View Full Submission View Parent Comment
0 users agree
5:02 AM, Sunday March 20th 2022

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

Not only does the 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 mostly looking smooth and confidently drawn.

  • 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 good job of experimenting with orientations. 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:

  • Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge but I do recommend practicing it in your future attempts (you appear to apply it to the initial Y rather than as instructed). It's an incredibly useful tool but one that people often require a fair bit of mileage before they feel comfortable applying it. The sooner you start to build up that mileage the sooner you'll see better results.

  • 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 misakes you've made more clearly.

  • Early on in the challenge at times you were placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes. This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. You can find some more examples of lines extended the wrong way here.

  • I'd like you to experiment with proportions and rates of foreshortening more. You drew fairly similar boxes throughout the challenge. Try mixing in some wider/longer/thinner boxes to see how your lines react in different scenarios. When it comes to rates of foreshortening after a couple pages you mostly keep your vanishign points fairly close to your boxes, try pushing them back at times so you build up experience creating lines closer to parallel.

  • At times you don't always extend your lines, either neglecting a set or just not drawing them at all for boxes. Be sure to do this not only because it's required as an instruction but because it gives you information in regards to how to improve your boxes.

  • 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.

Most of the boxes you've provided are looking solid but it does appear like you may have possibly tackled this a bit hastily causing you to not follow directions as closely as you could have. That being said I'd like you to draw 15 more boxes please, focus on experimenting with rates of foreshortening and proportions more. Extend all your lines, draw larger and if you decide to apply line weight be sure to give that section of the instructions another read.

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.

Next Steps:

15 more boxes please.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
7:54 AM, Saturday April 2nd 2022
8:37 PM, Saturday April 2nd 2022

These are looking good, I'm glad you experimented more.

I have no problem moving you on to the next lesson now so I'll be marking your submission complete.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups and good luck.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
10:06 AM, Monday April 4th 2022

thank you for the feedback!

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Ellipse Master Template

Ellipse Master Template

This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.

I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.

No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.