250 Box Challenge
9:27 PM, Tuesday August 18th 2020
Dear Uncomfortable,
here is my attempt at the 250 box challenge.
Best regards,
MisterSpades
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5:49 AM, Wednesday August 19th 2020
Hey! Congrats on finishing this challenge! I’ll be looking through it~
Starting with the line-work, this is looking good. There’s the occasional issue, like how you’ll sometimes apply line-weight to the inner lines of the box, or cross out a box that you don’t like, but, overall, this stated off strong, and improved considerably throughout the set. This is particularly visible in your hatching lines, which, by the end, are tight, and consistent. It’d have improved even further if you’d taken the time to apply line-weight/hatching to all of your boxes, but that’s not an issue- it was optional, after all.
Moving on to the convergences, these started off fairly strong, too. There’s a lot of variety in your boxes, and, save for the notoriously annoying back lines, all other lines do a good job of heading to the same vanishing point. I do wish you’d spent a little more time experimenting with some more extreme foreshortening, but that’s alright- the one you’ve settled on is the one you’ll be using most often, anyway. Now, in regards to the back lines, there’s a method of thinking about your convergences that I’d like to introduce you to. It’s outlined in this diagram. The gist of it is that we think about each set of lines (that share a vanishing point, not a plane) in isolation, focusing in particular on the angles formed between them, as they intersect over at the vanishing point. If, as an example, we look at the inner lines of the set, we notice that they have a small angle between them, that becomes negligible by the time they reach the box. Understanding this, allows us to simply think of these lines as parallel, for a guaranteed, correct answer. These relationships are also valuable for the outer lines of the set, whose degree of foreshortening will depend on their size, so it’s useful to become accustomed to them. Try to start seeing them in your own boxes, from now on, and this’ll become yet another valuable tool in your tool-set. For the purposes of this challenge, however, you’re more done, and clear to move on to lesson 2. Good luck!
Next Steps:
Lesson 2
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Staedtler Pigment Liners
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).