For those unfamiliar, the 250 box challenge is part of DrawABox completely free drawing lessons, aimed at any level to teach people the fundamentals of drawing.
I started these lessons mid-last year, looking to add some structure to how I've been learning art and improve my drawings during the process. It's a long set of lessons, this will take me over a year even if I could dedicate a solid amount of time each week to it. At the pace I'm going, I'm not sure if retirement or completing these lessons will happen first.
The 250 box challenge
In short, it's exactly what the title suggests. To draw 250 freely rotating boxes, marking your work along the way.
As I'm writing this, it looks like the challenge has been updated in Feb 2024 so a bit different to when I did it. Now the challenge is broken down into the first 50, the next 50 and the other 150. You'll submit after each of these stages to get feedback. After doing the exercise it makes a lot of sense, I made the most improvement in the first 100 boxes and after that still made mistakes but they were much less obvious and less often. Getting feedback earlier would have been so helpful.
Rather than go into any more detail, if you're interested in taking the lessons go sign up at DrawABox.com.
My key takeaways
This was the longest drawing challenge I've ever done, taking about 5 months for me as I didn't commit to it regularly. Heres are my top 5 takeaways:
1. I finished it! I was surprised at how motivated I was to to get to the finish line. Being able to easily pick it back up after a lengthy break made it easy to chip away at over time.
2. I made noticeable improvements early on, driving me to draw more.
3. I can say I understand how to place objects in 3D space much better at the end of the challenge than at the start.
4. I'm much more confident drawing in pen, something Uncomfortable insists on at the start.
5. Mistakes don't bother me as much. Doing digital art I was getting paralyzed by making sure my drawings were as mistake free as I could make them. But this challenge taught me to put in the laps is more beneficial use of my time than focusing on one perfect piece of art while I'm trying to learn.
Some of my best and worst
That's what we're really here for 😄
So is it worth all the time and effort? I think so if you're looking to make improvements to your drawing fundamentals. The point the creator Uncomfortable makes throughout this part of the course is to gain knowledge of objects in 3D space, which you really need to learn by putting the laps in. Yes, drawing boxes isn't exciting but they're pretty quick and reveal your mistakes quickly so you can move on from a bad box and put your learnings into the next one.
Credit to Uncomfortable for creating a very thorough, course all for free, that's always evolving.