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10:05 PM, Monday November 1st 2021

Hi there. 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. 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

  • You're drawing smoothly and confidently.

  • When hatching you're keeping your lines evenly spaced which helps keep your boxes looking solid and tidy rather than rushed.

  • Good work experimenting with orientations and proportions. Experimenting is an important part of the learning process and an excellent habit to build. I hope you continue to work on demonstrating this habit in the future as well.

Things you can work on:

  • At times you're imaginging your vanishing point between the viewer and the box which causes you to extend your lines in the wrong direction. This results in your lines diverging from their actual vanishing point and your box becomes distorted. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you understand how to place vanishing points and line extensions consistently.

  • You're not experimenting with rates of foreshortening much. You tend to keep your vanishing points as far away from your boxes as possible while trying to keep your lines perfectly parallel. This is a mistake because due to perspective our lines will always converge at least to some degree. Try mixing it up more and seeing how your vanishing points react to different rates of foreshortening by moving your vanishing points closer.

  • 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.

I'd like you to draw 20 more boxes please. Remember to experiment with different rates of foreshortening.Try to get your lines to converge to their correct vanishing point and focus on working with your lines as a set towards a vanishing point rather than just keeping them parallel.

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:

20 more boxes.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:58 PM, Wednesday March 30th 2022

Hi,

I know it's been a long time but I'm stuck in a vicious cycle. No matter what I seem to do when it comes to the internal lines I always seem to mess it up and get supremely frustrated. It's always a guess and one line ALWAYS is super messed up. I've tried looking at the videos and the links you posted.

Here's what I mean

https://imgur.com/a/O2LEjB3

If there's anything I can read or do to get over this - it would be GREATLY appreciated.

Cheers,

Chris

3:37 PM, Wednesday March 30th 2022

Sorry to hear that you're frustrated.

The goal of the exercise isn't to create perfect boxes, it's to help you develop your ability to think in 3D space. If we want to create perfect boxes there are tools to do so (rulers, computer programs etc.) but when we rely on them it takes a lot of the thought out of the process.

That being said we expect there to be mistakes, we expect things to not be perfect because you're drawing these boxes freehand. We point out issues like your lines converging in pairs or not consistently so that you're aware of what the issues are so you can improve your later attempts so they can get closer to "perfection" and so that you can see how to improve your work, make it more consistent and have a stronger sense of what's happening in the 3D space you're constructing.

In your revisions I asked for you to focus on experimenting with rates of foreshortening by bringing your vanishing points in closer to your boxes and to place your vanishing points in the correct position so that your lines extend away from the viewer rather than towards. The box you provided does both of those things, you're being way too hard on yourself.

The internal lines tend to be the most noticeably inaccurate lines and it's because we draw them last, they basically amplify any previous mistakes we've made meaning that if you make a mistake anywhere else they will usually be off at least a little bit. Again all I can say is that this is expected, if you showed me 20 boxes of that quality and they all had lines extended in the correct direction you would probably get the go ahead to move on unless there was something obvious that you were misunderstanding. In this case I'm fairly certain it's just lack of mileage leading to inaccuracy, those inaccuracies build over time throughout the box.

Our minds aren't always the kindest to us but all I can really say is try not to let your inner critic eat at you too much. Inaccuracy and mistakes come with being human, if you were to ask me, Uncomfortable, or your favourite artists to free hand boxes they wouldn't all be perfect either (some of the ones in the demos aren't as an example).

Keep trying your best, I look forward to seeing your results.

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