250 Box Challenge

10:43 AM, Monday March 7th 2022

Tidesphere's 250 Box Challenge - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/3kdgeJD.jpg

Find, rate and share the best memes and images. Discover the magic of th...

There are a few spots where I went over a line a second time or made a correction, and then realized I'm not supposed to.

0 users agree
10:02 PM, Tuesday March 8th 2022

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:

  • By the end of the challenge you're doing a good job of drawing your construction lines confidently, this keeps your lines smooth and prevents wobbling. You do redraw at times which is a bad habit, but you called it out yourself so it's good that you realized.

  • When hatching you're taking the time to space each line evenly which shows that care and thought is being put into each line. This helps your boxes appear solid and tidy rather than rushed.

  • 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:

  • Line weight isn't a requirement of the challenge but I do recommend practicing it in your future attempts. It's an incredibly useful tool but one that people often require a fair bit of mileage before they feel comfortable applying it. The sooner you start to build up that mileage the sooner you'll see better results.

  • 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 misakes you've made more clearly.

  • At times you're placing your vanishing point between the viewer and your boxes (boxes 148,165, 177, and 183 are some of the later examples). 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 some here.

  • 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.

You're doing a good job so far, I just want to make sure you know how to place your vanishing points and line extensions consistently in the correct direction. I'll be asking you to draw just 10 more boxes for now, if it seems like you still struggle then we can address it and add some more if needed.

Take your time, do your best to draw confidently and larger.

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:

10 more boxes please.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:24 AM, Sunday March 13th 2022

Hey there! I'll definitely get started on this. One worry that I do have though is that if I draw larger boxes I fear I won't be able to put in clear converging lines to demonstrate the vanishing points. Also, I don't know if it was clear from the pictures, but I am using larger than 8x10 paper. I'll get started right away though.

7:30 AM, Monday April 4th 2022
6:41 PM, Monday April 4th 2022

These all look great, good work.

I have no problem moving you on to the next lesson now.

Keep practicing previous exercises and boxes as warm ups and good luck in lesson 2!

Next Steps:

Move on to lesson 2.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:42 AM, Tuesday April 5th 2022

Thank you!

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Sakura Pigma Microns

Sakura Pigma Microns

A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.