JAMB

Hey Agnast don't know if you are still active on this, I was going to critique your work, it would be great if you could reply to this so I can know if you still are doing Draw A Box since its been a while since this was posted.

Good Job on completing the 250 Box Challenge! From reviewing your boxes I can the the evolution of your boxes and how you view the space around them, just look at the boxes at the 50 mark and compare them to the 140 mark the progress is very apparent. You can also see how your inner lines developed too, which are probably the hardest ones to get to hit correctly, at the 140 mark you can still see some problems with them but towards the end in the last few boxes you seemed to have improved much more!

Hi Hairy tbh I wasn't even going to review/respond to this post but after looking at your profile and seeing you've been waiting a while I feel obliged to. Okay at first I did skim through your drawing but when I saw they were out of order and hard to see the number it sort of made me not want to review it, so in the future I think you should do the most to make your work as easy to review or else people will just think its a little extra work that they'd rather not deal with and review another post.

After looking through each page I can see there are some boxes that you just gave up on because they looked bad/there was no point in finishing them cause they look messed up. I would encourage you to try and avoid doing this a part of Draw A Box is to come to accept mistake and acknowledge them, what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how to avoid it in the attempt/drawing to come. I can see that your boxes definately improved overtime I think you could have fit more boxes on some of the pages that only have 3 but that not a big issue. Towards the end of the pages your boxes definitely are a lot more accurate but I can see that the inner lines still cause you some problems, sometimes the hit very close other times they diverge instead of converge. Something that I discovered while doing the challenge myself to fix this is to see/ghost where I want each inner line to go before finishing the box and then drawing my outer lines to those specifications. If thats confusing I'd be more than happy to show you what I mean. Other than that I think you definitely learned through this challenge so I think its okay for you to move on to lesson 2, keeping in mind to keep your work clean looking (that doesn't mean it has to look good because they definitely aren't expected to look like a masterpiece) clean as in making them easy to look at and review. Congratulations!

side not while I was looking through your profile I didn't see lesson one have you completed it or did you remove it? Just out of curiosity

Congratulations! After reviewing your boxes I can see lots of improvement in lots of areas, just from looking at the first few pages and comparing them to the last few you can see how much the pages cleaned up. Your boxes definitely improved and became alot more cleaner looking along with your shading. I can also see that your boxes' extended lines started hitting closer and closer becoming more and more convincing.

Hey, congragulations on completing lesson 1! To start off looking at your superimposed lines you seem to be drawing them quickly with confidence which is what this excercise is for. There is some visibile wavering taking place on the lines that tend to be long and some of the curvier lines but that in't much to lose sleep over you'll get momre accurate the more you practice. Your ghosted lines look good they are looking straight with no wobbliness to them.

Your rough perspective came out fairly well, lots of the lines are hitting close to the vanishing point though some do stray off very far, you'll certainly get bettter and following the vanishing point in the 250 box challenge so don't sweat that. Nothing much to say about the plotted looks great and nice range of different views of drawing the boxes in.

Your pages of ellipses are actually very good, they might look bad to you at the moment but as you continue on the lessons you'll realise the aren't as bad as the seem. They are certainly difficult especially when trying to go over them twice but it'll get easier. You drew lots of ellipses which is great practice and also you can see some are really well done.

As for the ghosted planes and ellipses in planes, I felt you could have filled the page much more. The ones that are on the page are well done with the lines looking confident and the ellipses hitting all sides. Your funnels are well done and the page is filled with them, which I think is how your ghosted planes should have been like. The ellipses in the funnels look good the only thing I would say about them is the ones towards the center could be drawn a bit thinner(shorter minor axis).

Ok the rotated boxes exercise is very difficult and getting it right the first time is not expected I can see you gave it a very good try and your boxes actually do look like they are rotating/convincing, you did a much better job on this than when I tried it. Some problems I see though is your boxes are very curved on the first attempt, on the second attempt not so much but still see some curved boxess. A reason for this curving might be you are drawing from the wrist,make sure you are drawing from the elbow making sure you are locking your wrist so your lines are straight. On your first attempt the boxens all seem to be of the same width and length whereas the second attempt they seem to go super far back. This might have been caused by you guessing how the face of the box in the back would look and how big it would be use the surrounding boxes' back face and hint to minimize this. The last thing is it seems your going over your inner lines to improve them which makes it look like sketching and a bit messy, for the outlines of the boxes it is fine to go over them to darken and thicken them but not the inner ones. The inner ones should be done in one confident and ghosted line and if you mess up roll with it, by accepting that a line didn't come out the way you wanted it too and it looking a bit off you practice acceptance which is very important in draw a box, moving past mental blocks that keep you from improving.

Your organic perspective look great, your thickening of your outlines and accuracy will improve with more practice so no issue there. You didn't make the same mistake of going over inner lines as much like in the rotated boxess, there are very few times from what I can see.

Thanks so much for looking over my submission and replying so quick!

First I'd like to say that good job on sticking it through and uploading your submissions for critique, even though you think they look bad.

This is my opinion and view on some general fixes, and if anyone else is reading looking looking to review I'd like for their input aswell. I think first you should look into the materials that you are using to submit your assignments, if you don't have any felt pens I think you should just use a reqular pen rather than a pencil. i have two reasons for this the first is because it will make your lines easier to see and just make your drawing look a lot cleaner. The second reason is because they are more permanent that pencil which is one of the important parts of drawbox making sure you can't go back and fix your mistakes and ackowleding those mistakes so you're less likely to do them next time. As for the paper I personally use printer paper because it comes out better in pictures. (Side note I recommend you download and use the Adobe Scan app to take the pictures of your homework they come out much clearer, you certainly don't have too.) Also I saw that for some of the exercises that required 2 pages you only had one and didn't setup the pages correctly by setting them up in 3 scenes on a page like for the Organic Perspective exercise.

What follows is the exercise that I have some comments on based on your submissions(the exercises not included I think were done well):

Ghosted Planes

*  Needs another page

*  Could look to fit planes together a little more so little empty space is left

Table of Ellipses

* Needs another page

* Did very well on this exercise and set up page properly by making the scenes

Ellipses in Planes

* You should use the planes you made form the ghosted planes, if you want rather than making new ones, to draw *ellipses* not circles

* Need 2 full pages

Funnels

* Good amount of funnels

* Ellipses should not cross minor axises and instead mirror on each side

Plotted Perspective

* Review the provided video and steps carefully 

* Page and scenes broken up correctly

Rough Perspective

* Some boxes don't look like they were drawn considering the vanishing poi

* Review the provided video and steps carefully

* Need another page

Rotated Boxes

* Your attempt could have come out better if you had drawn the boxes at the ends of the axis that were intended to be fully rotated boxes

* Review the provided video and steps carefully

Organic Perspective

• Pages not setup correctly (no scenes)

• Good attempt

• Don't need to draw lots of boxes it makes them feel squeezed in and page cluttered

• Boxes increase in size well

In general I think you should look to follow the steps and videos that Uncomfortable has made more, but i think you made a good attempt.

Thanks so much for taking the time to critique my work! I found it very helpful! I have one question about doing these excercises as warmup before drawing. How often do you recommend doing them and are there some I should focus more on than other? Thanks!