250 Box Challenge

5:38 PM, Wednesday January 18th 2023

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7:35 AM, Saturday July 29th 2023
edited at 7:36 AM, Jul 29th 2023

Hi FunkyMills! I can only count 109 boxes so far from the link. Make sure you post the rest of them under this reply section (or update the link and then notify me) so that I can review your submission properly.

Next Steps:

  • Post the remaining boxes.
When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 7:36 AM, Jul 29th 2023
12:51 PM, Saturday July 29th 2023
edited at 12:57 PM, Jul 29th 2023

Hello Tonygotcakes, it seems like imgur is being annoying again. I've attached a google drive link that hopefully includes all 250 boxes this time. Sorry for the inconvenience. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-5gEPxF9b2VP6dQYU5Zfj_6M6qh6t8f0

edited at 12:57 PM, Jul 29th 2023
1:56 PM, Sunday July 30th 2023
edited at 1:58 PM, Jul 30th 2023

Hi FunkyMills! This is a solid submission and you have demonstrated your understanding of the challenge really well! Your linework is wonderfully smooth & confident with high accuracy. Convergence is nice and your extending lines are in the correct direction (you forgot one set of extending lines on page (108/250) though). You also went for 5-6 boxes per page and tackle line-weight + hatching although they are not a compulsory part of the challenge. Here are some pointers that you can work on in future warm-ups:

Line weight: When adding line weight, you only draw over a line once because we want heavier lines to be subtly thicker than others. You go over more than once, which makes the line too thick and it defeats the subtlety that we are after.

Go extreme: Although you go for a variety of box shapes with a mixture of both dramatic & shallow foreshortening, you could have pushed for far more extreme boxes. For example:

  • toothpaste boxes: the length is extremely long but width & height is narrow

  • pizza boxes: the height is extremely slim with humongous width & length

  • boxes with even more dramatic foreshortening

  • boxes where one of the front planes appears really small (see box 189 here for example).

You can think of other wild boxes to try out as well.

Back corners: Your back corners look good overall but there are two angles you should be on look out for: (1) converging too sharply with a leg of the initial Y (Page 40/250 - bottom right corner box - green extending lines), (2) diverging with a leg of the initial Y (Page 84/250 - bottom right corner box - leftwards & upwards extending lines). I recommend you try out my favorite way to plan out all corners for your boxes (see this image for illustration) if you haven't tried this before. Basically, I'm plotting the back corner before the 3rd corner. Colored lines are ghosting lines and they do not appear on the paper. Don't be afraid to experiment with different plot locations until you find a suitable dot for the corners as well (see this image where I throw a bunch of dots on the canvas).

Advanced exercises: They are entirely optional but I think you would be interested in checking out if you haven't yet. A student who completed this course recommended me to hold off the second exercise (subdividing boxes) until Lesson 6 so you should incorporate the first exercise in your warm-up from time to time.

Number each box/object: This is not what you should necessarily do in your future warm-ups but when you tackle 250 cylinder challenge in the future, giving every cylinder a number will make it easier for other people to reference them.

I think that's pretty much every thing I want to cover. Remember to warm-up with this challenge from time to time to keep your box drawing skills sharp and keen.

Next Steps:

  • Lesson 2

  • Add this challenge into the warm-up pool

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
edited at 1:58 PM, Jul 30th 2023
10:18 AM, Monday July 31st 2023

Thank you so much for the comprehensive critique and the example links. I did not know about the additional exercises and intersecting corners(?) method that you listed, but I’m sure that they will be useful for me. I will make sure to reference this critique whenever I do warmups that include boxes. Thank you so much again, have a nice day!

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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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