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12:09 AM, Monday June 21st 2021

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

To answer your question you should be using the previous exercises you've completed as well as challenge topics (boxes in this case) as your warm ups after you've completed them. So before working on boxes you'd pick some lesson 1 exercises as warm ups, when you move on to lesson 2 you'd be picking exercises from lesson 1 as well as boxes, lesson 1 + 2 + boxes for lesson 3 warm ups etc.

You are improving in some areas overall but you do have things to work on as well that I'll be addressing.

Your lines are looking more confident and tidy which is great, it's good to see you're attempting to use line weight as well.

The biggest issue in your submission is that you're not thinking about your vanishing points and in nearly every box you draw by the end you either attempt to keep your lines as parallel as possible or they end up diverging. You also draw fairly similar boxes throughout most of the challenge instead of experimenting which is what will help deepen your understanding the most.

Take a look at this example, it shows the relation between a set of lines and their vanishing point. Due to perspective our lines should always converge at least slightly towards a vanishing point and should always converge as an entire set, not as pairs. This is important to remember as our lines should never be diverging away from our vanishing point or else it causes distortion and harms their overall solidity.

You'll notice in that example that the inner pair of lines are fairly similar and will be unless our boxes are quite long, and that the inner pair can vary drastically depending on the location of our vanishing point. The closer the point is the faster the rate of convergence and the more extreme the rate of foreshortening, while the further the point the closer to parallel they'll become.

I won't be moving you on just yet as you still have work to do in order to understand the concepts being taught so far. Seeing how each lesson builds on concepts introduced earlier in the course if I did move you forward it would just lead to further issues down the line.

I'm going to be asking you to draw 50 more boxes, take your time, be sure to experiment and put in your best effort.

Remember:

  • Our lines should never be completely parallel

  • They shouldn't diverge from the vanishing point

  • Experiment with the location of your vanishing point

  • Experiment with proportions and orientations

I know you're capable of this and look forward to seeing your work in the future.

Next Steps:

50 more boxes.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:23 PM, Tuesday February 1st 2022

Hello, here are the 50 extra boxes you asked me for, sorry for the long delay.

I can't tell you exactly why I keep messing up, probably I need to work more on my straight lines.

Cheers.

https://imgur.com/a/b50PqAh

12:58 AM, Wednesday February 2nd 2022

Hey there, it's definitely been a bit but I'm glad to see you're back.

Overall these are much better than your original submission which is great.

There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.

As long as you keep those facts in mind and keep practicing you'll continue to see improvement.

I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups and good luck.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:01 AM, Wednesday February 2nd 2022

Thank you so much, I will.

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A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

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