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

The challenge was updated very recently as the disclaimer at the beginning of it explains. We expect some of the older style submissions to still come in so don't worry, your work will be critiqued all the same. I would recommend that you read and watch through all of the updated challenge however so it can potentially help reinforce/clarify any of the concepts.

Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.

Things you did well:

  • Good work drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling.

  • When hatching you're taking the time to space each line evenly which shows that care and thought is being put into each line. This helps your boxes appear solid and tidy rather than rushed.

Things you can work on:

  • You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.

  • I'd like you to experiment more with orientations, proportions, and rates of foreshortening. You've kept most of your boxes fairly similar in terms of proportions and orientations, try rotating your starting Y more and mixing in longer/wider/thinner boxes to see how your lines behave in different scenarios. As for rates of foreshortening you tend to keep your vanishing points quite far from your boxes and your lines closer to parallel. I'd like you to try and bring your vanishing points in closer so you build up experience working with closer vanishing points and lines that converge more dramatically. Remember that experimentation is an important part of the learning process.

  • 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.

The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.

I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.

I'd like you to draw 30 more boxes please. For the first 15 I'd like you to draw your boxes' vanishing points explicitly on the page after you've drawn your starting Y, this will make it so you have to keep these vanishing points in mind (it's the method we use in the First 50 of the updated challenge). For the latter 15 go back to the challenge's method without drawing the vanishing points which will hopefully be easier after the first set.

Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.

I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.