Hi Sea Jay, here's feedback for 250 boxes.
Before getting into the feedback, I want to say that the way your homework was presented in the Imgur gallery made it very difficult for me to evaluate it. Firstly, pictures were not posted in sequential order, and not being in sequence makes it hard to gauge your progress. I had to download the Imgur gallery to my desktop and renamed every picture in order. This is a LOT of extra work that defeats the purpose of a gallery.
Secondly, the numbering of boxes is confusing, eg. I don't see boxes #230-#250 but there are repeats of boxes #100-120. Not all the pages had dates on them either so I didn't know when you drew which page. Since pictures were not posted in sequential order in Imgur, and there are repeated box numbers while other box numbers are missing, it was hard to gauge your actual progress.
I think you didn't get any critique earlier because your Imgur gallery was confusing, which discourages people who want to help. It helps the critiquer a lot if you put the photos in sequential order and numbered properly - or if there are no numbers, at least dated on each page. Presentation is important: it always helps to make life easier for a viewer so they don't have to spend a lot of energy just trying to figure out the sequence of the pictures, on top of the energy needed to give a critique. I understand that Imgur doesn't make it easy to put pictures in specific order, but try to spend a bit of time to do it, or share a Google Drive folder and name the filenames in order (or photograph the drawings in chronological order) before uploading. Just this little effort you do makes a big difference for others, and it may help you get feedback sooner too. :)
Okay, here's the feedback.
Linework -
Looks good: you generally draw a confident line, although it wobbles now and again. The added lineweight also shows similar confidence with occasional wobble. Hatching on the box faces is also quite good, I see you've taken care with drawing them as well as the box edges. Continue to practice ghosting and drawing confident lines, and it's OK to sacrifice accuracy at first, because you can adjust accuracy later once you're able to draw the lines with confidence.
Box construction -
Generally good, you've drawn a variety of sizes and 'initial Ys', which gives good practice in drawing accurate boxes from all views and angles. The big issue is that the extension lines are not always extended in the correct way, eg. boxes #55, #57, #61-67, and as late as box #130. Some boxes are also missing a few extension lines, eg. #51, #103 (the sharper-looking page). Getting the extension lines correct is important because it demonstrates that you understand the 3-D perspective of the box when you're looking at it, plus it helps you evaluate how well your box's edges are converging to the VP.
If you're not sure how to extend the lines, see this reference pic (also pinned in Discord #basic-challenges) - https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/365180330103013388/716494148093607946/unknown.png
The extension lines extend away from the corner of the box that's closest to the viewer - which is formed by the initial Y you draw.
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Overall your linework and box construction looks good, and I think you're ready for Lesson 2. However, I'm going to ask you to draw a few extra boxes, for a few reasons: (a) it was very hard to evaluate how you improved over the whole challenge since the pictures were out of order, (b) extension lines are incorrect in a lot of boxes - and again, hard to evaluate if you corrected this mistake eventually since pics are out of order, (c) you said that it's been months since you last finished the homework and posted it.
Please:
draw 15 additional boxes, at most 5 boxes per A4 page (so they're not too cramped),
and show all the extension lines extending in the correct direction,
number them in sequence please :)
Post the extra homework here when you're done - you can ping me in Discord if you want (I'm also @Vega at the DaB server). Feel free to post your progress in #basic-challenges, especially if you're still unsure about the extension lines. Hope this helps, I'm confident you can do these few more boxes and then the next lessons!
Next Steps:
15 additional boxes with correct extension lines. Max 5 boxes per A4 page, all numbered.
OK. So it took me an entire month, but I did 15 more boxes just like you asked https://imgur.com/a/DM4vLGQ is this OK?
Hey there, thanks for that! Great work - nice variety of boxes, box edges are all converging really well, the lineweight is clean and tidy, and all the extension lines are extended in the correct direction. Thanks a bunch for updating with your recent work. All the best for the later lessons!
Next Steps:
Lesson 2 is next.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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