I quickly discovered that interior lines are very difficult to align correctly. I did try numerous strategies to improve convergences (like ghosting a drawn line to get the hand movement down, then moving the paper to the position of the interior line), but I unfortunately did not number my pages as I went on.
Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge! I can see you made some good improvement with the quality of your mark making. Your lines steadily become straighter and more confident looking as you progressed through the challenge.
For many of your boxes, you appear to have purposely tried to keep your sets of lines parallel on the 2D page, drawing them all to an "infinite" vanishing point. As explained in this section, because these boxes are oriented with us looking at the corner of the box, you should be drawing your boxes in 3 point perspective - meaning with 3 concrete vanishing points, each set of lines converging towards a real point in space, even if that point is far off and the convergence is gradual. At no point in the instructions does it state that you should draw your boxes without any foreshortening. All of the boxes you draw will have some foreshortening even if the convergence is very gradual. The circumstances in which vanishing points go to “infinite” as discussed in lesson 1 are only in specific orientations that run parallel to the viewer. In this exercise we are working with completely random rotations and so those cases are exceedingly rare. You can also watch this video I made where I demonstrate how I approach drawing boxes.
To clarify, when I say "sets of parallel lines" or refer to your sets of lines as parallel, I am referring to lines that are parallel in 3d space not parallel on the page. If you remember from lesson one, the core principle of perspective is that when we draw a 3d form on a flat surface those lines that are parallel in 3d will now converge towards a shared vanishing point on the page.
Which means your sets of lines will not appear perfectly parallel on the page. Think about how those lines converge, do not purposely try to keep them parallel on the page.
I think this diagram will help you as well. 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. Remember that varying the foreshortening and orientations of your boxes, will also help you get the most out of the exercise.
Before moving onto lesson 2, I am going to have you draw 30 additional boxes.
For these boxes you will do the following:
Use the ghosting method for every mark you make, including hatching and extra line weight
Draw all of your boxes in 3pt Perspective
5 boxes per page maximum
Check all of your convergences as per the instructions
I will mainly be looking at the quality of your mark making to see if you are employing the ghosting method correctly for all of your mark making, including extra line weight and hatching. I will also be looking at your boxes to make sure your sets of lines are not being kept purposefully parallel.
Make sure you visit every link I have left for you and reread the challenge instructions in their entirety before beginning your revisions.
Next Steps:
30 additional boxes as described in the critique.
So I had to take a much longer break from Drawabox than I anticipated (I had to move, among other things). On the bright side, I managed to get a much better roomier desk that really allows me to move my arm around a lot more. I did keep up with doing some exercises from Lesson 1 during this time, so my mark making hasn't completely deteriorated, but I'm very much open to re-doing Lesson 1 and the 250 Box Challenge.
These are the 30 boxes, started a few days ago and finished yesterday. I made sure not to make my line sets purposefully parallel, although a few turned out that way from mark making error.
I also checked out the video you linked. I believe your method of doing the interior lines after the initial Y-mark helped immensely, but I wanted to ask if it is acceptable to ghost the edges to the general area where the vanishing point of a line set would be when placing dots to align the interior lines (the areas I was ghosting to are visible on some of my pages since I accidentally skimmed the paper with my pen a few times). I was doing this to get a better idea of how to position my interior lines, but I'm not sure if this is something that is harmful for my improvement.
This is a good improvement! I can see that your sets of lines are doing a better job of converging towards their shared vanishing points.
Keep in mind that when you are applying your extra line weight you should be applying it to the silhouette of your boxes for this exercise. Extra line weight should never be used to hide or correct mistakes.
To answer your question; you can ghost to the vanishing point if you want, so long as what you do doesn't put marks on the page while you are ghosting.
I will go ahead and mark this lesson as complete and you can now move onto lesson 2!
Next Steps:
Continue to lesson 2!
Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.
Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.
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