seems like 40-45 didnt get uploaded: https://imgur.com/a/pkWbQRK
i tried my best spent around 4 minutes on each box, i know the lines arent clean but i really tried to make them cleaner
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge 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:
Your lines while messy at times are being drawn confidently. You mentioned you tried to lean them up as you progressed through the challenge which is good, know that this can be partly due to how you pace yourself. You mentioned each box took you around 4 minutes to draw, I'm glad you didn't go any faster than this but it's also quite common for people to spend around 10 minutes on each one. In the future just remember to take your time, plan your lines using the ghosting method and draw confidently, over time you'll become more accurate but messiness is partly how you tackle the task to begin with.
Line weight wasn't a requirement of the challenge but it does look like you tried to apply it at times. Most people need some mileage with it before they find themselves comfortable applying it so getting an early start is something I always recommend. Keep practicing and you'll get more consistent results.
You do a good job of experimenting with orientations and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it's how we form a more well rounded understanding of the concepts themselves. I hope you continue to nurture and display this habit int he future as well.
Overall your convergences become more consistent as you progress through the challenge which is a sign your sense of 3D space is improving.
Things you can work on:
Going back to the idea of taking your time, your hatching is a spot where you'd improve from this idea s well. Try to keep your lines evenly spaced, plan each one with the ghosting method before drawing them confidently to avoid any wobbling.
At times you're redrawing lines, this is a habit we don't want to build so try not to do it in the future. Part of the reason we use ink is so we're forced to work with and learn from our mistakes.
There's room for you to experiment with proportions more, currently you keep your boxes fairly similarly shaped. Try mixing it up by drawing some longer/thinner/fatter boxes and see how your lines will behave differently, remember experimenting is important.
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.
Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
