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8:36 PM, Monday August 7th 2023
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:
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Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn.
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Seeing as how line weight is not a requirement of the challenge it's nice to see that you're applying it. It's a useful tool but one that most people need some mileage with before they feel comfortable applying it. Getting an early start like this will help you see better results sooner.
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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:
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When hatching you want to have both ends of the lines touching an edge of the form they're being drawn on rather than being left floating. Usually when left floating like this it's caused by people hesitating while worrying about accuracy. Remember to take your time to space each line with the ghosting method, and then draw them confidently just like any other line, accuracy will improve with more mileage.
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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.
10:16 AM, Wednesday August 9th 2023
Hello,
Thanks for the quick reply.
I've also noticed that most of my boxes have trouble with the back lines. Box 246 in ther vertical axis (red) is one example, but you can find many. Usually the problem is that the back line converges too early with the front line.
I read that by not leaving back lines for the end you would alleviate the problem of having weird back lines. The "weird" back lines are better now, but I still can't solve those early convergences, even though I don't do them last.
In the same way, sometimes an edge line converges too early too, which is the last one I do.
I hope you could give me some insights on how to solve those problems.
Thank you very much.
Best regards,
10:04 PM, Wednesday August 9th 2023
I'll quickly point you to the reminders section found here which stresses that you shouldn't worry about the back corner too much.
As the reminder says, the back corner is likely always going to be a bit off and focusing on it will distract you from other importance concepts like converging your lines as consistently as you can. Whether you draw the rear corner or last won't really fix things, the reason the back corner tends to be so noticeably off is that it's drawn last and every inaccuracy up until that point gets magnified in it. That being said you will always have to draw something last, switching the order you draw in will just move those inaccuracies around.
Ultimately the goal of this challenge isn't to draw perfect boxes, there are tools to help with that (rulers, digital tools etc.). Instead we want you to improve your understanding of 3D space which you've accomplished. Keep doing your best to think of your lines as a set, with mileage you'll be able to keep track of your vanishing points better and become more consistent. Just remember that at the end of the day you're human and if you're freehanding you'll likely make some mistakes, so don't stress about it more than you have to.
Best of luck in lesson 2.
9:44 AM, Thursday August 10th 2023
Got it.
Thank you again!
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