This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.

250 Box Challenge
Additional Box Exercises
Listed here are a couple variations on the basic box exercise that should be left until after you're fully comfortable with constructing individual arbitrarily rotated boxes in 3D space. These modifications can help develop one's understanding of 3D space further, but if the basics are not grasped solidly enough, they will merely serve as a distraction.

Boxes on a string
I'd recommend tackling lesson 2, or at least reading the section in that lesson about thinking in 3D, before tackling this exercise.
This one's a combination of the rotated boxes and organic perspective boxes from lesson 1. Start by drawing a line that swoops through 3D space, then place boxes along it, as though they're all connected by a string and being pulled along.

Subdividing boxes
This one's complicated enough to merit a video. It discusses how we can take a box and start cutting it up into many smaller boxes. We also discuss the accumulation of errors that occurs when we approximate, and how to stay on top of them as you push through a construction, rather than trying to avoid them outright.

Drawabox-Tested Fineliners (Pack of 10, $17.50 USD)
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.