Hello! I will be critiquing your 250 Box Challenge this afternoon.

Throughout your boxes, I noticed that you didn’t add lineweight over the silhouette of the box. It’s not strictly necessary, but it helps to emphasize the form, and you’ll be using lineweight extensively throughout the rest of the course. Plus, it’s another opportunity to practice effective mark making!

I noticed that you started the Box Challenge by making your boxes in an orthographic projection—that is, the angles between your initial lines are approximately 120 degrees, and the way you drew your lines does not converge. Oftentimes you used the back lines to bring about convergence, but all sets of parallel edges must converge to the vanishing point. This tended to lead to more divergence than convergence, such as on box 14 or 25. Even though convergence may be minimal, it’s necessary for all boxes, even those with shallow foreshortening.

As you moved through the Box Challenge, I saw a trend of you breaking out of the orthographic projection and into perspective, mainly at about box 75. However, many times your perspective was stunted because you drew your boxes pretty small, like for box 87. When practicing, try to draw boxes at a medium or larger size, like for box 84. It will not only help you practice mark making from the shoulder, but it will give you more control for plotting points where your lines should be. I also noticed that your edges began to consistently converge, even though they would converge to two vanishing points. This is a good step in the right direction—now that you understand how edges converge, you can work on wrangling the edges’ convergence together to a single vanishing point. Throughout the rest of the challenge, I noticed significant improvement and you started to hit some solid convergences, like for the red lines in box 142 or the blue in box 145.

I noticed that you tended to revert closer to orthographic projections when attempting to draw boxes with shallower foreshortening. Although the orientation of the corner does have some bearing on how the box foreshortens, note that it is primarily the convergence of the edges which leads to the effect. Oftentimes it can be helpful to draw one converging edge of the box and using its intersection with the initial Y to plan your foreshortening instead of visualizing the VP first—you’ll get to a point where you can intuit where a VP will be placed in space based on the foreshortening, itself. I also can’t really tell by the resolution of the images, but I would recommend starting to place points when planning lines. You’re allowed to palace as many points as you want (within reason, of course) and it can be especially helpful when determining convergence from several edges at once, such as the back corner.

I do have a few points that you should look for when practicing boxes as warm-ups. First, try to vary the angles in the initial Y more. Though there was more variation later in the exercise, you tended to revert back to a sort of 120-120-120 scheme. In line with this, try to practice more dramatically skewed boxes with highly extreme foreshortening. You practiced many planes and boxes, but I didn’t see too many long “toothpaste boxes,” which can be a challenge in and of themselves. Finally, I would advise practicing some shallow foreshortening, since you tended to revert to orthographic projections as opposed to perspective in these instances.

Ultimately, I noticed considerable growth throughout your Box Challenge! This is especially apparent when comparing the first few pages with the last few, going from minimal or no convergence to rather consistent convergence and an understanding of three point perspective, along with increased confidence when constructing boxes and giving yourself room to explore the form freely. Wonderful work!