250 Box Challenge
6:26 PM, Friday April 10th 2020
Thanks for taking a look! You can definitely see how they got better over time.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
0 users agree
4:56 AM, Sunday April 12th 2020
Hey there, good job making it through the 250 box challenge.
Starting off, your line confidence was quite rough. There's still some signs of wobbling even towards the end though, so make sure you're taking the time to plan and confidently execute each and every one of your lines. It's good to see you've applied line weight and hatching to the majority of your lines however again, make sure you're executing these confidently and with the appropriate amount of planning.
I noticed that you used whiteout quite a lot throughout the challenge. I don't think I need to tell you that this is highly discouraged and that you should be working with your mistakes as these are generally not as bad as they seem. Throw it away or put it somewhere away from your working area so that you're not tempted to use it.
Your convergences have improved over the course of the challenge however your inconsistent application of the check lines has robbed you of the chance for further improvement. Additionally, you've drawn your boxes quite small, we tend to recommend that students draw no more than 2-6 boxes per page - this gives them more space to work through the spatial problems they're encountering and makes certain kinds of mistakes more obvious.
You've still got divergence present in your final boxes as well as parallel lines converging in pairs. This diagram shows the relationship between the angles of the lines of your boxes. You'll note that the green and orange (interior) lines are so similar in angle as to be almost parallel whilst the blue and magenta (outer) lines converge at a steeper angle.
Next Steps:
I would like to see 20 more boxes, with the following taken into consideration:
-
The relationships of the angles of your lines
-
No whiteout
-
Check lines applied consistently
-
Lines executed confidently
-
Boxes drawn large - no more than 6 to a page
4:49 AM, Thursday May 28th 2020
8:01 AM, Thursday May 28th 2020
You're still wobbling quite significantly when you draw your lines, so make sure you're warming up and varying up the speed at which you execute these in order to eliminate the wobble. Confidence is not the same thing as speed however speed can really help beginners shut out the micromanaging of their brains for long enough to execute a straight, confident line.
One thing I noticed here is that you extended your lines in the wrong direction in a few instances. You've done this on boxes 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 20. When we draw the initial Y for our boxes, we're actually establishing several facts about the box - where the horizon line is, where all three vanishing points are, and ultimately, what the shape of the box is going to look like. This means that when we extend our lines away from the viewer, we're actually extending them away from the centre of the Y, towards the vanishing point that each arm is pointing at.
Your check lines do tell me that you are thinking more about the relationship between your lines than you were previously. You did stick mostly to shallower convergences here, which has resulted in slight divergence in one or two spots as well as a tendency to have your boxes parallel lines converge in pairs towards the vanishing point rather than all together as shown in this diagram. The big takeaway from this diagram is that every parallel line in a set will converge towards the vanishing point at varying angles and that those on the outer edges (blue and magenta) will tend to converge more steeply towards the vanishing point than those in the middle.
I'm going to mark the box challenge as complete however make sure that you're closely following the instructions and working on your line confidence in your warm-ups and lessons.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 2
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Ellipse Master Template
This recommendation is really just for those of you who've reached lesson 6 and onwards.
I haven't found the actual brand you buy to matter much, so you may want to shop around. This one is a "master" template, which will give you a broad range of ellipse degrees and sizes (this one ranges between 0.25 inches and 1.5 inches), and is a good place to start. You may end up finding that this range limits the kinds of ellipses you draw, forcing you to work within those bounds, but it may still be worth it as full sets of ellipse guides can run you quite a bit more, simply due to the sizes and degrees that need to be covered.
No matter which brand of ellipse guide you decide to pick up, make sure they have little markings for the minor axes.