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7:49 PM, Saturday November 14th 2020
Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!
Before we begin I just want to mention that in the future, when you go to scan your homework submissions, it would be better to scan your homework using the "photo" setting instead of the "drawing" setting. The drawing setting tends to up the contrast on an image and can cause you to lose some of the subtlety in your line work. It is also best to show the entire page rather than individual boxes so that the TAs can see the full scale you were drawing in. Back to your critique.
You did a pretty good job on the challenge overall. When I compare your early boxes with your final sets I can see that the quality of your mark making is steadily improving. You also do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points!
Something I noticed about your boxes is that you tend to draw them a bit small. One of the reasons for the 5-6 box per page restriction is so that students have enough room to draw their boxes at a larger size while still leaving room for you to do your line extensions. Drawing bigger helps engage your brain's spatial reasoning skills, whereas drawing smaller impedes them.
I also noticed that there is still a bit of hesitation showing in your marks still. Likely due to prioritizing your accuracy over creating a smooth, confident looking line. Just remember that the confidence of the stroke is far and away your top priority. Accuracy is something that you will improve on as you continue working through Drawabox and practice ghosting. While it is important that you use the ghosting method of each mark you make while doing Drawabox one thing you can try to help with ending your marks closer to where you want them is lifting the pen off of the page rather than stopping the motion of your arm.
I would also encourage you to try adding extra line weight to your boxes in your future warm ups. When you go to add weight to a line it is important that you treat the added weight the same way you would a brand new line. That means taking your time to plan and ghost through your mark so that when you go to execute it the mark blends seamlessly with your original mark. This will allow you to create more subtle and clean looking weight to your lines that reinforces the illusion of solidity in your boxes/forms. Extra line weight should never be used to correct or hide mistakes. You can also read more about this here. Something to keep in mind as well, when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes.
Finally while your converges do improve overall I think this diagram will help you further develop that skill as you continue through Drawabox. So, when you are looking at your sets of lines you want to be focusing only on the lines that share a vanishing point. This does not include lines that share a corner or a plane, only lines that converge towards the same vanishing point. Now when you think of those lines, including those that have not been drawn, you can think about the angles from which they leave the vanishing point. Usually the middle lines have a small angle between them, and this angle will become negligible by the time they reach the box. This can serve as a useful hint.
Congrats again and good luck with lesson 2!
Next Steps:
Continue to lesson 2!
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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.
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