Why You Should Be Drawing Boxes
Since the new year began, I’ve carefully drawn over one hundred boxes.
It’s been a couple months since I started slowly making my way through the tutorials at drawabox.com (a very appropriately named website). “Draw a Box” is essentially a set of beginner drawing lessons, but with a specific emphasis on perspective and construction.
Interspersed in the lessons are “challenges,” the first of which is to draw 250 boxes. These aren’t just any boxes though — each one must be carefully drawn freehand and in three point perspective. After finishing a page, you use a straight edge to extend the lines and check whether they are converging correctly.
You can read the full details of the challenge on the Draw a Box website here.
I’ve been going through the challenge at an average of 10 boxes a day. It feels like a fast pace to me, although I watched a video of someone completing the challenge twice as fast and calling her own speed slow. Of course, these things are all relative.
I was skeptical of this challenge going into it, because it seems like an extreme grind, and I’m just drawing for fun. But, the Draw a Box lessons have been very helpful for me so far, so I decided to trust the system and try the challenge anyway. I’m glad I did.
