Hey. In all fairness. Uncomfortable says it in the initial description. This approach is tough. And IMO this is Drawabox's method most valuable lesson. Not the huge perspective gains you can get from the 250 boxes or the awesome constructive method that can help with drawing just about anything in 3d.

It is the discipline to work trough a huge amount of repetition of exercises which you might not even like at times. Because honestly, that is the only way to learn to draw real good.

For example. I had not drawn an animal in my life. Decided that I wanted to be able to draw horses competently so I decided to draw 50 horses on the side of lesson 5 just to get better at it. Have I improved? Yes, proof here: https://imgur.com/gallery/CG6N0Br

To be honest this is how a structure my learning now. I decide on what to focus on and I set myself a challenge to do which is challenging and will take about a month or more. Right now I am on a 30 color studies from film frames. And also did 30 light rendering challenge in photoshop, Mostly boxes, cylinders and such but this head was number 30 and I am pretty pleased. https://www.instagram.com/p/CRJbArOrLH8/?utm_medium=copy_link

Like a said, repetition. Learn to embrace it or you will never get to be a decent artist.

About how to do it. Slowly, to be honest. If you try to power through it you will at best burn out and drop. At worst, you will rush it and do a lot of rushed repetition, which will teach you little. Start your daily practice with a warmup and do a bit of your boxes before moving to other more fun art that you want to do (the 50% rule). Personally for me it topped at 5 boxes which took me 50 minutes at the beggining of the 250 boxes challenge and around 30 minutes by the end. All in all it was 45 days in which I spend an average of 40 minutes daily.

All that said, do expect to loose some sanity.

Hi! I think If someone knows just one thing about DaB, it is that it asks students to draw 250 boxes.

You make it through the same way you climb a mountain, one step at a time.

Keep drawing for fun along the challenge and try to not think too much about the time it takes.

Good luck, you can do it!

Think of it this way. I am lucky, I am not having to draw cylinders in boxes.

In all seriousness one box at a time, I think I did between 10 and 20 per day but not everyday. It's a marathon not a sprint as has been already said. If you did all 250 in one day you wouldn't get half the benefit of doing it steadily over a month.

Also, don't look for improvements. It's not like that. Do the work to the best of your ability. Get feedback. If that's OK move on to the next task. The benefits appear in mysterious ways when you are not looking for them.

My students also have trouble with exercises like that. I found a more structured and precise way to develop the sense of 3d space and practice the basic shapes. It helped them to go through the repitition and gave them specific goals along the way, and the structure makes sure that they are not repeating shapes/positions that they already know well, which saves time. It also provides instant feedback to fix mistakes. If you are interested, I made it available to the public recently and think is a good addition to the other exercises on this site: Practice Kit

I just started, and it is really taking time.

But, I've played music for very long and I can't overstate how repetition is EVERYTHING. In music repeating something over and over has a massive impact where you go from being slow and afraid to make mistakes to being able to do it perfectly while having an unrelated chat with someone else.

I assume it is the same with drawing where the beginning probably feels slow and hopefully in a few months we'll laugh at the boxes we do today. The key is most likely the same as other skills: repetition :)

I'm at 215 after one year with lots of breaks for different reasons, and it's already my second attempt. That's how I made it, I essentially first needed to learn how to manage the work and I still learn it. It's bard but it's meant to be.

hi, namelessart sorry if the next words are harsh.

Look, i am 27 years old and feel like I waste my life chasing tutorials, cheating on me distracting and procrastinating, not pushing myself to do what I want: ART. Even now that I'm doing the challenge I find myself trying to avoid the responsibility of my own improvement (yes it's your responsibility to get better at drawing if you want to improve). If you want to shout to the void go ahead, do it, and then come back to your chair and draw the rest of the boxes, only if u want to improve at art.

I already had done 223, try doing a bunch of pages, not rush the 250 on the same day. I push myself to do more than 1 page (today I did 3 pages(18 boxes). I am not perfect, it's a constant struggle because it makes u feel uncomfortable and you want to avoid the hard work not just you the human itself, it's easy not to do than practice. But you need to keep the discipline and mindset... only if u want to improve. Maybe you don't understand but your muscles do. I had to stop because I got a 3 days job and those 3 days without drawing destroys me and I need to start again my routine.

The deal of making 250 boxes it's not to make you a master of boxes its made it for your brain can develop the 3d space understanding and you need to keep it up so your neurons can make synapse and understand the process and also your muscle get used to what want to do with your hand.

Sorry English it's not my main language so i try my best writing this