Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

I'll address your questions after the critique as they'll probably take up a bit of space when I start to ramble. Thank you for your patience until then.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it 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:

• Good work drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling.

• You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.

Things you can work on:

• It's not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend practicing applying hatching in your future work. It's a useful tool to learn and the only way to improve is to practice.

• 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.

While I've noted a few things you can work on in the critique above, you've completed quite the daunting challenge. Overall your boxes are looking really solid, you clearly put in a lot of care and time. Good work.

That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Answers to your questions

• Most people have a particular direction they're comfortable drawing, if you're right handed it tends to be starting close to your left side and then moving up and to the right (and flipping hands and sides if you're left handed). This is normal and while you could spend time practicing a bunch of different angles, it's often easier to just rotate your page so you can tackle each line in the most comfortable way possible. No point in making things needlessly difficult unless it's under weird circumstances (being in a confined space etc.)

• The rear corner of the box will nearly always be off just due to the fact that you're freehanding these, any mistakes you make up to that point will be reflected in the rear corner since we tend to draw it last. Just do your best to adjust and work with it, the goal of the challenge isn't to create perfect boxes (we have digital tools and rulers to help with that), it's just meant to help improve your understanding of 3D space (which you achieved, good work once again).

Self reflection like that is very normal. We acknowledge that the box challenge isn't fun, it's part of why we stress the importance of the 50% rule and the fact that you should be spending time drawing for yourself. I can't tell you whether you personally are a good fit for drawing or not, but I will say that some people love the idea of drawing more than drawing itself. I don't want that fact to discourage you but like a lot of creative hobbies the gratification can take a long time to achieve. It can take a while to learn to enjoy the process and for some that enjoyment never comes, there's nothing wrong with that, it just means they either really enjoy the outcome (if they keep doing it) or it's just not the right interest for them.

Lots of people grow up playing games or having interests that provide gratification very quickly, and while there's nothing wrong with those hobbies it can make the transition into slower gratification interests very challenging. If you just enjoy doodling and don't care about improving that much than by all means there's nothing wrong with doing so, and you should do so in your own time to keep yourself enjoying drawing. That said this course is about very focused practice (most good post high school courses will be as well), it's aim is to help those that want to improve faster than if you were to just draw for fun on a daily basis.

Focused mindful practice results in the fastest growth but it's very rarely that enjoyable (at least in the beginning), if you play music at all then a comparison can be found in scales or rudiments. Ideally you practice them everyday, they can be tedious, they're not as entertaining as playing songs you enjoy but they help you improve faster than playing the same song over and over. That said, if you only played scales and rudiments you'd drive yourself crazy, so you do have to balance it out by learning some songs you enjoy along the way (the 50% rule applies to most creative hobbies).

While some people will be lucky enough to fall in love with a hobby or interest right away (usually if they're younger and aren't dealing with as much stress), it's not the case for a lot of people. It can be hard to tackle something new and starting at square one if you're already comfortable/good at doing other things. It may be a while before you enjoy it. You may never enjoy it. You won't know until you try though. If you just want to draw super casually and for fun then there's nothing wrong with that and while it may be slower you'll still gradually improve over time as long as you keep doing so. If you want to improve faster and to have a higher chance of getting better than you would on your own, then you'll need to focus on fundamentals whether you like it or not really. This time it was boxes, but in the future when you determine what type of drawing you want to focus on you'll likely have to draw that subject type over and over again as well. The same can be said for any interest, they all require trial, error, repetition as well as time.

Apologies for rambling and that I can't give you a definitive answer. Forcing yourself to do something that isn't enjoyable when you're just starting isn't unusual. Only you can determine where the line for your interest is. If the idea of working slowly on a piece for hours and hours isn't appealing to you then maybe it's just not the right pursuit for you, but you'll figure that out as you progress and self-reflect more. I would encourage you to try and do some personal drawing/painting in your own time if you don't currently. Try to put in a fair bit of time and your best effort to see how it feels committing to a longer project. Know that the better you get the more you'll realize there is to learn (so if you want to draw something like a comic, start now because you'll just keep moving the "not until I'm good" goal line further back and you can always redo it in the future). You'll likely always be somewhat critical of your own work if you care about it so it becomes a matter of having to learn learn to enjoy the process. If you can't then maybe give something else a try, maybe it'll stick or maybe you'll realize you did enjoy drawing after all and come back to it.

Hope that helps, sorry if it doesn't. Best of luck with the course, your personal work, and anything else you may pursue in the future.