Repost of https://drawabox.com/community/submission/3GE9KVT4 because Imgur messes up my images for some reason.
These took a bit more than 3 months. My black pens were dying towards the end, so I apologise if some of the lines are difficult to see or if I repeated lines for it to show up. Thanks in advance for the critiques.
Hi, I'll be giving you my critique for this challenge.
The first thing I wanted to say is congratulations on finishing this mighty challenge! Go give yourself a pat on the back.
Now for the critiques:
Old mistakes coming back. We all started with boxes with extended lines that didn't converge with one another, the same happens here and I could see a rapid improvement in your convergences. Lines that at first didn't converge finally converge. However, after around the 50th boxes, I saw a rapid decline in quality boxes. Lots of the lines didn't converge (especially the one extended down south) as if this was your first box. What I think is dangerous is that this mistake kept getting repeated over and over again almost in 100 boxes (see around boxes no 100-200) where you seem to draw the same angled boxes over and over again while also repeating the same mistake (extended lines going south almost never meet). So personally, I would like you to check what you have drawn earlier and learn from it before you do the next page. See which part you could improve and keep calibrating from the mistake you have made. You don't have to make big changes for every page, but small changes until you can finally make a good box.
Your lines were confident, which is great! However, I suggest that you should try to vary the boxes you draw. Most of the boxes you drew had shallow foreshortening. I suggest playing with a more dramatic foreshorterning. Don't worry if you make mistakes, we are all here to make mistakes and learn from them. I think this happened around boxes 100-200, where all the boxes feel very similar in terms of angle and size.
Overall the extended lines never really converge near the boxes. Most of the time it was too wide and even if it was narrow and tight, you rarely get three of them in one box. You managed to get some boxes where all three extended lines converge in one spot, though a majority is still too wide. I suggest making a mistake where you make the convergences points for the line too close to the box and calibrate from there. Varying the way you make mistakes may help you fix the other one.
Some of the extended lines seem to not go to the viewer's eyes. You only did this a couple of times, so it's not that bad.
Overall, I think the biggest thing you need to take from this is that you need to check your previous work before drawing another one. Try to find out what works and what is not working on the lats you drew before drawing another page. It's gonna allow you to incrementally improve your drawing, without feeling like you need to improve so much that it feels like a wall. Keep this in mind when doing the next exercises.
Good luck with your next exercise! Cheers!
Next Steps:
Go to the next exercise, keep in mind what I just said :D
Thanks for taking the time to write a critique, I really appreciate it.
No worries, good luck on your next lesson! You can do it!
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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