250 Box Challenge

9:33 PM, Friday May 8th 2020

Greeny 250 box challenge - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/wAVZ833.jpg

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

Hello!

So this is my attempt at the 250 box challenge took me a long time to actually get through it all, i didnt want to just crank out 250 boxes in one sitting so i paced myself and made this a part of my warm up every day when i set aside time to draw, doing 20 boxes or so each day!

Imgur was a pain getting this set up, but thats besides the point; persoanlly, I think there is a general level of improvement of how "good" my boxes are, certainly a lot less extreme divergences as i went on with each day.I know i should be doing these, and well, drawabox as a whole, with a pen, but i just dont have the ones that the course requires of me; however when i do get one i will likely go back and redo these exercises at least parts of them to really pick up the skills that DaB is teaching me. Along with my boxes generally getting better, in terms of getting more accustomed with ghosting and line confidence, doing this has improved those aspects of my drawing skill too; and if i want to be able to draw from imagination really understading simple 3d forms is key.

In hindsight, i likely should have asked for critique every 50 boxes or so, as the fact i didn't do that certianly has not helped, but i feel as though i have still improved over the course of this challenge and this is setting myself up nicely for when i eventually go on to do the 250 cylinder challenge too!

Thanks for reading and the eventual review of this; again, sorry its not in pen; but this is as best as i can do given the current situation; thanks in advance~

Regards Greeny

2 users agree
6:30 PM, Saturday May 9th 2020

First of all, I wanna say that you don't need to get the pens that drawabox recommends you, a ballpoint will do the job greatly and your learning will be wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, better with ballpoint, so please, do the following lessons with a ballpoint. Ballpoints are only a few cents, and they are sold at the supermarket, if you don't have already a bunch at home.

First thing, congratulations on finishing the box challenge! I'll go over what I can notice on your work.

First thing I notice is that you're drawing quite small, and you could be drawing with your wrist because of the size. In this exercise, you should be drawing max 5 boxes per page, filling the page completely. It doesn't matter if the extension lines of the boxes collide with other boxes, draw them as big as you can.

You also mantain some issues with line extension through the challenge, as shown here,lines should always be extended away from the center of the initial Y

You do have some clear divergences as well, as shownhere, it's something that can never happen, careful with it.

Last thing is your hatching. You have fraying on both ends on it. Don't neglect it.

Next Steps:

Before marking this as complete. I want 12 more boxes from you drawn with ballpoint pen. Draw 3 per page, as big as you can, it doesn't matter if the line extensions collide with other boxes.

Be sure you apply the line extension correctly on each page before moving to the next, and good luck! Keep it up, you're almost there!

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
6:55 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020

Hello; so after reading this and realising that i did, well, nothing substantial right/well, im not gonna lie to you i was disheartened, more than i'm willing to let on. I get is critique and that its all given so i can improve but it didnt make me feel great to say the least.

Never the less, i did what you asked and here is the imgur album https://imgur.com/a/q974EMj Hopefully this is what you asked...

9:32 PM, Sunday May 10th 2020
edited at 9:33 PM, May 10th 2020

You did stuff well of course, your line quality improves, and your convergences improve too, I tend to keep my critiques short so I can critique as many people as I can; as you can see, the submissions are actually at an absurdly high number, so I try to keep the critiques to the point so I can make more critiques, sorry if I sounded rude and harsh on it, it was by no means my intention.

Into your boxes, they're looking p good, you've applied the line extension method correctly on all of them, and the line quality is mostly good.

You've some lines with a bit of wobble however.

In drawabox exercises, you should always prioritize confidence over accuracy, even when adding lineweight.

A wobbly line will always be worse than a confident line, no matter how off the confident line is.

If you take a look over the ghosted lines notes you'll see the levels of lines:

Level 1: Line is smooth and consistent without any visible wobbling, but doesn't quite pass through A or B, due to not following the right trajectory. It's a straight shot, but misses the mark a bit.

Level 2: Line is straight, smooth and consistent without any wobbling and maintains the correct trajectory. It does however either fall short or overshoot one or both points.

Level 3: Line is straight, smooth, consistent without any wobbling. It also starts right at one point and ends exactly at the other.

As you can see, wobbly lines aren't mentioned, which means that they would be worse than level 1.

In your hatching, it still has a bit of fraying on both ends. Remember to take your time with it. Carefully place the pen on the border of a box so the lines doesn't float, fraying on both ends.

Overall they look p good, I can see a improvent from your beggining boxes, good job!

There is a thing you still have trouble with, which is the inner corner. Most students still struggle with this by finishing the challenge and it's pretty normal, as it's really hard to get right. The inner corner appears wrong because of the accumulation of mistakes done through the whole box.

One way that helped me to improve it, is to change the order I drew my boxes in, I changed it as the way I did here. It helps, because it help you to think more about the relationships between lines, instead of just thinking in pairs. This picture explain this. It's hard to understand, so don't worry if you don't get it right now, look at it from time to time and it'll click eventually (It took me quite a while to get it to me as well).

Anyways, you've been following my instructions and have ended improving a lot, good job!

Next Steps:

Good luck on lesson 2 and keep it up!

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
edited at 9:33 PM, May 10th 2020
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.
PureRef

PureRef

This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.

When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.

Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.

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