Good job on completing the box challenge. It is far more work than most people expect, and its completion is a big milestone on your draw a box journey. I would like to cover the knowledge learned that you applied well, as well as things to work on for the future.
I will first mention the things you did well here regarding knowledge learned in lesson 1; line work here has improved over time with both smoothness and accuracy, seeing less wobbling or bending that was present in the beginning, showing you took your time with each line with the ghosting method to rely on muscle memory alone while making your mark. You are experimenting with different rotations, this is good to see, playing around with rotations will help you better understand spacial problems. You have also done well in solving the divergence issue you had at the beginning of your challenge, with no sets fully diverging away from the vanishing point. Lastly, I would like to mention that you are applying hatching and superimposed lines for line-weight. It is good to see that you started out practicing with these tools early on in the challenge, as they are powerful tools important in future lessons.
I would like to now mention the things you can work on and some recurring mistakes. I will start with the aforementioned hatching and line-weight. While you did begin to practice with them early on, it appears both are rushed and not much care was given to them. For example, even near the end of the box challenge, the superimposed line ends up wobbling a lot still, plus you have a tendency to draw them multiple times when you are only required to draw it once. It could be that you are correcting your lines, which should be avoided, and I encourage you to stick to your original mark no matter how far off the end point it is. Remember that fraying is not really an issue, since that will go away with practice on your warm-ups. Your hatching could also do with some extra time, most of the lines here appear bent or sometimes wobbling. I suspect that you didn’t take the time to ghost each, they should be treated with the same amount of respect you have for the box’s line. So remember to take as much time as you need with each hatching line there on the plane. The other issue that is quite common is the convergence in pairs that often appear through the challenge, as well as the issue with the back corner of the box that seems to diverge away from the rest of the set, which is normal, because all of your previous mistakes accumulate there on the back making it hard nearly impossible to find a spot where the back corner goes. One way to work on this issue is to look at how the angles of your lines relate to one another, here is a helpful image that can give you a better grasp of this: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png This here shows that the lines of the front corner and back have a very similar angle in degree, so you can roughly estimate the convergence of each, looking at their relationship will also help you avoid the convergence in pairs issue over time. So in essence, moving the vanishing point closer to the box will create more dramatic foreshortening, making the whole set of lines converge faster, while moving it further away will make the lines converge less but never diverge from the vanishing point. One final mistake I would like to mention, keep the degrees of the initial Y’s angles greater than 90 degrees to prevent any distortion in your boxes.
Edit: I forgot to mention, you should try to draw bigger boxes, much bigger than the ones you have here. Drawing big also helps a lot with tackling spatial problems and has the added benefit of helping you improve your line quality.
One of the things that seem to be holding you back at the moment is that you have not practiced dramatic foreshortening much in the challenge, with the only doing so was near the end it seems. This is an issue because for you to develop a stronger comprehension of space and tackle these types of problems, you have to experiment with the rates through the entire challenge. For this reason, I would like you to submit a few extra boxes, practicing it. I’ll give you some details below.
Next Steps:
All the points I made with the hatching and superimposed lines should be taken into account in your revision as well, so keep them in mind. If it helps, try doing the superimposed lines exercise and also the ghosted lines warm-ups exercise to get more confidence in your line making. Don’t forget that we are not concerned with accuracy as much as we are concerned with a smooth line.
Now onto the thing that is of most importance, I will ask you to submit 20 extra boxes practicing dramatic foreshortening only on all sets of lines. You can read about foreshortening here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/7/foreshortening on the additional notes on for boxes. Take as much time as you need with these 20 boxes and try to think about how the lines in one set relate to one another, like it is shown in the previous image in the critique.
I will await for your revision.
You have seen most of these by now but here is the additional 20 boxes you requested!
this was pretty tough but i will try and integrate this into my warm ups to get better with perspective!
Hello!
Seeing these extra 20 boxes, you gave dramatic foreshortening a shot and to the best of your ability. I think that while you do need some more practice, you got the framework down to improve on it further in your warm-ups. I can suggest to draw boxes that are more dramatic than the ones here even; make them converge really fast. But aside from that, I feel you are good to move on to lesson two. Don't forget to revisit them in your warm-ups and read the image showcasing the relationship between lines. Congratulations Phobic, you have completed the 250-box challenge, a big milestone on your Draw A Box journey. I will be marking you submission as complete. Good luck and have a great day!
Next Steps:
Onwards to lesson 2.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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