250 Box Challenge

8:17 PM, Monday January 4th 2021

Drawabox Challenge: 250 Boxes - Google Photos

Drawabox Challenge: 250 Boxes - Google Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/zZ9hUfWUxSyrh2EV8

Hi All!

I had actually forgotten to post this a couple months back when I finished, but I'm very happy to have completed the challenge. It was very humbling and I feel like I learned a lot about form and construction from all the iteration I've been diving a lot deeper into my art practice outside of Drawabox, but I'm looking forward to whatever Lesson 2 may bring!

Best,

Yang

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8:29 PM, Tuesday January 5th 2021

Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!

You did a good job on the challenge overall. 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 have made good progress with adding extra line weight to your boxes, I can see that your extra line weight is doing a better job of blending more seamlessly with your original marks as you progress. 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 mention that in the future, when you go to scan your homework submissions, it would be better to scan your homework using the "photo" setting instead of the "drawing" setting. The drawing setting tends to up the contrast on an image and can cause you to lose some of the subtlety in your line work.

I noticed that you still struggle a bit with applying your extra line weight. 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 it the mark 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.

Extra line weight should never be used to correct or hide mistakes. You should read more about this here. Something to keep in mind as well, when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes.

I see that for some of your boxes, you appear to have purposely tried to keep your sets of lines parallel on the 2D page, drawing them all to an "infinite" vanishing point. As explained in this section, because these boxes are oriented with us looking at the corner of the box, we should be drawing it in 3 point perspective - meaning with 3 concrete vanishing points, each set of lines converging towards a real point in space, even if that point is far off and the convergence is gradual.

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.

Before moving onto lesson 2, I am going to have you draw 30 additional boxes.

For these boxes you will do the following:

  • Use the ghosting method for every mark you make, including hatching and extra line weight

  • Apply extra line weight in a single pass along the silhouette of your boxes

  • Draw all of your boxes in 3pt Perspective

  • 5 boxes per page only

Make sure you visit every link I have left for you and reread the challenge instructions in their entirety before beginning your revisions.

Next Steps:

30 additional boxes as described in the critique.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
4:55 PM, Saturday January 9th 2021

30 Boxes

Thank you for your feedback. After going through the additional 30 boxes, I feel like I still have a bit of trouble with the inner construction lines, but I improved on the extra lineweight and linework overall. Taking more time with my ghosting definitely helped so I will be sure to carry that over in my learning. Let me know if there is anything else I should be looking for in my 30 boxes!

Best,

Yang

8:43 PM, Saturday January 9th 2021

This is a very good improvement and thank you for photographing your work as well!

From what I can see your mark making is more confident looking overall and your sets of lines are doing a better job of converging towards their shared vanishing points. Your extra line weight is also doing a better job of blending more seamlessly with your original marks. With more practice, your ability to estimate your convergences will improve. Just make sure to keep practicing this and the exercises from lesson one in your warm ups.

I am going to mark this lesson as complete and you can now move onto lesson 2.

Good luck!

Next Steps:

Continue to lesson 2!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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