Feel free to read the comic (which you can access by clicking here or directly on the preview image), instead of the write-up below, or vice-versa.
Over the years I've heard a lot of people question the reasoning behind the 250 box challenge, and to be completely honest, the true value of the challenge itself - not the exercise, but the act of drawing two hundred and fifty boxes as meticulously as we prescribe it, has revealed itself steadily over the time we've been assigning it.
I first assigned it in response to a student who was having trouble with the organic perspective boxes from Lesson 1 - an exercise that comes straight out of the Dynamic Sketching course I'd taken with Peter Han at Concept Design Academy, which itself served as the starting point for what eventually became Drawabox as you know it today. I didn't really know how to explain the logic behind how to draw their boxes more successfully, so instead I decided to try something that didn't rely on explanation at all. I asked them to draw 250 freely rotated boxes.
They came back some time later, and lo and behold - it helped. They had markedly improved, and so I started suggesting it to others as an optional challenge. Over time, and in a sort of back and forth with students, we added more elements to it - drawing through the boxes in order to better understand how they sat in space, the Y method to provide a more structured approach that shifted the focus to sets of converging lines, and finally the line extensions themselves to drive that focus on convergence home.
All of this certainly helped students better develop their sense of 3D space - at least enough to make considerably better use of the lessons that followed, but that wasn't where the benefits of the challenge shined through most clearly.
The true value that eventually became clear was the discipline it developed in our students, and more than that, the knowledge of that discipline as a part of themselves. Not some external thing to chase, but an internal well of willpower upon which they could draw in order to face anything.
I know it sounds really lofty and, frankly, like self-help nonsense. But the 250 box challenge is just a big task. And like any task, it can be broken down into smaller pieces, which themselves can be broken down further, until all you're really doing in the moment is one simple, achievable thing.
The totality of it may take weeks, or even months, depending on how much time you can throw at it each session, and how often you can sit down to chip away at it, but it's looking at the overall goal that we become overwhelmed. After all, climbing a mountain is a terrifying prospect. It gets a lot easier, however, if all you need to focus on is the very next step, and nothing more.
In completing this challenge, you will discover that for yourself in a way that goes beyond simple understanding. We can understand something by having it explained to us - but knowing it, truly believing it, demands something more. It requires experience.
Climb this mountain, and you can climb any mountain. Complete this overwhelming task, and you can complete any overwhelming task. But really believing you can do it isn't the first step - it's the reward you get at the end.
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