250 Box Challenge

3:23 AM, Sunday February 23rd 2020

Drawabox 250 Box Challenge - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/VGFJYxw.jpg

Post with 20 views. Drawabox 250 Box Challenge

Whew... this took a while. A bit difficult to stay motivated during it for me so Im very proud of working it out. Included is all my warmups too which is basically the whole lesson 1 all over again. That was cool seeing how much I improved. My earliest attempt at lesson 1 was a disaster and now Im actually decently confident in my abilities.

I found doing the method of drawing two outer faces, the inner face, then the last outer face to really help with getting proportions correct. Line weight feels like my main issue as I miss the mark sometimes. I find its mostly at a specific angle where my wrist will hit the rings of the sketchbook and throw me off.

Honestly drawing for fun was one of the hardest things to do during this! Especially during winter time and struggling with depression. There was a huge lack of inspiration for me but I pushed through and dedicated 50% of my time to drawing just for myself and not really caring about end results.

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10:11 AM, Sunday February 23rd 2020

Hey there, TA Meta here to review your box challenge but before we get started, congratulations on making it through. It's definitely a big ask, but looking at your first and last boxes alone, I can see that you got a lot from the challenge. I'm also glad to hear you're figuring out how to enjoy just drawing for fun, that in itself is not always easy for students, especially when they've got other things going on in their heads at the same time.

Your line confidence honestly starts off really strong but by the end, you've got a really nice tapering to your lines that suggests you're learning to control the pressure you're using when you draw lines. I would suggest you get a new pen or try to hold it more vertical (if you aren't already) as this one seems to be on its last legs!

You've made some remarkable improvement in your convergences throughout the set, with your initial boxes showing a lot of divergence - it's clear that your consistent application and use of the check lines has helped you identify and address the issues you were having. That's not to say that you've completely ironed out all the issues in your boxes, they're just much less noticeable, with a lingering tendency to have your parallel lines converge in pairs rather than altogether as in this diagram. This diagram shows the predictable relationship that the angles of the parallel lines of a box have with each other, which may help you iron out those last few inconsistencies.

Finally, I did notice you applied line weight to some of the interior lines of the boxes rather than the silhouette as shown here so make sure that when you practice boxes in your warmups, you also try to practice your line weight on the silhouettes of the boxes. Where you have applied line weight, it's really nice and confident, so keep up the good work there and don't worry too much about the accuracy, since even a subtle bit of weight will still clarify the overlaps in your forms.

Next Steps:

Well done! Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:03 PM, Sunday February 23rd 2020

Thanks a bunch for the critique and support!

Ill try to adjust the way I hold my pen, I just got a few new staedlers but they were unpacked so maybe the one I'm using is a dud. The lines tend to be clearer at certain angles so maybe its to do with the end being bent if thats possible.

That diagram I've seen time to time on the discord server, I suppose I do have a habit of using the inner line as a guide for my outermost lines. I ghost every line of the same axis to compare angles before marking a new line but I might be subconsciously giving the inner one too much importance. I'll be keeping that in mind now.

About the line weight, I got called out on that exact mistake on the discord server (adding weight to the inner lines) which led to me stopping that and only doing one line through the silhouette lines after that. That being said it still makes me frustrated when I miss the mark on line weight so thank you for the support on just focusing on the accuracy.

A big part of this challenge for me was realizing just getting it all done and watching my skills improve is better than striving to make every single box 100% perfect first try. It was daunting seeing this being the next task for me and it did take a few months to get through but I now definitely see why it was recommended so much. I'm going to take a break and then return to go onto lesson 2, very excited for it!

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