sluggydragon

2019-05-22 00:09

Wow, nice work getting through the gauntlet. I really have to say, your line work is fabulous - it's very neat and it's clear to me you take your time before you place down mark down. A few of your warm-ups are also pretty cool looking, but that's not super relevant, haha.

Over the course of your homework, the improvement in your convergences is very obvious. You seem to tame those middle lines (the real problem lines) by the end, making sure they consistently go back towards the same VP. Overall, this is really solid work, so I'm definitely going to pass you, but I'm also going to nitpick a little, to make this worth your while!

- We link these notes as a matter of course. While your convergences are pretty good, something that may help you get it even more consistent would be considering each line's angle relative to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a plane or corner. Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a fairly small angle between them, which'll result in the lines running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box at times, so look out for this kind of relationship.

- pushing your line-weight. I do see you superimposing lines on most boxes, but I think you could push it more on the outer lines, to clarify overlaying forms.

- end points. I can see that you're quite comfortable keeping a wobble out of your lines, but in a few instances, you're overshooting the end points you've set while ghosting. This has the unfortunate effect of weakening the illusion of 3D form. I think you're at the point where you can really focus on accuracy while ghosting, making sure you stop at the end point rather than shooting past it. This will help strengthen the illusion and control of the drawing.

Other than that, over all, this is really great work, and I'm happy to mark it complete, so good job! Good luck on Lesson 2!

Uncomfortable

2019-05-29 16:24

The account you've got listed in my records is /u/Wolfcub86 - but more importantly, after receiving your critique for lesson 1, patreon's attempt to charge you at the beginning of April was declined.

Since the payment never went through, I won't be able to give you a critique until that gets resolved. Let me know when you're able to sort it out.

Uncomfortable

2019-05-30 18:03

I'm glad you were able to sort out the issue with the direction of your line extensions. Early on, I think what may have initially been the source of the problem was that you were extending the lines in both directions. Eventually you got the right of it and started extending only in one direction... but it happened to be the wrong one. I also noticed that as I looked at the face of each box that you'd shade in, frequently it seemed like the box would look more correct if the opposite face had been shaded in and marked as the side that faces the viewer. Were you shading them in immediately after drawing them, or were you doing it later on, just before applying the line extensions? If it's the latter case, it'd make sense, as you might not be as sure which side was which (since we're drawing through our forms).

Either way, you definitely show improvement over the set, and you're able to get past the whole direction issue. Your overall confidence with your linework and box construction as a whole gets better as well.

There certainly is still room for improvement (largely because of the additional confusion you had to deal with along the way), but I am noticing that you do tend to still have lines that often diverge as they move away from the viewer (albeit subtly), and some sets of lines that are a ways off from converging consistently towards the same point.

I do however have advice that you can employ as you work on this in the future.

So when a student goes to draw a line, they obviously try and think about how the line they're drawing is going to relate to the others on the page. Many will try and think about the lines that share a corner with the one they're drawing, and others will think about the lines with which this one defines a plane. Both these cases are incorrect, and result in focusing on a distraction.

Instead, I want you to think about the lines that run parallel to the one you're drawing (including those that haven't yet been drawn) - think about how they all converge towards that single, shared vanishing point, and consider how you're going to angle this one to match up.

As you do this, you can also consider the angles between the lines as they leave this theoretical vanishing point (which may or may not be on the page itself). You'll notice that the two middle lines of a given set will usually have a fairly small angle between them - the smaller the angle, the closer to parallel these lines are going to be running, especially once they reach the box itself. This is a useful relationship to keep in mind - anywhere you can get away with drawing two lines as being parallel to one another is easy, because it's something you can gauge right on the box.

I explain this idea further in these notes.

Anyway, you've definitely put a lot of work and patience into completing this challenge, and have definitely shown a good deal of growth, and overall improvement in your understanding of the material. So, I will go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure however to continue incorporating this kind of freely rotated box drawing into your regular warmup routine, mixing them in with exercises from lesson 1, and picking two or three exercises to do for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of each sitting.

Uncomfortable

2019-05-30 18:44

Looks like you're using the wrong account again! I'm going to go ahead and do the critique here anyway so we don't waste any time, but would you like me to transfer the patreon/lesson badges from your other account to this one? I can only have them sitting on one account at a time, but I'm happy to move them over.

Overall you've done a pretty solid job. I can see clear improvement in the consistency of your convergences, and by the end of the set, I can clearly see that when you draw a line, you're not getting distracted by the lines with which it shares a corner, or a plane, but rather you're focusing purely on how it's going to converge with those it runs parallel to. This is an extremely important point that you've picked up quite well, and it helps keep our boxes solid and believable.

Now, that isn't to say that you've still got room to grow in terms of getting those lines to converge towards the same point, but you're doing a great job in moving in the right direction. One thing that may help is that when you're thinking about how all these lines converge together (including the ones you haven't yet drawn), you can think about how they leave the vanishing point itself, and the angles that sit between them.

As shown in these notes, the two middle lines are going to usually have a pretty small angle between them. The smaller that angle gets, the closer to parallel the two lines run - and even moreso when they reach the box. This kind of a relationship is important to keep in mind, because it helps to avoid situations where one of those middle lines veers off on the wrong path. It's also the easiest relationship to maintain, because two lines running close to parallel is something we can achieve without thinking that much about the vanishing point.

One thing I noticed that is going to continue to need work however is your line quality. While you're not that far off from maintaining smooth, consistent lines, there does tend to be a degree of wobbling here and there. More than that, however, is that you have a tendency to automatically reinforce the lines you're drawing, resulting in two, three, and even four strokes sitting where only one should be.

This is a bad habit to get into, and is one you should consciously fight against. Don't worry about correcting mistakes - adding more ink to a problematic area is only going to draw more attention to it. And when you do draw a mark, each and every one should be preceded by the planning and preparation phases of the ghosting method, before being executed with a confident stroke. This includes situations where we add line weight - it shouldn't be automatic, it should be planned, and it should still be executed with confidence (rather than trying to draw the additional stroke slowly and carefully to match the underlying line).

Keep that in mind as you continue to move forwards. Anyway, I'm going to go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Overall you've demonstrated a good deal of persistence and patience, and have grown considerably over the set. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-02 18:08

Great stuff! I was a little worried with how you started out - you were kind of haphazard in terms of properly applying the line extension technique, and seemed to be going about it in your own fashion. After a few pages though, you started to fall in line and follow the instructions more carefully. From then on, you demonstrated a great deal of patience and care in how you worked through the challenge, and a truly conscientious use of the line extension technique.

By the end, you had improved quite a bit, with your boxes feeling considerably more confident and more solid. I was very pleased with the line weights you were applying from 128-158, though overall your construction and convergences continued to improve all the way to the end.

One suggestion I have is to try and be aware of how the lines of a given set leave the vanishing point, and the angles that fall between them, while you are actually drawing those marks. I'm noticing places where the two middle lines of a given set tend to diverge from one another, with one of them in particular falling out of sync with the other three of the overall set. By being mindful of the angles at which these lines leave their vanishing point, you can identify cases where the two middle lines have a very small angle between them to begin with - something that results in them running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, especially when that vanishing point is a good distance away. I explain this concept further in these notes.

Taking advantage of this requires you to think specifically about how the lines of a given set (including those that haven't yet been drawn) converge, as you're drawing. Don't worry about the lines that aren't running parallel to the one you're drawing at that moment - just focus on the ones that share a vanishing point.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

spelling_expirt

2019-06-04 00:24

Hello, I am one of Uncomfortable's teaching assistants. After I critique your work he will give you your flair.

Congratulations on completing the challenge. 250 boxes does take a degree of fortitude, so take a moment to appreciate your achievement.

From your first boxes, it is obvious that you paid a great deal of attention to both the instruction and purpose of the exercise. All of your boxes are drawn through, your lines are extended properly, one face of most boxes are hatched, and the outer edges of each box even has additional line weight, which adds to the solidity of each drawing. Importantly, it is clear that each line is ghosted, because they are crisp and straight. There is a little room for increased accuracy on your hatching lines, but this will come with time.

There is a marked improvement as you proceed through the lesson, where one can see that, as a group, each set of parallel edges starts to converge more consistently. Additionally, you really started to turn each box in a lot of different ways, and you also tested how a box would look with closer versus more distant vanishing points.

While there are gains made on this front, I do notice a slight tendency which persists to the end of the challenge, which affects many people. In some cases, it seems like within two opposite faces of a particular box the lines seem to converge more tightly, rather than the group of parallel lines as a whole. Additionally, sometimes the rear, hidden edge is noticeably askew compared to its parallel neighbors. For some examples, see boxes 240, 241, 207, 176, 175, and 174. Remember, it is good to approach each group as a whole, as shown here. Doing so helps you keep the convergences more consistent throughout each edge of the box, and is more useful than a face by face approach to the construction of the box.

This is great work, and I hope you are proud of what you have done here, and what you have gained from it. Feel free to move on to lesson 2!

Uncomfortable

2019-06-05 01:12

Well, to start with, congratulations on completing the challenge. You pushed through with a great deal of patience and I'm pleased to see that you applied the line extensions throughout.

Now, it is worth mentioning that when we extend our lines, in order to get the most out of this process, we need to think about what those extensions are actually telling us. Based on the rules of perspective, if a set of lines are parallel to one another, when drawn going off into the distance away from the viewer, they must converge consistently towards the same point.

With this in mind, a fairly consistent trend becomes clear in your boxes: much more often than not, the lines are diverging. As they move away from the viewer, they are growing farther apart, rather than coming together at a single point.

There are several potential reasons for this:

• The first thing that comes to mind is, are you doing things backwards? Is it possible that you're applying hatching lines to one of the BACK faces, and then extending the lines in the wrong direction? Looking at some of your boxes, this seems possible, though not a likely explanation for all of them. For example, the very bottom right of this page would be far more successful if it were reversed, but the bottom left of this last page clearly shows lines converging dramatically as they should be.

• When drawing a line, you aren't thinking about how it is meant to converge with the other members of its set at that moment - you're treating it like an afterthought, to see how it turned out afterwards. When drawing each line of a given box, you need to think about how it converges with its fellow parallel lines (including those that haven't yet been drawn), ignoring all others. Think about how they are all oriented towards a single far-off point. You can also consider the angles between them as they leave the vanishing point, as explained here, to identify which lines should be running close to parallel with one another, and which should be converging more dramatically.

It's worth mentioning that the vast majority of your boxes all used extremely shallow perspective. In this section of the 250 box challenge instructions, I do mention that you should have a healthier balance of boxes with more dramatic foreshortening (where the vanishing points are closer), and those with shallower foreshortening. I imagine this may also have helped you to focus more on the convergences.

As much as I want to mark this challenge as complete - as you did put a great deal of work into it, and that deserves praise - I want you to do 25 more boxes, applying what I've explained here. Show me that you do understand that these lines must converge, rather than diverge.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-05 20:41

Congrats on getting it done! You've definitely demonstrated a great deal of patience, and while it's too bad you didn't apply the line extension method in that last leg of the challenge, you did hold through a great deal of it.

It is worth discussing what exactly the line extensions are all about. In simple terms, they show us how our sets of parallel lines converge towards their shared vanishing point. This is critical because as we analyze exactly how they're converging, we can identify where our lines are going off track, and more importantly how we need to change what we think about while actually drawing the lines.

It's fairly normal for students, as they draw a given line, to think about the other lines it shares a corner with, or those with which it shares a plane. These don't tell us anything about how it relates to its vanishing point however, so instead it's better to focus entirely on the other lines it runs parallel to - including those that have not yet been drawn, ignoring all others. Focusing on how it converges with these lines allows you to focus entirely on maintaining that appropriate trajectory, rather than guessing and hoping for the best.

Furthermore, we can think about the actual angles between the lines as they leave the vanishing point, as explained here. Often you'll find that the two middle lines of a given set will have a fairly small angle between them, often running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself. Being aware of these kinds of relationships can give you some useful hints to apply, as once you know two lines are going to be virtually parallel, it's easier to draw them correctly.

A few minor points to mention - for the most part your line quality is pretty good, though I do see a little bit of arcing here and there, a few wobbly ones, and some cases where you correct mistakes with a second stroke to follow the first. Correcting mistakes and any kind of reflexive drawing is a bad habit to get into, so try fighting the urge to do that. I'm pleased that they were fairly limited overall. As for the line quality, keep pushing the ghosting method, focusing on separating the mark making process into three independent stages (planning, preparing and execution), with the last being focused on achieving a confident, smooth stroke.

I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. You're headed in the right direction, though you do have to work on those convergences, so be sure to integrate some freely rotated boxes into your regular warmups (alongside the exercises from lesson 1).

svendogee

2019-06-08 16:03

Hi there, sizb. Taking a while to get through something like the box challenge is not a bad thing, and thanks for the extra context and self awareness as that will help me tailor my review of your work.

You have done a lot of good work here and shown good progress throughout the challenge. Right from box #1 your line quality is strong and confident and you stick with your lines, even if they miss their mark which is a really good thing. One thing that you would have benefit from is to have hatched the near plane of your boxes, not only for extra line practice but also clarity and keeping things straight in your mind. In some of your boxes you actually did your check lines in the wrong direction (#13 for instance, the red lines should have gone the other direction) and those mistakes are harder to make when hatching planes. On top of that it also helps visual clarity for the viewer and since dynamic sketching is all about communication, anything that provides clarity to the viewer is important.

As you get to your final boxes your convergences are improving quite a bit and you have a good mixture of very subtle convergences and a few extreme ones, which is a good spread since more often than not what we draw will have that subtle perspective. In your boxes you sometimes are still having problems with one of the interior or "back lines" that is common for many students, and imposter has made a lovely infographic on how to tackle that problem here. The main points to take away from this are that we need to look at all parallel lines as a set instead of looking at pairs of parallel lines that make up a single plane of the box. All of the parallel lines are related to each other via the vanishing point and how far or close it is. When the VP moves, the angles between these parallel lines will change and that is what we need to pay attention to. So just read over that and keep it in mind when drawing boxes.

Good job, your 250 box challenge is complete! You may now proceed to lesson 2 and we will see you when you finish. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-08 23:43

Congratulations on working through all 250 boxes. I do have a few thoughts on how you approached them however that should help as you continue to move forwards.

• From what I can see, almost all of the boxes where you applied the line extensions had relatively shallow foreshortening - that is to say that you placed your vanishing points very far away from the box, resulting in lines with little to no convergence. You'll notice that in this section of the notes I specifically say that you should play with both shallow and dramatic foreshortening. What you've done here doesn't really do much as far as testing your ability to have lines converge consistently towards each other, and more focuses on achieving lines that run parallel in 2D space. That's definitely an important skill to have, but you ended up missing a pretty important component of this exercise. I would have definitely wanted to see more pages like this one, where you definitely started focusing more on a variety of kinds of foreshortening, with a much greater focus on convergence.

• I definitely agree that your boxes had a tendency of being very small. These box drawing exercises are all about spatial reasoning. Our brains will generally do better when we give ourselves more room to think, so try and draw your boxes (and anything that comes up in the future) bigger, rather than squeezing them into cramped areas of each page. Additionally, this will also help you in engaging the use of your whole arm, and drawing from the shoulder more consistently.

Now, had it not been for the one page where you did explore more convergence, I would ask you to do more boxes. Instead, I am going to mark this challenge as complete and ask you to move forwards - but I want you to integrate these freely rotated boxes with the line extensions as a major part of your warmups.

With that, I will leave you with one major piece of advice to apply while you draw these boxes. When drawing a given line as part of a box, it's pretty common to think about the lines that share a corner with the one you're drawing, or the lines that share a plane with it. These are all distractions, however.

Instead, I want you to focus only on the lines that run parallel (in 3D space) to the one that you're drawing, including those that haven't yet been drawn. Focus on how they're meant to converge towards a point - even if that point is very far away. As you consider this, think as well about the angles that sit between the lines themselves at the vanishing point, paying special attention to those that have small angles between them. Often we see this with the middle lines. Smaller angles, as we make our way back to the box, can result in lines that can be drawn as effectively parallel to one another, which is an important relationship to keep in mind. Still, it all comes back to the fact that they are converging, just very slowly. I explain this further in these notes.

So. Feel free to move onto lesson 2, but make sure to continue practicing this kind of stuff as explained here as part of your warmups.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-08 23:59

To start with, congratulations on pushing through and completing all 250 boxes. It definitely is a laudible achievement, and one that demonstrates great patience and care.

Looking over your work, I have noticed that throughout the set, you seem to have been focusing primarily on keeping your lines parallel to one another, focusing on extremely shallow foreshortening where the vanishing points are all at infinity. Early on you did have some convergences, where the foreshortening was still shallow, but we could see that there were far off vanishing points - but after your first fifty or so, you seem to shift to focusing almost entirely on being able to keep your lines running parallel to one another.

While this is an important skill to have, in pursuing it you seem to have shifted away from the core of the exercise. In this section of the notes, I do specifically say that you should be practicing both shallow and dramatic foreshortening, dealing with situations where your vanishing points are both very close, and farther away. In both of these situations, you still want to be able to think about a vanishing point that exists somewhere.

I feel that as you worked on this challenge, you allowed yourself to get quite distracted and pulled away from the explicit instructions, instead pursuing your own ends. This isn't uncommon, but it is something you need to keep an eye on. Revisiting the instructions to make sure you're on track is certainly something you may need to do.

Now, when you draw a given line as part of a box, you need to focus entirely on how that line converges with the lines to which it runs parallel in 3D space. You're doing the opposite - you've been focusing on how it fails to converge. We want to think about how their orientations allow them to converge together at a single point, somewhere - be it close by or almost infinitely far away. Either way, there should be in your mind some point that exists where those lines finally touch.

With that, we can consider the angles that sit between the lines at the vanishing point itself. This is where we start thinking about lines that may be effectively parallel - we consider which lines have very small angles between them, and if the distance to this vanishing point suggests that by the time we reach the box, there may be no significant convergence between them. Most often we see this in between the two middle lines of a given set of 4, but it isn't always a given. Certain factors come into play, from the proximity of that vanishing point to that actual angle between them at the VP. I explain this concept further in these notes.

Now, as you missed a pretty important aspect of the challenge, I want you to draw another 30 boxes to apply what I've explained here. Once you submit them to me, I'll mark this challenge as complete.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-12 19:39

Your work here is phenomenal. By the end, the accuracy of your convergences is really fantastic. That isn't to say that there aren't a few little hiccups here and there, and there are a few tendencies that I'll address, but by and large you're really demonstrating an excellent sense of 3D space that is continually developing in the right direction.

With the few little issues you have on occasion, they're generally minor, but they do tend to follow a certain trend. Generally what I recommend to most students here may apply to you as well, although you're already likely doing it to a considerable degree, and just have to have the concept reiterated.

When you're drawing a given line as part of a box, it isn't always clear what lines you should be paying attention to to figure out what its orientation should be. You can't focus on every line, as that's too much to balance in one's mind, so picking the specific lines to focus on is key.

Some students will look at the lines that share a corner with the one they're looking to draw, or they'll focus on the one plane as a whole. Instead, what's critical is to focus only on the lines that run parallel to the one they're drawing - including those that haven't yet been drawn - as the only principle we're trying to maintain is that consistent convergence towards the far off vanishing point. Things meeting at the right corner and all will fall into place if the convergences are consistent and correct.

Furthermore, as we think about how the lines converge towards that VP, we can think about the angles that sit between the lines as they meet there. Often times you'll find pairs of lines with very small angles between them (usually the two middle lines, though not always). This small angle, by the time it reaches the box (especially if the VP is far away) will result in a convergence that is so negligible that we can say the two lines run virtually parallel to one another. This is an important relationship to keep in mind, as knowing that two lines should be running parallel can keep us from avoiding situations where they end up converging far too early in our drawing. I explain this further in these notes.

Anyway, keep up the great work! I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-12 20:54

Hah, I'll certainly take you at your word for those five missing boxes.

As for the other 245, I do have a few thoughts on your general approach to this challenge. Throughout the set there are a number of inconsistencies in your approach to drawing each individual box, with considerably fewer towards the end, which certainly shows progress.

• The first thing that catches my eye is that you're perhaps a little rushed. Your main lines are generally drawn decently most of the time, with a few appearing to be more sloppy, but your hatching lines are pretty much always done in a haphazard manner, and it definitely speaks to your overall state of mind. Regardless of how integral (or not) a line is to your overall drawing, you should still never allow yourself to draw a line in a sloppy manner. Make sure your hatching stretches all the way from edge to edge, rather than letting it float arbitrarily in the middle. The reason is that it impacts your outlook on all your linework, and is the reason that you're a little more inclined to allow for sloppier marks where they count.

• You've demonstrated a great deal of patience in applying the line extensions, although you may not have taken enough time to really consider what those extensions were telling you about how your sets of parallel lines were converging. The key here is to extend the lines of all the boxes on a freshly completed page, and then think about how you can alter your approach to drawing the boxes to yield better results on the next one.

So the trick is that when you're drawing a given line as part of a box, you want to focus entirely on the other lines that are going to be running parallel to it - including those that haven't yet been drawn. Some students will think to focus on the lines that share a corner, or the lines that form a plane, but these are distractions. Only concern yourself with the lines that converge to the same vanishing point, and focus on getting them to converge consistently, and everything else will begin to fall into place.

At the same time, when thinking about how those lines converge, you can also think about the angles between the lines as they leave the vanishing point. Lines with a relatively small angle between them will converge so little once they reach the actual box (especially if the VP is far away), that you can often effectively treat these as being parallel to each other. This is a very useful relationship to keep in mind, as it'll help keep such lines from converging too quickly. I explain this further in these notes.

Before I mark this challenge as complete, I'd like you to do 30 more boxes, applying what I've covered here.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-12 22:02

Very, very nicely done! You actually started off quite well to begin with, demonstrating many of the little issues I expect to see towards the end of a set (a tendency to have one line go off at a slightly different trajectory for instance, but nothing too severe), and as you pushed through the set you continued to improve your estimation of your convergences in small ways. Small though they were, such things are bound to accumulate over the course of 250 carefully drawn, and patiently analyzed boxes. So it's safe to say you still improved a great deal.

By the end of the set, your lines are still as confident and well executed as they were at the start, but your convergences have improved substantially, with the trajectories being remarkably consistent. While I'm sure some of the ones with far-off vanishing points would probably show some inconsistency, those are also the ones with the greatest leeway. Even when extended as far as they have been, they still look very close to correct, which is pretty phenomenal.

Additionally, you've covered an excellent range of foreshortening, from more dramatic to shallower, and as such should be wonderfully prepared for what lays ahead. Unfortunately, I don't really have any advice to offer - you already seem to be applying what I generally share with students at this point, specifically these notes on being aware of how your lines converge as you draw them, and the angles between them as they leave the vanishing point, so as to better identify which ones can pass as being virtually parallel, and which need more purposeful convergence.

Keep up the fantastic work and feel free to move onto lesson 2. Congratulations on completing this considerable achievement, and doing so with such measured patience and care.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-06-13 07:55

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs and I'll be reviewing your work today. :)

First off, well done for completing the box challenge. It's definitely a slog and I know the temptation of wanting to cross out an imperfect box.

Your boxes were actually pretty solid to start with, though with their fair share of the usual problems such as diverging lines and lines converging in pairs. Line confidence was definitely not an issue at all here and your application of line weight is subtle and well done throughout, though there are a few instances where you've incorrectly applied line weight to the internal lines.

As you've progressed through the challenge, I can tell you've definitely thought about what those correction lines are telling you and I'm very happy to see it applied correctly and consistently to every one of your boxes. In your final boxes you still seem to be having a few of little mistakes compound onto the final rear lines of your box but it is much better than where you started.

Overall you've done some fantastic work here with only a few small issues lingering. I'm happy to mark the challenge as complete and feel free to move onto lesson 2.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-06-13 08:10

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs, let's get started.

First off, well done on completing the challenge! I'm glad you found a kind of routine to settle into with it, getting little bits done at a time is the best way to keep focused and not get too sloppy.

Starting off, you definitely had a lot of those little mistakes that compound on the final few lines of the box. I think you've included a good variety of different box shapes, though make sure you're practicing the less extreme converging boxes as well, since there's far fewer of those present.

I'm happy to see that you've applied line weight throughout, as this is extra mileage on the challenge. Not only that, but your application of it has improved greatly over the course of the challenge - going from laborious wobbly strokes to a far more confident application. The other thing I'm glad to see is a consistent application of the check lines as these have clearly helped you tighten up your estimation of perspective.

The back lines of your box have definitely improved overall though I am seeing a few instances of your lines converging in pairs instead. This usually stems from considering only the line that is directly opposite the one you are drawing, instead of all others that converge (or will converge) with it. It's not so bad that your boxes do not look like boxes but it's something to consider, particularly when it comes to doing more advanced things with your boxes in later lessons.

Overall, you've improved greatly from that first page of boxes and should definitely be proud of your improvement. Keep pushing.

I'm happy to mark this challenge as complete. Please feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-14 21:44

Nice work! You've definitely shown steady improvement in your understanding of how these forms sit in space, and how the individual sets of parallel lines converge towards their shared vanishing points. There are still hiccups and mistakes, but by and large the margins are narrowing, and you're being more consistent in your choices.

The few mistakes I'm seeing come primarily from what I perceive as momentary slip-ups. That is, when drawing the lines that go awry, you may have shifted your focus to perhaps thinking about how the line you're drawing relates to those with which it shares a corner, or even those with whom it creates a plane. For the most part, I think you are mindful of the lines that run parallel to the one you're drawing, but on occasion you forget.

But that really is key - to get used to thinking about each line in terms of the others of its own set of parallel lines, including those that haven't yet been drawn, and focusing on how they all converge towards the same point - be it close by or far off. This in turn allows us to think about the angles at which they hit the vanishing point, and the angles that sit between the individual lines. When we notice that two lines of a given set have a very small angle between them at the VP, we can often surmise that these lines - especially if the VP is a fair distance away from the box itself - will likely run virtually parallel to one another once they reach that box. This serves as a critical relationship that helps make it easier to draw those lines in relation to one another.

I explain this further in these notes, though you're already demonstrating its use in cases like box 248. Its green lines show a virtually parallel pair in the middle, which is exactly correct. The purple lines probably have their middle pair converging a little too quickly, however, and the orange set have the outer two lines perhaps converging a little too slowly.

Anyway! You're doing great so far, so keep it up. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-18 20:08

Congratulations on completing the challenge. Working through all 250 boxes certainly is an accomplishment, and of that you should be proud. I'm also very pleased to see that you applied the extensions to each and every line.

Looking over your work however, I do get the impression that you may have been a little more focused on reaching the end, and a little less on what the extensions themselves were telling you about the kinds of mistakes you tend to make, and how to improve on them. Based on the rules of perspective, what we're working towards is getting our sets of parallel lines to converge consistently towards the vanishing point that each set shares. So, when we apply the line extensions, we're specifically looking for cases where our lines don't converge consistently.

I don't by any stretch expect students to be able to do this perfectly even upon completion, but I am noticing even in your boxes the occasional case where a set of parallel lines will actually diverge as they are extended.

The key is to think about what you want to achieve with those lines as you are drawing them. This means that as you draw a given line, you shouldn't be thinking about the lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with whom it defines a plane. You need to be thinking entirely about the other lines that run parallel to it - including those that have not yet been drawn - and how they are all going to converge consistently towards that single, shared vanishing point. Furthermore, we can think about how these lines leave the vanishing point, and the angles that sit between them as they do. You'll often find cases where two lines - usually the middle pair of a set - have a very small angle between them. This can often result in those two lines running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, especially if the vanishing point is a fair distance away. I explain this further in these notes.

Based on what I see here, you have improved somewhat towards the end, but by and large you seem to be relying on more instinct and intuition rather than actually thinking about the problem and how to best approach it. So, before I mark this challenge as complete, I'd like you to do another 25 boxes. Take your time, apply the Y method detailed in lesson 1's organic perspective boxes and think properly through each stroke about how it needs to behave.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-18 20:25

I'm definitely seeing a great deal of care and analysis in how you extend your sets of parallel lines, which is great to see. Doing so is a major element of this exercise, so I'm glad to see that you're taking the time to do so properly.

I do however notice that throughout the set, while you are showing some improvement, there are still a lot of cases where you seem to be doing that analysis after the fact, but not really factoring it into how you approach drawing each box.

Since we're extending those lines to study where our lines succeed in, and fail to, converge consistently towards a shared vanishing point, the logical point to glean from this is that as we draw a given line as part of a box, we should be focusing on how we can get this line to converge more consistently with the lines that run parallel to it.

This means that as you draw that line, you shouldn't be thinking about the lines it shares a corner with (as many beginners do), and you shouldn't be preoccupied with the lines with which it defines a plane (something I'm seeing frequently in your work, as it results in lines converging in pairs rather than all four together). Instead, you should be focusing entirely on the other three lines the one you're drawing runs parallel to - including the ones that have not yet been drawn.

You need to focus on how they're all going to converge together. This is what the Y method explained in the 'how to draw a box' video as well as in lesson 1's organic perspective exercise, focuses on. As we draw our initial Y, we establish one line from each set, pointing towards the vanishing point.

Furthermore, as we think about how the lines of a given set points towards the VP, we can also think about the angles between them as they leave it. Often we'll find that the two middle lines of a given set will have a fairly small angle between them. This is extremely useful to note, because when that angle is small enough, and the box itself is far enough away from the vanishing point, this can result in the lines running virtually parallel to one another on the page (as explained in these notes). It's an extremely valuable relationship to be aware of.

One other point I wanted to mention was that you should keep an eye on which direction you're extending your lines. Generally speaking you're doing fine, but I noticed a few - like 211 and 208 - where one of your sets gets extended in the wrong direction.

Now, before I mark this challenge as complete, I'd like you to do 25 more boxes, applying what I've described here, and showing me that you can think about those convergences and the relationships between these lines as you draw them.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-18 20:42

Great work! I think this is my fourth box challenge critique today, and yours definitely shows the greatest awareness of the intended behaviours of the various sets of parallel lines. You're definitely doing a good job of showing that you understand what you need to be aiming for as you draw your lines - that is, having those lines converge towards that shared vanishing point, and this is also something you improve upon a great deal throughout the set.

Your use of line weight is also coming along great - it goes a long way to make the individual boxes feel solid and cohesive, as though they are solid forms rather than a collection of independent lines.

The one piece of advice I want to offer has to do with how you think about the lines as you draw them. It's clear that when you're drawing a line, you're not getting distracted by thinking of the lines that share a corner with the one you're drawing, or the ones with which it defines a plane. You're definitely focusing on the set of parallel lines as a whole, so they converge.

The next step is to consider the actual angles between those lines as they leave the vanishing point. You'll often find that the two middle lines of a given set have a fairly small angle between them. Combined with the distance of the vanishing point from the box itself, we can often end up with situations where those two middle lines end up running virtually parallel to one another. Being mindful of that particular relationship is very useful, as explained in these notes. Towards the end of your set, I mainly notice issues where a single line (often one of the middle two, though not always) strays from the convergence that is fairly consistent for the other three. This kind of awareness of the angles between them at the vanishing point can definitely help to solve that one errant line.

Anyway, keep up the great work! I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-18 21:00

Your boxes have shown growth in a number of areas, but there are also a few critical problems that have hindered you along the way. This is both good and bad - it's bad because it means you struggled a lot more than you needed to along the way, but it's good because the problem itself is one that is very easily fixed, and with that roadblock cleared, you should be able to see considerably greater improvement moving forwards.

The problem is simple: when applying the line extension technique to your boxes, you, more often than not, extended them in the wrong direction. As explained here, we want to extend the lines back into space, away from the viewer. You have many situations here where you've extended at least one set of your lines away towards the viewer. At best this would be confusing for you as you try and figure out what this is telling you about the convergences of your lines, and at worst, it would hamper your progress considerably.

In these notes, I explain the situation with examples of lines being extended correctly and incorrectly. Within your own work however, if we look at box 250, we can clearly see all three sets of lines being extended towards the viewer (based on the face with the hatching lines being front-facing). If the hatching was on one of the back faces, then those lines would be extended correctly. Alternatively, we can look at 248 where the hatching sitting on a front plane tells us that the purple and red lines are extended correctly into the distance, but the blue lines are extended towards the viewer.

As you worked through the set, you seem to have attempted to handle what the erroneous line extensions were telling you by striving to make the boxes more and more isometric - that is, focusing on getting those lines to run parallel to one another on the page, eliminating their actual convergences. In doing this, you also moved away from a healthy split of shallow/dramatic foreshortening of your boxes, as detailed here.

Now, I am going to ask you to do another 30 boxes, taking greater care in extending the lines in the correct direction and focusing on both shallower and more dramatic foreshortening. As you do so, I want you to apply the following advice:

When you draw a given line, it's easy to get confused in terms of which lines you need to pay attention to when finding the correct behaviour of the one you're adding. Some students will initially focus on the corners that share a corner with the one they're drawing, while others will attempt to focus on the lines that define a plane with the one they're drawing. Both of these are distractions.

Instead, focus entirely on the lines that run parallel in 3D space to the one they're drawing - and therefore the ones that converge towards the same vanishing point (including the ones that haven't yet been drawn). This is actually something you do appear to have a good sense of, though I'm curious to see if it will hold when dealing with actual convergences. As you focus on how those lines need to be oriented in order to converge together at the same point, you can also think about the angles that end up sitting between them when they leave the vanishing point. As explained here, you may find that certain pairs of lines have very small angles between them - often you'll notice this in the two middle lines of a given set. In combination with the vanishing point being a fair distance away from the box itself, you'll find situations where those two lines will be running virtually parallel to one another - a very useful relationship to take note of.

So, as I mentioned - I'd like to see another 30 boxes. I'm confident that with this sorted out, they should show considerable improvement. For the future, be sure to read the notes and instructions more carefully in order to avoid these kinds of issues.

sluggydragon

2019-06-20 18:04

Hey there! I'm sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to give you a flair and check this critique.

So congrats on getting through the gauntlet! The sheer number of boxes is nothing to sneeze at. Nice work!

My main concern looking at this is that your boxes are far too crowded on the page. I fear that without much breathing room, you may not have learned as much as you could've, since this makes it more difficult for your brain to track and learn from the extension lines. This may be why you consistently make the same errors with your convergences, even towards the end of the challenge. These notes may help you sort things out.

Something that may help you get it even more consistent would be considering each line's angle relative to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a plane or corner. Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a fairly small angle between them, which'll result in the lines running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box at times, so look out for this kind of relationship.

However, that being said there is improvement in the consistency of your box convergences and it's clear the challenged helped you a lot.

The other point I wanted to mention was to focus on less dramatic perspective. Students have a tendency to pick a closer vanishing point for their boxes because it does make it a little easier to mentally trace lines back to it, but this has the effect of creating extreme perspectives on every box - practicing across the spectrum of perspective would be very useful, so this would be good to keep in mind for future practice sessions.

Finally, you did neglect to hatch the front faces of the boxes - following the directions closely will maximize your learning.

Overall, however, you did a good job with this challenge - your line work is clean and neat and you clearly understand the purpose of the exercise. I'm happy to mark this complete and send you on to Lesson 2. Good luck!

Uncomfortable

2019-06-20 21:05

To be completely honest with you, that listing of all the lines, subsets, vanishing points, etc. actually gives me a fair bit of confidence that you understand the concepts covered in the lessons. It's that awareness of how they break down into sets, and that they share vanishing points that definitely says a lot in terms of what you've learned from the challenge.

It's also demonstrated directly in your work, as you've put in a great deal of time and care into each and every box: in drawing it, in extending the lines, and in analyzing the results and pinpointing where things went wrong and how you can do better. As such, you've shown a good deal of growth, both with your grasp of 3D space, as well as with the general confidence of your linework.

I am however noticing certain tendencies that speak to how you actually approach drawing each boxes, where I believe a little advice will help. Most importantly, you definitely show an understanding of the goals for how those lines ought to behave (specifically when extending the lines and analyzing the results), but while you actually draw them, you may not be focusing on the right thing.

The key is that while some students will while drawing a given line as part of a box, focus on a corner and the lines with which it shares that corner, or the lines with which it defines a specific plane, these are distractions. Instead, it all comes down to the sets that run parallel to one another, and that converge towards the same vanishing point.

As such, we must focus, as we draw a given line, specifically on those other three lines with whom this one runs parallel (including those that have not yet been drawn), and no others. We want to think about how they are all to be oriented in order to converge towards the same point. The Y method helps drive this forward, as each arm of the initial Y will point directly at one of the vanishing points, and as you add another line to each set, the specific location of each VP becomes solidified.

As we think about those trajectories, we can also consider how those lines leave the vanishing point, and the angles that sit between them. It's often that for the two middle lines of a given set, the angle between them will be quite small - combine that with the distance from the vanishing point to the box itself, and we can find ourselves in situations where these two lines can effectively be drawn as being parallel to each other. This is a useful relationship to keep in mind, as it can help us avoid having those lines converge too early. I explain this further in these notes. Keeping these two points in mind will help you as you move forwards, especially in cases where you have one line in a given set that tends to go off on its own.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Keep up the great work, and feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-23 01:02

Really nice work! You've shown a great deal of growth and improvement over the course of these 250 boxes, along with intense patience and care in the application of the line extensions, and your overall analysis thereof.

You're showing me that you're clearly understanding what those line extensions were telling you, and you've steadily applied what you've learned throughout. There's still a few minor hiccups towards the end, and I have a tip on how to continue to reduce them, but you're absolutely barrelling down in the right direction at considerable speed. Really fantastic work.

So you're clearly already aware of the fact that when you draw a given line, you need to think about how it relates to all the others that it's gonna run parallel to, including those that haven't been drawn, rather than looking at the lines with which it shares a corner or a plane. You're showing that very clearly here.

The next step is to think about how those lines leave the vanishing points, and the angles that sit between them as they do. You'll often find that two of the middle lines of a given set will actually have a pretty small angle between them, resulting in them being quite close to each other on the box itself, and depending on just how far the box is from the vanishing point, you'll also find that at the box itself, they're running pretty close to parallel to one another. Keeping an eye out for these kinds of relationships will help you not only take advantage of a relatively easy pair of lines to draw, but also to avoid situations where they converge too early, or just fly off on their own (like that one errant green line in box 250). These notes elaborate on this concept a little bit.

Anyway, aside from that, keep up the great work! I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto the next lesson.

sluggydragon

2019-06-25 16:50

Hey there! Nice work getting through the gauntlet.

So, I do agree that your lines need work, but I also agree that you improved significantly over the course of the challenge. Your lines gained a bit more confidence and your boxes show clear improvement. I see what you mean about a dip in quality with the last 50, but even there I see that your spatial awareness improved. The ones just before the last set show the greatest improvement though, so nice job there!

I'll confess, I'm not certain I understand what you mean with 2 guide points as opposed to 1. Were you using the method with laying down end points that Uncomfortable uses in his video?

In any case, it seemed to have worked for you to some degree. However, I would like you to do 25 more boxes after watching/rewatching the video and keeping these tips in mind:

- Take your time with each box. Quite a few of these look a bit rushed. You want to be ghosting every single line there, to make sure you hit those end points you're laying down. The same goes for the hatch marks - untidy hatching has the unfortunate effect of drawing the eye and subtracting from the work.

- Try to practice a few different modes of foreshortening. At the moment, a lot of your boxes are fairly neutral when it comes to perspective, sitting in a more or less 'middle ground', but I'd like you to practice both extreme and shallow foreshortening.

- Take a look over these notes to help you tame those convergences. Consider each line's angle relative to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a plane or corner. Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a fairly small angle between them, which'll result in the lines running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box at times, so look out for this kind of relationship.

More than anything, take your time. This will help train your brain in that spatial awareness. When you complete those last 25, just post them here and I'll take a look. Good luck!

svendogee

2019-06-27 14:45

Hi there, good job finishing the 250 boxes. Throughout this exercise you have shown a lot of good improvement. First off, I am happy to see that you quit cramping your pages early on and gave each box the room it needed to fully understand what was going on. Your perspective throughout is definitely getting better, but I still want to drop this infographic that uncomfortable has produced. The main takeaway lesson from this is to think about all 4 parallel lines as a set instead of the usual first instinct students have which is to look at parallel lines that make up a single plane. All of the parallel lines are related to a vanishing point which has a direct impact on the angle between these four lines. Give it a read a few times and digest it and next time you go to draw some boxes keep this in mind. The other point I want to bring up is your line quality. It is definitely not bad but it still has quite a bit of wobble that we would like to get rid of. This appears to be mainly in your silhouettes which I assume is you adding line weight, which is correct. Remember that when adding line weight it is the same as the super imposed line exercise. You are not tracing a line, but rather drawing a new one right one top, meaning we still need to ghost and draw confidently with our shoulder. Your hatching is a little wobbly as well so once again remember to ghost and draw with your shoulder and things will be better.

Overall you did a good job; you followed directions correctly with your check lines (they are a little hard to see but I assume that's scanner setting issues) and you showed steady improvement. Unfortunately there is no "perfect method" for anything, especially drawing boxes and you will have to find which way is most comfortable for you. Depending on the box perspective and what it will be used for I have a few different ways to draw them that I've found through trial and error.

With this your box challenge is complete and you are ready to move on to lesson 2. Keep up the good work.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-27 20:09

Unfortunately in order to ensure that we don't get swamped with submissions as well as to ensure that students are given ample time to go through a given lesson or challenge without rushing, submissions can only be made once every two weeks. As your last submission was on June 22nd, you'll have to hold onto this work and submit it again on July 5th at the earliest.

Uncomfortable

2019-06-28 23:50

Overall you've done a pretty good job of completing the challenge. There are a few things that I want to point out however that will be important for you to keep in mind as you continue to move forwards.

First and foremost, you really shouldn't take it upon yourself to modify the instructions given for a task in any way, and if you do feel that it is necessary, you should ask first. It is, after all, difficult to know what it is that you don't know. In this case, deciding not to extend the lines of all of your boxes wasn't a great idea, because it took an important process of analyzing mistakes and identifying the patterns they follow and severely diluted the sample data you had to work with. Instead of 250 individual analyses, you had only 50 or so, with most of these having vanishing points fairly close to the box itself.

The point of that process is to get the student to think about what they're doing as they draw the box, and how it influences the results. While you do show progress in the overall confidence of your linework, and the overall illusion of solidity of your forms throughout the set, I do tend to see many of the same mistakes showing up. This suggests to me that you haven't necessarily been adjusting your approach based on what you'd identified.

Now, that part isn't abnormal - but the chances of that are usually higher when a student hasn't applied the line extensions as intended.

Anyway! So here's what you're doing wrong. When drawing a line as part of a box, we have to decide what exactly we're going to be drawing this line in relation to. We many choose to relate it to the lines with which it shares a corner, or the lines with which it defines one plane of the box. Both of these are incorrect.

Instead, we need to pay attention to the lines that run parallel to the one we're drawing - the ones that share its vanishing point (including those that have not yet been drawn), so we can think about how they all converge consistently together. This is why we rely on the Y method detailed in lesson 1's organic perspective exercise, as well as the video provided with this challenge. Each arm of the Y points to a separate vanishing point.

Furthermore, as we think about how the lines converge towards their shared vanishing point, we can also consider the angles at which they leave that point. Often you'll find that the two middle lines of a given set will have a very small angle between them at the VP. This, in combination with the box being a fair distance away from the vanishing point, will often result in the two lines running virtually parallel to one another by the time they reach the box itself. This is a very useful relationship to keep in mind in order to avoid early convergences. I explain this further in these notes.

The last point I wanted to mention was that your line quality, though it does improve over the course of the set, is a little sporadic. This tells me that you may not always be investing as much time as you should into each individual stroke, and applying the ghosting method as intended (putting all of that time into the planning and preparation phases, before executing a with a confident, persistent pace and without hesitation, from the shoulder). Always keep that in mind, regardless of whether or not this line appears to be important in the grand scheme of things.

So, I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete. Be sure to continue practicing your freely rotated boxes as part of your warmup routine (along with the lesson 1 exercises), but feel free to move onto lesson 2.

Uncomfortable

2019-07-01 17:02

Great work! You've shown a great deal of progress over this set, both in your line confidence as well as in your spatial reasoning, and the overall consistency of your convergences develops by leaps and bounds. You've clearly demonstrated a lot of patience in applying the line extensions, which is great to see.

I did notice a certain pattern to some of your mistakes towards the end that can certainly be rectified with a little bit of advice. If we look at boxes like 238, 239 and 246, we see a pretty common kind of problem. Looking at the red lines, we can see that they all tend to converge in pairs, rather than all four lines of a given set at once. This happens when, as they draw a given line as part of their box, they focus too much on the lines with which it defines a plane. Instead, you should be focusing on all four lines that run parallel to one another, including those that have not yet been drawn. Specifically we want to pay attention to how they all need to be oriented in order to converge towards roughly the same far off point.

For the most part, I do get the feeling that you're doing this, but having the lines that share a plane converge early with one another is a common sign that the student is slipping in this area.

Additionally, we can think about the angles between the lines at the vanishing point itself - for example, if we look at 244, we'll see that the two middle lines of the set going downwards are diverging slightly. Often we'll see that at the vanishing point, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will end up being quite small. this in combination with the vanishing point being reasonably far from the box itself, will result in those lines running close to parallel with one another at the box. This kind of relationship is important to keep in mind, as it can help us to avoid early convergences. These notes go into this point a little further.

Anyway, keep up the good work. I'll go ahead and mark this challenge as complete, so feel free to move onto lesson 2.

svendogee

2019-07-01 01:23

Hey there, good job finishing the challenge. Leaving it all on the court is the way to go in my book!

You made some great strides in quality throughout this challenge! You have applied your check lines correctly, and throughout the challenge your perspective tightens up as a consequence of such. You do a good job with varying your boxes orientation and perspectives, and your line quality is pretty good. One point of line quality I do want to bring to your attention is the hatching. While the hatching isn't technically part of the box, it is still part of the overall drawing helping to communicate the near plane to the viewer. In a lot of your boxes your hatching is sloppy, feeling a little rushed compared to the boxes themselves. When hatching remember to apply ghosting and use the shoulder and draw them with the same care as any other lines in your drawing. Other than that there a few places where when you are reinforcing the silhouette the lines get a tad sloppy but overall your lines are good.

Looking at a few of your arrows where you think the vertices should be nudged was really helpful as an instructor to give you further feedback. It is showing that you are still not quite looking at all the lines in unison. Take box 242, if you move that vertex down as you indicate with the arrow, to adjust (what I think you were intending) the blue and green lines, this would throw off your purple convergences more. Now I'm not 100% sure but from looking at it I think technically to "fix" that box the vertex in question should be moved upward and outward, but this is kind of getting into the weeds. When I say to look at all the lines in unison, think about the 4 parallel lines in each direction and how they relate to one another with respect to the location of their vanishing point. As the VP changes location, the angles between them change. Uncomfortable has made this infographic to further explain the concept. Overall I am quite pleased with your work and you are free to move on to lesson 2. Uncomfortable will be by to verify and give you your flair. Keep up the good work!

Uncomfortable

2019-07-01 21:22

This is definitely a big step in the right direction. You are definitely demonstrating a better grasp of the exercise as a whole (with the correct line extensions and all). You do still need to work on how you think about a line as you draw it, and its relationship with all the others that are to converge towards the same VP. You do still have a tendency to have one line in a given set veer off on its own, so continue to keep an eye on that.

That said, you are definitely doing much better, and I think you're solidly on the right track at this point. Where previously I was marking the challenge as complete based on the technicality of you having drawn 250 boxes, you can now consider it properly completed. Feel free to move onto lesson 2.

sluggydragon

2019-07-05 17:17

Hey there! I'm Sluggy, one of the TAs. Uncomfortable will be by later to check this critique and give you the appropriate flair.

So, nice work getting through the whole challenge! That's nothing to sneeze at. I see a good amount of improvement over the course of the set, especially in the confidence of your superimposed lines. Other than that, I'd like to go over a few things:

- In future practice, try not to crowd your pages with boxes. When things are crowded like that, your brain has a harder time processing the correction lines you've laid down. You want to be able to see where those are heading to get maximum learning and to improve your convergences.

- Try to practice all sorts of foreshortening. At the moment, you've got a lot of boxes with extreme foreshortening. It is common for students to prefer these as extreme foreshortening draws the vanishing point up closer and makes it easier to estimate while drawing freehand. However, practicing less dramatic foreshortening just as often will be more beneficial to you in the long run.

- Your convergences do show improvement over the course of the set but I do see that you're still having trouble with the middle lines. Take a look over these notes to help you tame those inner lines. Consider each line's angle relative to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a plane or corner. Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a fairly small angle between them, which'll result in the lines running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box at times, so look out for this kind of relationship.

Overall, this is very solid work and it's clear that your mark-making and your grasp of 3D form has improved. I would continue to practice boxes in your warm-ups, keeping those notes in mind. Nice work!

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to include that I'm marking this as complete and sending you on to lesson 2. Good luck!

sluggydragon

2019-07-05 17:37

Hey there! I'm Sluggy, one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be by later to check this critique and give you the right flair.

First off, wow! This challenge certainly paid off for you. Your boxes are quite neat to start with, but your line confidence improved substantially by the end. Your line weight is solid and your hatch marks are clean and thoughtful, really nice work! I just have two things I wanted to point out for you:

- try not to overcrowd your pages with boxes. Making sure you're able to see the line extensions is important for learning and when there are too many boxes on the page, it can get to chaotic to process.

- Your convergences are fairly good to start and improve towards the end, but I do notice a few of the middle lines are still not behaving. Take a look over these notes to help you tame those inner lines. What you're looking to do is consider each line's angle in relation to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a plane or corner.

Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a small angle between them, which'll result in the lines running virtually parallel to one another once they reach the box, so look out for this kind of relationship when you're practicing in the future.

Overall, though, really good work and very solid mark-making. Keep it up! I'm happy to mark this complete and send you on to lesson 2. Good luck!

Uncomfortable

2019-07-05 21:43

Looks like you submitted your lesson 1 work a couple days ago! Don't forget that students must wait a full two weeks in between submissions (except for when specific revisions are requested). This is both to avoid situations where students get the work done ahead of time and then dump it all together, as well as to ensure that students have plenty of time to do the work without the impulse to rush.

So go ahead and hold onto this work and resubmit it no earlier than July 16th.

Oh, and I took a glance at your work and saw that you didn't actually apply any of the line extensions, so you may want to read the lesson page and watch the video again. Make sure you're following the instructions to the letter to make sure you get the most out of every exercise.

Uncomfortable

2019-07-08 20:15

It looks like you've only linked to a single page of your boxes, rather than the whole set. Could you update the link to point to the full album?

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-09 08:12

Hi there, I'm one of the TAs. Let's get started.

I'm not sure how you've numbered these, but I assume the number in the circle is the number of boxes that page brings you up to. I'm going to assume this is the case and critique it as such.

Your work is actually pretty solid from the start and you're doing a good job of estimating perspective on boxes with extreme convergence. Over the set, your line quality definitely improves in terms of accuracy when it comes to adding line weight which is good to see. I do think you've done yourself a bit of a disservice by not consistently applying the checking method to all of your boxes, as this helps us identify those more subtle mistakes that aren't immediately obvious to the naked eye and makes it more difficult to critique to boot.

I can see, even in your last boxes that you're still struggling to place those back three lines in such a way that they join at a single point. Again, the line extensions would have helped you here to ascertain where your estimation had wavered and caused these mistakes to compound. In addition to this, you tended to stick to very extreme boxes in at least one direction whereas we tend to see a lot more of the more subtle kind of convergence that tends to suggest a more relatable human scale.

Overall you've made some great progress in your estimation of perspective and line confidence however before you move on, I would like you to draw 25 more boxes, with shallower foreshortening (like the one on the right in these notes and consistently applying the line extension method.

sluggydragon

2019-07-10 15:33

Hi there! I'm Sluggy, one of the TAs. Uncomfortable will be by later to check this critique and give you the right flair.

So, you start out pretty strongly in this challenge - your line work is clean, confident and accurate. Your convergences do have noticeable issues, but I'm happy to say that by the end of the challenge, your convergences improve quite a bit. So does the hatching on the front faces of your boxes, which tells me you're putting more and more thought into each one. Nice work!

That said, I have a few things I'd like to point out:

- fight the instinct to go back over a mistake with another line. This has the tendency to draw the eye and as a result, many of your boxes lack the solidifying focus that using line weight effectively can bring. That's because, in many cases, only one line is darkened, while the rest are left without the additional weight. Allowing a line to remain imperfect actually draws less attention than darkening that area to cover up a mistake. This will come in handy in later lessons.

- While your convergences certainly improved, take a look over these notes to help you tame the interior set of lines. What you're looking to do is examine each line's angle in relation to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a plane or corner.

Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a rather small angle between them, which will result in the lines running more or less parallel to one another once they hit the box, so look out for this kind of relationship when you're practicing in the future.

In all, this is very strong work and you've shown clear improvement. I'm happy to mark this complete and send you on to Lesson 2. Good luck!

spelling_expirt

2019-07-13 01:18

Hello, I am one of uncomfortabless TAs. I will review your work and then he will assign your flair. Lets take a look!

Congratulations on completing the challenge! There is a lot of patience and endurance required for 250 boxes! Think about it, that is 4*3*250 = 3000 lines, and then another 3000 for each extension line. You should take a moment to celebrate your discipline.

Your line work started off quite strong. The lines were clean and crisp. You also drew through all of your boxes, and while some of your extension lines may be incorrectly applied, you still used them every time. I think continuing to do the lesson 1 exercises served you well here, and will in the future, as even your added line weight was also very confident and thoughtfully placed on the silhouette of the box. It is common for students to have a confident primary line, but then the secondary lines waver as they strive for accuracy. I dont see any indication of that here.

You also chose a good degree of foreshortening by selecting vanishing points that are distant from your box. This is a more realistic and also more challenging goal then keeping the vanishing points close to each box.

One thing I was really glad to see is that, initially, your boxes, sometimes, didnt converge correctly. Taking a look at boxes 1, 5 or 10, you can see that cases where lines that should converge to a shared point are often pointing to very different places. But by the end of the exercise (Box 240, 241, 242, ad 249), the lines all really started to behave as a group. It looks like you were starting to understand that it is best to treat each set of 4 converging lines as a group, rather than tackling each separately. One way you can tell is that, for many of your later boxes, the lines on two opposite faces of the box seem to converge to the same point, rather than two points. Continuing to think of things in this manner will help you address the rear edge problem. For the record, this is a problem that nearly everyone struggles with.

I think this challenge was really good for you in terms of your line confidence and three dimensional thinking. It is great to see a students growth so visibly. Feel free to move on to lesson 2. For the future, I would suggest that you could sample more extreme box angles, for example where 4 faces are extremely foreshortened, while the front and back face are nearly perpendicular to the viewers line of sight (play around with this for a bit to see what I mean). Lastly, keep doing lesson 1 as a warmup!

spelling_expirt

2019-07-13 21:46

Hello, I am one of uncomfortabless TAs. I will review your work and then he will assign your flair. Lets begin!

Regardless of how you felt about the challenge (although its good to hear you had fun), it is worth taking a quick moment to appreciate your discipline for this challenge. It is a lot of work, and you should be proud of completing it.

In terms of line work, there is a lot of good habits here. Your boxes are clearly ghosted and your extra line weight is also confident. Although it looks possible that you might be trying to straighten out your first line, as sometimes the lines are much thicker on one side over another. I also wanted to point out that it seems like your hatching lines were maybe a little less precise than those of your boxes. Try to approach each line on the page with the same mentality.

It was also good to see that by the end of the exercise, you were choosing more realistic, distant vanishing points to target, which will serve you well in the future. You could still push yourself more on this front. Also, nice work with using the extension lines for each box.

It looks like, even to the end of the exercise, you struggled with the angle of the rear edges of the box. This is a common issue. There are also still some very divergent lines even towards the end of the exercise, such as boxes 222 and 235. Box 237 also does not converge in a realistic way. In fact, it seems that often, when you draw a box where two opposite faces are above and below the point of view (for example boxes 237, 224, 228, 246), the box ends up looking a little less realistic. One very helpful demo uncomfortable made is about how to think about the lines in a box. In a box there are 3 sets of 4 lines. Each set converges to a single vanishing point, and as in the rotated box exercise, you can often estimate the angle of convergence by using neighboring lines. If you treat the lines as sets, rather then approaching each plane by itself, you will have a lot more success in creating realistic boxes.

There was a lot of progress made over this challenge. Your line work has gotten better, your line weight more precise, and your boxes are overall looking more solid. Nice work. Feel free to move on to lesson 2!

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-13 23:25

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. Let's get started.

Firstly, congratulations on finishing the slog through 250 boxes. Secondly, thanks for picking up on the fact you hadn't followed the instructions correctly up until that 100 box mark. In future, make sure you read the lesson section in its entirety before you dive in, otherwise you miss important points that make the lesson that much more valuable.

Your boxes start off pretty rough with chicken scratching and significant wobbles. This definitely improves after the 100 box mark where it seems like you started putting more planning and care into each line of your box. I was also glad to see that you picked up on scribbling your hatching at around 150 and your entire set shows considerable growth not only in confidence but in mindset.

In terms of convergences, I definitely see improvement here across the board though even towards the end, you're still falling into the trap of having your parallel lines converge in pairs or having the final back line of the box shear off in another direction due to the previous mistakes compounding. Usually this kind of thing is caused by thinking about how the line they're drawing is going to relate to others on the page, the lines that share a corner with the one they're drawing, or the lines which define the plane. Rather, we should be thinking about the lines that run parallel to the one we're drawing (and those yet to be drawn) and think about how they all converge at a similar angle towards a shared vanishing point. This idea is explained in these notes.

Overall, I think you've learnt quite a bit from this exercise and I hope it has been valuable to you. Again, in future, make sure you look before you leap so you don't miss anything. Keep practicing your boxes with what I've mentioned above in mind and please feel free to move onto lesson 2.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-19 23:08

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to assign your flair.

First off, well done for pushing through the 250 box challenge. I think you had some good improvement over the course of the set but there's definitely room for more and hopefully my crit will help with that.

You start off with boxes that are really small and cramped and I'm glad to see you did start making them slightly bigger - though you could have stood to have made them even bigger. Drawing big is definitely encouraged in Drawabox as it gives you more space to think through the spacial problems you're tackling. It's also good to see consistently applied line weight and hatching for that extra practice and certainly you improve over the set in terms of subtlety and confidence.

At the end of the set, I'm still seeing quite a few issues with lines of your boxes converging in pairs or small mistakes in the front faces compounding to send those back lines shearing off in a random direction. This is usually a result of the student not thinking about how the angles of the lines are affected as they converge towards their shared vanishing point and what the angles of those lines yet to be drawn will look like. When a box is drawing correctly, the two middle lines of a given set will usually have a fairly small angle between them - the smaller the angle, the closer to parallel these lines are going to be running, especially once they reach the box itself. This idea is explained further in these notes.

Overall, I think you've done a pretty good job and made some good improvements across the board but there is work still to be done to bring those lines under your control. I'm going to mark the challenge as complete and invite you to move onto lesson 2 however I strongly encourage you to continue to incorporate boxes into your warm up to try and push that understanding of how the angles of the lines relate to one another in 3D space.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-21 21:31

Hey there, Mr Crayon. Look at that, I did get your submission after all. You know the drill, Uncomfortable will be along later to give you your flair and all that good stuff, so let's look at some boxes.

3 months is a hell of a slog and congratulations on pushing through. Hopefully you learned a lot from the experience and your understanding of 3D space has improved. Your boxes honestly start off pretty strong with nice confident line work and only minimal problems with the application of line weight. There's issues with diverging lines and lines converging in pairs as happens with all students as they grapple with how to think about what the boxes they're drawing should be doing.

Around box 100 though, some of these issues start to become a little less apparent. As we progress through the set, I feel there's some deterioration in your initially solid linework and you start to get a little more inaccurate with landing your lines. Almost as if you got a bit sloppy as you saw the end point in sight. :)

Even at the end of the set, you're still displaying a few of those little issues I mentioned above. Particularly the one where your parallel lines converge in pairs. It's possible you're thinking about the vanishing point too much or considering the plane you're drawing but what we want to think about is the angles at which our lines converge and the way those lines relate to on another and the vanishing point. Please refer to the holy TA text for a visual representation of this.

Overall, I think you've made some solid improvement over the set but got a little sloppy towards the end with your line work. There's still work to be done with your convergences as mentioned but I know that you plan to work on this in warm ups so feel free to draw 250 more boxes move onto lesson 2 and consider this challenge marked as complete.

MatheusNunescp

2019-07-21 21:25

I forgot to say good night to you, good evening team <3

svendogee

2019-07-21 23:07

Hey there. First of all I want to say that you are being entirely too hard on yourself, as this is a very solid set of boxes you have submitted! You had a strong start, showed growth throughout and ended even stronger. Your line quality and sense of perspective is really nice, and you appropriately applied your check lines to your boxes, which is what we like to see!

It wouldn't be a proper critique to find something to point out for you to work on, although with this submission it isn't as easy as some. I would like to point out that many of your boxes are very similar in terms of size/scale, convergence, and orientation. It would have been nice if you attempted to try some 2 point perspective boxes, or maybe some more extreme convergences for practice sake. In reality, the convergence rate/lens you used on these boxes is very good and what you would want to use most of the time, so it's not really even a huge deal, just something for me to point out. In terms of orientations though, you do seem to have a few comfort zones that you stick with, and more importantly than varying convergences is to be able to rotate boxes (and more complex) forms arbitrarily in space.

In respect to your entire submission of boxes, your hidden lines maintain consistent perspective pretty well, with very few wild, off kilter lines. Regardless, we like to share this infographic that uncomfortable made that illustrates how the 4 parallel lines all are related to one another with respect to the vanishing point and how their angles between change when the VP moves. You have a good handle on that already, but here it is for the sake of being thorough. You are now finished with the 250 box challenge and your next step is lesson 2. Overall you have done a great job and keep up the good work.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-23 08:37

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to check this and update your flair.

First off, well done for slogging through, 4 months is certainly a marathon! From the start, your linework was solid - confident, straight, and accurate. By the end, it's just as solid but it looks like you're managing the pressure you use far better.

Your estimation of perspective does improve over the course of your boxes though certain mistakes plague them all the way through. Namely the back lines of the boxes shooting off in other directions and in cases where this doesn't happen, the lines converging in pairs. The first is usually the result of little mistakes from the near planes of the boxes compounding to create more dramatic errors in the far planes. The latter is the result of something a little more tricky and indicates a need for a little shift in your thinking when drawing these boxes.

Often, students are inclined to think about their boxes in terms of where the vanishing point is, or how the planes of their box should look. The better way to think about this is to consider how the angles of each line that shares a vanishing point (parallel lines) change and compare to each other as they approach the vanishing point - including those parallel lines yet to be drawn. This idea is best demonstrated in this diagram.

Overall your estimation of perspective had improved and your pressure control has definitely improved. That said, I would like you to draw 20 more boxes and trying to implement the method above, since I feel you probably need that last little piece to push your boxes to the next level. When you're done, feel free to post them as a reply to this comment and I'll review them.

Uncomfortable

2019-07-23 16:37

It looks like when patreon attempted to charge you for last month, your payment method was declined. In order to be eligible for a homework critique, you'll have to first resolve that (to pay for the critique you received for lesson 1). You'll also have to wait until the beginning of next month so you can be charged up front in case your payment gets declined again.

svendogee

2019-07-25 00:55

Hey there. You have submitted a nice set of boxes here. You have shown a lot of growth in your boxes, perspective and even overall line quality. As you go through the 250 boxes your convergences show steady improvement, but you still seem to have some trouble with the back line fairly often. Here in this infogrphic uncomfortable made, he explains how we need to look at all four parallel lines in a single ensemble instead of the more common way of viewing them in pairs the make up a single plane. The four parallel lines are all related to each other via the internal angles in relation to their respective vanishing point. That is, as the vanishing point moves further away, the angles decrease and the four lines become more and more "truly parallel." Aside from this struggle, I am pleased with your work. You have done a good job drawing your boxes in a variety of scales, orientations, and lenses, and this exploration will only lead to further growth. If I were to find other things to nit pick on, I would say you could have taken a little more care on the hatching, as it seems you could have used more ghosting, but to your credit the lines look smooth and confident and drawn with your shoulder! I see you have attempted some line weight around the silhouettes and you've done a good job for the most part keeping the weight subtle, "whispering to the viewer's subconscious instead of screaming," as uncomfortable puts it. Overall, you've done a good job on this challenge both in drawing the boxes but also just following the directions of applying the check lines correctly. So with this you have completed the 250 box challenge. Your next step is to move on to lesson 2, so keep up the good work.

spelling_expirt

2019-07-24 03:35

Hello again Riibot09!

Glad to see that you made it to the other side of the challenge. No matter which way you look at it, you just completed a lot of work, so take a moment to appreciate your own determination and discipline.

It may have taken you a long time, but it isnt a race, and I think your deliberate, thoughtful pace helped you in the long run. Your linework started off confident and crisp in the first boxes, and only got better as you worked through the challenge. One can tell that you put a lot of time into ghosting to get a clean strong mark. You also used the line extensions on every box to check your work.

It looks like something may have clicked in your head around box 220 or so. Up to this point, there are some boxes where either the convergence (boxes 197, 212, 219) or how the lines ended up intersecting (box 215, 216) undermined the solidity of the drawing. But after this point, the lines begin to behave together a little more nicely. A principle that is worth touching on at this point is how you treat the lines of your box. The best method to do so is consider each group of 4 parallel lines as a whole, rather than individually. By using neighboring lines to estimate angles (very similar to the rotated box exercise), you can prevent lines from converging in pairs (211, 215) or having a very off back edge (177, 198). It looks like you started to play with line weight on the silhouette of the box as well, which will serve you well in future lessons. One thing I could suggest is that for your hatching lines, try to make them extend from edge to edge on the box. Its basically free ghosted line practice that way.

You improved a lot over the challenge. Your boxes are looking more consistently believable. I think you would be pleased if you did the organic perspective exercise as a warmup at some point and then compared that to the one you had at the end of your lesson 1. Feel free to move on to lesson 2, and keep up the great work!

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-25 06:37

Hello Kira, Box Duchess Squiggaloo reporting in. Our Box Overlord shall be by later to present you with your shiny new flair but first, boxes.

You start off pretty strongly. Your lines are nice and straight though your line weight is pretty scratchy. This certainly improved as you got further through though make sure you're only reinforcing the silhouette of the box and doing it in one confident stroke like you're doing superimposed lines. Better to miss the mark than to wobble the whole way along. It was good however to see you apply line weight and hatching to every single one of your boxes since it's good free mileage out of the exercise.

Your convergences definitely improved over the set and while there's no more really obvious errors like lines shooting off away from their vanishing point (except 249, but we don't invite him to the box reunions anymore), there's still some inaccuracies and lines converging in pairs. The former is a symptom of being human and needing more practice, the latter is related to how you think about your boxes when you draw them. You may have seen a common recommendation in our critiques that students consider the angles of their lines, how they relate to other parallel lines drawn and those yet to be drawn as well. The vanishing point is a consideration in there as well, but only in so far as how the angle of our lines relate to that imaginary point. Check out these notes for a more visual representation of what I'm talking about.

Overall, you've made a solid improvement with your lines and your convergences. There's work still yet to be done but there always is. Make sure you try drawing a few boxes with the mental shift I suggested, and draw them big, because there's no better way to engage your shoulder than to draw big. I'm happy to mark this one as complete. You may move onto lesson 2.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-25 06:53

Hey there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to check on this and give you a flair.

While I can't comment much on the quality of the lines of your early boxes (the red is a bit overpowering), I can see instances where you've redrawn lines to correct mistakes. I want to strongly discourage doing this as in some cases here it has popped the backs of your boxes forward and made them look quite off. You only want to be applying line weight to the silhouette of the box and correcting your mistakes often results in a heavier line weight.

Your convergences definitely improve over the set though the biggest issue I'm still seeing with these is that many of your parallel lines will converge as pairs. Particularly lines that share a plane. This is suggestive of considering only the lines that you are drawing at that moment and not the others that are already drawn or yet to come. You may wish to consider how the angles of the lines relate to each other between planes. There is a more acute angle between the lines that sit at the middle of the box than the ones on the outside. This is a good relationship to keep in mind as it will allow you to draw these lines more parallel to each other and will flow onto the other other lines that share the vanishing point. Just as mistakes will compound onto those rear lines, so too will good decisions about the angles and placements of your lines. Check out this diagram to see what I mean about the middle lines.

Overall you've made some good improvement. You should focus on getting those pairs of lines in sync and being mindful that you do not reinforce your lines with a kneejerk correction to a perceived mistake. I'm going to mark this one as complete, please feel free to move onto lesson 2.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-26 23:37

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to update your flair and check on this.

Your work all the way through is pretty solid here and the line confidence is on point. Early on there's signs of reinforcing internal lines but you seem to have picked up on this and towards the end, line weight is only applied to the silhouette of the box and quite confidently at that.

Your estimation of perspective improves in subtle ways over the set though there's still signs of your lines converging in pairs in some cases. There's also some instances where it's clear little mistakes have compounded on the final lines of your box. I think you're very close to solving this issue on your own however allow me to give you a little push in the form of a diagram. Note how the pair of lines that converge in the middle are very close in angle and very close to being parallel? Once you place down one of these lines, the other is very quickly able to be estimated due to their similarity. Once you've got two down, it then becomes easier to think about the remaining lines.

Overall, you've done a great job and it's great to see such smooth confident lines all the way through. There are some subtle lingering issues that you should be able to iron out during your warm ups. As such, I'm happy to mark this challenge as complete and ask you to move onto lesson 2.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-07-26 23:59

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to update your flair and check on this.

Good job pushing through the box challenge. I see lots of notes on your pages which definitely suggests you spent some time thinking about what you were doing in the month you spent in the box mines. The biggest thing that stands out to me about your submission is the variety of rotations and dimensions of your boxes, this is really great to see.

I see a lot of reinforcing of inner lines throughout the set, make sure you're only reinforcing the silhouette of the box since this is what will lend it solidity. There's also some issues with line confidence throughout the set, particularly with application of line weight. We want to make sure our line weight is applied with the same confidence we draw our lines with otherwise we get those kind of weird fuzzy-bumpy bits on our boxes.

You definitely struggled with applying the check lines in the beginning though I did see a note around box 60 where you realised this mistake. In terms of your convergences, there is some improvement however you are still falling into some common mistakes even towards the end with some of your parallel lines converging in pairs or even two pairs diverging away from each other. This suggests to me that you need to shift your thinking more towards what the angles of your lines are supposed to be doing. What this means is considering how each of your lines relates to others it shares a vanishing point with - including those not already drawn and how those angles relate to each other as they converge towards the vanishing point. This diagram demonstrates the point quite clearly and you'll notice that the pair of lines in the middle of the box are very similar in angle so as to be almost parallel.

Before I mark this challenge as complete, I would like to see 15 more boxes drawn with what I've just told you in mind. Try to draw them big and confidently, because this will help you think about the angles a little more.

svendogee

2019-08-02 00:54

Hey there, good job finishing up the box challenge. I can tell that you've put in a lot of hard work here, not limited to putting in all of your check lines which makes us happy and indicates you were following directions. While there was a lot of hard work here, there is also quite a bit of room left to improve. Your lines, while not the worse, are quite wobbly and hesitant which is definitely not what we want. You have done a good job of making your boxes bigger as you progress which gives your brain more room to think through these puzzles, and that should provide you with adequate room to really use your shoulder to get confident marks. Remember the points taught in lesson 1 and always try to warm up before you start any work that will be submitted. You are correct in your evaluation that the marks in the back of your boxes are throwing off your convergences, but those aren't the only ones. There are a lot of times where you end up having distortion stem from all of your lines and not just the internal ones. Before marking your boxes as complete I want you to read through these notes that uncomfortable has put together about how all of the parallel lines of a box are related to each other with respect to the vanishing point. A lot of students in the beginning tend to view the parallel lines in pairs that make up a single plane instead of viewing them all as the ensemble they are. After reading through these notes please draw 20 more boxes and submit them as a reply to this comment. After that, I will go over them with you and we will move on from there. Please don't be discouraged, as you put in a lot of hard work and I can see that, I just want to see a little more out of you with some guidance this time and a friendly reminder to ghost your lines and use your shoulder. You do not need to wait for the 2 week cool down period as this isn't a new submission. See you when you finish those 20 boxes!

Uncomfortable

2019-08-01 14:00

Your last submission was 5 days ago - you may have forgotten, but students have to wait 14 days between submission, except when revision work has been requested as part of a critique. This is both to ensure that we don't get overwhelmed with homework submissions and to ensure that students don't have any incentive to rush through the work.

You'll have to hold onto this work and resubmit it no earlier than August 10th.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-08-03 11:35

Hi there, I'm one of /u/Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to update your flair and check on this so let's get started.

When you said that you'd only submitted 2 weeks ago, I was a bit skeptical but looking at your submission, you do seem to have done a really good job of planning your lines out and thinking about what you're doing here.

Over the course of your box challenge, there are significant improvements in your line confidence, application of line weight, and of course, convergences. There's a good mix of exaggerated and subtle foreshortening and boxes of all different shapes and sizes here, which is also fantastic to see.

You seemed to hit your stride somewhere around box 200, where your boxes look consistently pretty good to the naked eye. There's a few little issues here and there where your lines are diverging or converging in pairs, even in the last few boxes but I do think you're starting to understand how the angles of your lines relate to one another.

Overall you've made some really solid progress across your box challenge on a number of fronts and it's clear that despite only taking 2 weeks to complete, you have not rushed and have made an effort to understand what your extension lines were telling you. Keep up the good work, continue working on getting those convergences consistent, and feel free to move onto lesson 2.

ElectricSquiggaloo

2019-08-04 10:33

Hi there, I'm one of Uncomfortable's TAs. He'll be along later to update your flair and check on this.

First off, well done slogging through. 250 boxes is by no means a small task and I can see significant improvements in your line confidence as well as your estimation of perspective, though there is a ways to go yet.

Your boxes start off with very thick, unconfident lines but this definitely starts to improve as early as box 30. By the end, I can see lines that are made with far less pressure applied. I do see quite a few instances of lines being redrawn throughout your box challenge and this is particularly distracting on the interior lines of your box as this has the effect of thickening those lines and somewhat breaking the illusion of solidity that you're building by adding line weight to the silhouettes. When we make a mistake in ink, we must learn to live with what that means for the rest of our drawing and work with it, because it's very difficult to hide a mistake in ink without drawing more attention to it. You may need to spend more time planning your lines as I can particularly see a lack of planning and sometimes rushing in your hatching.

In terms of your convergences, you start off with some pretty extreme divergence and lines converging in pairs. These issues are still quite present by the end but the divergence particularly has become more subtle. Often times a student considers how the line they're drawing relates to others on the page, whether it's those that share a plane or a corner. What they should be focusing on is how the angles of those lines that share a vanishing point relate to one another. You'll note that the two lines in the middle (top left and bottom right of the box) are very similar in their angle, so as to be almost parallel. This is an important distinction to make as the rates at which the other two lines converge will be steeper than those in the middle.

Before you move onto lesson 2, I would like to see 20 more boxes. Ensure that you plan and execute your lines confidently and consider the angles of those lines and how they relate to one another - both those already drawn and those yet to be drawn.

svendogee

2019-08-04 13:55

Hey there, good job completing the 250 boxes! You have made some good improvement here, but there are a few things I want to point out to help you continue to progress. First of all, you have drawn all of your boxes extremely small. With any "real" drawing, your subjects most likely won't be at this thumbnail scale and so drawing your boxes this tiny isn't very helpful. Additionally, when we draw larger we are giving our brains more room to work through these spatial puzzles that drawing presents to us. I see that you are improving with your back line convergences, but to help continue that uncomfortable made this infographic for students upon completion of the challenge. The distilled point of it is that all 4 parallel lines are related to one another with respect to the vanishing point and as the vp changes, the angles between all four lines change. For the most part your line weight is pretty good, but I'm seeing some boxes, 247 for instance, that aren't quite up to snuff. Remember that line weight should be most prominent around the silhouette and lightest for the internal lines, which is shown and explained more here. There isn't much more to say for your boxes. I want to reiterate on last time to draw larger in the future as a general rule of thumb for drawing larger is always better (unless you are doing thumbnails which have a distinct time and purpose). Good job completing the challenge and we will see you after you complete lesson 2.

svendogee

2019-08-08 14:47

No worries, we have critiqued much more wonky photo orders for the challenge, but thanks for the heads up!

Ok, so there is a lot to address in your submission so let's get started. First of all, congratulations on making it to the finish line; it's a difficult challenge and students should always feel good about finishing. You've made some good strides in your work through the challenge, but there are also still some problem areas to address. Starting with your growth - your sense of space and perspective definitely improved through the challenge, especially with the convergences of your hidden lines. To improve even more on the back line convergences, uncomfortable made this infographic for students after the challenge (so they have more context and had time to work through problems as best as they can) . Please give it a read through, but long story short is that all 4 parallel lines of a set are related to one another with respect to their vanishing point. As the VP changes, the angle between all these lines change.

Moving on, I feel that you could have drawn your boxes much larger, as they are all fairly small and timid. Speaking of timid, your line work is still very hesitant and lacks the confidence that ghosting and drawing from the shoulder provide. On a positive note, you did a good job drawing boxes in a lot of different configuration and didn't settle into a "comfort zone box". Overall, you've made some good progress, but before I mark this challenge as complete I am going to ask you to do one additional page of boxes, with some stipulations.

1. Make sure to ghost every line and use your shoulder, bigger lines are better for this which leads into the second point. Also - no re-do lines like you have done in your submission. Make sure to prepare each line and if it goes off kilter, we must all live with our results. Re-do lines only draw more attention to mistakes.

2. The page should have 5 (roughly) equally sized boxes, no more no less.

3. Read through this section on line weight again here and do your best to apply what uncomfortable goes through.

Once you have completed your page submit them as a reply to this comment and we will go from there. Keep up the hard work and I will see you soon.

svendogee

2019-08-08 15:04

No worries! The important part is you caught your mistake early and proceeded to correct it, that's great to hear!

Your line quality is great throughout this challenge, and while there could be some improvement on the hatching for the most part I can tell you didn't lose your lesson 1 habits we strive to build.

You have made great strides in your grasp of three dimensional form and perspective throughout the challenge so that is great to see. You are still having some trouble nailing down those back/hidden lines to be in perspective, which is very common for students and that is why uncomfortable made this infographic to help students sort it out. I would like you to read this and take in all of the information, but the short story of it is that students often look at boxes in sets of two parallel lines that make up a plane, often leading to two points of convergence. Instead, we must view all of the parallel lines of a box (four) as a single unit, because all parallel lines go towards a common VP. As the VP moves, the angle between these boxes move. For example, as the vanishing point moves very far away, the lines become more and more parallel looking, meaning the angle between them gets smaller and smaller. Anywho, read that over and keep it tucked in your brain space for the future. Other than that my only other critique is regarding your line weight. You have very good consistent lines, but to bring them up to the next level you need some variation and strategic placement of line weight. Uncofortable goes over that in this section so take a look and keep that information tucked away as well. You've done a good job varying your boxes proportions and orientations, and while I would have liked to see some larger boxes from you, you've done well so I won't ask any more boxes from you. You are now finished with the 250 box challenge. Congratulations! Your next step is to move on to lesson 2. Keep up the good work and we will see you then.

ThunderEasy

2019-08-10 15:30

Howdy, TA qzhans here to give you a critique! Uncomfortable will be by later to make sure everything's in order.

Before we begin, I just want to congratulate you on giving those 250 boxes a good ol pen and ink smackdown. It is a MASSIVE undertaking and youve joined the special club of its completers.

The next thing I want to congratulate you on is your amazing work here. Youve carefully drawn through all your boxes and extended every single last line out to check your errors, and your boxes have been better for it. Really, I can see a marked improvement throughout the set, with some of the boxes reaching laser cut precision.

Looking through this, I do see the line quality get sloppy at times. The only thing I can recommend is to just take it easy; remember, this is not a sprint, this is not a marathon, this is a journey across a continent.

Despite that, I do like what you've done with line weight, it really does help the boxes pop off the page.

Though you've done an overall great job with convergences, there's sometimes where that middle back line jumps stubbornly out of line. I can offer some advice on this: when you go to draw a line, think only about the lines that are supposed to be parallel to it (share a vanishing point). Lines closer to an existing line will converge slower, while the opposite is true for lines further away.

This is a really solid submission, and I have no qualms about marking this complete. I salute you, and send you off to Lesson 2!

ThunderEasy

2019-08-10 19:19

Hiya, TA qzhans here to give you a critique! Uncomfortable will be by later to make sure everything's in order.

Before we begin, I just want to congratulate you on giving those 250 boxes a good ol pen and ink slam. It is a MASSIVE undertaking and youve joined the esteemed club of its completers.

One thing I will point out is how your use of the error checking method, where we extend our lines back out to their vanishing point, fell off sometimes throughout the set. I know its tempting to skip it when you feel like you got a box just perfect or when you can blatantly see that its wrong (believe me, Ive been there). But taking the time to extend those lines really helps internalize exactly how far you were off, and is part of the positive feedback loop that will ultimately solidify your convergences.

Additionally, On the boxes you did do error checking on, I'm a little concerned about how you modified the method. Draw through the entire line regardless of whether you're using a ruler or not, it helps you to see if your ruler line was off. It should look like this.

Despite that however, the improvements you've made across the set are astonishing, with some of the convergences reaching laser cut precision. I will offer some advice however for those mischievous middle back lines: When you go to draw a line, think only about the lines that are supposed to be parallel to it (share a vanishing point). Lines closer to an existing line will converge slower, while the opposite is true for lines further away.

Overall, solid work on this and I have no qualms about marking this one complete. See you in lesson 2!

Uncomfortable

2019-08-12 14:41

Yes, students do have to wait 14 days between the submission of different lessons/challenges. It's mentioned on the actual patreon pledge tier. Thank you for having waited - I've added this submission to our backlog spreadsheet, so one of the teaching assistants should be out to review your work some time today.

ThunderEasy

2019-08-12 15:07

Heyo, TA qzhans here to give you a critique! Uncomfortable will be by later to make sure everything's in order.

Before anything however, I've gotta congratulate you on giving those 250 boxes a good ol pen and ink smack in the face. Its a tough number, and youve earned your place in the hall of its completers.

Scrolling through this album, I'm pleased to see that youve drawn through all your boxes and extended every single last line out to check your errors. I do want to say a little bit about how far you've extended out those lines. Throughout the set, they got shorter and shorter, to the point where they weren't really out far enough to see if your convergences were lining up. Remember that it's okay to have those lines collide into other boxes you've drawn.

The second thing I'd like to address is your line quality. I'm seeing a lot of extra lines here and there, perhaps to correct some perceived mistake.Remember that all lines we put down are law, and laying down more lines to fix something will only create more contradictions and draw eyes to a mistake.

Additionally, I'm still seeing some problems with convergences on the last page, so a final thing I wanted to do was give you a piece of advice for those back middle lines that stubbornly diverge from the rest. When you go to draw a line, think only about the lines that are supposed to be parallel to it (share a vanishing point). Lines closer to an existing line will converge slower, while the opposite is true for lines further away.

Despite all, I'm seeing a noticeable improvement in your boxes throughout the set. I salute you, and send you off to Lesson 2!

sluggydragon

2019-08-15 11:48

Hey there! I'm Sluggy, one of the TAs. Uncomfortable will be by later to check this critique and give you the right flair.

Nice work getting through the entire box challenge! That's a real accomplishment and I can see that both your linework and your convergences improved greatly over the course of the set. Nice job with that. I just have a few things I'd like to point out:

- I noticed you stopped adding additional line weight towards the end of the challenge. I'm pointing this out because it's important to follow the directions closely for maximum learning. Additionally, you seem to consistently overshoot your end points, making your lines poke out around the corners of your boxes. This has the unfortunate effect of weakening the illusion of 3D form on a 2D plane.

What I noted above combined with the slight wobble I'm seeing in your lines, means I'm going to urge you to continue practice ghosting in your warm-ups. First focus on finding a speed at which you're putting down consistent and confident line work and once you have that down, look towards consistently hitting that end point.

- Foreshortening. You stick quite closely with a middle-ground perspective, but in future practice sessions, I want to encourage you to try some more dramatic perspectives as well! Practicing a fuller range of foreshortening will be extremely useful for later lessons and beyond.

- Your convergences improve enormously towards the end, but I notice that the back corner of the box continues to give you a bit of trouble. This is extremely common, so that is nothing practice can't fix, but take a look over these notes for additional insight.

What you're trying to do is consider each line with regards to the other lines with which it shares a vanishing point, rather than the lines with which it shares a corner or a plane. Also, the angle between the two middle lines of a set will have a rather small angle between them, which will result in the lines running more or less parallel to one another once they hit the box, so look out for this kind of relationship when you're practicing in the future.

Overall, this is strong work, but I think you can push yourself further. I would like for you to submit 20 more boxes keeping these points in mind. Remember to ghost consistently and add additional line-weight to strengthen the illusion of 3D form. Good luck!

ThunderEasy

2019-08-16 18:58

Howdy, TA qzhans here to give you a critique! Uncomfortable will be by later to make sure everything's in order.

Before we begin, I just want to congratulate you on giving those 250 boxes a good ol pen and ink smackdown. It is a MASSIVE undertaking and youve joined the prestiged club of its completers.

Youve painstakingly drawn through all your boxes and extended every single last line out to check your errors, and your boxes have been better for it. Indeed, youve made a marked improvement throughout the set!

I do see something strange with your linework that I can't quite place. There's a little bit of arcing and wobbling here and there, especially in your reinforced lines, but your accuracy is almost perfect. This signals to me that you might be drawing too slowly, but I could be wrong. Either way, I will reiterate that a confident line looks better than a wobbly, accurate one.

Another concern is that you have drawn a lot of your boxes quite small. I would say 2-6 boxes is a good number per page, as you want to do some especially big ones. This also allows you to do very flat or long boxes, which you should try. A good example is your last page.

Also, you've done a pretty good job with convergences but some of your middle back lines are still stubbornly not jumping in line with the rest of them. Thats okay, and is something that can be ironed out the more you do this, and Ill offer some advice for ya. When you go to draw a line, think only about the lines that are supposed to be parallel to it (share a vanishing point). Lines closer to an existing line will converge slower, while the opposite is true for lines further away.

Overall however, this is some good work, and I don't have any qualms about waiving you past. I salute you, and send you off to Lesson 2!

ThunderEasy

2019-08-17 15:24

Heyo, TA qzhans here to give you a critique!

Before we begin, I just want to congratulate you on giving those 250 boxes a good ol pen and ink smackdown. It's one hell of an exercise, but youve joined the prestiged club of its completers.

The first thing I'd like to address is how your use of the error checking method, where we extend our lines back out to their vanishing point, fell off throughout the set. I know its tempting to skip it when you feel like you got a box just perfect or when you can blatantly see that its wrong (believe me, Ive been there). But taking the time to extend those lines really helps internalize exactly how far you were off, and is part of the positive feedback loop that will ultimately solidify your convergences.

Additionally, you have drawn a lot of your boxes quite small. I would say 2-6 boxes is a good number per page, as you want to do some especially big ones. This also allows you to do very flat or long boxes, which you should try.

Also, I noticed that you stopped hatching some of your boxes. Usually this isn't a big problem, but combined with not extending your lines, it can be very difficult to tell when you have a correct box or not.

Overall, your boxes don't show any glaring errors to the naked eye, but without that convergence checking, I can't be sure. So I'll offer some advice anyway, think of it as an on-the-house freebie: When you go to draw a line, think only about the lines that are supposed to be parallel to it (share a vanishing point). Lines closer to an existing line will converge slower, while the opposite is true for lines further away.

A final nitpick is lineweight. I'm not seeing very much of it, and it can be useful to go over the silhouette once to help your boxes pop off the page. Just be sure not to do it to all the lines.

I think you've certainly gotten great mileage out of this exercise and your boxes have definitely been better for it. However, I do want to make sure that you've internalized the main ideas in this exercise. Therefore, I'd like to see 10 more boxes with hatching and extended lines, with no more than 4 boxes per page (you should have some with 2 boxes per page). Really try to fill these up. You've already done 250, this is just the final sprint to the finishing line. Fight on!

ThunderEasy

2019-08-18 01:14

Yo, TA qzhans here to give you a critique! Uncomfortable will be by later to make sure everything's in order.

Before we begin, I just want to congratulate you on giving those 250 500 boxes a good ol pen and ink smackdown. You've done something crazy.

The first thing I notice is how you've drawn through all your boxes and extended every single last line out to check your errors. Youve made a marked improvement throughout the set, and your convergences are looking very tidy on that last page.

I also like you've used line weight to reinforce the silhouettes of your boxes and help them pop out. I do see a few places where there is a tendency to get sketchy with it, so just be careful with that. Remember, confidence before accuracy.

I am concerned a little bit about the size of your boxes, and I can't help but think you could've drawn a few really big ones, but that is just a small nitpick.

I've said that your convergences are pretty good, but I'll offer you some advice anyway just for some extra value: when you go to draw a line, think only about the lines that are supposed to be parallel to it (share a vanishing point). Lines closer to an existing line will converge slower, while the opposite is true for lines further away.

Overall, awesome job. I salute you, and send you off to Lesson 2!

Uncomfortable

2019-08-20 13:33

Unfortunately you're posting this too early! Your last submission was three days ago - we require students to wait a full 14 days between homework submissions, as explained on the patreon tiers themselves. As your last submission was on August 17th, you'll have to hold onto this and resubmit it on August 31st.

This rule exists for a few reasons - to avoid us getting overwhelmed by submissions, to ensure that students have a substantial enough period to complete the work with no reason to rush through it, and ultimately to keep students from completing a bunch of work ahead of time and then rapidly submitting it all soon after pledging.