9:36 PM, Thursday September 16th 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 experimenting with proportions and orientations. Experimenting is an important part of the learning process because it helps us form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you continue to form this habit and push yourself in the future as well.
Things you can work on:
I get the impression you may have tackled this challenge a bit too quickly for a few reasons.
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You didn't follow the recommendation of sticking to 5-6 large boxes per page which can be found here. Drawing large helps us become more comfortable working from our shoulder and allows us to see our mistakes more clearly.
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You're not hatching or applying line weight, which while optional are good things to practice. Most people find that they need a fair bit of mileage before they feel comfortable applying line weight so getting an early start is often helpful and allows you to see results sooner.
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From the writing you included in your submission and from submission dates it looks like this only took you about 2 weeks to complete, which while definitely possible is actually pretty quick for this challenge. The 2 week per submission rule is in no way a time frame at which you need to complete the next section of material, it's there to encourage you to take your time (some people try to complete sections in a day) and to help prevent Uncomfortable and us assistants from being overwhelmed with submissions. While I can't say for certain how long you spent each day tackling these boxes, just know that it's better to take your time and get the most out of the material than it is to rush. You'll learn more working on something 30 minutes a day than you would 3.5 hours one day a week.
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Your lines look like they are drawn confidently but I can't be certain from how far from the page your photos are taken, in the future try to stick to one (preferably) or two pages per photo so we can see your work more clearly.
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You're not experimenting with rates of foreshortening and instead keep your vanishing points as far from your boxes as possible which makes your convergences lines nearly parallel. Remember that experimentation is important so you definitely should mix it up so you don't end up only improving at one certain task.
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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'm going to ask you to draw 25 more boxes.
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Experiment with your rates of vanishing points and aim to have consistent points in mind rather than just extending your lines into infinite.
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Draw larger, limit the amount of boxes to 5 or 6 per page.
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Try implementing line weight and hatching on at least some of the boxes.
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Take photos of each page so I can double check that you're drawing confidently and there aren't issues that we need to work on here as well.
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Continue experimenting with proportions and orientations on top of rates of foreshortening.
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Remember to take your time, it's quite common for each box to take 10 minutes to draw, with 25 boxes that will be a bit over 4 hours. With time to let some of the concepts brought up in your critique to set in I wouldn't expect to see these later today, or even tomorrow necessarily. If It takes a few days then it does, and that's fine.
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:
25 more boxes please.