Uncomfortable

2018-11-30 21:33

Your work here is really phenomenal. You've followed all of the instructions to the letter, and haven't really stumbled on much of anything. Your linework is confident and persistent without any sign of hesitation. You're applying the ghosting method faithfully, giving the planning and preparation phases the time they need to improve the likelihood of accuracy in your strokes.

This carries over into the other sections as well. Your ellipses are taking advantage of the same confidence to achieve even shapes, even when you're placing them in the awkward confines of the planes where most students struggle against the urge to deform them in order to better occupy the space they're given.

Honestly if I was being super picky, I'd point out that there's maybe just a slight issue with your ellipse funnels, where your alignment is off just a bit. It's barely worth mentioning, but you've left me with very little advice to offer - so that's an area that you may want to focus on as you move forwards. The deviation is minimal though.

I'm very pleased with the patience you exhibit in your boxes section. You're not rushing through them and are clearly devoting the same amount of time for each line as you did in the previous sections. Some students get caught up in the fact that this is the 'boxes' section and end up spending as much time as they would have previously on a single line on a whole box. I'm also glad to see that you applied the double checking method to your rough perspective boxes which actually demonstrated a REALLY high accuracy overall. Most students - and even I myself (though to be fair I'm out of practice with this exercise) - will end up with a bunch that are quite a bit further off the mark when estimating the convergence of lines far from the vanishing point.

The last two exercises are where we get into the territory of things that are really intended to be very challenging for students, and I don't expect them to be successful. I don't even expect this exercises to be particularly tidy, as many students get a bit messy when they're overwhelmed. It's more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem, one they may not have otherwise considered.

To start with, you did a great job in keeping the rotated boxes well structured, with narrow, consistent gaps between them. One issue I am seeing however is, as demonstrated here, you've got boxes that ought to be rotated relative to one another, but where their respective edges are converging towards the same vanishing point. That demo image is actually from the rebuild/restructuring of the drawabox lessons that I'm working on at the moment (which will release on christmas with clear do's/don't's for ever exercise). Long story short, it's a pretty common mistake.

Keep in mind how this diagram from the lesson shows how the vanishing points slide along the horizon as a box is rotated.

Lastly, your organic perspective exercise is coming along pretty well. There is room for improvement in terms of keeping the sets of parallel lines converging towards their shared vanishing points, but all things considered you're making great progress. This is also something that is expected, and we'll work on that next.

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 and watch the video there (as I'm sure you will), as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-03 21:55

Gripping the pen too tightly is a pretty common problem, as is pressing too hard (which usually comes along with it). It is definitely something that goes away with practice, but by and large it is definitely a harmful practice and a bad habit on both counts (the former to your hand and wrist, the latter to your pen's tip). When it comes to lesson 1 of course, detail is a non-issue, and these kinds of exercises ultimately should help you to develop better general control of your hand and arm.

As for your work, it's coming along quite well. Your linework is looking very confident and smooth, which is helping you maintain consistent trajectories with your strokes and avoid any sort of hesitation or wobbling. This carries over into your ellipses as well, where you're clearly achieving a fairly smooth, even shape. There is perhaps a touch of hesitation here which creates a slightly stiff appearance, so keep pushing yourself to execute your marks with confidence, but by and large you're heading in the right direction.

I think your attempts at being looser in your funnels backfired. They are definitely more difficult, but you seem to have been losing your overall shapes here a bit more than elsewhere. Overall they're still not bad, but rather than just drawing quickly, remember to employ the ghosting method to maintain control.

Your boxes section as a whole is very well done. The plotted and rough perspective boxes are spot on, and you've clearly taken your time to apply the ghosting method to all your freehand lines, and have generally followed the instructions to the letter. Your rotated boxes - both attempts - are looking really quite good, though you're covering your rotations better on the horizontal axis than the vertical axis. There's definite rotation on both which is great, but it just needs to be pushed and exaggerated a little further to cover the full 180 degree arcs. This is, all things considered, very good - I don't expect students to nail either this exercise or the organic perspective boxes, they're instead more about exposing them to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are also coming along very well. You've still got some inconsistencies here and there with the convergences of your sets of parallel lines towards their shared vanishing points, but that is again - completely expected. We'll continue to work on this next.

Also worth mentioning is that I noticed your use of line weight in varying capacities in this exercise. As such, I figured I'd point out that you have a tendency to leave some of your outer lines (those defining the silhouette of each form) a little lighter than some of the internal ones. In general, you should try and keep the inside a touch lighter than those external lines, in order to create the sense of a single cohesive grouped unit (enclosed by slightly heavier lines). When the internal ones are heavier, it breaks apart this illusion of a solid group and makes it feel more like loosely associated lines. Great work pushing into line weight though, that's definitely great to see.

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 and watch the video there before starting on the work, as they go over a couple techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-05 04:40

1. A lot of people find it easier to engage the shoulder when drawing while standing up, but I think there's a lot of value in learning to do it when sitting down. Keep employing the exercise covered in the intro video (pivoting from each joint one by one, locking the others, to familiarize yourself with what it feels like) so you can better identify when you're drawing from your elbow vs. your shoulder, and correct yourself whenever you catch yourself drawing from the elbow.

2. I answer this one in this point on the FAQ

These questions should definitely be asked directly on the subreddit rather than here, so others can answer them for you.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-07 21:30

Overall your work is coming along well, but there are a couple things that I want to point out.

Your super imposed lines are looking pretty good - the lines are confident, you're focusing on keeping your execution confident and avoiding slowing down or trying to be too careful while actually making the mark, so there's not much wobbling or wavering.

Your ghosted lines do seem a little sloppy at times, though I think I know why. It relates to the question you had about stopping/overshooting. Right now you're trying to tackle a lot of different things at the same time, and I think you might be biting off a bit too much all at once. You've got maintaining a confident stroke, keeping the line straight, getting the line to pass through both points, and finally stopping at the appropriate location. Instead of doing all of these together, try one at a time.

Think of it as though you've got stages of this exercise (and by extension, the planes exercise as well). Until you're able to keep your lines straight/smooth, don't worry about anything else. Once you've got them straight, try adding on the requirement of having them pass through both points. Once you're getting that, add on the final requirement of having them start and stop at the correct points. By breaking them up like this, you can build up the important skills steadily rather than splitting your focus before you're ready.

Also, I do think that you could probably put a little more time into the ghosting/preparation before the execution, as this should help you build up enough muscle memory to get a little more control behind each line. This applies to your ellipses as well - you have a tendency to end up a little loose, and your control suffers from this. We do want to make sure you're continuing to execute the marks confidently, but accuracy is still important. It's just that achieving it means investing more time before execution. Right now you're definitely struggling to keep those ellipses within their specific, defined spaces.

Your plotted and rough perspective boxes are looking pretty good, and I'm very pleased to see that you applied the double checking method to the latter, so you could identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes are both a good start - these exercises are really more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem rather than expecting them to be able to nail them at this point (they're notoriously challenging so don't worry about that). It's just a matter of changing how you regard the challenges involved in drawing in 3D space.

In your rotated boxes, you are actually heading in the right direction, you just need to exaggerate the rotations between your boxes more. Right now they're covering a fairly limited range of rotation, rather than the full 180 degree arc on each axis.

We'll also get some more work in next on your organic perspective boxes - you're headed in the right direction, but we'll want to focus on getting the convergences of your sets of parallel lines to be more consistent as they head towards their shared vanishing point.

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 and watch the video there before starting the work, as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise. Also, look at this as a further opportunity to work on your use of the ghosting method and improve your overall line quality.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-09 00:54

There's some good and some bad here - but the good is very good, and the bad is a pretty normal issue that a lot of students struggle with at first, but that is generally pretty easily resolved.

First with the good - you're demonstrating an immense degree of patience and care with how you lay out your exercises, and the sheer volume you pack into one page. I assign the homework in pages for just this reason - it helps me to identify a student's personality and their personal drive. Some will do the bare minimum (or somehow manage less than that, leaving way too much blank space), and some will go above and beyond, trying to use every bit of space they can. You're the latter, and that'll serve you very well in the future.

The bad is that when you draw your lines, you're highly focused on accuracy, to the detriment of the flow and smoothness of your lines. As a result, you're drawing quite slowly and carefully, which results in a lot of wobbles in your linework throughout the lesson. Instead, you need to be executing your marks with confidence, trusting in your muscle memory and not allowing your brain to consciously guide your hand as you draw. Here's a silly comic illustrating the point.

This issue is pretty much across the board - it's causing your lines to wobble, it's making your ellipses uneven, and it's making your boxes feel less solid. Ultimately, this is what the ghosting method is designed for - it allows you to split the process into multiple phases, where you invest all of your time in planning and preparing, before committing and executing the stroke you've practiced.

Now, most everything else is really well done. If you ignore the wobbly lines, you're demonstrating a good spatial awareness, and you're following all the instructions to the letter.

Your rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes do have plenty of room for improvement, but that's expected and you're within the normal ranges. Both these exercises were assigned in order to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

With your first attempt of the rotated boxes, you weren't quite rotating the boxes along the side much at all (those on either side were fairly parallel to one another, with edges converging towards the same vanishing points. Your second attempt however did have more rotation to it, which is good - they just needed to be exaggerated more to cover the full 180 degree arc on each axis.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well. We'll continue to work on keeping the convergence of your sets of parallel lines consistent towards their shared vanishing points, but it's all coming along quite well.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete, despite that glaring wobbling issue. This is because I want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, which should give you ample opportunity to work on your methodology to achieve smoother, more consistent linework.

Be sure to read through all of the notes on that challenge page and watch the video there before starting the work, as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-10 03:59

Your lines section is fantastic. Your execution is confident and smooth without a hint of wobbling, but still manages to maintain a good deal of control and accuracy with each stroke. You commit to every mark you make and don't show any signs of hesitation or fear of making a mistake, which is exactly what I want to see and will continue to serve you well throughout these lessons and for all the drawings you do.

I strongly agree with your self-assessment. The ellipses are really the only place where you're showing any considerable difficulty, and it stands in stark contrast to the results in the other sections. The biggest issue that I'm seeing is that, while you're drawing through your ellipses (which is great), you are definitely having difficulty keeping it from unraveling. A certain degree of looseness is expected, though in many cases here you do seem to be struggling with keeping them under control. My first guess would be that you may not be drawing these from the shoulder without realizing it, as a smaller radius to your arm motion (perhaps you're drawing them from the wrist?) will require a lot more additional movement from your fingers to accomplish ellipses of any considerable size. You also may not be applying the ghosting method, or not doing so enough - which is strange to be due to your obvious use of it everywhere else, so I'm not confident that's necessarily the case. That said, proper use of the ghosting method will help you develop the muscle memory and acquaint yourself with the shoulder motion needed to execute each mark.

One thing that I do want to recommend here is that you limit yourself to drawing only two full turns of each ellipse, just to keep the ellipses from getting too out of control. You'll still be able to get that driving confidence with which to execute them, but it should help keep things a little more in check.

Other than that, it's really going to be a matter of practice and getting used to using your arm for these kinds of shapes.

It is worth mentioning that I do feel that your later attempts - the retries that is - are certainly better, though at times a bit more stiff. It's really going to be a matter of finding a balance between drawing with that driving confidence and keeping things under control - though I generally find proper use of the ghosting method does allow you to achieve both.

Now your boxes section is extremely well done. Your plotted perspective is solid, but that's no big surprise. You've done a great job of the rough perspective boxes as well and I'm pleased to see that you've applied the line extension method to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes - an exercise largely meant to be quite challenging and like the last exercise (the organic perspective boxes) really only meant to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, was done very well. Both attempts are well structured and achieve a full coverage of both axes, in terms of achieving the full 180 degrees of rotation.

Your organic perspective boxes are on the better end of what I'm used to seeing, though still do have the expected room for improvement. One thing I noticed as well was that in that second frame on the first page, you do get noticeably chicken-scratchy when adding line weight. That's something to keep in mind, though elsewhere (especially that first frame) you're much more successful. There's still work to be done in improving the consistency of the convergence of sets of parallel lines towards their shared vanishing points, but that's normal and is what we will work on next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, though you'll definitely want to focus your warmups on the ellipses. 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 and watch the video there, as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-11 20:08

All in all I'm quite satisfied with your work. Your lines section is pretty solid - a few wobbles through the super imposed lines exercise where you're still a little caught up in accuracy over the smoothness of your execution, but you seem to be fixing this as you move through the second page as well as the ghosted lines exercise. From here your lines look considerably smoother, and the degree to which they are straight is pretty normal. This will improve with practice, and you already show a good deal of growth over the set.

I do agree that your ellipses have a good deal of room for growth, and that you are struggling to get them to fit snugly within the space they're afforded, but it is also clear to me that you are aware of this (even outside of your comment), and that you are working towards fixing it. That's really what I'm looking for here - the quality will come with the warmups and continued practice, but only if the student understands what they're meant to aim for. You clearly do, and are already making moves to improve on these fronts.

Your plotted perspective boxes are fine, but your first attempt at the rough perspective boxes suffers in its line quality. It's pretty clear that in this case you've not put in as much time drawing each line as you could have, especially based on previous lines you've already demonstrated. This isn't abnormal, but it is usually the result of a student being used to applying a certain amount of time to all tasks. First to each individual line, then to each individual ellipse, and finally to each box - but since each box is made up of several lines, that results in each line being rushed needlessly.

Your later attempt at the rough perspective boxes at the end of the set demonstrates a good deal of improvement, where you're clearly affording each line a good deal more time. As for missing the vanishing point, that's totally normal. We extend our lines to identify how far off we are, not so we can chastize ourselves for it, but simply so we know what to work on next.

Despite being designed to be intentionally challenging, the rotated boxes exercise was done fairly well. This exercise, along with the organic perspective one is really only meant to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. That said, you've achieved some great structure here, kept your gaps narrow and consistent, and took advantage of these neighbouring edges to limit your guesswork. The actual rotations between your boxes could certainly stand to be pushed and exaggerated further in order to cover the full 180 degree arc on each axis, but this is a great start.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there is more room for improvement, especially when keeping the convergences of your lines towards their implied vanishing points consistent. Again, this is totally normal, expected, and will be the focus of our next task.

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 the notes and watch the video on that page as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-11 20:38

Nice work! From what I can see, your work does appear to have been conducted quite patiently and carefully, and you've invested your time in the right places. I don't see anything that particularly stands out as having been rushed, though I'm sure it always has the tendency to sneak through in little ways here and there.

So, to start with, your lines section demonstrates an excellent use of the ghosting method, and the general concept of executing each mark with confidence, following taking the time to plan and prepare to improve your chances of achieving accuracy without bogging down the actual mark making process with hesitation. This carries over into your ellipses as well, where they're achieving a smooth and even shape due to your process and the separation of processes involved.

Your plotted perspective is looking pretty solid, as are your rough perspective boxes. I'm also quite pleased to see that you applied the line extension method to check how your estimation of perspective may drift - this is important to keep in mind as you continue to work on these exercises, to see where you can improve, and what patterns exist in the mistakes you're making.

Despite the rotated boxes being intentionally difficult and focused more on exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, you've done a great job. You kept your boxes nicely structured, with narrow gaps between them to limit the use of guesswork. Now, you could stand to push that rotation more (the outermost boxes should be rotated so much that what would have been the front face for the middle box should be almost completely turned away). Still, great work.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well too. There's still some room to work on keeping the convergences of your sets of parallel lines consistent towards their shared vanishing point, but that's normal and expected. This exercise is much like the rotated boxes, more about exposing students to new problems to think about, rather than expecting perfection right off the bat.

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 and watch the video there, as they go over a series of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-12 21:09

It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to go over that exercise again and make a point to apply the ghosting method. You don't seem to be using it in your organic perspective boxes.

Also, if you're posting for critique, I don't currently have you down as being eligible for the private ones. If you are a current patreon supporter, check your inbox as I'll have sent you a message when you pledged. If not, you're welcome to submit it directly to the subreddit or on the discord server where the community can help you out.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-13 22:09

Your lines do start out a little wobbly and stiff in the first exercise, though that's fairly normal. Once you hit the ghosting method the line quality definitely improves a fair bit and you show the willingness to push through with a confident pace, which in turn keeps your lines fairly smooth. You're also keeping this up through the boxes section, so that's solid. There's certainly room to improve, but you're hitting the major notes so far.

Your ellipses are alright, though here and there I can see signs of hesitation where you slow down and that wobbling/stiffness comes in again. Be sure to apply the ghosting method here as well and to get used to executing the marks with the same kind of confident persistence you would with straight marks. Any opportunity to avoid a mistake is over as soon as your pen touches the page, so all you can do is push through and complete the mark.

Your plotted perspective is looking good. Your rough perspective is also fairly well done, though don't forget to go over the completed work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes are a good start, and I'm pleased with how you're keeping your boxes structured with narrow gaps between them, which helps to limit the need for unnecessary guesswork. You are however struggling with getting the boxes to rotate relative to one another. This is normal, as this exercise is more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, but it is something we'll work on. Towards the right side of your set you're doing a somewhat better job, though the rotations are still quite subtle and need to be pushed farther. On the left side however, your rotations are going in the wrong direction. As you move left from the central box, you rotate well for that first step, but the box following that seems to attempt to reverse that rotation. As shown here, watch how the vanishing points slide along the horizon as the box rotates. One VP gets closer to the box and the other slides farther and farther away. Similarly, the plane towards the VP that's getting closer turns away from us, making less of it visible, while the plane on the other side becomes more and more visible.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, and you're demonstrating good line quality. There's still work to be done with keeping your sets of parallel lines converging towards their shared vanishing points in a consistent manner, but again - that's expected, and we'll be working on that next.

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 and watch the video there as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of this exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-13 22:23

In your lines section, you're demonstrating a good thing - a great deal of confidence behind your linework. At the same time though, you're leaning a bit too hard on that, and aren't taking the time to plan and prepare enough before each stroke to ensure that the confidence is directed effectively. As a result, your linework has a tendency to be a touch sloppy at times.

This gets better when you get into the ghosting method, but this is a technique you definitely need to continue to practice. It allows you to draw with that lovely confidence, but the time needs to be invested beforehand in order to keep the line smooth as well as accurate. Right now you're making good progress, but you'll want to work on minimizing how much you overshoot your end points when ghosting.

The same applies to your ellipses - the ghosting method can and should be used here as well. You are doing a good job of keeping your ellipses mostly even and smooth, but they get a little too unravelled and start to loose their shape. It's great that you're drawing through your ellipses as instructed, but keep working towards tightening them up and limit yourself to drawing around the ellipse two full times before lifting your pen - no more (and no less) than that.

This unravelling is especially prominent in your funnels, where I think you may have gotten ahead of yourself, and likely rushed through the exercise somewhat. The focus is not on completing the exercise, but rather on doing every single part to the absolute best of your current ability. What you're showing me needs to be your best, otherwise my advice isn't going to be as relevant, and therefore won't be as helpful.

Your plotted perspective is solid. Your rough perspective is reasonably well done too, though there are two things missing that were mentioned in the instructions:

• You're not framing your compositions (that is, you should be starting with a clean rectangle drawn with a ruler, and then drawing your boxes inside of it as though it were a picture frame).

• You're not going over your boxes as described here. This will help you identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

You did a pretty good job with your rotated boxes - I'm glad that you kept the boxes fairly structured with narrow gaps between them. You also covered the rotation pretty well. The only issue I can see is that you accidentally made the boxes immediately around the center much longer than they should have been, but that's not an uncommon mistake, and it's generally one that's hard to fix once you've made it.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are pretty loose and haphazard, especially when it comes to line quality. The box constructions themselves aren't a big issue (do need to work on keeping your sets of parallel lines converging towards their shared vanishing points but that's normal and expected), but the boxes won't feel solid if your lines aren't smooth and straight. As such, it's extremely important that you use the ghosting method here, and really with every mark you put down.

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 and watch the video there as well. They go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-15 19:05

Honestly, your work here is about as close to perfect as I'd expect it to be. That doesn't mean there isn't always room for growth and improvement, but as far as every point I was hoping to see students hit, you've nailed them all.

Your lines are confident and smooth, executed with no hesitation and ample prior planning and thought. Your ellipses are much the same, able to maintain a smooth, even shape. Your boxes convey a strong grasp of 3D space and how they can be manipulated within it freely. Most importantly though, you've followed all my instructions to the letter. That is perhaps the most challenging thing for students, as there is so much written there that it can be overwhelming (though an imminent rebuild of the website, to be released on December 25th, will hopefully help though not outright solve that problem).

The areas that will improve with continued practice are all entirely normal expected. Things like controlling the degree to which your ghosted lines overshoot their target, tightening up your ellipses as you draw through them so the multiple passes come closer together and merge into a single visible stroke, and so on.

Jumping forward, there are two exercises that are intentionally meant to be more challenging than students can usually manage - the rotated and organic perspective boxes exercises. They're more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, and to break them away from the overly rigid chains of the all-too standard one/two/three point perspective systems.

That said, you did a fantastic job with the rotated boxes, keeping the set well structured, with narrow gaps between them in order to limit guesswork, and covered a full range of rotation on each axis. Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well too, though they're more in line with what I'd expect to see. A great start working with arbitrarily rotated forms, but there's still work to be done in keeping your sets of parallel lines converging towards their shared vanishing points. Again, that's normal and expected.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. You can read through the notes there and watch the video, as I'm sure you will. They go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

wimillion

2018-12-14 19:31

I did some in ballpoint pen but that was only because I wad in a pinch. I tried to keep the same mentality of line economy and ghosting to minimize or eliminate subconscious line fixes.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-15 19:16

From what I can see, your work is generally very well done, demonstrated by smooth, confident linework with no real hesitation or wobbling in your strokes. Your ellipses are generally even and remarkably tight (though in a few cases it does look like you're drawing through them quite a lot - I'd stick to 2 or 3 times, leaning more towards 2 full rounds before lifting your pen). Your use of the ghosting method is apparent throughout, as you're clearly thinking through and planning each mark you put down before executing it, properly separating the process of mark making into its key parts.

In addition to all of this, you're remarkably thorough - while I prefer students to stick to the recommended number of pages (people can really get away from themselves when they start focusing more on their own satisfaction with the results and can fall into grinding which is not a great use of one's time at this point), I do keep an eye on just how the pages are used. While you've definitely done much more than the required amount, you also used the hell out of each page, and that's great to see, especially when it comes to your plotted and rough perspective boxes exercises.

You've also shown considerable improvement on the rotated boxes exercise, where you were doing pretty well from the start, but your overall confidence working without clear vanishing points in this manner has developed a great deal. Personally I think the central one is likely the best, probably due to the proportions for your boxes.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be, or perhaps a little head of that. You're demonstrating a well developing grasp of 3D space, and I'm pleased with your tendency to maintain a fairly consistent sense of scale by avoiding overly dramatic foreshortening across all the boxes in a given scene. There is room to continue improving on keeping your sets of parallel lines converging towards their shared vanishing points consistently.

Now, all of this aside, there is one glaring issue that I hope will be avoided in future submissions - the images you've uploaded are unbelievably small, and it's made for a particularly challenging review. If there's some technical limitation (I've had students who were stationed out of the country for work and relying on shoddy internet with throttling and bandwidth caps), then I can understand that, though in such a scenario I'd consider how the space is being used. Posting just the recommended number of pages and allowing yourself to zoom in closer to them would definitely help a great deal.

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 and watch the video there, as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-17 04:55

Unfortunately you haven't left me a lot to be critical of. Your work is exceptionally well done, especially through the first two sections. Your lines are drawn with great confidence and without any signs of hesitation, resulting in smooth, even strokes. This carries over into your ellipses as well, where it helps maintain ellipses with even shapes, no wobbling, or no awkward deformations.

Into your boxes section, your plotted perspective is looking fantastic. I do start to see the first hint of an issue in your rough perspective boxes however - it seems to me that you may finally be starting to tire. What suggests this to me is that your line quality gets ever so slightly weaker here, with a few visible waverings in your lines. Not quite the wobbling that comes with hesitation, but perhaps signs that you're not drawing with as much confidence as you could, or perhaps aren't putting as much time into the use of the ghosting method as you ought to before executing your mark.

Your rotated boxes, though a bit uneven, are very well done. It's worth mentioning that this exercise, along with the organic perspective one, was assigned with the intent of exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. I don't expect students to nail this just yet, and while there are a few little hiccups with the angles of your boxes, you've done an excellent job. I'm especially pleased with the fact that you kept your boxes well structured and stuck to fairly narrow, consistent gaps, helping eliminate as much guesswork as possible.

Your organic perspective boxes do tend to show that weaker line work again, especially as you push on through the exercise. I can see places where you've gone over existing lines with another stroke to reinforce it - something you should generally avoid. One mark per line is all you need, and when you find yourself drawing additional ones by reflex, you need to step back and consider whether or not you're applying the ghosting method as conscientiously as you ought to.

There is definitely room for improvement here as far as getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but that's entirely normal and expected, and will be the focus of our next step.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto to the 250 box challenge next. Be sure to read through all of the notes on the challenge page and watch the video there as well, as they go over a few techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-17 05:03

I currently don't have you down as being eligible for private homework critiques (those are reserved for the folks who support drawabox on patreon). If you are a patreon supporter, then check your inbox as I'll have sent you a message asking for your reddit username.

Otherwise, I did notice you submitted your work to the subreddit to have the community review your work. That's one great free option, another is to have the folks over at the discord server give you a review.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-17 22:01

Nope, not too early. Once you're pledged, you're welcome to submit your work, under the assumption that you won't cancel your pledge before you actually get charged at the beginning of next month.

Anyway, your work is actually quite well done. Through the first two sections, you're demonstrated exceptional confidence behind your linework, without much hesitation at all. This keeps your lines smooth and straight, and helps you maintain even shapes for your ellipses. You're also demonstrating a good deal of control, which comes from exceptional use of the ghosting method. You're clearly taking your time to plan and prepare before each mark.

Now, this is something that visibly diminishes when you get into the boxes exercises. Not by too much, but I can clearly see some hesitation when you draw lines that exist as part of something larger. There are a couple reasons this could be happening, both being pretty normal:

• You may be feeling intimidated by the fact that these lines are no longer quite as arbitrary, causing you to lose confidence.

• You may be speeding up and investing less time into preparing before each mark. Sometimes students will see each section's work as being assigned consistent amounts of time. For example, in the first section, they may see one line as taking one unit of time. In the ellipses, each ellipse may take one unit of time. And when they reach the boxes, they may be trying to complete each box within one unit of time as well - despite it consisting of several different lines, each of which that should be planned and plotted using the ghosting method. This results in sloppier work, because each line is not given the time it requries.

That said, your boxes exercises were still quite well done. One thing you did forget is to go over your completed rough perspective work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes are fairly well done. Despite this intentionally being challenging (both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were assigned to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered) with no expectation of students succeeding here, you've done a great job of keeping your boxes structured, keeping your gaps narrow and consistent and avoiding any unnecessary guesswork.

I am noticing though that while the boxes around the central one are rotated relative to it, those further out to the sides aren't actually rotated much relative to their neighbours. Instead, they more or less share similar vanishing points. As shown here, those vanishing points should be sliding along the horizon line as the boxes rotate. Instead, your boxes look more like this.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be. You're making good progress in thinking through these kinds of spatial problems, though there is still plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to getting your sets of parallel lines to converge towards a shared vanishing point.

Also, this is where I see your linework getting the most hesitant. That makes sense, considering that this exercise is generally the most difficult.

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 the notes there and watch the video before starting the work as they go over a couple techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-18 22:15

Very nice work! By and large you're doing a pretty good job, but there are a couple little hiccups here and there that I will draw to your attention.

Your lines section is particularly well done - you're executing your strokes with a great deal of confidence, which helps keep your marks smooth and consistent, rather than getting caught up in hesitation and uncertainty, which tends to manifest as wobbling or stiff lines. This is something that mostly carries over into your ellipses, but really only where you draw through those ellipses. You have many attempts where you've tried to nail ellipses in one go (rather than drawing through them two full times before lifting your pen), and as a result you slow down and stiffen up. This is why drawing through your ellipses is so important. You may feel that it becomes something of a crutch, where you have to do that to achieve a smooth ellipse, but that's not the case. As you continue to practice it, you'll get better at keeping those ellipses tight without losing that confidence, and will continually train your muscle memory as you go, ultimately improving your ability to draw ellipses in one go as well.

Moving onto your boxes, your plotted perspective work is good. From the looks of it though, when doing your rough perspective you did not follow the instructions as closely as you should have:

• You used two point perspective instead of one, which split your attention from the challenge of simply lining up your marks with a vanishing point, ultimately diluting the effectiveness of the exercise.

• You didn't go over the work as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

You still did a good job, but following the instructions exactly as they're written really is critical because each one has a specific goal, and modifying it may impact how effectively it works towards that goal.

Your rotated boxes are very well done. The rotation could stand to be exaggerated a little further along the outside boxes, but by and large you've done an excellent job of keeping them all structured with narrow gaps between them so as to limit the amount of guesswork required. By and large this exercise is really just meant to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have considered otherwise, and really isn't something you're expected to be able to nail. That said, you've done a great job.

The organic perspective boxes exercise is very much the same, in that it's more about exposing students to a different kind of challenge and breaking them away from 1/2/3 point perspective systems. Your work here is coming along well, though there is, as expected, more room to be done in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

There is one major issue though - you need to fight back against the urge to immediately reinforce lines upon drawing them. It's something students frequently do early on our of a lack of confidence, but it's a bad habit. Drawing from reflex in this manner breaks away from the principles of the ghosting method, where every mark you put down is planned and prepared beforehand. Keep that in mind as you continue to move forwards.

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 the notes on the page there and watch the video as well, as they go over a number of techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-21 18:45

Doesn't look I currently have you listed as being eligible for private homework critiques. That is reserved for those who support drawabox through patreon - if you are a recent patron, then check your inbox as I'll have sent a message to gather your information.

Otherwise, you're welcome to submit your work directly to the subreddit for a critique from the community, or on the discord server. Both of those are entirely free.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-23 22:38

Really nice work! Your first two sections are really solid. Both demonstrate a considerable amount of confidence behind each stroke, which helps you to maintain smooth, consistent linework without any hesitation or wobbling, as well as evenly shaped ellipses that don't stiffen up when they need to fit in awkward or limited spaces. You're also demonstrating pretty solid control. There's certainly room for improvement, but you're most of the way there and the rest will come with continued practice using the ghosting method.

Your plotted and rough perspective boxes are looking good, and I'm glad to see that you applied the double checking method to your converging lines, as to better identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Now, it is worth mentioning that your rotated and organic perspective boxes aren't perfect, and they're not expected to be. Both of these exercises were assigned with the intent of exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. That said, you're making good headway.

I'm quite happy with how you kept your boxes well structured, with narrow gaps between them allowing you to avoid as much guesswork as possible. When it comes to the actual rotation of the boxes however, aside from those rotated relative to the center, the rest are still running pretty parallel to one another, as shown here. You want to get the same kind of change that we see between the central box and its neighbours (which involves the vanishing points for that box sliding along its axis) to happen between each box. It is a pretty common issue though.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well - there is plenty of room for improving how your sets of parallel lines converge, ensuring that it remains consistent towards their shared vanishing point, but you're moving in the right direction. Additionally, I noticed that you've focused your line weight on the inside of your boxes. I wouldn't recommend this, as it breaks apart the overall cohesiveness of each box, making it feel more like a loosely associated series of lines. Instead, focus that line weight along the silhouette of the form, to enclose the box and make it feel like a more solid unit.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I noticed you submitted the box and cylinder challenges as well - I'd much prefer not having had them all submitted together, though I do understand that you completed all this work prior to submitting. Had you moved onto lesson 2 as well, I would have asked you to do it over, but as the challenges don't have lesson 1 as a prerequisite, I'll critique them next.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-25 01:28

By and large you're actually doing quite well, but there are some technical points to your execution that I'd like to adjust.

Through your lines and ellipses, you're definitely going to great lengths to demonstrate a fair bit of control with your marks, but I can definitely see a touch of stiffness throughout - especially in the ellipses. These are two sides of the same coin - you're able to maintain such fine control because you're drawing a little slower, a little more hesitantly than you ought to, and as a result your linework comes out a bit stiff.

Your first priority with all mark making should be to achieve a smooth, confident stroke, even if that means missing the mark sometimes. Ultimately the ghosting method gives you a path to take that allows you to plan and prepare, investing all of your time in these early phases, before finally executing your mark confidently, without hesitation, and while accepting that nothing you do past the point your pen touches the page will allow you to avoid any mistakes you are going to make. All you can do is commit to the motion and push on through.

This will ultimately help smooth out your lines and make your ellipses much more evenly shaped.

Getting into your boxes, it does look to me as though you're not quite applying the ghosting method as you ought to. It's very important that you get used to applying this technique to every single mark you put down, as it allows you to achieve that balance between premeditated control and confident execution. Most of the lines here do appear to have been drawn without much prior practice or ghosting, so they are rather slow and wobbly.

I am definitely pleased to see that you went over your rough perspective boxes with the line extension method. This will definitely help a great deal to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift. I do want to mention though that the hatching lines you've used here is notably sloppy - try to keep these parallel, consistent and stretched across the plane from edge to edge rather than letting them fall short.

All things considered, you did a really great job with the rotated boxes, which demonstrates a well developing grasp of 3D space. I don't actually expect students to nail this one - it's more about exposing them to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. So the fact that you did such a good job at keeping your boxes structured and consistent while also covering the full range of rotation says a lot.

The organic perspective boxes exercise is another one of those that is more about exposing students to a different kind of challenge. You are doing pretty well here, though there is still plenty of room to improve, especially on the front of keeping your sets of parallel lines consistent towards their implied vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I do want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This will both give you the opportunity to work on your freely rotated boxes and further cement your grasp of 3D space, while also letting you practice the use of the ghosting method.

Also worth mentioning - within a few hours of me posting this critique, I am going to be launching a full rebuild of the drawabox website with revised lesson content. So in case you see this response immediately and start working on the box challenge, I'd recommend that you wait for the launch of the rebuild.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-25 01:42

By and large you're doing very well, but there are a few little hiccups I'd like to mention. Nothing critical - in fact all the major points I focus on are being done quite well.

To start with, your line quality through the ghosted lines and planes is fantastic. Really confident and smooth, no hesitation to them. You're clearly ghosting through them a great deal too, as you're achieving pretty good control.

When doing the planes exercise though, some more variety would definitely be good. Right now all your planes are essentially square/rectangular - try playing with having some sides be shorter than their opposite. This will make it a much more useful precursor to dealing with perspective.

Getting into the ellipses, the confidence of your linework carries over here as well, helping you maintain smooth, even shapes to them. I do recommend however that when tackling the ellipses in planes, try to ghost through them a bit more - based on what I'm seeing, I think you are capable of achieving more control than this without losing the smooth confidence.

Next, for your funnels, I'm noticing that you may have missed the part of this exercise about aligning those ellipses to the central minor axis line, such that it cuts each one into two equal, symmetrical halves. That's one of the core aspects of this exercise, so keep that in mind as you move forwards. Right now they're quite slanted.

Jumping ahead, you did a great job with your plotted perspective. Your rough perspective's looking good too, though it does feel like your line quality is slightly less consistent than it was in your ghosted lines exercise, which suggests to me that you may not have put as much time into each line as you could have.

Your rotated boxes started off pretty decently, but you really nailed it with your second attempt. You're keeping those boxes quite well structured with narrow gaps between them to limit the amount of guesswork that is needed. You're also covering the full range of rotation on each axis, so great work here. I don't actually expect students to nail this exercise, as it's more about exposing them to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise expected. So, that said, you're doing quite well here.

Lastly, while the organic perspective boxes exercise is similar to the rotated boxes one (in that it's more about getting students to tangle with a new, difficult problem), you're making great headway here as well. There is still room for improvement in keeping the convergences of your sets of parallel lines consistent towards their shared vanishing point, but that's entirely normal.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. As I mentioned to you before, the website is getting a massive overhaul, and I should be starting the switch over to the new website in a few hours, so I'd recommend waiting until that is done before you go to read the challenge page notes and start the work.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-25 01:54

Your lines section is looking really solid. Really nice, confident lines, definitely drawing from the shoulder, and not a lick of hesitation so your lines come out smooth rather than stiff or wobbly. I did notice though that your ghosted lines section was a little bare (there's a lot of room on that page for more). I noticed this in the planes exercise as well.

Moving onto your ellipses, you are definitely demonstrating a good deal of control while also keeping them smooth and evenly shaped. There are a few places there where you've drawn your ellipses without any clear bounds (drawing them floating in the middle of space rather than having a set space for them to fill). I always recommend that when you practice your ellipses, try and make sure you've got something clear to aim for - if they're floating more arbitrarily in space, then you're not going to really know if you nailed what you were trying to achieve. This is of course something you only did a few times, but I figured I'd mention it anyway.

Your plotted perspective is fine, though I noticed some weirdness with your line weights. I'm guessing you were just experimenting, but some of those lines (despite being clearly drawn with a ruler) have some scratchiness overtop of them, and others are needlessly heavy. Not really sure what's going on there.

Some of this scratchiness does carry over to your rough perspective boxes. Remember that with every line you draw freehand, you should be applying the ghosting method - this means planning and preparing before the execution of each line, and avoiding any situations where you draw by reflex, automatically reinforcing your mark upon drawing it. You seem to have a lot of that here, causing your lines to appear quite rough. Mistakes happen, but if you go drawing over them, you'll develop a bad habit that results in your mistakes having more attention on them than had you simply left them alone.

The rotated boxes are, admittedly, more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, rather than expecting perfect or even decent work. That said, I am quite pleased with how you kept your boxes structured and consistent, with narrow gaps between them to limit the amount of guesswork required. You did appear to struggle with actually getting them to rotate relative to one another however.

Your boxes are generally rotated relative to the central box, but aside from that, they're running fairly parallel to their neighbours (similar to what's shown here). Remember that you want your vanishing points to slide along an axis as the box rotates, rather than keeping them in the same position.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there is plenty of room for improvement here (which is totally normal). Mainly you want to work on keeping your sets of parallel lines consistent in their convergence towards their shared vanishing point. Your linework is also showing those bad habits I mentioned before, so work on applying the ghosting method to every stroke, and avoiding reflexive drawing.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. While it's good that you started on the 250 box challenge (as that is going to be the next step I'll assign), I am releasing the rebuild of the drawabox website tonight/early tomorrow morning, so you should be sure to go back and read through the newer version of the notes before continuing.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-26 03:40

In your super imposed lines exercise, you're definitely visibly worried about diverging from the guideline, and as a result you draw more slowly. This in turn causes your hand to course-correct its trajectory as you draw, making little wobbles in the line. It's a pretty normal issue, but as is explained in the ghosting method exercise, what we really want is to produce lines that are executed with confidence - enough so that the brain does not interfere and the motion is driven purely from muscle memory. You can read more about this common issue here.

Now, you do this very well in your ghosted lines. They're smooth, consistent and maintain a singular trajectory without much wobbling or stiffness to them. You're also maintaining pretty good control, and while sometimes you're a little off the mark here and there, it's still very well done. At the end of the day, a confident, smooth line that's a little off is still entirely usable, we just need to adjust things a little to work with it. A wobbly line would instead undermine the solidity of the forms we use it to construct.

Once you get into your planes however, you start to fall back into drawing too carefully, and perhaps not putting as much time into the preparation stages. That's where all your time should go - not in drawing the marks slow-and-steady, but in planning your angle of approach and ghosting through the motion repeatedly.

Moving into the ellipses section, you definitely held to drawing more slowly, and as a result they tended to come out uneven and stiff, not quite rounded as ellipses should be. Once again, you should be applying the ghosting method here (as you should be for every mark you put down), and that means doing all the preparation you feel is needed, but ultimately drawing your ellipses with a confident, persistent pace. I do see that you're mostly drawing through your ellipses (except near the beginning there), but this isn't nearly as useful without the confident pace to keep them smooth.

In your plotted perspective boxes, I noticed that your first page was drawn freehand. I'm glad that you moved onto using a ruler in the following page, but in general make sure you're following the instructions to the letter. Each exercise serves a specific, stated purpose, and adding additional challenges for yourself is only going to distract you from them.

In terms of the spatial challenges of the exercise, your rough perspective boxes are fine, though your line quality is a far cry from section 1. Your lines are wobbling all over, and there's no sign of the confidence and smoothness you demonstrated near the beginning. Also, I'm glad to see that you applied the line extension method to your first page, but be sure to apply that after every completed page to ensure that you're identifying and learning from your mistakes. This exercise is all about estimating, and then identifying where your estimations tend to drift. Also, watch your hatching lines there - try and keep them parallel, consistent and stretched all the way across the plane from edge to edge. They're not a requirement for this exercise, so if you don't want to draw them you don't have to - but anything you decide to put on the page must be drawn conscientiously.

Your rotated boxes were off to a decent start, but doesn't appear to have been completed. The demonstration shows a set with five rows and five columns of boxes. This is a difficult exercise, and it's meant to be - I don't expect it to be done well, as it's more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, and simply trying it out carries a lot of value. As such you need only attempt the exercise once, even if it comes out poorly - but make sure you take it all the way to completion.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes do start to improve on the linework front relative to the rough perspective, though they're not as smooth as I know you are capable of. Aside from that, you're moving in the right direction - it's another one of those purposely difficult exercises that are more about getting you to tackle something a little different to get your gears moving. You definitely do need to work on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing point, but we'll be working on that.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I want to see one full attempt at the rotated boxes. Perhaps make a point of rereading the instructions for that exercise before you start. Once that's done, you can submit it and I'll mark the lesson as complete.

At that point I'll want you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Be sure to read the notes carefully as they cover additional techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-27 22:09

Your work is looking pretty good so far. Your super imposed lines are a little too careful (which is pretty normal), but once you get into the ghosted lines exercise you push through each stroke with a lot more confidence, which helps keep them smooth. The ellipses you've added to those planes are also fairly smooth, though I'd recommend trying to make your planes a little larger - refer to the example image included in the updated lesson content for this exercise, and focus especially on how the majority of the page is being used.

Also, make sure you read the instructions more carefully when it comes to the submission requirements. You should only be submitting your work when the whole lesson is complete (in this case, lines, ellipses and boxes).

Uncomfortable

2018-12-28 18:46

Your linework is looking great! Your strokes are extremely confident and smooth, and you're demonstrating an excellent balance between focusing on flow and control in your ghosted lines. You're clearly investing your time during the preparation and planning phases, and then executing the marks without hesitation, resulting in smooth, even strokes.

Do note though that you should not be submitting your work for a lesson until all that lesson's work has been completed. Your next submission for lesson 1 must contain all three sections - lines, ellipses and boxes.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-30 02:05

Overall you're doing a pretty good job here, though there are a few little hitches and things that I want to address. In your initial ghosted lines exercise, there is some wavering here and there - it's not necessarily the kind of wobbling and stiffness we see from being too careful, but I do think it shows some degree of hesitation. You clearly do seem to be aware of it though, and I can see it improving through the rest of your work.

There is however some visible stiffness to your ellipses though. It looks to me like you might be drawing them more from the wrist than your shoulder, which results in little hitches here and there, and a general inconsistency to your control. When drawing your shoulder, the motion itself is simpler and involves fewer pivots actively rotating/moving. When you do it from your wrist, you've got more going on and as a result, the repetition of the action (when drawing through the ellipse) becomes harder to reproduce, resulting in stiffer lines and more separation between the separate times around the elliptical shape. Some are definitely much better than others, but overall this is something to keep in mind.

Your work on the plotted and rough perspective boxes is pretty solid. Most of your line quality is definitely improving, though keep working on getting those ghosted lines to be smooth, smooth, smooth and eliminate that wavering. The things you noticed when doing the double checking are totally normal - our eyes are pretty shitty at this at first, and require a lot more planning, preparation, and ghosting towards the vanishing point.

In your rotated boxes, your line quality is actually really good here, and I'm pleased with how you've kept the boxes structured and have kept your gaps narrow and consistent in order to avoid as much guesswork as possible. That said, you are demonstrating this issue to a degree, where boxes aside from the center one aren't quite rotated relative to their neighbours, and are more or less running parallel to one another towards the same vanishing points.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though they have plenty of room for improvement, especially in keeping your sets of parallel lines consistently converging towards their shared vanishing points. This is entirely normal, as both this and the rotated boxes exercises don't come with the expectation of students being able to demonstrate a strong grasp of either. It's more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2018-12-30 02:42

Definitely better! Glad to see them well structured with narrow gaps between them, and your line quality is looking solid. You are exhibiting this issue, but that's not entirely unexpected.

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

Uncomfortable

2019-01-03 19:21

Really, really phenomenal work here. You've really nailed the major points I was looking for.

Throughout your lines section, you're demonstrating considerable confidence behind each stroke, which helps keep them smooth and consistent. You're not showing any signs of hesitation or wobbling, which is fantastic.

This carries over to your ellipses, where that same confident pace is helping to maintain even shapes. You're also clearly applying the ghosting method to great effect, demonstrating considerable control and keeping the ellipses relatively tight, despite not slowing down to do so.

Smooth, confident lines and evenly shaped ellipses really are the bedrock of solid construction, so this will all serve you very well as you move forwards.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, you're doing equally well here, there's just a couple little things I want to bring to your attention:

• You applied the double checking method nicely to your first attempt at the rough perspective boxes, but it is important that you apply it to all of them - reflecting on your mistakes after the fact is the most efficient way to learn from them, and this helps us to identify where our estimation of perspective tends to drift.

• Your rotated boxes are far and above better than what I'd expect from students at this stage - you're demonstrating a great coverage of the full 180 degree arc on each axis, and are keeping your boxes neatly structured together with narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to minimize any guesswork. The only issue I noticed was that the boxes furthest out towards the sides have a tendency to stretch a little as they rotate, causing them to both turn and get longer as they push back into space. Try to push yourself to tuck these far edges in a little bit more, so we see less of their 'front' planes.

• It is worth mentioning that both the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are included here only to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. As such, I expect most students to struggle a great deal with both of these. Your work on the rotated boxes were better than I'd expect, while your organic perspective boxes are about where they should be - perhaps a little beyond that as well. That is to say, you're doing a great job, are demonstrating excellent linework and are working towards constructing solid, arbitrarily rotated boxes. There is more room for improvement however, especially in keeping your sets of parallel lines converging consistently towards their shared vanishing points. We will be working on this next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-05 00:27

Very nice work overall! Your linework is extremely confident, resulting in lines that are all very smooth and consistent. At the same time, you're demonstrating considerable control over each stroke, with no signs of hesitation or wobbling.

Your ellipses are quite similar in this regard, but with perhaps just a touch of stiffness to them, that comes from focusing too much on accuracy. Accuracy is definitely important, but first and foremost you want to make sure each mark you draw is executed confidently, focusing more on achieving a smooth, evenly shaped stroke. By and large you're still doing fine in this regard, it's just a slight adjustment that's needed.

Great work on the plotted and rough perspective boxes, and I'm glad to see that you're applying the double checking method to latter. Your accuracy is actually far better here than I'd generally expect, so great work there. One thing I noticed was that you seemed to keep all your boxes above and below the horizon line. Into the second page, you started to vary things up a bit, but don't be afraid to have boxes that fall right on the horizon line.

You've done a great job of keeping your rotated boxes well structured, with narrow gaps between them so as to eliminate as much guesswork as you could. One thing I did notice however was that your outermost boxes were pretty close to parallel to their neighbours (as explained here). Be sure to push those rotations further to cover the full 180 degree arc on each axis.

Lastly, your work on the organic perspective boxes is coming along great. Both this exercise and the rotated boxes one are intended to be particularly challenging, and I don't expect students to be able to do a great job with them just yet. Instead, it's more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

Here you're doing really well, though there is still room for improvement - specifically on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge towards their shared vanishing points. We'll continue to work on this next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-05 00:59

Well done! Your lines section demonstrates a great deal of confidence behind every single stroke, allowing you to achieve smooth, consistent strokes without any signs of hesitation or wobbling. You generally maintain this as well through your ellipses, keeping to smooth, even shapes, though I did notice that when you hit the funnels exercise you may have been feeling a less sure of yourself here. There's a touch of stiffness to those lines, where you're drawing a little more slowly, being a little more careful as you execute the strokes, and as a result they come out a little less evenly shaped. Keep an eye on that.

Your work on the boxes section is generally very well done. Your plotted perspective and rough perspective are solid, and I'm pleased to see that you applied the double checking method to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift on the latter.

For your rotated boxes, you far surpassed my expectations - generally this exercise is more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, and is not really about expecting success of any real level. That said, you kept the boxes well structured, with narrow gaps between them to eliminate as much guesswork as you could. You also did a pretty good job of covering the full 180 degree arcs of rotation on either axis.

Worth mentioning, I noticed that towards the outermost boxes, while rotating them, you also stretched them back a little bit. This is a pretty normal response that happens when you rotate the form, but still feel compelled to expose more of that box's face than is necessary. Try tucking them in a little more, and allow yourself to show only a sliver of that box's face in the future.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well. I'm pleased to see that you applied the drawing-through technique here to better understand how each box sits in 3D space, and you definitely benefited from it. There is still room for improvement, which is as expected (this is again another one of those exercises where students aren't expected to produce perfect work), specifically in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next to get some more practice in on those freely rotated forms, and to take what you've already developed in terms of your understanding of 3D space and really cement it early on.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-05 20:39

Very nice work overall! To start with, your lines section is very well done - each stroke is executed with a confident, persistent pace, which helps you to maintain a smooth stroke with no signs of hesitation or wobbling. You're also applying the ghosting method very well, and achieving a good deal of control without sacrificing the flow of your marks.

Your ellipses are also pretty well done, mostly executed with that same confidence so as to achieve even shapes, but I did notice that some of them - especially in the table of ellipses exercise - have a slight tendency to get a little pointier towards their bottoms. This is something you'll want to keep an eye on, though you do improve on it through the rest of the lesson. If you find yourself doing this again, try and look at where you're moving your arm from - it's more common to see some deformation when you're drawing ellipses from your wrist, rather than your shoulder.

Your plotted perspective is looking great. Your rough perspective boxes are fairly well done, though I can see a (very slight) decrease in confidence with your linework, when I compare it to your earlier use of the ghosting method. It's not uncommon for students to falter a little when faced with drawing more complete forms with their lines, because they get caught up in the fact that they're trying to draw something more complex. When doing this, always focus on the individual stroke you're trying to draw. Once you've set out the points you're trying to draw between, don't worry about the rest of it, focus only on applying the ghosting method confidently and smoothly, without any hesitation. For the most part your lines are still well done here, I'm just remarking on a very small shift in confidence.

Your line quality is definitely improved again when you hit the rotated boxes. You definitely did struggle with the arrangement of the boxes here as well, and I noticed that you left out the four corners - these are usually the ones most find to be most difficult. No matter how daunting a challenge may be, you need to complete each exercise in its entirety. Don't stop early because you feel like trying for the hardest part might make you "ruin" the result. The final drawing doesn't actually matter - the only thing of value here is what you learn from doing it.

In truth, this exercise is meant to be challenging, and I don't expect students to succeed with it on their first few tries. It's really more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

In addition to the missing corners, I did notice that your outermost boxes had a tendency of running fairly close to parallel with their neighbours, an issue I explain further in these notes.

Lastly, you're off to a great start with your organic perspective boxes. Like the previous exercise, this one is again more about getting students to try something that is beyond them, to get them to start thinking about different kinds of spatial challenges. That said, you're moving in the right direction. Next we'll focus on exercise that'll help you work on keeping your sets of parallel lines converging consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but for now you're doing fine.

Before I mark this lesson as complete, I want you to try the rotated boxes exercise once again. This is not because you made mistakes, as those are expected. It's because you didn't complete the exercise in your last attempt, so I want to see a single completed attempt.

Once you submit that, I'll mark this lesson as complete. At that point I'll want you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-05 21:02

Your lines section is coming along great - you're drawing each stroke with a confident, persistent pace, and applying the ghosting method quite well so as to increase your overall control without sacrificing that smooth, consistent flow. There isn't much in the way of hesitation or wobbling, so you're definitely doing great on this front.

Your ellipses are coming along, but they do require some adjustment. For the most part, you're only drawing around your ellipse 1, maybe 1.25 times. In the instructions, I'm pretty adamant that you should be drawing through your ellipses 2 full times before lifting your pen. This is something I want you to do for each and every ellipse you draw for these lessons. It'll help you maintain a confident, persistent pace, to keep your ellipses evenly shaped, while also allowing you to maintain enough control for those ellipses to be usable in your usual drawing. When attempting to nail them in one go, we either lose control of them or draw too slowly, resulting in an uneven shape. As you continue to work on it, your ellipses will 'tighten up' - that is, the gaps between the two lines around the ellipse will shrink, until they overlap perfectly. This takes a great deal of practice and time however, and is your goal.

The ghosting method should also be applied here as a means to improve your overall control and work towards that tighter ellipse.

Your funnels are generally coming along pretty well - there are a couple where your ellipses are a little misaligned (including the one where you neglected to draw the minor axis), so keep working on that, but generally you're doing pretty well on this front.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, your plotted and rough perspective boxes exercises are done well. I'm glad to see that you're applying the double checking method to the latter, so as to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

If you do decide to add hatching lines to these boxes, or really to any exercise, make sure you're not rushed or sloppy about it - keep your lines consistent, parallel and stretch them all the way across the plane from edge to edge rather than letting some of them float arbitrarily.

Very nice work on the rotated boxes - you kept them structured with consistent, narrow gaps between them so as to limit unnecessary guesswork, and you did a fairly good job covering the full range of rotation on each axis. I did notice that you found yourself having to add an extra box to cover the full arc, so you probably may want to work on pushing and exaggerating your rotations a little further in the future in order to cover it with just the 5 boxes, but all in all you've done very well.

It's worth mentioning that both this exercise and the organic perspective boxes are intended to be challenging, and are more about exposing a student to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. They're not expected to be done perfectly, so you've done very well with the rotated boxes.

The organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there is plenty of room for improvement here, specifically in keeping your sets of parallel lines converging consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge as your next step.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-06 18:59

At the beginning, your lines start out pretty good. Fairly confident, achieving reasonably smooth strokes, with a little bit of hesitation and wavering here and there that causes some of your lines to wobble a bit here and there, but nothing particularly abnormal or worrying.

Your ghosted lines are fairly well done, though again - keep pushing the confidence of your execution so as to eliminate any hesitation as you execute your marks. Once your pen touches the page, any chance of avoiding mistakes you might make goes out the window, so all you can do is push through and get the stroke finished, relying on the muscle memory you developed through ghosting. You may feel some benefit from putting more time into preparing/ghosting beforehand.

You've got a good start on your ellipses, but I do think you're maybe leaning a little hard into 'drawing through' them. Drawing through your ellipses is certainly a good thing, but from the looks of it you've got a number of these where you've gone around them four times. I'd recommend trying to aim for two full times around the elliptical shape before lifting your pen.

When you hit the funnels, your ellipses do start to get noticeably uneven - always remember that the flow, smoothness and evenness of your shape is your first priority, rather than accuracy. Again, make sure you're using the ghosting method, because this will allow you to plan and prepare beforehand, then execute the mark with a confident pace.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, your line quality here definitely suffers a great deal. You're clearly not putting nearly as much time into ghosting your lines, and you're likely drawing a little more slowly to compensate - the result is that your lines wobble. It's not an uncommon problem, but it is one we'll have to deal with. Additionally, I'm glad you applied the error checking technique. It is pretty normal to see that your lines deviate from aligning to the vanishing point pretty frequently. One thing that helps is that when you ghost your lines going back into the distance, ghost them all the way back to the vanishing point (even though the line you draw will not extend that far back).

In your rotated boxes, I am pleased that you kept the boxes nicely structured, with narrow gaps between them so as to avoid any unnecessary guesswork. An issue that I did see however was that your rotation was very limited between boxes other than the central one. Sometimes there was no rotation at all (as demonstrated in these notes), and other times it was very slight. As a result, you definitely struggled to cover the full 180 degree range on each axis and found yourself having to add more boxes than were demonstrated in the example.

Now this exercise and the organic perspective one are meant to be challenging, so don't feel too bad about this. I don't expect students to have an easy time of this exercise, and I certainly don't expect it to be performed well on the first few attempts. The point is instead to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

As such, the organic perspective boxes is similar - you're moving in the right direction, but there are definitely areas for improvement, specifically keeping your sets of parallel lines for each box converging consistently towards their shared vanishing point.

Now, all in all, there are plenty of things to work on. That said, I am going to mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This will help you develop your understanding of these arbitrarily rotated 3D forms further, while also giving you the opportunity to work on your line quality and basic usage of the ghosting method.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-06 19:10

Pretty nice work! Your lines start off quite smooth and confidently drawn, so that's great to see. There isn't much wavering or hesitation in your execution, so they remain fairly consistent through their lengths. You're also employing the ghosting method to great effect, which is great to see. As you continue to work on this, keep pushing that confident, persistent execution, and you'll continue to see improvement, but as it stands you're heading down the right track.

Your ellipses are fairly well done, though I am noticing a bit of stiffness to their shapes, where it appears that you may be drawing them a little more slowly in order to achieve better accuracy. Remember that accuracy is important, but it comes second to achieving a smooth, even shape. Trust in your muscle memory and remember that once your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid any mistakes you might make have effectively passed - all you can do is push through with confidence. You might make a mistake, but it's better to have a smooth, even stroke that misses the mark slightly than a stuff ellipse that deforms here and there in order to maintain its accuracy.

Jumping through the plotted and rough perspective exercises, your line quality is looking great, as are your box constructions. I'm also pleased to see that you applied the line extension technique to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

For your rotated boxes, you definitely did a good job of keeping your boxes well structured, maintaining narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to avoid any unnecessary guesswork. I did notice however that you did stretch and deform some of these boxes a little as you rotated them, resulting in the corner boxes to compound these deformations. It's not an uncommon mistake, and you've done quite well for your first attempt here, but it is something to keep in mind as you move forwards.

All in all, it is important to understand that I don't by any means expect perfect work (or even anything resembling success) for this exercise, or the organic perspective one. These exercises are assigned here purely to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

As such, your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there certainly is room for improvement - specifically in ensuring that your sets of parallel lines converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. We'll continue working on that next.

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.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-06 23:32

You start off quite well - your lines are fairly smooth, and you're executing them with a good deal of confidence, which keeps hesitation and wobbling at a minimum. That isn't to say you don't waver at all, so there is still room for improvement, but that will continue to develop as you further practice your use of the ghosting method and strike that balance between investing all of your time in the planning and preparation phase, and executing with a confident, persistent pace.

Your ellipses do show a little bit more hesitation, which causes them to reflect a bit of stiffness in their linework. You're not far off, but you are putting more weight on accuracy. As a result, the smooth, even shape of the ellipses we want takes a bit of a hit. As always, continue applying the ghosting method here - which means putting all your time in the preparation, and executing with full awareness of the fact that any opportunity to avoid mistakes is over once your pen touches the page. All that can be done from there is to push through and complete the mark.

Admittedly this does actually improve as you get into the ellipses in planes - here they're looking much smoother, which is a little interesting because usually most students stiffen up when they're faced with the challenge of cramming their ellipses into these awkward shapes. So great work there.

Jumping ahead, your plotted and rough perspective boxes are pretty good - though in the latter, your freehanded lines still show some wavering as mentioned before. I am pleased to see that you're applying the double checking method there, to better identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

While your rotated boxes are a little squashed horizontally, and each box has quite a bit of depth to it, you've actually done a pretty fantastic job. You've nailed two of the main things I look for - firstly, you kept your boxes well structured, with narrow gaps between them to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. Secondly, you covered the full 180 degree range of rotation on each axis and conveyed a good deal of rotation from box to box. Very well done.

It is worth mentioning that this exercise and the organic perspective boxes one are both intended to be more challenging than most students can manage at this point. Rather than looking for perfect work, I'm merely looking to expose students to a kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered.

Now, your organic perspective boxes are more in line with my expectations - you're off to a good start, but have plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. This is something we'll continue to work on.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This will give you both an opportunity to work on your linework and use of the ghosting method, as well as a chance to further practice your free rotation of boxes in space.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-07 20:10

Your ellipses are looking great - you've drawn each one with a confident, persistent pace, and have held true to the recommendation of drawing through your ellipses, and as a result they each come out looking quite evenly shaped. In addition to this, you're employing the ghosting method to great effect, to help keep them accurate while still maintaining that confident execution.

Admittedly I am a little disappointed to see the boxes section done on lined paper - in the future, avoid doing this, as it really does have an impact on the amount of care you're likely to use when going through the work. It's much easier to let yourself be sloppy on lined paper (or otherwise messy paper) than it is when working on a clear blank sheet.

That said, you're generally doing a good job. One small note about your plotted perspective boxes - when you're applying hatching lines to a surface, make sure your lines are straight, parallel and consistent, and that they stretch all the way across a given plane from edge to edge rather than floating sloppily in the middle.

I'm glad to see that you applied the extension method to your rough perspective boxes to check how your estimation of perspective tends to drift. Make sure you draw each of these in a frame however and draw out your explicit horizon line, as instructed in this step.

You did a pretty solid job with the rotated boxes - you've kept them well structured with narrow gaps between them. You also covered a good range of rotation on each axis - you could stand to push that rotation a little further from box to box so as to cover the full 180 degrees, but you've generally done a very good job all the same.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are about where I'd expect them to be for this lesson, though there is plenty of room for improvement here in terms of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

Now, the normal thing I'd do based on this work is mark it complete and assign the 250 box challenge - that's where things get a little complicated, since you've already completed it. You did mention that your boxes for this lesson were done beforehand (i'm assuming before the 250 box challenge), so at this point I should be basing my assessment for your boxes (at least for this last exercise) on your box challenge work.

Based on that, I am going to mark this lesson as complete, but I want you to go to the box challenge, reread the material there in full (as well as my critique of your other box challenge work), and do another 50 boxes. You can number these from 251-300. I want to make sure that you have a good coverage of shallower boxes along with those with more dramatic foreshortening (as I mentioned in my critique of your box challenge).

Uncomfortable

2019-01-08 00:03

I currently don't have you down as being eligible for private homework critiques - that is reserved for those who support drawabox through patreon. If you are a patron, then be sure to check your inbox there as I'll have sent a message to grab your reddit username.

If not, you're welcome to get a free critique from the community, by submitting your work directly to the subreddit or by posting it over on the discord chat server.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-08 20:03

You're definitely approaching your linework with a great deal of confidence, which certainly is good, but along with that there are several signs that you're definitely rushing through the work far faster than you should be. Drawing with a confident pace is great because it allows you to achieve a smooth, consistent stroke, but you absolutely need to get used to combining it with the ghosting method. That means planning and preparing beforehand to ensure that you can still maintain some degree of control. Just because we're separating the preparation out from the execution phase doesn't mean that we're throwing it aside altogether. Keep that in mind, above all else.

In your ghosted lines exercise, work on getting your lines to fall directly between the start and end points without shooting, all the while maintaining the confidence of your stroke.

In your ellipses, they're definitely getting pretty loose. Drawing through them is great, but you're taking it to a point where they're no longer holding together, so work on that as well. As with every other mark, the ghosting method will help you here, as the preparation phase will help increase your general control.

For your funnels, watch for their alignment - they tend to be slightly slanted, whereas the central minor axis line should cut each of them into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower dimension.

Your plotted and rough perspective boxes are both done pretty well. There is still a bit of wavering in your lines in the rough perspective one, but generally you are demonstrating better control than before. I'm also pleased that you're applying the double checking method here to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes were obviously a challenge - it is certainly meant to be, as I've mostly assigned this exercise with the intent of exposing students to a kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. That said, there is one major issue that caused you trouble. As explained in this step, make sure you're keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent. By keeping things structured in this way, you can use neighbouring edges as hints when drawing new lines. When you don't follow this, you end up having to use a lot more unnecessary guesswork. In general it also doesn't look like you followed all the steps as closely as you could have - for instance, you seem to be missing this step.

Lastly, the organic perspective boxes are similar to the previous one. They're intended to be challenging, and it's about getting students to think about different kinds of spatial problems. As such, you do have a great deal of room for improvement - specifically getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points (right now you don't really seem to be entirely aware of where their vanishing points ought to be). This is something we'll be working on next.

Now, you do have a lot of room for improvement, but I am going to mark this lesson as complete. Your next step is going to be to move onto the 250 box challenge. There you can continue to practice your use of the ghosting method, getting used to taking more time with each stroke, while also further developing your understanding of 3D space. Make sure you read through the notes there - it's not just about drawing boxes, there are important steps to be applied to your boxes once they've been completed that will help you make the most of the exercise as well.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-09 17:52

Pretty nice work overall! There are a couple little hitches that we'll address, but by and large you're demonstrating pretty good linework and a solid understanding of 3D space.

When drawing your lines, you're generally doing so with a fairly confident pace, which helps keep your lines from wobbling too much. There is a little bit of wavering here and there in your ghosted lines so this is something you can certainly improve upon, but you're heading down the right track. Just remember that when your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid any mistakes you may make has passed - all you can do is push through without hesitation and move onto the next mark. Ultimately that's what the ghosting method is all about, and why it's important to apply it stringently to every mark we make. It allows us to break the process down into planning/preparation, where we invest all of our time, and execution, where our only focus is trusting in our muscles and making the mark smoothly and consistently.

Your ellipses are quite similar. Relatively confidently drawn, they're pretty evenly shaped and maintaining a fair bit of control, so by and large they're coming along well. Keep pushing that confidence though, and applying the ghosting method. Also, I noticed that in your funnels you had a tendency to drop little gaps between your ellipses - this was likely unintentional, but it's still something worth being aware of. Try keeping those ellipses snugly against one another.

Your work on your boxes demonstrates that you're developing very well when it comes to your general grasp if 3D space. Your plotted perspective boxes are great (though that's entirely expected), but this carries over into your rough perspective boxes as well. The same slight wavering of your line quality applies here, but by and large you're demonstrating a solid grasp of the concepts and are able to estimate your convergences quite well. I'm glad that you're applying the double checking method however, as it shows us how that estimation drifts, so we know what to work on during our next attempt.

Your rotated boxes are really well done. You're keeping the boxes well structured with narrow gaps and eliminating any unnecessary guesswork. You're also covering the full range of rotation on each axis, which is great to see. Admittedly I fully expect students to struggle in this area - both this exercise and the organic perspective one are assigned here not with the expectation of receiving perfect work, but rather just to expose students to a kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered.

Now your organic perspective boxes are more in line with this - they're moving in the right direction but have plenty of room for improvement, especially when it comes to getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. We will work on this next, but this is completely normal and expected.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge as your next step.

johnnylamonte

2019-01-10 14:28

Also yeah i completed this lesson before but took a long break so best I start over and get everything right.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-10 22:11

Very nice work! By and large you've done really well here, and have ticked all my boxes. There are a couple of minor hiccups we'll address, but by and large you're doing great.

To start with, your line quality is fantastic. You're executing those marks with the smooth confidence I expect from the use of the ghosting method - you're not hesitating or drawing too carefully, but you are investing your time wisely into the planning and preparation phases, and as such are achieving lines that are straight as well as well controlled.

This applies to your ellipses as well - the confidence with which you draw them is helping you to maintain smooth, even shapes, without any distortion or deformation. Ultimately, straight lines and even ellipses are the bedrock of solid construction, so this will help you as you move forwards.

Jumping ahead to the rough perspective boxes, you've done a great job with the spatial aspect of the exercise but it is worth mentioning that your line quality here is not quite as good as you demonstrated yourself capable of previously. It's not terrible or anything, but there are in places various signs of wavering or hesitation. It's quite normal to see students draw a little more carefully when drawing lines that belong to a larger form - it is however important to get used to focusing in on the mark you're making and ignore everything else. Once you set the start and end points, all there is to do is draw a line - a task you are definitely capable of.

Your line quality does improve again in your rotated boxes, so that's a good sign. As for the spatial aspects of this exercise, you did an okay job, but there is one major issue that held you back - you didn't keep the gaps between your boxes narrow as instructed to here, and as a result, had to rely a lot more on guesswork. I explain this issue in these notes (though your results weren't nearly as bad as that exaggerated example).

Now, to be clear, this exercise is meant to be very challenging. It's really about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, rather than expecting them to do it perfectly.

The organic perspective boxes are much the same, in that it's more about how it makes you think. As such, you're doing pretty well, but there are definitely some inconsistencies in regards to how your lines converge towards their shared vanishing points. You can see this if you extend your lines back into space and study how they come together.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Your next step will be to move onto the 250 box challenge. It's a little awkward assigning it to you considering that you have already completed it, but since that was nearly two years ago, I'm treating this as something of a clean slate. You'll definitely benefit from it, but be sure to read the notes and watch the video on that page before starting the work, as it's more than just drawing a bunch of boxes these days.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-11 21:57

You've got a pretty good start here. There are a couple things that I want to address, but by and large you're moving in the right direction.

What I noticed is that when you execute your marks - be they straight, ellipses, or otherwise - you tend to draw with a little bit of hesitation. When we apply the ghosting method, we focus all of our time on the planning and preparation phases, so we can execute with full confidence, trusting in our arms and not holding ourselves back or trying to correct with our brains as we go. Your hesitation is a little minimal, but it is present enough to see a little wavering in your lines, and is more prominent in your ellipses where it results in some stiffness.

Always remember that once your pen touches the page, there is nothing you can do to avoid any mistakes that may occur - all you can do from this point is commit to your stroke and push forwards. This will ensure that your lines are smooth, that their trajectories are consistent, and that your ellipses remain evenly shaped.

Jumping ahead to the boxes, you've done a pretty good job through the plotted and rough perspective exercises. One thing about the latter - try placing your vanishing points in different locations along the horizon when doing your rough perspective. I noticed that you put them in the same place through both pages.

It's worth mentioning that the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises are expected to be extremely challenging for students at this stage. They're really about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

As such, you definitely did have quite a struggle with the rotated boxes, though this is entirely normal. Towards the left side of your middle row, you did a pretty decent job of getting your boxes to rotate, but towards the other sides you ended up keeping them more parallel, as shown here. You did however keep the gaps between the boxes nice and narrow, which helped you to eliminate a good deal of guesswork.

Your organic perspective boxes are similarly moving in the right direction, but there is room for improvement, especially on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points. We will be working on this next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-11 22:11

There are a few little concerns I'd like to raise, but by and large you're doing a pretty good job with this lesson.

I think your use of the ghosting method is a little inconsistent at times. You've clearly demonstrated in various parts of this lesson that you can apply it quite well, but there are definitely places where you're a little more relaxed or sloppy with it, resulting in lines that waver or wobble. Basically, sometimes you have a tendency to invest less time in the preparation/planning phases, and you offload it onto the execution phase (where you're actually drawing the mark). This execution phase should always be executed with a confident, persistent pace, you don't want to be drawing with any hesitation or being overly careful. All that care should be taken prior to this phase.

For the most part, you're actually doing fine with your straight lines (aside from when you've got some little stray marks). This problem that I'm raising is more of a problem when you're drawing your ellipses, which tend to come out a little more stiff and uneven than they ought to. Drawing with a confident pace will allow you to achieve a smoother, more consistent shape. This will in turn reduce your accuracy somewhat, but that's where the ghosting method helps to compensate.

Your plotted perspective work is looking solid. Spatially, your rough perspective is done well, though I think your first page of this exercise is where your linework takes a real dip. Second page is better again. Also, don't forget to go over your completed work for this exercise as described here to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes are really well done. Your linework is solid, your awareness of how these forms sit in 3D space is fantastic, and you're achieving a great range of rotation on each axis. Very well done, no complaints here. Also worth mentioning that this exercise really is more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, so the expectation is that they'll struggle a great deal. You've exceeded my expectations here.

This whole expectation of struggles applies to the organic perspective boxes as well. You've done a good job here too, but there is room for improvement (which is entirely normal), specifically in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

So, I am 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 the notes on that page as they go over a couple important techniques that'll help you make the most of the exercise.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-11 22:46

Nicely done! Your linework is looking quite confident and smooth - there's no real hesitation when you execute your marks, and you're clearly investing a good deal of time into the planning and preparation phases of the ghosting method, so you're demonstrating pretty good control. This applies to both your lines and your ellipses - the latter of which is being kept quite even and smooth.

One minor thing I noticed in regards to your funnels exercise is that here and there you have a tendency to tilt them slightly, causing them to become misaligned to the central minor axis line. Keep that in mind, as it's a major focus of this exercise. It's all about getting that central line to cut each ellipse into two equal, symmetrical halves down their narrower axis.

Your plotted and rough perspective boxes are looking great, and I'm very pleased to see that you're applying the double checking method to the latter to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

For the rotated and organic perspective boxes, it is important to mention that I don't actually expect students to turn in perfect work here - it's about exposing them to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. That said, you've done a pretty great job. Your rotations along your major axes are looking pretty good - the corners tend to rotate a little less though, so you do need to get used to pushing and exaggerating their rotations a little more.

Your organic perspective boxes are also coming along well, though there is still room for improvement, mainly in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. This is what we'll focus on next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-12 02:03

Just responding to let you know that it did indeed work! :D I'll add this to my backlog, so you should receive a critique tomorrow.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-12 19:04

For the most part your linework is looking pretty good. There is just one minor concern that I want to address, though it's something to keep in the back of your mind rather than trying to make any concerted effort to modify your approach.

For the most part, you're drawing with a fair bit of confidence, and are applying the ghosting method pretty well (obviously investing most of your time into the preparation phases). I am however noticing a hint of stiffness/wavering in your lines that suggests to me that when you make your marks, you are hesitating slightly. Because of this, you're not pushing forwards with the full confidence you could be using, and as a result, your brain interferes just a little bit here and there and the line generally shakes.

This kind of wavering can also come from occasionally drawing more from the wrist or elbow than the shoulder, so make sure you're doing your best to be aware of which pivot is driving the motion of your arm.

I say that this is a minor thing because for the most part, you are following the processes properly - it's largely just a matter of getting used to accepting that the second the pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid a mistake that may occur is over and all you can do from this point on is push forwards and move onto the next mark. This principle applies to all linework - straight lines, curves, and ellipses as well. All of them should be broken up into distinct steps as described for the ghosting method.

I should also mention that the instructions do state that you should be submitting your homework once the entire lesson is completed (in this case, the lines, ellipses and boxes sections). Every now and then people miss this requirement, (and you've gone through considerable difficulty getting your work submitted), so I've critiqued what's here anyway - just be sure to submit the whole thing next time.

I look forward to seeing the rest of your work when it is completed.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-12 19:13

Great work! Above all else, one thing that stands out is the fact that your linework demonstrates a considerable amount of confidence behind each stroke, which helps to maintain a certain degree of smoothness and consistency to each and every mark. This is true for both your lines as well as your ellipses, where it helps to keep those shapes even and circular.

I can also see that while you are making a concerted effort to be accurate and control your marks, you're not allowing that to supersede the main priority of smooth lines with consistent trajectories. Continued work with the ghosting method will take your marks that last mile and help improve your accuracy further, though as it stands you're doing very well.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, your plotted perspective and rough perspective boxes are solid, and I'm pleased to see that you applied the double checking method to the latter of them.

It is worth mentioning that the rotated boxes (and the organic perspective boxes) are more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, and they are expected to be challenging. Overall you did a pretty good job, and I'm glad to see that you kept the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. Your rotations themselves were successful in many areas, though towards the top and left could certainly have been exaggerated further to fully cover the range of rotation on those axes. Still, it's clear that you have a good grasp of how this exercise works.

Your organic perspective boxes are also coming along well, and by and large you're showing a well developing grasp of 3D space. There's still room for improvement - of a subtler sort - when it comes to keeping the convergences of your lines consistent towards their shared vanishing points, but you're well on your way to achieving that and we'll continue to work on it next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge as your next step.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-12 19:46

Pretty nice work overall. Your pens do seem to be a touch on the dry side even when you start out, but you're very clearly executing each of your marks with a good deal of confidence behind each stroke, which helps keep your lines smooth and your trajectories consistent. You carry this over into your ellipses as well, which helps to keep them evenly shaped and avoids any stiffness or wobbling. My only recommendation here is to continue working on your use of the ghosting method to keep developing your general control and accuracy (getting your ghosted lines to fall directly between the start/end points, and working on getting your ellipses to fit more snugly within the spaces you've allotted for them). This is completely normal however, and you've made the right call in focusing on your overall flow first.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, your plotted perspective is looking solid. Your rough perspective is also quite well done, and I'm glad to see that you're applying the double checking method here to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift. One minor issue I did notice however was that you do need to work on getting your horizontals to run more parallel to the horizon, and your verticals to run more perpendicular to it. You get this right in many areas, but there are a noticeable few that slant slightly.

You've done a great job of keeping your rotated boxes structured with narrow gaps between them so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. The only issue here that I can see is that your boxes directly neighbouring the central box actually rotate too drastically. As a result, the boxes towards the outside of the set can only rotate so much relative to their neighbours, and so the shift in rotation is inconsistent. It's a big jump, followed by a very small turn. This gives us the impression that the outer boxes are running more parallel to their neighbours.

It is fair to say that both this exercise and the organic perspective boxes are about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. They're expected to be difficult, and all things considered, you've still done a pretty great job with them.

Your organic perspective boxes are much the same - moving in the right direction, but with room for improvement. There's two major areas for this - firstly, in this step I do mention the importance of avoiding overly dramatic foreshortening - something you've used a fair bit of here. Secondly, as there is with everyone working through this exercise at this point, we can certainly work on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. That's what we'll be doing next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-15 22:14

If you go to the page for a given lesson and click the "Finished your homework? Get it critiqued" button at the bottom of the table of contents, it'll show you the variety of ways you can get your work reviewed. From there, just click the "Private Critiques, Patreon Only" button and it'll take you to the correct reddit thread for submitting your homework.

Anyway, by and large you've done a good job but the way you've jumped between following the instructions and not doing so really threw me a bit. In the challenge notes, I explain why it's important that you both draw through your boxes as well as apply the extension method - and you're clearly aware of that as you've applied the techniques - so I don't really understand why you didn't apply them all the way through.

You are showing considerable improvement in the confidence of your linework as well as the consistency of the convergences of your sets of parallel lines. Your attempts at the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes there at the end are considerable improvements over your previous attempts, so the challenge has definitely helped a great deal and your overall understanding of 3D space and how forms can sit within it has grown a lot.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2. That said, please take greater care in following the instructions exactly as they have been written, and review them at the beginning of a sitting if you have to, or reread the instructions for a given exercise immediately before working on it. Aside from that, keep up the great work!

Uncomfortable

2019-01-16 22:05

Nice work overall! You've made a pretty great start. There are a few things I want to address, but by and large you're doing well.

One thing that stands out to me is that when you're drawing your linework - be it for simple straight lines, curved ones or ellipses - you have a tendency to focus a little too much on the accuracy you're trying to achieve, and as a result you hesitate when you actually move to execute the mark. This hesitation leads to just a little bit of stiffness to your linework, which impedes its flow, and results in a slightly wobbly line at times, or one that simply doesn't feel as smooth as it could.

The key to this is to execute your marks with a confident, persistent pace - to accept that the second your pen touches the page, that any opportunity to avoid a mistake you might make has now passed, and that all is left to do is to commit to your stroke and push forwards. Trust in your arm, not your brain, and let your muscle memory do what it does best.

The ghosting method focuses on this quite a bit, as it allows us to split the process of mark making into distinct stages - we're able to fuss over planning and preparation first, taking our time and doing what we can to give ourselves the best chances, but ultimately once that's over, we execute with that confident, persistent motion that yields a smooth, consistent mark. Even if this mark is not entirely accurate, it is still going to be useful to us.

As this allows us to produce smooth lines, it also helps us to keep our ellipses evenly shaped. Smooth, straight lines and evenly shaped ellipses are the bedrock of solid construction.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, you've done a solid job with your plotted perspective. Your rough perspective does show this general stiff linework as mentioned above, though I can see that you may not have been applying the ghosting method too stringently here - so keep in mind that you need to be applying it to each and every mark you draw for these lessons.

I am pleased to see that you applied the double checking method to your boxes for this exercise, to help identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes were a good start - you did a good job of keeping them well structured, maintaining even, narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to limit the amount of unnecessary guesswork. It is worth mentioning however that this exercise and the organic perspective boxes after it are intended to be very challenging for students at this stage. I don't assign them expecting students to be able to complete them without difficulty or mistakes - instead, it's more about exposing those students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

In your rotated boxes, I can see one fairly common problem. Aside from those beside the central box, there's actually not much in the way of rotation between your boxes - they all run roughly parallel to one another, sharing similar vanishing points as described here.

You made a solid attempt with the organic perspective boxes, and you've got a good start here. There is however plenty of room for improvement, as I would have expected - specifically in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. We will continue to work on that next.

I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, both to help develop your grasp of 3D space, as well as to get more practice with the use of the ghosting method to execute smooth, consistent lines.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-17 20:50

Pretty nice work! There are a couple things that I want to bring to your attention, but by and large you're doing quite well.

To start with, through your super imposed lines, you're demonstrating quite a bit of confidence behind each of your marks, which helps to keep them smooth and their trajectories consistent. I don't see much in the way of hesitation or wobbling, so that's fantastic. This holds through into the ghosted lines exercise, where you're applying the technique on top of that confidence to improve the overall control and accuracy without losing those smooth lines.

Now when you hit the ghosted planes exercise, I'm noticing that you start to hit a bit of a hurdle. From the looks of it, you may not be spending quite as much time with each individual line - the quality drops a little, we see more wavering and the lines become less straight. My guess is that when you're faced with the challenge of these lines becoming part of something larger and more complex (like where a plane is made up of several lines), you find it a little more daunting, or perhaps you try to move through it a little more quickly. Remember that a line is always a line - whether it exists on its own, or as part of a larger object, there should be no difference in the time and effort you put towards each individual one.

Your ellipses are looking pretty good - the confidence of your strokes is keeping them evenly shaped, and while you'll continue to tighten them up through practice, I am pleased that you're drawing through each and every one.

Your plotted perspective boxes are fine. The rough perspective is well done too, aside form the line quality I addressed earlier. I am also pleased that you're applying the line extension method to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

You've done a pretty good job with the rotated boxes. Again, line quality is an issue, but by and large you've kept the boxes well structured together with narrow, consistent gaps so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you've done a good job of covering the full range of rotation on both axes.

Both this exercise and the organic perspective one are intentionally meant to be challenging, and perhaps more difficult than most students can manage right now. It's more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, so they start thinking about it.

Your organic perspective boxes as such are coming along quite nicely, though there is still room for improvement on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. We'll work on this next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next. This is both to further develop your grasp of 3D space, which is already coming along quite well, and perhaps more importantly to fix the linework issues and your use of the ghosting method.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-17 21:03

You've got a good start here, though there are a few adjustments I'm going to identify that should help you as you continue to move forwards.

Your super imposed lines are looking pretty good - the longer lines have some wavering to them which is not remotely surprising, but by and large you're drawing these lines quite well with a good deal of confidence.

Your ghosted lines are alright, though this is where that confidence definitely needs to be maintained. Currently I'm seeing more hesitation as you execute your marks, which results in more wavering and wobbling along the way. Remember that the ghosting method's purpose is to split the process of making marks into distinct steps with distinct concerns and responsibilities. When it comes to accuracy, the planning and preparation phases where you put down your points (you may want to draw these a little smaller by the way) and where you ghost through the motion are where this is a major focus. You're training your arm to make a specific mark between two specific points, following a specific trajectory.

Once your pen touches the page however, and you move onto the final phase - the execution of the stroke - all opportunities to maintain accuracy and avoid mistakes are over. All you can do is push through and execute a smooth, consistent stroke. Mistakes may happen, but at the end of the day, even if your mark misses its target slightly, as long as it is smooth and consistent, it will still be workable. If you slow down and try to guide your hand with your conscious brain or your eyes however, that line will waver and wobble, and won't be good for much.

Jumping ahead to your ellipses, you're actually demonstrating a good deal of confidence here through the first couple exercises, and as a result your ellipses come out looking smooth and evenly shaped, which is great. You do waver a little when you hit the ellipses in planes, where you're hit with the challenge of getting the ellipses to fit snugly within these awkward planes. It's pretty normal to see students to struggle with that. Always keep in mind that the flow and shape integrity of your ellipse is the main priority - accuracy is important, but only once that flow has been achieved.

Moving on, you've done a great job with the plotted perspective boxes and are demonstrating a good grasp on the basics of perspective. Your rough perspective boxes are coming along decently, and I'm glad to see that you're applying the double checking method here.

One thing worth mentioning however is that I'm noticing that some of your horizontals aren't quite parallel to the horizon line, and some of your verticals aren't quite perpendicular to it. They have a tendency to slant slightly - keep this in mind, and do your best in this exercise to maintain those relationships with the horizon. This issue is further discussed (though in a more exaggerated fashion) in these notes.

You definitely struggled with the rotated boxes exercise. This is entirely normal. I assign this exercise, as well as the organic perspective one with the full expectation that most students are not yet ready to tackle this with any expectation of success. Ultimately, not all exercises come with that expectation. This one is instead more focused on exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, to get them to start thinking about that sort of thing.

For the most part, you did do a good job, especially towards the center, of keeping your boxes well structured with narrow, consistent gaps between them. As you reached further out towards the extremities, this started to fall apart somewhat, with the gaps becoming less consistent - so that's something to keep in mind. As soon as those gaps start falling apart, we're forced to rely more and more on guesswork when positioning our boxes in space.

You actually did a pretty good job of achieving a full range of rotations across both axes, but you weren't quite able to maintain them as you moved out towards the corners, where the rotations diminished.

That said, the attempt was still solid, and accomplished what I was looking for.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a good start, but there's plenty of room for improvement, especially on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. This is what we're going to focus on next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge, both to work on further developing your grasp of 3D space and forms that are rotated freely within it, as well as to work on your use of the ghosting method to achieve smooth, confident lines.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-17 21:25

Nice work! You're definitely pushing through with some excellent linework - there's a lot of confidence there, and very little hesitation or wavering, so your lines maintain a fairly consistent, smooth trajectory. There's certainly still room for improvement, but you're coming along pretty well.

Your ellipses continue on with this sense of confidence, and I can see a clear improvement in this area in particular between your earlier draft and your latest one. You're managing to maintain smooth, even shapes that feel both fluid and reasonably well controlled. Your earlier set were definitely a little bit on the loose side, but you've managed to tighten things up here.

Your narrower ellipses tend to be your strongest - there is a touch of stiffness here and there with your wider ones (mostly the full circles), so that's where you'll likely want to focus your efforts.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, your plotted perspective is solid. Your rough perspective is coming along well, though I can see here that your linework isn't quite as strong here as it was earlier. This isn't uncommon, but it does suggest that when you're going through the process of drawing something more complex, that you're either devoting a little less time to each individual line than you could, or that you're allowing the additional challenge to overwhelm you slightly. In essence, they're really the same issue - make sure that with each line, that you're allotting the time necessary to draw it to the best of your ability with full application of the ghosting method - that is, investing all your time in the planning/preparation phases before pushing through the stroke with full confidence and no hesitation. Mind you, I am nitpicking somewhat - the lines are still decent, they're just weaker than what I know you to be capable of.

Your rotated boxes are looking pretty well done. By and large this exercise is more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, so they start thinking about how forms can be manipulated in 3D space, rather than expecting any manner of perfect work. Most students struggle with this, but all things considered you've done a pretty good job. You've kept your boxes well structured with narrow, consistent gaps between them to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you've managed to cover the full range of rotation across the horizontal axis. The vertical axis however does fall somewhat short of the full 180 degree arc we're looking to achieve, however.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a good start, though much like the previous exercise, they are intended to be quite difficult. As such, you do have plenty of room for improvement - especially when it comes to getting those sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points. That will be the focus of our next step.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You're welcome to move onto the 250 box challenge as your next step, as this should help further develop your grasp of 3D space.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-18 20:58

Nope, you did just fine! Both on the submission, and on the work it contains. You've done an excellent job applying the concepts covered in the lesson, especially when it comes to drawing lines that are smooth and confident, focusing on achieving a consistent flow and trajectory. You're not demonstrating any hesitation or wobbling, and instead are clearly investing your time into the planning and preparation phases, so as to continue maintaining your control without letting your brain control your hand as you draw.

This carries over into your ellipses where you're drawing them to be evenly shaped - both these straight lines and evenly shaped ellipses are the bedrock of solid construction, so you're off to an excellent start.

Your plotted perspective is fine, though this is pretty normal. The rough perspective boxes are coming along well too - I'm pleased to see that you're applying the line extension method to check your estimation of perspective. You're also doing a good job of keeping your horizontals parallel to the horizon line, and your verticals perpendicular to it.

This is about the point where the exercises students should be able to manage ends - now we get into the tough stuff, where the exercises are less about having students do perfect work, and more about exposing them to spatial problems they may not have otherwise considered.

In your rotated boxes, you did a good job of keeping the boxes well structured, maintaining narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. I do think however that the boxes immediately beside the central one were rotated a little too dramatically relative to it, leaving you with very little further rotation to accomplish on the boxes further out. This resulted in those outer two layers running close to parallel with one another, in an issue similar to what's described here. You probably could have squeezed some extra rotation out of the boxes that were furthest out, but ultimately it did put you in a tricky position.

Your organic perspective boxes show that your understanding of 3D space is coming along very well. There's still room for growth, as is expected, specifically in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but you're making great headway here and are heading in the right direction. We'll continue to focus on this particular kind of thing next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-19 20:04

Pretty well done overall! You start off fairly well. You approach the super imposed lines with a good degree of confidence, mostly keeping your strokes smooth rather than fussing overmuch with accuracy. Your ghosted lines are similar - a touch of hesitation here and there that results in a bit of stiffness, but by and large you're heading in the right direction and are pushing through with a fair bit of confidence to keep things smooth and maintain consistent trajectories. Keep pushing yourself to commit to each stroke the moment your pen touches the page (and accept that any opportunity to avoid mistakes will have passed at this moment, so there's no sense in doing anything but pushing forwards).

Your ellipses are very much the same - there's a touch of hesitation, but overall your confident strokes are helping you to maintain an even shape for each one. You're particularly good with the narrower degrees, so you may want to focus more of your focus with these to your wider, more circular ellipses (which you do seem to have been doing, so that's great).

Jumping forward to your rough perspective boxes, you're doing a good job of keeping your horizontals fairly parallel to the horizon line, and your verticals perpendicular to it. I'm also very pleased to see that you're extending your lines back towards your vanishing point to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

What you do need to be more aware of is the fact that here we can see that your lines wobble and waver much more than they did in the earlier section. This suggests to me that you're not applying as much care or investing as much time as you were, and your use of the ghosting method is either lacking, or it simply is more rushed. Always remember that every single mark you put down should apply this method, and that regardless of what you're drawing, each mark should be given as much time as is needed to execute it to the best of your ability. This means putting that time towards the planning and preparation phases, before executing it with a confident, persistent pace.

Despite intentionally having been assigned to challenge and push students, with the focus being on exposing them to a kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, your attempt at the rotated boxes came out quite well and conveys a well developing grasp of 3D space. You kept your boxes well structured with minimal, consistent gaps between them to eliminate unnecessary guesswork, and did a good job of covering the 180 degree arc of rotation on each axis.

The organic perspective boxes do certainly have more room for improvement, but as I said, neither of these last two are intended to be done well at this point. You've made a good start here, and we'll continue to work on your ability to maintain consistent convergences for your sets of parallel lines towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-19 21:03

Lovely work across the board! Your lines are remarkably smooth and confidently drawn, showing no sign of hesitation or stiffness. Once you start applying the ghosting method, you lose none of that confidence, but imbue each stroke with greater control and precision, to great effect.

You then go on to carry this into your ellipses for the most part - there's a touch of stiffness there, where the ellipses are perhaps drawn just a little too slowly, with just a bit of hesitation. Your shapes are still quite evenly shaped, but if you look closely at the linework there you'll see that some of them have a bit of a jerking stutter that makes them ever so slightly bumpy. It's very minor, so just keep the idea of always drawing confidently from your shoulder in mind, that the moment your pen touches the page any opportunity to avoid a mistake has passed, and it should resolve itself.

Despite the many self-corrections and whatnot through your ellipses in planes, you've actually done quite well here. A lot of students get caught deforming their ellipses to fit the awkward plane (similarly to the one you labelled as "weird shape" but for the most part, your ellipses came out maintaining their elliptical shape.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective, you're doing quite well, and I'm pleased to see that you're generally keeping an eye on the relationships between your horizontals/verticals and the horizon line (that is, keeping the horizontals parallel to it and the verticals perpendicular to it). I'm also glad that you're applying the line extension method here to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift. What you're seeing here is completely normal, and the point of the exercise is as much to reveal to the student that this tends to happen (and is a point to continually work towards improving).

That's ultimately why we extend our lines - so we can become aware of these tendencies, and identify the patterns there. What this shows us here is that you need to exaggerate the angles of your lines as they go further and further out.

Your work on the rotated boxes is solid - you're keeping your boxes well structured with narrow, consistent gaps between them to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you're doing a pretty good job of covering the full 180 degree range of rotation on each axis. One thing I did notice was that on your second attempt there, I think the box to the immediate left of the center was rotated a little too dramatically, causing its neighbour to the left to have much less room to further distinguish its orientation. Aside from that though, they're extremely well done.

This exercise, along with the next one, are really about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. As such, you've pushed beyond my expectations here. Your organic perspective boxes are coming along pretty well too, but these are more in line with what I'd expect to see. That is, there is still plenty of room for improvement here, especially in keeping your sets of parallel lines converging more consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next, as it provides some focused and targeted exercises on developing your ability to judge those convergences.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-20 19:46

Honestly, your work is pretty fantastic. You really take the concept of executing your marks with a confident, persistent pace to heart - I don't see a hint of hesitation or deviation, you maintain a consistent trajectory through each stroke, clearly trusting in your muscle memory to push through. You're also not doing this willy nilly - you're employing the ghosting method to achieve exceptional control and precision.

This carries through into the ellipses where each one achieves an even, consistent shape with no sign of wobbling or stiffness. Here your control varies here and there - by and large it's pretty good, but it does leave room for improvement, which will come with continued practice and use of the ghosting method. It's worth mentioning that I can already see improvement on that front throughout the work you've done here.

When it comes to the ellipses in planes, keep working on getting them to fit snugly within the plane, but you're absolutely focusing on the right area - I can see that you've prioritized getting your ellipse to be evenly shaped and to maintain its consistent, rounded nature, before worrying about accuracy. You made the right call.

Very nice work on the plotted perspective - you were very thorough and filled each frame nicely. This was admittedly one of those more basic exercises, but despite that you've still managed to produce work that was impressive in its cleanliness and general presentation.

In your rough perspective boxes you've clearly taken great care to keep your horizontals parallel to the horizon, and your verticals perpendicular to it. I'm also pleased to see that you've applied the line extension method to check those convergences against your vanishing point. This helps to keep track of how our estimation of perspective tends to drift.

For the rotated boxes, you achieved solid rotations along either of the major axes, though I did notice a slight tendency to stretch your boxes as they rotated along the vertical one. Your spacing and proportions were more successful along the horizontal. Along the vertical, this stretching resulted in the boxes rotating less, resulting in less coverage of the full 180 degree range. Also, worth mentioning that while you maintained consistent, narrow gaps between your boxes for the most part (so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork), your corner boxes seemed to deviate from this pattern.

It's worth mentioning that this exercise, along with the organic perspective one, were included here with the full expectation that students would struggle considerably with them. They're here to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. As such, your work is still impressive on this front, and you've accomplished more than I would have expected.

Your organic perspective boxes - where you're left free to rotate them however without nearly as much structure - was more in line with what I'd expect to see. That is, your boxes mark a good start of exploration of 3D space, but there is plenty of room for improvement here, especially when it comes to keeping the convergences of your sets of parallel lines consistent towards their shared vanishing points. We'll continue to work on this next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

SmashingTheAdam

2019-01-21 21:22

white out on the organic perspective from when my cat jumped on the desk and freaked me out and I forgot what I was doing.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-21 22:52

Well done! Your super imposed lines have been drawn with a distinct sense of confidence driving them to be smooth and fluid, maintaining consistent trajectories without much hesitation. Once you get to the ghosted lines exercise, I noticed that most of that confidence remained, but there was a sense of stiffness there that suggests that you weren't 100% sure of how you were approaching it. I am pleased to say however that as you pushed into the planes, that full confidence returned, and your lines smoothed out once again.

This continued on through your ellipses, where the confidence resulted in smooth, even shapes, although I did notice that your control here does need work. Remember that you can apply the ghosting technique to everything - straight lines, curves, and even ellipses. So try to use that to ensure that your ellipses fall within the space that you're aiming for. Still, your first priority is maintaining the flow and integrity of the shape, so you're doing that well.

Jumping ahead to your boxes, your plotted perspective is very solid. Your rough perspective is coming along as well, and I'm pleased to see that for the most part, you're mindful of keeping your horizontals parallel to the horizon, and the verticals perpendicular to it. In addition to this, I'm glad to see that you're applying the line extension to check how your estimation of perspective drifts.

As far as spatial understanding goes, your rotated boxes tick my two main boxes. You kept their gaps narrow and consistent so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you covered the full 180 degree range of rotation on both axes. What is definitely weaker here however is that your linework is visibly rushed. It doesn't look like you applied the ghosting method here, which, as always, should be applied to every single mark you put down for these lessons.

You've got a good start on those organic perspective boxes - I expect students to struggle with them, and this exercise is here largely to expose them to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered, and to get the gears turning in their heads. As such, while you have plenty of room for improvement, especially in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points, you're headed in the right direction.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-21 23:03

You started off pretty nicely - your super imposed lines were smooth and confidently drawn, which is definitely a big plus. You carried this through into your ghosted lines and planes, where you were able to maintain consistent trajectories and keep those lines relatively straight without much hesitation or wavering.

Your ellipses were pretty well done, and definitely demonstrated an excellent degree of control, though they were also just a little bit stiff as a result. Not enough to be a big problem, but I do want you to try and execute those ellipses with a little more confidence, and keep yourself from hesitating as you draw them. Using the ghosting method can help a great deal here, if you're not already using it, as it separates the process into phases where you can invest your time in planning and preparing, before executing the mark with the understanding that the second your pen touches the page, the opportunity to avoid a mistake has passed, and all you can do is push forwards.

This stiffness is more visible in the ellipses in planes. While it's pretty normal to see students stiffen up and deform their ellipses to try and get them to fit in these awkward containers, always remember that maintaining the integrity of your elliptical shape and keeping it smooth and fluid are your top priorities.

Your plotted perspective is looking pretty good. Your rough perspective was also fairly well done, though I did feel that it was a bit lacking in terms of the actual number of boxes you included in each frame. There was plenty of empty space there, space that could have been taken advantage of to make the most of the exercise.

It's worth mentioning here that the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes exercises were both assigned here not with the expectation that students would be able to complete them with ease, but rather to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. Struggling with this is normal, and it's really only here to get the gears to start turning in your head. That said, your attempt was pretty admirable. There are still a couple major issues:

• You made some attempt to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, but the further you got out from the center, the more this started to fall apart. The less consistent and the wider your gaps got, the more guesswork you had to employ instead of using your neighbouring edges as hints.

• You also drew the boxes aside from the centermost one as being fairly parallel to one another, resulting in very little rotation between them. This issue is explained in these notes.

Your organic perspective boxes were a solid attempt, and while there's plenty of room for improvement - specifically in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points - you're heading in the right direction.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-22 23:02

Imgur can be a bit finnicky at times, so no worries on that front.

Your lines section is looking great. You're executing the marks with a confident, persistent pace, and maintaining smooth strokes and consistent trajectories with minimal hesitation. At times it does look like you might benefit from putting a little more time into the planning/preparation phases of the ghosting method (specifically in the ghosting exercise, the planes exercise was actually a fair bit better), but you're headed in the right direction and the marks you're making good headway.

Your ellipses carry over that same confidence, which helps you to maintain the integrity of their rounded shapes, but I am noticing that you've got a lot of ellipses that aren't quite touching their bounds. Again, put more time into the planning/preparation phases of the ghosting method (which can and should be applied to all kinds of mark making, not just straight lines), so as to improve your overall control and accuracy without losing the smooth flow and even shapes that arise from a confident execution.

Jumping down to your rough perspective, you've done a great job of maintaining horizontals that run parallel to the horizon, and verticals that run perpendicular to it. You do seem to have skipped the step of the exercise where we extend our lines back to the horizon to check how our estimation of perspective tends to drift. This gives us a better sense of what we need to work on during the next attempt.

Your rotated boxes came out quite nicely - you made a concerted effort to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so as to avoid any unnecessary guesswork (although they started to separate a little towards the corners). Also, you are demonstrating visible rotation across each axis, though this can certainly be pushed a little further, especially right at the ends. I think the boxes on the extremities should have their far sides tucked in further, so as to show us less of that front-face (the one without the hatching lines).

It is worth mentioning that this exercise as well as the organic perspective one have been assigned here not with the expectation that students would be able to produce perfect work, but rather to expose them to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered, and to get the gears in their brains turning. I fully expect students to struggle, and all things considered, you did a pretty great job.

Your organic perspective boxes are a good start, though as I mentioned, struggling is expected and there is plenty of room for improvement. For example, you do need work on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points. This is something we'll work on next.

In addition to this, I noticed that you have a habit of reinforcing your marks or correcting them if you're not fully satisfied with them. Don't. Drawing by reflex in this manner means you're not applying the ghosting method (which demands that you plan and prepare before each stroke). Furthermore, fixing mistakes just adds more ink to problematic areas and draws the viewer's attention to them. It's generally better to leave them untouched and move on.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-23 23:58

Your first exercise definitely shows a great deal of confidence behind your execution, which helps you to maintain smooth lines and consistent trajectories. That's definitely great to see. This carries through into your ghosted lines, but it is worth mentioning that while you're doing this fairly well, it does start to show the beginning signs of sloppiness - just a touch, where it feels like you could be investing more time into the planning and preparation phases of the technique. By and large they're fine, but you do start to get impatient by the end of the page. Just something to keep in mind.

This impatience definitely becomes more visible when you start tackling the ellipses. It looks like you're kind of jumping into them without taking the time to ghost through them. As a result, they don't have a whole lot of control behind them, and tend to get a little uneven or wobbly in certain areas. By and large that confidence is still there, so your ellipses are mostly smooth and rounded, but taking the time to plan and prepare beforehand is definitely going to be key.

I actually feel the first page of the ellipses in planes shows some improvement here, where you've gone to much greater lengths to get them to fit smoothly in these awkward containers. This is actually an exercise where most people have more difficulty, but you've mostly been able to manage it without deforming those ellipses or letting them get stiff. The second page is definitely visibly sloppier, but that first page is really quite fantastic.

Jumping ahead to the rough perspective boxes, there are a couple things I noticed:

• Here and there I can see places where your horizontals aren't quite running parallel to the horizon, or where your verticals aren't quite running perpendicular to it. It's not all throughout, but keep these relationships in mind. Also, I noticed a few places where you accidentally filled one of the back faces of your boxes with hatching instead of the front face - this resulted in a bit of visual confusion. Generally when adding hatching to a face like this, make sure that your lines are parallel, consistent and stretch all the way across from edge to edge rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle of the plane.

Your rotated boxes have a few strengths and a few weak points. Towards the center, you did a very good job of keeping them well structured, maintaining narrow gaps between them so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. This is something that fell apart as you reached out towards the corners, and I'm not entirely sure why that happened. Keeping the gaps narrow throughout allows you to use neighbouring edges as hints when adding new lines.

You also did manage to cover the full 180 degree arc along your horizontal axis. Along the vertical axis however, the boxes furthest out stopped rotating relative to their neighbours, in a manner quite similar to what's explained here.

It is worth emphasizing that this exercise as long as the organic perspective one are both assigned here with full expectation that they're perhaps too challenging for students to be able to manage successfully here. Instead, the intent is to expose students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered. It helps a great deal to get your gears turning in this regard.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes do definitely suggest that there is plenty of room for improvement. A couple of your boxes here were constructed decently, though just about all of them did struggle to have their sets of parallel lines' convergences remain consistent towards their shared vanishing points. This is something we'll be practicing next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-24 21:46

Looking good! Your super imposed lines do start out a little bit wobbly, but I can definitely see a greater tendency to draw with confident strokes once you hit the ghosting exercise. You certainly hit your stride when you hit the planes - your marks are fluid and smooth, and show no signs of hesitation.

You carry this over pretty well to your ellipses where the confidence of your pace holds up the integrity of your elliptical shape and avoids any kind of deformation or stiffness. You're also maintaining pretty solid control, keeping them fairly snug within the space you've set out.

Jumping forward to your rough perspective, you're clearly still using the ghosting method, which is great to see. You're also taking considerable care to keep your horizontal lines parallel to the horizon line, and the verticals perpendicular to it. I'm also pleased to see that you applied the double checking method there to test where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

With the rotated boxes, there are two things I check for, and you're nailing one of them. That is, you've done a great job keeping the boxes structured, maintaining narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. The issue however that I'm seeing is that your boxes (aside from the central one) don't actually rotate much relative to one another. They converge towards the same vanishing points, as explained here.

That's a pretty common mistake, and these last two exercises are meant to be quite challenging and I don't expect students to be able to nail them just yet. Instead, they're about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem they may not have otherwise considered.

Your organic perspective boxes are coming along well, though there is room for improvement - especially when it comes to getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-24 21:54

Nice work overall. Your lines section came out pretty great - you're drawing with a great deal of confidence, so you're able to achieve smooth, consistent marks without much hesitation or wobbling. With this inevitably comes issues of control (like what you described, overshooting your points), but the solution is not to slow down, but rather to practice stopping suddenly. It's not something that comes immediately, but as you noticed, drawing less confidently is going to make your lines wobble, so this is instead a different kind of skill that needs to be developed. It will come with practice though.

This confidence continues into your ellipses, though I can definitely see signs that you're not quite maintaining the same degree of control and precision here, at least at first. Remember that you can apply the ghosting method here as well, and you should - it'll help you to improve control without having to resort to slowing down as you draw. You do have some great ellipses across this set, and many where things are tightening up, but there are enough that are more loose and erratic, so that's definitely an area you'll want to continue focusing on.

Jumping forward to your rough perspective boxes, you're doing a pretty good job, but I am catching a couple cases here and there where your verticals don't quite run perpendicular to the horizon line, or where your horizontals don't quite run parallel to it. It looks like you're not putting as much thought and planning into them as you could, so slow down and focus more when you're going through the planning/preparation phases of the ghosting method. Of course, execution should always be confident, but you need to think about what line you actually want to put down and how you need it to behave.

While your rotated boxes are a bit rough around the edges, you've actually done a pretty good job. You've nailed the two main things I look for - you've kept the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you've covered a full 180 degree arc of rotation along either axis. Nicely done!

This exercise and the organic perspective one are intended to be quite challenging, and to push you to think about spatial problems you may not have otherwise considered, so I don't expect things to be perfect. This is definitely good to see.

The organic perspective boxes are more in line with what I'd expect to see at this point - that is to say, they're coming along, but there's plenty of room for improvement when it comes to keeping your sets of parallel lines consistent in their convergence towards their shared vanishing point. We will continue to work on this next.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, and I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-25 19:17

Nice work! Your lines start out quite well - they're smooth and confident, and while you do need to put a little more time into the planning/preparation phases of the ghosting method to keep your lines from arcing, you're doing a great job of maintaining a consistent trajectory and limiting your overall hesitation.

This holds true to your ellipses as well, though I can see them improving over the set, where they start off a little bit more loose and steadily show greater control. The same thing applies here - taking more time to plan and ghost through the motion before actually executing the mark will help tighten up your ellipses and continue to develop those nice, rounded, even shapes.

When we hit your rough perspective boxes, I do think that your use of the ghosting method suffers a little. That is, I can see that your lines become a little less accurate and waver a little more. This is pretty common, often when a student gives themselves less time per line than they would when the focus of the exercise is on the lines and nothing else. Even if you're drawing a box, or anything more complex, always remember that when you're drawing a line, that's all you're doing. No individual part should be rushed.

To this effect, keep in mind that you want your horizontals to run perfectly parallel to the horizon, and your verticals should be running perpendicular to it. There are definitely some places where your lines slant a little, so that's something to work on.

In your first attempt at the rotated boxes, you've done a good job of achieving a full 180 degree range of rotation along both axes, but this falls apart as you reach the corners. This is because you haven't quite kept the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, as explained here. As a result, you ended up having to make a lot of guesses that were largely unnecessary, because there would have been enough information present from neighbouring boxes to tell you how to draw the new edges/lines you were adding.

The second attempt did a better job of keeping the gaps consistent (though they would have benefitted from being closer together), and your horizontal axis covered a solid range of rotation. The vertical axis flattened out however, as described here.

Your organic perspective boxes are a good start, but there's a lot of room for improvement. As we move forwards, we're going to focus more on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-25 19:31

Very nice work! Your lines are exceptionally confidently drawn, and you execute them with a considerable degree of control and precision. You're applying the ghosting method to great effect throughout this set.

This carries over to your ellipses where you're maintaining the integrity of their rounded, even shapes. That said, you do need to put a little more time into getting them to fit snugly within the confines they've been given. Right now it does seem that you have a tendency to let them float freely instead. We see this most of all in the tables of ellipses exercise. On the other hand, your ellipses in planes are considerable better, which is an amusing thing - usually this is where students struggle most, either deforming their ellipses to fit within the space, or failing to have them rest against all four edges.

Your rough perspective boxes are quite well done. I can see that you've done a good job of keeping your horizontals parallel to the horizon line, though watch some of your verticals there - a few are slanted (they should be perpendicular to the horizon). I'm also pleased to see that you're double checking using the line extension technique, to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes are very well structured, and I'm glad that you kept the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. One mistake however was that your boxes aren't actually rotating very much relative to one another, as explained here. This is why you ended up adding additional boxes to try and cover the full range of 180 degrees.

Your organic perspective boxes were quite well done, considering that this exercise is meant to be challenging. There is still room for improvement, however, and we'll continue to focus on keeping your sets of parallel lines' convergence consistent towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-25 20:17

You're not wrong in your assertion that there's plenty of room for improvement, but I will be marking this lesson as complete. The areas where you need more work will be integrated into the next step - this actually isn't abnormal at all, and is exactly why these critiques are available and encouraged.

So the big issue is that your lines waver quite a bit. This generally comes from drawing the marks relatively slowly, and trying to guide our hand with our conscious brain, rather than trusting in our muscle memory and drawing with a confident, persistent pace. Drawing more from the wrist rather than the shoulder [as explained on this page]() can also play a considerable role.

It's important that when your pen touches the page, you accept that any opportunity to avoid a mistake is over. The ghosting technique gives us phases in which we can invest our time, planning and preparing the stroke, but as soon as your pen touches the page, all you can do is push through and accept the inevitability. Mistakes are not the end of the world, and a smooth mark with a consistent trajectory can still be used even if it's a little off target. A wobbly line isn't terribly useful, however.

Your ellipses are a bit of a mixed bag, where there are some that are smoother and more evenly shaped, and others that appear to wobble or deform for the same reasons listed above. You are however doing a good job of keeping your ellipses snugly fitting within their allotted space. This is not as important as drawing with a confident pace and maintaining a smooth, evenly elliptical shape, but it is still important and worth noting. Additionally, you do steadily get better with this as you pushed through the exercises, and your last page of tables-of-ellipses is actually fairly well done.

Also worth mentioning, while you're largely following this in your funnel exercise, you do have a few ellipses that aren't quite aligned to that central minor axis line, so keep an eye on that.

In your rough perspective boxes, watch the behaviour of your individual lines. As explained here, your horizontals need to run parallel to the horizon line, and your verticals need to run perpendicular to it. Part of this is likely how you're approaching the ghosting method - you need to invest more time into thinking about what you want to achieve with a given stroke before you rush into actually drawing it.

A couple things about your rotated boxes - firstly, as mentioned here, keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, otherwise you're going to perform a lot of unnecessary guesswork. Secondly, your boxes are rotating a little relative to one another, but not nearly enough. For the most part, your boxes remain fairly parallel to one another, as demonstrated here. You need to push and exaggerate those rotations further in order to cover the full 180 degree arc on each axis.

Lastly, your organic perspective is a good start, but there is plenty of room for improvement. We'll be focusing specifically on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points as we continue to move forwards.

So, there are two main things to take away from this:

• Get used to drawing your marks more confidently, so as to keep them smooth and straight. The ghosting method allows you to separate the mark making process into multiple steps, so you can plan and prepare beforehand, then push forwards without second-guessing yourself as you make the mark.

• You do need to pay more attention to the instructions and follow them more carefully, as you are missing quite a few things that were touched upon in the lesson.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge. Not only will this give you an opportunity to work on those freely rotated forms in space, but it will also give you a great chance to work on your use of the ghosting method.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-25 20:34

I'm proud to say that you've done a fantastic job, and have clearly gone to great lengths to follow the instructions as closely and carefully as possible here.

Your linework is smooth and confident, and each stroke maintains a consistent trajectory. At the same time, you apply the ghosting method to achieve a considerable degree of control over your marks, resulting in their being precise and accurate.

This carries over to your ellipses, which are both evenly shaped and fit nicely within the space that they are given. Confident, smooth strokes and evenly shaped ellipses are the bedrock of solid construction, so all of this will serve you well in the future.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you clearly went to considerable lengths to ensure that your horizontals ran parallel to the horizon, and your verticals ran perpendicular to it. I'm also pleased to see that you applied the line extension method so as to check where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Your rotated boxes hit both the major points I'm looking for - you've kept the gaps between them narrow and consistent so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you've done a great job of covering the full 180 degree arc of rotation on each axis. The only slight issue is that along the top left and bottom right corners, those boxes tend to tilt outwards slightly, rather than being tucked in with the rest. Still, phenomenal work, and all on an exercise that is intended to be more about exposing students to a new spatial challenge to get their gears turning rather than actually expecting it to be managed well.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a great start. Similarly to the previous exercise, it's intended to be challenging, and is all about exposing students to new challenges. As such, there is room for improvement, but you've still exceeded my expectations. We will continue to work on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points as we move forwards, but this is all very well done.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-25 20:46

All in all you did a pretty good job. That's not to say there isn't room for improvement - there certainly is - but you're headed in the right direction and have shown a decent grasp of the core material.

To start with, your lines are demonstrating a fairly confident execution, where you're taking the time previously to apply the ghosting technique, before making the mark with a persistent pace to avoid your brain interfering. With practice you'll gain more comfort in the use of the ghosting method and will improve on your accuracy and control, while also ironing the last few little wavers and hesitations, but you're doing well as it is. Just always remember - once your pen touches the page, all you can do is push through. No hesitation, no trying to avoid mistakes. All the opportunities to avoid messing up have passed, so all you can do is commit to your stroke.

Your ellipses are a bit of a mixed bag, which isn't strange by any measure, as each exercise demands a different kind of consideration. Your ellipses in tables were okay, but they did come out rather stiffly where you weren't quite applying the same kind of confidence as you had before. Also, there's a chance that you may have been drawing somewhat with your wrist here, rather than your shoulder, which can also be the cause of such stiff and uneven ellipses.

Your ellipses in planes were considerably better, which is interesting because this is often where students struggle the most. Your ellipses are much more evenly shaped, more confidently drawn, and you demonstrate a fair bit of control here. Lastly, your funnels are again somewhat more stiff and uneven, and while there has been some success in keeping them aligned to the central minor axis line, this is something that does need more work.

Jumping forward to your rough perspective boxes, do remember that as described here, your horizontals need to run parallel to the horizon and your verticals must run perpendicular to it. Before drawing any mark, make sure you consider the nature of the stroke you want to put down, especially during the planning phase of the ghosting method.

Your rotated boxes are actually very well done. They're not perfect, but this exercise is meant to be very challenging, largely focusing on exposing students to a new spatial challenge, something that they'll gradually develop and grow accustomed to. That said, you hit the two main things I look for - you kept your boxes well structured with narrow gaps between them so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork, and you also covered the full 180 degree ranges of rotation on both axes. Things did go a bit awry along that top right corner, but still, your work on this exercise was very well done.

Lastly, the organic perspective boxes are an extension of the rotated boxes, in that they're again about challenging students' idea of 3D space. In this regard, you're moving in the right direction and have done a pretty good job, but there still is plenty of room for improvement. We'll continue working on your ability to keep the convergences of your sets of parallel lines consistent towards their shared vanishing points as we move forwards.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-26 23:37

You start out great - your super imposed lines are looking smooth and confident for the most part, with minimal hesitation or uncertainty. Things do get a little stiff and wobbly when you hit those curves and waves, but that's pretty normal. Always remember that no matter what, your mark should be made with a confident stroke so as to allow it to flow well.

Your ghosted lines are coming along well, though I can see a touch of hesitation here and there, which causes the little bumps and wavering we see on occasion. For the most part however you are showing your ability to plan and prepare beforehand, and then push through with a confident stroke, it's merely a matter of practice to iron out the rest of those kinks. You also improve on this a fair bit as you work through the ghosted planes.

The same principles apply to the ellipses - your narrower ones are actually drawn with a great deal of confidence, and as such they maintain even shapes. The wider, more circular ones, however, tend to lose some of the integrity of their shapes. This can happen simply due to hesitation, but not drawing from your shoulder can also be a cause, so keep an eye on this.

The issues I'm highlighting here aren't particularly egregious, just things to keep in mind.

You've done a pretty fantastic job of keeping your ellipses in planes even and smooth, while also getting them to touch all four sides of the ellipses. As you move forwards, try and rein in just how many rounds of the ellipses you're making. I can see a few that have four or more passes - generally stick to 2 or 3, with 2 being ideal.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you're doing pretty well but there's one thing to keep in mind - actually I think you're already aware of this, as I can see it improving as you move through. Horizontals must run parallel to the horizon, and the verticals must run perpendicular to it. You adhere to this for the most part, but there are places where your verticals in particular slant a little.

Your rotated boxes are coming along well enough - there's room for improvement, but by and large you've made a solid attempt here, especially considering that this exercise, along with the one after it, is more about exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered.

You're doing a decent job of keeping your boxes well structured, with narrow, consistent gaps between them, though there is room for improvement here. I can see a few places here and there where the gaps get bigger, and others where the gaps aren't consistent (one edge starts slanting away from the other). You're also doing a pretty good job of covering the full 180 degree range of rotation on each axis, though this certainly can be pushed further. In addition to this, your corners tend to rotate less than your main vertical/horizontal axes, so that's another thing to watch out for.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a good start, but as expected there's plenty of room for improvement. Specifically we're going to look at working on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-27 19:50

Well done! You're demonstrating a great deal of confidence through the lines section, without any visible hesitation or wobbling to your strokes. At the same time, you are clearly achieving a considerable degree of control with your use of the ghosting method, all the while maintaining that same confidence.

This carries through to the ellipses section, where it helps you to maintain smooth, even shapes without any deformation or stiffness to them. I can see in places that you struggle at times to keep your ellipses snug within the spaces afforded to them, but I can clearly see that you're aware of this and that you're doing what you can to achieve this degree of accuracy. That is really all I'm looking for - that you understand the goal of the exercise and that you work towards it.

One point about your funnels - it seems that here you've effectively stopped drawing through your ellipses. Remember that as outlined here you should be drawing through each of your ellipses 2 to 3 times (2 is ideal). This applies to every single ellipse you draw for these lessons.

Your plotted perspective is very well done, just be a little more careful with your hatching lines. Keep them parallel and consistent, and make sure they stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge, rather than floating arbitrarily in the middle of a plane.

Great work on the rough perspective - you've clearly made a concerted effort to keep your horizontals parallel to the horizon and your verticals perpendicular to it. I'm also pleased to see that you applied the extension method correctly to identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

You did a good job in your rotated boxes of keeping the boxes well structured, with narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to eliminate any unnecessary guesswork. I did notice a tendency towards the outer edges however to stretch your boxes as you rotated them - the farthest edge of your farthest boxes should be tucked in a little more, especially along the horizontal and vertical axes.

Lastly, your work on the organic perspective exercise is a solid start, but we'll continue to work on your ability to estimate the convergences of your lines, so as to keep the convergence of your sets of parallel lines more consistent towards their shared vanishing points.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-27 21:44

You've done pretty well! Your lines section is composed of smooth, confident strokes with no visible hesitation or wobbling. Your control will improve as you continue to practice and as you get more comfortable with the use of the ghosting method, but your work is coming along quite well here.

The same carries on for your ellipses, where that confidence results in smooth, evenly shaped ellipses. Both of these - that is, the even ellipses and the confident, straight lines, serve as the bedrock of solid construction.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, you've put a good deal of work into keeping all of your horizontals parallel to the horizon, and all of your verticals perpendicular to it. I'm also pleased that you've applied the line extensions to better identify where your estimation of perspective tends to drift.

Now at this point, I should mention that the next two exercises are intentionally challenging. Unlike those above, these are specifically focused on merely exposing students to a different kind of spatial problem that they may not have otherwise considered. That's why they're so difficult - they're meant to be, and I have no expectation for students to be able to nail them just yet.

With the rotated boxes, I look for two main things:

• For the boxes to be well structured, with narrow, consistent gaps between them. You've passed this with flying colours, and as such have eliminated any unnecessary guesswork.

• For the boxes to have clear rotation between them. You've got this for the vertical central axis, but your horizontal central axis actually has boxes (aside from the center one) sitting more or less parallel to each other, as shown here. Keep an eye on that.

Your organic perspective boxes are a great start. There's certainly still room for improvement, and we'll continue to work on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but all in all you're marking a great start.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-28 23:28

Nice work! Your lines speak of considerable confidence behind each stroke, which helps you to achieve smooth, straight lines with consistent trajectories. I don't see any signs of hesitation or wobbling there, which is great. You carry this on into your ellipses, where they're achieving smooth, even shapes. I am noticing however that you are struggling a bit to get your ellipses to fit snugly within the space that is allotted to them - there are many that float a little more arbitrarily (especially in the table of ellipses exercise), so that's something you'll want to work on. It's largely going to be a matter of continuing to practice the use of the ghosting method on ellipses, as this can take a bit of practice to get used to. The evenness of the shape is still your highest priority though, and you're managing that quite well.

Jumping forward to the rough perspective boxes, you're doing pretty well, but watch your horizontals and verticals - always remember that your horizontals must run parallel to the horizon, and your verticals must run perpendicular to it. You're close, but I can see a bit of slanting in many of your lines.

Excellent work on the rotated boxes - you've kept them well structured, with narrow, consistent gaps between them so as to avoid any unnecessary guesswork. You've also done a pretty decent job of covering the 180 degree arc of rotation on both of the major axes. Your corners were handled better towards the upper right and lower left, though your upper left flattened out a little quickly.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are a good start, though there is plenty of room for improvement. We'll continue to work on getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points as we move forwards.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. I'd like you to move onto the 250 box challenge next.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-28 23:41

On one hand, your work demonstrates a great deal of confidence behind each and every stroke - there's no hesitation, and as a result no wobbling. Just smooth marks.

On the other hand, throughout your work I see a strong tendency to rush - there isn't a whole lot of planning behind most of your marks, and as a result you don't seem to have a great deal of control over where they fall. This is an issue that is thankfully fairly easily fixed, and it would have been a bigger concern had your lines been all stiff and shaky. It does however mean that you need to slow down and put a great deal more thought and consideration into each mark before you actually move to execute the stroke.

Looking at your ghosted lines exercise, two things stand out to me:

• For most of these, you've laid down your start and end points, and then made no effort to actually start your line at one of those points. It's entirely normal to have students struggle to stop their stroke at the end point, and to overshoot it, but you must at least start at your intended location.

• Your strokes are very erratic, and not always particularly straight. There's a good deal of arcing to these lines that you need to consciously work to diminish.

Jumping ahead to your ellipses, you're not doing too badly here, but there is a definite sense of looseness to them at times. Your execution isn't bad, but they could use tightening and it's very clear to me that the only reason your work here isn't vastly better is that you're not taking the time to ghost through the motion before executing your mark. Keep in mind that the ghosting method can and should be applied to every mark you put down, and that the very concepts it embodies are central to how we're approaching drawing in this course.

We're not looking to sketch erratically and quickly - we plan our marks before we put them down, and we take the time beforehand to give ourselves the best chances of putting down exactly the mark we mean to make, before executing it with a confident stroke.

Jumping down to your rough perspective boxes, the behaviour of your lines seems to frequently be arbitrary, and your use of the ghosting method is again lacking, or at least not well prepared. When approaching this exercise, our horizontals must remain parallel to the horizon, and our verticals must remain perpendicular to it, as explained here. You need to put more effort into considering the nature of the line you want to draw before putting it on the page.

Your rotated boxes were actually done fairly well. There's some greater control to your linework there, and towards the center you're demonstrating quite a bit of effort to keep the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so as to avoid any unnecessary guesswork. Things do tend to fall apart somewhat however as you move out towards the corners, where the gaps get bigger and you start to lose that sense of structure.

Additionally, towards the extremities, your boxes tend to run more parallel to one another, converging towards the same vanishing points as explained here.

Lastly, your organic perspective boxes are actually a pretty good start. There's definitely room for improvement in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but your line quality here is vastly better and those kinds of mistakes are entirely expected. We'll continue working on this as our next step.

Before that however, I want you to do one more page of the ellipses in planes exercise, followed by one more page of rough perspective. Apply the ghosting method everywhere. Once you're done that, submit it here and I'll mark the lesson as complete.

At that point, you'll be able to move onto the 250 box challenge.

Uncomfortable

2019-01-28 23:56

Fantastic work through the lines section. Your lines are smooth and confidently drawn, and as such they maintain consistent trajectories throughout with no signs of hesitation or wobbling. At the same time, you're demonstrating considerable control and precision, and excellent use of the ghosting method.

Now your ellipses take a bit of a turn. In the table of ellipses exercise, you seem to be more hesitant, and as a result you draw more slowly. This causes your ellipses to come out a little stiff and uneven, as they lack the smoothness of the lines that preceded them. It's really important that you draw every mark with a confident, persistent pace - accuracy is important, but it's not terribly useful if your marks wobble.

Now you do improve on this quite a bit when you hit the ellipses in planes. Here your ellipses are again smooth and evenly shaped, which is actually rather interesting. This is where most students start to stiffen up, due to the challenge of getting their ellipses to fit. So at least it does show that you're learning from those mistakes.

Jumping ahead to your rough perspective boxes, there are a couple problems here:

• You don't seem to be applying the ghosting method anymore, so your lines are visibly wobblier and less certain. The ghosting method is not just an exercise - it's a technique you should be applying to every single mark you put down without exception, be they lines, ellipses, or anything else.

• Remember that your horizontal lines must be parallel to your horizon, and your verticals must run perpendicular to it, since our boxes for this exercise are all aligned to the ground plane. Your lines tend to slant a little arbitrarily.

In your rotated boxes, you put forward a pretty solid attempt, but there are a couple issues:

• Towards the center you're doing a good job of keeping the gaps between your boxes narrow and consistent, so as to avoid any unnecessary guesswork, but they start to get farther apart as you go towards the outside of the set. This results in you losing that sense of structure, and ultimately guessing a lot more than you need to.

• Your boxes aren't actually rotating very much relative to one another. As demonstrated here, they're actually aligned towards fairly similar vanishing points.

Again, you're not applying the ghosting method to your organic perspective boxes - at times this results in lines that are sketchy or wobbly, though towards the second page they are at least much smoother.

Aside from that, you've got a solid attempt at the exercise here. There is room for improvement, especially in getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but that's expected and is something we'll continue to work on.

Now 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 work more on your freely rotated boxes, while also further practicing your use of the ghosting method.