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1:23 AM, Tuesday January 16th 2024

To start, congratulations! There is a reason why the 250 Box Challenge is referred to as 'The Crucible', so give yourself a pat on the back for making it this far!

Now, though I mostly agree with the critique above by Gyanyu, I want to add a few things,

I see your most of your lines are very good and show confidence in execution, though, your hatching process could use a bit of practice (as mentioned by the reply above, hatching should be executed just like any other line, e.g. with planning, ghosting, etc.).

Your start was pretty rough, (parallel lines, diverging lines, messy linework, etc.) but you quickly got the hang of it and your technical skills seemed to improve considerably.

Now, whilst most of your boxes feel relatively solid, I observe that most of your issues (regarding convergence) seem to arise when dealing with the back corner of your boxes. This is a very common thing, so don't be discouraged. This is a problem that is quite insidious, in that it worsens with small inaccuracies made prior--and so, remediating this may not be as straight-forward as other things.

The best thing you can do to resolve this issue, (whilst it may sound redundant) is to focus on the accuracy of all the lines you draw. I believe that Uncomfortable puts this best, and as mentioned on the '250 Box Challenge' page, "The back corner is a distraction - a symptom of the individual sets of lines not converging consistently."

As your draw your box, the small mistakes you make in the convergence of your lines slowly build up, and as you continue to go about drawing your box, the mistakes that you have already made will begin to fall on the lines that you have yet to make--and, as the back corner tends to always be drawn last, it always appears to be the glaring inaccuracy most see first.

This is a tricky thing to master, and whilst you have improved considerably, I believe it would benefit you to practice a bit more, employing a more careful/methodical & holistic approach to (all of) your convergences, just to get a feel for it and hopefully see a marginal improvement.

Next Steps:

  • 15 Boxes (Hatching optional)

Try to keep focus on the accuracy of all your box's convergences, and you may feel that the placement of the back corner comes more easily/intuitively

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:10 AM, Thursday January 25th 2024

I followed through with Gyanyu's advice and did 25 boxes with a focus on line weight and hatching, but I did place great focus on where the lines were converging though.

https://imgur.com/a/5LABo4l

8:39 PM, Saturday January 27th 2024

Great! These boxes are very well done and a lot of them feel very solid & 3-dimensional. In addition, your hatching here is much neater and seems to have improved greatly.

I think you did very well trying to focus on the whole of all of your sets of convergences, though, I want to mention a few things.

  1. While YMMV, one thing that has helped me a lot is utilizing the ghosting technique to ghost further towards my VP's in order to help me better visualize how & where to draw my other lines. Here's a thread about this that Uncomfortable answered: https://drawabox.com/community/submission/LHBWHX1

  2. I should have mentioned this, but, the most accurate placement back corner is not necessarily always going to be so easy to find even if your convergences are holding up well. I found this to be the case for a couple of your boxes, and this can be remedied with just a bit more planning/observation (I, personally, meticulously go about ghosting and placing dots to find the best placement for my back corners). I made this example using one of your boxes to help illustrate what I mean: https://imgur.com/a/cKRVIJz. The revised box obviously does not have the most accurate placement of the new back corner, but I hope you can see what I mean.

    Overall, I feel that you have are pretty ready to move on, as (especially if you do warm-up's, as is recommended) you are most likely going to have lots of chances to continue practicing and bettering your boxes & how you, yourself can go about constructing them.

Next Steps:

  • Move on to Lesson 2: "Contour Lines, Texture and Construction"
This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
5:58 AM, Sunday January 28th 2024
edited at 5:59 AM, Jan 28th 2024

Thank you for spending the time to do this. I look forward to my continued journey.

edited at 5:59 AM, Jan 28th 2024

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