WOW! That was something else.
Something that definitely came through while doing this challenge was that being relaxed and loose is the only way you can draw well. Uptight? Anxious about things? Draw and loosen up and voila!
Hopefully you don't get too annoyed when I forgot the rules here and there. ????
Josh
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. 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 did well:
Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn when you aren't redrawing them. Try not to redraw in the future, part of why we work with ink is so that we have to work with our mistakes, they're valuable and you learn from them. Redrawing doesn't erase them and instead just creates a mess.
Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge so it's nice to see you're applying it anyways. Most people need to build up some mileage before they feel comfortable applying it so I always recommend starting early. The sooner you feel comfortable the sooner you see better results.
You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. 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.
It's not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend practicing applying hatching in your future work. It's a useful tool to learn and the only way to improve is to practice.
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.
Overall while you did make a few mistakes your boxes are improving so far and with more mileage you'll continue to become more consistent. That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.
Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
Thank you so much for your helpful review and critique. I have a VERY bad habit of redrawing and it is something I am working on. I feel like I got better as the page count increased, but I know that near the end, I redrew a few times and shook my fist at myself every time.
By the end, I understood staying loose and relaxed is the only way to draw. So now I do silly things to loosen up, like theatre/acting exercises from way back to get overmyself and have fun.
In regards to the convergence/divergence issue for pairs of lines, I tried to think in terms of the planes being parallel in perspective, and this helped as I got nearer the end of the challenge. Thinking of the lines in terms of "families" from the get go also helped.
Best,
TheMathochist
(PS I accidentally sent same to Community for review bc I didn't check the "official review" slider the first time. Should I leave it there, or is there a way I could get it removed from the Community Review Queue?)
No problem.
I've removed your community post for you as well.
A lot of folks have heard about Scott Robertson's "How to Draw" - it's basically a classic at this point, and deservedly so. It's also a book that a lot of people struggle with, for the simple reason that they expect it to be a manual or a lesson plan explaining, well... how to draw. It's a reasonable assumption, but I've found that book to be more of a reference book - like an encyclopedia for perspective problems, more useful to people who already have a good basis in perspective.
Sketching: The Basics is a far better choice for beginners. It's more digestible, and while it introduces a lot of similar concepts, it does so in a manner more suited to those earlier in their studies.
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