Observing and Drawing a Box

1A box has six faces, but you never see them all

A box is a cube or a cuboid. It has six flat faces. Hold a box in front of you and turn it slowly. You can never see more than three faces at the same time.

A drawing that shows two or three faces looks solid, as if it has depth. We call this a three-dimensional (3D) drawing.

2Draw a box in four steps

1. Draw the front face: a square.
2. Draw the same square again, a little up and to the right. Draw it lightly, because some of it will be hidden.
3. Join the four corners with short slanting lines. All four lines slant the same way, so they are parallel.
4. Rub out the lines you could not really see, behind the box. Then shade the three faces: one light, one middle, one dark.

3Look closely: where are your eyes?

Take a small box, such as a matchbox or a tea box. Put it on the floor and look down at it. Now hold it high above your head and look up at it.

• Box A is on the floor, below your eyes. You see its top.
• Box B is on a high shelf, above your eyes. You see its bottom.
• If the box is exactly at eye level, you see only its front and one side. The top and bottom disappear.

So before you draw, always ask: is the box above, below or at the height of my eyes?

Try it yourself

Try each one first, then tap Show answer to check.