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:

  • You're doing a good job of drawing the lines constructing your boxes smoothly and confidently.

  • It's nice to see that you're taking the time to plan each of your hatching lines and space them evenly. This helps keep your boxes looking tidy rather than looking like they were rushed on to the page.

  • You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, and proportions. 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:

  • 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 mistakes you've made more clearly.

  • I'd like you to experiment with rates of foreshortening more. Throughout nearly the whole challenge you keep your vanishing points far from your boxes and make your lines close to parallel. Experiment by bringing your vanishing points in closer so that your lines have to converge dramatically. Remember that experimentation is important, if you don't do it then it just slows down your progress.

  • At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 84, 147, 149 , 165, 182, and 186 are examples of this). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction, and if your lines were converging more they'd end up distorting your box because your lines would be diverging away from their actual vanishing points.

  • 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.

The box challenge has been updated since you've started your attempt and I would encourage you to read/watch through all of it to help clarify any misunderstandings you may have. It will also demonstrate how to extend your lines consistently in the correct direction by using your starting Y.

I'd like you to draw 30 more boxes please, focus on experimenting with rates of foreshortening and extending your lines consistently in the correct direction. For the first 15 I'd like you to draw your boxes' vanishing points explicitly on the page after you've drawn your starting Y, this will make it so you have to keep these vanishing points in mind (This is what you'd be doing in the first 50 of the updated challenge). For the latter 15 go back to this challenge's (and the later sections of the new challenge) method without drawing the vanishing points which will hopefully be easier after the first set.

If you have any questions before starting feel free to ask them.

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.