Even as I actively tried not to draw over my first line, I really struggled with accepting my mistakes (you can see this especially in the middle section). I'm trying to give myself more grace and accept the lines as I first draw them. It's okay to be a beginner!
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. 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:
Things you can work on:
Your line confidence is something to work on, you do improve as you progress through the challenge but as you mentioned you struggled with redrawing. You're also still overshooting your lines a fair bit and some of them look like they could have used a bit more time in the planning stage. It feels like you may be tackling things a bit too hastily.
They're not a requirement of the challenge but I recommend practicing applying hatching and line weight in your future work. They're useful tools to learn and the only way to improve is to practice.
You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any misakes you've made more clearly.
At times (boxes 153 and 189 are some examples) you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes. This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. If you'd like some more examples of what incorrectly extended lines look like you can find some here.
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.
I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.
Looking back on this critique it may appear like you did a lot more incorrectly than you did correctly, try not to get discouraged because that's not the case. You are on the right track, I think you just need to take a deep breath and slow down a bit. These are mostly issues that stem from tackling things too quickly rather than a lack of understanding. That being said you are supposed to be submitting your best work and I know that you're capable of better than this.
For now I'm going to ask you to draw 10 more boxes,. Draw larger, keep experimenting and take your time to plan your lines and convergences to the best of your abilities. This is a good opportunity to try to apply hatching and line weight as well. I'll also note that some people may feel like they're taking their time and may just not realize how long it can take to complete some of these exercises, it's quite common to spend 10 minutes per box for example (some people feel ike if they're taking that long they're somehow doing it wrong and they should be faster). You may also find that taking a look at ScyllaStew's videos may be beneficial, she recorded herself working through some of the course material which can be found here.
Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.
I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.
Next Steps:
10 more boxes please.
Thank you so much for all the great details in your critique. I took much more time with these boxes and can see a difference.
No problem.
These are looking pretty good overall. It does seem like you extended your lines incorrectly on two of your attempts here though.
The top box on the first page has lines extended upwards that should be extended downwards.
The bottom box on the 3rd page has lines to the upper left that should be going to the lower right. It does seem like you noticed this one however which is good to see.
I'm hoping that because you noticed this you have an understanding of what to look out for at this point so I'll be marking your submission complete and move you on to the next lesson.
Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes in your warm ups and good luck.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
Some of you may remember James Gurney's breathtaking work in the Dinotopia series. This is easily my favourite book on the topic of colour and light, and comes highly recommended by any artist worth their salt. While it speaks from the perspective of a traditional painter, the information in this book is invaluable for work in any medium.
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