Check Out NMA    Learn More About our Partnership
Close and Enjoy Drawabox Ad-free

250 Box Challenge

12:45 AM, Sunday April 25th 2021

250 Box Challenge - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/j5A6S1O.jpg

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

I appreciate any and all critiques, but I'm hoping to get an opinion on a specific concern regarding this challenge:

I feel like not only my convergences but my linework were better during the beginning portion of the challenge than they were towards the end of the challenge. This was very unexpected, considering I slowed my pace down considerably, traced my vanishing points more diligently, actively tried to seek out and solve specific perspective issues as I went, and warmed up with ghosted/superimposed lines more and more the further I got into this challenge. I'm wondering if I maybe focused too hard on getting my lines and boxes right towards the end, and perhaps I should relax a bit and be more intuitive with my boxes? As a reviewer, do you notice any other trends in my work that may have led to a decrease in quality? Or maybe I'm just being too hard on myself and there is actualy visible improvement? I'm kind of stumped and really not sure what to take away from this challenge upon my completion... Any and all input is greatly appreciated.

Cheers :)

  • youenoh
Report
1 users agree
4:18 AM, Thursday April 29th 2021

Congratulations on finishing the 250 Box Challange.

I want to start by saying I love how confident and clean your lines are. The line weight is well done as well. You might want to change the variety of the boxes a little bit and experiment with different-sized boxes and different amounts of foreshortening as it might increase your understanding of perspective. Still, your overall understanding of perspective seems very good.

The correction lines are extended correctly. There are some divergences in the inner corners of some boxes. This order of drawing boxes, might help you draw more accurately, but the accuracy gets better towards the end.

As for your question, I don't see much difference in your line quality between the first pages and the last ones. What I realized is that, towards the end, it seems like you fixed some of your lines to be more accurate. Fixing the lines creates messier and less confident linework, so that might be the reason you feel like your lines changed towards the end. I think it's good that you spent time understanding the perspective better and tried to fix the specific problems you encountered. That's how you improve.

And for the linework, If you believe that thinking too much about accuracy holds you back, I would recommend you think less about the correctness of your lines or your boxes. Once you planned out the line and put your pen on paper, don't think about the accuracy anymore since you already made the plan beforehand and ghosted your line enough for your muscles to remember the correct move. When I feel like my lines are getting less accurate and less confident, I would stop drawing for a bit, and try not to think about the accuracy, and only rely on my muscle memory I build from ghosting the line.

I am not sure if this answers your question, but if you feel like I missed the point feel free to ask again.

I would recommend you to start more advanced box exercises introduced here and include drawing boxes in your warm-ups. Good luck. :)

Next Steps:

I am glad to mark this lesson as complete. You can go ahead and start Lesson 2.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete. In order for the student to receive their completion badge, this critique will need 2 agreements from other members of the community.
1:07 AM, Friday April 30th 2021

Hi KamiyaSora,

Thanks for the thorough review and for addressing my questions. I think you're right that I may have gotten too hung up on the accuracy of my lines after planning, especially since I was getting a better idea of where they needed to align for accurate convergences.

The link you sent for box construction is great to see because I started noticing that specific process leading to more accurate results. I don't remember how early on I employed that method, but I experimented with a few others and that one seemed to work best. I never saw that process explained anywhere prior but it's certainly nice to have some confirmation on my trial and error approach.

I also appreciate the advance box exercises, I'm not sure how I missed those but I can see how they will be very useful, especially the second exercise in regards to future lessons. I will most definitely give them a shot and stay fresh on boxes for warmups. Thanks again!

  • youenoh
2:50 PM, Monday May 24th 2021

I am a bit late but I am glad I could be of help. I hope you will keep improve and be a much better artist.

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.
The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

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.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.