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250 Box Challenge

The Challenge   

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 Drawing boxes  

Welcome to the crucible. If you

haven't completed lesson 1 yet, you
should go and do that first.
This exercise is probably what
Drawabox is best known for (and
perhaps most reviled). Which is kind of
unfortunate, given that it's a pretty
basic exercise. As one might imagine, you draw a box - then do it again another 249
times.
I cover it (partially) in my notes about the organic perspective exercise, but before
we get to drawing, I don't want you leaving thinking that this is all there is to the
exercise. Some people rush off without getting all the instructions, and fail to make
the most of the arduous task. There's a little more to it, which is explained in the
video as well as below.
 Drawing through your 
forms 

This exercise is all about developing

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

The first step towards this is to draw through our forms. That is, drawing all the
edges, including those that we cannot see. Think of it like you have x-ray vision. We
already did some of this in lesson 1.
Doing this forces us to understand to a much greater degree how the forms we
draw exist in space. You may find it difficult to do so, and may find that often times
the "back corner" fails to fit with the rest. This is completely normal. As we draw a
box, we regularly make small mistakes in our angles and trajectories of our edges.
We compensate for them as we continue to build out our box. This accumulation of
mistakes always falls on the lines that have yet to be drawn, and if we're not
drawing through them, it becomes quite easy to get by without having to deal with
the issues present. Once we draw that back corner however, we're forced to come
to terms with our blunders.
 Checking our 
convergences 

Noticing and identifying our mistakes is

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

Once you've completed drawing a page

of boxes, grab a pen of a different
colour and a ruler and start extending your lines back in space - meaning, towards
their implied vanishing points. You don't have to extend it all the way (usually this
will be impossible due to vanishing points falling way off the page), but extend them
as much as you reasonably can.
By looking at how a given set of parallel lines (that is, a set that is meant to converge
towards a single vanishing point) actually behaves, we can identify patterns in our
mistakes.

Apply the extensions upon the completion of each page. Not after each box,
and not after you're done all 250.
 Do not extend in the 
wrong direction 

As there's a lot to take in, sometimes

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

Our lines must be extended AWAY

from the viewer, towards the
implied vanishing point, never
towards the viewer. Make sure that
when you are about to extend your
lines, that you think about which side
of the box is pointing towards you, the
viewer.
Sometimes students will feel that they
need to extend their lines in the
direction that they converge, but this is
incorrect. Sometimes, because we
have drawn the initial box incorrectly, our lines will diverge as they move farther
away from us. This is the kind of mistake we are trying to identify by extending the
lines.
Since we apply this technique after we've completed a full page of boxes, it may be
a little difficult to identify which side of the box is which (since we're drawing
through our boxes). In order to avoid this, you can fill one of the faces pointing
towards the viewer with tight hatching (as shown in this example, as well as in the
next section) when you draw the box itself. That way, when you come back to it, its
orientation in space will be much clearer.
 Easy way to extend 
correctly 

If the section above on line extension

direction isn't really making sense to
you right now, don't worry. Here's a
handy approach to ensuring that
you're extending them correctly.

It all works off the Y method we

introduce in the video, where the Y we
start with defines 3 edges that meet at
the corner closest to the viewer.
If you start by extending along each
"arm" of the Y from that central point,
you'll guarantee that you're extending
them in the right direction. That'll give you one line extension for each set of edges,
which will tell you how to extend the other edges of each set.
 Line weight  

One technique that is extremely useful

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

When adding line weight to a box,

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

In this challenge, you can practice

adding line weight (which involves
going back over the line, like in the
super imposed lines exercise, and
using the ghosting method to ensure a
confident stroke) along the boxes'
silhouettes, but when we get into
drawing actual objects (Lesson 3
onwards), we'll use it in a more limited
fashion - specifically as a tool to help
clarify how different forms overlap one another, restricting it to the specific areas
where those overlaps occur. You can see this demonstrated with these two
overlapping leaves.

Don't worry about this right now - I just wanted to point out that, as with
everything we learn here, line weight is a tool, and it is important to always think
about what we're meant to achieve through its use, rather than applying it blindly
and without purpose or clear intent.
 Foreshortening  

As explained in the extra box notes of

lesson 1, a box with a lot of dramatic,
rapid foreshortening, with its vanishing
points positioned close to the form
itself, is going to suggest a very large
scale or an object that is right up to the
viewer's eye. Alternatively, shallower
foreshortening with far-off vanishing
points and minimal convergence
towards them is going to imply an
object that is either at a more human
scale, or simply very far away.
I want you to make sure you practice both of these, perhaps with a bit more of a
lean towards the shallower foreshortening. These will be especially relevant in later
lessons as we use boxes to construct more complex objects, due to most things
we're drawing not being so immensely large. Still, it is valuable to get used to both
situations, as they both pose different kinds of challenges.
 Width of opposite ends  

This was initially pointed out in the

cylinder challenge, but it is entirely
relevant here as well. As explained
back in lesson 1's ellipses, if you have a
plane in 3D space, and you turn that
plane slowly to face away from you, it
will steadily get narrower and
narrower. In terms of an ellipse
enclosed within that plane, this is the
degree of that ellipse gradually
decreasing.
When we have a box floating in 3D
space, unless you're looking right down
the barrel of one of its faces, either
end of this box is going to be sitting at
a slightly different orientation relative
to the viewer. That is, the angle of the
planes' orientation in space will be
different. The more space there is
between these faces, the more
different that orientation will be. This
goes for any of the three pairs of faces in a box.
As a result, the farther end of the box is always going to be wider (and therefore be
oriented more towards the viewer) than the closer end. This is an important point
to keep in mind when thinking of how your boxes fit in 3D space.
Generally speaking, this idea of the proportional width (we're not talking about
overall size, just the width in proportion to the plane's scale) being related to a flat
surface's orientation in space is pretty important, and will come up in cylinders as
well as in any kind of cross-section of a form.
 Important reminders  

Some mistakes still come up frequently amongst

students, so this reminder will hopefully keep you
on the right track:

Do not draw your boxes with lines that are

actually parallel on the page. Back in Lesson 1 we talked about how a
vanishing point can go to "infinity", eliminating the convergences of the
lines it governs. This is not something we can just arbitrarily do for
everything - it only happens when that given set of lines runs perpendicular
to the viewer's angle of sight. Since we're drawing boxes that are freely and
randomly rotated in space, make sure all of your boxes' lines converge,
whether gradually and slightly or quickly and dramatically.
It is extremely important that you ensure that your line extensions
point away from the viewer, as their purpose is to help us analyze how
those lines behave (whether they converge or diverge) as they move farther
away. If they're extended towards the viewer, then it kind of renders the
line extension analysis pointless, since it doesn't tell us how we can
improve our next page of boxes.
Don't worry about the back corner being off. The back corner is a
distraction - a symptom of the individual sets of lines not converging
consistently. This is not something you're going to master here, so that
back corner will always be at least a little off, and if all you're focusing on is
the back corner, it's going to feel like you're not making progress, when in
fact you are. Focus on the sets of lines, and making them converge as
consistently as you can.
Vary your boxes. Don't just draw the same box over and over. Vary its
orientation, its rate of foreshortening/convergence, and so on.
Number your boxes. It helps us immensely in case the pages are uploaded
out of order (which happens frequently since imgur is kind of a pain about
that), and also allows us to call out specific boxes easily in our critiques.
 Assignment  

In order to complete this challenge, you must draw the following, in either
fineliner/felt tip pen (ideally) or ballpoint pen:

250 boxes, drawing through each one, and applying the line extension method
to check for errors after completing each page (not after each box).

Try to stick to 5-6 boxes per page (assuming you're working with the recommended
A4, 8.5"x11" sheets of paper), in order to give yourself enough room to draw each
box at a reasonable size while also leaving some space to extend your lines. Also, if
you're having trouble thinking up orientations for your initial 'Y', you may use this
tool, which was created by our own community member, Eric Na in your first 100
boxes to get comfortable. After that however, I'd like you to create your own
arbitrary Ys.
 Contour Lines, Texture and Construction >>>

This page has student-made recordings


They're great to draw along with, or just to see how much time these exercises really
take when they're not rushed.

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