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1:26 AM, Friday February 16th 2024
Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.
Not only does the challenge help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. That being said I'll try to keep this critique fairly brief so you can get working on the next steps as soon as possible.
Things you did well:
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Your construction lines are looking smooth and confidently drawn when you're not redrawing them. Try not to redraw, part of why we work with ink is so that we learn from and work with our mistakes. Redrawing doesn't erase them and just makes your work less tidy.
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It's good to see that you're taking the time to plan and evenly space your hatching lines. This helps keep your boxes tidy and makes them look more solid.
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You're doing a good job of experimenting with orientations, and rates of foreshortening. Experimenting is an important habit to build when learning any new skill, it helps form a more well rounded understanding. I hope you'll continue to display and nurture this habit in the future.
Things you can work on:
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You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future. Drawing large will help you become more comfortable working from the shoulder and allow you to see any mistakes you've made more clearly.
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I'd like you to experiment with proportions more. Mix in some longer/thinner/wider boxes to see how your lines behave in different scenarios.
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At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 138, 198, and 249 are examples of this). This leads to you extending your lines in the wrong direction and your boxes becoming distorted because your lines are actually diverging from where the vanishing point would actually be. Here's a guide I wrote that will hopefully help you place your vanishing points and line extensions more consistently. If you need some more examples you can find them here and a simplified guide below.
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There are times when your lines converge in pairs or you attempt to keep your lines a bit too parallel which results in them diverging. This is an example of lines converging in pairs, and this shows the relation between each line in a set and their respective vanishing point. The inner pair of lines will be quite similar unless the box gets quite long and the outer pair can vary a lot depending on the location of the vanishing point. Move it further away and the lines become closer to parallel while moving it closer increases the rate of foreshortening.
The key things we want to remember from this exercise are that our lines should always converge as a set not in pairs, never diverge from the vanishing point and due to perspective they won't be completely parallel.
I won't be moving you on to the next lesson just yet, each lesson builds off concepts in the previous course material so if you move forward with un-addressed issues you end up just creating further issues on top of them.
I'd like you to draw 20 more boxes please. Focus on extending your lines consistently in the correct direction, drawing larger and expermenting more.
Once you've completed your boxes reply to this critique with a link to them, I'll address anything that needs to be worked on and once you've shown you're ready I'll move you on to the next lesson.
I know you can do this and look forward to seeing your work.
Next Steps:
20 more boxes please.
5:41 AM, Friday February 23rd 2024
Tofu, thanks for the thorough critique. I found your guide to be very helpful and I have completed 20 extra boxes. Here's the imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/kdCwypL
I look forward to hearing if I can move on to the next lesson or if more remedial assignments are on the way. OK, I don't actually look forward to more boxes, but I will comply anyway.
7:08 PM, Saturday February 24th 2024
No problem.
These are all extending correctly and you're experimenting a bit more which is good to see. There's still room to draw larger so I would encourage you to do so in the future.
That aside these are solid so I'll be marking your submission complete.
If you haven't noticed the box challenge was just updated a few days ago, I would encourage you to read/watch through it just to see if any of the updates help reinforce/clarify any of the concepts.
Keep practicing boxes and previous exercises as warmups and best of luck in lesson 2.
Next Steps:
Move on to lesson 2.
PureRef
This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.
When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.
Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.