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250 Box Challenge

9:24 AM, Saturday February 8th 2020

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Finally finished my 250 boxes. I ended up going through a lot of difficulty with Lesson 1 due to my perfectionism and had to do some extra pages. I had actually done 250 boxes already before getting my critique for Lesson 1 but after reading my feedback I ditched most of my pages and re-drew 101 boxes. Before I started to kind of try and crawl under the fence again and did all kinds of stupid stuff like drawing with a completely locked wrist and pressing down hard and also drawing super small boxes. Once I re-started I tried to focus more on confidence with lines and drawing from the shoulder which still can be a hassle for me especially during the mornings when I'm really shaky to begin with. However, mornings are usually the art time for me since I do a lot of evening shifts in my job.

There are some errors that I'm already aware of myself. For starters I wasn't paying enough attention on extending the check lines so for the first few pages the green lines are often extended towards the horizon line even if they should be the opposite.

I also realized right towards the end that when doing the bolder lines I wasn't paying attention to the REAL direction of the box. Rather, I was 'shading' the boxes according to how I had turned the page.

The line quality kind of goes up and down a lot. I did improve a lot towards the end. The first few pages show a lot of uncertainty. However there are times when the linework just farts out and this is mostly due to my muscles getting tired since drawing from the shoulder is very new to me. When this starts happening I also start bending the longer lines.

The angles start going pretty well as I move forward. In the beginning I was completely and utterly confused by them. Especially when it comes to the inner corner. I still make mistakes in the final few pages but mostly it happens when my arm is tired and I miss-draw some lines at the start. But at least I grasp the concept better and I started to kind of see the finished box in front of me before I had actually drawn the final lines.

Actually pulling through with this challenge is already a huge achievement for me as I tend to drop things that frustrate me very very easily. Especially considering that I actually drew around 350 boxes. I'm fully prepared to draw some extra pages due to the way I stick to my old habits. But just don't make me draw 250 again :')

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1:57 PM, Sunday February 9th 2020

Alrighty Saronsa, that was quite the self reflection! I will say, I think you're in your head a bit too much at times, as many students often are, and this can get in the way of being able to just execute. You should focus on doing your best and let the instructors be the ones to guide you. Yes there are always things to pick up on and improve, but when that isn't filtered and pared down it often becomes overwhelming for the student. So. With that, let's get started!

You have definitely made good progress throughout the challenge. One nit picky thing that I have had to mention a lot lately is that when you are drawing many of the same thing on a page that will be looked at it helps to number each one so they can be referenced clearly and easily.

By the end of your challenge your line work does improve as does your sense of space and convergence. I am glad to see a variety of box sizees and view points, and would have liked to see some more boxes with quicker rates of convergence. Your hatching is fine for the most part, and for the most part your converging lines are at least on the right track. You are still getting tripped up by the convergences of the back lines, which is totally normal at this stage and thus uncomfortable made this infographic to better explain how we should be approaching parallel lines in perspective. This long story short of is we need to view these parallell lines as a single unit all related to each other, tied together by the vanishing point. When the vanishing point moves closer or futher away, the angles between them change. Often times when starting out we draw a box plane by plane. We focus on the first plane making sure the lines are good and going where we want them, converging appropriately etc. then we move to the next and do the process again in a vacuum. At the end we often end up with two points of convergence because we weren't relating the second plane to the first. As you continue to practice boxes in warm ups try to keep this in mind and really apply it. Overall though, you have followed the instructions and shown tangible growth throughout so I will be marking this challenge as complete. Congratulations!

Next Steps:

Next stop lesson 2. During your warm ups try not to neglect boxes. Even though lessons 2-5 are very organic heavy, you don't want to get rusty!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:42 AM, Saturday September 26th 2020

Thank you for your reply. Yes, I'm definitely in my head too much. It has been a problem for a long time now and I'm trying to get back into art now and trying to just DO things. I'm going to start getting back into Drawabox again since I don't like leaving things unfinished. I'll start working on Lesson 2 once I have more free time.

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