250 Box Challenge
4:00 AM, Saturday December 19th 2020
Boxes 45-55 are included at this link: https://imgur.com/gallery/80ghRFT
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7:26 PM, Sunday December 20th 2020
Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!
From what I can see your line work is fairly well done and your boxes are coming along well. 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!
One thing I notice about your boxes is 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, which you should apply only to the silhouette of your boxes. I recommend that you try adding your extra line weight in no more than 1-2 pases to better focus on ghosting your extra line weight properly.
Extra line weight should never be used to correct or hide mistakes. You can also 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.
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. 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.
Finally while your converges do improve overall I think this diagram will help you further develop that skill as you continue through Drawabox. So, 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.
Congrats again and good luck with lesson 2!
Next Steps:
Continue to lesson 2!
11:58 PM, Sunday December 20th 2020
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
I ghosted as much as possible to add my line weight, but I feel like my lines vary so much from day to day. On the days where I wasn’t doing so well with lines, I ended up making all those passes and tried to hide my mistakes like you said. And like Uncomfortable said in his comment, I am definitely hesitating when I draw my lines. Most of the hesitation I notice is when I’m adding line weight and not to the initial line. I get anxious and probably drink too much coffee. Should I even submit work from days where I am not doing as well?
5:48 PM, Monday December 21st 2020
We aren't really qualified to give medical advice. If you are concerned about the effects of caffeine might have on your mark making you should speak to a medical professional for specific information like that.
As for the question about not submitting homework from days you felt you didn't do well, I would suggest rereading this section of lesson 0.
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