12:22 AM, Monday March 21st 2022
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
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:
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Your construction lines are mostly looking smooth and confidently drawn.
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You're doing a good job of experimenting with orientations. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.
Things you can work on:
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Your hatching lines could be tidier. Just like any other line we want to take our time planning them using the ghosting method, space them evenly and draw them confidently.
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Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge but I do recommend practicing it in your future attempts. It's an incredibly useful tool but one that people often require a fair bit of mileage before they feel comfortable applying it. The sooner you start to build up that mileage the sooner you'll see better results.
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You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. In the instructions we recommend drawing 5-6 large boxes per page as seen here. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.
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At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 191/193/194/212 are some later examples of this). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. Here are some more examples if you need them and here's a briefer visual guide as well.
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I'd like you to experiment with proportions and rates of foreshortening more. You drew fairly similar boxes throughout the challenge, I recommend mixing in some longer/thinner/wider boxes to see how your lines behave in different scenarios. As for rates of foreshortening you mostly kept your vanishing points fairly far form your boxes and tried to create close to parallel lines it seems. Try bringing your vanishing points in closer to get more experience working with lines that have to converge more dramatically.
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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 get the impression that you may have tackled this challenge a bit too hastily, there were instructions glossed over and you created this submission just 2 weeks after your lesson 1 submission. While the there is a mandatory 2 week waiting period between submissions know that it is in no way a guide for how fast you should be progressing. It's fairly common for the box challenge to take over a month with each box taking 10 minutes each. You may find it helpful to take a look at ScyllaStew's videos which can be found here, she recorded herself working through some of the early lesson content.
I did notice that you submitted lesson 2 in the past as well, while we do accept old submissions of lesson 1 if this is just a case of old boxes being submitted we usually ask for an additional 50 to be drawn as well to show your current abilities.
Either way, I can't say for certain if these were just done hastily or perhaps old and not representative of what you're capable of currently. I do think you can do better though.
I'm going to be asking you to draw 30 more boxes please. Focus on experimenting with rates of foreshortening and proportions as well as placing your vanishing points/line extensions in the correct direction. Take your time, draw larger and try to get your lines to converge more consistently towards their vanishing points.
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.
Next Steps:
30 more boxes please.