250 Box Challenge

The First Fifty

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The exercise

For our first fifty boxes in the challenge, we're going to be drawing freely rotated boxes in three point perspective, with all three vanishing points marked out right on the page. Similarly to the rough perspective boxes exercise in Lesson 1, we'll be estimating our lines' convergences towards these points, but having the vanishing points marked on the page will give you something more obvious to aim for.

This will force those vanishing points to be quite close, which leans into the second aspect of the challenge - the foreshortening on these boxes will be quite dramatic, meaning the convergences will be very close.

As with most other exercises throughout this course, we will be freehanding our lines here, which means you will be using the ghosting method and going through the planning, preparation, and execution phases as explained here in Lesson 1.

Each page will contain 5 to 6 boxes - no more, no less. Be sure to make good use of the space available to you, and don't be afraid of having your line extensions run through other boxes. Drawing bigger boxes helps us engage our whole arm when drawing, and helps us get more out of the exercise as a whole.

Before starting your next page, you will apply line extensions as explained in the video to check how consistent our convergences are, so we can study the behaviour of our lines as they recede in space. Make sure you're extending them in the right direction, so the line extensions are able to provide us with useful information. One thing that helps with this is that for the first line extension of each set of edges, start from the center point of the Y and extend back along each arm.

Foreshortening

As noted above, we'll be using dramatic foreshortening (which we also refer to as rapid convergence) in this section of the challenge. You can refer to this diagram if you're uncertain what that means, or the more detailed diagram here on the first page of the challenge instructions.

Homework

For the first section of the box challenge, we will be drawing 50 boxes using the Y method, adhering to the following:

Vanishing points will be marked explicitly on the page. I recommend using different symbols for the VPs of different boxes - so maybe an O for one box, an @ for another, a # for the next, and so on. This will help you keep in mind which VPs belong to which box.
These boxes will have fairly rapid convergence/dramatic foreshortening. This is unavoidable since we're forced to keep our vanishing points close enough to be on the page, but this is also a requirement for this section of the challenge.
Write the date at the top of the page, and number every box individually from 1 to 50. You may also want to write down the symbol for the box's vanishing points beside the number, just as a reminder for yourself.
You will be drawing 5 to 6 boxes per page. No more, no less.
Before starting the next page, apply your line extensions as demonstrated in the video above. Be sure to start from the central point of your original Y and extending back along each arm to ensure you're extending them in the right direction.

In terms of tools, you can use a ballpoint pen or a fineliner, and we would like you to work on A4 or 8.5"x11" printer paper. If for whatever reason you aren't able to, keep in mind that what you do use should not be smaller than that. Going any smaller will make it harder for you to engage your whole arm when drawing, which this early on is going to make it that much harder to get comfortable with drawing from your shoulder. The 5-6 box per page count will still apply, regardless of how big your paper is.

If you need help with varying your Y, you can try using this helpful Y generator tool by Eric Na. This is permitted for the first 100 boxes (so the "First Fifty" and the "Next Fifty") but after that you should be more comfortable coming up with those Ys yourself.

Important reminders

Some mistakes still come up frequently amongst students, so this reminder will hopefully keep you on the right track. I'm putting it here above the other sections, just so that it doesn't get missed.

Do not draw your boxes with lines that are actually parallel on the page. Back in Lesson 1 we talked about how a vanishing point can go to "infinity", eliminating the convergences of the lines it governs. This is not something we can just arbitrarily do for everything - it only happens when that given set of lines runs perpendicular to the viewer's angle of sight. Since we're drawing boxes that are freely and randomly rotated in space, make sure all of your boxes' lines converge. This should be fairly easy to avoid in this section of the challenge, since we have our vanishing points marked out explicitly on the page, but keep this in mind anyway.
It is extremely important that you ensure that your line extensions point away from the viewer, as their purpose is to help us analyze how those lines behave (whether they converge or diverge) as they move farther away. If they're extended towards the viewer, then it kind of renders the line extension analysis pointless, since it doesn't tell us how we can improve our next page of boxes. I've mentioned this a few times already on this page, so it's probably annoying at this point - but it's that important.
Do not simply draw a line straight to the VP when applying your line extensions. Sometimes we see students drawing a line between the corner of an edge nearest to the viewer, and the vanishing point, skipping the farther end of the edge entirely. If you think this is what you've been doing, go back and review the video, or look at how it's being approached in the example below. Remember that our goal is to look at how the edge itself is behaving, and how far it is from aligning towards the VP.
Don't worry about the back corner being off. The back corner is a distraction - a symptom of the individual sets of lines not converging consistently. This is not something you're going to master here, so that back corner will always be at least a little off, and if all you're focusing on is the back corner, it's going to feel like you're not making progress, when in fact you are. Focus on the sets of lines, and making them converge as consistently as you can.
Vary your boxes. Don't just draw the same box over and over. Vary its orientation and proportions by playing with the lengths of the arms of the Y and the angles between them (as long as those angles are greater than 90°).
All freehanded lines throughout this course are to be drawn using the ghosting method from Lesson 1. This means focusing most of your time in the planning and preparation phases, and then executing each mark confidently, without hesitation. Remember - confidence takes priority over accuracy.

Example

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What next?

Once you've completed the first 50 as assigned, move onto the next page for further instructions on how to tackle the next 50.

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