Advice to beginners: Learn to draw a box.

That's good advice to artists learning the basics of drawing standard forms.

The thing about that is my dislike of drawing boxes when I was a kid.

I could draw straight lines and connect the dots. I could freehand a diagram copied from another page while changing its size. These are valuable skills!

But they were easy for me to pick up.

What I could not do was understand what the lines did if the box was turned. I couldn't move the box in my mind. Changing the size meant moving the point is closer together. To change the angle, the points had to be in different places relative to each other.

I could draw a "3D" diagram of a box.

The problem was understanding a 2D image as a 3D or really as a 4D (moving) object. I could draw a real 3D box on the page only how I could see it through my eyes in the moment.

I couldn't visualize the hidden parts.

This was despite how often I played in and around boxes.

This was a problem for understanding other 3D shapes like heads and feet, too.

Can you guess what helped?

Scultping.

Holding pets and persons in moments that form strong memories of what they feel like.

Martial arts.

In general, I needed to understand how solid 3D shapes feel, not only what they look like.

I've still got a ways to go to master the drawing of a box. But I've certainly gotten some basics down, yeah?