https://imgur.com/a/G3OYSpL Link to my 250 Box album. have a nice day uncomfortable, hope you're doing well when you read this :3 I have a tendency to get frustrated when I draw bad boxes I've noticed, and sometimes I autopilot and end up correcting lines. Adding outlines hides a lot of that stuff which I'm not sure is a good thing, but it does look way better. Box 250 is most representative of what my boxes look like when I'm really careful with them, at least in my opninion.
Really nicely done! You've got a lot of great stuff here, and demonstrate a good deal of growth over the set. By the end, you're demonstrating a solid understanding of 3D space, along with consistent convergences towards vanishing points, confident linework all executed conscientiously using the ghosting method, and lastly a lot of great experimentation with line weight to help further the illusion of solidity of your forms.
You're doing great with the boxes, so the one piece of advice I'll offer will have to do with the last bit - the line weight. It's pretty normal to jump at line weight with a lot of exaggeration, and it's a good way to learn it, but as you continue to move forwards it can come to a point where things get so thick that they start to get a little cartoony. You're not nearly there, but you could stand to be a little more subtle with that weight. The thing about line weight is that it's all about relative weights between different lines. A mark could be a little bit thicker - unnoticeable to our conscious brain - but our subconscious would still pick up on it.
That kind of subtlety and nuance is what we're ultimately after. Line weight is about whispering to the viewer, rather than telling them firmly and directly. Speak to their subconscious, and less to their conscious brain, and you'll find that your drawings start to develop a really beautiful sense of liveliness. You may also want to think more of weight being applied to either end of a given line (resulting in a particular corner being generally heavier rather than a side being heavier), as this also can lead to the sort of tapered weight along the length of a line that also gives us a sort of energetic quality.
Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. You're welcome to move onto the next lesson.
This was even harder than I thought it would be. I think over the course of the challenge my boxes did improve, but I don't think my line convergence improved very drastically. I am definitely still having difficulty placing the last, hidden corner. Also, when I try to draw less dramatic perspective, I sometimes end up make the angles too large, creating diverging lines where they should be converging. I look forward to your feedback. Thank you!
Nice work! You've definitely made good use of this exercise, and have demonstrated considerable growth over the set in a number of areas. Your conscientiousness with applying the line extension method definitely helped you improve those convergences - it is understandable that the boxes with shallower foreshortening did see a degree of divergence here and there. While it's essentially the same challenge (getting your lines to converge consistently towards the same shared vanishing point), both dramatic and shallow foreshortening manifest this difficulty in remarkably different ways. Dramatically converging boxes are difficult because it's very obvious when you've made a mistake, since there's a smaller margin for error, but shallowly converging boxes are difficult because the convergences are so subtle that it's easy to overshoot in the wrong direction and end up with divergence. For this reason it's important to practice both in considerably quantity in order to equally target both issues.
The majority of your boxes sit somewhere in between, which honestly is good for the most part, but just be sure to practice both extremes a fair bit as well. They won't come up as often (shallow foreshortening will come up more frequently than dramatic but usually it's going to sit somewhere in between), but it's still a good idea to get those kinds of challenges down.
Along with improving those estimations of convergence, you definitely showed a good deal of improvement with your experimentation with line weight. One thing I wanted to recommend on that front was to try and make your line weights a little more subtle. Line weight is less about shouting at the viewer that a particular line is much heavier, and more about whispering to the subconscious. Our subconscious is very attune to picking up the relationships between lines, even when minimal - so making a line only slightly thicker won't be apparent to our conscious brains, but we'll still pick it up subconsciously. This generally results in a more nuanced, effective result.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Awesome! Thank you for your feedback. I had a feeling I was going to heavy on line weight, so I'll keep an eye on that, as well as continuing to draw boxes that are both shallow and deep convergence while warming up. Thanks again!
Hello Boss. Linkin' my 250 boxes. Took me some time to do them. Shading was partly done using elbow (for a test) but mostly using shoulder - that's why they might be different. Exercise is hard and time consuming but worth it. I've scanned the pages so every flaw will be visible. Looking forward to your bashing.
You've done a good job of working through the exercise, conscientiously applying the line extension method and generally being patient with the work and with yourself. There is definitely still room for improvement, but you've come a long way and will continue to do so. The most important thing when dealing with these boxes is to ensure that as you draw a line, you are thinking about all the lines that it's going to run parallel to. Don't think about the other sets (and don't focus too much on the corners themselves), think only on the other lines that are going to converge with the line you're about to draw - whether you've drawn them already or not.
Also, as explained in these notes, try and think about the angles at which these four lines meet at their vanishing point - those with very small angles between them can be effectively drawn parallel to one another as a part of the box.
Over the course of your set, you definitely play a lot with line weight, which is great to see. I do want to mention a couple things on that front though:
Make sure you're applying the same ghosting method when you're adding weight. Don't draw slowly and carefully, be sure to plan and prepare beforehand and then execute with the same kind of confidence for your initial mark.
Don't use line weight as a way to hide mistakes. I noticed a few places where you added a lot of thickness in certain areas in a way that looked off, so I'm assuming it's because you had something you wanted to cover up. In general, don't correct your mistakes, and don't go to any lengths to hide them, because both of these simply add more ink to a problematic area and draw more attention to it.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2. Be sure to continue practicing freely rotated boxes as part of your regular warmup routine though, as this is something you'll continue to improve on over time.
Thanks for the feedback. I did use line weight to hide my mistakes. I'm trying to avoid doing this as much as I can. By freely rotated boxes do you mean organic perspective, rotated boxes, just random boxes as in 250 challenge or all of them?
Random boxes like from this challenge - though the other exercises you mentioned should already be covered as part of doing lesson 1 exercises as part of that warmup as well (which is explained at the start of lesson 1)
Hey Uncomfortable! Hope you're doing great! I finished the 250 box challenge. By the end I start to scoring boxes according to how off the lines were according to the vanishing point just to have an extra help of accuracy I guess. Just in case you see weird numbers and don't understand what are those.
Very nice work! You've shown a great deal of patience and care in your approach to this challenge, and it seems to have paid off. I'm very pleased to see that you applied the line extension technique to each and every box, as well as the fact that you clearly included a wide range of box types - some with dramatic foreshortening, some with shallower foreshortening, and a great variety of orientations as well.
I'm honestly not entirely sure how useful scoring them would have been - it's more important to think about the reasons behind why lines were converging consistently or why they weren't, and identifying patterns that can then be corrected. That said, I don't think it did any harm, as long as it wasn't drawing your attention away from properly analyzing your results, page by page, which you did seem to be doing.
Continue to keep an eye on boxes that are very shallow in their foreshortening, as there are cases even towards the end (like 217) where your lines end up diverging when they should be converging (albeit very slightly). It's definitely one of the more challenging areas.
Also, while your overall estimation of alignment was pretty solid, I figured I'd share this demo I frequently offer as part of my box challenge critique, in case it offers more insight. It's about paying attention to how your lines exit the vanishing point, and thinking about the angles that would exist between each set of lines. If such an angle between two lines is minimal, you can generally just draw it as being actually parallel on the page by the time it reaches the box.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Hello again! I didn't mean to drop two submissions at once but I only just now thought about it .-. Sorry, but here are my boxes: https://imgur.com/a/qYgtMWf
I've only been drawing for a little less than 2 months so I feel like I learned a mountain of material from this challenge.. Confidence and line weight are two areas that I'd love to improve in, but I'll leave that up to the master to let me know :p. Thanks in advance, and I am excited to hear back ^^.
[deleted]
2018-11-12 23:22
Im back from the land of boxes. Heres what I got https://imgur.com/a/R8sR3As and part 2 https://imgur.com/a/vIQPPyB. As I drew more and more boxes I started to imagining boxes in my head. Towards the end I started to think about a camera leases could affect how boxes could look. Unfortunately my felt tip pends did not arrive on time so there are no line weight. I hope what I wrote make sense.
Youve demonstrated some really impressive growth here, along with a great deal of patience and care in how youve been approaching the exercise. You clearly took your time planning and preparing each and every stroke, and arent displaying any signs of rushing or getting ahead of yourself. Im also very pleased to see that youve been applying the line extension method throughout, and I can see how it has impacted your overall approach - causing you to be more mindful of how those sets of lines are meant to converge towards their shared vanishing points.
I have just one suggestion as you continue to move forwards. When considering these sets of parallel lines, think about not only how theyre going to behave once they reach the box itself, but also how those lines leave the vanishing point. Consider the angles between different lines leaving the same vanishing point - where those angles are small, then those differences are going to be even smaller all the way out at the box. So, you can effectively draw these pairings of lines as being parallel to one another. This comes into play a great deal when drawing the middle two lines of a given set (where we tend to have the outer two lines quite a ways away from each other, but another two towards the center tend to be quite similar in their trajectory.
I am struggling in some key areas. One of the hardest parts was the bold outline, occasional bad habits and the lines connecting to the farthest corner. My bolding was distracting so I mixed up between adding it and not to see the quality of lines and because I felt they were taking away rather than improving the boxes. Not sure I made the right call there. I did see improvement, but I'm not sure if it is enough to move onto the next challenge. At the very least, I need to do many more boxes and exercises from lesson 1. I saw a steep decline in quality on the last 50 boxes in the new larger sized sketch book when drawing larger boxes. The larger boxes were more challenging to do for me because of connecting the lines. So longer line ghost is a must in the future and larger box practice.
I look forward to your comments and advice for moving forward.
I can definitely see what you mean in terms of the last 50 boxes being considerably more difficult for you, and showing a significant dip in the quality of the results. That said, overall I do feel that youre getting ahead of yourself - Theres still some visible (though pretty minor) hesitation and wobbling in the pre-200 boxes, and this issue just gets exacerbated when tackling the larger ones near the end. It doesnt make a lot of sense to fuss over line weight until those initial marks are drawn as confidently as you can possibly manage - and I am definitely still seeing evidence that when you execute your marks, youre still too preoccupied with accuracy, rather than committing to them and driving forward, accepting the inevitability of mistakes at this stage.
Remember - we can still work with a mark that has been drawn smoothly and confidently, with a singular, consistent trajectory even if it misses the mark. A wavering, wobbly line however is not going to do us much good, and will result in a a construction that simply wont feel solid. Before you have that down completely, worrying about line weight is going to be a misuse of your focus - largely because we also need to be adding that line weight with the same kind of confidence. Right now Im seeing you slowing down a great deal for the line weight in order to track the underlying stroke accurately, and it wobbles a fair bit as a result.
Also worth mentioning, from 0-200, youre showing a great deal of improvement in your estimation of these lines convergences, and it all feels like its coming together fairly well (though its worth noting that many of these have their vanishing points much closer to the box, resulting in more dramatic, rapid foreshortening). The last 50 however totally abandon any of that - it doesnt seem like youre paying much attention to those convergences, and are instead focusing only on the challenge of ghosting these considerably longer lines. Its not an effective use of your time, and youre drawing your attention away from whats really important. It is also worth mentioning that more of these last 50 boxes have much shallower foreshortening, which presents a different kind of challenge than the more dramatic ones did.
All in all, I think you should not be striving for such massive forms. The sizes you were working at previously were pretty good (they werent so small as to get cramped and mess with your spatial reasoning), and they allowed you to focus more on the core challenges youre facing with the ghosting method.
Instead of jumping into much bigger boxes, try to work more with both dramatic and shallow boxes at that smaller scale, and focus on nailing that confident stroke and erradicating all hesitation.
Im going to mark this challenge as complete, but Id recommend that you do another 100 before moving onto lesson 2. You may, if you wish, submit those here when youre done.
I played around a bit but here are the next 100 boxes. I am adding at least a box to my warm up page and was trying the best methods to add it. One thing that I found helpful was correcting free hand my boxes after drawing the extending lines, it took some of the guess work out of what I was doing wrong or make me rethink of were I went wrong. The only down side is that it clutters the page which can be harder to read. I tried keeping it as easy to read with consistent color. Still struggling with line quality, but it is getting better. I will move to lesson 2 now, thank you for your input.
Alright, that's getting better. There's still room for improvement, especially in working on keeping those convergences consistent, but you're doing better. When you draw a line, think about all the lines that are going to be parallel to it - those that have been drawn, and those that have yet to be drawn. Think about how they're all going to converge towards the same vanishing point, and try and figure out where that vanishing point is going to be so you can aim the line you're about to draw towards it.
Also, as covered in these notes, think about the angles at which these lines leave the vanishing point. Some of them - usually the middle two of a given set - will have a very small angle between them. Once these lines reach the box, that angle will be so unnoticeable that you can effectively draw them as being parallel to one another. This will help avoid issues where your middle two lines converge too quickly together.
Anyway, as the challenge was marked as complete before, you can go ahead and move onto lesson 2. Be sure to work some of these freely rotated boxes into your warmups as well however.
Congratulations on pushing through all 250 boxes. I do have to say though, there are definite signs here that you may not really be thinking through what youre doing, or why youre doing certain things - and as a result, the growth seen here is not as extensive as it could have been.
There are three things I want to point out:
You generally only applied the extension method to one of the three sets of parallel lines that makes up each box. This alone tells you a little bit about the behaviour of some of your lines, but as a whole its really falling far short of what analyzing the extensions of all three sets of parallel lines would have been able to tell you. Even if youd have picked up more on what those extensions were telling you, there would be a greater likelihood that you might get better at keeping the convergences of one set consistent, while messing up the other two further to compensate. Its necessary to deal with all three sets simultaneously.
At first, I thought because your line extensions were frequently diverging as they went further from the box, you simply may have been continually making the same mistake over and over. Its still very likely that youre not really analyzing what the line extensions are telling you, but in this particular case, I realized that you were simply extending them in the wrong direction. You were colouring in a face that points towards the viewer, but you were also extending the lines towards the viewer in boxes like 212, 213, 247, and many others. That serves no purpose here - we need to look at how those lines are converging as they move further away from the viewer.
Your overall linework is improving, but its slow. Always remember that when applying the ghosting method, the actual execution of the stroke must be confident - no hesitation, no fear of making a mistakes. Mistakes may occur, but at this point theres nothing you can do to avoid it (once youve moved past the planning and preparation phases). There is still a lot we can with a line that is smooth and consistent even if it misses the mark - but a line that wavers isnt going to be terribly useful. Also, of course, make sure youre drawing from the shoulder.
So by and large, youve drawn a fuck ton of boxes, but it looks like you didnt really do a great job of actually applying the concepts covered on the challenge page notes and the video. Id recommend rewatching the video, rereading the notes, and at the very least doing another 50 boxes. Show me that youve absorbed the instructions, that you can apply them as theyre laid out, and that you can analyze and learn from the mistakes that are brought to light (in terms of where your sets of parallel lines fail to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing point).
Sometimes it takes me a bit to absorb information correctly. Am I more or less on the right track with this box? If so, I'll continue on to the 50 extra boxes.
This is getting better, and your line quality has improved as well. You should be good to move onto lesson 2, but there are a few things that you need to continue to keep an eye on:
You still tend to have one line in your sets that goes awry - it's almost always one of the middle two (rather than the two outer lines). When drawing your sets of parallel lines, try and think about the angle between the line you're drawing and the others in its set as they leave the vanishing point. If you have a very small angle between two lines, then by the time they reach the box the difference in trajectory will be negligible. This means you'll be able to draw those lines as being virtually parallel to one another. I explain this further in these notes.
Put some more variance in the orientations of your boxes - yours here are pretty much all oriented roughly the same way.
As you continue to move forwards, be sure to include some freely rotated boxes into your regular warmup routine, as this is an area that is definitely going to continue to require training.
Midway through the challenge I changed my pen to a better quality one. That's why the lines get thinner at some point. Had trouble at the beggining to find a good way of imagining vanishing points but I got the hang of it after a while I think.
Great work! Youve shown a great deal of progress over the set - by about 180, you really solidify that grasp of 3D space. You demonstrate a lot of patience and care with your work through the set, and it really pays off. You take the time to apply the line extension method to each and every line, and youre very analyzing what they bring to light and incorporating them into your next page.
I really have no complaints whatsoever - youve done a fantastic job. Keep up the great work, consider this challenge complete, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Nice work! You start off from a definite position of strength, and do show some significant - though more subtle - improvement over the set. One recommendation that I have is to think about a given set of parallel lines not only where it reaches the box youre drawing, but also the angles at which these lines leave their shared vanishing point. If two lines have a relatively small angle between them where they leave the VP, then the difference in their orientation at the box is actually going to be so minimal that you can get away with drawing them as being more or less parallel. This helps avoid issues where those lines converge much sooner than the actual VP. I demonstrate this concept further in these notes.
Aside from that, keep up the great work. Ill go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Overall you've done a pretty great job. Your constructions improved a fair bit over the set once you got the hang of things, and your use of line weight helped add solidity and cohesiveness to the forms. It is worth mentioning that your use of the line extensions was a bit inconsistent - sometimes you didn't do it at all, sometimes you only did it for certain sets of lines, and so on.
As an error-checking technique, it gets to be particularly useful for people in your situation, whose boxes are visibly coming along really well, because they can highlight the kinds of mistakes we can't identify with the naked eye. So it's going to be particularly important for you to continue applying this technique for all three sets of parallel lines, so you can avoid plateauing. You want to make sure that all the time you put into improving your skills yields results, rather than just practicing the same thing without any awareness of where you have room to grow.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Very nice work! I think you're doing great, and I can see clear trends of improvement, and a shift in how you think about the lines you're drawing in relation to the different elements of the construction. There are still a few places here and there where lines that are particularly close in orientation end up going off at weird angles here and there, but they become considerably less common throughout, and by the end appear to be more like outliers.
That said, it does help to think about the angles at which a line leaves its vanishing point, and how that relates to those of other lines within the same set. I explain this further in these notes, but the short of it is that if two lines leave the vanishing point with a minimal angle between them, then by the time they reach the box they're basically running nearly parallel to one another, and can be drawn as such.
Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
[deleted]
2018-11-18 16:03
That was quite the ride. I have to say this challenge really helped me getting more precise and accepting mistakes when they happen. I had to watch your videos many times before "getting it", but i am overall satisfied with how it turned out. Also, i somehow did a wrong count and ended up with 252 boxes.
Nice work! I can definitely see a considerable improvement in your awareness of how these forms sit in space, and the relationships between the various members of a given set of parallel lines. Eventually you hit your stride and really start to nail them more consistently.
I have two suggestions to make, as you continue to move forwards:
Firstly, when drawing a line, think about the angle at which it's going to leave its vanishing point, and how that relates to the angle of the other lines in its same set. Reason being, if you have two lines that depart from the VP with a pretty small angle between them, then that difference becomes even more negligible by the time they reach the box, and they run effectively parallel to one another. Being aware of this can help you to avoid issues where those lines accidentally converge too quickly. I explain this further in these notes.
Also, I noticed that you definitely took to your line weight with gusto. As you move forwards, try to be a little less heavy handed with it. The thing to keep in mind with line weight is that it's all about the relationships between the lines - when one line is a little heavier than another, the subconscious picks up on it, and interprets that information in a meaningful way. When you go overboard and make things WAY thicker, then it's kind of akin to screaming at the viewer rather than gently whispering in their ear. The latter is really what you want to go for. That said, this is generally the first step, before learning to achieve those subtle shifts, so keep up the good work.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2. Oh, and since you drew 252, you're going to have to pick two of these and take them out behind the shed. We only brought enough food for two-fifty.
[deleted]
2018-11-18 21:38
Oh, and since you drew 252, you're going to have to pick two of these and take them out behind the shed. We only brought enough food for two-fifty.
I don't have the heart to do it. Those are my boxes after all :'(
Overall you're showing a good deal of progress. That said, even if you weren't, I'd backhand you for presenting your boxes as "shitty". On one hand, a lot of this is about confidence and mindset, but more than that, among a lot of people it tends to be a strategy (whether intentional or not) to preempt criticism. If you come up front declaring your work to be of poor quality, then any negatives raised in the review become somewhat moot and loose their sting. When sharing this stuff with others, put forward your most confident face and have some pride - even if it's not entirely real yet.
So by and large you've done a pretty good job with this set, and show progress with your linework and the solidity of your constructions. There's still room for growth of course, both in the confidence of those lines (to keep them smooth) as well as in getting your lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but you've definitely come a long way.
When it comes to the latter, I am noticing that you have a tendency to have one of those lines veer off on its own path, while the other three remain fairly consistent. Usually it's one of the middle two of any given set, which also tends to be the that has a close neighbour, since the middle two are usually going to be following a very similar trajectory.
For this reason, it's important to think about all the lines that belong to a given set when drawing one of its members - including those that haven't yet been drawn. Think about the angle at which they all leave their vanishing point, and the angle between it and its neighbours. When you find a pair that actually leaves at a fairly similar trajectory, the angle between them is going to become quite negligible by the time it reaches the box, meaning you can generally just draw them as being perfectly parallel to one another rather than guessing their relationship.
As mentioned briefly before I have already done all the exercises (but without critique) up to the plants lesson where I got frustrated and stopped. This time I'm planing on finally going trough the whole Draw a Box curriculum.
I did lesson one and the Box challenge again because you can always get some more exercise, right? But my question is if I should also do Lesson 2 and the cylinder challenge again or just go the the plants straight away? I could upload my old stuff but I'm not sure if it would present my current Skill-lvl right. I'm guessing I should do it again and have you take a look at it?
Very nice work! The fact that this is your second time around the box challenge definitely shows, as you start from a position of experience. That said, I can see some more subtle improvements with your linework as well as the construction of your boxes, and I believe the line extensions are definitely helping a fair bit.
Looking at your later work, there are still some places where you tend to have one line out of your sets that doesn't quite run consistent with the others, so that is something you'll want to continue to work on. Out of the four of a given set, it's generally one of the middle two - this is a common problem I see, and you can help resolve it by thinking about the angle at which these lines leave the vanishing point. Usually the middle two of a given set will have a fairly small angle between them where they originate, and this angle becomes negligible by the time they reach the box. At that point it's usually fair to just draw them as being parallel to one another. These notes explain this concept further.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge complete, so keep up the good work. I do want you to move onto lesson 2 next - ultimately while the previous work you've done has certainly set you up in a better position to tackle this work, it's effectively out of date, and the results themselves aren't going to be of much value to me. I need to see a current attempt at the material so I can continue to identify areas of weakness that are currently relevant.
I have done it over a pretty long time (9+ months) so my results have been inconsistent through time, and things that I thougt I had grasped got "lost" from session to session. Closer to the end I started finding the see-through point before the last point, which helped me get better estimation for the last point's position; however I'm not sure if that's a bad habit that I developed.
Whew, that's a long time! I'm very pleased that you stuck through it though. There are definite points where I can see your confidence and general awareness of space and form improving - the biggest appears to be around 140, where your boxes start to feel less like a general collection of lines and more like individual, cohesive forms. This generally holds pretty well through the rest of the set, as you continue to improve with the convergences of your lines, though in less overt and obvious ways.
I think the trick to figuring out the back corner is to actually stop thinking about the corners altogether. Your approach doesn't sound wrong or anything, and it's certainly not a bad habit to do things that way, but I generally find that the most success comes from focusing purely on the sets of lines. That is, when you're drawing a line, focus on all the others that share its vanishing point - including those that have not yet been drawn.
By thinking about it this way, you're going to be more aware of their convergences and are going to go to greater lengths to keep them consistent. That's ultimately what throws the back corner off - as we build up our box, the little inconsistencies in the convergences of sets of lines accumulate, and eventually we end up with a back corner (really, a set of 3 back edges that meet at that corner) that simply doesn't work as well as the rest, because it must bear the weight of all the built-up mistakes. It's a symptom, not really the problem.
Hello Mr. Uncomfortable! Here are my extra boxes. It took me much longer than I thought, but I didn't want to draw without thinking everything through - I wanted to have a clear mind and I tried to keep in mind your advice. I am satisfied with the result in that I can see I have improved and I can tell where my mistakes are. While drawing the axes I used the black line to indicate the corrected one. I feel more confident now. Please let me hear (or read actually) your thoughts on this. Thank you!
You've got a great deal of improvement here compared to your last set. Your lines are looking much more confident, and as a result are generally much smoother, and your forms are more solid. The general range of mistakes is definitely getting smaller (meaning you're getting more accurate in your estimation) as well.
Marking in the correct line is totally fine, but if at all possible I would recommend doing it in a colour other than the one you used to draw the box initially, just so you can have a visible and logical separation. While at this point there's little risk of this, I generally don't like people correcting things with the same colour lest it develop into a habit of correcting mistakes in their regular drawings.
Thank you very much! I'll move on to Lesson 2 then. I think it really helped me to draw the boxes, having your advice in mind. Thank you! I'll draw the correction lines with another colour from now on too.
I muscled through some of the pages while being dead tired, so some of the boxes are numbered incorrectly (or just plain horrible) and I apologise for that. Interestingly I only noticed improvement in result and technique once I reached the 200s. Mostly in my ability to super impose over my box lines for line weight.
A couple things before we get into the critique. First, I actually fished this post out of the spam filter - my guess is because of the mega.nz link. I'd recommend using some other host (I generally recommend imgur - some people shy aware from it because it fucks up a post's ordering, but I don't mind if images are submitted out of sequence).
The other thing was that it seems you've disabled your flair on this subreddit (on the sidebar of the desktop website you should see a checkbox for "Show my flair on this subreddit"). I use the flair to keep track of who is and isn't eligible for critiques as well as which lessons a student has completed. I'd appreciate it if you could reenable it.
I can definitely see a good deal of improvement in the confidence of your linework and your overall construction. You've definitely put the challenge to good use and by the end your forms feel considerable more solid, and I think the subtle touch of line weight here and there definitely goes a long way towards helping in that area.
There are still some mistakes I'm noticing though, mostly in terms of the convergences of your lines that you'll want to keep an eye on as you continue to move forwards.
Mainly it's one sort of issue that I see in boxes like 246 (green lines), 253 (green lines), 245 (blue lines), 251 (green lines). Basically, these lines tend to converge together in pairs rather than all meeting together at the same point. This usually happens when a student is more focused on the planes to which each edge belongs - you'll find that the pairs that converge early are usually belonging to the same plane.
Instead, try and think about all four lines in a given set - including those that have not yet been drawn - and how they should be converging together. This isn't by any means an uncommon sort of problem, and it's one you'll definitely be able to solve by keeping this in mind as you move forwards.
Also worth mentioning - though you worked while being tired, and it may play a role in these kinds of convergence issues, it doesn't show in your actual linework. That said, if at all possible (I know people have scheduling problems and it's simply not doable otherwise) try and sit down to do this work when you're in a better position to focus, so as to make the best of the time spent.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Thank you for the critique. I'll use a different host for submitting my homework from now on.
I have a quick question about my daily warm-ups, how should I incorporate drawing boxes into it? Or better put, how should I arrange my warp-up routine in general?
I typically pick a part of a lesson (say, Lesson 1, Part 1), and do all the exercises in it within 15 minutes (e.g. I'll draw 6-10 lines of various lengths with a straight edge, and super impose over them. Then ghost some planes. I usually skip the ghosting lines exercise since I'm already doing that with the planes). I do this with Part 1 & 2 of Lesson 1, for Part 3, I normally skip the Plotted Perspective exercise because it doesn't seem very useful in terms of building line confidence or ability to wing my perspective, and I take the whole 15 warm-up time for that day to do one of them. Warming up using Part 3 typically lasts 3 days. This is how I manage a (somewhat) fair rotation to prevent neglecting any most of the exercises. And this is where my question stems from, I don't really see an obvious way to slot in drawing boxes as a warm-up under this system without any ambiguity. Advice on a solid warp-up routine would be a appreciated.
P.S. I'm doing the rotated boxes exercise for today's warp-up.
You made some good calls there in terms of skipping ghosted lines in favour of ghosted planes (I'm working on rebuilding the website and restructuring the lessons for christmas and have actually written in that exercise's new description to do just that), and skipping the plotted perspective as well. That said, sticking to 5 minutes per exercise is still best even if it means you're only going to get a taste of a given exercise.
So with the rotated boxes, I MIGHT spend up to 10 minutes, but really I'm only going to fuss over building up one quadrant rather than the whole thing.
As for doing a few freely rotated boxes, I'd just slot it in as another exercise to add to the pool, as you'll be doing for the exercises in lesson 2 as well. It's all to make sure that you continually get a chance to employ the skills involved in each of these exercises every now and then, rather than letting them get rusty. So even if you only end up doing freely rotated boxes once a week, or even less, it's not such a bad thing.
Lastly, if there's some area of weakness you specifically feel needs more attention, you are welcome to slot those in more frequently, just make you're not letting any of the others get completely ignored.
Thanks for posting them in two locations! I usually prefer imgur because it's much easier to navigate through, but in the case of the challenge being able to see them in order as well was definitely an advantage. Just wanted to let you know that I really do appreciate the extra effort.
You are definitely showing growth in terms of both the confidence of your lines and the overall solidity of your forms, but I am noticing one thing that may have held you back somewhat - you seem to have focused pretty strictly on boxes with very dramatic foreshortening.
This generally suggests one of two things about an object - that it is either very, very large (like when you look at a tall building from the ground, its top is generally much smaller visually than its base) or that it is extremely close to your eye.
What you're missing here are boxes with shallower foreshortening, where the far end is not significantly smaller than the closer end and where the vanishing points are positioned much further from the box itself (often far off the page). This suggests a more relatable, human scale, which is something that will be used frequently.
Now both of these present their own difficulties. With dramatic foreshortening, mistakes become considerably more obvious because you can see the convergence right there on the page. With shallower foreshortening, it becomes easier to accidentally have your edges diverge where they should be converging (albeit subtly).
So, long story short, while you're making solid progress with these more dramatic boxes (and are definitely getting quite consistent with your convergences), you will want to continue to focus on shallower ones as you continue to move forwards. I will be marking this challenge as complete, so you can move onto lesson 2, but be sure to incorporate these into your regular warmup routine as they'll come into play a great deal.
You definitely got off to a great start and showed considerable progress for a while. It's really unfortunate that you stopped applying the extension method however. There were still plenty of areas where you were making certain mistakes (like how in 72, the lines going up and to the right were converging in pairs rather than all four together at one point, a common mistake that comes from thinking more about how the planes exist independently). Deciding not to apply the extension method afterwards didn't fix the mistakes, it just made it much easier to ignore them. Your time and effort on the last 150 could have been spent much better, and you could have solidified things to a much greater degree.
That said, your boxes are still looking pretty decent, though there is plenty of room to improve on keeping your convergences consistent. You're good to move onto lesson 2, but I'd recommend incorporating some freely rotated boxes (and applying the extension method to error check them) into your warmup routine. Also, it wouldn't hurt to take the last couple pages of boxes or so and applying the method there to familiarize yourself with the more subtle mistakes you're making.
Nice work! I'm very pleased to see that you stuck with the extension method through most of this, and I can definitely see considerable improvement on the consistency of your convergences over the course of the set. Towards the end you're really doing a remarkably good job of estimating the angles of your lines, and the resulting boxes appear much more solid and believable for it.
One thing I notice here and there is that you've got some places where you double up your lines in a way that doesn't suggest you're adding line weight. Usually it's one line that looks a bit weak and rough, alongside another that looks darker and more confident. Whatever's going on here, make sure you're only executing one mark per line, and that it's done using the ghosting method with full confidence behind your execution. Line weight should be applied the same way (using the ghosting method to go over an existing line), but never follow up with an extra stroke by reflex without the appropriate planning and preparation.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Yes, I admit that I let the tedium get to me rather than focusing on improving my mistakes. Ill work on that in the future. Just for clarity, Can you elaborate on the thinking about planes existing independently line?
Basically, there's many ways of thinking of a box:
Eight corners.
Twelve lines.
Six planes/faces.
Each of these impact how we think about the construction of a box and how the components relate to each other. As such, none of those I just listed are ideal.
Instead, we think of our boxes as being composed of 3 sets of parallel lines. Each set contains 4 lines, but we think of the whole set together. So what you were demonstrating there was that you were thinking of one plane at a time, and as a result, the parallel lines of the given plane converged nicely together, but ended up somewhat disconnected from the plane on the opposite side of the box.
[deleted]
2018-12-14 19:52
250 Box Challenge is finally complete. Took me a looooong time but I put a lot of work in, average 30 min. per page, so I think that's around 24 hours of boxes. I feel good about my improvement and being able to make planes vanish towards the same point without making the vanishing point too dramatic/close. At the beginning I didn't go back and check the vanishing points but I began making it a point because I see the value in it. Some lines could be straighter, still finding the balance between the straightness/inaccuracy that comes with speed and the accuracy/wobbliness that comes with being slow.
I noticed that you're currently not pledged, so technically not eligible for the private critiques. That said, I did check my records and you'd been pledged for a while, and did pay last month, so I'll go ahead and do the critique anyway. Also the box challenges are generally pretty easy to critique.
You've done some pretty great work here. Early on you were definitely a little less attached to the idea of extending your lines, but admittedly I am glad that you at least did them intermittently, rather than trying them a bit and then giving up for a huge period of time. In doing so, you were periodically checking your work, identifying what you had to keep in mind, and even if it wasn't being applied across the board, it was a much better strategy than it could have been.
I am, admittedly, very pleased with the fact that through your second half you committed to them much more, and it's fair to say that through this challenge you improve a great deal not only with keeping your convergences more and more consistent, but also with the confidence of your linework. By the end your boxes look quite solid, your use of the ghosting method is on point, and your rate of success improves considerably.
One kind of mistake I tend to see here and there in your work is the tendency to have your lines converge in pairs. It's a common issue, and you actually don't do it that often, but basically it occurs when we focus too much on all the lines that define a particular plane that we may be working on, rather than always thinking about all of the lines that are going to run parallel to the one we're drawing. It may seem kind of counterintuitive, but when you go to draw a given stroke, instead of thinking about the corners at which it meets other lines, or the plane to which it belongs, you'll achieve the greatest success if you focus on all the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point - including those that haven't yet been drawn.
It can also help to think about how these lines leave the vanishing point, and the angles between them. Those with very small angles are going to be virtually parallel by the time they reach the box itself, so this can be pretty helpful to consider. I explain it further here, though I get the feeling that based on your work, you do already understand this concept.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You should be good to move onto lesson 2.
[deleted]
2018-12-15 21:36
Hi there! Ill read the critique when I have more time, and thank you for your time and reviewing this in regards to my past pledges. I was unaware that I am no longer pledged, I will absolutely be renewing my patreon if it is expired.
Oh damnit, I messed up. I screwed up something in my records, and accidentally assigned your reddit username to the wrong patreon, who's since cancelled. My mistake! It should now be fixed.
My main concern with this challenge is that I feel I learned to make boxes from all different "Y" shapes, but I didn't learn what "Y" shape to use to make a box I thought of in my head. If I saw it in front of me I had a better chance of figuring it out, and I played with that a bit near the end, but I'm worried I've learned how to do a "trick" using a "Y" shape to draw a box, rather than understanding how to draw any kind of box I want. I'm not sure if I've missed something about the challenge or if I was only meant to get this far in my understanding by this point.
Overall you've done pretty well. Your linework started out a little shaky at first, but by the end became much more confident and consistent, so that's a pretty big win. I'm also pleased that you did apply the line extension method, but I did catch a few on the last page where you extended certain lines in the wrong direction (the red lines in 246, 245, 243, 242, 248, 247, etc). So that's a bit weird. Extending the lines off into the distance is an important part of this exercise, as we're studying how they converge rather than how they diverge.
Anyway, as for your question, as with a lot of the exercises and techniques we get into here, it is necessary to think beyond the technique itself and think to what it implies or represents. This is often something that emerges through repetition - hence the reason we're doing so many of these boxes.
The Y method is less about the Y shape itself, but rather about how it gives us a single line point to each of the three vanishing points of a box. It doesn't have to be configured in a Y, though usually we're working with the corner that is positioned closest to us, and we usually do get a Y. Sometimes however - if we're oriented more towards staring down one of the box's edges (something more similar to 2 point perspective) or down one of the box's faces (something more similar to 1 point perspective), then the angle relationships will no longer match a proper "Y". But the concept of having one arm pointing towards each vanishing point still stands (if you're confused about an arm can point towards the third vanishing point in two point perspective, these notes and their explanation of "vanishing points at infinity" may help - they're from the new lesson/website content that will be released on christmas, which includes a full revision of lesson 1's boxes lecture).
So basically, while the Y itself doesn't survive all permutations of a box, the concept the Y represents still does. This exercise is less about teaching you to employ a certain technique, but rather about using a technique to get you started, and developing your mental model of 3D space along the way.
Anyway, I hope that helps. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
I see exactly what you mean about those red lines. I don't know why I got mixed up about those ones but I can clearly see the mistake now.
Thanks for the explanation about the Y, too. When I started trying to draw boxes I had in mind near the end, rather than just drawing a Y and waiting to see what kind of box it turned into, I sometimes didn't know how to draw the box I'd thought of with a Y. Now I see the Y won't always be present, so that makes sense.
I'll keep these notes in mind when drawing boxes in my warm ups. Thanks again!
My struggle that still lasts after my final box was establishing the initial outline of the box, i.e the vanishing points using mostly eye measuring.
With wrong initial vanishing points, there isn't a way all of the 3 inner lines to match in the same point, so I had to make a compromise and chose 2/3 lines that match and that's why most of the time one of the inner lines go in different direction than others.
I didn't go all the way with the pen, i.e. ghosting it and placing the points within or outisde the paper, but just trying to establish the angle of each line in a small segment of the page.
Overall you've done a pretty great job and have shown definite improvement in terms of getting your convergences to behave more consistently. The execution of your lines also gains a greater confidence as you go, which diminishes the slight hesitation I see near the beginning of the set.
With your issue, the key to the problem is a little counter-intuitive. Basically, you're struggling with that back corner. It's a common problem, but the solution comes from not fussing so much over corners themselves. When adding a line to our box construction, there are a few different sets of things we can think about.
We can think about all the lines that meet at a given corner we're working from.
We can think about all the lines that make a particular face we're constructing.
We can think about all the lines that run parallel to the one we're draiwng.
Most people will do #1, at first. Sometimes people progress into #2, which is a little more effective. #3 however is the correct approach - you focus only on maintaining a consistent convergence between all the lines that share a vanishing point (that is, the set of parallel lines). If you achieve that, then the rest of it falls into place. That means thinking not only about the line you're drawing and those you've already drawn - but members of that set of parallel lines that have not yet been drawn as well.
Additionally, it does help to think about how these lines leave the vanishing point itself, and the angles between them as they do so. When you have lines that have a very small angle between them, by the time they reach the box, they'll be running virtually parallel to one another. This is a very helpful relationship that we can take advantage of. I explain this concept further in these notes.
Anyway, you've done well. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Nice work! You've definitely progressed a great deal, both in terms of your linework and the confidence behind each stroke, as well as the consistency with which your sets of parallel lines converge towards their shared vanishing points.
There are of course still some little hiccups here and there, and I'd suggest two things as you continue to work on them:
When drawing a line, sometimes we have a tendency to think about the other lines that it will meet at a given corner, or the other lines that share a plane with it. Instead, think only about the other lines that run parallel to it, including those that haven't yet been drawn. Only focus on how it converges with them, towards their shared vanishing point, and don't let anything else distract you.
While thinking about these other lines to which your stroke is parallel, think about how they all leave the vanishing point and the angle between them. Any lines that have a very small angle between them as they leave the VP are going to be running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box, so you can take advantage of this relationship. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Thanks for the feedback! Question: I've heard that you're releasing a rework of the lessons later this month; are there gonna be any significant changes I'll miss out on if I do lesson 2 before the change?
If you can, I would recommend waiting a week. There is an extra exercise attached to lesson 2, but in general the lesson material is (hopefully) much more thorough.
Very nice work! Overall you're demonstrating a significant improvement in your constructions. Your convergences gradually become more and more consistent as well, and you're demonstrating the ability to think ahead to lines that haven't yet been drawn.
One thing that will help as you continue to push forward is, as you draw a line and consider all the lines that run parallel to it, think about how they all leave the vanishing point and the angles that sit between them. As mentioned here, when the angles are small when leaving the vanishing point, two given lines will run virtually parallel to one another as they reach the box. This makes for a pretty useful thing to keep in mind while actually drawing those lines.
One other thing to focus on as you continue to move forwards is your use of the ghosting method. It's coming along well, but I am noticing - especially when compared to the red extension lines - that your lines do waver a little. Not in the sort of wobbling we see from hesitation, but just from needing to prepare a little more beforehand.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete so feel free to move onto lesson 2. I do recommend though that if you can, wait until December 25th before you start - that's when the rebuild/revision of drawabox (a massive update) is going to be released, and the content should improve considerably.
Oh damn, it certainly was! Overall you've done a pretty great job with the boxes, and you have demonstrated considerable improvement over the set. It is a little unfortunate that you didn't apply that line extension method across the board (I thought that maybe you'd started so long ago that I hadn't talked about the technique but you did use it in a couple of instances). This technique allows you to check how far off your convergences were, and what the nature of your mistakes were, and can be very helpful in getting the most out of the exercise.
I'd recommend going back over your last page, just for your own sake, and extending those lines to see where your boxes can continue to use improvement.
Also worth mentioning, though it's more difficult to relate this to specific boxes without the extensions, but when drawing a line, don't think about the lines with which they share a corner, or the lines with which they share a plane. Instead, think only about the other lines with which the one you're drawing are parallel.
When you do so, think about the angles at which they leave the vanishing point, specifically the angles between them. Those with small angles between them will run roughly parallel to each other by the time they reach the box, which is a very useful thing to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, though I would recommend waiting a week til after December 25th. That's when a large rebuild/revision of the website will finally launch, including significant updates to the website content and how it's delivered and organized.
Should I use the line extension method for each box? The page seemed to get pretty busy after just two boxes.
Regarding focusing on a single set of parallel lines: Is it okay to be drawing a line past the point it intersects with a perpendicular in order to focus on it's parallels? Does that problem reduce or disappear with experience?
Apply the line extension method to each box. The clutter doesn't matter much presentation-wise, and while it'll get a little bit tough by the end to identify what's going on with your boxes, it should still be possible with a bit of focus and attention.
As for your other question, you can overshoot your ghosting motion, but not the line itself. Try not to end up with a box that has a bunch of lines sticking out from it (before actually applying the extension method). And yes, as you continue to practice and develop your understanding of space and the nature of convergence of parallel lines when drawn in 2D, the inaccuracies do decrease in intensity. One would imagine they disappear too, though mastery is a far, far off goal for all of us.
That was pretty quick! I can see that you took certain unfortunate shortcuts (only extending some lines as you got further into the set) which likely reduced the effectiveness of the exercise, but by and large I can see considerable improvement in a number of areas. The confidence of your linework and the solidity of your constructions has gotten considerably better. Your estimation for convergences definitely improved as well, though you definitely could have gotten much more out of this.
Extending all your lines really is important, and this becomes even more so as you get better and better, because the mistakes we make have a tendency to become more and more subtle as we improve. If you extend only certain sets of lines, then you might get better on those directions, but the other sides tend to compensate - if left unchecked, then they can go a bit crazy without you realizing it. That's why applying the method evenly across all axes is pretty important.
Also, try extending your lines further - a little bit is nice, but to get a really good sense of the nature of your lines and how they're converging towards their shared vanishing points, extending a line to twice its original length will tell you a great deal more. I'd recommend going over your last page in this manner - don't worry if things overlap. The different colours generally help making things a little more clear and easier to track.
Lastly, based on your last boxes, there's two things I want to suggest:
When drawing a line, don't think about the lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it shares a plane. Think about all the other lines that are to run parallel to it (of which there are 3), including those that haven't yet been drawn. Think about how they all converge towards their vanishing point and ignore the others.
Furthermore, as you consider this, think about the angles between each pair of lines as they leave the VP. Lines with small angles at this point are going to end up running virtually parallel to one another when they reach the box itself, which is a very helpful thing to take advantage of. I explain this further here: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You've done a good job, but you could have done better. Even if it means taking more time, do everything in your power to follow the instructions carefully and completely.
You're definitely showing a good deal of progress. There are a couple things I noticed:
Early on, your linework was definitely a little more hesitant and wobbly. This got better as you moved through the set, and by the end your linework was considerably more confident, which is great to see.
As you progressed through the set, I can see a tendency where you brought the vanishing points closer and closer to your box, causing the foreshortening to get more and more dramatic. This suggests to me that rather than improving how you handled a given problem (estimating convergence towards a variety of vanishing point locations) you changed the parameters of the problem to make it more manageable. By bringing the vanishing points closer, you changed the situation so it was easier for you to gauge those convergences more accurately. So, if you were to try to draw a box with shallower foreshortening (which is common amongst smaller, human-sized objects or things that are farther away), you would likely still struggle a great deal. Both shallow and dramatic foreshortening presents different kinds of challenges and are both important, so it's best to get a good mix of these going all through your exercise rather than having such a gradual shift like this.
I hope you still plan to go over your last page with the line extension method to check your mistakes and identify where you need to improve. I'm assuming you left it blank for the sake of presentation, but it's always valuable to reflect upon your work in a constructive manner.
Anyway, you have definitely shown a good deal of progress over this set. Make sure you get some more practice in on shallower boxes - you can focus on them when doing warmups at the beginning of each sitting, as you continue to move forwards.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Since you haven't submitted lesson 1 yet, I'll be expecting that next.
You've shown considerable improvement over the set, and I think a lot of it comes from the patience and conscientiousness you've demonstrated in applying the line extension method to each and every mark you put down. It's clear that you went to great lengths to assess those convergences and identify where you were making mistakes. Your linework is looking confident, your line weights go to great lengths to make each box feel cohesive, and your constructions are consistent and solid. Very well done. You did do the last two pages in pencil, but I'll overlook that this one time.
One suggestion that may help you continue to improve at a decent rate is that when you draw a given line, and are thinking about all the other lines to which it is parallel, think about how they all leave their shared vanishing point. Those lines that leave the VP with a very small angle between them are going to end up running virtually parallel as they reach the box - a fact that can be very useful when constructing it. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
I'm still having some trouble with wobbly lines, but I am working on drawing from my shoulder and using the ghosting exercise as a warmup. Thanks in advance for the feedback.
You've definitely made progress over this set, though I do agree that some of your linework is still falling just a liiiiittle bit short, and I think it comes down to confidence. From the looks of it, you're drawing a little slower, and while your lines aren't really wobbly per-se, they are kind of stiff in a way that comes from a line that lacks the driving confidence. In this way you can detect the subtle hints of hesitation that in turn make the boxes feel less solid. So try and push yourself to draw more confidently, even if it means risking a little mistake here or there. A confident, smooth line is still something we can use even if it misses the mark a little. A stiff or wobbly line isn't going to be good for much.
Additionally, while you definitely made progress by the end with your convergences, you did have a tendency to have one line in a given set go way off. This is because when you go to draw a line, you're likely thinking about the other lines with which it shares a corner, or perhaps the lines with which it shares a plane. Instead, think about the lines with which it is parallel - all four of the set, including those that are not yet drawn. When doing so, think about how they leave their vanishing point, and the angles between each pair of lines. Those with really small angles between them are going to end up running virtually parallel to one another as they reach the box itself, which is a very useful fact. These are also often the lines you end up having trouble with. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
As a side note, I had 3 Faber Castells die in the first 100 boxes or so, and then for the rest of them, my Staedtler pen somehow survived and did very well.
I can definitely see vast improvement on both the solidity and consistency of your constructions, as well as your linework over all. The first 100 or so were a bit shaky and rough, but as you pushed through, it seemed to come together in a big way. I can also see signs that you've experimented with line weight, and by the end your use of it is much more subtle and nuanced, suggesting a considerable amount of development on that front.
Even your convergences have improved a great deal, though I am going to offer you some advice that, while not overtly addressing issues that are really common in your work, should help you think through the spatial problems.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
It certainly is difficult, but most people generally find it to be quite worthwhile. In your case, I can definitely see that it has been. Though you held somewhat steady in the quality of your constructions through the first hundred and fifty or so, the last hundred definitely showed a considerable improvement. You clearly became much more aware of the convergences of your lines, and also demonstrated much more confidence in your linework.
There is one suggestion that I want to offer as you continue to move forwards, though you've done very well here. This will simply help you continue to progress on this front.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Throughout the exercise I tried imagining box a 3 sets of parallel lines as you said, and it definitely helps envision the box as a 3d shape, but I'm still struggling with that back corner, which is a common problem, I assume. I think it is because the initial(visible) lines I make are not consistent to each other and then the corners are in the wrong places and then it's hard for non-visible lines to make that back corner.
Nice work! Your line quality is coming along well, as is the consistency of your constructions. I can definitely see ample signs that applying the line extension technique has made you generally much more aware of how your lines converge. Ultimately, while it's easy to get caught up in the whole 'back corner' conundrum, it's more of a distraction than anything else. It's the convergences within individual sets of parallel lines that matters - get that right, and the back corner will fall into place.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
The only other recommendation I have is a minor one - as you continue to practice these, play a little more with your use of line weight. It will help kick your boxes up to the next level.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.
finally, took nearly a month to draw so many boxes, I'm a little frustrated to realize I still have trouble to draw the back of 2-point-perspective box, the precision stoped growing after finishing drawing two hundreds boxes, and I actually feel the last dozens of boxes are worse than previous boxes...
anyway, here is my 250 boxes, look forward to your feedback.
Very nice work! There's a very obvious transition from your first boxes to your last, where your general line confidence has increased by leaps and bounds, as has the consistency of your convergences and the general sense that you know what you're doing. While variation amongst pages that are close together is common (so seeing your last boxes as being a little worse than the page before it - which admittedly I don't entirely agree with), the important thing are the large trends which denote a steadier increase in skill and understanding.
Now there's always room for improvement - one thing I noticed in a few places amongst your later boxes was a tendency to have sets of parallel lines that converge together in pairs rather than all together. This generally happens when we're focusing more on the lines that make up a given plane.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Nice work! I'm actually kind of surprised to see these submitted within 6 days, and expected them to be rushed, but I was pleasantly surprised. You've done a pretty good job with them - your linework is confident, your convergences are consistent and your lineweight goes a long way to help reinforce the illusion of solidity with each form.
You actually started off at a pretty strong position, so I figure some of the tips from the challenge were enough to help, but I can see your convergences improving in subtle ways over time, and the line extensions do help to reinforce that. I can generally see that you're also paying attention to how your lines leave the vanishing point - that is, those with smaller angles between them are visibly pretty parallel once they reach the box itself, and you seem to be demonstrating a good awareness of that.
Unfortunately I don't have much else to offer besides what you've already gained from the exercise - so keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
they took me a while! Tried to be consistent and do them in batches of 10 or 20. I can see some improvement, tried to rotate some of then and starting at 200 and something I can see how it started to work. Will keep practicing rotating on my own :-)
Congratulations on completing the challenge - sort of. By and large you've done a decent job, and have shown improvement on your box constructions. That said, you have however very clearly skipped an integral part of this exercise: checking your convergences by extending your lines. I can see hints of it here and there, but it's only ever for one set of lines at a time, and only on one box out of every handful, so while you clearly understand that it's a part of this exercise, I'm not sure why you've skipped over it.
This is a critical part of the exercise because it forces you to reflect directly upon the kinds of inconsistencies that are present in your boxes, so you know what to focus on next. This kind of reflection is at the core of the concept of failure being the vehicle by which we learn and grow. There is certainly value in simple iteration as you've done here, but you're missing such a critical part of the process and are as a result only getting a fraction as much out of the exercise as you otherwise could have.
Furthermore, as you continue to improve, the nature of your mistakes become less and less obvious. Extending the lines in this manner make clear mistakes that we may have otherwise not noticed, and it keeps us from plateauing.
So here's what I want you to do. Take your last two pages and apply the extension method to each and every box on them. Extend the ALL the lines - there's three sets of four parallel lines, I want to see them all extended, and I want you to study where they come together properly, and where they fail to.
Then I want you to do another 75 boxes, applying this same methodology upon the completion of each page. Submit that, and I'll mark the challenge as complete.
Ohh I misunderstood it. I thought I should point out only the bad ones with the lines, not all of them. Will do that! It's ok, I wanted to get better rotating as well, so a chance for keep improving it :-D
This is an improvement, but there are two major mistakes that I want to point out so you refrain from making them in the future:
You appear to have extended only two of the three sets of parallel lines. Boxes are made up of three sets with four parallel lines in each set, as demonstrated here. That you missed this suggests that you're not being terribly careful in following the instructions, and you need to pay more attention to these. Upon looking at my previous critique, I can see that I pointed this out there as well.
For the most part you've done this correctly, though on a few boxes, you've extended your lines in the wrong direction. Remember that these lines should be extended away from the viewer, not towards them. Your numbering is actually kind of confusing (not always legible, and I can see that you've got duplicates), but on Image 9 in that folder, the box marked as 230 is one example of such a box, where the blue lines come to wards the viewer (generally the hatching is applied to the face that is closer to the viewer). Similarly, 268 shows the same issue.
Now I was ready to mark this finished and let you move onto lesson 2, but I am genuinely concerned that the issue I raised about extending all three sets of parallel lines in my previous critique is still partially an issue here. I want you to do one more page of boxes, showing me that you fully understand the instructions. Based on your past pages, that should just be 10 pages.
I got it, the thing is I was doing all of them in 2-point perspective. So one of the sets of lines are meant to be totally straight.
You are correct about getting wrong the line extending correcting method. Regarding the hatching, most of the time I was rotating the boxes so I applied it in the "same" face. But will take it into consideration.
In the last word, you meant boxes instead of pages? Im planing to reach 500 on my own somewhere before Lesson 4, too tired of the boxes! haah
Thank you for your patience. I really appreciate what you are doing here ( that's why I increased the pledge :-)
Hah, wow! Yeah, I definitely meant 10 boxes, not 10 pages.
As for the two point perspective, extending those lines is still useful in that regard (although in this case you may want to extend them in both directions for a vanishing point 'at infinity', as explained here), so you'd be testing the lack of convergence on both sides.
Much better, though you definitely do need to work on your convergences. You've got a couple there where the convergences are way off.
When you're drawing a given line, always think about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point, and don't think about those with which it shares a corner or a plane. This includes lines within the set that haven't yet been drawn. Consider how they leave the vanishing point, and the angles present between them. Those with smaller angles will end up running close to parallel with one another once they reach the box, as shown here.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You do need more work, but you're ready to move onto the next lesson. Just be sure to continue integrating them into your warmup routines.
Nice work! Your line quality and the consistency of your lines' convergences definitely improves over the set. The latter started out fairly well (the process of drawing through your boxes and applying the Y method must have helped bump you up right off the bat, but there was still more subtle improvement throughout the set).
I did notice however that you did have a common tendency to have the middle lines of a given set converge with one another too quickly - this is a common issue, and here's a way that you can think about the problem in order to help reduce their occurrence:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
These are looking pretty good, though while you are definitely improving a fair bit, it is clear that there is still plenty of room to continue honing your convergences as you continue to move forwards. As such, make sure you work these into your regular warmup routine.
I did notice here and there that when you draw longer boxes, you have a tendency to have the pairs of parallel lines on either side of a stretched box to converge more quickly together. Here's a recommendation that will help you contend with that:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, you can consider this challenge completed. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Nice work! You've definitely demonstrated a great deal of patience and care in going through each box, drawing through it and applying the line extension method. It's also clear that your estimation of these convergences has improved steadily over the course of the set.
For where you do have some inconsistencies in your convergences, the following should help you continue to improve on them:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, keep it up. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Congratulations on completing the challenge. I can definitely see that your convergences have certainly improved over the course of this set. There's still room for improvement - and I'll address that in a second, but there's something else I noticed over the course of your 250 boxes that needs to be pointed out.
If you compare the line quality between the first few boxes and your last, the last bunch are noticeably stiffer and wobblier than when you started.
Now, it's been a while since you submitted lesson 1, something line 9 months. I suspect that you may have started the challenge closer to that time, when you were fresh off that material and more familiar with the use of the ghosting method. Your lines weren't perfect at the beginning, and there was a touch of hesitation here and there, but by and large they were coming along well.
After a while, it does seem that you may have stopped using that method altogether, instead investing more of your time in the execution phase of the mark making process, and as a result you stopped executing those marks with the same kind of confidence. It's extremely important that you refamiliarize yourself with the correct use of the ghosting method - every mark you put down for these lessons must make use of it, to ensure that the marks you put down are drawn confidently, without hesitation, so the results are smooth and consistent. Smooth, straight lines are the very bedrock of solid construction.
Now, back to the convergences - you're improving steadily on that front, and the following should help you continue to do so:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. As you're coming back after quite a while, be sure to review the lesson 1 material, and make sure that you incorporate those exercises into a regular warmup routine (picking 2 or 3 exercises at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes). Also, as you'll probably have noticed, that material has all been rewritten and updated, so you may find it to be somewhat clearer than you remember.
One reasons for the wobbly lines is that I started to draw with my shoulder at about box 190. Before that, I would prop up my elbow on the table and draw using the elbow. I will review lesson 1 and see what else I might have missed. Thank you again for your time!
Nice work! The solidity of your boxes and the consistency of their construction improves a fair bit over the set. Initially they feel a little less certain, like you're not entirely sure of why you're drawing certain lines over others, but your overall approach comes together as you push through and you appear to be more sure of yourself.
There is still room for improvement in terms of getting the sets of parallel lines to converge consistently, but you're making considerable progress all the same. One important thing to keep in mind is that when you go to draw a line, don't think about the other lines with which it shares a corner, or those with which it shares a plane. Focus instead on all the other lines that run parallel to it - both those that have been drawn and those that have yet to be. Think about how they converge towards the same vanishing point, and the angle at which they leave that point. As shown here, lines with small angles between them at this far off point will run virtually parallel to one another as they reach the box, which is quite a useful thing to realize.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Hi Uncomfortable! Long time no talk. It wasn't you, it was me. After procrastinating because I couldn't start with the perfect box, I decided to take a simpler approach. Just do 6 boxes a day. Many moons later I finished the challenge. Here is my submission! THANK YOU FOR THE CRITIQUE!
Congratulations on getting through all of them! I can definitely see improvement over the set, but there are a few things worth pointing out:
You demonstrate here a tendency to get confused as to which side of the box is pointing towards the viewer and which is pointing away. Generally we use the single face with hatching lines to represent a face pointing towards us, but based on this assumption, you have many cases where your lines are extended in the wrong direction. These lines should always be extended away from the viewer, so we can identify how they converge towards their implied vanishing point.
When it comes to improving your convergences, your progress certainly is a little slow, which suggests to me that you may not be reflecting enough on what these extensions actually tell you. The goal is of course always to work towards getting these sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards the same point. We can work towards achieving this by looking at the mistakes we tend to make, and considering them as we draw our lines.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. I'd recommend that you continue working a few boxes at a time into your warmup routines, mixing them up with the previous exercises you've encountered and picking two or three at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes. Aside from that, feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Thank you uncomfortable! I do see an improvement from the beginning of this journey and I look forward to gaining a better understanding. You're the best!
You've definitely shown a good deal of growth and progress both in the confidence of your linework and the consistency of your convergences, so that's great to see. There are a couple of things that I want to point out, but by and large you're doing well.
What stands out most is the fact that you only applied the line extension method as you should have (to every box, and to every set of parallel lines for each box) on the first and last pages. In skipping this process for many of your other boxes, or only applying it to a select few, you definitely robbed yourself of the opportunity to grow more and to make better use of the exercise as a whole. This should be applied to each box on a page after that page has been completed, so you can identify the patterns of mistakes that you're making, and attempt to improve upon those specific areas of difficulty in the next page.
When adding hatching lines to one face on a box, don't scribble or draw erratically. Draw consistent, parallel lines that stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge.
Your convergences definitely improve, though there are a few little mistakes that I see coming up frequently, even towards the end. For example, sometimes you'll have three of the four lines of a given set converge correctly, but then a fourth (usually one of the two middle lines) goes off at its own angle. You can avoid this by employing the following approach: when you go to draw a line, think about all the other lines to which it is parallel (rather than thinking about the lines with which it shares a corner, or with which it shares a plane). Focus only on the lines within the same set, including those that have not yet been drawn. Then think about how those points all meet at a vanishing point and think about the angle at which they'd be leaving that VP. The lines that have a smaller angle between them are likely to be running more or less parallel to each other (when drawn on the page) by the time they reach the box (or near parallel at least). Being aware of this relationship can help avoid mistakes considerably. I demonstrate this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Thank you for the feedback, you're right on point with the problems and something I will take with me going forward.
I've done two pages with more boxes now where I've focused on the hatched areas and extending all the lines, to be honest it was just laziness that got to me. I'm doing this exercise for myself so it was just stupid.
I'll be honest, I was a little concerned that this was submitted less than a week after it was assigned. I thought that either you'd rushed through it, or that you'd skipped the line extensions, or didn't reflect upon your work after applying the extension technique... But it seems I was wrong. You've done some excellent work here.
Throughout the set, your linework is confident and concise, and I can clearly see steady improvement from being somewhat uncertain of how to approach structuring these boxes, to ultimately demonstrating considerable control over the convergences of your lines. You've improved a great deal.
The one thing that I feel is missing is for the most part optional, but will help continue to kick your boxes up to the next level: line weight. Right now you're working with pretty uniform lines, but going back over a box once it's constructed to subtly add weight to key lines (mostly along the silhouette) can really have a great impact on the sense of cohesion and solidity of a box. You'll find more notes about it right here.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Nice work! You clearly start out not really sure of how to approach constructing these boxes (your convergences are often all over the place, with some divergences and whatnot) but you quickly pick up on what you're doing and I can see considerable progress over the set.
I'm very pleased with your results. I am noticing one relatively minor issue, usually that one of the middle lines of a given set of parallel lines tends to diverge off on its own. This is pretty common, and can be gradually resolved by thinking about all the lines to which the one you're about to draw will be parallel to, including those that haven't yet been drawn. You can think about how they'll all converge at that vanishing point, and the angle between them there. Generally speaking, the two middle lines of a set will have a pretty small angle between them, resulting in them running close to parallel, if not more or less parallel, by the time they reach the box. This can be a very useful point to keep in mind. I expand on this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Unfortunately I did misunderstand line weight when I started adding it initially, adding it to all the "front facing" edges rather than just those around the outside of the silhouette, so you'll probably spot this is going on until about box 220, hopefully it's not been too detrimental to the exercise.
Your warning there had me worried, but it looks like the issue was minimal. Even if the line weight was completely wrong, then it still wouldn't have impacted the spatial portion of this exercise, but still - your line weights weren't that far off, and by the end you demonstrate a solid use of it.
All in all you've demonstrated a great deal of improvement over this set. By the end your boxes feel solid, and your convergences are looking vastly more consistent. There are a couple places where one of the middle lines of a given set goes off at an odd angle, but that's fairly normal. Just remember that when you're drawing these lines, you always want to think about the lines with which it is parallel (including those that haven't yet been drawn), instead of those with which it shares a corner or a plane. From there, think about how they leave the vanishing point, considering the fact that those with smaller angles between them will be running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box. I explain this further in these notes.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Nice work! I can definitely see considerable improvement when it comes to the estimation of your convergences over this set, and extending your lines has certainly contributed to an awareness that resulted in growth. I'm also pleased to see a variety of rates of foreshortening - you've got some boxes with very rapid, dramatic foreshortening (where vanishing points are closer, this implies that the object is quite large or close to the viewer), as well as boxes where the foreshortening is more shallow (farther vanishing points implying a smaller scale, or objects that are farther away). Often students will focus too much on one rather than the other - shallow foreshortening is particularly important because most of the objects we draw are going to be of a smaller, more relatable scale.
I did notice that your line weight was generally pretty uniform, so that's an area you may want to focus on as you move forwards to kick your boxes up to the next level.
Additionally, while your convergences have improved considerably, there are still mistakes towards the end and I believe I have some advice that should help. When you're drawing a line, don't think of the other lines with which it shares a corner, or those with which it shares a plane. Think about all the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point - that is, the lines with which it is parallel, including those that have not yet been drawn. From there, think about the angles at which they leave the vanishing point. Those with smaller angles between them are more likely to be running close to parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself, so this can be a useful piece of information to keep in mind. You can often look at a similar such line and draw a next one as being parallel to it if they're close together and share the same VP. I expand on this in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Hey there I'm sven, one of uncomfortable's new teaching assistants. I am going to start off by saying you have shown some improvement throughout your 250 boxes in terms of line quality and you are slowly building up a better sense of perspective with your convergence. However, there are some very serious aspects of the challenge that it appears were not implemented for maximum feedback for your improvement. Your pages are packed to the brim with boxes. Normally packing pages of a sketchbook with studies is great, but in this instance it is hard to properly learn anything from what the line extensions tell you. These line extensions are just as important as the boxes themselves, because this is what helps us see where we are hitting the mark and where we are falling short with things like convergence. From this information we apply it to the next page to improve just a little bit more and then repeat the process again. https://i.imgur.com/IjgdTG0.jpg this page is a particular showcase of how little there is to glean from all of the extensions bleeding into each other. Additionally, there are many cases where you aren't applying the line extensions correctly and they are going off in a direction different from the line itself. Remember: as an extension, the line should continue in the same path as the original one you drew. All of this compounds to a point where you are repeating the same mistakes page after page and not getting nearly as much out of this exercise as intended.
One more point I would like to bring up is how to think about sets of parallel lines converging to a single point. https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png this diagram shows the relationship between the angles of the lines as they leave the VP and how they relate to each other once they are in a box. Notice how lines that are close together have a very small angle between each other at the vanishing point, and the further the vanishing point is from the box that angle will continue to shrink, causing our lines in our box to become more and more parallel. Take some time to digest this diagram and apply that thought process to your future boxes.
I have spoken with uncomfortable and we think it is appropriate to ask you to do 25 more boxes. Please take your time with these. Address each box as its own challenge and be mindful of how each set of lines converges to a shared vanishing point. Draw these boxes bigger and fit 5 to 7 to a page to give you plenty of room for extension lines. Once you finish a page, draw your extension lines and really analyze when you had a good box vs a bad one and why that is. Make sure you continue to be mindful of line quality with the ghosting technique as you were with these boxes. Once you finish your 25 boxes resubmit them as a reply in this comment chain and we will pick up from there. I can see your ability to create solid boxes in space, we just want to be mindful of how to examine our boxes once they have been drawn.
Hello, here's my submission. There's a chance some of the photos might be missing due to Imgur trying its best not to work as intended and simply either refusing to upload some photos or uploading them three times. If you'll need me to reupload them, please let me know and specify which boxes are missing so I could quickly reupload them for ya. Cheers :)
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair.
Nice work completing this challenge! It's a tough one. The first thing I notice is that your linework improved quite a lot throughout the set - in the beginning, the lines were a bit wobbly, but I can see you became quite confident with superimposing your lines.
Similarly, you began with a fairly good grasp on your boxes and then substantially solidified your understanding towards the end. I can see that you became more consistent with ensuring that all three sets of parallel lines converge so nice work! I need to note that you did pack your pages with boxes and on a lot of them, the extended lines became quite tangled - giving your boxes some breathing space would allow you to better see and learn where and how to improve.
Another thing I want to recommend is to play more with the lineweight. As of right now, almost all of your boxes are composed of lines of the same weight - playing with lineweight will help the illusion of a 3D form, by emphasizing the outer lines while pushing the inside lines 'back into space'.
Overall, great work! Go ahead and move on to Lesson 2. Good luck!
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable TAs. He'll be by later to go over this critique and assign you your flair. Let's get into it!
So, first off, beautiful work! Your linework started out pretty strong and only got better throughout the set. Similarly, I can see that you've learned quite a lot and your boxes at the end are very consistent in that three sets of parallel lines converge evenly towards their respective points.
The one thing I want to recommend is for you to utilize more lineweight for your boxes to clarify forms. This will really tighten up the form of the box and it's silhouette. However, overall, I think you're ready to move on! Great job!
One little thing I want to add to sluggy's critique is that I noticed a tendency as you pushed through the set to make the foreshortening more and more dramatic - that is, bringing the vanishing points closer and closer to your boxes. This probably came from you trying to focus a lot on your convergences, which is definitely a great thing to pay attention to. Just keep in mind that dramatic foreshortening tells the viewer that the object is either very large, or very close. So it is important to mix in some shallower foreshortening as well, which implies objects that are at a smaller, more relatable scale. I talk a little more about this here.
Thanks, Uncomfortable! I noticed it as well, sometimes the vanishing point is super close to a box, and I tried to avoid keeping so short distance to a vanishing point. However, it seems I was a bit biased towards it, just to make sure my lines will converge at some reasonable point and will not be completely parallel (as in some earlier drawings), so you guessed right :)
Realizing I'm doing this too! Definitely need to try and switch it up and create less foreshortened boxes. I must say - coming here and reading other peoples' critiques is a great resource as well!
Hahaha, I'm glad you're benefitting from looking at these reviews - there's a lot here to sift through, and a great deal of it will certainly apply to those still working through the challenge.
Hey there! Sluggy again! Like I said yesterday, Uncomfortable comes behind and checks the critique and gives the appropriate flair. Let's get into it!
So first, I want to commend you for getting through the challenge! 250 boxes is tough for anyone and you should be very proud for having gotten in this mileage.
That said, I have a few things I need to point out:
First, you do show improvement over the set, especially in your linework. There is significantly less wobble between the first few pages and the last. Nice work!
However, in several places, I notice you applying the line extension method in the wrong direction. Think of it this way: the extensions are meant to go 'back' into space. In some places, you have them coming 'towards' you. Understanding this will help you train your brain into viewing these as 3D forms rather than a collection of lines.
They are also meant to help you see how your sets of parallel lines are converging towards their respective vanishing points, so you know where and how to improve. Check out this portion of the challenge here about line extensions. Remember when drawing each line to only think of the lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the box or plane as a whole. Refer to these notes for a bit more on that.
Similarly, you have placed the hatching on a back face of a few of the boxes, which does mess with the illusion of the form.
So overall, great work for getting through the challenge and improving on your linework! I spoke to Uncomfortable, and I would like you to complete and submit 50 more boxes using the line extension method I linked and remembering the hatch the front face of the box. Nice work!
Hey there! Nice work, I definitely see improvement here and that you kept a good handle on the foreshortening. Keep working with that ghosting method going forward and try to avoid the tendency to go back over mistakes again. This has the effect of drawing the eye to them.
I currently don't have you down as being eligible for private homework critiques. If you're a recent patreon supporter, be sure to check your email/patreon inbox as I'll have sent you a message to gather your reddit username. Alternatively, are you using the correct reddit account?
If neither of those are the case, you're welcome to submit your work directly to the subreddit or on the discord server to get the community to review your work.
Hello! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to go over this critique and assign the appropriate flair. Let's get at it.
Awesome, awesome job getting through this challenge. It's a lot of boxes and sticking it out is to be commended! My first impression is that your line-work is very strong - even from the beginning, your boxes are neat and thoughtful. They look solid and only improve throughout the set. Great work!
I will note, however, that you overshoot your corners on almost every box. Unfortunately, this messes with the silhouette and the illusion of a 3D form. While your grasp of ghosting is obviously very strong, I recommend aiming for accuracy now, ensuring you don't overshoot with your lines.
I also urge you to lengthen your line extensions to get a better idea of where and how to improve your convergences. It's very slight, but some of your sets of parallel lines still don't converge evenly. Remember to consider each line in relation to the lines its parallel to rather than the plane or the box as a whole. That said, it is very slight!
Overall, wonderful, solid work. I'd say you're ready to move on to lesson 2. Great job!
Very nice work! You've really shown a great deal of growth over this set. You went from rather wobbly, uncertain and hesitant linework with lines that went off in all directions without much cohesion of intent, to developing your understanding of how these forms sit in 3D space and how the parallel lines behave in relation to one another. Your overall line quality improved considerably as well, and your line weight had a great impact on reinforcing the solidity of the overall forms.
I'm very pleased with the conscientiousness you displayed, patiently working through all of your line extensions and corrections. You're clearly demonstrating mindfulness towards your lines' convergences, and have a great balance between boxes with shallower and more dramatic foreshortening.
Based on your work, I think you already understand this, but this is something I offer to most people working through this challenge, so I figure I may as well here:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
There's definitely room for growth and improvement, but you're barrelling in the right direction with considerable speed. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.
Aha! I was certain that paper looked familiar, but I couldn't remember which lesson 1 submission used it, so I wasn't sure if the submission would go to my TAs or to me.
Congratulations on completing the challenge. You're certainly demonstrating improvement with the confidence of your constructions and your linework overall, though there are a few issues that I'd like to point out.
It's really critical that you read the instructions carefully, especially when doing challenges like this one to ensure that you're putting your time to good use. From the looks of it, you had some definite trouble when it came time to extend your lines. From what I can see, you may not have been entirely certain as to what the purpose of this step was. As outlined in the instructions here, you need to be extending your lines back in space on all three axes to test how they come together, to see where you tend to have lines converging too early, or off in pairs, and so on.
There are a number of places where you've extended your lines in the wrong direction. You're also frequently extending them in both directions (which makes it visibly more confusing as to distinguishing the near and far sides of the box. You've also got a number of cases where you've added hatching lines (which usually serve as a visual cue to tell us which side is pointing towards us) to the farther side of the box, leading to many visually confusing situations. And lastly, most of the line extensions are minimal and superficial.
Since you weren't entirely sure of why these lines were being extended, there wasn't much consistent improvement as far as the actual convergences went. By extending the lines, seeing where your convergences go completely out of whack, and identifying the patterns and tendencies in your mistakes, you're able to move onto the next page with a sense of what you need to work on. Without that kind of analysis and reflection, you're left shooting in the dark, hoping that you'll improve through mileage alone.
It's absolutely true that even just drawing boxes - and drawing through them as fastidiously as you have been - will definitely help, and once upon a time that was what the challenge was limited to. Within the last couple years however, these line extensions have become a huge part of the challenge because of how incredibly helpful they can be.
Now I am going to mark this challenge as complete, because you did indeed draw all 250 boxes. I strongly recommend however that you go over your last page and extend the lines properly (as explained in the video and in the written instructions). You should also, for your own benefit, do 50 more boxes, extending the lines properly upon the completion of each page and thinking about what those extensions tell you.
I'll also offer you this piece of advice:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Hey there! Right off the bat I noticed you have very nice draftsmanship in your boxes.
You are showing a good progression of your command in perspective and getting your parallel
lines to converge as you go throughout the challenge, as well as having various orientations. I will say that while your draftsmanship is nice, your lines are
consistently over shooting throughout the duration of the 250 boxes. While
our main goal is to gain a better grasp of three dimensional space as well as
raw mileage, line quality and accuracy is also something to be mindful of. In the future I would like to see you be a little more mindful of accuracy and try to stop those lines exactly where intended.
Aside from the overshoot, the only other draftsmanship thing I want to bring up is to consider adding lineweight around the perimeter of the boxes as shown here
https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/lineweight As far as general convergence goes, you are doing a fine job with both vanishing points that are near as well as further away. You really seem to have a handle on the angles between parallel lines and how they relate to the distance of vanishing points (https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png)
All in all, you've done a nice job and I will be marking this lesson as complete. Uncomfortable will be around to confirm this and give your flair but feel free to move on to lesson 2, being mindful of not overshooting your lines when drawing your forms. Have a good one!
I know that you had given me a pass on this challenge earlier on, but after getting to the everyday objects lesson, I decided that I wanted to take this on, as I could see the value in getting the mileage in. I also wanted to work on understanding what a cube looks like in perspective. I wanted see if I could uncover some characteristics I could look to in order to more reliably freehand cubes and use them as units of measure within my constructions.
I also used the challenge as an opportunity to work on adding line weight to silhouettes with single, confident strokes. In the beginning, it's fairly off the mark, creating double lines quite often, but I could definitely see and feel improvement towards the end.
In any case, here's my submission. I certainly learned a lot and am glad that I put the work in. Thanks in advance for your feedback, and I hope you've been well.
I really commend your decision to tackle this challenge anyway - it was a fantastic idea, and it really demonstrates your dedication to improvement.
You started off a little shaky and uncertain, but still in a manner that reinforces why I gave you a pass (something I do less and less frequently as time goes on). Relatively quickly, however, you start solidifying your grasp on this material, and go on to construct consistently solid and cohesive boxes.
I'm very happy with the conscientiousness and thoroughness you've shown with all of your line extensions. You've clearly put a great deal of thought into what each set of extended lines told you, and learned from them as you moved through.
Your boxes by the end are phenomenal, and the issues by that point have shrunk to a minimal degree. Still, I will address the one issue I'm noticing, even if it is small and its nature suggests that you are probably aware of it.
In cases like 246 and 250's red lines, 240's blues, and so on, I do see a slight tendency to have the middle lines of a given set (those that are generally very close to each other) to either diverge, or to converge too rapidly. The reason for this is simple - because they're so close to one another, the margin for error is so small that any mistake is going to be very obvious.
What you really want to strive for in this case is to keep these lines as parallel to one another as possible. Since they inevitably going to have a negligible angle between them at the vanishing point itself, the lines will inevitably run parallel to one another by the time they reach the box (as demonstrated in these notes).
Now I do think you're aware of this, and you demonstrate this understanding in other cases, but I figured I'd mention it anyway to keep myself relevant to your growth :P
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 6.
Thanks for the feedback, Uncomfortable; always appreciated. And you are certainly right about my inner lines diverging or converging too much from time to time.
One of the things that stuck with me while working through these was just how little room for error there really was when laying down a stroke. It was surprising how even just the slightest increase or decrease in an intended angle would throw off the construction. This was usually apparent in the draw-throughs, and particularly in those inner lines for the reasons you mentioned.
I'll go ahead and get started on Lesson 6 and will post the results in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I hope you keep well.
Unfortunately it hasn't been a full 2 weeks since your last submission (on February 9th), so you'll have to hold onto these and submit them on the 23rd. A quick glance does suggest that you rushed through these however (one of the reasons this 2 week period is imposed). You only extended the lines for a few of them, so you didn't really benefit from the kind of reflection and self-analysis that is stressed for this exercise.
That was a ride. For page 22 I drew with a ballpoint pen because I had box drawing time but didn't have my felt pen. I hope that's ok, but I can redraw them if not.
Nice work! I can see a considerable improvement not only in the consistency of your convergences and the solidity of your resulting boxes, but also in the confidence of your linework. You seem a lot more sure of yourself, and your lines suggest a greater sense of intent, rather than just putting strokes down and hoping for the best.
There is of course still room for improvement, though you're headed in the right direction. One thing to keep in mind as you continue to move forwards is that when you're putting a line down, don't get caught up thinking of the other lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it shares a plane. These can lead to certain inconsistencies that I see sporadically through your work, especially places where you've got sets of parallel lines that converge in pairs too early.
Instead, think about all the other lines with which the one you're drawing shares a vanishing point. That is, all the lines that run parallel to it, including the ones that have not yet been drawn. Think about the angles between them as they leave the vanishing point - those with a minimal angle here will end up running effectively parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself. This is particularly critical with the central lines of a given set (where they usually run pretty close to one another, and even a slight deviation in angle will result in an early convergence, or even divergence).
I expand on this concept in these notes, so give that a look.
One other thing I'm noticing is that for the most part, you seem to be focusing on boxes that have really, really shallow convergences - where the lines barely come together at all. It's a good idea to explore boxes that have shallow convergence like this, as well as those with more dramatic foreshortening (where the vanishing points are much closer), and those in between these two extremes.
Aside from that, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Thank you! I was definitely putting a lot of focus on the relations of the lines to each other rather than to the vanishing point. And I had this nagging feeling my boxes were kinda samey but I couldn't pinpoint why. I'll need to write these on a sticky note to keep nearby during sessions.
Hello /u/uncomfortable, finally got through this one! Learned quite a bit and am all the better for it. The exterior lines don't cause too much trouble once you decide to lay down a vanishing point and systematically create the box starting from the edge closest to the viewer, especially when ghosting all the way to the VP, you sort of get a mental image of where the line should be. It's a real pain dropping a point for the back corner furthest away, and really makes you consider how all three interior lines are going to converge. Sometimes trying to consider a diagonal line running from the front corner to the rear helped visualize where the point would lie.
I tried adding some weight to exterior lines by tracing/ghosting my initial stroke, as well as adding a tiny bit of weight to the interior lines along the shaded plane's perimeter. All in all, which I got sick of boxes around 180, I had several aha! moments that can only come from putting in repetition. Great exercise! All boxes were drawn on a 11x14 pad. Thanks for the review and feedback, appreciate all the hard work. Cheers, Kyle
Great work! You're demonstrating considerable skill when it comes to being able to rotate these boxes freely in your head, and you're doing a great job of conveying the sense of weight and overall cohesiveness of the form with your line weights. Your convergences are generally coming along quite well too.
Based on the comments you mentioned in your submission though, I do want to really emphasize one thing - it's normal for students to preoccupy themselves with, say, the back corner and how those "interior" lines converge to it, but that isn't what you should be focusing on while drawing your lines. Though it's counter intuitive, there's not a lot to be gained from that. Instead, when you put a line down, rather than thinking of how that line shares a corner with two others, or how it shares a plane with three others, think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point. Think about how they all converge towards that singular point - including the lines that have not yet been drawn - and focus on making that happen. Think about the angles at which those lines leave the VP, and the angles that fall between them. The smaller the angle, the more parallel those lines will run to one another by the time they reach the box itself.
Now all in all, your convergences are actually quite good. I do want to point out though that you do have a tendency in many of these to have lines that run perhaps a little too parallel (in 2D space that is) - adding just a touch more convergence in these cases will help. In some cases, when you strive for complete isometric parallelity, you risk having those lines actually start to diverge a little as they move further back in space.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
In some cases, when you strive for complete isometric parallelity, you risk having those lines actually start to diverge a little as they move further back in space.
Thanks, for the good feedback. I think this is great observation! You're right, especially when the lines become quite parallel, e.g. VP is tending towards to infinity. What I learned from your feedback is that the margin of error for the correct angle becomes so small that you just as easily can draw a diverging line. So being more conservative with a converging angle will overall produces 'tighter' work. This also echoes back to your first advice... to think about the lines (drawn and not drawn) that share a VP. Appreciate the review. See you in a few weeks!
Hello /u/uncomfortable, Here is my resubmission for the 250 box challenge where you instructed me to draw 100 new boxes. I want to say thanks for the freebie critique on my last submission of this challenge. The critique notes you gave really helped me to understand what I should be looking for when drawing my boxes, and going back and drawing 100 more was definitely the right thing to do.
Rather than passing this onto the TAs, I'll go ahead and take this critique since it's technically in response to one I'd already given. Yeah, the extra 100 were definitely the right call, and you've shown a good deal of growth over them. In many cases, you definitely show an improved sense of the convergences, though this is primarily focused when the vanishing point is very far away, and the lines effectively run parallel to one another. When you actually do need to deal with some convergences, you still end up with cases where you don't quite follow some of the advice I gave you previously:
When you draw a line, don't think about the lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it shares a plane. Think only about the other lines with which it is parallel - that is, the ones with which it shares a vanishing point. Think about the angles at which those lines leave the vanishing point, specifically the lines that have a small angle between them (usually the middle lines of a set of 4 parallel lines). If the angle between them is smaller, then by the time they reach the box they'll be running virtually parallel to one another. That's an important and useful fact to keep in mind while drawing these boxes. I explain this further in these notes.
If we look at this one for example, from page 10, you'll see that the blue lines converge in pairs. This is because you were focusing only on the lines that made up each individual plane, rather than considering all four lines of the given set, and how they'd converge towards a single vanishing point.
These two from the same page, if we look at their blue lines, the convergences are definitely better, though those middle lines are diverging. This is a pretty common problem and it's easy to make - those two middle lines have such a small angle between them that they barely converge, so if you do happen to mess up their angles even a little bit, you're going to see them either cross way too early, or they'll diverge as they do here. This is what the notes I provided previously address specifically. Lines that converge towards the same vanishing point that are so close to each other are going to run virtually parallel to one another.
Now you are making headway compared to before, and I'll certainly be marking this lesson as complete. That said, you should reflect upon the advice that I'd given you before (and that I've quoted here). With every single mark you put down, you need to be aware of all the lines that are going to be converging towards its vanishing point, including those that have not yet been drawn. All other relationships between these lines aren't all that important - it's all about these convergences.
So, you can consider this challenge as complete. I see that you submitted your lesson 2 work, but as per the two-week rule I won't be critiquing it now, as that's the third full lesson submission in two weeks (a period in which you should only be receiving two). You can submit it on March 3rd.
Thank you for the feedback and for taking the time to demonstrate areas where I need work. I'll take the time over the next two weeks to practice drawing boxes and consider your critiques. I'll resubmit my lesson 2 on the 3rd then as per your instructions.
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair!
So, I gotta stay, you started out strong and got even stronger! Your line work improved as did your grasp of the box form. AND you drew all 250 of them, so even just getting the challenge done is to be commended.
Throughout the set, I saw you experimenting with foreshortening on the boxes, and almost tagged you on it, but you pulled them back towards the end - that said, I do need to tag you on hatching the front faces of your boxes. I saw you did a couple of them, but I recommend doing this on future boxes you practice. This, along with line weight, helps the illusion of 3D form on a 2D plane and trains your brain to see it as such.
However, this is not listed explicitly in the assignment and I'm happy to mark this as complete. Nice work and move on to Lesson 2!
Thank you Sluggy :) I was expecting my boxes perspective to be near perfect when I got 250, but I know I missed a lot of lines even at the end. Im glad to hear that they are okay anyway!
For sure! You definitely got more consistent, I should've noted that. If you're looking for a good rule of thumb, remember to measure the sets of parallel lines in relation to each other. Check out these notes here for a few extra tips. Best of luck!
I can't believe I finished this! I realized I did too many "extreme" perspective boxes and tried to do the remaining boxes with more "subdued perspective", hopefully that's noticeable. I'm super nervous to post this - I feel like I didn't improve and really struggled and it was so much work, too. Ok. Here goes nothing.....
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair, so let's get at it.
First of all: right? 250 boxes is a huge challenge and you did it! Nice work.
Though you say feel like you didn't improve, you most certainly did. In both line work and perspective you produced strong work throughout the set. Your convergences became more consistent as did adding the line weight to the silhouette of the boxes. Good job catching yourself on the extreme perspective as well.
I will note that one reason you feel like you may not have improved as much as you could've is that you packed your pages with boxes. It tangles up the line extensions making it difficult to measure your convergences. When practicing this in the future, I think it will help solidify your learning to cut down on the number of boxes per page so you can see the line extensions.
One thing I want to add is that here and there I see a tendency to, out of every set of four parallel lines, to have one of the middle ones veer off slightly. This is a pretty common problem that can be improved upon by thinking specifically about the angles at which the lines leave the vanishing point. Those two middle lines tend to have pretty small angles between them, and as such, by the time they reach the box (especially if they're very close to one another) they'll run virtually parallel to one another. This means even a slight convergence or divergence will appear very obvious, whereas letting them run perfectly parallel will generally look pretty correct (as long as they're within a certain margin of proximity to each other). These notes expand on the point.
Thank you. I made a specific effort to combat that exact problem toward the last 3rd of the boxes but I know I didnt always succeed. I did read those notes as you posted them on pretty much everyone elses critiques haha. Like I could get two of the three lines but the third one would be wonky and when I tried to fix that one it threw off another one. But yeah those back corners were the bane of my existence. Thank you for your time!
Nice work completing the challenge! By and large you've done a pretty good job and are demonstrating some confident linework and solid construction. There is however one major issue that you've run into that really needs to be pointed out: you only applied the line extension to two sets of parallel lines, rather than to all three. As a result, you've been improving a great deal on maintaining the convergences of the lines running towards the left and right, but the more vertical lines actually are running into a great deal of divergence.
For example, if we look at 242, 250 and 227, at a glance we can see that the vertical lines separate as they move farther away from the viewer. That's definitely something you're going to want to get a handle on, and as you move forwards, make sure that when doing this kind of exercise that you apply the line extension method to all lines. When we focus too much on some, the others tend to compensate and while we see improvement on one front, it's that other one that starts to deteriorate further.
You've still done a good job overall, and your boxes do a good job of appearing well constructed - it's just after a closer look that these mistakes become more obvious.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up with this kind of exercise as part of a regular warmup routine, but feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Thank you, yes I didnt even think to extend my verticals. I see what you are saying now that I look again. I was so focused on the left and right convergences that I neglected to put as much thought into what my verticals were doing. Ill be sure to keep an eye on that moving forward.
So you definitely set yourself to complete the challenge, and that you did. You pushed through and drew all 250 boxes. That said, there were some choices you made and steps you skipped that made the exercise somewhat less valuable than it could have been.
To start with, you stuck through extending your lines for the first half or so, which is good. But from what I can see, you didn't necessarily think very much about what those line extensions were telling you.
For example, if we look at box 150, and study the lines going off towards the left, we can see that these four lines are converging in pairs - one pair for each plane. This tells us that when you draw a line, you're focusing too much on the relationship that line has to the ones with which it shares that plane, rather than how all four lines are coming together at a far off vanishing point.
This kind of self-reflection is what allows us to grow. We draw a page of boxes, then we extend the lines for all of them and identify the patterns of mistakes we tend to make, and compare them to what we're trying to achieve. Armed with that information, we move onto the next page purposely trying to address the mistakes we saw before. Then we check that page for errors and repeat the process.
Extending the lines and analyzing the results is a key part of what makes this exercise valuable. Simply drawing boxes is useful to a point, but there's a lot more to be gained from this relatively simple process. So in that, you did miss out quite a bit.
As such, before I mark this challenge as complete, I'm going to ask for another hundred boxes. Take your time, analyze your results, and think about what you're trying to achieve with each and every line you put down.
When you go to draw a line, don't think about the lines with which it shares a corner, or with which it shares a plane. Focus only on all the lines that run parallel to it, the ones that converge towards the same vanishing point - including those that haven't yet been drawn. Everything else is just a distraction.
Then, as shown here, you can think about the angles at which those lines are going to leave the vanishing point. Those with smaller angles between them will end up running close to parallel to one another by the time they reach the box. This is a little trick you can use for the middle lines of a set, since they tend to be very close together.
I finished this challenge as suggested, when I started I put a month as the end line to complete it and exactly a month has passed so at least I've reached this goal!!
Sorry for the double link but I think I've reached some limit on imgur
[deleted]
2018-10-22 21:19
[deleted]
mistletine
2018-10-24 01:45
https://imgur.com/a/G3OYSpL Link to my 250 Box album. have a nice day uncomfortable, hope you're doing well when you read this :3 I have a tendency to get frustrated when I draw bad boxes I've noticed, and sometimes I autopilot and end up correcting lines. Adding outlines hides a lot of that stuff which I'm not sure is a good thing, but it does look way better. Box 250 is most representative of what my boxes look like when I'm really careful with them, at least in my opninion.
Uncomfortable
2018-10-24 18:12
Really nicely done! You've got a lot of great stuff here, and demonstrate a good deal of growth over the set. By the end, you're demonstrating a solid understanding of 3D space, along with consistent convergences towards vanishing points, confident linework all executed conscientiously using the ghosting method, and lastly a lot of great experimentation with line weight to help further the illusion of solidity of your forms.
You're doing great with the boxes, so the one piece of advice I'll offer will have to do with the last bit - the line weight. It's pretty normal to jump at line weight with a lot of exaggeration, and it's a good way to learn it, but as you continue to move forwards it can come to a point where things get so thick that they start to get a little cartoony. You're not nearly there, but you could stand to be a little more subtle with that weight. The thing about line weight is that it's all about relative weights between different lines. A mark could be a little bit thicker - unnoticeable to our conscious brain - but our subconscious would still pick up on it.
That kind of subtlety and nuance is what we're ultimately after. Line weight is about whispering to the viewer, rather than telling them firmly and directly. Speak to their subconscious, and less to their conscious brain, and you'll find that your drawings start to develop a really beautiful sense of liveliness. You may also want to think more of weight being applied to either end of a given line (resulting in a particular corner being generally heavier rather than a side being heavier), as this also can lead to the sort of tapered weight along the length of a line that also gives us a sort of energetic quality.
Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. You're welcome to move onto the next lesson.
artguy24
2018-10-25 04:47
Hi Uncomfortable. Here is my results of the 250 Box Challenge.
http://imgur.com/gallery/1zkCerK
This was even harder than I thought it would be. I think over the course of the challenge my boxes did improve, but I don't think my line convergence improved very drastically. I am definitely still having difficulty placing the last, hidden corner. Also, when I try to draw less dramatic perspective, I sometimes end up make the angles too large, creating diverging lines where they should be converging. I look forward to your feedback. Thank you!
Uncomfortable
2018-10-25 19:49
Nice work! You've definitely made good use of this exercise, and have demonstrated considerable growth over the set in a number of areas. Your conscientiousness with applying the line extension method definitely helped you improve those convergences - it is understandable that the boxes with shallower foreshortening did see a degree of divergence here and there. While it's essentially the same challenge (getting your lines to converge consistently towards the same shared vanishing point), both dramatic and shallow foreshortening manifest this difficulty in remarkably different ways. Dramatically converging boxes are difficult because it's very obvious when you've made a mistake, since there's a smaller margin for error, but shallowly converging boxes are difficult because the convergences are so subtle that it's easy to overshoot in the wrong direction and end up with divergence. For this reason it's important to practice both in considerably quantity in order to equally target both issues.
The majority of your boxes sit somewhere in between, which honestly is good for the most part, but just be sure to practice both extremes a fair bit as well. They won't come up as often (shallow foreshortening will come up more frequently than dramatic but usually it's going to sit somewhere in between), but it's still a good idea to get those kinds of challenges down.
Along with improving those estimations of convergence, you definitely showed a good deal of improvement with your experimentation with line weight. One thing I wanted to recommend on that front was to try and make your line weights a little more subtle. Line weight is less about shouting at the viewer that a particular line is much heavier, and more about whispering to the subconscious. Our subconscious is very attune to picking up the relationships between lines, even when minimal - so making a line only slightly thicker won't be apparent to our conscious brains, but we'll still pick it up subconsciously. This generally results in a more nuanced, effective result.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
artguy24
2018-10-25 21:31
Awesome! Thank you for your feedback. I had a feeling I was going to heavy on line weight, so I'll keep an eye on that, as well as continuing to draw boxes that are both shallow and deep convergence while warming up. Thanks again!
VikeriSyndrome
2018-10-25 17:20
Hello Boss. Linkin' my 250 boxes. Took me some time to do them. Shading was partly done using elbow (for a test) but mostly using shoulder - that's why they might be different. Exercise is hard and time consuming but worth it. I've scanned the pages so every flaw will be visible. Looking forward to your bashing.
https://imgur.com/a/cnnI8Qr
Uncomfortable
2018-10-25 20:13
You've done a good job of working through the exercise, conscientiously applying the line extension method and generally being patient with the work and with yourself. There is definitely still room for improvement, but you've come a long way and will continue to do so. The most important thing when dealing with these boxes is to ensure that as you draw a line, you are thinking about all the lines that it's going to run parallel to. Don't think about the other sets (and don't focus too much on the corners themselves), think only on the other lines that are going to converge with the line you're about to draw - whether you've drawn them already or not.
Also, as explained in these notes, try and think about the angles at which these four lines meet at their vanishing point - those with very small angles between them can be effectively drawn parallel to one another as a part of the box.
Over the course of your set, you definitely play a lot with line weight, which is great to see. I do want to mention a couple things on that front though:
Make sure you're applying the same ghosting method when you're adding weight. Don't draw slowly and carefully, be sure to plan and prepare beforehand and then execute with the same kind of confidence for your initial mark.
Don't use line weight as a way to hide mistakes. I noticed a few places where you added a lot of thickness in certain areas in a way that looked off, so I'm assuming it's because you had something you wanted to cover up. In general, don't correct your mistakes, and don't go to any lengths to hide them, because both of these simply add more ink to a problematic area and draw more attention to it.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2. Be sure to continue practicing freely rotated boxes as part of your regular warmup routine though, as this is something you'll continue to improve on over time.
VikeriSyndrome
2018-10-25 20:47
Thanks for the feedback. I did use line weight to hide my mistakes. I'm trying to avoid doing this as much as I can. By freely rotated boxes do you mean organic perspective, rotated boxes, just random boxes as in 250 challenge or all of them?
Uncomfortable
2018-10-25 21:13
Random boxes like from this challenge - though the other exercises you mentioned should already be covered as part of doing lesson 1 exercises as part of that warmup as well (which is explained at the start of lesson 1)
-Chears
2018-11-07 20:12
Hey Uncomfortable! Hope you're doing great! I finished the 250 box challenge. By the end I start to scoring boxes according to how off the lines were according to the vanishing point just to have an extra help of accuracy I guess. Just in case you see weird numbers and don't understand what are those.
Here's the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SQfFQfHTjzxqr820G1GL-CZIsjDG7a-O/view?usp=sharing
Uncomfortable
2018-11-07 20:21
Very nice work! You've shown a great deal of patience and care in your approach to this challenge, and it seems to have paid off. I'm very pleased to see that you applied the line extension technique to each and every box, as well as the fact that you clearly included a wide range of box types - some with dramatic foreshortening, some with shallower foreshortening, and a great variety of orientations as well.
I'm honestly not entirely sure how useful scoring them would have been - it's more important to think about the reasons behind why lines were converging consistently or why they weren't, and identifying patterns that can then be corrected. That said, I don't think it did any harm, as long as it wasn't drawing your attention away from properly analyzing your results, page by page, which you did seem to be doing.
Continue to keep an eye on boxes that are very shallow in their foreshortening, as there are cases even towards the end (like 217) where your lines end up diverging when they should be converging (albeit very slightly). It's definitely one of the more challenging areas.
Also, while your overall estimation of alignment was pretty solid, I figured I'd share this demo I frequently offer as part of my box challenge critique, in case it offers more insight. It's about paying attention to how your lines exit the vanishing point, and thinking about the angles that would exist between each set of lines. If such an angle between two lines is minimal, you can generally just draw it as being actually parallel on the page by the time it reaches the box.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
-Chears
2018-11-07 20:41
Thank you so much! I shall continue to lesson 2 :)
Foreigner24
2018-11-10 08:23
Hello again! I didn't mean to drop two submissions at once but I only just now thought about it .-. Sorry, but here are my boxes: https://imgur.com/a/qYgtMWf
I've only been drawing for a little less than 2 months so I feel like I learned a mountain of material from this challenge.. Confidence and line weight are two areas that I'd love to improve in, but I'll leave that up to the master to let me know :p. Thanks in advance, and I am excited to hear back ^^.
[deleted]
2018-11-12 23:22
Im back from the land of boxes. Heres what I got https://imgur.com/a/R8sR3As and part 2 https://imgur.com/a/vIQPPyB. As I drew more and more boxes I started to imagining boxes in my head. Towards the end I started to think about a camera leases could affect how boxes could look. Unfortunately my felt tip pends did not arrive on time so there are no line weight. I hope what I wrote make sense.
Thanks, G
Uncomfortable
2018-11-13 20:09
Youve demonstrated some really impressive growth here, along with a great deal of patience and care in how youve been approaching the exercise. You clearly took your time planning and preparing each and every stroke, and arent displaying any signs of rushing or getting ahead of yourself. Im also very pleased to see that youve been applying the line extension method throughout, and I can see how it has impacted your overall approach - causing you to be more mindful of how those sets of lines are meant to converge towards their shared vanishing points.
I have just one suggestion as you continue to move forwards. When considering these sets of parallel lines, think about not only how theyre going to behave once they reach the box itself, but also how those lines leave the vanishing point. Consider the angles between different lines leaving the same vanishing point - where those angles are small, then those differences are going to be even smaller all the way out at the box. So, you can effectively draw these pairings of lines as being parallel to one another. This comes into play a great deal when drawing the middle two lines of a given set (where we tend to have the outer two lines quite a ways away from each other, but another two towards the center tend to be quite similar in their trajectory.
I demonstrate this concept further in these notes.
Anyway, Ill go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
EntropyArchiver
2018-11-13 11:39
I am struggling in some key areas. One of the hardest parts was the bold outline, occasional bad habits and the lines connecting to the farthest corner. My bolding was distracting so I mixed up between adding it and not to see the quality of lines and because I felt they were taking away rather than improving the boxes. Not sure I made the right call there. I did see improvement, but I'm not sure if it is enough to move onto the next challenge. At the very least, I need to do many more boxes and exercises from lesson 1. I saw a steep decline in quality on the last 50 boxes in the new larger sized sketch book when drawing larger boxes. The larger boxes were more challenging to do for me because of connecting the lines. So longer line ghost is a must in the future and larger box practice.
I look forward to your comments and advice for moving forward.
https://imgur.com/a/Jelj4CK
Uncomfortable
2018-11-13 20:21
I can definitely see what you mean in terms of the last 50 boxes being considerably more difficult for you, and showing a significant dip in the quality of the results. That said, overall I do feel that youre getting ahead of yourself - Theres still some visible (though pretty minor) hesitation and wobbling in the pre-200 boxes, and this issue just gets exacerbated when tackling the larger ones near the end. It doesnt make a lot of sense to fuss over line weight until those initial marks are drawn as confidently as you can possibly manage - and I am definitely still seeing evidence that when you execute your marks, youre still too preoccupied with accuracy, rather than committing to them and driving forward, accepting the inevitability of mistakes at this stage.
Remember - we can still work with a mark that has been drawn smoothly and confidently, with a singular, consistent trajectory even if it misses the mark. A wavering, wobbly line however is not going to do us much good, and will result in a a construction that simply wont feel solid. Before you have that down completely, worrying about line weight is going to be a misuse of your focus - largely because we also need to be adding that line weight with the same kind of confidence. Right now Im seeing you slowing down a great deal for the line weight in order to track the underlying stroke accurately, and it wobbles a fair bit as a result.
Also worth mentioning, from 0-200, youre showing a great deal of improvement in your estimation of these lines convergences, and it all feels like its coming together fairly well (though its worth noting that many of these have their vanishing points much closer to the box, resulting in more dramatic, rapid foreshortening). The last 50 however totally abandon any of that - it doesnt seem like youre paying much attention to those convergences, and are instead focusing only on the challenge of ghosting these considerably longer lines. Its not an effective use of your time, and youre drawing your attention away from whats really important. It is also worth mentioning that more of these last 50 boxes have much shallower foreshortening, which presents a different kind of challenge than the more dramatic ones did.
All in all, I think you should not be striving for such massive forms. The sizes you were working at previously were pretty good (they werent so small as to get cramped and mess with your spatial reasoning), and they allowed you to focus more on the core challenges youre facing with the ghosting method.
Instead of jumping into much bigger boxes, try to work more with both dramatic and shallow boxes at that smaller scale, and focus on nailing that confident stroke and erradicating all hesitation.
Im going to mark this challenge as complete, but Id recommend that you do another 100 before moving onto lesson 2. You may, if you wish, submit those here when youre done.
EntropyArchiver
2018-11-16 06:22
I played around a bit but here are the next 100 boxes. I am adding at least a box to my warm up page and was trying the best methods to add it. One thing that I found helpful was correcting free hand my boxes after drawing the extending lines, it took some of the guess work out of what I was doing wrong or make me rethink of were I went wrong. The only down side is that it clutters the page which can be harder to read. I tried keeping it as easy to read with consistent color. Still struggling with line quality, but it is getting better. I will move to lesson 2 now, thank you for your input.
boxes 251-350 boxes
https://imgur.com/a/0XrklkN
Uncomfortable
2018-11-16 23:23
Alright, that's getting better. There's still room for improvement, especially in working on keeping those convergences consistent, but you're doing better. When you draw a line, think about all the lines that are going to be parallel to it - those that have been drawn, and those that have yet to be drawn. Think about how they're all going to converge towards the same vanishing point, and try and figure out where that vanishing point is going to be so you can aim the line you're about to draw towards it.
Also, as covered in these notes, think about the angles at which these lines leave the vanishing point. Some of them - usually the middle two of a given set - will have a very small angle between them. Once these lines reach the box, that angle will be so unnoticeable that you can effectively draw them as being parallel to one another. This will help avoid issues where your middle two lines converge too quickly together.
Anyway, as the challenge was marked as complete before, you can go ahead and move onto lesson 2. Be sure to work some of these freely rotated boxes into your warmups as well however.
L2D_
2018-11-14 17:28
Hi Uncomfortable, here is my 250 box homework. The confidence is not quite there yet...the pen still feels off in my hand.
https://imgur.com/a/LDleZJo
Uncomfortable
2018-11-15 19:34
Congratulations on pushing through all 250 boxes. I do have to say though, there are definite signs here that you may not really be thinking through what youre doing, or why youre doing certain things - and as a result, the growth seen here is not as extensive as it could have been.
There are three things I want to point out:
You generally only applied the extension method to one of the three sets of parallel lines that makes up each box. This alone tells you a little bit about the behaviour of some of your lines, but as a whole its really falling far short of what analyzing the extensions of all three sets of parallel lines would have been able to tell you. Even if youd have picked up more on what those extensions were telling you, there would be a greater likelihood that you might get better at keeping the convergences of one set consistent, while messing up the other two further to compensate. Its necessary to deal with all three sets simultaneously.
At first, I thought because your line extensions were frequently diverging as they went further from the box, you simply may have been continually making the same mistake over and over. Its still very likely that youre not really analyzing what the line extensions are telling you, but in this particular case, I realized that you were simply extending them in the wrong direction. You were colouring in a face that points towards the viewer, but you were also extending the lines towards the viewer in boxes like 212, 213, 247, and many others. That serves no purpose here - we need to look at how those lines are converging as they move further away from the viewer.
Your overall linework is improving, but its slow. Always remember that when applying the ghosting method, the actual execution of the stroke must be confident - no hesitation, no fear of making a mistakes. Mistakes may occur, but at this point theres nothing you can do to avoid it (once youve moved past the planning and preparation phases). There is still a lot we can with a line that is smooth and consistent even if it misses the mark - but a line that wavers isnt going to be terribly useful. Also, of course, make sure youre drawing from the shoulder.
So by and large, youve drawn a fuck ton of boxes, but it looks like you didnt really do a great job of actually applying the concepts covered on the challenge page notes and the video. Id recommend rewatching the video, rereading the notes, and at the very least doing another 50 boxes. Show me that youve absorbed the instructions, that you can apply them as theyre laid out, and that you can analyze and learn from the mistakes that are brought to light (in terms of where your sets of parallel lines fail to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing point).
L2D_
2018-11-16 20:06
Sometimes it takes me a bit to absorb information correctly. Am I more or less on the right track with this box? If so, I'll continue on to the 50 extra boxes.
https://imgur.com/a/xgrjnUo
Uncomfortable
2018-11-16 20:07
So far so good - but tell me what the line extensions tell you about the mistakes you're making when constructing this box.
L2D_
2018-11-16 22:45
My lines are converging at multiple points instead of one. On the left side, am I converging too soon?
Uncomfortable
2018-11-16 22:47
Yup, you got it. Go ahead and do the extra 50.
L2D_
2018-11-16 22:55
Awesome, thanks man.
L2D_
2018-11-19 03:05
Here is the extra 50. I ran out of my .5 fine liner had to go down to my .3.
https://imgur.com/a/WRt4f8J
Uncomfortable
2018-11-19 21:43
This is getting better, and your line quality has improved as well. You should be good to move onto lesson 2, but there are a few things that you need to continue to keep an eye on:
You still tend to have one line in your sets that goes awry - it's almost always one of the middle two (rather than the two outer lines). When drawing your sets of parallel lines, try and think about the angle between the line you're drawing and the others in its set as they leave the vanishing point. If you have a very small angle between two lines, then by the time they reach the box the difference in trajectory will be negligible. This means you'll be able to draw those lines as being virtually parallel to one another. I explain this further in these notes.
Put some more variance in the orientations of your boxes - yours here are pretty much all oriented roughly the same way.
As you continue to move forwards, be sure to include some freely rotated boxes into your regular warmup routine, as this is an area that is definitely going to continue to require training.
L2D_
2018-11-22 18:11
Yeah, I think I know what I'm doing wrong there and I will continue practicing rotating the boxes. Thanks for the critique.
Zulexo
2018-11-14 19:57
Hey Uncomfortable! I finally finished my 250 box challenge.
https://imgur.com/a/oYpwA9J
Midway through the challenge I changed my pen to a better quality one. That's why the lines get thinner at some point. Had trouble at the beggining to find a good way of imagining vanishing points but I got the hang of it after a while I think.
Uncomfortable
2018-11-15 19:42
Great work! Youve shown a great deal of progress over the set - by about 180, you really solidify that grasp of 3D space. You demonstrate a lot of patience and care with your work through the set, and it really pays off. You take the time to apply the line extension method to each and every line, and youre very analyzing what they bring to light and incorporating them into your next page.
I really have no complaints whatsoever - youve done a fantastic job. Keep up the great work, consider this challenge complete, and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
[deleted]
2018-11-15 15:40
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2018-11-15 19:46
Nice work! You start off from a definite position of strength, and do show some significant - though more subtle - improvement over the set. One recommendation that I have is to think about a given set of parallel lines not only where it reaches the box youre drawing, but also the angles at which these lines leave their shared vanishing point. If two lines have a relatively small angle between them where they leave the VP, then the difference in their orientation at the box is actually going to be so minimal that you can get away with drawing them as being more or less parallel. This helps avoid issues where those lines converge much sooner than the actual VP. I demonstrate this concept further in these notes.
Aside from that, keep up the great work. Ill go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.
list634
2018-11-16 16:08
Try and error sometime, some box just guess or ghosting very careful, and so somehow I finished my challenge: https://imgur.com/a/0nmUXPz
Uncomfortable
2018-11-16 23:28
Overall you've done a pretty great job. Your constructions improved a fair bit over the set once you got the hang of things, and your use of line weight helped add solidity and cohesiveness to the forms. It is worth mentioning that your use of the line extensions was a bit inconsistent - sometimes you didn't do it at all, sometimes you only did it for certain sets of lines, and so on.
As an error-checking technique, it gets to be particularly useful for people in your situation, whose boxes are visibly coming along really well, because they can highlight the kinds of mistakes we can't identify with the naked eye. So it's going to be particularly important for you to continue applying this technique for all three sets of parallel lines, so you can avoid plateauing. You want to make sure that all the time you put into improving your skills yields results, rather than just practicing the same thing without any awareness of where you have room to grow.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Pops_Maellard
2018-11-18 15:54
Finished! Still a lot of room for improvement but it's definitely getting better : https://imgur.com/a/zQFDSvD
Uncomfortable
2018-11-18 21:15
Very nice work! I think you're doing great, and I can see clear trends of improvement, and a shift in how you think about the lines you're drawing in relation to the different elements of the construction. There are still a few places here and there where lines that are particularly close in orientation end up going off at weird angles here and there, but they become considerably less common throughout, and by the end appear to be more like outliers.
That said, it does help to think about the angles at which a line leaves its vanishing point, and how that relates to those of other lines within the same set. I explain this further in these notes, but the short of it is that if two lines leave the vanishing point with a minimal angle between them, then by the time they reach the box they're basically running nearly parallel to one another, and can be drawn as such.
Anyway, keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
[deleted]
2018-11-18 16:03
That was quite the ride. I have to say this challenge really helped me getting more precise and accepting mistakes when they happen. I had to watch your videos many times before "getting it", but i am overall satisfied with how it turned out. Also, i somehow did a wrong count and ended up with 252 boxes.
Here is the link: https://imgur.com/a/WUH9Vet
Uncomfortable
2018-11-18 21:24
Nice work! I can definitely see a considerable improvement in your awareness of how these forms sit in space, and the relationships between the various members of a given set of parallel lines. Eventually you hit your stride and really start to nail them more consistently.
I have two suggestions to make, as you continue to move forwards:
Firstly, when drawing a line, think about the angle at which it's going to leave its vanishing point, and how that relates to the angle of the other lines in its same set. Reason being, if you have two lines that depart from the VP with a pretty small angle between them, then that difference becomes even more negligible by the time they reach the box, and they run effectively parallel to one another. Being aware of this can help you to avoid issues where those lines accidentally converge too quickly. I explain this further in these notes.
Also, I noticed that you definitely took to your line weight with gusto. As you move forwards, try to be a little less heavy handed with it. The thing to keep in mind with line weight is that it's all about the relationships between the lines - when one line is a little heavier than another, the subconscious picks up on it, and interprets that information in a meaningful way. When you go overboard and make things WAY thicker, then it's kind of akin to screaming at the viewer rather than gently whispering in their ear. The latter is really what you want to go for. That said, this is generally the first step, before learning to achieve those subtle shifts, so keep up the good work.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2. Oh, and since you drew 252, you're going to have to pick two of these and take them out behind the shed. We only brought enough food for two-fifty.
[deleted]
2018-11-18 21:38
I don't have the heart to do it. Those are my boxes after all :'(
Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
[deleted]
2018-11-25 18:26
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2018-11-26 21:06
Overall you're showing a good deal of progress. That said, even if you weren't, I'd backhand you for presenting your boxes as "shitty". On one hand, a lot of this is about confidence and mindset, but more than that, among a lot of people it tends to be a strategy (whether intentional or not) to preempt criticism. If you come up front declaring your work to be of poor quality, then any negatives raised in the review become somewhat moot and loose their sting. When sharing this stuff with others, put forward your most confident face and have some pride - even if it's not entirely real yet.
So by and large you've done a pretty good job with this set, and show progress with your linework and the solidity of your constructions. There's still room for growth of course, both in the confidence of those lines (to keep them smooth) as well as in getting your lines to converge consistently towards their shared vanishing points, but you've definitely come a long way.
When it comes to the latter, I am noticing that you have a tendency to have one of those lines veer off on its own path, while the other three remain fairly consistent. Usually it's one of the middle two of any given set, which also tends to be the that has a close neighbour, since the middle two are usually going to be following a very similar trajectory.
For this reason, it's important to think about all the lines that belong to a given set when drawing one of its members - including those that haven't yet been drawn. Think about the angle at which they all leave their vanishing point, and the angle between it and its neighbours. When you find a pair that actually leaves at a fairly similar trajectory, the angle between them is going to become quite negligible by the time it reaches the box, meaning you can generally just draw them as being perfectly parallel to one another rather than guessing their relationship.
I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Nihilisus
2018-11-27 10:44
Here goes my 250 Box Challenge.
As mentioned briefly before I have already done all the exercises (but without critique) up to the plants lesson where I got frustrated and stopped. This time I'm planing on finally going trough the whole Draw a Box curriculum.
I did lesson one and the Box challenge again because you can always get some more exercise, right? But my question is if I should also do Lesson 2 and the cylinder challenge again or just go the the plants straight away? I could upload my old stuff but I'm not sure if it would present my current Skill-lvl right. I'm guessing I should do it again and have you take a look at it?
Thanks for the help!
Uncomfortable
2018-11-27 21:13
Very nice work! The fact that this is your second time around the box challenge definitely shows, as you start from a position of experience. That said, I can see some more subtle improvements with your linework as well as the construction of your boxes, and I believe the line extensions are definitely helping a fair bit.
Looking at your later work, there are still some places where you tend to have one line out of your sets that doesn't quite run consistent with the others, so that is something you'll want to continue to work on. Out of the four of a given set, it's generally one of the middle two - this is a common problem I see, and you can help resolve it by thinking about the angle at which these lines leave the vanishing point. Usually the middle two of a given set will have a fairly small angle between them where they originate, and this angle becomes negligible by the time they reach the box. At that point it's usually fair to just draw them as being parallel to one another. These notes explain this concept further.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge complete, so keep up the good work. I do want you to move onto lesson 2 next - ultimately while the previous work you've done has certainly set you up in a better position to tackle this work, it's effectively out of date, and the results themselves aren't going to be of much value to me. I need to see a current attempt at the material so I can continue to identify areas of weakness that are currently relevant.
Ytegog
2018-11-29 05:32
Hi there, here is my submission for the 250 Box challenge.
I have done it over a pretty long time (9+ months) so my results have been inconsistent through time, and things that I thougt I had grasped got "lost" from session to session. Closer to the end I started finding the see-through point before the last point, which helped me get better estimation for the last point's position; however I'm not sure if that's a bad habit that I developed.
Thanks in advance for your precious advice.
Uncomfortable
2018-11-29 21:54
Whew, that's a long time! I'm very pleased that you stuck through it though. There are definite points where I can see your confidence and general awareness of space and form improving - the biggest appears to be around 140, where your boxes start to feel less like a general collection of lines and more like individual, cohesive forms. This generally holds pretty well through the rest of the set, as you continue to improve with the convergences of your lines, though in less overt and obvious ways.
I think the trick to figuring out the back corner is to actually stop thinking about the corners altogether. Your approach doesn't sound wrong or anything, and it's certainly not a bad habit to do things that way, but I generally find that the most success comes from focusing purely on the sets of lines. That is, when you're drawing a line, focus on all the others that share its vanishing point - including those that have not yet been drawn.
By thinking about it this way, you're going to be more aware of their convergences and are going to go to greater lengths to keep them consistent. That's ultimately what throws the back corner off - as we build up our box, the little inconsistencies in the convergences of sets of lines accumulate, and eventually we end up with a back corner (really, a set of 3 back edges that meet at that corner) that simply doesn't work as well as the rest, because it must bear the weight of all the built-up mistakes. It's a symptom, not really the problem.
These notes may help as you continue to move forwards.
Anyway, you've done quite well here, so I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work.
EvelinaStamati
2018-11-30 15:21
Hello Mr. Uncomfortable! Here are my extra boxes. It took me much longer than I thought, but I didn't want to draw without thinking everything through - I wanted to have a clear mind and I tried to keep in mind your advice. I am satisfied with the result in that I can see I have improved and I can tell where my mistakes are. While drawing the axes I used the black line to indicate the corrected one. I feel more confident now. Please let me hear (or read actually) your thoughts on this. Thank you!
250 Boxes Extra Eve
Uncomfortable
2018-11-30 21:53
You've got a great deal of improvement here compared to your last set. Your lines are looking much more confident, and as a result are generally much smoother, and your forms are more solid. The general range of mistakes is definitely getting smaller (meaning you're getting more accurate in your estimation) as well.
Marking in the correct line is totally fine, but if at all possible I would recommend doing it in a colour other than the one you used to draw the box initially, just so you can have a visible and logical separation. While at this point there's little risk of this, I generally don't like people correcting things with the same colour lest it develop into a habit of correcting mistakes in their regular drawings.
EvelinaStamati
2018-11-30 22:06
Thank you very much! I'll move on to Lesson 2 then. I think it really helped me to draw the boxes, having your advice in mind. Thank you! I'll draw the correction lines with another colour from now on too.
pentsk
2018-12-01 19:57
Hello Uncomfortable. Here is my submission for this challenge.
https://mega.nz/#F!PCwl2YaK!zGauo8tpIzJGQi_sv2IjOA
I muscled through some of the pages while being dead tired, so some of the boxes are numbered incorrectly (or just plain horrible) and I apologise for that. Interestingly I only noticed improvement in result and technique once I reached the 200s. Mostly in my ability to super impose over my box lines for line weight.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-02 20:42
A couple things before we get into the critique. First, I actually fished this post out of the spam filter - my guess is because of the mega.nz link. I'd recommend using some other host (I generally recommend imgur - some people shy aware from it because it fucks up a post's ordering, but I don't mind if images are submitted out of sequence).
The other thing was that it seems you've disabled your flair on this subreddit (on the sidebar of the desktop website you should see a checkbox for "Show my flair on this subreddit"). I use the flair to keep track of who is and isn't eligible for critiques as well as which lessons a student has completed. I'd appreciate it if you could reenable it.
I can definitely see a good deal of improvement in the confidence of your linework and your overall construction. You've definitely put the challenge to good use and by the end your forms feel considerable more solid, and I think the subtle touch of line weight here and there definitely goes a long way towards helping in that area.
There are still some mistakes I'm noticing though, mostly in terms of the convergences of your lines that you'll want to keep an eye on as you continue to move forwards.
Mainly it's one sort of issue that I see in boxes like 246 (green lines), 253 (green lines), 245 (blue lines), 251 (green lines). Basically, these lines tend to converge together in pairs rather than all meeting together at the same point. This usually happens when a student is more focused on the planes to which each edge belongs - you'll find that the pairs that converge early are usually belonging to the same plane.
Instead, try and think about all four lines in a given set - including those that have not yet been drawn - and how they should be converging together. This isn't by any means an uncommon sort of problem, and it's one you'll definitely be able to solve by keeping this in mind as you move forwards.
Also worth mentioning - though you worked while being tired, and it may play a role in these kinds of convergence issues, it doesn't show in your actual linework. That said, if at all possible (I know people have scheduling problems and it's simply not doable otherwise) try and sit down to do this work when you're in a better position to focus, so as to make the best of the time spent.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.
pentsk
2018-12-02 22:12
Thank you for the critique. I'll use a different host for submitting my homework from now on.
I have a quick question about my daily warm-ups, how should I incorporate drawing boxes into it? Or better put, how should I arrange my warp-up routine in general?
I typically pick a part of a lesson (say, Lesson 1, Part 1), and do all the exercises in it within 15 minutes (e.g. I'll draw 6-10 lines of various lengths with a straight edge, and super impose over them. Then ghost some planes. I usually skip the ghosting lines exercise since I'm already doing that with the planes). I do this with Part 1 & 2 of Lesson 1, for Part 3, I normally skip the Plotted Perspective exercise because it doesn't seem very useful in terms of building line confidence or ability to wing my perspective, and I take the whole 15 warm-up time for that day to do one of them. Warming up using Part 3 typically lasts 3 days. This is how I manage a (somewhat) fair rotation to prevent neglecting
anymost of the exercises. And this is where my question stems from, I don't really see an obvious way to slot in drawing boxes as a warm-up under this system without any ambiguity. Advice on a solid warp-up routine would be a appreciated.P.S. I'm doing the rotated boxes exercise for today's warp-up.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-02 22:18
You made some good calls there in terms of skipping ghosted lines in favour of ghosted planes (I'm working on rebuilding the website and restructuring the lessons for christmas and have actually written in that exercise's new description to do just that), and skipping the plotted perspective as well. That said, sticking to 5 minutes per exercise is still best even if it means you're only going to get a taste of a given exercise.
So with the rotated boxes, I MIGHT spend up to 10 minutes, but really I'm only going to fuss over building up one quadrant rather than the whole thing.
As for doing a few freely rotated boxes, I'd just slot it in as another exercise to add to the pool, as you'll be doing for the exercises in lesson 2 as well. It's all to make sure that you continually get a chance to employ the skills involved in each of these exercises every now and then, rather than letting them get rusty. So even if you only end up doing freely rotated boxes once a week, or even less, it's not such a bad thing.
Lastly, if there's some area of weakness you specifically feel needs more attention, you are welcome to slot those in more frequently, just make you're not letting any of the others get completely ignored.
KiMichael
2018-12-02 15:25
Hello again, Uncomfortable. Here are my 250 boxes imgur . (Here, if you want them ordered Y.disk )
The hardest part was scanning them :)
Uncomfortable
2018-12-02 21:06
Thanks for posting them in two locations! I usually prefer imgur because it's much easier to navigate through, but in the case of the challenge being able to see them in order as well was definitely an advantage. Just wanted to let you know that I really do appreciate the extra effort.
You are definitely showing growth in terms of both the confidence of your lines and the overall solidity of your forms, but I am noticing one thing that may have held you back somewhat - you seem to have focused pretty strictly on boxes with very dramatic foreshortening.
This generally suggests one of two things about an object - that it is either very, very large (like when you look at a tall building from the ground, its top is generally much smaller visually than its base) or that it is extremely close to your eye.
What you're missing here are boxes with shallower foreshortening, where the far end is not significantly smaller than the closer end and where the vanishing points are positioned much further from the box itself (often far off the page). This suggests a more relatable, human scale, which is something that will be used frequently.
Now both of these present their own difficulties. With dramatic foreshortening, mistakes become considerably more obvious because you can see the convergence right there on the page. With shallower foreshortening, it becomes easier to accidentally have your edges diverge where they should be converging (albeit subtly).
So, long story short, while you're making solid progress with these more dramatic boxes (and are definitely getting quite consistent with your convergences), you will want to continue to focus on shallower ones as you continue to move forwards. I will be marking this challenge as complete, so you can move onto lesson 2, but be sure to incorporate these into your regular warmup routine as they'll come into play a great deal.
petyrlannister
2018-12-06 01:05
Got it done. phew https://imgur.com/a/E8FcHVV
Uncomfortable
2018-12-06 22:14
You definitely got off to a great start and showed considerable progress for a while. It's really unfortunate that you stopped applying the extension method however. There were still plenty of areas where you were making certain mistakes (like how in 72, the lines going up and to the right were converging in pairs rather than all four together at one point, a common mistake that comes from thinking more about how the planes exist independently). Deciding not to apply the extension method afterwards didn't fix the mistakes, it just made it much easier to ignore them. Your time and effort on the last 150 could have been spent much better, and you could have solidified things to a much greater degree.
That said, your boxes are still looking pretty decent, though there is plenty of room to improve on keeping your convergences consistent. You're good to move onto lesson 2, but I'd recommend incorporating some freely rotated boxes (and applying the extension method to error check them) into your warmup routine. Also, it wouldn't hurt to take the last couple pages of boxes or so and applying the method there to familiarize yourself with the more subtle mistakes you're making.
[deleted]
2018-12-06 15:55
Done. https://imgur.com/a/fiPBJp2
Uncomfortable
2018-12-06 22:18
Nice work! I'm very pleased to see that you stuck with the extension method through most of this, and I can definitely see considerable improvement on the consistency of your convergences over the course of the set. Towards the end you're really doing a remarkably good job of estimating the angles of your lines, and the resulting boxes appear much more solid and believable for it.
One thing I notice here and there is that you've got some places where you double up your lines in a way that doesn't suggest you're adding line weight. Usually it's one line that looks a bit weak and rough, alongside another that looks darker and more confident. Whatever's going on here, make sure you're only executing one mark per line, and that it's done using the ghosting method with full confidence behind your execution. Line weight should be applied the same way (using the ghosting method to go over an existing line), but never follow up with an extra stroke by reflex without the appropriate planning and preparation.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
petyrlannister
2018-12-06 22:27
Yes, I admit that I let the tedium get to me rather than focusing on improving my mistakes. Ill work on that in the future. Just for clarity, Can you elaborate on the thinking about planes existing independently line?
Uncomfortable
2018-12-06 22:44
Basically, there's many ways of thinking of a box:
Eight corners.
Twelve lines.
Six planes/faces.
Each of these impact how we think about the construction of a box and how the components relate to each other. As such, none of those I just listed are ideal.
Instead, we think of our boxes as being composed of 3 sets of parallel lines. Each set contains 4 lines, but we think of the whole set together. So what you were demonstrating there was that you were thinking of one plane at a time, and as a result, the parallel lines of the given plane converged nicely together, but ended up somewhat disconnected from the plane on the opposite side of the box.
[deleted]
2018-12-14 19:52
250 Box Challenge is finally complete. Took me a looooong time but I put a lot of work in, average 30 min. per page, so I think that's around 24 hours of boxes. I feel good about my improvement and being able to make planes vanish towards the same point without making the vanishing point too dramatic/close. At the beginning I didn't go back and check the vanishing points but I began making it a point because I see the value in it. Some lines could be straighter, still finding the balance between the straightness/inaccuracy that comes with speed and the accuracy/wobbliness that comes with being slow.
Part 1: https://imgur.com/a/j7F3Pbg
Part 2: https://imgur.com/a/pDo6fjy
Uncomfortable
2018-12-15 20:09
I noticed that you're currently not pledged, so technically not eligible for the private critiques. That said, I did check my records and you'd been pledged for a while, and did pay last month, so I'll go ahead and do the critique anyway. Also the box challenges are generally pretty easy to critique.
You've done some pretty great work here. Early on you were definitely a little less attached to the idea of extending your lines, but admittedly I am glad that you at least did them intermittently, rather than trying them a bit and then giving up for a huge period of time. In doing so, you were periodically checking your work, identifying what you had to keep in mind, and even if it wasn't being applied across the board, it was a much better strategy than it could have been.
I am, admittedly, very pleased with the fact that through your second half you committed to them much more, and it's fair to say that through this challenge you improve a great deal not only with keeping your convergences more and more consistent, but also with the confidence of your linework. By the end your boxes look quite solid, your use of the ghosting method is on point, and your rate of success improves considerably.
One kind of mistake I tend to see here and there in your work is the tendency to have your lines converge in pairs. It's a common issue, and you actually don't do it that often, but basically it occurs when we focus too much on all the lines that define a particular plane that we may be working on, rather than always thinking about all of the lines that are going to run parallel to the one we're drawing. It may seem kind of counterintuitive, but when you go to draw a given stroke, instead of thinking about the corners at which it meets other lines, or the plane to which it belongs, you'll achieve the greatest success if you focus on all the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point - including those that haven't yet been drawn.
It can also help to think about how these lines leave the vanishing point, and the angles between them. Those with very small angles are going to be virtually parallel by the time they reach the box itself, so this can be pretty helpful to consider. I explain it further here, though I get the feeling that based on your work, you do already understand this concept.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You should be good to move onto lesson 2.
[deleted]
2018-12-15 21:36
Hi there! Ill read the critique when I have more time, and thank you for your time and reviewing this in regards to my past pledges. I was unaware that I am no longer pledged, I will absolutely be renewing my patreon if it is expired.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-15 21:40
Oh damnit, I messed up. I screwed up something in my records, and accidentally assigned your reddit username to the wrong patreon, who's since cancelled. My mistake! It should now be fixed.
[deleted]
2018-12-16 18:43
Thank you for fixing it!
bellebethcooper
2018-12-15 05:30
Hi again! Here's my 250 box challenge.
My main concern with this challenge is that I feel I learned to make boxes from all different "Y" shapes, but I didn't learn what "Y" shape to use to make a box I thought of in my head. If I saw it in front of me I had a better chance of figuring it out, and I played with that a bit near the end, but I'm worried I've learned how to do a "trick" using a "Y" shape to draw a box, rather than understanding how to draw any kind of box I want. I'm not sure if I've missed something about the challenge or if I was only meant to get this far in my understanding by this point.
Thanks in advance for your critique!
Uncomfortable
2018-12-15 20:22
Overall you've done pretty well. Your linework started out a little shaky at first, but by the end became much more confident and consistent, so that's a pretty big win. I'm also pleased that you did apply the line extension method, but I did catch a few on the last page where you extended certain lines in the wrong direction (the red lines in 246, 245, 243, 242, 248, 247, etc). So that's a bit weird. Extending the lines off into the distance is an important part of this exercise, as we're studying how they converge rather than how they diverge.
Anyway, as for your question, as with a lot of the exercises and techniques we get into here, it is necessary to think beyond the technique itself and think to what it implies or represents. This is often something that emerges through repetition - hence the reason we're doing so many of these boxes.
The Y method is less about the Y shape itself, but rather about how it gives us a single line point to each of the three vanishing points of a box. It doesn't have to be configured in a Y, though usually we're working with the corner that is positioned closest to us, and we usually do get a Y. Sometimes however - if we're oriented more towards staring down one of the box's edges (something more similar to 2 point perspective) or down one of the box's faces (something more similar to 1 point perspective), then the angle relationships will no longer match a proper "Y". But the concept of having one arm pointing towards each vanishing point still stands (if you're confused about an arm can point towards the third vanishing point in two point perspective, these notes and their explanation of "vanishing points at infinity" may help - they're from the new lesson/website content that will be released on christmas, which includes a full revision of lesson 1's boxes lecture).
So basically, while the Y itself doesn't survive all permutations of a box, the concept the Y represents still does. This exercise is less about teaching you to employ a certain technique, but rather about using a technique to get you started, and developing your mental model of 3D space along the way.
Anyway, I hope that helps. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
bellebethcooper
2018-12-15 20:31
Thanks so much for the quick critique!
I see exactly what you mean about those red lines. I don't know why I got mixed up about those ones but I can clearly see the mistake now.
Thanks for the explanation about the Y, too. When I started trying to draw boxes I had in mind near the end, rather than just drawing a Y and waiting to see what kind of box it turned into, I sometimes didn't know how to draw the box I'd thought of with a Y. Now I see the Y won't always be present, so that makes sense.
I'll keep these notes in mind when drawing boxes in my warm ups. Thanks again!
steadyh32
2018-12-15 14:30
Hey there,
Finally I'm done with my 250 boxes .
My struggle that still lasts after my final box was establishing the initial outline of the box, i.e the vanishing points using mostly eye measuring.
With wrong initial vanishing points, there isn't a way all of the 3 inner lines to match in the same point, so I had to make a compromise and chose 2/3 lines that match and that's why most of the time one of the inner lines go in different direction than others.
I didn't go all the way with the pen, i.e. ghosting it and placing the points within or outisde the paper, but just trying to establish the angle of each line in a small segment of the page.
Looking forward for your critique, Thanks :)
Uncomfortable
2018-12-15 20:29
Overall you've done a pretty great job and have shown definite improvement in terms of getting your convergences to behave more consistently. The execution of your lines also gains a greater confidence as you go, which diminishes the slight hesitation I see near the beginning of the set.
With your issue, the key to the problem is a little counter-intuitive. Basically, you're struggling with that back corner. It's a common problem, but the solution comes from not fussing so much over corners themselves. When adding a line to our box construction, there are a few different sets of things we can think about.
We can think about all the lines that meet at a given corner we're working from.
We can think about all the lines that make a particular face we're constructing.
We can think about all the lines that run parallel to the one we're draiwng.
Most people will do #1, at first. Sometimes people progress into #2, which is a little more effective. #3 however is the correct approach - you focus only on maintaining a consistent convergence between all the lines that share a vanishing point (that is, the set of parallel lines). If you achieve that, then the rest of it falls into place. That means thinking not only about the line you're drawing and those you've already drawn - but members of that set of parallel lines that have not yet been drawn as well.
Additionally, it does help to think about how these lines leave the vanishing point itself, and the angles between them as they do so. When you have lines that have a very small angle between them, by the time they reach the box, they'll be running virtually parallel to one another. This is a very helpful relationship that we can take advantage of. I explain this concept further in these notes.
Anyway, you've done well. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
BixHD
2018-12-16 17:33
Finally done. https://imgur.com/a/tSy2NaZ
This took quite a while (although someone apparently took 9 months?); I think I improved nicely enough, but my inner lines are always a struggle...
Uncomfortable
2018-12-17 20:50
Nice work! You've definitely progressed a great deal, both in terms of your linework and the confidence behind each stroke, as well as the consistency with which your sets of parallel lines converge towards their shared vanishing points.
There are of course still some little hiccups here and there, and I'd suggest two things as you continue to work on them:
When drawing a line, sometimes we have a tendency to think about the other lines that it will meet at a given corner, or the other lines that share a plane with it. Instead, think only about the other lines that run parallel to it, including those that haven't yet been drawn. Only focus on how it converges with them, towards their shared vanishing point, and don't let anything else distract you.
While thinking about these other lines to which your stroke is parallel, think about how they all leave the vanishing point and the angle between them. Any lines that have a very small angle between them as they leave the VP are going to be running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box, so you can take advantage of this relationship. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
BixHD
2018-12-18 03:07
Thanks for the feedback! Question: I've heard that you're releasing a rework of the lessons later this month; are there gonna be any significant changes I'll miss out on if I do lesson 2 before the change?
Uncomfortable
2018-12-18 03:21
If you can, I would recommend waiting a week. There is an extra exercise attached to lesson 2, but in general the lesson material is (hopefully) much more thorough.
LearningForLucy
2018-12-18 00:15
Here are my boxes, their lives are in your hands now.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-18 21:54
Very nice work! Overall you're demonstrating a significant improvement in your constructions. Your convergences gradually become more and more consistent as well, and you're demonstrating the ability to think ahead to lines that haven't yet been drawn.
One thing that will help as you continue to push forward is, as you draw a line and consider all the lines that run parallel to it, think about how they all leave the vanishing point and the angles that sit between them. As mentioned here, when the angles are small when leaving the vanishing point, two given lines will run virtually parallel to one another as they reach the box. This makes for a pretty useful thing to keep in mind while actually drawing those lines.
One other thing to focus on as you continue to move forwards is your use of the ghosting method. It's coming along well, but I am noticing - especially when compared to the red extension lines - that your lines do waver a little. Not in the sort of wobbling we see from hesitation, but just from needing to prepare a little more beforehand.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete so feel free to move onto lesson 2. I do recommend though that if you can, wait until December 25th before you start - that's when the rebuild/revision of drawabox (a massive update) is going to be released, and the content should improve considerably.
Hopely
2018-12-18 01:43
https://imgur.com/a/nLizthq
There was a very long hiatus about halfway through that, hopefully, didn't impede my improvement.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-18 22:03
Oh damn, it certainly was! Overall you've done a pretty great job with the boxes, and you have demonstrated considerable improvement over the set. It is a little unfortunate that you didn't apply that line extension method across the board (I thought that maybe you'd started so long ago that I hadn't talked about the technique but you did use it in a couple of instances). This technique allows you to check how far off your convergences were, and what the nature of your mistakes were, and can be very helpful in getting the most out of the exercise.
I'd recommend going back over your last page, just for your own sake, and extending those lines to see where your boxes can continue to use improvement.
Also worth mentioning, though it's more difficult to relate this to specific boxes without the extensions, but when drawing a line, don't think about the lines with which they share a corner, or the lines with which they share a plane. Instead, think only about the other lines with which the one you're drawing are parallel.
When you do so, think about the angles at which they leave the vanishing point, specifically the angles between them. Those with small angles between them will run roughly parallel to each other by the time they reach the box, which is a very useful thing to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, though I would recommend waiting a week til after December 25th. That's when a large rebuild/revision of the website will finally launch, including significant updates to the website content and how it's delivered and organized.
Hopely
2018-12-19 03:17
Thank you for the feedback.
Should I use the line extension method for each box? The page seemed to get pretty busy after just two boxes.
Regarding focusing on a single set of parallel lines: Is it okay to be drawing a line past the point it intersects with a perpendicular in order to focus on it's parallels? Does that problem reduce or disappear with experience?
Uncomfortable
2018-12-19 04:59
Apply the line extension method to each box. The clutter doesn't matter much presentation-wise, and while it'll get a little bit tough by the end to identify what's going on with your boxes, it should still be possible with a bit of focus and attention.
As for your other question, you can overshoot your ghosting motion, but not the line itself. Try not to end up with a box that has a bunch of lines sticking out from it (before actually applying the extension method). And yes, as you continue to practice and develop your understanding of space and the nature of convergence of parallel lines when drawn in 2D, the inaccuracies do decrease in intensity. One would imagine they disappear too, though mastery is a far, far off goal for all of us.
aaronstuver
2018-12-21 01:36
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A077fd12e-4e8a-44a8-a38c-55098e98f0ca
Heres my submission.
Thanks!
Uncomfortable
2018-12-21 19:46
That was pretty quick! I can see that you took certain unfortunate shortcuts (only extending some lines as you got further into the set) which likely reduced the effectiveness of the exercise, but by and large I can see considerable improvement in a number of areas. The confidence of your linework and the solidity of your constructions has gotten considerably better. Your estimation for convergences definitely improved as well, though you definitely could have gotten much more out of this.
Extending all your lines really is important, and this becomes even more so as you get better and better, because the mistakes we make have a tendency to become more and more subtle as we improve. If you extend only certain sets of lines, then you might get better on those directions, but the other sides tend to compensate - if left unchecked, then they can go a bit crazy without you realizing it. That's why applying the method evenly across all axes is pretty important.
Also, try extending your lines further - a little bit is nice, but to get a really good sense of the nature of your lines and how they're converging towards their shared vanishing points, extending a line to twice its original length will tell you a great deal more. I'd recommend going over your last page in this manner - don't worry if things overlap. The different colours generally help making things a little more clear and easier to track.
Lastly, based on your last boxes, there's two things I want to suggest:
When drawing a line, don't think about the lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it shares a plane. Think about all the other lines that are to run parallel to it (of which there are 3), including those that haven't yet been drawn. Think about how they all converge towards their vanishing point and ignore the others.
Furthermore, as you consider this, think about the angles between each pair of lines as they leave the VP. Lines with small angles at this point are going to end up running virtually parallel to one another when they reach the box itself, which is a very helpful thing to take advantage of. I explain this further here: https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You've done a good job, but you could have done better. Even if it means taking more time, do everything in your power to follow the instructions carefully and completely.
Corncanm
2018-12-21 13:25
https://imgur.com/a/V0KLuoX
Submitting 250boxes.
Hope this goes well.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-21 20:15
You're definitely showing a good deal of progress. There are a couple things I noticed:
Early on, your linework was definitely a little more hesitant and wobbly. This got better as you moved through the set, and by the end your linework was considerably more confident, which is great to see.
As you progressed through the set, I can see a tendency where you brought the vanishing points closer and closer to your box, causing the foreshortening to get more and more dramatic. This suggests to me that rather than improving how you handled a given problem (estimating convergence towards a variety of vanishing point locations) you changed the parameters of the problem to make it more manageable. By bringing the vanishing points closer, you changed the situation so it was easier for you to gauge those convergences more accurately. So, if you were to try to draw a box with shallower foreshortening (which is common amongst smaller, human-sized objects or things that are farther away), you would likely still struggle a great deal. Both shallow and dramatic foreshortening presents different kinds of challenges and are both important, so it's best to get a good mix of these going all through your exercise rather than having such a gradual shift like this.
I hope you still plan to go over your last page with the line extension method to check your mistakes and identify where you need to improve. I'm assuming you left it blank for the sake of presentation, but it's always valuable to reflect upon your work in a constructive manner.
Anyway, you have definitely shown a good deal of progress over this set. Make sure you get some more practice in on shallower boxes - you can focus on them when doing warmups at the beginning of each sitting, as you continue to move forwards.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Since you haven't submitted lesson 1 yet, I'll be expecting that next.
Corncanm
2018-12-26 02:29
Thank you for the feedback. I now know what I've not been doing.
I'll keep on drawing shallower boxes between warmup times. and also submit lesson 1 materials.
jagodapo
2018-12-22 10:37
Here is my 250 box challenge. I would appreciate your feedback https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yhx8jxuqoz13fgs/AABR6iseIwpA-rcuOS5x6JCpa?dl=0
Uncomfortable
2018-12-23 22:43
You've shown considerable improvement over the set, and I think a lot of it comes from the patience and conscientiousness you've demonstrated in applying the line extension method to each and every mark you put down. It's clear that you went to great lengths to assess those convergences and identify where you were making mistakes. Your linework is looking confident, your line weights go to great lengths to make each box feel cohesive, and your constructions are consistent and solid. Very well done. You did do the last two pages in pencil, but I'll overlook that this one time.
One suggestion that may help you continue to improve at a decent rate is that when you draw a given line, and are thinking about all the other lines to which it is parallel, think about how they all leave their shared vanishing point. Those lines that leave the VP with a very small angle between them are going to end up running virtually parallel as they reach the box - a fact that can be very useful when constructing it. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete.
duneghost
2018-12-23 01:50
Hi Uncomfortable, here are my 250 boxes: https://imgur.com/a/V57elbz
I'm still having some trouble with wobbly lines, but I am working on drawing from my shoulder and using the ghosting exercise as a warmup. Thanks in advance for the feedback.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-23 23:08
You've definitely made progress over this set, though I do agree that some of your linework is still falling just a liiiiittle bit short, and I think it comes down to confidence. From the looks of it, you're drawing a little slower, and while your lines aren't really wobbly per-se, they are kind of stiff in a way that comes from a line that lacks the driving confidence. In this way you can detect the subtle hints of hesitation that in turn make the boxes feel less solid. So try and push yourself to draw more confidently, even if it means risking a little mistake here or there. A confident, smooth line is still something we can use even if it misses the mark a little. A stiff or wobbly line isn't going to be good for much.
Additionally, while you definitely made progress by the end with your convergences, you did have a tendency to have one line in a given set go way off. This is because when you go to draw a line, you're likely thinking about the other lines with which it shares a corner, or perhaps the lines with which it shares a plane. Instead, think about the lines with which it is parallel - all four of the set, including those that are not yet drawn. When doing so, think about how they leave their vanishing point, and the angles between each pair of lines. Those with really small angles between them are going to end up running virtually parallel to one another as they reach the box itself, which is a very useful fact. These are also often the lines you end up having trouble with. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next one.
HeXaGoN62
2018-12-30 07:13
Hey Uncomfortable. I tried to hold back on the nasty writing, but I couldn't forever. Perhaps I'm doomed to be like Doc.
Here's my boxes: https://imgur.com/a/Z699gUq
As a side note, I had 3 Faber Castells die in the first 100 boxes or so, and then for the rest of them, my Staedtler pen somehow survived and did very well.
Uncomfortable
2018-12-30 20:22
I can definitely see vast improvement on both the solidity and consistency of your constructions, as well as your linework over all. The first 100 or so were a bit shaky and rough, but as you pushed through, it seemed to come together in a big way. I can also see signs that you've experimented with line weight, and by the end your use of it is much more subtle and nuanced, suggesting a considerable amount of development on that front.
Even your convergences have improved a great deal, though I am going to offer you some advice that, while not overtly addressing issues that are really common in your work, should help you think through the spatial problems.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
NesteaDrinker
2019-01-08 21:36
Here are my boxes: https://imgur.com/a/nt6Rg55
I wonder how many gave up during this challenge because it was hard as hell.
Uncomfortable
2019-01-09 17:29
It certainly is difficult, but most people generally find it to be quite worthwhile. In your case, I can definitely see that it has been. Though you held somewhat steady in the quality of your constructions through the first hundred and fifty or so, the last hundred definitely showed a considerable improvement. You clearly became much more aware of the convergences of your lines, and also demonstrated much more confidence in your linework.
There is one suggestion that I want to offer as you continue to move forwards, though you've done very well here. This will simply help you continue to progress on this front.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Sagasiter
2019-01-08 22:12
Hi Uncomfortable! I hope your New Years celebration was great!
Here's my 250 boxes: https://imgur.com/a/R17ct4k
Throughout the exercise I tried imagining box a 3 sets of parallel lines as you said, and it definitely helps envision the box as a 3d shape, but I'm still struggling with that back corner, which is a common problem, I assume. I think it is because the initial(visible) lines I make are not consistent to each other and then the corners are in the wrong places and then it's hard for non-visible lines to make that back corner.
Thank you for your effort and time!
Uncomfortable
2019-01-09 17:34
Nice work! Your line quality is coming along well, as is the consistency of your constructions. I can definitely see ample signs that applying the line extension technique has made you generally much more aware of how your lines converge. Ultimately, while it's easy to get caught up in the whole 'back corner' conundrum, it's more of a distraction than anything else. It's the convergences within individual sets of parallel lines that matters - get that right, and the back corner will fall into place.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
The only other recommendation I have is a minor one - as you continue to practice these, play a little more with your use of line weight. It will help kick your boxes up to the next level.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.
Deinococcus-radio
2019-01-10 12:01
finally, took nearly a month to draw so many boxes, I'm a little frustrated to realize I still have trouble to draw the back of 2-point-perspective box, the precision stoped growing after finishing drawing two hundreds boxes, and I actually feel the last dozens of boxes are worse than previous boxes...
anyway, here is my 250 boxes, look forward to your feedback.
Uncomfortable
2019-01-10 21:37
Very nice work! There's a very obvious transition from your first boxes to your last, where your general line confidence has increased by leaps and bounds, as has the consistency of your convergences and the general sense that you know what you're doing. While variation amongst pages that are close together is common (so seeing your last boxes as being a little worse than the page before it - which admittedly I don't entirely agree with), the important thing are the large trends which denote a steadier increase in skill and understanding.
Now there's always room for improvement - one thing I noticed in a few places amongst your later boxes was a tendency to have sets of parallel lines that converge together in pairs rather than all together. This generally happens when we're focusing more on the lines that make up a given plane.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
martianfield
2019-01-10 20:15
Hey Uncomfortable ... belated happy new year. Here my attempt at 250 boxes ... https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nzkqedouwra4hwi/AACNNrUGHc-DEecqXTu_var6a?dl=0
Uncomfortable
2019-01-10 22:30
Nice work! I'm actually kind of surprised to see these submitted within 6 days, and expected them to be rushed, but I was pleasantly surprised. You've done a pretty good job with them - your linework is confident, your convergences are consistent and your lineweight goes a long way to help reinforce the illusion of solidity with each form.
You actually started off at a pretty strong position, so I figure some of the tips from the challenge were enough to help, but I can see your convergences improving in subtle ways over time, and the line extensions do help to reinforce that. I can generally see that you're also paying attention to how your lines leave the vanishing point - that is, those with smaller angles between them are visibly pretty parallel once they reach the box itself, and you seem to be demonstrating a good awareness of that.
Unfortunately I don't have much else to offer besides what you've already gained from the exercise - so keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
_jmgomez_
2019-01-12 15:14
Hi Uncomfortable,
they took me a while! Tried to be consistent and do them in batches of 10 or 20. I can see some improvement, tried to rotate some of then and starting at 200 and something I can see how it started to work. Will keep practicing rotating on my own :-)
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4f8s62fw9xz5zke/AAA4fwjRdNha76a6aNYVzrZ_a?dl=0
Thank you!
Uncomfortable
2019-01-12 19:20
Congratulations on completing the challenge - sort of. By and large you've done a decent job, and have shown improvement on your box constructions. That said, you have however very clearly skipped an integral part of this exercise: checking your convergences by extending your lines. I can see hints of it here and there, but it's only ever for one set of lines at a time, and only on one box out of every handful, so while you clearly understand that it's a part of this exercise, I'm not sure why you've skipped over it.
This is a critical part of the exercise because it forces you to reflect directly upon the kinds of inconsistencies that are present in your boxes, so you know what to focus on next. This kind of reflection is at the core of the concept of failure being the vehicle by which we learn and grow. There is certainly value in simple iteration as you've done here, but you're missing such a critical part of the process and are as a result only getting a fraction as much out of the exercise as you otherwise could have.
Furthermore, as you continue to improve, the nature of your mistakes become less and less obvious. Extending the lines in this manner make clear mistakes that we may have otherwise not noticed, and it keeps us from plateauing.
So here's what I want you to do. Take your last two pages and apply the extension method to each and every box on them. Extend the ALL the lines - there's three sets of four parallel lines, I want to see them all extended, and I want you to study where they come together properly, and where they fail to.
Then I want you to do another 75 boxes, applying this same methodology upon the completion of each page. Submit that, and I'll mark the challenge as complete.
_jmgomez_
2019-01-12 20:57
Ohh I misunderstood it. I thought I should point out only the bad ones with the lines, not all of them. Will do that! It's ok, I wanted to get better rotating as well, so a chance for keep improving it :-D
Thank you for your time!
_jmgomez_
2019-01-22 11:36
Uncomfortable
2019-01-22 15:54
This is an improvement, but there are two major mistakes that I want to point out so you refrain from making them in the future:
You appear to have extended only two of the three sets of parallel lines. Boxes are made up of three sets with four parallel lines in each set, as demonstrated here. That you missed this suggests that you're not being terribly careful in following the instructions, and you need to pay more attention to these. Upon looking at my previous critique, I can see that I pointed this out there as well.
For the most part you've done this correctly, though on a few boxes, you've extended your lines in the wrong direction. Remember that these lines should be extended away from the viewer, not towards them. Your numbering is actually kind of confusing (not always legible, and I can see that you've got duplicates), but on Image 9 in that folder, the box marked as 230 is one example of such a box, where the blue lines come to wards the viewer (generally the hatching is applied to the face that is closer to the viewer). Similarly, 268 shows the same issue.
Now I was ready to mark this finished and let you move onto lesson 2, but I am genuinely concerned that the issue I raised about extending all three sets of parallel lines in my previous critique is still partially an issue here. I want you to do one more page of boxes, showing me that you fully understand the instructions. Based on your past pages, that should just be 10 pages.
_jmgomez_
2019-01-22 16:40
Hi! Thank you for your review :-)
I got it, the thing is I was doing all of them in 2-point perspective. So one of the sets of lines are meant to be totally straight.
You are correct about getting wrong the line extending correcting method. Regarding the hatching, most of the time I was rotating the boxes so I applied it in the "same" face. But will take it into consideration.
In the last word, you meant boxes instead of pages? Im planing to reach 500 on my own somewhere before Lesson 4, too tired of the boxes! haah
Thank you for your patience. I really appreciate what you are doing here ( that's why I increased the pledge :-)
Uncomfortable
2019-01-22 16:43
Hah, wow! Yeah, I definitely meant 10 boxes, not 10 pages.
As for the two point perspective, extending those lines is still useful in that regard (although in this case you may want to extend them in both directions for a vanishing point 'at infinity', as explained here), so you'd be testing the lack of convergence on both sides.
_jmgomez_
2019-01-26 11:29
Hi u/uncomfortable
Just appended the extra page.
Thanks!
https://www.dropbox.com/home/drawing/DrawABox/250%20Boxes?preview=Photo+26-01-2019%2C+11+15+50.jpg
Uncomfortable
2019-01-26 17:40
Much better, though you definitely do need to work on your convergences. You've got a couple there where the convergences are way off.
When you're drawing a given line, always think about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point, and don't think about those with which it shares a corner or a plane. This includes lines within the set that haven't yet been drawn. Consider how they leave the vanishing point, and the angles present between them. Those with smaller angles will end up running close to parallel with one another once they reach the box, as shown here.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You do need more work, but you're ready to move onto the next lesson. Just be sure to continue integrating them into your warmup routines.
tirejuice
2019-01-12 20:36
Hello Mr. Uncomfortable here are the boxes
https://imgur.com/a/dZFbhtN
thank you in advance
Uncomfortable
2019-01-13 18:36
Nice work! Your line quality and the consistency of your lines' convergences definitely improves over the set. The latter started out fairly well (the process of drawing through your boxes and applying the Y method must have helped bump you up right off the bat, but there was still more subtle improvement throughout the set).
I did notice however that you did have a common tendency to have the middle lines of a given set converge with one another too quickly - this is a common issue, and here's a way that you can think about the problem in order to help reduce their occurrence:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
tirejuice
2019-01-14 02:48
thank you sir
Corncanm
2019-01-13 23:21
Hello Uncomfortable, here are the 50 boxes.
https://imgur.com/a/KtDgkZp
Uncomfortable
2019-01-15 02:13
These are looking pretty good, though while you are definitely improving a fair bit, it is clear that there is still plenty of room to continue honing your convergences as you continue to move forwards. As such, make sure you work these into your regular warmup routine.
I did notice here and there that when you draw longer boxes, you have a tendency to have the pairs of parallel lines on either side of a stretched box to converge more quickly together. Here's a recommendation that will help you contend with that:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, you can consider this challenge completed. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
[deleted]
2019-01-14 12:25
Hi Uncomfortable, here are my boxes. Cheers!
Uncomfortable
2019-01-15 03:07
Nice work! You've definitely demonstrated a great deal of patience and care in going through each box, drawing through it and applying the line extension method. It's also clear that your estimation of these convergences has improved steadily over the course of the set.
For where you do have some inconsistencies in your convergences, the following should help you continue to improve on them:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, keep it up. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
glowing_eyed_monster
2019-01-16 21:47
Hello Uncomfortable,
I took me a while, but here are my 250 boxes!
Uncomfortable
2019-01-16 22:35
Congratulations on completing the challenge. I can definitely see that your convergences have certainly improved over the course of this set. There's still room for improvement - and I'll address that in a second, but there's something else I noticed over the course of your 250 boxes that needs to be pointed out.
If you compare the line quality between the first few boxes and your last, the last bunch are noticeably stiffer and wobblier than when you started.
Now, it's been a while since you submitted lesson 1, something line 9 months. I suspect that you may have started the challenge closer to that time, when you were fresh off that material and more familiar with the use of the ghosting method. Your lines weren't perfect at the beginning, and there was a touch of hesitation here and there, but by and large they were coming along well.
After a while, it does seem that you may have stopped using that method altogether, instead investing more of your time in the execution phase of the mark making process, and as a result you stopped executing those marks with the same kind of confidence. It's extremely important that you refamiliarize yourself with the correct use of the ghosting method - every mark you put down for these lessons must make use of it, to ensure that the marks you put down are drawn confidently, without hesitation, so the results are smooth and consistent. Smooth, straight lines are the very bedrock of solid construction.
Now, back to the convergences - you're improving steadily on that front, and the following should help you continue to do so:
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. As you're coming back after quite a while, be sure to review the lesson 1 material, and make sure that you incorporate those exercises into a regular warmup routine (picking 2 or 3 exercises at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes). Also, as you'll probably have noticed, that material has all been rewritten and updated, so you may find it to be somewhat clearer than you remember.
glowing_eyed_monster
2019-01-17 05:24
Thank you for the feedback!
One reasons for the wobbly lines is that I started to draw with my shoulder at about box 190. Before that, I would prop up my elbow on the table and draw using the elbow. I will review lesson 1 and see what else I might have missed. Thank you again for your time!
Eclipsing_Sun
2019-01-17 23:25
Hello! Here are my boxes. https://imgur.com/a/12P2z17
Looking forward to your critique!
Uncomfortable
2019-01-18 20:31
Nice work! The solidity of your boxes and the consistency of their construction improves a fair bit over the set. Initially they feel a little less certain, like you're not entirely sure of why you're drawing certain lines over others, but your overall approach comes together as you push through and you appear to be more sure of yourself.
There is still room for improvement in terms of getting the sets of parallel lines to converge consistently, but you're making considerable progress all the same. One important thing to keep in mind is that when you go to draw a line, don't think about the other lines with which it shares a corner, or those with which it shares a plane. Focus instead on all the other lines that run parallel to it - both those that have been drawn and those that have yet to be. Think about how they converge towards the same vanishing point, and the angle at which they leave that point. As shown here, lines with small angles between them at this far off point will run virtually parallel to one another as they reach the box, which is quite a useful thing to realize.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto the next lesson.
KicksForLuck
2019-01-19 00:53
Hi Uncomfortable! Long time no talk. It wasn't you, it was me. After procrastinating because I couldn't start with the perfect box, I decided to take a simpler approach. Just do 6 boxes a day. Many moons later I finished the challenge. Here is my submission! THANK YOU FOR THE CRITIQUE!
250 Boxes For My Teacher: UNCOMFORTABLE
Uncomfortable
2019-01-19 20:18
Congratulations on getting through all of them! I can definitely see improvement over the set, but there are a few things worth pointing out:
You demonstrate here a tendency to get confused as to which side of the box is pointing towards the viewer and which is pointing away. Generally we use the single face with hatching lines to represent a face pointing towards us, but based on this assumption, you have many cases where your lines are extended in the wrong direction. These lines should always be extended away from the viewer, so we can identify how they converge towards their implied vanishing point.
When it comes to improving your convergences, your progress certainly is a little slow, which suggests to me that you may not be reflecting enough on what these extensions actually tell you. The goal is of course always to work towards getting these sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards the same point. We can work towards achieving this by looking at the mistakes we tend to make, and considering them as we draw our lines.
When going to draw a line as part of a box, some students will think about the other lines with which that one shares a corner, or the ones with which it shares a plane. Instead of doing this, always think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point - all the other lines to which it is parallel, and ignore the rest. While doing this, think about the angles at which these lines leave the VP - that is, the angles between them. Those with very small angles separating them will end up running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, which makes for a very useful hint to keep in mind. I explain this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. I'd recommend that you continue working a few boxes at a time into your warmup routines, mixing them up with the previous exercises you've encountered and picking two or three at the beginning of each sitting to do for 10-15 minutes. Aside from that, feel free to move onto lesson 2.
KicksForLuck
2019-01-19 21:20
Thank you uncomfortable! I do see an improvement from the beginning of this journey and I look forward to gaining a better understanding. You're the best!
MelodicWoodpecker
2019-01-19 22:52
Finally, here are my boxes. It was tougher than I expected!
https://imgur.com/a/ajayjiH
Uncomfortable
2019-01-20 18:33
You've definitely shown a good deal of growth and progress both in the confidence of your linework and the consistency of your convergences, so that's great to see. There are a couple of things that I want to point out, but by and large you're doing well.
What stands out most is the fact that you only applied the line extension method as you should have (to every box, and to every set of parallel lines for each box) on the first and last pages. In skipping this process for many of your other boxes, or only applying it to a select few, you definitely robbed yourself of the opportunity to grow more and to make better use of the exercise as a whole. This should be applied to each box on a page after that page has been completed, so you can identify the patterns of mistakes that you're making, and attempt to improve upon those specific areas of difficulty in the next page.
When adding hatching lines to one face on a box, don't scribble or draw erratically. Draw consistent, parallel lines that stretch all the way across the plane from edge to edge.
Your convergences definitely improve, though there are a few little mistakes that I see coming up frequently, even towards the end. For example, sometimes you'll have three of the four lines of a given set converge correctly, but then a fourth (usually one of the two middle lines) goes off at its own angle. You can avoid this by employing the following approach: when you go to draw a line, think about all the other lines to which it is parallel (rather than thinking about the lines with which it shares a corner, or with which it shares a plane). Focus only on the lines within the same set, including those that have not yet been drawn. Then think about how those points all meet at a vanishing point and think about the angle at which they'd be leaving that VP. The lines that have a smaller angle between them are likely to be running more or less parallel to each other (when drawn on the page) by the time they reach the box (or near parallel at least). Being aware of this relationship can help avoid mistakes considerably. I demonstrate this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
MelodicWoodpecker
2019-01-20 20:45
Thank you for the feedback, you're right on point with the problems and something I will take with me going forward.
I've done two pages with more boxes now where I've focused on the hatched areas and extending all the lines, to be honest it was just laziness that got to me. I'm doing this exercise for myself so it was just stupid.
I'll get on lesson 2.
creakinglemon
2019-01-21 03:03
My drawings from the 250 box challenge are here:
https://imgur.com/a/AdsowDS
Uncomfortable
2019-01-21 21:42
I'll be honest, I was a little concerned that this was submitted less than a week after it was assigned. I thought that either you'd rushed through it, or that you'd skipped the line extensions, or didn't reflect upon your work after applying the extension technique... But it seems I was wrong. You've done some excellent work here.
Throughout the set, your linework is confident and concise, and I can clearly see steady improvement from being somewhat uncertain of how to approach structuring these boxes, to ultimately demonstrating considerable control over the convergences of your lines. You've improved a great deal.
The one thing that I feel is missing is for the most part optional, but will help continue to kick your boxes up to the next level: line weight. Right now you're working with pretty uniform lines, but going back over a box once it's constructed to subtly add weight to key lines (mostly along the silhouette) can really have a great impact on the sense of cohesion and solidity of a box. You'll find more notes about it right here.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Gachi95
2019-01-23 23:08
Hello again. Here is my submission for the challenge https://imgur.com/a/LU8YFuZ .
Uncomfortable
2019-01-24 00:03
Nice work! You clearly start out not really sure of how to approach constructing these boxes (your convergences are often all over the place, with some divergences and whatnot) but you quickly pick up on what you're doing and I can see considerable progress over the set.
I'm very pleased with your results. I am noticing one relatively minor issue, usually that one of the middle lines of a given set of parallel lines tends to diverge off on its own. This is pretty common, and can be gradually resolved by thinking about all the lines to which the one you're about to draw will be parallel to, including those that haven't yet been drawn. You can think about how they'll all converge at that vanishing point, and the angle between them there. Generally speaking, the two middle lines of a set will have a pretty small angle between them, resulting in them running close to parallel, if not more or less parallel, by the time they reach the box. This can be a very useful point to keep in mind. I expand on this further in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Rheapon
2019-01-26 21:33
250 boxes done! https://imgur.com/a/UahE1Hb
Unfortunately I did misunderstand line weight when I started adding it initially, adding it to all the "front facing" edges rather than just those around the outside of the silhouette, so you'll probably spot this is going on until about box 220, hopefully it's not been too detrimental to the exercise.
Uncomfortable
2019-01-26 23:43
Your warning there had me worried, but it looks like the issue was minimal. Even if the line weight was completely wrong, then it still wouldn't have impacted the spatial portion of this exercise, but still - your line weights weren't that far off, and by the end you demonstrate a solid use of it.
All in all you've demonstrated a great deal of improvement over this set. By the end your boxes feel solid, and your convergences are looking vastly more consistent. There are a couple places where one of the middle lines of a given set goes off at an odd angle, but that's fairly normal. Just remember that when you're drawing these lines, you always want to think about the lines with which it is parallel (including those that haven't yet been drawn), instead of those with which it shares a corner or a plane. From there, think about how they leave the vanishing point, considering the fact that those with smaller angles between them will be running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box. I explain this further in these notes.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
MangoIce76
2019-01-31 05:42
Here is my 250 box challenge! https://imgur.com/a/eWQAIJ8
I switched from Sakura micron to Copic multiliners at box 185. I also drew an extra 12 boxes because some boxes i had drawn were very wrong.
Uncomfortable
2019-01-31 22:19
Nice work! I can definitely see considerable improvement when it comes to the estimation of your convergences over this set, and extending your lines has certainly contributed to an awareness that resulted in growth. I'm also pleased to see a variety of rates of foreshortening - you've got some boxes with very rapid, dramatic foreshortening (where vanishing points are closer, this implies that the object is quite large or close to the viewer), as well as boxes where the foreshortening is more shallow (farther vanishing points implying a smaller scale, or objects that are farther away). Often students will focus too much on one rather than the other - shallow foreshortening is particularly important because most of the objects we draw are going to be of a smaller, more relatable scale.
I did notice that your line weight was generally pretty uniform, so that's an area you may want to focus on as you move forwards to kick your boxes up to the next level.
Additionally, while your convergences have improved considerably, there are still mistakes towards the end and I believe I have some advice that should help. When you're drawing a line, don't think of the other lines with which it shares a corner, or those with which it shares a plane. Think about all the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point - that is, the lines with which it is parallel, including those that have not yet been drawn. From there, think about the angles at which they leave the vanishing point. Those with smaller angles between them are more likely to be running close to parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself, so this can be a useful piece of information to keep in mind. You can often look at a similar such line and draw a next one as being parallel to it if they're close together and share the same VP. I expand on this in these notes.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the good work and feel free to move onto the next lesson.
seashellenic
2019-02-05 19:50
Here is my submission for the 250 box challenge:
https://imgur.com/a/6OS3ruq
svendogee
2019-02-05 20:51
Hey there I'm sven, one of uncomfortable's new teaching assistants. I am going to start off by saying you have shown some improvement throughout your 250 boxes in terms of line quality and you are slowly building up a better sense of perspective with your convergence. However, there are some very serious aspects of the challenge that it appears were not implemented for maximum feedback for your improvement. Your pages are packed to the brim with boxes. Normally packing pages of a sketchbook with studies is great, but in this instance it is hard to properly learn anything from what the line extensions tell you. These line extensions are just as important as the boxes themselves, because this is what helps us see where we are hitting the mark and where we are falling short with things like convergence. From this information we apply it to the next page to improve just a little bit more and then repeat the process again. https://i.imgur.com/IjgdTG0.jpg this page is a particular showcase of how little there is to glean from all of the extensions bleeding into each other. Additionally, there are many cases where you aren't applying the line extensions correctly and they are going off in a direction different from the line itself. Remember: as an extension, the line should continue in the same path as the original one you drew. All of this compounds to a point where you are repeating the same mistakes page after page and not getting nearly as much out of this exercise as intended.
One more point I would like to bring up is how to think about sets of parallel lines converging to a single point. https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png this diagram shows the relationship between the angles of the lines as they leave the VP and how they relate to each other once they are in a box. Notice how lines that are close together have a very small angle between each other at the vanishing point, and the further the vanishing point is from the box that angle will continue to shrink, causing our lines in our box to become more and more parallel. Take some time to digest this diagram and apply that thought process to your future boxes.
I have spoken with uncomfortable and we think it is appropriate to ask you to do 25 more boxes. Please take your time with these. Address each box as its own challenge and be mindful of how each set of lines converges to a shared vanishing point. Draw these boxes bigger and fit 5 to 7 to a page to give you plenty of room for extension lines. Once you finish a page, draw your extension lines and really analyze when you had a good box vs a bad one and why that is. Make sure you continue to be mindful of line quality with the ghosting technique as you were with these boxes. Once you finish your 25 boxes resubmit them as a reply in this comment chain and we will pick up from there. I can see your ability to create solid boxes in space, we just want to be mindful of how to examine our boxes once they have been drawn.
seashellenic
2019-02-12 04:38
Thank you so much for your feedback. It was really helpful, and I tried to incorporate it with the best of my ability. Here is my work:
https://imgur.com/a/8TWv0lQ
[deleted]
2019-02-06 16:16
https://imgur.com/a/gcIEXh0
Hello, here's my submission. There's a chance some of the photos might be missing due to Imgur trying its best not to work as intended and simply either refusing to upload some photos or uploading them three times. If you'll need me to reupload them, please let me know and specify which boxes are missing so I could quickly reupload them for ya. Cheers :)
sluggydragon
2019-02-06 16:41
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair.
Nice work completing this challenge! It's a tough one. The first thing I notice is that your linework improved quite a lot throughout the set - in the beginning, the lines were a bit wobbly, but I can see you became quite confident with superimposing your lines.
Similarly, you began with a fairly good grasp on your boxes and then substantially solidified your understanding towards the end. I can see that you became more consistent with ensuring that all three sets of parallel lines converge so nice work! I need to note that you did pack your pages with boxes and on a lot of them, the extended lines became quite tangled - giving your boxes some breathing space would allow you to better see and learn where and how to improve.
Another thing I want to recommend is to play more with the lineweight. As of right now, almost all of your boxes are composed of lines of the same weight - playing with lineweight will help the illusion of a 3D form, by emphasizing the outer lines while pushing the inside lines 'back into space'.
Overall, great work! Go ahead and move on to Lesson 2. Good luck!
ETA: dropped a word.
iovorobiev
2019-02-07 03:18
https://imgur.com/a/WAs0Ucu
Hi, this is my 250 box challenge submission. I switched to $5 from $3 just today, hope I still can get some critique.
Thanks in advance.
sluggydragon
2019-02-07 03:35
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable TAs. He'll be by later to go over this critique and assign you your flair. Let's get into it!
So, first off, beautiful work! Your linework started out pretty strong and only got better throughout the set. Similarly, I can see that you've learned quite a lot and your boxes at the end are very consistent in that three sets of parallel lines converge evenly towards their respective points.
The one thing I want to recommend is for you to utilize more lineweight for your boxes to clarify forms. This will really tighten up the form of the box and it's silhouette. However, overall, I think you're ready to move on! Great job!
Uncomfortable
2019-02-07 04:58
/u/iovorobiev
One little thing I want to add to sluggy's critique is that I noticed a tendency as you pushed through the set to make the foreshortening more and more dramatic - that is, bringing the vanishing points closer and closer to your boxes. This probably came from you trying to focus a lot on your convergences, which is definitely a great thing to pay attention to. Just keep in mind that dramatic foreshortening tells the viewer that the object is either very large, or very close. So it is important to mix in some shallower foreshortening as well, which implies objects that are at a smaller, more relatable scale. I talk a little more about this here.
iovorobiev
2019-02-07 05:08
Thanks, Uncomfortable! I noticed it as well, sometimes the vanishing point is super close to a box, and I tried to avoid keeping so short distance to a vanishing point. However, it seems I was a bit biased towards it, just to make sure my lines will converge at some reasonable point and will not be completely parallel (as in some earlier drawings), so you guessed right :)
lindsayturtle
2019-02-11 18:30
Realizing I'm doing this too! Definitely need to try and switch it up and create less foreshortened boxes. I must say - coming here and reading other peoples' critiques is a great resource as well!
Uncomfortable
2019-02-11 18:33
Hahaha, I'm glad you're benefitting from looking at these reviews - there's a lot here to sift through, and a great deal of it will certainly apply to those still working through the challenge.
iovorobiev
2019-02-07 05:19
Thanks a lot, sluggy!
BTHLunar
2019-02-07 08:12
Hi, This is my 250 box challenge https://imgur.com/a/VhKIPLx
sluggydragon
2019-02-07 15:50
Hey there! Sluggy again! Like I said yesterday, Uncomfortable comes behind and checks the critique and gives the appropriate flair. Let's get into it!
So first, I want to commend you for getting through the challenge! 250 boxes is tough for anyone and you should be very proud for having gotten in this mileage.
That said, I have a few things I need to point out:
First, you do show improvement over the set, especially in your linework. There is significantly less wobble between the first few pages and the last. Nice work!
However, in several places, I notice you applying the line extension method in the wrong direction. Think of it this way: the extensions are meant to go 'back' into space. In some places, you have them coming 'towards' you. Understanding this will help you train your brain into viewing these as 3D forms rather than a collection of lines.
They are also meant to help you see how your sets of parallel lines are converging towards their respective vanishing points, so you know where and how to improve. Check out this portion of the challenge here about line extensions. Remember when drawing each line to only think of the lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the box or plane as a whole. Refer to these notes for a bit more on that.
Similarly, you have placed the hatching on a back face of a few of the boxes, which does mess with the illusion of the form.
So overall, great work for getting through the challenge and improving on your linework! I spoke to Uncomfortable, and I would like you to complete and submit 50 more boxes using the line extension method I linked and remembering the hatch the front face of the box. Nice work!
BTHLunar
2019-02-12 07:35
Hello, here's my additional 50 boxes. https://imgur.com/a/leBbhtS
The lines were a bit blurry, let me know if you prefer it to be re-uploaded.
Thank you!
sluggydragon
2019-02-13 23:55
Hey there! Nice work, I definitely see improvement here and that you kept a good handle on the foreshortening. Keep working with that ghosting method going forward and try to avoid the tendency to go back over mistakes again. This has the effect of drawing the eye to them.
Overall, nicely done!
BTHLunar
2019-02-14 01:29
Thank you! I'm struggling with drawing lines downward, but still working on this.
Anyway, Will it be okay to proceed to lesson 2 already?
sluggydragon
2019-02-14 01:31
Remember that you can rotate the page if you have trouble drawing a line in a certain direction. But yeah! Go for it. Good luck!
BTHLunar
2019-02-14 02:20
Thank you!
dragonar25
2019-02-07 22:36
Hi, this is my 250 box challenge https://imgur.com/gallery/9FHP4b1
Uncomfortable
2019-02-07 23:27
I currently don't have you down as being eligible for private homework critiques. If you're a recent patreon supporter, be sure to check your email/patreon inbox as I'll have sent you a message to gather your reddit username. Alternatively, are you using the correct reddit account?
If neither of those are the case, you're welcome to submit your work directly to the subreddit or on the discord server to get the community to review your work.
johnnylamonte
2019-02-08 13:59
20 pages later Here's my box challenge done!: https://photos.app.goo.gl/M5eX8SQGJ7RhJScU6
sluggydragon
2019-02-08 14:35
Hello! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to go over this critique and assign the appropriate flair. Let's get at it.
Awesome, awesome job getting through this challenge. It's a lot of boxes and sticking it out is to be commended! My first impression is that your line-work is very strong - even from the beginning, your boxes are neat and thoughtful. They look solid and only improve throughout the set. Great work!
I will note, however, that you overshoot your corners on almost every box. Unfortunately, this messes with the silhouette and the illusion of a 3D form. While your grasp of ghosting is obviously very strong, I recommend aiming for accuracy now, ensuring you don't overshoot with your lines.
I also urge you to lengthen your line extensions to get a better idea of where and how to improve your convergences. It's very slight, but some of your sets of parallel lines still don't converge evenly. Remember to consider each line in relation to the lines its parallel to rather than the plane or the box as a whole. That said, it is very slight!
Overall, wonderful, solid work. I'd say you're ready to move on to lesson 2. Great job!
[deleted]
2019-02-08 19:29
[deleted]
Uncomfortable
2019-02-08 21:51
Very nice work! You've really shown a great deal of growth over this set. You went from rather wobbly, uncertain and hesitant linework with lines that went off in all directions without much cohesion of intent, to developing your understanding of how these forms sit in 3D space and how the parallel lines behave in relation to one another. Your overall line quality improved considerably as well, and your line weight had a great impact on reinforcing the solidity of the overall forms.
I'm very pleased with the conscientiousness you displayed, patiently working through all of your line extensions and corrections. You're clearly demonstrating mindfulness towards your lines' convergences, and have a great balance between boxes with shallower and more dramatic foreshortening.
Based on your work, I think you already understand this, but this is something I offer to most people working through this challenge, so I figure I may as well here:
There's definitely room for growth and improvement, but you're barrelling in the right direction with considerable speed. Keep up the great work and consider this challenge complete.
leftran
2019-02-09 01:13
Hi, this is my 250 box challenge. Posted it with the wrong account before! https://imgur.com/gallery/9FHP4b1
Uncomfortable
2019-02-09 01:32
Aha! I was certain that paper looked familiar, but I couldn't remember which lesson 1 submission used it, so I wasn't sure if the submission would go to my TAs or to me.
Congratulations on completing the challenge. You're certainly demonstrating improvement with the confidence of your constructions and your linework overall, though there are a few issues that I'd like to point out.
It's really critical that you read the instructions carefully, especially when doing challenges like this one to ensure that you're putting your time to good use. From the looks of it, you had some definite trouble when it came time to extend your lines. From what I can see, you may not have been entirely certain as to what the purpose of this step was. As outlined in the instructions here, you need to be extending your lines back in space on all three axes to test how they come together, to see where you tend to have lines converging too early, or off in pairs, and so on.
There are a number of places where you've extended your lines in the wrong direction. You're also frequently extending them in both directions (which makes it visibly more confusing as to distinguishing the near and far sides of the box. You've also got a number of cases where you've added hatching lines (which usually serve as a visual cue to tell us which side is pointing towards us) to the farther side of the box, leading to many visually confusing situations. And lastly, most of the line extensions are minimal and superficial.
Since you weren't entirely sure of why these lines were being extended, there wasn't much consistent improvement as far as the actual convergences went. By extending the lines, seeing where your convergences go completely out of whack, and identifying the patterns and tendencies in your mistakes, you're able to move onto the next page with a sense of what you need to work on. Without that kind of analysis and reflection, you're left shooting in the dark, hoping that you'll improve through mileage alone.
It's absolutely true that even just drawing boxes - and drawing through them as fastidiously as you have been - will definitely help, and once upon a time that was what the challenge was limited to. Within the last couple years however, these line extensions have become a huge part of the challenge because of how incredibly helpful they can be.
Now I am going to mark this challenge as complete, because you did indeed draw all 250 boxes. I strongly recommend however that you go over your last page and extend the lines properly (as explained in the video and in the written instructions). You should also, for your own benefit, do 50 more boxes, extending the lines properly upon the completion of each page and thinking about what those extensions tell you.
I'll also offer you this piece of advice:
archibaldmeatpants1
2019-02-09 21:17
Hello Uncomfortable and TAs! This is my 250 box challenge: https://imgur.com/a/DPVCOwH
svendogee
2019-02-10 01:41
Hey there! Right off the bat I noticed you have very nice draftsmanship in your boxes.
You are showing a good progression of your command in perspective and getting your parallel
lines to converge as you go throughout the challenge, as well as having various orientations. I will say that while your draftsmanship is nice, your lines are
consistently over shooting throughout the duration of the 250 boxes. While
our main goal is to gain a better grasp of three dimensional space as well as
raw mileage, line quality and accuracy is also something to be mindful of. In the future I would like to see you be a little more mindful of accuracy and try to stop those lines exactly where intended.
Aside from the overshoot, the only other draftsmanship thing I want to bring up is to consider adding lineweight around the perimeter of the boxes as shown here
https://drawabox.com/lesson/250boxes/1/lineweight As far as general convergence goes, you are doing a fine job with both vanishing points that are near as well as further away. You really seem to have a handle on the angles between parallel lines and how they relate to the distance of vanishing points (https://i.imgur.com/8PqQLE0.png)
All in all, you've done a nice job and I will be marking this lesson as complete. Uncomfortable will be around to confirm this and give your flair but feel free to move on to lesson 2, being mindful of not overshooting your lines when drawing your forms. Have a good one!
archibaldmeatpants1
2019-02-10 17:02
Thank you for the feedback! Totally correct, I do overshoot each time. I will work on planning my lines better. Thanks so much again!
dvdjrnx
2019-02-10 03:06
Hey Uncomfortable (and TA's),
I know that you had given me a pass on this challenge earlier on, but after getting to the everyday objects lesson, I decided that I wanted to take this on, as I could see the value in getting the mileage in. I also wanted to work on understanding what a cube looks like in perspective. I wanted see if I could uncover some characteristics I could look to in order to more reliably freehand cubes and use them as units of measure within my constructions.
I also used the challenge as an opportunity to work on adding line weight to silhouettes with single, confident strokes. In the beginning, it's fairly off the mark, creating double lines quite often, but I could definitely see and feel improvement towards the end.
In any case, here's my submission. I certainly learned a lot and am glad that I put the work in. Thanks in advance for your feedback, and I hope you've been well.
Uncomfortable
2019-02-10 19:29
I really commend your decision to tackle this challenge anyway - it was a fantastic idea, and it really demonstrates your dedication to improvement.
You started off a little shaky and uncertain, but still in a manner that reinforces why I gave you a pass (something I do less and less frequently as time goes on). Relatively quickly, however, you start solidifying your grasp on this material, and go on to construct consistently solid and cohesive boxes.
I'm very happy with the conscientiousness and thoroughness you've shown with all of your line extensions. You've clearly put a great deal of thought into what each set of extended lines told you, and learned from them as you moved through.
Your boxes by the end are phenomenal, and the issues by that point have shrunk to a minimal degree. Still, I will address the one issue I'm noticing, even if it is small and its nature suggests that you are probably aware of it.
In cases like 246 and 250's red lines, 240's blues, and so on, I do see a slight tendency to have the middle lines of a given set (those that are generally very close to each other) to either diverge, or to converge too rapidly. The reason for this is simple - because they're so close to one another, the margin for error is so small that any mistake is going to be very obvious.
What you really want to strive for in this case is to keep these lines as parallel to one another as possible. Since they inevitably going to have a negligible angle between them at the vanishing point itself, the lines will inevitably run parallel to one another by the time they reach the box (as demonstrated in these notes).
Now I do think you're aware of this, and you demonstrate this understanding in other cases, but I figured I'd mention it anyway to keep myself relevant to your growth :P
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Feel free to move onto lesson 6.
dvdjrnx
2019-02-11 00:25
Thanks for the feedback, Uncomfortable; always appreciated. And you are certainly right about my inner lines diverging or converging too much from time to time.
One of the things that stuck with me while working through these was just how little room for error there really was when laying down a stroke. It was surprising how even just the slightest increase or decrease in an intended angle would throw off the construction. This was usually apparent in the draw-throughs, and particularly in those inner lines for the reasons you mentioned.
I'll go ahead and get started on Lesson 6 and will post the results in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I hope you keep well.
CuteDogeOfDoom
2019-02-15 02:30
Here's my 250 Box submission for critiques! http://imgur.com/a/4NZ2yx7
Uncomfortable
2019-02-15 03:01
Unfortunately it hasn't been a full 2 weeks since your last submission (on February 9th), so you'll have to hold onto these and submit them on the 23rd. A quick glance does suggest that you rushed through these however (one of the reasons this 2 week period is imposed). You only extended the lines for a few of them, so you didn't really benefit from the kind of reflection and self-analysis that is stressed for this exercise.
AmicableOwl
2019-02-15 03:44
Hi /u/uncomfortable, I hope you're doing well. Here is my challenge submission!
http://imgur.com/a/V4gmYfZ
That was a ride. For page 22 I drew with a ballpoint pen because I had box drawing time but didn't have my felt pen. I hope that's ok, but I can redraw them if not.
Thank you for your feedback!
Uncomfortable
2019-02-15 20:52
Nice work! I can see a considerable improvement not only in the consistency of your convergences and the solidity of your resulting boxes, but also in the confidence of your linework. You seem a lot more sure of yourself, and your lines suggest a greater sense of intent, rather than just putting strokes down and hoping for the best.
There is of course still room for improvement, though you're headed in the right direction. One thing to keep in mind as you continue to move forwards is that when you're putting a line down, don't get caught up thinking of the other lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it shares a plane. These can lead to certain inconsistencies that I see sporadically through your work, especially places where you've got sets of parallel lines that converge in pairs too early.
Instead, think about all the other lines with which the one you're drawing shares a vanishing point. That is, all the lines that run parallel to it, including the ones that have not yet been drawn. Think about the angles between them as they leave the vanishing point - those with a minimal angle here will end up running effectively parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself. This is particularly critical with the central lines of a given set (where they usually run pretty close to one another, and even a slight deviation in angle will result in an early convergence, or even divergence).
I expand on this concept in these notes, so give that a look.
One other thing I'm noticing is that for the most part, you seem to be focusing on boxes that have really, really shallow convergences - where the lines barely come together at all. It's a good idea to explore boxes that have shallow convergence like this, as well as those with more dramatic foreshortening (where the vanishing points are much closer), and those in between these two extremes.
Aside from that, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.
AmicableOwl
2019-02-15 23:32
Thank you! I was definitely putting a lot of focus on the relations of the lines to each other rather than to the vanishing point. And I had this nagging feeling my boxes were kinda samey but I couldn't pinpoint why. I'll need to write these on a sticky note to keep nearby during sessions.
kmshannon
2019-02-16 17:10
Hello /u/uncomfortable, finally got through this one! Learned quite a bit and am all the better for it. The exterior lines don't cause too much trouble once you decide to lay down a vanishing point and systematically create the box starting from the edge closest to the viewer, especially when ghosting all the way to the VP, you sort of get a mental image of where the line should be. It's a real pain dropping a point for the back corner furthest away, and really makes you consider how all three interior lines are going to converge. Sometimes trying to consider a diagonal line running from the front corner to the rear helped visualize where the point would lie.
I tried adding some weight to exterior lines by tracing/ghosting my initial stroke, as well as adding a tiny bit of weight to the interior lines along the shaded plane's perimeter. All in all, which I got sick of boxes around 180, I had several aha! moments that can only come from putting in repetition. Great exercise! All boxes were drawn on a 11x14 pad. Thanks for the review and feedback, appreciate all the hard work. Cheers, Kyle
https://imgur.com/a/q251Bpi
Uncomfortable
2019-02-16 18:10
Great work! You're demonstrating considerable skill when it comes to being able to rotate these boxes freely in your head, and you're doing a great job of conveying the sense of weight and overall cohesiveness of the form with your line weights. Your convergences are generally coming along quite well too.
Based on the comments you mentioned in your submission though, I do want to really emphasize one thing - it's normal for students to preoccupy themselves with, say, the back corner and how those "interior" lines converge to it, but that isn't what you should be focusing on while drawing your lines. Though it's counter intuitive, there's not a lot to be gained from that. Instead, when you put a line down, rather than thinking of how that line shares a corner with two others, or how it shares a plane with three others, think instead about the lines with which it shares a vanishing point. Think about how they all converge towards that singular point - including the lines that have not yet been drawn - and focus on making that happen. Think about the angles at which those lines leave the VP, and the angles that fall between them. The smaller the angle, the more parallel those lines will run to one another by the time they reach the box itself.
Now all in all, your convergences are actually quite good. I do want to point out though that you do have a tendency in many of these to have lines that run perhaps a little too parallel (in 2D space that is) - adding just a touch more convergence in these cases will help. In some cases, when you strive for complete isometric parallelity, you risk having those lines actually start to diverge a little as they move further back in space.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work and feel free to move onto lesson 2.
kmshannon
2019-02-17 05:00
Thanks, for the good feedback. I think this is great observation! You're right, especially when the lines become quite parallel, e.g. VP is tending towards to infinity. What I learned from your feedback is that the margin of error for the correct angle becomes so small that you just as easily can draw a diverging line. So being more conservative with a converging angle will overall produces 'tighter' work. This also echoes back to your first advice... to think about the lines (drawn and not drawn) that share a VP. Appreciate the review. See you in a few weeks!
lokivii
2019-02-17 14:37
Hello /u/uncomfortable, Here is my resubmission for the 250 box challenge where you instructed me to draw 100 new boxes. I want to say thanks for the freebie critique on my last submission of this challenge. The critique notes you gave really helped me to understand what I should be looking for when drawing my boxes, and going back and drawing 100 more was definitely the right thing to do.
https://imgur.com/a/ELizjHa
lokivii
2019-02-17 14:50
Oh and here is a link to my original submission if you wanted to compare the two: https://imgur.com/a/niMuNZQ
Uncomfortable
2019-02-17 17:36
Rather than passing this onto the TAs, I'll go ahead and take this critique since it's technically in response to one I'd already given. Yeah, the extra 100 were definitely the right call, and you've shown a good deal of growth over them. In many cases, you definitely show an improved sense of the convergences, though this is primarily focused when the vanishing point is very far away, and the lines effectively run parallel to one another. When you actually do need to deal with some convergences, you still end up with cases where you don't quite follow some of the advice I gave you previously:
If we look at this one for example, from page 10, you'll see that the blue lines converge in pairs. This is because you were focusing only on the lines that made up each individual plane, rather than considering all four lines of the given set, and how they'd converge towards a single vanishing point.
These two from the same page, if we look at their blue lines, the convergences are definitely better, though those middle lines are diverging. This is a pretty common problem and it's easy to make - those two middle lines have such a small angle between them that they barely converge, so if you do happen to mess up their angles even a little bit, you're going to see them either cross way too early, or they'll diverge as they do here. This is what the notes I provided previously address specifically. Lines that converge towards the same vanishing point that are so close to each other are going to run virtually parallel to one another.
Now you are making headway compared to before, and I'll certainly be marking this lesson as complete. That said, you should reflect upon the advice that I'd given you before (and that I've quoted here). With every single mark you put down, you need to be aware of all the lines that are going to be converging towards its vanishing point, including those that have not yet been drawn. All other relationships between these lines aren't all that important - it's all about these convergences.
So, you can consider this challenge as complete. I see that you submitted your lesson 2 work, but as per the two-week rule I won't be critiquing it now, as that's the third full lesson submission in two weeks (a period in which you should only be receiving two). You can submit it on March 3rd.
lokivii
2019-02-17 18:21
Thank you for the feedback and for taking the time to demonstrate areas where I need work. I'll take the time over the next two weeks to practice drawing boxes and consider your critiques. I'll resubmit my lesson 2 on the 3rd then as per your instructions.
Simmons_beats
2019-02-18 14:00
250 boxes completed yay
sluggydragon
2019-02-18 22:30
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair!
So, I gotta stay, you started out strong and got even stronger! Your line work improved as did your grasp of the box form. AND you drew all 250 of them, so even just getting the challenge done is to be commended.
Throughout the set, I saw you experimenting with foreshortening on the boxes, and almost tagged you on it, but you pulled them back towards the end - that said, I do need to tag you on hatching the front faces of your boxes. I saw you did a couple of them, but I recommend doing this on future boxes you practice. This, along with line weight, helps the illusion of 3D form on a 2D plane and trains your brain to see it as such.
However, this is not listed explicitly in the assignment and I'm happy to mark this as complete. Nice work and move on to Lesson 2!
Simmons_beats
2019-02-18 23:24
Thank you Sluggy :) I was expecting my boxes perspective to be near perfect when I got 250, but I know I missed a lot of lines even at the end. Im glad to hear that they are okay anyway!
sluggydragon
2019-02-18 23:27
For sure! You definitely got more consistent, I should've noted that. If you're looking for a good rule of thumb, remember to measure the sets of parallel lines in relation to each other. Check out these notes here for a few extra tips. Best of luck!
lindsayturtle
2019-02-21 04:21
I can't believe I finished this! I realized I did too many "extreme" perspective boxes and tried to do the remaining boxes with more "subdued perspective", hopefully that's noticeable. I'm super nervous to post this - I feel like I didn't improve and really struggled and it was so much work, too. Ok. Here goes nothing.....
https://imgur.com/a/km3tdgJ
sluggydragon
2019-02-21 14:26
Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair, so let's get at it.
First of all: right? 250 boxes is a huge challenge and you did it! Nice work.
Though you say feel like you didn't improve, you most certainly did. In both line work and perspective you produced strong work throughout the set. Your convergences became more consistent as did adding the line weight to the silhouette of the boxes. Good job catching yourself on the extreme perspective as well.
I will note that one reason you feel like you may not have improved as much as you could've is that you packed your pages with boxes. It tangles up the line extensions making it difficult to measure your convergences. When practicing this in the future, I think it will help solidify your learning to cut down on the number of boxes per page so you can see the line extensions.
That said, really strong work. Keep it up!
Uncomfortable
2019-02-21 16:51
/u/lindsayturtle
One thing I want to add is that here and there I see a tendency to, out of every set of four parallel lines, to have one of the middle ones veer off slightly. This is a pretty common problem that can be improved upon by thinking specifically about the angles at which the lines leave the vanishing point. Those two middle lines tend to have pretty small angles between them, and as such, by the time they reach the box (especially if they're very close to one another) they'll run virtually parallel to one another. This means even a slight convergence or divergence will appear very obvious, whereas letting them run perfectly parallel will generally look pretty correct (as long as they're within a certain margin of proximity to each other). These notes expand on the point.
Anyway, keep up the great work!
lindsayturtle
2019-02-21 18:18
Thank you. I made a specific effort to combat that exact problem toward the last 3rd of the boxes but I know I didnt always succeed. I did read those notes as you posted them on pretty much everyone elses critiques haha. Like I could get two of the three lines but the third one would be wonky and when I tried to fix that one it threw off another one. But yeah those back corners were the bane of my existence. Thank you for your time!
lindsayturtle
2019-02-21 18:30
Shall I move on to lesson 2? Or do a few more boxes with these things in mind?
sluggydragon
2019-02-21 18:32
Sorry! I shouldve noted that. Yes, Im happy to mark this complete. Move along to lesson 2, whenever youre ready.
lindsayturtle
2019-02-21 16:27
Thank you for your time!
Patmet
2019-02-21 23:47
The 250 box challenge, for your viewing pleasure. https://imgur.com/gallery/CuxtegP
Uncomfortable
2019-02-22 21:20
Nice work completing the challenge! By and large you've done a pretty good job and are demonstrating some confident linework and solid construction. There is however one major issue that you've run into that really needs to be pointed out: you only applied the line extension to two sets of parallel lines, rather than to all three. As a result, you've been improving a great deal on maintaining the convergences of the lines running towards the left and right, but the more vertical lines actually are running into a great deal of divergence.
For example, if we look at 242, 250 and 227, at a glance we can see that the vertical lines separate as they move farther away from the viewer. That's definitely something you're going to want to get a handle on, and as you move forwards, make sure that when doing this kind of exercise that you apply the line extension method to all lines. When we focus too much on some, the others tend to compensate and while we see improvement on one front, it's that other one that starts to deteriorate further.
You've still done a good job overall, and your boxes do a good job of appearing well constructed - it's just after a closer look that these mistakes become more obvious.
I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up with this kind of exercise as part of a regular warmup routine, but feel free to move onto lesson 2.
Patmet
2019-02-22 23:38
Thank you, yes I didnt even think to extend my verticals. I see what you are saying now that I look again. I was so focused on the left and right convergences that I neglected to put as much thought into what my verticals were doing. Ill be sure to keep an eye on that moving forward.
Rox8Master
2019-02-22 04:14
submission boxes
Uncomfortable
2019-02-22 21:38
So you definitely set yourself to complete the challenge, and that you did. You pushed through and drew all 250 boxes. That said, there were some choices you made and steps you skipped that made the exercise somewhat less valuable than it could have been.
To start with, you stuck through extending your lines for the first half or so, which is good. But from what I can see, you didn't necessarily think very much about what those line extensions were telling you.
For example, if we look at box 150, and study the lines going off towards the left, we can see that these four lines are converging in pairs - one pair for each plane. This tells us that when you draw a line, you're focusing too much on the relationship that line has to the ones with which it shares that plane, rather than how all four lines are coming together at a far off vanishing point.
This kind of self-reflection is what allows us to grow. We draw a page of boxes, then we extend the lines for all of them and identify the patterns of mistakes we tend to make, and compare them to what we're trying to achieve. Armed with that information, we move onto the next page purposely trying to address the mistakes we saw before. Then we check that page for errors and repeat the process.
Extending the lines and analyzing the results is a key part of what makes this exercise valuable. Simply drawing boxes is useful to a point, but there's a lot more to be gained from this relatively simple process. So in that, you did miss out quite a bit.
As such, before I mark this challenge as complete, I'm going to ask for another hundred boxes. Take your time, analyze your results, and think about what you're trying to achieve with each and every line you put down.
When you go to draw a line, don't think about the lines with which it shares a corner, or with which it shares a plane. Focus only on all the lines that run parallel to it, the ones that converge towards the same vanishing point - including those that haven't yet been drawn. Everything else is just a distraction.
Then, as shown here, you can think about the angles at which those lines are going to leave the vanishing point. Those with smaller angles between them will end up running close to parallel to one another by the time they reach the box. This is a little trick you can use for the middle lines of a set, since they tend to be very close together.
novocaines
2019-02-22 22:41
I finished this challenge as suggested, when I started I put a month as the end line to complete it and exactly a month has passed so at least I've reached this goal!!
Sorry for the double link but I think I've reached some limit on imgur
250 boxes challenges pt.1 https://imgur.com/gallery/kqOHA55
250 boxes challenges pt.2 https://imgur.com/gallery/xIfQ7R8