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250 Box Challenge

7:37 PM, Tuesday October 27th 2020

Malk 250 Box Challenge - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/cBwA1M7.jpg

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First of all, apologies for inital mistakes with inking: for the first part of this challenge I was using paint pens which had an unfortunate tendancy to leak.

It also took me a while to get over my fear of actually drawing around 5 boxes on a single page: I was intially worried about there not being enough space, but I eventually just took the plunge and simply did it.

As is apparent, my main issue has been with my linework. Even with ghosting around 10 times on average and making sure to lock everything up to my shoulder, I still couldn't get reliably straight lines. It's worth bringing up that my wrists are slightly damaged due to an accident a few years ago, but I don't want to use that as an excuse. Going soft on myself is exactly why it's taken so long for me to even put THIS much effort into studying art.

I tried my hardest to avoid going over lines multiple times: this was the main takeaway from my feedback of lesson one's exercises, and still something I have struggled with to an embaressing degree.

For the outer lines I have the slight 'excuse' that I was trying to go over each of them (only) once to add subtle line weight, but for the others I have no such excuse.

I either didn't think my mark through in the first place or I realised I was going over the line a second time just after doing it. I also had a lot of trouble with ghosting the hatched lines to denote a box's face. Again, I have no excuse.

I also had a lot of trouble with actually understanding a great deal of the lesson material, despite watching the various youtube videos/reading the articles multiple times over the weeks, trying to get them to 'click'.

Again I have no excuse, I simply have embaressingly poor comprehension difficulties for my age. I wish I could be productive and point to certain sections so you may better explain them to me, but in truth it's almost every single concept.

I watched ScyllaStew's youtube videos (both her 'How I draw boxes' video and the one of Uncomfortable critiqueing her homework) which helped me understand what I was doing a great deal better... but I'm sorry to say I didn't learn anything outside of the scope of what I literally had to for the sake of completing this challenge.

It'd be greatly appericated if not only could you explain where a lot of my boxes fall short, but also assign me a few more pages of boxes so I can apply that feedback as soon as possible. I'm terrified at the idea of attempting Lesson 2 without actually feeling confident that I understand one of the core concepts of the site that I just studied for a month.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you are having a good day.

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4:38 PM, Thursday October 29th 2020

Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge!

Normally TAs ignore student self-critique so as not to contaminate our own critique of your work. However, since you still appear to be struggling a bit with this challenge I have read through your comments and will try to address them all before sending you to your revisions.

One of the first things I have noticed about your work here is your mark making. It appears that you are not taking your time enough to employ the ghosting method correctly. I would recommend that you go back and reread the steps here before you move on. I also highly recommend you read this comment by Uncomfortable where he talks more about hesitation and drawing with confidence. Remember that every mark you make while doing these exercises is meant to be planned and executed using the ghosting method (including the hatching we use on our boxes). Rushing will not help you here only consistent practice and time.

When it comes to applying line weight it is important to keep in mind that the extra line weight we add to our boxes should be planned and executed the same way we do our brand new lines. That means using the ghosting method to plan and execute that extra line weight so that it blends more seamlessly with your original mark. This too will take time and practice, so if you don't get it right away that isn't an issue. Just keep using the ghosting method and make sure that you practice consistently.

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. Once your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid mistakes has passed, so all you can really do is push through. Hesitation serves no purpose. Mistakes happen, but a smooth, confident mark is still useful even if it's a little off.

I understand that you were nervous at first about filling your page with boxes. Having looked at the pages that you filled with more than 2 boxes, I just wanted to let you know that for the most part you have filled those pages well and kept most of your boxes at a good size for this exercise with enough room to comfortably check your line extensions. For your revisions I will expect that you try to maintain this.

Now one thing that may help you with your convergences is this diagram. 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. You can see in the diagram that each set is made up of four lines, not two, which is a mistake I noticed on occasion in your work. 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.

The biggest thing I can recommend is that you take your time. Rushing your work will not help you understand the concepts Drawabox teaches faster or better. If you are ever confused as to what your next step should be you can and should go back to the lesson material where you can always find your next step. You can also ask questions here on the community platform or in the Drawabox Discord server if you find yourself still struggling after rereading the material.

Before marking this lesson as complete and sending you to lesson 2 I am going to assign you 50 Additional Boxes. I will be looking for improvements in your mark making quality as a whole. I want to see straighter, more confident looking lines and I will be looking at your sets of lines to see if they converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points. Keep in mind what I said about taking your time and be sure to visit the links that I have left for you here.

Next Steps:

50 additional boxes, as described in the critique

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:34 PM, Saturday November 7th 2020

https://imgur.com/a/XrkpIzx

First of all, thank you very much for your critique. it was incredibly direct and gave me a next step, which is very much what I personally need.

I'm happy to note that my markmaking defiently underwent some improvement. A friend gave me the advice that I should simply ghost slower (I had initally misinterpreted 'make your lines fast' lines and ended up completely rushing them) which helped alongside the links you gave me.

Confidence is still a massive issue, despite my best efforts.

I also improved a little bit on the fact that I kept not keeping in mind that all four lines are to be drawn in relation to each other. (Even if a lot of these pages turned out awful.)

I still feel confused: how much am I supposed to be visuallising my vanishing points? As these boxes are all drawn abstractly with their own vps, I just often used my intial Y as the 'instructions' for where every other line was meant to go. Everything I've seen seems to intdicate that I'm supposed to be carefully visuallising a vp and imagining my lines going from it to my dot, as opposed to the other way around.

Ultimately I don't feel like I'm capable enough to move onto lesson 2.

Ultimately that's your judgement, but even after 300 boxes I still feel like I'm learning the very basics of this. I'm still embaressed by how difficult it is for me to understand the lesson material (I got taken out of proper education when I was eight, so anything that goes into these complex math ideas confuses me to no end) and asking for help isn't mangable when I simply can't articulate what elements I can't understand. It'd be pretty embaressing if I went forward with lesson 2, only to fail at learning anything due to me not even understanding the most basic fundemental that's being used as a springboard. Just like how even now I'm struggling with just making simple marks.

Thank you for your time.

8:50 PM, Sunday November 8th 2020

Your initial approach, basing things off your initial Y lines is correct. This exercise does not involve marking out an explicit vanishing point because instead of focusing on the vanishing point itself, we are focusing on the behaviour of our lines, and how they converge to create a vanishing point. In a sense, this requires us to stop treating the vanishing point as something that exists inherently, and instead to think of it as something that is created by the interaction between these lines.

Focus on how your lines are all oriented to converge at the same point. It doesn't matter which point that is, at least in the context of this exercise - just that it is a point they all share.

As for your feelings about moving onto lesson two, I recommend that you read this section of lesson 0.

4:35 AM, Wednesday December 9th 2020

Sorry for the mistake!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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