250 Box Challenge

8:56 PM, Tuesday May 25th 2021

250 Boxes — Postimages

250 Boxes — Postimages: https://postimg.cc/gallery/fR9Rbc7

Man, I found this challenge quite frustrating, but rewarding at the same time.

Any advice, critique or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

1 users agree
8:41 PM, Monday May 31st 2021

Hi kleb92,

Good job on completing the 250 box challenge. I'll be reviewing your homework.

I notice a great improvement in your line convergence. You've drawn a great variety of rotated boxes and extended the lines in the right direction. Also your hatching lines look really clean.

Things you can improve:

  • You nicely added line weight the lines to each box. However, it looks like you also emphasized the inner lines of each box. You should only add line weight to the silhouette of each box (the outer lines). If you focus the weight on the internal edges, you'll give the impression that your box is really just a loose collection of lines. Adding them to the silhouette on the other hand will enclose them into a single cohesive group. See section about line weight.

  • Most of your boxes contains dramatic foreshortening. It's good to also practice drawing boxes with shallow foreshortening. These will be especially relevant in later lessons as we use boxes to construct more complex objects, due to most things we're drawing not being so immensely large. Still, it is valuable to get used to both situations, as they both pose different kinds of challenges.

  • Although I see great improvement in you convergence, I notice some divergence from the inner corner on some of your boxes. It's pretty normal to have the inner corners come out pretty off, as they are affected by the accumulation of previously done mistakes.

One way to improve your convergence is to start thinking about the relationships between your set of lines, instead that just in pairs. When we are doing our boxes, we usually compare the one we are drawing with the main converging line, this is a first step. However, what's better, is to take into account all the other lines that converge into that point so we can guess better how the angle of our next line should be.

Now, I know how confusing it sounds, so check this diagram and see if somethings clicks. If you don't immediately get it, don't worry, just keep checking it from time to time and it eventually will make sense.

Another way to improve your line convergence is to change the order you draw your boxes in. By drawing the inner corner before the last line of the box, some people find it easier to use the previously mentioned info above of thinking about the relationship between lines. Here's the order I'm talking about: https://imgur.com/a/DHlA3Jh. This takes into advantage something explained in the rotated boxes exercise too (taking advantage of lines that are very close), so give a look at the page if you want to know more about it.

Next Steps:

Well done. Keep practicing drawing boxes during your warmups and make sure to also practice shallow foreshortening. Continue with lesson 2.

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11:57 PM, Wednesday June 9th 2021

Hi Ran,

Thanks a lot for the feedback, you really gave me some useful tips. I will keep drawing boxes as warmups.

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