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6:21 PM, Wednesday March 1st 2023

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:

  • Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn.

  • You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, and proportions. 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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I'd like you to experiment with rates of foreshortening more. Currently you tend to keep your lines close to parallel and push your vanishing points far from your boxes. Try bringing your points in closer so that your lines have to converge more dramatically. Remember that experimentation is important.

  • 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'll be asking you to draw 30 more boxes please, focus on experimenting with different rates of foreshortening. For the first 15 I'd like you to draw all 3 of your vanishing points explicitly on the page after you've drawn your initial Y shape, this will force you to work with vanishing points closer to your box. For the latter 15 you can go back to the original method which should hopefully be easier an easier task after the first 15.

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.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:31 AM, Monday March 6th 2023
5:42 PM, Monday March 6th 2023

While these boxes aren't technically bad you are unfortunately picking which instructions to follow rather than following them all closely.

You're not extending your lines at all at times, and the times you do they're barely visible (at least in the pictures you've provided). These lines are meant to show you how to improve your next set of boxes so there shouldn't be any room for guessing to be involved.

Visibilty issues aside box 20 has lines extending upwards when they should be extending downwards and a number of these boxes have their vanishing points pushed quite far back leaving your lines nearly parallel (which is what the revisions were asking you to address).

I'l be asking you for another set of 30 boxes please. Same as before mark your vanishing points on the page explicitly for the first 15 after you've drawn your Y shape, then for the latter 15 go back to the original method without explicit vanishing points.

Next Steps:

30 more boxes please.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:43 AM, Wednesday March 8th 2023
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