rotation of those boxes, as you're not quite covering the full 180 degree arc. That said, I'm very pleased to see that you're keeping the gaps between boxes narrow and consistent, and are using neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new ones.

Both this exercise and the organic perspective boxes one are intentionally very difficult, so I don't expect people to be doing those perfectly just yet. Rather it's meant to get you started on thinking about how things exist in 3D space, and how to manipulate that in your mind.

Once I do mark this lesson as complete, I'll want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work in on this particular area, as well as to get more practice applying the ghosting method. In case I forget, I just want to mention that when you approach the challenge, be sure 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.

Before that I'd like you to do one more page of the table-of-ellipses exercise. Focus on drawing more confidently and applying the ghosting method to smooth out those ellipses.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-04 20:34

Overall, pretty great work! Your lines are generally quite confident, which helps keep your lines straight and your ellipses smooth, and will generally help you imbue your forms with a sense of solidity in the future. Both the first two sections were done very well, so I don't have much to say on those as far as critique goes.

I do have a few recommendations for the boxes section however. Firstly, I noticed that your linework in the rough perspective boxes had a few areas of inaccuracy, with lines missing their mark at times. This is of course completely normal, and will improve with time, but I do want to ensure that you are applying the ghosting method here, and really with all of your mark making. The preparation phase is really key to being able to execute with confidence whilst maintaining your accuracy.

Additionally, definitely take the time to go over your completed rough perpsective boxes work as described here. This will help you identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to focus on when attempting this exercise in the future.

Your rotated boxes were interesting - for all intents and purposes, you did a really solid job here. What I did notice in particular though are how you went about drawing through your forms (the parts we wouldn't generally be able to see). You've got a lot of overlap going on here, with boxes spilling into one another. In general, it's a good idea to keep the gaps between your boxes consistent and parallel - you did this for the 'visible' gaps (those on the outside of the set), but the internal ones weren't quite so consistent. Keeping them parallel like this allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines, which helps keep everything sorted out.

Anyway, both this exercise and the organic perspective boxes were included here with no expectation for students to be able to do them well just yet. That said, you did a really good job despite this, with the internal overlaps being the only issue. Your organic perspective boxes were a little weaker (as one would expect), but I have additional resources to help you in that area.

I'll go ahead and 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 before starting the work - especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular should help you better grasp how each arbitrarily rotated box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-05 00:34

All in all, not bad, but there are some things I'd like to point out that should help keep you on track. Before anything however, I want you to read through the introduction to lesson 1 - that is, the part boxed in blue and labelled "As this is probably your first lesson at Drawabox, read this before moving forward!" - or reread it, as I'd imagine you must have at least gone through it once before when first jumping into the lesson. The point I make there is that you're not meant to aim for mastery of each exercise. 70 hours is definitely excessive, and if you refuse to let yourself move forward until things are perfect, you will burn out. All we're looking for at this stage are signs that you understand what each exercise aims for.

Here are some things I'd like to point out that should help improve your work:

• Lets start by taking a look at the ghosted lines exercise. Notice how they're quite wobbly and wavy? Your goal here is very clearly to hit both points accurately. Unfortunately, in order to prioritize accuracy above all else, you end up with a line that doesn't flow particularly well, and isn't terribly straight. When executing our marks, we want to do so with a confident, persistent pace - prioritizing the flow of our line above all else, rather than accuracy. Accuracy is of course still important, but once we've finished going through the preparation phase of the ghosting method, we've done all we can to ensure our accuracy. From here, all we can do is execute with confidence - maintaining the same trajectory from start to finish, rather than course-correcting as we go. Drawing with a persistent pace means shutting off your brain and trusting in your muscle memory. Ultimately, mistakes may happen, but that's perfectly fine. There are always more opportunities to do better in the future, and accuracy will certainly improve with practice, but the flow of a mark relies more heavily on one's approach rather than just raw practice. I talk about this further in this comic.

• This matter of accuracy vs. smoothness applies to your ellipses as well, and the whole idea of drawing through your ellipses hinges quite heavily on you first drawing with a more confident pace. Overall this will help you maintain a more even shape, avoiding any wobbling, pointy ends or misshapen/bumpy features. You'll notice that things got especially awkward in the ellipses-in-planes exercise, where you stressed how the ellipses would fit in each plane so much that many of them stopped being ellipses altogether. This is a pretty common thing that I see, of course, as the shapes of the planes tend to overwhelm students a little and draws their attention poignantly away from the flow of their lines.

• Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, I've got a few things here. Firstly, draw your compositions in frames as instructed. This helps give structure to the overall exercise, and that structure encourages a more disciplined mindset when approaching the exercise. Secondly, I highly recommend that you go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This will help you identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off. This is entirely expected, and by finding where you tend to stray more, you'll know what to focus on in future attempts. Lastly, here and there you get a little loose and sloppy with that hatching you're applying to the near planes of your boxes. Try to keep them consistent, parallel, and snug within the confines of the plane. So avoid overshooting or undershooting - keep them going from edge to edge. It takes a little bit more time and focus, but ultimately our presentation is judged by the weakest part of our work, so even some superfluous detail can be the basis on which we are perceived. Nothing should be halfassed, everything should be the result of planning, preparation and forethought. This is of course a minor concern, but still worth mentioning.

• Your rotated boxes exercise was a very solid attempt. This exercise, along with the organic perspective boxes one were both included here intended to be perhaps too difficult for students at this stage. Rather, by attempting them, the seed is planted to start thinking about how these forms can be manipulated in 3D space, and so the student begins to build a model of three dimensional space in their minds. This model is yet undeveloped, but we explore that further in a bit. All that said, your rotated boxes are quite well done. One recommendation I have on this front is just to keep the gaps between your boxes more consistent and parallel, as we can use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines in a way that helps maintain the overall structure of the set of boxes. Your organic perspective boxes are somewhat more in line with my expectations, in that we'll be working to further develop your ability to construct more arbitrarily rotated forms.

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

2017-06-09 19:52

Not bad! Your lines are generally looking pretty confident and well executed. Your ellipses are fairly smooth, although when you get into drawing ellipses in planes, you're definitely getting a little caught up in getting them to fit into the awkwardly shaped planes to the point that their shapes get oddly deformed and stop being ellipses altogether. Remember that the evenness of the shape and the confidence of the stroke is paramount, and is a higher priority than accuracy. Make sure you draw through them all as well.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, make sure your horizontals run parallel to the horizon, and your verticals run perpendicular to it. I see some cases where some of your lines slant a little. Also, it's a great idea to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to stray. This will help you figure out which areas require greater focus when attempting this exercise in the future.

For your rotated boxes exercise, try and keep the gaps between your boxes smaller and more consistent - this will allow you to use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines, and will generally allow you to keep things more structured.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here not with the expectation that students would be able to nail them, but rather to get them to begin thinking about how these forms exist as three dimensional objects in space, rather than just 2D drawings on a flat page. We'll continue to work on this particular sort of challenge as we continue to move through the lessons.

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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-09 20:49

Certainly an improvement. The main area I was interested in were your ellipses, which definitely appear to be smoother. There's certainly room for improvement, but you're moving in the right direction. With those ellipses in planes, I noticed that you weren't always aiming to get the ellipses to fill out the planes, so mind that in the future. It's one thing to accidentally miss the edges because you were focusing on drawing smooth, confident ellipses, but here it doesn't always look like you were really intending to hit the edges in the first place.

I did notice that the lines for your rough perspective boxes were a little wobblier than the rest of your exercise - make sure your'e taking the time to apply the ghosting method to every single line you draw.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so go ahead and move onto the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-11 23:42

Your lines section is pretty solid. Your ellipses are alright, although you're definitely not drawing them quite as confidently as you should be, and as a result your hesitation is causing your ellipses to stiffen up. Remember that we draw with a confident, persistent pace in order to keep our brains from course-correcting as we draw. Trust in your muscle memory, and allow yourself to risk mistakes in order to improve the flow and smoothness of your linework.

For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimated perspective is off, so you know what to work on during future attempts of this exercise.

Your rotated boxes are okay, although the biggest tip I have for you here is to keep the gaps between your boxes consistent and narrow. This will allow you to use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines, and to generally keep things structured.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes don't seem to reflect any of what you learned when last completing the 250 box challenge (you're not drawing through them, to start with). That said, I glanced at your work before and I think a piece of advice that I added to the challenge notes a couple months ago may be useful to you, specifically when going over your boxes to find and correct mistakes (which you seemed to have difficulty with).

Each box consists of three sets of four parallel lines, each set having its own vanishing point. When going over a box in the correction phase, you can extend these lines two to three times their original length towards their implied vanishing point. This will give you a better sense of how these lines behave as they converge. Ideally all four lines of a given set will converge towards a single point at roughly the same rate. By extending these lines, you will start to notice how some lines within a set converge more quickly than others, which implies several points of convergence instead of just one. By being able to spot these mistakes, you should be able to learn from them that much more effectively.

I definitely think that trying the boxes again would be a good idea. As for that other issue you were having with your lines when drawing boxes, remember that you're meant to apply the ghosting method to each and every mark you put down. You don't seem to have had much difficulty applying the technique to draw a line between two points in the exercise for it, so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to apply it successfully when drawing boxes.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-12 00:03

Not bad! Your linework definitely starts off somewhat stiff and wobbly, but it improves considerably over the course of the lesson. One thing I do want to draw attention to however is your super imposed lines exercise. It's a good example of priorities being somewhat reversed.

Looking at the exercise, I see that you jumped to the execution of your lines very quickly, but actually performed the execution slowly and carefully. As a result, you didn't always start them off from the same point, but you course-corrected your line as you went.

Instead, more time should be invested before executing a mark (planning/preparing - of course we hadn't gotten into the ghosting method here yet, but ultimately that is what ghosting is all about). In this case, taking the time to line your pen up at the correct starting point. Then when it comes time to execute the mark, we do so with a confident, persistent pace, so that our brains are unable to drive the motion of our hands. We trust instead in our muscle memory. The result can be a decrease in accuracy (which is why we put more time into preparation), but the lines come out smoother and more consistent, maintaining one trajectory instead of a wobbly stroke.

This principle is important - the flow of your lines is always more important than accuracy. Don't hesitate while execution. Mistakes will happen, that's a given, but you cannot allow the fear of mistakes to keep you from being bold.

In this regard however, you did a pretty good job with your ellipses, and as a result they generally came out quite smooth and evenly shaped.

Your boxes were also very well done. The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were actually included here not with the intent that students would nail them, but rather to push students to start exploring the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. That said, you did a solid job with both. I still do believe you'll gain from reading through the notes on the 250 box challenge page (especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space).

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-16 13:56

Sorry for the slight delay - the last few weeks have been rough at work, and this last one has been worse than most.

I'm glad that you mentioned your mistake with the pen thickness - at first glance, it definitely seemed like something of concern, as your pen generally looked to be struggling all the way through. Just be sure to pick up a proper 0.5 before starting future exercises.

In general you're doing a pretty solid job. Your lines flow well, and are drawn confidently. This keeps them straight where they need to be, and keeps shapes like your ellipses more evenly shaped, avoiding any kind of wobbling or stiffness. You're also showing plenty of evidence that you've continued to apply the ghosting method through your box exercises, which is exactly what I like to see.

For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here. This will help you to identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know which areas need more work in the future.

As for your rotated boxes, this exercise (as well as the organic perspective one) has been included here with the full expectation that most students would struggle quite a bit. Rather than expecting perfect work, the exercises serve to get you to start thinking spatially, to start developing a mental model of 3D space. This isn't something that will develop immediately, it does take time - this is the first step towards that.

I do agree that you're having some particular trouble spanning over the entire 180 degree rotation - your boxes cover a narrower range, and you're not pushing that rotation quite far enough. One thing that may help, is instead of just building your boxes from the center out, do the opposite. Try building them from the extremities (that we define early on, which are rotated a full 90 degrees relative to the center) towards the middle. Regardless of what trick you use to fool your brain, what matters is that you really push that rotation. Our brains naturally want to keep things neatly aligned in grids, and so will fight against us when we try and move off those perfect alignments.

As for that other point you mentioned, about the approach you've used in the past of sketching lightly then building up from there - you'll find that as you move through these lessons, that's an approach we staunchly discourage. That is, approaching things with timidity, trying to hide our initial marks, not committing until we're well into the drawing. This often results in forms that don't feel solid, and constructions that just don't quite fit together.

Always remember that the end result is not our focus. We're not in this to draw a pretty picture that we can pin up on our refrigerator door. We could just as well tear up every page upon its completion, and we would have lost nothing. We're doing these exercises for what they teach us about drawing, about understanding 3D space, and about understanding how forms relate to one another. It does take time to shift your manner of thinking in this way, but ultimately it will develop with practice so long as you continue to remind yourself that everything is a drill and an exercise, and that the end result is irrelevant.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I think you'll benefit from moving onto the 250 box challenge next to get more work in on constructing freely rotated boxes. Be sure 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.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-16 14:12

This is a solid first attempt, but there are definitely a lot of areas in which I'd like to adjust your approach. I think you'll see considerable improvement from this, as they're the sort of issues that come from not yet understanding how to best use the tools at your disposal (specifically, your arm).

So the first thing that jumps out at me is that your lines are quite wobbly. This happens because you're very focused on the priority of maintaining accuracy. When you draw, you do so slowly and carefully, taking your time and making sure that whenever you go off-track, you consciously course-correct. Every course-correction manifests as a little wobble. There is another major priority however, that ends up being forgotten - the maintenance of a smooth flow to your lines.

In truth, if you had to rank these two priorities, flow be given more attention than accuracy. This may seem counter-productive to beginners, but bare with me. Accuracy will naturally improve with practice, and we've got some tricks (like the ghosting method) that will help here. Flow, however, is a matter of approach. The wobbles occur as a direct side-effect (or even the primary result) of the fact that you're drawing carefully, that you're trying to stay on track. Therefore it's the approach you're using that's causing the lines not to flow smoothly.

The solution is to draw your marks with a confident, persistent pace - to draw quickly enough that your brain does not have the opportunity to course-correct as you go. Once your pen touches the page and sets a course, you want to maintain that trajectory until the line is complete, with no shifts or changes, even if you happen to go a little off track. You effectively accept that once your pen touches the page, there is nothing you can do to avoid any mistakes that may occur, and so you must accept the possibility that the line you draw won't be the line you meant to draw. As a result however, it will be smooth.

The ghosting method is used to offset this decrease in accuracy - we invest all of our time in the phase before actually executing a mark, ghosting through the motion to build up muscle memory, so that when it comes time to make the mark, we can trust in that muscle memory rather than in our conscious thought.

All of this is a very common issue that beginners face, so much so that I even wrote a comic about it. It applies not just to straight lines, but to curves and ellipses as well. An ellipse that has been drawn too slowly and carefully will look stiff and uneven. You'll find that the whole draw through your ellipses thing that I insist upon will make much more sense if you draw more confidently. Right now, while drawing more slowly, it doesn't really serve any purpose. That's probably why in a handful of cases, you stopped applying that technique. Remember that as you move forwards through the exercises, I do want you to draw through all of your ellipses.

So that covers the issue of your lines, and applies to the first two sections. For the boxes section, I have a few recommendations:

• Make sure you go over your completed rough perspective boxes exercises as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to work on when next attempting this exercise.

• For your rotated boxes, it looks like you missed a couple important instructions. Firstly, you need to be drawing through your boxes. Notice how in my demonstration, I draw all of the lines that make up each box - even the ones that are occluded by neighbouring boxes, as well as those that exist on the far side of any given box? Every single line should be drawn. This will help you to better understand how each box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as the box rotates. Secondly, keep your gaps narrow, parallel and consistent. This will allow you to use neighbouring lines as hints when drawing new lines, which in turn will keep the whole set together. Since you are largely guessing when adding new lines, rather than taking advantage of the clues around you, the boxes tend to drift apart.

I'd like you to try your hand at this lesson again. I know it's asking a lot, but I think you'll benefit immensely from it, and will be in a much better position to move forwards once you've had the chance to properly apply what I've said here.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-16 14:27

In general, this is very well done. Your lines are smooth and confident, your ellipses are evenly shaped, and your boxes carry a strong sense of solidity, and a well developed understanding of 3D space. I do have a couple of recommendations to make, however.

• One thing I noticed is that to varying degrees throughout the lesson, and especially where you're pushed to struggle with more spatial problems (like the organic perspective boxes), your lines get a little hairy. It's important to exert a little more self-control. Every line we put down should be the result of planning and forethought. Students will often come in drawing a little more reflexively, putting down a line then immediately following it up with another. This is a habit that you need to work to avoid. Of course, adding line weight is different, so long as you are actually planning and ghosting those additional strokes each time. Overall, minding this will help clean up your linework considerably.

• For your completed rough perspective boxes exercises, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to be at its weakest.

• For your rotated boxes exercise, I noticed that along the top, you weren't quite pushing the rotation of those forms far enough. Our brains naturally want to keep things aligned in neat grids, so at times you do have to fight against your own brain and really exaggerate rotations to break away from what feels comfortable. Additionally, it can help to keep the gaps between your boxes more narrow. In general you do seem to be keeping the gaps consistent and parallel, but the closer those boxes are to each other, the more reliably you can use neighbouring lines as hints when adding new marks.

Overall I'm quite pleased with the understanding of 3D space that you're demonstrating. I'll be marking the lesson as complete - generally if a student was struggling with the organic perspective boxes at this point, I'd send them onto the 250 box challenge. This certainly isn't the case for you, but I am still going to ask that you attempt the challenge. In this case, the goal would be to get that reflexive/hairy linework a little more under control. Since you tend to do it more when forced to think through arbitrary rotations for those boxes, I think it'd be a good opportunity to improve on that front.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-16 14:34

Very solid work. Your linework is generally smooth and confident, and your ellipses are quite evenly shaped and consistent. I did notice that in your ellipses in planes exercise, you do sometimes get a little caught up in conforming the ellipses perfectly to their enclosures. This is fine, only so long as you maintain the consistency of that elliptical shape. Don't let it get deformed.

For your completed rough perspective boxes exercises, I recommend going over them as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is a little off. Identifying mistakes like this helps to guide you in regards to what needs your attention the next time you attempt this exercise.

Your rotated boxes exercise was alright. One issue that I did notice is that you aren't quite pushing the rotation of those boxes hard enough. This is a pretty common issue, as our brains like things to be neatly aligned in grids, and will actively fight against us when we try and break free of that. It's often necessary to really push and exaggerate rotation in order to break free of the comfort area our brain clings to.

This exercise, along with the organic perspective boxes one, are actually included in this lesson with the expectation that students would struggle. It's largely so you start thinking about how forms exist in 3D, and how they relate to one another, in order to begin the development of a mental model of 3D space. It's perfectly normal that you've struggled here.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, and you've done quite well. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge to get some more work in on 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

2017-06-18 17:38

Nice work! Your lines and ellipses have all been drawn with a strong sense of confidence, resulting in lines that flow very nicely, and maintain a consistent trajectory, as well as ellipses that are smooth and evenly shaped. That's a very big part of what I look for in the homework for this lesson.

For your rough perspective boxes, I'm glad to see that you applied the double-checking method for your perspective, but it's important to apply it to all of your lines, rather than just some of them.

For your rotated boxes exercise, I think you did a pretty solid job (i fully expect students to struggle here, and you did better than most). One recommendation I have however is to keep the gaps between your boxes fairly narrow and consistent, so you can use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. Being able to take the guesswork out of certain cases and just draw lines as being effectively parallel helps keep things more structured.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes is a solid attempt. Just like the rough perspective boxes, I expect students to struggle here. The purpose is to get them to start thinking about how to rotate forms freely in 3D space, instead of being tied down to explicitly plotted perspective.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I think you'll benefit from moving 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 should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-18 17:55

Honestly, this is very well done. Your lines are straight and smooth, with very little (mostly no) visible wobbling or stiffness. Your ellipses are evenly shaped, and while you're clearly striving for accuracy, you're not letting it get in the way of the flow of your lines. You're also very diligent in applying everything I've covered in the notes.

I have just a couple things to suggest:

• For your rotated boxes exercise, try and keep the gaps between the boxes narrow and consistent. This frees you up to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines, which effectively takes guesswork out of certain areas since you can just draw particular lines as being parallel to others.

• Since you're redoing lesson 1, you technically know certain things that I throw in a little later - like the importance of drawing through your forms when rotating boxes arbitrarily (like in the organic perspective boxes exercise). I purposely refrain from mentioning that here, because I want students to stumble a little, before I give them that useful tip. Once you learn about drawing through your forms however (as you did when tackling the 250 box challenge), I'd hope you'd apply it across the board. Keep that in mind in the future. While your organic perspective boxes here are done quite well, there are a few little places where I think the additional spatial awareness offered by drawing through your forms would have helped.

Anyway, keep up the great work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-22 13:47

Your lines and ellipses sections are very solid. You're executing your marks with confidence, which keeps them smooth and even. Your boxes however are definitely a challenge, although this isn't entirely abnormal.

The first thing I want to mention is that I do purposely include some exercises that are intended to be too hard for the skill level of the average student at that stage - in this case, that includes the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes.

Before we get to those however, for your rough perspective boxes, make sure you draw your horizon line, and more importantly, follow my instructions exactly as they're written and don't leave any part out. The horizon line is important as all of your horizontal lines should run parallel to it, and all of your verticals should run perpendicular to it. Based on your work, you know this. Having the horizon drawn serves as a useful reference/guide to maintain that relationship. The frames also work in this manner, but neglecting to add an important guide will result in work coming off a little wonkier than it otherwise might.

Additionally, be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to work on in the future.

Back to the rotated boxes. As I mentioned, this one's particularly difficult, and is meant to be. One thing that will definitely help however is to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines, as when they're close enough together, you can effectively draw them as running parallel to one another. This not only removes some guesswork, but also tends to make the set of boxes much more structured. The biggest issue with your attempt is that it was 80% guesswork. That said, I'm very glad that you still pushed through and drew all your boxes, rather than giving up halfway when things started to go wrong.

Additionally, I noticed that you didn't quite draw through all of your boxes. That is, drawing them in their entirety, with all of their lines (including those that are blocked by other boxes, or that exist on the opposite side of the form and would not normally seen). It's important to approach these things as though we have xray vision, as this gives us a better sense of how those boxes sit in 3D space, and ultimately this exercise is all about understanding how that changes as they are rotated.

Now, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get more practice in on rotating boxes freely in 3D space (like the organic perspective exercise). Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which is effectively what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes. Understanding how your forms sit in 3D space is critical, and the purpose of these kinds of exercises is to start developing and building up a model of three dimensional space in your mind. This of course takes time, and it'll start out rough, but your understanding of space will improve with practice.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-26 00:36

Overall, fairly well done. There is one major issue though that I'm seeing, which plays a role in your general approach to things, so it rears its head throughout the entire lesson. It is however a pretty common problem: you hesitate when drawing your lines, which results in strokes that are wobbly or stiff.

This happens because you're stressing too much about drawing accurate lines, and end up executing the mark slowly so your brain has the chance to course-correct as you go. These course-corrections are what ultimately manifest as wobbling. While accuracy is important, our first priority should always be the flow and smoothness of our strokes. This means that we need to be executing our marks with a confident, persistent pace.

Ultimately that's what the ghosting method is all about, and why it should be applied to every mark you draw. It splits the process of mark-making into multiple steps. First we focus on preparing, building up muscle memory and getting used to the motion we'll be using to draw. This is where we invest all of our time, and where we do what we can to improve our chances of being accurate. Once your pen hits the page however, you're committed - you need to maintain the same trajectory you started with, even if it's a little off. Mistakes happen, and if we fuss over trying to avoid them while drawing, our lines will wobble, and our work will always lack the confidence of smooth, straight strokes. I summarize this notion in this comic.

So as I mentioned, this issue is prominent in all of your lines, even to a somewhat lesser degree to your ellipses. Also for those ellipses, remember that ghosting still applies here, as that preparatory phase is what will improve your accuracy. I noticed that a lot of your ellipses in the tables of ellipses tend to be floating in their set spaces, rather than fitting snugly. This is a common result of not spending enough time preparing beforehand.

Jumping ahead, for your rough perspective boxes exercises, it's important to go over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to work on when next attempting it.

It definitely seems that for your rotated boxes exercise, the 33 attempts paid off. You're generally doing quite well here. Mind you, this exercise is meant to be very difficult. I don't necessarily assign exercises expecting students to be able to complete them perfectly, or even well. There are times where it is beneficial to get students to try tackling them now, knowing full well that they will struggle. In this case, the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises force you to start thinking about how forms can be rotated arbitrarily in 3D space. All I ask is that you put forth your best effort for every exercise, and devote the time necessary to do that.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along in this fashion, though we'll certainly get some more work in here.

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 get more work in on arbitrarily rotated boxes, but also to get more practice applying the ghosting method and drawing smooth, confident strokes. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms - which you applied in some of your boxes in the organic perspective boxes, but not all of them. Those were you did tended to be somewhat better, as drawing through your forms helps you to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Oh, about drawing from your shoulder - it's completely normal for it to feel weird. We're generally most practiced using pens/pencils from our wrists, so performing a similar act in such a different way naturally feels awkward and strange. It takes time both to get used to this, and also to develop the different muscles that are used when pivoting from the shoulder. Be sure to keep at it, even if it feels uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-26 01:30

Very nicely done! Across the lesson you've demonstrated a lot of careful attention to my instructions, which certainly warms my heart. That makes this critique a little easier than others.

Your lines are generally fairly smooth, but I detect just a hint of stiffness and wobbling in certain areas. Keep in mind that the flow of your lines is also the highest priority (more important than accuracy). Once you start executing a mark, it's important to maintain the same trajectory, even if that means missing your intended target slightly. Here's an exaggerated example of what I mean, with the super imposed lines as context.

It may seem a little counter-intuitive (since we're raised often valuing accuracy above all else), but the flow and smoothness of our work is something that is more dependent on how we approach things, while accuracy will always improve with practice.

The same principle applies to your ellipses, which again are fairly well done, but do have a touch of stiffness to them that throws off the evenness of their shape. Ghost through the mark during the preparation phase, but once you commit, trust in your muscle memory and focus on drawing confidently so you produce an ellipse that is smooth and even.

Jumping through to your boxes section, you've generally done a very nice job. Great to see that you're double checking your rough perspective boxes. Also, your rotated boxes are very solidly done, even though I fully expect students to struggle with this exercise, as well as the organic perspective boxes. I do still believe you'll benefit from some targeted work on constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes in 3D space, but you're doing great as it is.

So, I'll go ahead and 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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-06-30 01:06

Nice work! The first thing that crosses my mind when looking over your submission is a pretty important word when it comes to these lessons, and drawing in general: confidence. You're demonstrating a lot of it, and it will come in very handy, now and in the future. It keeps your lines smooth, and your ellipses evenly shaped.

Overall you did quite well, there's just a couple things I want to point out:

• For your ellipses in planes, I'm glad that you largely focused on keeping your ellipses evenly shaped. Make sure that you strive to have your ellipses touch all four edges of the enclosing plane though. If you miss the mark, that's totally fine, but avoid purposely planting them floating in the center. This exercises are all about establishing some sort of a pass/fail criteria (I hit my mark, or I missed) so you can go back and assess your success rate, and determine what about your approach may need to be adjusted. If we're drawing arbitrary things that float in space, we don't really have much to compare against.

• I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method to your rough perspective boxes. Keep it up.

• The rotated boxes exercise is definitely meant to be very challenging for students at this stage, although there are a couple tricks to it that definitely help. Try keeping the gaps between your boxes narrower and more consistent. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding a new line, and ultimately limits your guesswork and keeps things more structured. When it comes to drawing in 3D space, it's important to rely very little on guesswork. Sometimes it's inevitable, but often times if we step back, when can identify patterns that suggest our next course of action. For example, finding near-parallel lines to the one you want to add. If they're close enough, you can more or less draw them as parallel. If they're far away, two of them can help imply a vanishing point, which you can then orient your new line towards.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I would however like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get some more work in on constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes (similar to what you faced in the organic perspective 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

2017-06-30 01:09

Generally looks like you're applying the principles in the lesson quite well. Revisiting the lesson as a whole is definitely a good idea, but don't forget that you're meant to be continually practicing these exercises as part of a warm up routine to keep your skills sharp.

Just a couple things caught my eye:

• Make sure you're applying the [checking]() approach for the rough perspective boxes, once they're completed.

• For your organic perspective boxes, I don't talk about drawing through your forms for this exercise in particular because I want students to have the chance to stumble around a bit (so they grasp the benefits of drawing through forms a little better). Once you are exposed to it as a way to better grasp how things sit in three dimensions, you should apply it as much as possible to further develop your mental model of space. So in your case, it would have been wise to apply it here.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-02 00:42

I think you're doing great. Your linework tends to be quite confident and well executed, which helps you maintain smooth, straight lines and evenly shaped ellipses. That said, I definitely want to dissuade you from purposely trying to avoid rotating your page. I understand why you'd want to do that, but at this point it's not going to help. Ultimately since your work is coming out fine right now, take that more as a friendly suggestion rather than a commandment. It'll really only distract you from the things you should be focusing on right now.

I did notice that further along in the lesson, specifically in the rough perspective boxes exercise, your line quality declined somewhat. They still weren't too bad, but they did arc more, and became less accurate. Make sure you apply the ghosting method to every occasion. I'm glad to see that things got considerably better on this front with your rotated boxes exercise, where everything seemed quite precise and solid. You also demonstrated a well developed understanding of 3D space. I actually expect all students to struggle quite a bit with the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises, so you've impressed me quite a bit here.

I'm going to go ahead and mark the lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson, but before you do, I'd like you give the notes on the 250 box challenge page a read. The point about drawing through your forms is particularly helpful, and will help kick up your understanding of how your forms sit in 3D space. This helps in situations like the organic perspective boxes, and forces us to think of things as they exist in three dimensional space, rather than just on a 2D page. Again, you're doing fine at this, but it's a technique I try and push on everyone (especially after most struggle without it).

Uncomfortable

2017-07-02 01:09

Very nice work! Your linework is looking very confident, which has helped you maintain straight lines, as well as evenly shaped ellipses. This is going to be important as you continue to move forwards. I also appreciate that you've been quite mindful of the instructions, and even included things from the self critique resources, like double checking your rough perspective boxes.

I definitely agree that you did struggle somewhat with the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes, but this is totally normal and expected. I included these exercises here to get students to start thinking more organically about 3D space, and to start chipping away at the dependency a lot of people have to plotting out all of their perspective. It's definitely challenging, but struggling through it here starts you on the path to developing a mental model of 3D space.

That said, you actually did a pretty good job in both, all things considered. I do have a recommendation for your rotated boxes though. Try and keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. This will ultimately help you keep things much more structured as well.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but before you move onto the next lesson, I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. 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 your boxes sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-02 23:57

Nice work! You've demonstrated here quite a few important qualities that I look for in this lesson. Specifically, you've taken a lot of care when planning out your strokes, and execute them with full confidence and no sign of hesitation. This keeps your lines consistent, avoiding any sort of wobbling or course-correction, and allows you to maintain smooth, even ellipses.

Jumping ahead to your boxes section, you've generally done well though there's a couple things I'd like to recommend.

• For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is a little off, so you know what to work on the next time you attempt the exercise.

• I can see that you struggled with the rotated boxes exercise. This is completely normal and expected. I've included this exercise, as well as the organic perspective boxes exercise to help you get started with thinking about how to construct arbitrarily rotated boxes in 3D space. That said, there is one thing that would certainly help in your execution here. Try to keep the gaps between your boxes narrower and more consistent. This will allow you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines, and will overall help keep things structured. Additionally, you should draw each and every line for every box, including those on the opposite side of the form (that would otherwise be blocked from view). Think of it as though you have x-ray vision. This will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as the boxes are rotated.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read through all of the notes before starting the challenge, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This relates to what I mentioned about drawing all of the lines of your boxes.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-05 14:32

From what I can see, my records don't list you as being eligible for my homework critiques. If you are a patreon supporter, make sure you've sent me your reddit username through patreon's messaging system. Otherwise you're welcome to submit your work for a community critique, which is completely free and open to everyone.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-06 14:14

Nicely done! Your lines section is spot on. Your ellipses are coming out quite well, although I notice just the slightest hint of hesitation, which in turn causes your ellipses to be ever so slightly stiffer than they could be. Remember that while accuracy is important, we don't want to stress on it so much that we second-guess ourselves when executing the mark. Trust in the muscle memory you develop by applying the ghosting method, and when executing, focus entirely on maintaining a smooth, even flow. As I said though, the stiffness here is very slight. For the most part you're doing fine.

Your boxes are coming along well too, though I did notice that you got a little lax in your use of the ghosting method. Your lines are arcing a little bit, moreso than they did in the lines section. It does seem that you noticed some of this yourself however, since you marked in "ghost it!" when doing your corrections. That's definitely solid advice :P

Your rotated boxes are coming along fairly well, and I'm pleased to see that you're maintaining narrow gaps between the boxes and overall keeping things nice and structured. This exercise, as well as the organic perspective one are intended to be somewhat more difficult than most students at this stage can manage, but overall you've done a good job.

The organic perspective boxes can use a little more work, and we will get to that, but you're definitely meeting my standards at the moment. I'm going to go ahead and 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. This should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-07 17:33

Fantastic work! You're definitely not doing it too slowly nor too carefully - there's no such thing, at least not in the grand scheme of things. It's possible to execute an individual mark too slowly (which results in a wobbly line), but simply being careful, taking your time, preparing before each stroke, and reading through all of the material several times to make sure you understand what you're meant to be doing is a-okay and highly recommended. So keep it up!

The thing about how one should draw lines, beyond the basics of using your shoulder as a pivot, is all about finding what's most comfortable. Starting closer to you and then moving your arm outwards is more likely to be comfortable, but this also means that if there is another motion that you feel to be more comfortable (so long as you're meeting the other criteria), feel free to experiment with that instead. If however drawing in that particular fashion works fine for you already, no need to fix that which is not broken.

So, overall you've done quite well. Your lines are well planned and smoothly executed. Your ellipses are evenly shaped and are generally evenly shaped. You do get a little stiff when you try to fit your ellipses into your planes (it's pretty normal at this point to stress too much over accuracy) - just make sure you remember that the flow/evenness of your shape is paramount, and accuracy is secondary. If you happen to be off the mark a little, but have maintained a well balanced elliptical shape, then that's fine.

Your plotted perspective and rough perspective boxes are looking great, and I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method to the latter. Your rotated boxes are also quite well done, though I do recommend that you keep the gaps between your boxes a little more narrow. That said, you've been able to keep those boxes fairly structured, which is quite the struggle for most students at this stage.

While there is room for improvement with the organic perspective boxes, that's entirely expected. I included this exercise (as well as the rotated boxes one) to get students to start thinking about how to rotate boxes arbitrarily in 3D space, so rather than expecting 100% success, it's merely a jumping off point.

I'm going to 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 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

2017-07-07 13:49

Looking good so far - your lines are confident and smooth, and that's what I'm looking for. That said, you should wait until you've completed all three sections of the lesson before submitting it for critique, rather than submitting each part individually, as mentioned in the homework section, under the list of exercises that should be submitted. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to critiquing the rest of the lesson's work.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-07 18:12

Definitely a solid start. There's a few things I want to point out, but you're moving in the right direction. Also, don't worry about the order - imgur always messes that up for everyone.

You're generally drawing pretty confidently, which is great. On the flipside of that though, you're also drawing a little too reflexively. That is, you should be only drawing one mark per line. Every additional stroke should be planned and prepared beforehand, using the ghosting method. Immediately reinforcing a line after drawing it is a bad habit to get into. As is correcting a line after you've drawn it, as this will only draw more attention to your blunder. It's often best just to let those things sit as they are.

So basically your mark making process should be to stop and think about what kind of mark you want to put down, then go through the process of ghosting through it, building up the appropriate muscle memory, then confidently executing the mark without hesitation. This may result in some mistakes at first, but that's totally fine. Those preparatory steps will reduce the chances of making a mistake, but they don't get rid of them entirely. What's most important here is that each line is planned, and that when executed, you maintain the same trajectory throughout (rather than wobbling back and forth while course-correcting).

It's damn time consuming, that's for sure, but it will build up good habits, and it will become second nature soon enough.

Generally most of your ellipses are looking pretty good, though I did catch a couple of instances (mostly where you tried to draw the ellipses-in-planes) where you allowed the stress of fitting the ellipse perfectly within the plane to throw off the evenness of the elliptical shape. Just like the flow of a line is paramount and accuracy is secondary, with ellipses the smooth, even, elliptical shape is most important - even if that means making mistakes with your accuracy.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you're doing okay as far as the perspective alignment goes, though make sure you continue applying the ghosting method here as well. Some of your lines got a little bit wobbly. In addition, upon completing this exercise, make sure you go over your completed work as described here to help identify areas where your estimation of perspective is off. This is fully expected, and figuring out where you tend to make mistakes will help you to know where you should be spending a little extra attention.

Your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes were definitely a bit of a struggle, but this is completely normal and expected. I included these two exercises here to get students to start thinking about how to deal with freely rotated boxes, so it's totally normal for it to be quite difficult. I'm not expecting to see work that is anywhere close to perfect, or even good. That said, I do have a couple recommendations:

• For your rotated boxes, draw larger. Rotating forms is very much a spatial problem, and our brains benefit considerably from being given more room to think through such challenges. When we're intimidated by an exercise, we have a tendency to draw smaller (like we're trying to hide our mistakes), but this in turn causes us to make even more mistakes.

• Also for the rotated boxes, keep the gaps between your boxes narrower and more consistent. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. It will also help keep things nice and structured, allowing you to rely far less on guesswork.

Now I'm going to mark the lesson as complete, but I would like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Not only will this give you additional practice with constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes in 3D space, but it will also give you a chance to continue practicing your use of the ghosting method, and to generally get your approach to mark making a little more under control. Make sure you 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

2017-07-09 01:33

Your lines and ellipses sections are looking pretty decent. You're executing your marks with confidence, and so your lines come out fairly smooth and consistent. Your ellipses are much the same, although here and there they stiffen up a little bit. This is because you hesitate slightly - which is perfectly normal, but something you'll want to work on. By using the ghosting method, we invest all of our time in the preparation phase. When we make the mark, we do so trusting in our muscle memory. This may result in some mistakes, but that's perfectly normal. The flow and evenness of our lines and ellipses is more important than our accuracy, so that comes first.

As far as your boxes go, they're structurally quite well done, although they're very messy. The biggest issue is that you're making a habit of reinforcing lines immediately after drawing them. Remember that the ghosting method means planning and preparing before every single mark you make. This inherently makes it quite difficult to draw by reflex, which itself is a bad habit. Make sure that in the future, you draw one mark per line and no more than that. Same thing goes for making mistakes - if you slip up, just leave it alone. Attempting to correct a mistake will only make it darker and draw attention to it.

Additionally, try not to be sloppy with your hatching lines. Ensure that they stretch from edge to edge, rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle of a plane.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. Overall your grasp of 3D space is pretty solid - the last two exercises of this lesson were intended to be very challenging and outside of the capabilities of most students, but you did quite well at them. This challenge will instead give you the chance to get your sketchy linework under control, as you seem to get messier when drawing lines as part of something larger (like boxes).

Make sure you read through the notes on the challenge page before starting though. The tip about drawing through your forms is especially important, and will help you continue to improve your grasp of how those boxes sit in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-11 01:38

Life certainly has a tendency to do that! Overall you're doing pretty well. There's definitely room for improvement (and that will come with practice), but you're moving in the right direction. Your lines are confident and consistent, your ellipses don't show any sign of hesitation and as a result come out fairly evenly shaped.

Jumping ahead to your boxes section, the first thing that caught my eye was the particular approach to shading in some of your rough perspective boxes. In the future, it's best to avoid anything that remotely channels chaos or randomness. As a rule, randomness is going to read as unintentional and messy. We want our linework to carry a sense of purpose - like whatever mark we put down was driven entirely our intent. In this case, if you want to shade in one of the faces here, make sure you do so with consistent, parallel hatching lines that stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Nothing floating arbitrarily in the middle. It's really a matter of presentation, and it keeps things neat and tidy.

For that same exercise, be sure to go over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify any issues with your estimation of perspective, so you know where to focus your efforts the next time you attempt the exercise.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes were a bit of a ruse. I've included them in this lesson fully expecting students to struggle with them, as they are quite challenging. By facing them here, you're forced to start thinking about how to arbitrarily rotate forms in 3D space. Key word being: start. I don't expect students to nail either of these just yet.

That said, one thing that grabbed me about your rotated boxes is that the actual range of rotation you're achieving here is very limited. You're hitting perhaps 45 degrees in either direction, while the boxes set at the extremities are a good 90 degrees out. Therefore there's a gap of a good 45 degrees to between the farthest box to either side, and the next one over.

Our brains naturally fight against us when we try and rotate these boxes by increments. See, we like to keep things in grids, all nice and parallel to each other. As a result, we may feel like something is rotating more than it actually is - our brain lies to us, in order to keep things more comfortable. For this reason, when tackling an exercise like this, we really need to push and exaggerate our rotation for each box, so as to cover the full 180 degree arc.

The other thing I wanted to mention in regards to this exercise is that you should try and keep the gaps between your boxes consistent and narrow. When they're close enough, this allows us to use neighbouring edges as hints when constructing new lines. It also tends to keep things more structured.

There's definitely room for improvement on the organic perspective boxes, but all in all you did a pretty solid job.

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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-11 02:09

Given that you've been a patreon supporter here for close to a year, it's nice to see that you're finally taking advantage of some of the perks! There's definitely some things here that I should be able to clarify for you, so lets get on with it.

For the lines section, I definitely see that you have a tendency to make your marks with a heavy stress on accuracy, and less so on the flow of your lines. This leads to you executing your marks more slowly, resulting in a lot of wobbles where your brain has actively course-corrected your arm.

This is something you'll want to avoid. I explain it in this comic, but the idea is that your first priority should be achieving lines that are smooth, with their accuracy coming in second. When you start drawing a line, you want to maintain that same trajectory, regardless of whether or not it's going to hit the mark you intended. In order to achieve this, we execute our lines with a confident, persistent pace. This keeps our brains from interfering and course-correcting. All in all, it means trusting in your muscles, specifically in your muscle memory.

That's what the ghosting method is all about - splitting the process into preparation and executing, where we develop muscle memory by repeating the drawing motion over and over, and then execute without hesitation.

Now, your ellipses are actually considerably more confidently done, and as a result they've largely come out quite smooth and evenly shaped. Your line quality also improves a fair bit as you get int your boxes. In fact, the wobbling's pretty much gone by the time you hit the organic perspective boxes, so that's fantastic. I just wrote all of that out for nothing... well, better to have it expressed and communicated explicitly.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method. I definitely am noticing though that while you're executing your marks quite confidently, you do need to work on ensuring that your horizontals run parallel to the horizon, and your verticals run perpendicular to it, as explained here. From the looks of it, you do understand this, but may need to spend more time in the preparatory phase of the ghosting method to ensure that you hit your intended marks. This will definitely improve with practice though - whereas the wobbly lines were more a matter of approach. Just make sure that you work on reducing situations where you end up with gaps at the corners of your boxes (where two lines should be meeting).

Now, your rotated boxes aren't.. really rotated. For the most part, they cover a range of rotation of about 60 degrees from one side to the other, rather than the full 180 we're looking for. The reason for this is that our brains don't like rotating forms arbitrarily. We much prefer to keep things in grids, nice and parallel. This very exercise is something that really forces you to tackle something that is inherently uncomfortable to us. This exercise (as well as the organic perspective boxes one) aren't expected to be completed successfully by students at this stage - they're just here to get your brain started in that direction.

That said, when attempting this exercise in the future, you're really going to want to push and exaggerate those rotations beyond what your brain tells you is enough. Additionally, try not to make the boxes quite so deep. If you maintained that same depth and rotated them correctly, you'd get a lot of them intersecting (or really large gaps between your boxes, which is best avoided).

Now, 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 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. This will also give you a good opportunity to continue practicing your use of the ghosting method.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-11 02:21

I think the biggest thing that jumps out at me here is your line quality, especially in your ellipses. It's wobbly and stiff as all hell. You're executing your marks way too slowly. Looking at some of the stuff you did for lesson 3, while they're not as smooth as a baby's bottom, they're certainly much less stiff than those you've done here. You can spend as much time as you need in the preparation phase of the ghosting method, but when you execute, you cannot execute - even if that means making a mistake every single time. Maintaining lines that flow smoothly is always going to be more important than avoiding a mistake.

For the rotated boxes, try to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so you can use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines.

For the organic perspective boxes, at this stage I don't mention drawing through your boxes, but now that you've been introduced to the concept in the box challenge, apply it whenever and wherever you can. The point here was to get students to fumble a bit by drawing the boxes without applying that technique, so they could better appreciate how drawing through forms impacts their understanding of 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-11 17:38

Very nice work! Your line quality is quite confident, so your lines come out smooth and straight, and your ellipses are evenly shaped. I would recommend being a little more careful drawing the center minor axis line for your funnels though - it seems like they're a bit sloppy (you may even want to draw this with a ruler or a straight edge). The minor axis plays an important role in the alignment of the ellipses, so it's best to get that one as accurate as possible.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you seem to be quite careful and conscientious in your estimation of perspective, as well as with your execution of each line. I do want to recommend however that you go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective is off.

The rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here with the full expectation that they'd be challenging for students at this stage. While I don't expect people to nail them just yet, they're really there to get you started thinking about how forms can be constructed and rotated arbitrarily in 3D space.

As far as your organic perspective boxes go, you seem to be moving in the right direction with these. There are some issues with far planes coming out a little larger than near planes, and other things like that, but that's perfectly normal at this stage and will be dealt with.

I'm going to hold off on marking this lesson as complete until you submit the rotated boxes exercise, so be sure to let me know when you've got that in. When I do mark the lesson as complete however, I'm going to want 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

2017-07-13 23:47

You reaaaally need to relax. The work you've done here is excellent, and well beyond what anyone is expected to do at this stage. The first thing I want you to do is go back to the lesson 1 page and read through the section at the top labelled "As this is probably your first lesson at Drawabox, read this before moving forward!". Considering how long you've been supporting DaB, this may have been added after you first went through the lesson.

The point of it is that you're not supposed to grind until it's perfect, then move on. You're supposed to understand the purpose and goal of each exercise, and then as you continue to move through later lessons, incorporate these exercises into a regular warmup.

As it stands, your work is spot on. Your lines are confident, your ellipses are smooth and evenly shaped, and your boxes demonstrate a very strong grasp of 3D space. I have just a few minor things to recommend as you move forwards:

• Go over your completed rough perspective boxes work as described here. Since this exercise is all about estimating perspective, the expectation is that you won't be spot on. So, this allows you to identify where your estimation of perspective is a little off, so you know what to focus on during your next attempt.

• Give the notes over at the 250 box challenge a read. You by no means need to complete the challenge, especially since you're already demonstrating a really strong sense of 3D space. Just go through the notes, focusing especially on the tip about drawing through your forms. This tends to be quite helpful in improving your understanding of how each box sits in 3D space, and how they relate to one another.

So, I'll mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-14 00:11

Nice work! You're applying the concepts from the lesson quite well. Your lines are smooth and confident, your ellipses are generally quite evenly shaped (and while it's great to aim for two rounds of each ellipse, you're doing pretty well as is and wouldn't stress too much over it).

I'm very glad that you applied the ghosting method so faithfully for your rough perspective boxes! Just a couple things about that exercise. Be sure to go over your completed work as described here. It helps you become more aware of where your estimation tends to be a little bit off. Of course, that was probably minimized by how you ghosted all the way back. Secondly, just make sure your hatching lines stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge. Avoid having them floating arbitrarily in the middle.

For your rotated boxes, you're generally doing pretty well, though I did notice that the outer most layer of boxes should have had their rotation exaggerated somewhat more in order to continue the trend.

The rotated and organic perspective boxes exercises were included here largely to get students to start thinking about how forms rotate freely in 3D space. I fully expect students to struggle with this, and have no expectation of perfection. That said, you've done fairly well.

I'm going to go ahead and 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.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-15 13:58

Yup, that's correct. I talk a little bit about it here: http://drawabox.com/faq#smallfromwrist

Uncomfortable

2017-07-18 19:49

Definitely a good start. One thing that jumps out at me though is that your execution of your linework is a little bit hesitant. Basically when going through the mark making process, you're definitely more focused on accuracy, and that causes you to execute each mark a little bit more slowly, to allow your brain the opportunity to course-correct as you go. This in turn causes little wobbles to manifest in your linework, breaking the flow of each line.

While accuracy is important, it comes in second to maintaining the smooth flow of a line. So when you start executing a line, it's important to maintain the same trajectory all the way through, even if you end up being a little inaccurate. We can achieve this by drawing with a more confident, persistent pace, which keeps our conscious brains from interfering, and trusts more in our muscle memory. In turn, proper use of the ghosting method (where we invest all of our time into the preparation phase, before execution), will help improve our accuracy, even when drawing confidently.

This applies to everything - straight lines, curves, even ellipses. Ellipses can really stiffen up when they're drawn too hesitantly, and I definitely see some of that in your work. Drawing through your ellipses essentially gives you a little bit more leeway to be more confident with your drawing, instead of overstressing the need to be hyper accurate. It is however ideal to draw through your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen. Three is also acceptable, but aim for two.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you're doing well. I do however want to recommend that you go over your completed work for this exercise as described here to help identify any areas where your estimation of perspective is a little bit off.

You made solid attempts at both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises. I do want to mention that these exercises were included here with the expectation that students would struggle. They're really meant to be a first introduction to the challenges faced when rotating boxes arbitrarily in 3D space, and no one's expected to nail it just yet. All I want to see is your best effort, and you certainly put that forward.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This will give you the opportunity to practice those arbitrarily rotated boxes a little more, while also letting you practice your confident execution of your 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, and will help you develop a better eye for those angles between your planes.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-18 20:39

The first lesson is always daunting, but I in no way am asking for perfect work. All I want to see is your best attempt, so I know what advice to offer you. That's certainly what you've submitted here, so I have several helpful things to suggest.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that your lines have a tendency to be quite wobbly. This is a very common problem, and it happens because we have a tendency to want to stress the accuracy of our lines, and any time we veer off course, we desperately want to course-correct. As a result, we draw slow-and-steady, careful not to rush.

The problem is that those course-corrections manifest as the little wibbles and wobbles in our line, and the resulting lines end up having very poor flow. Instead of prioritizing accuracy, we instead need to focus primarily on the smooth flow of our linework. In order to achieve smoother lines, we need to execute our marks with a more confident, persistent pace. It's important not to hesitate. Mistakes will happen, that's a fact of life, and it's perfectly acceptable.

So where drawing more confidently will inevitably decrease our accuracy, we compensate by applying the ghosting method. We invest all of our time in the preparation phase, finding a comfortable angle of approach and building up muscle memory. Just make sure that once you've done all of that, you are fully accepting of the fact that your line may not come out right. Again, perfectly fine. Just make sure it comes out smooth, even if it veers off course.

This principle applies to all of the lines we draw - straight, curved, wavy, even and especially ellipses. Ellipses that are drawn slowly tend to come out quite stiff and awkward. This is certainly the case with yours, and it's again something I see quite often. I actually stress the importance of drawing through one's ellipses because it takes some of the pressure off, allowing you to compensate when drawing a little more confidently. So right now, doing so may not make all that much sense - but when you draw through your ellipses when drawing with a faster pace, it should start to make a little more sense.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, I do get the impression that you understand what you should be aiming for, but your linework tends to get quite sketchy the more you stress over your results. It's important that you apply the ghosting method to each and every line, and adhere to the rule of drawing only one mark for every line you want to put down. If you make a mistake, don't correct it. Correcting by reflex can be a bad habit, and is one that many at this stage need to work out of their system. That's why the ghosting method is great - it forces you to plan and think before every single mark you put down, basically making it impossible to draw by reflex.

For this exercise in particular, I recommend that you go over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to work on the next time you attempt it.

Last, the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are difficult. Very difficult, in fact, and everyone struggles with them to varying degrees. I by no means expect students to nail these. Instead, my hope here is to expose students to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space. By facing it here, we get those gears to start turning in your head.

For the rotated boxes, there are a few tips I'd like to offer that could help when doing this specific exercise:

• Keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. You actually did a decent job of this in most places, but where you didn't, things tended to go a bit south. The reason this is important is that it allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines.

• Draw through your boxes. That basically means, draw every line that makes up your box, even those that exist on the other side of the form, that you wouldn't normally be able to see. This sort of x-ray vision gives you a better sense of how a box sits in 3D space, and how it relates to the forms around it. You did this for some of your boxes, but as you went further out to the sides, you did so less and less.

For the organic perspective boxes, as I mentioned before, make sure you apply the ghosting method to each and every mark you put down. One mark per line.

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

• One page of planes.

• One page of the table of ellipses exercise.

• One page of rough perspective boxes.

In all of these cases, make sure you apply the ghosting method, and execute each mark confidently. Do your best during the preparation phase to avoid mistakes, but don't hesitate when you actually make the mark.

Once you submit those three pages, I'll mark this lesson as complete. Then I'll want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get some more practice in 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. As I mentioned before, this will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space. It's the key to drawing boxes like this, which I purposely withheld for the organic perspective boxes, so you'd better understand why it's such a useful approach.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-20 21:14

Generally quite well done! Just a few things to keep in mind:

• Your lines generally flow pretty well, but there is just the slightest touch of stiffness to them that is present in your ghosted lines, and a little more apparent in your ellipses. Generally you want to make sure that when you execute your marks, you do so with a confident, persistent pace. Once you reach the execution phase (after you've invested all of your time into the preparation/ghosting phase), don't hesitate or worry about accuracy. You've already done what you can in that regard, at this point your responsibility is to trust in your muscle memory, turn your brain off and just maintain a consistent trajectory. You may make a mistake, but this is perfectly fine. Just make sure your line is smooth.

• Your rough perspective boxes are looking great. I do recommend though that you go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to focus on when you attempt the exercise next.

• Great work on the rotated boxes exercise. This one is particularly challenging, and you did very well.

• You did a pretty good job with the organic perspective boxes as well, all things considered. This exercise (and the previous one) were included here without the expectation that students would be able to nail them. Instead, they're meant to introduce students to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. There is certainly room for improvement, but you're generally doing well. One area with this exercise that definitely needs work though is how you execute your linework. I'm noticing here that your lines are somewhat sketchier. They're not chicken scratch by any stretch, but they are rougher than elsewhere, which tells me that you're not necessarily applying the ghosting method as stringently as you have elsewhere. Remember to plan out every mark, and that every line should consist only of a single mark. Don't correct your mistakes (doing so usually makes the blunder darker and more noticeable, whereas leaving it alone tends to make it disappear). Also try to avoid any sort of reflexive behaviour, where you draw an additional mark without thinking it through and planning it out.

I'm going to go ahead and 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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-22 21:29

Your work is actually very solid. Your lines are confident, you're very conscientious about applying the ghosting method, your ellipses are evenly shaped, and your grasp of 3D space is coming along well. Just a couple things to mention:

• Be sure to go over your completed rough perspective boxes exercises as described here. This helps you to identify where your estimation of perspective is off, so you know what to focus on during your next attempt.

• When doing the rotated boxes exercise, it's important to draw through your boxes. This means drawing every single line that makes up a box, regardless of whether or not we'd realistically be able to see it. Think of it like having x-ray vision. By seeing all of these lines, we gain a better grasp of how a form sits in 3D space, rather than just how it sits on the 2D page. This exercise is all about how things sit in space and how that changes as they are rotated, so it's a pretty important part of this exercise. That said you generally did a pretty good job with this exercise, though it is clear that you didn't follow the steps I laid out (which will bite you in the ass in the future).

• Your organic perspective boxes are coming along great. This exercise was expected to be a struggle for most students, and while you're doing far better than I would have expected, I can definitely see areas where a little extra practice in this area could go a long way.

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 on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms (which is what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes).

Uncomfortable

2017-07-24 02:16

Great work! Your line quality is very confident and consistent. I think when you started out with the super imposed lines, you were a little bit shakier, but that improved rather quickly, and the rest of your lines were much smoother.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, I did notice that your line quality here fell apart somewhat. It doesn't look like you were applying the ghosting method here. Instead, you seem to have been drawing your lines much more slowly, investing the bulk of your time into the execution phase, rather than spending all your time planning/preparing, before executing with a confident, persistent pace. You've shown with previous exercises that you're fully capable of drawing lines that are smooth and straight, so you've got to keep that up here as well.

You did a pretty solid job with the rotated boxes, just one recommendation here. Try to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. This allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there is certainly room for improvement here. This is completely expected however. Both the organic perspective boxes and rotated boxes exercises were included here merely with the intention of getting students to start thinking about how they'd go about constructing arbitrarily rotated boxes. It's totally normal for students to struggle with this at this point.

I'm going to go ahead and 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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-24 23:33

In general you're doing a pretty good job. Before I critique your work though, I do want to mention that in the lesson I stress the importance of rotating your page to find a comfortable angle of approach for a reason. The approach I push upon my student focuses heavily on being able to split tasks into smaller parts, and handling one such part at a time. Don't complicate the exercises by adding another element to them - stick to the instructions. The range of angles you can draw without rotating the page will, surprisingly enough, increase naturally without any extra effort from you. It's actually due to our natural laziness, in that rotating the page every time expends a great deal of energy.

So, as long as you can, I want you to consciously force yourself to spin the page. Over time you will face more and more resistance, and will as such find yourself subconsciously deciding, "do I really need to spin the page or can I nail that line from here". As such, your range will increase.

Now, since you draw on a desk easel, I can definitely see that it would be considerably trickier for you to rotate your page. If you were showing significant signs of stiff lines and poor flow, I would advise you to draw on a flat surface so you can actually rotate your page. Since this is not an issue however, I'll leave it to you to make the decision of how you wish to work.

For the most part, your lines are looking quite smooth and confident. I noticed some wobbling in your ghosted lines exercise however, where there are minor signs that you're executing your lines a little too slowly (or perhaps not tackling them in ideal conditions). Your line quality is generally fine in the rest of the lesson though, so whatever the issue is, you seem to get over it. Your ellipses also seem to be drawn quite confidently, which is great and keeps them quite even. I did notice however that some of your ellipses-in-planes aren't quite touching all four enclosing edges. That's definitely something you'll want to consciously try to remedy.

Very solid work with your rough perspective boxes, and I'm pleased to see that you applied the double checking method as well. Your rotated boxes are alright, although I did notice that the further your boxes go out from the center, the more you need to exaggerate their rotation. The outer boxes definitely look to be levelling off. This is pretty normal, as our brains prefer things to exist on consistent grids, and rotating things in this manner actively works against that. As such, these rotations need to really be pushed and exaggerated in order to get the desired result.

Ultimately the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes have been included here in order to get you to start thinking about how forms rotate in 3D space without concrete vanishing points to rely upon. In this regard, I don't expect students to nail either of these exercises. That said, you're doing a pretty solid job across the board. I'm also quite pleased to see that you drew through your boxes in the organic perspective boxes, and it definitely seems to have had a positive effect. I usually withhold this particular bit of information, so students are given the opportunity to stumble a little without it, before I point them to the 250 box challenge where it is covered.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-24 23:50

Very nice work! I was a little concerned when you said you spent a couple of days on it, at the rate of an hour per day. In my mind that meant two hours, which usually is waaay too little, so naturally I was worried you'd rushed. Thankfully your work demonstrates a great deal of patience, care and discipline. Your line quality is generally quite nice - you execute your marks confidently, after taking the time to plan and prepare, so they come out both smooth and accurate. Your ellipses are much the same, and due to that same confident execution, they come out fairly evenly shaped. For the ellipses though, I would recommend limiting yourself to just two times around each ellipse, as I think you will get the best results that way, based on your current work.

Looking at your rough perspective boxes, I think you've generally done a good job as far as the spatial aspect of the exercise goes, but I do believe that the quality of your lines has dropped somewhat, relative to the previous section. Make sure you're applying the ghosting method to each and every one of your lines, and execute your marks as confidently as you have elsewhere in this lesson. They're a little bit more hesitant here, and that shows through the slightest of wobbling.

Additionally, be sure to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift a little bit.

Your first attempt at the rotated boxes exercise was definitely a little weak (although frankly that's perfectly normal at this stage), but your second attempt corrects all of the major points that I would have raised. For example, you started keeping the gaps between your boxes narrower, so you could use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. You also started drawing through more of your boxes (whereas before you did only for a few), which overall gave you a better grasp of how each box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as they are rotated.

I do believe that your organic perspective boxes need some more work, but this isn't abnormal at all at this point. Both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were intentionally included in this lesson with the expectation that students would struggle. By working through them here, you're introduced to the challenges of rotating boxes freely in 3D space. This causes you to start developing a more structured mental model of how things can be manipulated in three dimensions.

Specifically though, I think you definitely used foreshortening on your organic perspective boxes that was way too dramatic. That is to say, your far end of your boxes were waaay smaller than your near ends. This causes the sense of scale to be thrown off quite a bit, as dramatic foreshortening tends to imply a very large scale (like looking at the top of a tall building from the street).

I'm going to 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 the challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms. This in particular, which I actually mentioned a little in regards to your rotated boxes, will help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-27 06:10

Excellent work! Your line quality is very smooth and confident, and that confidence continues on to keep your ellipses evenly shaped. This is an extremely important part of the mark making process, and really works wonders for the flow of your linework. The biggest thing students at this stage tend to struggle with is keeping their lines from being wobbly, so you've definitely got a huge leg up already.

You're also demonstrating a really solid grasp of 3D space with your boxes. I have only two recommendations:

• For your rough perspective boxes, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift. This is perfectly normal, and is simply a good way to figure out where you need to focus your efforts.

• Give the notes on the 250 box challenge page a read. You by no means need to complete the challenge, as you're already demonstrating a good sense of how to manipulate forms in 3D space, but some of the notes there are generally quite helpful. The tip about drawing through your forms is especially useful when it comes to understanding how each box sits in 3D space.

I'll go ahead and mark the lesson as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-27 22:07

Nice work! Your line quality is very confident and well executed, you're maintaining some very smooth, well-flowing lines. Your ellipses are much the same, where that confidence is helping you maintain their even, rounded shapes without any sign of hesitation and wobbling. You seem to be very conscientious when it comes to planning out your marks, so keep that up.

You did an equally good job with your boxes section. Your rough perspective boxes started out just a little bit sloppy, but I think your next page was much, much better. Just be sure to go over your completed work as described here. It helps to get a better sense of where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

You certainly did struggle at first with the rotated boxes, and this is about where most students end up with this lesson. It's intentionally difficult, and is meant really to get a student to start thinking about how forms can be rotated arbitrarily in 3D space, with no real expectation of success. You definitely punched through that barrier with your most recent attempt though. Great work. Your organic perspective boxes were also very well done, and demonstrate a strong understanding of how these forms exist in 3D space.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson, though before you do I'd like you to read over the notes on the 250 box challenge page, especially the notes about drawing through your forms. This will help you further develop your sense of how these forms sit in 3D space. You by no means need to complete the challenge, just give the notes a once over.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-27 22:15

Generally well done, though there are a few issues I'd like to point out. Your lines section is quite well done, as you're maintaining smooth, confident lines. Your ellipses are usually quite good as well, though I noticed here and there that you played with not drawing through your ellipses. This was just once in a while, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to underline the importance of drawing through them a minimum of two times, as it helps to maintain the confidence necessary to keep your ellipses evenly shaped.

Moving onto your boxes, I do think your rough perspective boxes get a little shaky. Firstly, try not to have any boxes cut off the frame, as those don't end up being terribly useful for the purposes of the exercise. Secondly, be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift. Thirdly, I think your application of the ghosting method here could certainly use some work, to help keep up the confidence and smooth execution we saw in the earlier section of the lesson. Lastly, when applying hatching lines, avoid any sloppiness. Make sure your lines stretch all the way from edge to edge across the plane, avoiding anything that floats arbitrarily in the center of a plane, or generally feels chaotic/messy. Presentation is, while not the top priority, still important.

For your rotated boxes, the first thing that jumps out at me is that you didn't draw through your boxes. That is, you only drew the lines that would be visible, not those that are otherwise hidden. Try to approach drawing these forms as though you have x-ray vision. This helps us to better understand how a box sits in 3D space, and how that changes as it is rotated. You'll find that a lot of my exercises and lessons are about far more than just what we see on the surface of a drawing.

You made a pretty solid attempt at the organic perspective boxes exercise. This one is intended to be quite difficult, and is meant to really just get you started thinking about how boxes can be constructed with an arbitrary rotation.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I'd like you to do one more page of rough perspective boxes, followed by one more page of rotated boxes. After that, resubmit your work and I'll mark the lesson as complete. At that point, I'll want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, before tackling lesson 2. Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page, especially the tip about drawing through your forms, which is more or less what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-29 02:28

Overall you're doing a pretty good job, and your line quality is generally quite confident and smooth. There's just a few areas I'd like to point out.

• I'm glad that you made a point of drawing through all of your ellipses in the table of ellipses exercise, but it's very important that you apply this to all of the ellipses you do for all of my exercises. It helps by allowing you to draw your ellipses more confidently, so they come out more evenly shaped.

• In your funnels, keep the alignment of those ellipses relative to the central line (the minor axis) in mind. Each ellipse should rest on the minor axis such that it is cut into two equal, symmetrical halves down its narrower dimension. Additionally, try to play with giving your ellipses a narrower degree at the center of the funnel, gradually increasing as it moves out towards the ends.

• I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking approach to your rough perspective boxes.

• Your rotated boxes are actually fairly well done, though I'd say that you are struggling with covering a full 180 degree arc of rotation in either direction. Part of this is likely because you skipped through some of the earlier steps I outlined in the exercise description, where we set out boxes on either extremity to establish the range we're aiming for. Without a goal like that, we end up vastly undershooting our rotations.

• Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, and are about where I'd expect them to be. This exercise was included here to get you started thinking about how forms can be rotated arbitrarily in 3D space, without relying on explicit vanishing points. That said, there's certainly room for improvement, so we'll spend a little more time on this particular matter.

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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-30 20:05

Well done! Your lines are generally quite well executed, with a strong sense of confidence which helps maintain their smoothness and flow. This carries on into your ellipses, which are looking quite evenly shaped and consistent. For the funnels, it's important that you not leave the actual curving edges out - right now the way you've approached the exercise has no real solid bounds or criteria, so there's less of a sense of whether or not you actually hit your target or not. By including those curving edges, it's clear whether your ellipse fits snugly between them or not.

Jumping ahead, your rough perspective boxes are looking pretty solid. Just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Excellent work with the rotated boxes exercise. This one was quite challenging, but you did a great job of covering the range of rotations and keeping the system structured and consistent. You're also doing a pretty good job with the organic perspective boxes, but I think a little more attention to this kind of exercise will be beneficial.

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 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

2017-07-30 20:23

Your lines section is fairly well done. You tend to maintain a good degree of confidence as you execute your marks, so your lines come out fairly smooth. This however does not carry over into your ellipses quite as well. Instead, you draw them a little more slowly, resulting in the ellipses coming out stiff and a little uneven. It's extremely important that you apply the ghosting method to every single mark you put down - that means investing the bulk of your time into the preparation phase beforehand, to build up muscle memory, then executing the mark with a confident, persistent pace. This goes hand in hand with why I ask you to draw through your ellipses. It doesn't make a lot of sense if you draw slower, but if you execute your ellipses confidently, you'll find that drawing through your ellipses allows your muscles to correct themselves a little bit on the second pass.

The linework on your rough perspective boxes is a touch on the sloppy site. It's not too bad, but there is some noticeable arcing in places. Make sure you're applying the ghosting method here as well. In addition to this, your hatching lines are quite rough - make sure you draw consistent, parallel lines stretching all the way across a plane from edge to edge, rather than having them floating arbitrarily in the middle. While presentation is not our first priority, it is still important.

Your rotated boxes were a good attempt, although I'm noticing that you do need to exaggerate the rotation of your boxes a lot more, and avoid stretching your boxes out as you did towards the right side of your second attempt. Our brains definitely like things to exist in nice neat grids, so when we rotate our forms away from that, we face resistance. To compensate for this, we need to really push our rotations further than we think we need to. I am pleased to see however that you largely kept the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. This allows us to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes do definitely need work, but that's pretty normal at this stage. I included this exercise here to introduce students to the challenges of rotating boxes freely without relying on explicitly placed vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I would 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. Also be sure to put some emphasis on drawing your ellipses more confidently when you practice those ellipse exercises in the future.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-30 19:01

Nice work. Just a couple things to keep in mind:

• When drawing through your boxes, don't be quite so faint. When you attempt to hide your lines this way, you tend to draw them less confidently, and gain less benefit from having them there at all. For all of my lessons and exercises, I want you to adhere to this principle: if you feel a line will contribute to your understanding of how the objects you're drawing exist in 3D space, draw it with full confidence. Don't try to hide it. If you feel it doesn't contribute however, don't draw it at all.

• Try to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. You generally did a pretty decent job of this, but as your boxes tended more towards towards the far left or far right, the gaps got much larger. Keeping them small allows us to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines.

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

Uncomfortable

2017-07-30 20:55

Overall your work is quite well done. I'm especially impressed by your rotated boxes exercise, as most people struggle a fair bit with that. In general your line quality is quite smooth and confident, although your ellipses are a touch on the stiff side. Applying the ghosting method to every mark you put down is especially important, as it forces you to invest most of your time in the preparation phase, ultimately executing your marks with a confident pace. In the case of ellipses, it helps keep things smooth and evenly shaped. Some of your ellipses were better than others in this regard, but overall I feel like there's a little bit of hesitation when you draw them, as though you're afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes happen - all you can do is prepare as best you can, then let what's going to happen, happen.

For your rough perspective boxes, you've done quite well, just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your organic perspective boxes were a very solid attempt at this particularly difficult exercise. I've included it here largely to introduce students to the challenges involved in rotating boxes freely in 3D space, and I by no means expect students to be able to nail it just yet.

So, I'm going to go ahead and 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. This in particular should help you better grasp how each box sits in 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-30 21:02

You did a good job with the rough perspective boxes, but you mistakenly did the organic perspective boxes exercise instead of the rotated boxes. That said, those were done fairly well. You can count those towards the 250 box challenge, though I'm still going to want you to do the one page of rotated boxes.

Uncomfortable

2017-07-31 16:21

Quite well done! You definitely have the confidence down with your execution, which is an important advantage at this point. My only concern is that as a result, your ellipses may be a touch too loose. I recommend spending more time in the preparation/ghosting phase before drawing them, to improve your accuracy. It also seems to me that when you draw your ellipses, you may not be quite as aware of what your goal or target is - for example, you have a tendency to leave gaps between your ellipses in the funnels, and have your ellipses-in-planes floating a little arbitrarily at times. Always strive to keep your ellipses snug against whatever edges contain them, be it the lines around them, or their neighbouring ellipses. You did this somewhat better with the table of ellipses, but it's definitely something to keep in mind. Having a clear criteria or goal allows you to determine whether or not you successfully met that particular goal.

Your boxes are generally solid. Your rough perspective boxes are coming along great, just be sure to go over your completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes were very well executed - you maintained clear structure, kept your gaps narrow and consistent, and followed my instructions to the letter. Excellent work.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well too - keep in mind that this exercise was largely meant to be an introduction to the challenges of rotating forms freely in 3D space, so I fully understand that students would generally struggle with this, and don't expect perfect work here. Your attempts were about where I'd hope them to be.

So, 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 with those freely rotated boxes. 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

2017-08-02 14:41

Your work is generally very well executed. Your lines are smooth and confident, and your boxes demonstrate a well developing understanding of 3D space. I just caught a couple minor things worth mentioning:

• For the funnels, the alignment of your ellipses is often off somewhat - it's important to keep in mind that the central line represents the minor axis of your ellipses, so each ellipse should be split into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension by that minor axis line. Yours appear to be slanted slightly, favouring one side.

• Your rotated boxes are very well done. The only issues I caught were very minor, and are best demonstrated on this page by the box directly above and to the left of the center, where the corner closest to the viewer seems to be pushed back into the box somewhat. This is best avoided by keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so we can ultimately use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines. Once lines are that close together, we can effectively draw them as being parallel on the page, or very close to it, eliminating some of the guesswork that tends to generate errors.

Your organic perspective boxes were also executed quite well - keep in mind that my expectation here is not for students to necessarily do perfect work on this exercise, but rather to get them to start thinking about how one might freely rotate a box in 3D space. As such, you've done a solid job.

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 in turn clarify where some of your angles might be a bit askew.

As for your questions,

1. I think drawing through your boxes will help with this - when drawing boxes partially (not drawing them where they are occluded by other forms, and not drawing the lines that make up the other side of the form), we only get a partial understanding of how they occupy space. By drawing everything that defines that box in space, we gain a much stronger understanding of the relationships between its angles and lines. Additionally, keep in mind that the initial 3 lines of the Y all point towards a vanishing point off in the distance. Each of these 3 lines belongs to a different set of parallel lines (there are 3 sets of 4 parallel lines), and all of the other lines within a set need to go off towards the same VP. The first line (from the Y) points towards it, and the second line of a set firmly defines where that point sits. Every other line needs to converge towards that point in order for the box to feel correct.

2. Yes - you can think of the center of the funnel being directly at eye level, with the ellipse representing the cross-section of a cylindrical form. That center ellipse is effectively going to be completely flat, and therefore wouldn't be visible as much more than a simple line. As you go above and below it, your ellipses rise above and fall below your eye line, so their degree expands, gradually becoming more circular.

Uncomfortable

2017-08-04 03:02

Pretty solid work. Your linework is especially confident - both in your lines section and your ellipses, and it helps keep your lines smooth and evenly shaped, which is pretty important when it comes to constructing more complex forms, where their solidity tends to weaken if a line gets stiff or wobbly.

Your boxes are generally well done, though there are a few things I'd like to point out:

• For the rough perspective boxes exercise, be sure to go over your completed work as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

• For your rotated boxes, while you ended up executing them quite well, it's important that you follow the instructions and draw through your boxes. That is, drawing all of the lines that make up each box, regardless of those lines are hidden from view. This helps us to better grasp how each box sits in 3D space, and this exercise is very much about understanding that in particular, and how it changes as those boxes are rotated.

• You did quite a nice job with the organic perspective boxes. We'll continue to focus a little more on this sort of topic (of rotating boxes freely in 3D space), but you're doing quite well with this as it is. For this exercise, I do not expect perfect work. Rather, this is an opportunity to get one's feet wet with this particular kind of struggle, and difficulties are expected.

As for that bit about doing the plotted perspective exercise freehand, the bit about using a ruler was actually included in the lesson instructions. There are a few things I leave out and place in the self critique resources, but for the most part, they're just reiterations of things people tend to miss. Sometimes it's necessary for students to make the mistakes and then read about it after the fact for certain things to really sink in. Either way, it doesn't look like doing those lines freehand hindered you at all, so no harm done. I allow for the use of a ruler here primarily so students can focus entirely on the elements of perspective that are being conveyed, like what a vanishing point is, and how they work. Doing the linework freehand tends to provide more distraction than would be beneficial for those students who are new to perspective.

And in regards to switching your pens, I highly recommend sticking with the 0.5 - reason being, it forces you to build up your pressure control. 0.5s are particularly great because they allow you to make some pretty heavy lines, but still make it possible to make lighter marks if you're able to exert a little control. Those who are new to that kind of tool will generally go full-on or nothing, but over time if they're forced to contend only with that thickness, their linework will develop more nuance.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and 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, which is what I mentioned in regards to your rotated boxes.