Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Before getting started I'd like to make note of a few things so that your future critiques can go a bit more smoothly. If you could limit yourself to 1 page per picture and number your challenge topic (boxes in this case) it would be appreciated, trying to fit more than one page per picture results in the picture being taken further back which can make it harder to notice finer details (not a huge deal in this box challenge but it does make it harder to tell if you're having any wobbling in your lines for example). As for numbering your attempts it allows us to quickly point to specific examples if you've made any notable mistakes, your boxes do appear well done from a quick glance (writing this before looking at them more in-depth) so I'm not too worried about it being a problem in this critique but going forward it will help us help you more efficiently.

This upcoming request is one that some people take personally at times so I just want to assure you that it is in no way personal and just a matter of how we use our time. I'd like you to ask that when submitting your work limit your submission to just your work and any questions that you may have (of course saying hi/thank you/a basic greeting/etc. is fine as well). It's great that you want to document your thoughts and we can understand why it can feel beneficial for some students, but if possible try to do so in a private file or journal/blog. The reason we request this is that we won't actually read your post until we're done our critique so it doesn't influence our thoughts, ultimately your work speaks for itself so what ends up occurring when people submit a lengthy written submission is that we have to read through it all to make sure we don't miss any questions that may be related to your understanding. While this may only be a few minutes keep in mind that when we're dealing with a lot of submissions that it does add up quite quickly. Again, it's great that you're enthusiastic enough to make notes like this to begin with, we just want to make sure we can get to everyone as soon and as efficiently as we can.

With all of that out of the way let's start your critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. 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:

• Good work drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling.

• When hatching you're taking the time to space each line evenly which shows that care and thought is being put into each line. This helps your boxes appear solid and tidy rather than rushed.

• Seeing as how line weight is not a requirement of the challenge it's nice to see that you're applying it. It's a useful tool but one that most people need some mileage with before they feel comfortable applying it. Getting an early start like this will help you see better results sooner.

• Excellent work experimenting with orientations, proportions and rates of foreshortening. It's important to experiment when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding of new concepts. This habit will serve you well in the future so I hope you'll continue to build it as you move forward.

Things you can work on:

• 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.

Overall while you did make a few mistakes your boxes are improving so far and with more mileage you'll continue to become more consistent. That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and moving you on to lesson 2.

Now let's address any questions you may have had:

Turns out there weren't really many to answer, but it does seem like you had some good breakthroughs and realizations along the way so congratulations.

That being said I do have 2 things to make note of:

• You mention that doing 3 hours of boxes and then 3 of hours of drawing for yourself isn't feasible. If you're fairly new to drawing in general drawing for 3 hours in itself is quite a bit and potentially risky in terms of burn out but if you can manage it more power to you. When it comes to the 50% rule in this case I would suggest 2 possible options, the first is instead of doing 3 hours of boxes and 3 hours of drawing for yourself you just split up the 3 hours into 1.5 hours of boxes 1.5 hours for yourself or you do alternating days. 3 hours of boxes one day, 3 hours of drawing for yourself the next. This of course does mean that the challenge would take longer but I can assure you that burning out and not drawing for long stretches of time because of it will slow you down even more.

• You noticed that your boxes got worse towards the end and asked about getting worse before you get better. This is something that can happen for sure and it can be caused by a few different possibilities. The simplest of them being that you perhaps just got a bit impatient as you knew you were approaching the end of this challenge (it's not the most enjoyable experience out there so it's understandable, just try to remain patient).

A few others are:

• That it was simply a bad day, everyone has them.

• You were noticing and disregarding bad habits for better ones as you noted.

• You began to feel more comfortable with your results at which point the next step is often achieving those results more quickly, at first your quality will go down a bit but with practice you'll be back to where you were in no time.

All that being said when I look at your last pages the thought "these are worse than a few pages ago" doesn't really cross my mind, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're most likely being overly critical of yourself which is something we often do. You're likely just adjusting in one of the ways mentioned above and you'll continue to improve and become more consistent.

Hopefully that helps address any concerns you had and a few things that can make your future submissions more helpful for everyone involved.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck!