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What to focus on to get the most out of the 250 box challenge

4:45 AM, Sunday July 13th 2025

In working on the 250 challenge, I'm finding that I'm pretty much nailing the vanishing points and line work right away. Keeping on with the challenge is mostly going to be an exercise in building muscle memory, but my main goal is exactly what Uncomfortable says Drawabox is intended for: to develop a strong, intuitive understanding of how the 3-D world is represented and recreated on a 2-D page.

So to that end, what exactly should I be focusing on or thinking about as I'm creating these boxes? Again, the boxes are turning out crisp and accurate. That's nice, but I want to make sense out of everything I'm seeing & drawing and to build as much spatial awareness and sensitivity as possible. And what about after drawing a page of quality boxes? What can I look at or notice about the forms on the page to deepen my understanding of what it is I'm creating?

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12:53 PM, Sunday July 13th 2025
edited at 2:23 PM, Jul 13th 2025

I strongly advise against attempting to over-optimize, or "min-max" your learning strategies here, as discussed in this video from lesson 0, which discusses how one might get the most out of this course. Each exercise serves its own purpose in the course, and attempts to expand their benefits in one direction can very easily introduce further distractions that may cause you to miss key aspects of the exercise.

This course is designed to be used in a particular fashion, to yield particular results. Put all of your time, energy, and focus on ensuring that you are following and adhering to the instructions as closely as you can.

It's also worth noting that as mentioned in that video, you should only be moving onto the next lesson/challenge after having the previous one marked as complete - I noticed that you have submitted your Lesson 1 work for official critique, but have not yet received it, so you've jumped the gun somewhat. Instead, this would be an ideal time to work off any of the 50% rule play debt you may have accrued this far.

edited at 2:23 PM, Jul 13th 2025
2:33 AM, Tuesday July 15th 2025
edited at 2:34 AM, Jul 15th 2025

I've been thinking about your response a little more, and although I see your point that I should follow the instructions as closely as possible, I would say that (apart from jumping the gun) my original question is an attempt to follow your instructions. I'm really not trying to min-max. Instead, I see these exercises as having two developmental goals: 1) mechanical drawing skills; 2) spatial reasoning abilities. I'm sure you would agree. I'm just saying that, as a student, I feel as though I'm not developing on the spatial reasoning axis quite the way I'd like, and I'm asking for advice on how to interpret the boxes I'm drawing, which is literally spatial reasoning.

There's no doubt that I've improved substantially on both fronts since starting DaB. But I'm running into some spatial-perceptual misconceptions and knowledge gaps where drawing another 250 boxes won't magically wax-on/wax-off solve the problem. I just want to be able to look at a box on the 2-D page and immediately know how it might actually appear in 3-D space. Sometimes I can do that. Other times, I have a lot of trouble. So my original question wasn't about min-maxing, it was about bridging that spatial reasoning and perceptual ability gap while I'm simultaneously doing the mechanical task of drawing a zillion boxes. That's the goal of the course, after all. Nothing more, nothing less.

To be more specific, sometimes with the Y-method/3-point perspective, I can't quite tell if one box corner is coming into or out of the plane of the page relative to another corner. That throws off my whole perception of the box. I end up getting sort of a Gestalt effect where I can see it both ways, but only one is truly correct. As such, I find myself occasionally not able to "read" the 2-D boxes properly. I sure can make them at this point, but if I can't imagine them or interpret them, I'm only succeeding in developing the mechanical skills, not the spatial reasoning. All I'm asking is for a little guidance on how to properly interpret the boxes I'm creating so that I develop on both of the axes you intend. There's no min-maxing in that request.

None of this is in opposition to what you said, nor am I trying to prove a point, be argumentative, or be "right." I just want to be sure that I'm getting the most out of the considerable investment of time and effort I'm putting in to your course.

edited at 2:34 AM, Jul 15th 2025
4:36 PM, Tuesday July 15th 2025

I understand where you're coming from, but ultimately the box challenge's purpose isn't actually to develop your spatial reasoning skills. That is something it helps with somewhat, but we're still preparing students with the tools they need. It isn't until the constructional drawing exercises in lessons 3-7 that we'll be directly targeting those spatial reasoning skills.

The box challenge has a few goals, which are outlined in the box challenge overview video:

  • The main one is to develop students' capacity to estimate their convergences; given a set of lines that converge together, to be able to add other lines to it that converge in a similar fashion.

  • To expose the student to an overwhelming task, and have them demonstrate to themselves that they can - step by step, box by box, line by line, whittle away at it while maintaining the same focus and attention to the choices they're making throughout.

  • To give them further mileage with their linework, the use of the ghosting method, etc.

As noted previously, all the student needs to do is their best to follow the instructions as they're laid out. The more students worry about things beyond that, the more they are likely to miss those key points and actually get less out of the course (despite their driven desire to get everything out of it that they can).

11:30 PM, Tuesday July 15th 2025
edited at 11:30 PM, Jul 15th 2025

Fair enough. I haven't looked ahead at forthcoming lessons, so I don't really know what's taught after Lesson 1. Knowing that there is a shift in focus to spatial reasoning skills in future lessons is really all I need to hear to stay engaged. Thanks for clarifying!

edited at 11:30 PM, Jul 15th 2025
1:17 PM, Sunday July 13th 2025

Oopsie. Sounds like a plan.

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