Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Welcome back to the course. Not only does the box challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

  • Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn when you take your time.

  • You're doing a good job of experimenting with orientations, and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

  • You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.

  • At times there is some noticeable wobbling and arching occuring in your lines which shows that you may not be utilizing your shoulder and not drawing as confidently as you could be. It does feel a bit like you started rushing at times to just get the challenge done rather than taking the time to follow the principles of markmaking.

  • It's not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend practicing applying hatching in your future work. It's a useful tool to learn and the only way to improve is to practice.

  • I'd like you to experiment with proportions more in the future, mix in some longer/thinner/wider boxes to see how your lines behave in different scenarios.

  • There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.

Since you stopped in 2022 the course material has been updated, the box challenge itself was revamped fairly recently. I encourage you to read through the new material just to re-familiarize yourself with the concepts you've already learned as well as possibly fill in any holes in your understanding.

I'll also be asking that you read/watch the new box challenge content and complete:

  • 30 boxes from the first section of the updated challenge (titled the first 50).

  • 30 boxes from the second section of the challenge (titled the next 50).

Be sure to take your time, don't just force yourself through them or you may risking burning yourself out again. Make sure you split your time and follow the 50% rule to help prevent it as well. You're on the right track you just need to experiment and be a bit more mindful of your work.

Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.

I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.