250 Box Challenge

1:57 PM, Monday November 23rd 2020

1.1. 250 Boxes - Google Drive

1.1. 250 Boxes - Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Dj5EFAbQkPoVQMp1sWnfwLglgonkUh8K?usp=sharing

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Hello everyone,

For this challenge I tried to slow down a bit, since I have a tendency to go fast. I also tried to consciously draw from the shoulder, but I had some slips.

My biggest challenge was with drawing the back part of the box, I can tell most of them are wrong, but I cannot put my finger on what I'm doing wrong exactly. Any tips on that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Magna

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12:41 AM, Tuesday November 24th 2020

Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!

You did a pretty good job on the challenge overall. When I compare your early boxes to your later ones I can see a good improvement in the quality of your mark making. Your lines steadily look straighter and more confident as you progressed through the challenge. You also do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points!

While your mark making has improved overall I can still see a bit of hesitation showing in some of your boxes. Just remember that the confidence of the stroke is far and away your top priority. Once your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid mistakes has passed, so all you can really do is push through. Hesitation serves no purpose. Mistakes happen, but a smooth, confident mark is still useful even if it's a little off. Accuracy is something that you will improve on as you continue working through Drawabox and practice ghosting.

Now, while it is important that you use the ghosting method of each mark you make while doing Drawabox one thing you can try to help with ending your marks closer to where you want them is lifting the pen off of the page rather than stopping the motion of your arm.

I would also recommend that you also try adding extra line weight to your boxes as an added step. When you go to add weight to a line it is important that you treat the added weight the same way you would a brand new line. That means taking your time to plan and ghost through your mark so that when you go to execute it the mark blends seamlessly with your original mark. This will allow you to create more subtle and clean looking weight to your lines that reinforces the illusion of solidity in your boxes/forms. Extra line weight should never be used to correct or hide mistakes. You can also read more about this here. Something to keep in mind as well, when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes.

Finally while your converges do improve overall I think this diagram will help you further develop that skill as you continue through Drawabox. So, when you are looking at your sets of lines you want to be focusing only on the lines that share a vanishing point. This does not include lines that share a corner or a plane, only lines that converge towards the same vanishing point. Now when you think of those lines, including those that have not been drawn, you can think about the angles from which they leave the vanishing point. Usually the middle lines have a small angle between them, and this angle will become negligible by the time they reach the box. This can serve as a useful hint.

Congrats again and good luck with lesson 2!

Next Steps:

Continue to lesson 2!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
4:25 PM, Tuesday November 24th 2020

Hello Scyllastew,

Thank you for all the insight and tips as well. I took notes and plan on practicing on the side too. Shall be back with Lesson 2 homework. ^^

Have a nice day/evening!

Magna

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