250 Box Challenge
6:50 PM, Monday July 26th 2021
after a year finally finished.
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2:02 AM, Friday July 30th 2021
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. It make have taken a while but you did it, and it taking a while is better than rushing through it. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. 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've done well:
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Your lines are looking smoothly and confidently drawn.
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You're clearly taking your time to plan your ghosting lines rather than drawing them haphazardly.
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It's good to see you're trying to implement line weight, it's a useful tool but one that requires a lot of mileage to be comfortable using, starting sooner rather than later will help in the long run.
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Great work experimenting with proportions, orientations and rates of foreshortening. Experimentation is key when it comes to deepening our understanding of new concepts so I hope you'll continue to demonstrate and nurture this habit in the future.
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Overall your convergences have become more consistent as well with fewer instances of diverging lines resulting in distortion.
Things you can work on:
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Your line weight does get a little wobbly at times, remember that just like any other line we want to draw confidently. We may miss our intended mark to start with but we'll become more accurate with mileage.
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While you've definitely improved, there are moments where your lines are converging in pairs as shown here, this is a mistake we can work on. If you take a look at this example it shows how each line in a set relates to one another and their 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.
Overall this was a solid submission and I have no doubt you'll continue to improve and grow with more mileage. I'll be marking your submission complete and moving you on to the next lesson. Keep practicing previous exercises as warm ups and good luck in lesson 2!
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
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Staedtler Pigment Liners
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
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