250 Box Challenge

2:30 AM, Saturday January 16th 2021

250 box - Album on Imgur

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What a behemoth of a challenge! Thank you for taking the time to look through my body of work included here.

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10:18 PM, Sunday January 17th 2021

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 also start to do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points!

While your lines are much more clean and confident looking, I do see that you still hesitate in some areas particularly with your extra line weight. 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. I would also recommend that you read this comment by Uncomfortable, where he talks more about hesitation.

Going back to your 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 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.

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 also noticed that you drew some of your boxes quite small. Part of the reason for the 5-6 boxes per page rule is so that students have enough room to draw their boxes larger while having room to check their convergences. By drawing your boxes very small you limit your own ability to execute your lines from the shoulder confidently, which affects the quality of your mark making. Drawing bigger also helps engage your brain's spatial reasoning skills, whereas drawing smaller impedes them. This, along with varying your foreshortening and orientations of your boxes will help you get the most out of the exercise.

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 10 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

I will mainly be looking at the quality of your mark making to see if you are employing the ghosting method correctly. 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:

10 additional boxes as described in the critique.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:28 AM, Monday January 18th 2021
edited at 1:30 AM, Jan 18th 2021

I'm sure you get this alot, but I've must have watched your video at least 6x throughout this challenge, it is an honor to have my work looked over by you!

The hesitation you noticed on my line weight is something that was ever present on my mind every box of the way for the reason that you pick up, i drew a somewhat pretty box, I don't wanna ruin this somewhat pretty box.

In the extra assignment, you mention 5 boxes only per page. Is this a max of 5 boxes per page, or do both pages have to have 5 boxes on each?

edited at 1:30 AM, Jan 18th 2021
8:16 PM, Monday January 18th 2021
edited at 8:17 PM, Jan 18th 2021

I am always happy to hear my videos are helpful! I will try to get back to them soon, once school settles down.

To answer your question, 5 is this maximum. If you want to draw fewer boxes per page that is fine. The extra space is good for drawing larger, so if you do draw fewer boxes I will expect to see you drawing larger. As I said before, drawing larger helps engage your brain's spatial reasoning skills, whereas drawing smaller impedes them.

edited at 8:17 PM, Jan 18th 2021
12:21 AM, Wednesday January 20th 2021
4:13 PM, Thursday January 21st 2021

This is a very good improvement!

You mark making quality has steadily improved here as well and your sets of lines are doing a better job of converging towards their shared vanishing points. Your extra line weight is also looking more confident and is beginning to blend more seamlessly with your original marks.

Great job! I will now mark this lesson as complete and you can move onto lesson 2!

Next Steps:

Continue to lesson 2!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
4:20 PM, Thursday January 21st 2021

Thank you so much for looking over my work! the feedback on the original turned in assignment really helped a lot.

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