250 Box Challenge

3:11 AM, Tuesday May 11th 2021

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hey guys i finally finshed it i mess up on the numbers and draw more boxes then needed.i correct them but i might left a few out their. sorry about that and im curious to hear what you think

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3:21 PM, Tuesday May 11th 2021

Congratulations for completing the 250 Box Challenge! You did a good job on the challenge overall. 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. You also start to do a better job of getting your sets of parallel lines to converge more consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

While your mark making has improved, I do see that you still hesitate in some areas. This is likely due to prioritizing your accuracy over creating a smooth, confident looking line.

Just remember that the confidence of the stroke is far and away your top priority. 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. If the line is wrong, we leave it and move onto the next step. Accuracy is something that you will improve on as you continue working through Drawabox and practice ghosting.

Now, while it is important that you use the ghosting method of each mark you make while doing Drawabox one thing you can try to help with ending your marks closer to where you want them is lifting the pen off of the page rather than stopping the motion of your arm. You can do this with extra line weight as well. I would also recommend that you read this comment by Uncomfortable, where he talks more about hesitation.

I can see that for some of your boxes you went back and tried to fix some mistakes. Remember that when you are working through Drawabox, you should not attempt to fix any mistakes you make. You are meant to do each assignment to the best of your current ability. If the line is wrong, we leave it and move onto the next. You should not start over, redo work or cross out your work, unless a TA or Uncomfortable has told you to in an official critique.

I would recommend that you try adding extra line weight to your boxes as a permanent step for your future warm ups. When you go to add weight to a line it is important that you treat the added weight the same way you would a brand new line. That means employing the ghosting method here as well. You should be taking your time to plan and ghost through your mark so that when you go to execute your extra line weight, it is done confidently and so that it blends seamlessly with your original mark. This will allow you to create more subtle and clean looking weight to your lines that reinforces the illusion of solidity in your boxes/forms. Extra line weight should be applied to the silhouette of your boxes, as shown here. I recommend that you try adding your extra line weight in no more than 1-2 pases so that you can easily identify mistakes in your work. This diagram should help also you better understand how to properly apply your extra line weight.

Something to keep in mind as well, when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes.

I did see that you forgot to check the convergences on some of your boxes.. Checking your convergences is an important step so you should always take your time and make sure you are extending your sets of lines correctly. Noticing and identifying mistakes is a major part of the learning process. Checking your boxes for mistakes is how you know what areas you need to address so that you get the most out of each exercise.

Your line extensions should extend away from the viewer and towards their implied vanishing point. You should do this for all three sets of lines that make up your box. They should extend from the center of the Y (from step one of your construction), out along the Y's arms. Be sure to visit the link for more information and for examples that you can use as reference. You can refer to the diagrams in this link if you are ever confused or uncertain.

Some of your boxes were drawn a bit small. Part of the reason for the 5-6 boxes per page rule is so that students have enough room to draw their boxes larger while having room to check their convergences. By drawing your boxes very small you limit your own ability to execute your lines from the shoulder confidently, which affects the quality of your mark making. Drawing bigger also helps engage your brain's spatial reasoning skills, whereas drawing smaller impedes them. It isn't a problem if your line extensions end up touching other boxes on the page so long as the boxes themselves do not touch or overlap. This should give you enough room to draw your boxes at a larger, more useful size.This, along with varying the foreshortening and orientations of your boxes, will help you get the most out of the exercise.

Keep in mind as you progress through Drawabox and begin to construct more complex forms that it is important to put in the time and focus required to execute each step correctly and to apply the ghosting method to every step of the process, as explained here. If you ever have any questions or are uncertain about what your next step is or how you should be doing something, you should first reread the instructions and if you are still uncertain you can always ask questions here.

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.

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 marks, including extra line weight and hatching. I will also be looking at your boxes to make sure you are checking your convergences correctly for every box.

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.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:10 PM, Monday August 2nd 2021

ok it took me a while because i kept messing up the boxes but here they are

https://imgur.com/a/GEOF3mf

12:22 AM, Tuesday August 3rd 2021

This is a good improvement overall! I can see your boxes are drawn at a much better size and you have your sets of lines converging more consistently towards their shared vanishing points.

A few things I want to point out before passing you onto lesson 2 first.

When it comes to your hatching I can see you are still struggling with executing your marks confidently. In some areas it looks as though you may be rushing a bit too. As I said before in your critique, "when you are working through Drawabox you should be employing the ghosting method for every mark you make. This includes the hatching that we sometimes use for our boxes."

When employing the ghosting method you are meant to take as much time as you need to plan and prepare your marks so that you can execute them confidently. There is no set limit on how long or how many times you should be ghosting. Just do it for as long as you need in order to maintain confidence in your mark making.

This brings me to your extra line weight where I can see a bit of this as well. Keeping in mind the advice I have given above, I would recommend that you try only adding one pass of line weight to your boxes as you do them in your warm ups. This will help you identify mistakes in your execution that can sometimes get lost when students go too heavy on the line weight.

Remember that you are meant to add a subtle amount of extra weight to the outer edges of your boxes, as shown here.

All that being said I will now mark this lesson as complete and you can continue to lesson 2!

Next Steps:

Continue to lesson 2!

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
9:13 PM, Tuesday August 3rd 2021

allright thank you for the critique and ill continue to work on ghosting my lines

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