250 Box Challenge
4:47 PM, Monday July 13th 2020
I did an additional 50 boxes because all my other boxes are a bit old
I’d have much appreciated it if the more recent boxes had been a little bigger, as per the official instructions, but that’s quite alright (next time, perhaps?) Hello; I’ll be looking through your challenge~ For starters, I’d like to congratulate you on seeing it through to the end- it is quite the achievement, and a quick glance at it tells me that your line quality, and especially your understanding of 3D space has improved throughout. Let’s talk about both in a little more detail.
Though they started off fairly strong, there was the occasional wobble to your lines (particularly noticeable in your hatching.) Said hatching lines were not always as parallel as we’d like them to be, too, and they’d sometimes stop short of their mark. I’m glad to see that you decided to stick with them despite that, however, because it is precisely that mileage that is to credit for their current state: confident, parallel, and quite accurate, too. Perhaps a little too much so, though- some of these latter boxes are not nearly as dynamic as a result of their subtle line-weight, but this is something that’s easily fixed. Before we move on to the meat of this critique - the convergences - I’ll also quickly praise you for no longer crossing any of them out, as you were one to do in the earlier parts of the challenge. It’s important to become comfortable with our mistakes- like it or not, we’re to become well acquainted with them in our drawing journey.
Now, let’s talk convergences. As is often the case in this challenge, your boxes started off with some obvious convergence errors (mainly: diverging outer lines), which were then taken care of, leaving the more subtle errors, reflected in the inner lines, left. Though these are also, for the most part, fixed, as a result of the sheer amount of mileage gotten throughout the course of this challenge, there is still the occasional issue, so I will direct you to this diagram, that outlines the preferred way for us to think about our convergences. To put it simply, we think about each set of lines in isolation, not concerning ourselves with the lines they share a plane with- just the ones they share a vanishing point with. Particularly, we think of the angle at which these lines intersect with the vanishing point, and how it relates to their distance from each other. The middle line lines of a box, for instance, are often quite close to each other. As a result, the angle formed by their intersection is quite small. Being conscious of this, allows us to make some decisions in regards to them. For example, we may treat them as being parallel, as we know them to nearly be, thus eliminating guesswork, and allowing ourselves to focus on the remaining lines in the set. Even for those, we can draw similar conclusions. One that is further off from the middle lines than the one opposite it, for instance, will have a higher rate of foreshortening (a larger angle of intersection) than it. This becomes another item in our toolset. It’s not one whose understanding off develops overnight, of course, but, provided we do our due diligence, it is bound to, over time. Anyway, this is merely something to consider in regards to any future box you might (and hopefully will!) construct. For the purposes of this challenge, you’re more than clear to move on. Best of luck in lesson 2!
Next Steps:
Lesson 2
Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"
It's not magic. We're made to think that when someone just whips off interesting things to draw, that they're gifted in a way that we are not. The problem isn't that we don't have ideas - it's that the ideas we have are so vague, they feel like nothing at all. In this course, we're going to look at how we can explore, pursue, and develop those fuzzy notions into something more concrete.
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