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1:12 PM, Friday June 23rd 2023
Hello, I'll be reviewing your homework today! Congratulations on completing the 250 Box Challenge and showing your determination!
Things you did well on
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All lines extend in the right direction
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You tried many different orientations and sizes
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Your boxes definitely improved throughout the challenge. Both hatching lines and line weight became cleaner and your lines became less wobbly
Things you can improve on:
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You seem to be struggling with the inside corners. One way to improve them is to start thinking about the relationships between the lines instead of just thinking about the lines in pairs. Think about all the other lines in the set and compare their angles. This diagram might help: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png . Another way to "fix it" is to change the order in which you draw your boxes, you can try it!
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Throughout the challenge, your lines became more and more parallel, sometimes even diverging. I get the feeling that you somehow lost confidence in the middle of the exercise and decided to stick to "easier" boxes, even though you tried to converge them more in the last part. Remember, don't be afraid to mess up, it's part of the learning process!
Overall, I think you've done well and no revisions are necessary. I suggest adding freehand box drawing to your warm-up as you continue the Drawabox course. That will be all, good luck and remember to use your 50%! Of course, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Next Steps:
Your 50%, 10-15 minute warm-up (of course try to include previous exercises), move on to Lesson 2. Good luck!
Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)
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.