250 Box Challenge

10:38 AM, Tuesday April 13th 2021

250 boxes... first half - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/h1F7moI.jpg

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Second half: https://imgur.com/a/PkKKDBQ

I can't believe how much my linework has improved over these 250 boxes. I think in the first half there are a few where I've shaded a 'back face' by accident - box 5, box 53?

There are some big jumps in understanding:

box 11, when i realised my tendancy to curve lines

box 17- first time i noticed my pairs of convergences

box 37 - when i realised my cold hands come from anxiety

box 41- linework needs better posture

box 76 - first time i worked out how to fix the pairs of convergences

box 86 - realising how difficult boxes with hardly seen front faces are

box 101 - realising that you can't rush them, even when you thought you got it

box 113 - first time I did a pretty good box with one hardly seen front face

first attempts at rotating a single box in 136-140 and 141-146.

box 149 - oh, my linework sucks. i need to be practicing bigger

box 169 - pairs have returned.

much better rotation of a box in 171-174

180 - the shakes and cold hands dissapear at this point and I power through,

191-195 were fun, using a single shared vp for all the boxes on the page

From 196 onwards I power through until the last 6, where the shakes return!

Omg I am so relieved to be done.

thank you for taking the time to review. I can see from comparing the first and last page how much I've improved. I'm very happy to move on at this point and get to textures. I've heard they are gonna be tough, bring it on. This is what I wanted to learn! How to draw things without having to exactly copy reference material.

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12:50 AM, Thursday April 15th 2021

Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!

I can see you made some good improvement with the quality of your mark making. Your lines steadily become straighter and more confident looking as you progressed through the challenge. You drew your boxes at a pretty good size and with a variety of orientations and foreshortening. You also start to do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points!

Before we begin I just want to let you know that in general TAs will ignore student self assessment or critique so as not to contaminate our own critique of your work. If you have any questions not answered in your critique, feel free to ask them here.

Back to your critique.

While your mark making has improved, I do see that you still hesitate in some areas. This is likely due to prioritizing your accuracy over creating a smooth, confident looking line.

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. If the line is wrong, we leave it and move onto the next step. 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. You can do this with extra line weight as well. I would also recommend that you read this comment by Uncomfortable, where he talks more about hesitation.

I would recommend that you try adding extra line weight to your boxes as a permanent step for your future warm ups as it gives you more opportunities to practice employing the ghosting method. 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 your extra line weight, it is done confidently and so that it 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 be applied to the silhouette of your boxes. I recommend that you try adding your extra line weight in no more than 1-2 pases so that you can easily identify mistakes in your work. This diagram should help also you better understand how to properly apply your extra line weight.

Finally while your converges do improve overall I think this diagram will help you as well. 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.
5:47 PM, Thursday April 15th 2021
edited at 8:29 PM, Apr 17th 2021

thank you for the time you've spent to critique :) I'll bear all of this in mind as I continue - Edit: trying to be less defensive!

your video was really helpful for me - so thank you for that too! I think I was thinking about ghosting to a vp rather than the differences in between the converging lines, I'll try thinking on that in some warm ups during lesson 2.

edited at 8:29 PM, Apr 17th 2021
9:01 PM, Thursday April 15th 2021

also - good link to the uncomfortable comment. I'll try to remember that, thank you

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Sakura Pigma Microns

A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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