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10:23 PM, Tuesday December 6th 2022
XavMeep here, giving you critiques on your 250 Box Challenge homework submission, personman. Around two and a half months late, but better late than never.
First of all, you have extended your lines in the correct direction, away from the viewer. Though in the early pages this wasn't the case (page 4, box 1), it appears you have resolved this fault by the end of the challenge. Good eyes.
These line extensions were hard to read due to them overlapping with other boxes but that’s quite inevitable anyway due to how small the page is.
Line quality could be improved. They appear wobbly (page 45, box 3), and sometimes presents fraying - implying attempts to fix an inaccurate line (page 43, box 5). Confidence over accuracy is key here. Just make sure you are ghosting enough, drawing from your shoulder, executing lines quickly...like in lesson 1.
Regarding the lack of lineweight and hatching - While you have attempted to incorporate these techniques into some of your boxes (such as page 28, box 1, and page 4, box 3), these are mostly not present in the entirety of your submission. This as a missed opportunity for further learning - lineweight is useful when determining if a particular object is behind or in front of another, and hatching is a way to help the viewer understand which side of an object is facing them (https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/overlaps, https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/lineweight).
Of course, these were all stated to be optional in the lesson instructions, so this isn’t a deal breaker whenever you passed or not. After all, it is quite tedious to do it for 250 boxes straight (speaking from experience). So keep in mind that if you want to improve your line quality, I highly suggest introducing these techniques to your warmups and such.
Most of the time, shallow foreshortening was used. Again, as mentioned in the lesson instructions, this was expected. It would have helped to use dramatic foreshortening a bit more to improve your convergence quality, and reduce chances of parallel lines occurring.
The position of your back corners and line convergences have improved over the challenge. They are still somewhat incorrect, but really, no one’s perfect by the end of the challenge (I am no exception).
*Here’s some images that I pulled from the critique guide that may prove useful.
https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png - Think about the relationship between all lines instead of thinking of them in pairs.
https://imgur.com/3zoQA65 - A technique to help lines correctly converge.*
You have shown considerable improvement across your submissions. I am confident that you have a basic grasp on how boxes are formed in perspective, and that you will improve with future warmups and exercises.
Next Steps:
Lesson 2.
Godspeed.
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