250 Box Challenge

Welcome to the crucible. If you haven't completed lesson 1 yet, I'd recommend you go and do that first.

This exercise is probably what Drawabox is best known for (and perhaps most reviled). Which is kind of unfortunate, given that it's a pretty basic exercise. As one might imagine, you draw a box - then do it again another 249 times.

I cover it (partially) in my notes about the organic perspective exercise, but before we get to drawing, I don't want you leaving thinking that this is all there is to the exercise. Some people rush off without getting all the instructions, and fail to make the most of the arduous task. There's a little more to it, which is explained in the video as well as below.

This exercise is all about developing your understanding of 3D space and how forms can be manipulated within it. In order to do this most effectively, we can't be thinking about what we draw as being lines on a flat page, or simple flat shapes. We need to work towards understanding how each form sits in 3D space.

The first step towards this is to draw through our forms. That is, drawing all the edges, including those that we cannot see. Think of it like you have x-ray vision. We already did some of this in lesson 1.

Doing this forces us to understand to a much greater degree how the forms we draw exist in space. You may find it difficult to do so, and may find that often times the "back corner" fails to fit with the rest. This is completely normal. As we draw a box, we regularly make small mistakes in our angles and trajectories of our edges. We compensate for them as we continue to build out our box. This accumulation of mistakes always falls on the lines that have yet to be drawn, and if we're not drawing through them, it becomes quite easy to get by without having to deal with the issues present. Once we draw that back corner however, we're forced to come to terms with our blunders.

Noticing and identifying our mistakes is a major part of the learning process, and sometimes it's not necessarily something we can pick up on easily with the naked eye. For this reason, I recommend that you apply the following technique to each and every box you draw for this challenge.

Once you've completed drawing a page of boxes, grab a pen of a different colour and a ruler and start extending your lines back in space - meaning, towards their implied vanishing points. You don't have to extend it all the way (usually this will be impossible due to vanishing points falling way off the page), but extend them as much as you reasonably can.

By looking at how a given set of parallel lines (that is, a set that is meant to converge towards a single vanishing point) actually behaves, we can identify patterns in our mistakes.

Apply the extensions upon the completion of each page. Not after each box, and not after you're done all 250.

As there's a lot to take in, sometimes students move forward without fully understanding what the line extension method really means, and as a result, extend their lines in the wrong direction. This gives them no useful information, leaving them uncertain and confused.

Our lines must be extended AWAY from the viewer, towards the implied vanishing point, never towards the viewer. Make sure that when you are about to extend your lines, that you think about which side of the box is pointing towards you, the viewer.

Sometimes students will feel that they need to extend their lines in the direction that they converge, but this is incorrect. Sometimes, because we have drawn the initial box incorrectly, our lines will diverge as they move farther away from us. This is the kind of mistake we are trying to identify by extending the lines.

Since we apply this technique after we've completed a full page of boxes, it may be a little difficult to identify which side of the box is which (since we're drawing through our boxes). In order to avoid this, you can fill one of the faces pointing towards the viewer with tight hatching (as shown in this example, as well as in the next section) when you draw the box itself. That way, when you come back to it, its orientation in space will be much clearer.

One technique that is extremely useful both in reinforcing the illusion of solidity in our forms and in helping to organize our linework and clarify how different forms overlap is the use of line weight. Basically, it means making certain lines thicker than others (by going back over them with a confident, planned stroke).

When adding line weight to a box, there are a few things to remember. Firstly, weight is relative. You're not going in to make one line extremely bold on its own. You're going in to make it subtly thicker than another. This doesn't require the addition of much extra thickness, just enough to set it apart. Our subconscious will pick up on this difference even if our eyes don't immediately, and will understand the kind of hierarchy this is creating.

Secondly, use line weight to create a solid silhouette. This means focusing that weight along the outer edges of your form. If you focus the weight on the internal edges, you'll give the impression that your box is really just a loose collection of lines. Adding them to the silhouette on the other hand will enclose them into a single cohesive group.

As explained in the extra box notes of lesson 1, a box with a lot of dramatic, rapid foreshortening, with its vanishing points positioned close to the form itself, is going to suggest a very large scale or an object that is right up to the viewer's eye. Alternatively, shallower foreshortening with far-off vanishing points and minimal convergence towards them is going to imply an object that is either at a more human scale, or simply very far away.

I want you to make sure you practice both of these, perhaps with a bit more of a lean towards the shallower foreshortening. These will be especially relevant in later lessons as we use boxes to construct more complex objects, due to most things we're drawing not being so immensely large. Still, it is valuable to get used to both situations, as they both pose different kinds of challenges.