Switched from ballpoint to sharpie ultra fine point around box #70.
Bonus 50% rule work included: https://imgur.com/a/glrMXmc
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. 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 mostly looking smooth and confidently drawn. There is the occasional bit of arching occuring which shows you may be relying on your wrist or elbow that your shoulder at times.
It's good to see that you're taking the time to plan and evenly space your hatching lines. This helps keep your boxes tidy and makes them look more solid.
You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening in your final 150 boxes . 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 have a tendency to create boxes with open corners because your lines are undershooting their stopping point. This hurts the solidity of your boxes a fair bit. Try to push your lines further, if you end up overshooting to start with that's preferred over undershooting and you'll build up muscle memory to figure out when to stop accurately. Remember to take the time you need to ghost and plan your lines before drawing them as well.
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.
While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. Once you spend some time on your linework your boxes will be looking pretty solid. I'm confident you'll continue to improve as you build up more mileage.
That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.
If you haven't already I would recommend reading/watching through the updated box challenge. It may help reinforce/clarify any concepts introduced in the challenge which will only help you going forward.
Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
Hi Tofu, thanks for the speedy critique. I'll be sure to work on the things you pointed out as I continue my practice. Much appreciated!
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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