Challenge 61: Goals

[eye_of_toad]

Title: The 50th Box
Artist: eye_of_toad
Rating: gen
Fandom: none
Characters/Pairings: none
Content Notes: Ballpoint pen (despite the medium being officially frowned upon by "Draw a Box" guidelines.)

This is probably perfect for a January goals challenge, because this is the classic sort of thing that I do. Set a goal. Decide it's hard. Argue with myself whether I even want to keep doing the goal. Make excuses for not doing the goal. Forget I was doing the goal. Find it months later and remember I was trying to do the thing and realize I barely made any progress on it.

I hate "Draw a Box" so much. It's super annoying. I suck at it. I see no evidence that I'm getting any better. The rules feel arbitrary. (Why can't I do this in pencil? Why do I have to put down the perfect line on my first attempt?) But I also know (just like the gym) that the reason I'm failing is probably because I'm being so half-hearted about this. I started this MONTHS ago. My first page of boxes is dated AUGUST. So I'm not sure these first fifty boxes even count since they were spread out over such a long period of time and clearly aren't helping to build muscle memory or hand-eye coordination or whatever it was that drawing 250 boxes is supposed to accomplish.

Opinions? To get the full benefit, do I need to start over and complete 250 boxes within a more reasonable timeframe? Or do I just draw 200 more ugly boxes and call it good enough?

Comments

[mific]

So you have to draw a box freehand, then after, you put in the perspective lines to see if you got it right? Hard!

drawing boxes

[eye_of_toad]

Yup. And there's always at least one or two lines (like here) that go completely askew. And the rules are that you have to do it in ink (ideally with a technical pen like a Micron or something similar). I question whether it's useful as an exercise since it seems designed to produce mainly frustration, but I'm also not proud of my habit of giving up the moment a goal is hard, so I'd really like to finish this just to say that I did it.

Re: drawing boxes - hang in there!

[yhlee]

Hey there! First, solidarity - I am also a learning (hobbyist) artist and I hear you on the frustration. I am also someone who struggles with, uh, lines. Like making them go where I want to. Honestly, your example looks pretty good! Maybe not architectural render but for informal perspective and urban sketching, it's fine!

So, a few things, PLEASE disregard if it doesn't resonate for you:

- These days I operate on the principle that The Imperfect Thing I Enjoy Doing is better than That Perfect Thing I Hate So I Stop Doing It. This does not make you half-hearted; this makes you a normal human being. So if there's a different line control and/or perspective exercise that's more fun, maybe try that instead? I'm someone who struggles with repetitive drills, especially when progress is slow, so I definitely hear your frustration.

(My motivator for drawing drills is washi tape tracking charts, but I am ridiculous and also my husband won't let me buy more washi tape until I use up some of the stash. Yours is probably different!)

- Did I mention that I struggle with lines? This is an example of my notes in a four-week workshop I'm partway through where I'm struggling with lines. I'm taking anatomy notes but notice the lines are ALL OVER THE PLACE and feathery and hard to read. (And that was the notes for my own reference. We won't even mention the actual extremely janky homework I turned in, lolsob. I feel bad for the instructor because while I am serious about wanting to learn…his other students are actual artists. He has been VERY NICE about it but I'm aware I am the outlier remedial student in a class of artists.)

- You've mentioned the arbitrariness of the rules. I cannot speak for the Draw a Box people and I am not an art instructor. I have no formal background in art.

However, I can think of at least one reason for "get the line right the first time" as a goal: because art is a physical skill (this is probably obvious to you, but literally I did not figure this out until three years ago during a year of remedial art lessons). Part of it is making the line that you meant to make. Maybe you did mean to make feathery weird janky lines like my example! But ideally you would be doing it with intent and on purpose, and not because of, uh, accident, hi.

Do you play a musical instrument? I have more background in music as opposed to being a remedial student in art, so I guess the analogy I would make would be to, for sake of argument, learning the piano. Before you can e.g. tackle that Chopin nocturne of your dreams :) you have to be able to play the scales and hit the notes accurately. (I had an old-school piano education so I endured a lot of Hanon scale-type exercises without anyone explaining to me the point of Hanon.) So yes: there are applications where you can sort of hunt for concert A and only hit it on the third try, and that's okay; if you're a MIDI composer you may not need to be a proficient keyboardist. But even if you don't plan to be a concert pianist (I certainly didn't!), it will, in the long run, save you time to develop that ability to hit the right note the first time.

- As for why pen or some permanent marking tool, and not a pencil, my guess (I hope to hear from artists here) is that it forces you to commit to the line. It forces you to see the wrong line so that you can go, Hmm, I drew the angle too steep, let's try correcting for that next time. The key here is that the permanent mark, the committed line, is not itself sufficient; it's also looking at that committed line and going, So, did I make the mark I wanted the way I wanted to or not? How could I make an adjustment when making the next line (box) to get a better line (box)?

Source: I started sketching people with a fountain pen because I am TOTALLY that person who, if you give me a pencil, will tear the paper because I erase over and over. Even today I am TERRIFIED of pencils because I can't get the line right and then I erase over and over. For whatever reason, the fact that I can't correct marks made with a pen makes me more zen. (But not everyone is wired this way, and that's fine.)

If drawing with a pencil and being able to correct your lines works better for you, and would be less frustrating, maybe try that! I assume the Draw a Box people can't send someone to your house to make you stop. Maybe it would be fun to thumb your nose at their rules. :)

- Also, one thing that my husband said when I was struggling with a game controller - I was so discouraged because I couldn't remember the buttons to push to jump or, like, move my character or anything, and I said to him that I have suck hand-eye.

My husband looked at me and said, "I've seen you play piano and classical guitar. I've seen you fence [the "en garde!" sword kind] and play tennis. Your hand-eye coordination is fine. You're just not familiar with the specific controller."

So you could well have perfectly fine hand-eye, but the ballpoint pen (so to speak) is an unfamiliar controller, and there's an inherent learning curve.

- Personally, the line control drill that I find more fun is just setting a timer for 5-15 minutes and drawing circles of various sizes and filling up sketchbook pages. I find it kind of zen. But also I struggle with perspective so there is probably something to be said for learning to draw good boxes on that front.

Also…if you can draw boxes in perspective, this is actually foundational for being able to draw other things in perspective, if that's your goal! Boxes in perspective lead you to spaceships and Gundams (if you care about those things). If someone had sat me down and explained to me TWO DECADES ago that I would be able to draw SPACESHIPS and CARS and GUNDAMS with some solid perspective techniques, I would have jumped on the bandwagon much earlier. :p So you're probably ahead of me!

Figure in perspective/with foreshortening is harder (because anatomy is hard, anatomy is kicking my butt right now) but it is going to be 10000000% easier to figure out perspective with a box than with something 1000000000% more complicated than a box like the human figure.

Re: drawing boxes - hang in there!

[eye_of_toad]

A couple years back drawesome had a "scribble art" prompt and I think it was my favorite prompt ever because "scribble" is 100% my style: scribbles!

This whole putting down a neat clean line on the first attempt is not my jam. But I do agree that it's about practice. And I think that shows in that the lines that I'm most likely to mess up are those three back edges that you wouldn't see on an opaque box. (The rules for "Draw a Box" is that you make it completely transparent and draw all the back edges too.) And I've got general practice of drawing boxes and boxy shapes, but not so much making them see-through and having to calculate the angle of those hidden edges. And I have no idea why it would be harder than the other edges, but it is.

I've never learned a musical instrument. (Both of my parents were musical and I think I was a bit of a disappointment. Mom paid for piano lessons for me for a year after which my teacher literally told her that she was wasting her money and that we should stop.)

I assume the Draw a Box people can't send someone to your house to make you stop.

Ha! Yeah. I'm not even formally doing the course. (They have a free version you do on your own and a paid version where you submit your work for critique. Since I'm not paying for critiques it literally doesn't matter whether I follow their rules or not.)

Anatomy is so hard. You'd think I'd never seen a human before looking at some of my drawings. I took an "Anatomy for Artists" class several years ago and I'd really benefit from taking the entire course again.

And, yeah, I think after the "draw 250 boxes" challenge, the next one is drawing a ton of cylinders in perspective, and then drawing things "inside" those shapes in perspective.

Re: drawing boxes - hang in there!

[yhlee]

Yeah, the hidden edges are hard! The advice I've often seen is to "draw through" as though the box were transparent (and then erase, if you're doing a finished drawing and, y'know, pencil is a thing).

Your scribbles are neat! :D I love how full of personality they are.

If you can find it through a library or something, you might enjoy Alphonso Dunn's Pen and Ink Drawing and the associated workbook? It's pretty strictly pen & ink technique - it will not, for instance, teach you perspective or how to capture accurate proportions - but there ARE scribbles. :D

Example of a scribbling drawing from Pen and Ink Drawing:



And from Pen and Ink Drawing Workbook, an example exercise page:



Good luck! :D

Re: drawing boxes - hang in there!

[eye_of_toad]

I've seen him on YouTube. He's good.

(I'm up to box #106.)

[goss]

I applaud you for getting this done in pen!

I think that since it appears like you've got the gist of the angles needed for this type of perspective, imo you don't need to be too regimental with repeating it x amount of time.

Perhaps you could try drawing interesting (to you) boxy objects (like houses or planters or whatever) using reference photos - this way you could check your work afterwards. That might be less tedious and still offer you practice in perspective. :)

boxy objects

[eye_of_toad]

Yeah, it definitely suffers from a lack of pizzaz. It would help to find some other motivation to tie into it.

[minoanmiss]

Hey the box!

also I love your icon!

Thanks!

[eye_of_toad]

Thanks! I drew the main drawing with markers following a "How to Draw the Mona Lisa" YouTube tutorial aimed at small children. Doing art lessons aimed at kids is my happy place. It's very relaxing. :-) I was so thrilled that I achieved a recognizable likeness that I then ran it through a ton of digital filters and the icon was born.