Most of these where finished about a month ago except for the last one which I just did today, I labeled it nov 6.
While I was doing these my hand was a lot shakier than when Im just doing warm ups, is there anything I should be doing to help with that?
Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!
I can see you put a lot of effort into this challenge and your boxes are coming along pretty well. You've made some good progress with the quality of your mark making. Your lines are steadily looking straighter and more confident. You also do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points!
One thing that stands out to me about your boxes is their size. You drew quite a lot of them very small. Part of the reason for the 5-6 boxes per page rule is to allow students enough room to draw their boxes at a decent size while also leaving some space to extend your lines. Drawing bigger also helps engage your brain's spatial reasoning skills, whereas drawing smaller impedes them.
I can see that you are still struggling a bit with drawing your lines with confidence and I can see where this extends to your extra line weight as well. When working through Drawabox it is important that you remember to take your time and to always use the ghosting method to plan and execute your marks. When you go to add extra line weight to your boxes you approach it the same way. That means taking your time to plan and ghost through your mark so that when you go to execute it the mark blends seamlessly with your original mark. This will allow you to create more subtle and clean looking weight to your lines that reinforces the illusion of solidity in your boxes/forms. Extra line weight should not be used to hide or correct any mistakes. You can read more about this here.
Something to keep in mind as well, when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes.
Finally while your converges do improve overall I think this diagram will help you further develop that skill as you continue through Drawabox. So, when you are looking at your sets of lines you want to be focusing only on the lines that share a vanishing point. This does not include lines that share a corner or a plane, only lines that converge towards the same vanishing point. Now when you think of those lines, including those that have not been drawn, you can think about the angles from which they leave the vanishing point. Usually the middle lines have a small angle between them, and this angle will become negligible by the time they reach the box. This can serve as a useful hint.
Before moving onto to lesson 2 I am going to have you draw 17 Additional Boxes. For your additional boxes you are to draw no more than 5-6 per page. I expect your boxes to be drawn larger and for your lines to be straight and confident looking. You will apply one pass of extra line weight to all of your boxes. Take your time and make sure you are following the directions explicitly.
Just remember that the confidence of the stroke is far and away your top priority. Accuracy is something that you will improve on as you continue working through Drawabox and practice ghosting. Mistakes happen, but a smooth, confident mark is still useful even if it's a little off.
Next Steps:
17 Additional Boxes as described in the critique.
Here they are
This is a good improvement. Your lines are more confident looking and you are now drawing them at a good size.
You do appear to have missed part of my instructions however. I specifically told you to apply extra line weight to all of the boxes in your revisions. There are areas where I can see you made extra passes over your marks. But these marks are being used to correct mistakes, which is also something I have instructed you not to do.
Taking your time and following instructions is an important and necessary skill which the 250 Box Challenge is meant to help you develop. It is also important that if you find you do not understand the instructions or are in need of clarification that you seek clarification either here, in the community or in the instructions themselves.
Before sending you to lesson 2 I will ask for one last page of boxes from you. On this page you will have the following:
6 boxes drawn at a decent size (boxes 11-14 are a good example from your revisions)
Each box will have a single pass of line weight applied, instructions for how to apply that line weight are here.
DO NOT use any extra marks to correct your lines. If the line is wrong we leave it and move on. Confidence in your stroke should be your top priority. As I said before accuracy is something you will develop over time and is not your focus for this exercise.
Keep in mind as you progress through Drawabox and begin to construct more complex forms that it is important to put in the time and focus required to execute each line correctly and to apply the ghosting method to every step of the process, as explained here.
Next Steps:
One page of boxes as described above.
Alright I think I got it this time, let me know if I i missed anything else.
A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.
In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.
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