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5:12 PM, Monday July 11th 2022

Hi there, I'll be handling your box challenge critique.

Congratulations on completing the box challenge, it's definitely a lot more work than most people expect. Not only does it help deepen your understanding of important concepts but it shows your desire to learn as well. Be proud of what you've accomplished and that desire you've shown. 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:

  • You're doing a good job of drawing the lines constructing your boxes smoothly and confidently.

  • It's nice to see that you're taking the time to plan each of your hatching lines and space them evenly. This helps keep your boxes looking tidy rather than looking like they were rushed on to the page.

  • Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge so it's nice to see you're applying it anyways. Most people need to build up some mileage before they feel comfortable applying it so I always recommend starting early. The sooner you feel comfortable the sooner you see better results.

  • You're doing a great job of experimenting with orientations, proportions 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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

Overall while you did make a few mistakes your boxes are improving so far and with more mileage you'll continue to become more consistent. That being said I'll be marking your submission as complete and move you on to lesson 2.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups, and good luck.

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
3:39 AM, Tuesday July 12th 2022

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

I've been trying to figure out why that was happening pretty much through out the challenge and the back corner. I think when I was drawing the outer pairs I got into the habbit of comparing them individually to the inner line instead of as a set as you mentioned. That makes more sense, I'll work on incorpating next time I draw a box.

You tend to draw fairly small, I'd like you to draw larger in the future.

Yeah I started getting paranoid about leaving myself room for the convergence check which resulted in them getting progressive;y smaller as I went on haha. I do work in A3 for that reason alone as A4 is way to cramped for me. This definitely something to work on for all my art as that seems to be a trend for me.

Thank you, for the feedback, I'll put it to use ASAP.

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