ThatOneMushroomGuy

Hello ShaunReelNews, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows, these are definitely flowing fluidly through space, which is what this exercise primarily focuses on. It is possible to see some hesitation/wobbling in the linework itself, so remember above all else that the second your pen touches the page, any opportunity to avoid making a mistake has passed, and all you can do is push through the motion you've prepared for and practiced (during the preparation phase of the ghosting method). Execute your marks smoothly and quickly, to avoid giving yourself time to try to course correct on the way and cause the wobbling in your marks.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

Generally you're doing a good job with this exercise, but try to step out of your comfort zone more often the next time you tackle this exercise in order to keep pushing yourself further. Try arrows with different kinds of twists and turns and different rates of foreshortening, keep in mind that arrows are very flexible objects and can move freely across the world in all sorts of manners, so you should push yourself and explore the different possibilities.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally keep the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, but don't forget to construct your edge detail additively as much as possible, that is, on top of your structure, avoid cutting back into the forms you've already drawn as that will cause us to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes, rather than the 3d edges they represent.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

This structure is looser than it could be, because you skipped construction steps and tried to capture the complex form of the structure right away, instead of constructing each individual arm with the leaf construction method and only then connecting them together. Even though leaves are single entities they can still made be made up of several parts.

Branches

Now let's talk about your branches, they're looking pretty decent as you generally follow the instructions for the exercise, but there are a couple of things that when addressed will allow you to create tighter, more solid structures overall.

Moving on to your branches they are coming. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not always starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting mark, you often start your new segments close to where your previous mark ended, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.

There are a couple of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

Now let's talk about your plant constructions. Your work is looking a little bit mixed at the start, because you struggle with applying the construction methods and techniques to your pages sometimes, but as you move through these pages it is possible to see the evolution in your homework as you become more comfortable with the techniques introduced in the lesson which is helping you develop your sense of spatial reasoning, some of your work is starting to look tridimensional due to that and you're clearly improving.

However because of a couple of issues in your work, you're not always getting the most out of your homework. One of these issues that is important to address is the fact that you're pre-planning how many constructions you wish to fit on a given page before you actually commit to drawing any of them, this is admirable as it's clear you wish to get more practice out of each individual page, but this only stops you from getting the most out of these exercises because it artificially limits how much space you allow yourself when tackling these exercises.

So draw bigger, as big as it's necessary for you to be able to properly engage your arm and brain, to fully think through each spatial reasoning challenge that arises as you work on your constructions. Only after you're done should you observe and analyze if there is enough space left for one more drawing, if yes, great, you can proceed until you finish, and afterwards, ask yourself if there is enough space for another drawing again, if not, it's completely okay to have only a single construction per page, as long as that construction was made to the best of your current ability.

Another thing I've noticed is that you have a strong tendency to draw over previous marks and "thicken" the lineweight in your constructions, especially around the outline of the structure, such as in here and here. Remember that it's strongly recommended that you do not draw earlier phases of construction with fainter lines and later ones with thicker strokes, as this is going to encourage you to approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step. So don't forget that added lineweight must be added subtly to your work, only once, on top of the overlaps, and the ends of the lines must taper seamlessly into the lines underneath, as shown here.

When drawing something with construction that we're doing is adding building blocks at each different step, using our first forms as a foundation in order to simplify our structures. In this way there's no need to alter that foundation, it should be able to stand for itself when you're done, without being redrawn, traced over, or having it's silhouette modified with 2d shapes on to of it.

When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. Going further don't forget to construct the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots, and make sure to add a soil plane to your structures, this line is necessary when constructing plant pots because otherwise your structure will look like it's floating in mid air, which breaks the illusion of the construction.

You're taking a great first step towards starting to think of how to break down different structures in this construction but it does end up accidentally stiffening the flower structure a bit if you don't approach it with the leaf construction method which naturally adds a sense of flow and energy to your work.

One way in which we can approach this structure that ensures the petal structures are still flowing nicely and that all of the relationships between the different forms are tight and specific is by using a slightly tapered cylinder in order to construct the main body of the leaf shape, then afterwards make use of the leaf construction method, build it on top of the cylinder in order to capture the flow of the different sections of the leaf structure, and lastly connect them together, making use of edge detail in order to finish the complex structure. I actually put together a quick demonstration of how this would look like un the context of a Daffodil for a different student once, and I believe you will find it helpful.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are looking very explicit because you attempt to make use of big areas of black to attempt to capture texture, rather than carefully designed dynamic shadow shapes.

Remember that in Drawabox, texture isn’t about making your work look pretty or aesthetic. Instead, it’s about accurately representing what’s physically present in your reference. The goal is to understand how each form exists in 3D space and how it casts shadows on surfaces. By analyzing the reference closely, you'll be able to translate it into your construction.

The shape of the shadow is important because it shows the relationship between the form and the surface it’s on. We need to think carefully about how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic and communicates 3D space effectively. It’s harder than just focusing on making your work look nice, but this method will help you strengthen your spatial reasoning skills. This also means that by considering the tridimensionality of the form we must consider the transitions from light to dark that your texture would have as the form shifts away in space and if affected differently by the light.

As shown in this diagram, depending on how far the form is from the light source, the angle of the light rays will hit the object at shallower angles the farther away they are, resulting in the shadow itself being projected farther. This gives us the logical grounds to say that despite two forms being identical, they don't have to cast identical shadows - and therefore we can control where we want shadows to be longer or shorter, without changing the nature of the texture being conveyed.

By following this approach, you’ll focus on conveying texture more efficiently, using fewer lines and less ink, while sticking to the mark-making techniques from Lesson 2. Take some time to review the reminders to solidify your understanding of texture.

Please let me know if you are unable to access any links or images contained within this critique.

Final Thoughts

In general your work is starting to move in the right direction, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and developing your sense of spatial reasoning.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello drawnlearn, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world, however the way your arrows are bending is a bit unnatural. Do not be afraid of letting edges overlap as this allows you to create a more solid structure. In order to achieve a more cohesive arrow construction use the ghosting method, that way you can gauge whether your lines would look right and overlap the way they should before committing to any marks.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, it's also good that you're making use of added line weight in order to reinforce the depth of your arrows.

In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

However there are also some unnatural bends present in your leaf structures, such as in here and in here. Keep in mind that even though leaves are very flexible structures, that mostly applies to their length and not their width. They're like a piece of paper, not a piece of rubber, they can fold and bend in a lot of ways, but they can't stretch or compress, and if we try to force them to they'll simply rip apart.

When it comes to your addition of edge detail you need to spend more time with the execution of each mark— because there are so many and they seem individually unimportant, you're putting less time into each one and so they do not properly rise off and return to the existing stroke— there are often gaps, overshoots, and zigzagging marks which is a mistake that could be avoided by putting more time into the work. No mark you draw is unimportant— if you decided it was worth adding, it's worth giving as much time as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, but they can still be improved. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not always extending said segment completely up to the halfway point between ellipses, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.

There are a couple of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions. In general you're trying to follow the instructions to the methods and techniques introduced in this lesson and previous ones, which allows you to create more solid and tridimensional looking structures. You're starting to understand the purpose of these exercises and develop your spatial reasoning skills, but there are still some issues that are holding you back and must be addressed— not all of them are outright mistakes, but they are holding you back from your full potential and from getting the most out of these exercises.

I've noticed that for these pages you had a tendency to choose more complex plant structures with lots of elements to them, while this is not necessarily a mistake it can end up limiting your ability to hone your skills and fully become acquaintanced with the construction techniques and methods, choosing some less leafy and more simple structures would have allowed you to focus more on applying the construction techniques and methods to your structures, rather than trying to juggle several elements at once.

Always keep in mind that the construction methods and techniques introduced in this course must always be applied to your work, as they're tools which will help you construct much tighter and solid looking structures, there are times where you deviate from the construction methods by not starting your branches with a minor axis or drawing your leaf structures with the correct construction method, as you skip the flow line step. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

It's really good to see that you're making use of elliptical boundaries in order to construct some of your flowers, this allows you to keep the distance and size of the petals consistent with onr another and helps reinforce the illusion of tridimensionality in your work.

Final Thoughts

You're starting to move in the right direction, but you're struggling to apply the construction methods and techniques to your work consistently.

I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson yet, these concepts will be highly important in the following lessons, make sure to revisit any relevant material mentioned here, once you're finished please reply with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.

Hello Imitation, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're keeping foreshortening in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy. It's good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth, but don't forget that it must be added subtly to your work, only once, on top of the overlaps, and the ends of the lines must taper seamlessly into the lines underneath, as shown here.

In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

However there are also some unnatural bends present in your leaf structures. Keep in mind that even though leaves are very flexible structures, that mostly applies to their length and not their width. They're like a piece of paper, not a piece of rubber, they can fold and bend in a lot of ways, but they can't stretch or compress, and if we try to force them to they'll simply rip apart.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks and helps you create solid but still organic looking structures.

There are a couple of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. It's good to see that you're aware of the ellipse degree shift and making use of it in your constructions, which helps these structures feel more solid and believably tridimensional.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

However there are some minor issues present in these pages. So here are the points you should keep in mind whenever you tackle these exercises again so that you can continue to develop your skills.

I've noticed that for these pages you had a tendency to choose very similar plant structures, while this is not necessarily a mistake it can end up limiting your ability to hone your skills and fully become acquaintanced with the construction techniques and methods, choosing a wider variety of plant types would have allowed you to focus more on applying the construction techniques and methods to your structures, rather than trying to juggle several elements at once.

When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. Going further don't forget to construct the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots, and make sure to add a soil plane to your structures, this line is necessary when constructing plant pots because otherwise your structure will look like it's floating in mid air, which breaks the illusion of the construction.

Final Thoughts

In general your work is starting to move in the right direction, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and developing your sense of spatial reasoning.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello Liaz, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're keeping foreshortening in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy. It's good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth, but don't forget that it must be added subtly to your work, only once, on top of the overlaps, and the ends of the lines must taper seamlessly into the lines underneath, as shown here.

Overall you've done really well in this exercise, your arrows look very tridimensional and you're exploring the space available to you, but make sure to experiment with more different kinds of arrows next time you attempt this exercise, while your arrows look good they also look very similar to each other, arrows are very flexible objects and as such ther's a myriad of ways they can fold, twist, and overlap as they move through the world, so make sure to push yourself out of your comfort zone and explore all the different types of arrows possible in order to develop your spatial reasoning skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves needs some more work, at times it is looking a bit patchy and has clear signs of hesitation, such as you going over your marks more than once, which goes against principles of mark-making from lesson 1. Remember to keep your linework smooth and confident in order to communicate the fluidity and sense of energy of your leaves.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

This structure is looser than it could be, because you skipped construction steps and tried to capture the complex form of the structure right away, instead of constructing each individual arm with the leaf construction method and only then connecting them together. Even though leaves are single entities they can still made be made up of several parts.

When it comes to your addition of edge detail you need to spend more time with the execution of each mark— because there are so many and they seem individually unimportant, you're putting less time into each one and so they do not properly rise off and return to the existing stroke— there are often gaps, overshoots, and zigzagging marks which is a mistake that could be avoided by putting more time into the work. No mark you draw is unimportant— if you decided it was worth adding, it's worth giving as much time as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.

One last thing about your leaves— it's not uncommon for students to confuse what they're trying to achieve when adding marks to the surface of their leaves, as you've done here. It's important that you consider whether you're trying to add artificial contour lines to just help convey how that surface flows through space, or whether you're trying to capture the actual vein texture present along that surface. If you're drawing artificial contour lines, you shouldn't be trying to mimic a branching vein pattern. If you're drawing the veins proper, then you shouldn't be doing so with lines, and should instead be using cast shadows to imply the presence of those textural forms as discussed back in lesson 2.

Branches

Moving on to your branches you are deviating from the instructions for this exercise because you're not following the instructions for how to draw the edges as shown in the exercise instructions. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments, you're not extending said segments completely up to the halfway point between ellipses, which removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures, and prevents you from utilizing compound strokes— one of the main points for this exercise.

The overlap we get between the two segments when doing it as I described is important because it allows is to treat the last chunk of the previous segment as a runway, overlapping it directly before shooting off towards the next target.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them, as that allows for smoother marks overall, however you're drawing through it one too many times, which is causing your ellipses to look too loose. So remember to only draw through them 2-3 times at most. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

So here are some points you should keep in mind for the next time that you attempt these exercises in order to get the most out of this course.

First things first, I noticed that you have a strong tendency to draw over previous marks and "thicken" the lineweight in your constructions, especially around the outline of the structure, such as in here and here. Remember that it''s strongly recommended that you do not draw earlier phases of construction with fainter lines and later ones with thicker strokes, as this is going to encourage you to approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step. So don't forget that added lineweight must be added subtly to your work, only once, on top of the overlaps, and the ends of the lines must taper seamlessly into the lines underneath, as shown here.

It's really good to see that you're making use of elliptical boundaries in order to construct some of your flowers, this allows you to keep the distance and size of the petals consistent with onr another and helps reinforce the illusion of tridimensionality in your work.

Final Thoughts

You're starting to move in the right direction, but you're struggling to apply the construction methods and techniques to your work.

I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson yet, these concepts will be highly important in the following lessons, make sure to revisit any relevant material mentioned here, once you're finished please reply with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.

Hello hotdogwater_martini, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

To address your comment - both fruits and flowers are structures, therefore they count as construction and not texture. Texture is what is found in the surface of a form, the texture of tree bark, the smoothness of a metal surface, the porosity of concrete, if something is an object that can be manipulated with your hands, it's construction.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows you've done a really nice job in here, your linework looks very confident and smooth which helps in giving these arrows a great sense of fluidity. It's good that you're exploring the depth of your page and adding hatching to the overlaps between your segments, which helps reinforce their solidity as both are effectively and correctly applied. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

In general you've done well in this exercise and the way you can improve further is simply by getting out of your comfort zone more often and experimenting more with the depth of your page and the different types of perspective, rates of foreshortening and negative space you can apply to your work, all while experimenting with the different ways your arrows can move through 3d space.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

This structure is looser than it could be, because you did not establish the spatial boundary that all of the later structures should abide to, despite complex structures being made up of several different parts, they still exist as a single entity, by not skipping construction steps you can ensure that your constructions are much more solid and specific.

One last thing about your leaves— it's not uncommon for students to confuse what they're trying to achieve when adding marks to the surface of their leaves, as you've done here. It's important that you consider whether you're trying to add artificial contour lines to just help convey how that surface flows through space, or whether you're trying to capture the actual vein texture present along that surface. If you're drawing artificial contour lines, you shouldn't be trying to mimic a branching vein pattern. If you're drawing the veins proper, then you shouldn't be doing so with lines, and should instead be using cast shadows to imply the presence of those textural forms as discussed back in lesson 2.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks and helps you create solid but still organic looking structures.

There are a couple of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks, but you will also naturally improve as you continue to tackle this exercise during your warm ups.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. It's good to see that you're aware of the ellipse degree shift and making use of it in your constructions, which helps these structures feel more solid and believably tridimensional.

Plant Construction Section

Moving on to your plant constructions you're doing a very good job of capturing their solidity. You're applying the concepts and instructions introduced in the lesson very effectively which is showing in your work, demonstrating a good deal of spatial reasoning skills.

There's still a couple of issues present within your work which are holding you back from your full potential. Going forward please keep these points in mind, addressing them will help you whenever you tackle these exercises again.

First things first, an issue that hurts your work without you even realizing is the fact that you're pre-planning the amount of constructions you want to fit on a given page before you've even committed to any of them. Drawing bigger would allow you not only more room to work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when tackling these exercises, but also give you enough space to fully engage your whole arm.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions.

• For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

While this is something that you do generally respect, you did extended off of pre-existing forms for some constructions, such as these sections in one of your mushroom constructions.

In order to avoid this, since the cap of the mushroom you drew has an depression in the middle, one way to approach it would be to use contours or textures to communicate the depression in the middle of the mushroom, rather than cutting back/extending off of it.

You can find here more information that talks about how to make use of organic forms to construct plants that aren't simple branches with leaf structures attached to them, and you can see here how you can construct on top of your preexisting structures with new organic forms.

Another issue present in your structures is that when you put contour lines on your forms they don't really communicate any new information. Those kinds of contour lines, the ones that sit on the surface of a single form, only serve to take a form that can already be interpreted as 3 dimensional, and clarify it, while they're useful for introducing the concept of a contour line in practice it can be really hard to apply them incorrectly, if even 1 of your lines isn't in sync with the others the solidity of your structure will suffer. As such it's best to focus only on contours that communicate intersections, or when they communicate additional information about the structure's surface or form, such as volume.

Final Thoughts

In general your work is starting to move in the right direction, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and developing your sense of spatial reasoning.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello soymaida, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

Still speaking of hatching, there are a couple of times where you've placed it incorrectly, making it seem like your arrow is getting bigger the further away it is, and getting smaller as it gets closer, which goes against the rules of perspective.

— Perspective works in the following manner: things that are further away from the viewer will look smaller, and as they get closer to the viewer they'll look bigger. The way this affects an object of consistent size and width that stretches across space is that certain segments of this object will look bigger and others smaller, either gradually or dramatically depending on the perspective of the scene, as such the bigger part of the arrow will always be the one that's closest to the viewer so the segment that's behind it should be the one receiving the hatching.

In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally keep the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, but don't forget to construct your edge detail additively as much as possible, that is, on top of your structure, avoid cutting back into the forms you've already drawn as that will cause you to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes, rather than the 3d edges they represent.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

This structure is looser than it could be, because you did not establish the spatial boundary that all of the later structures should abide to, despite complex structures being made up of several different parts, they still exist as a single entity, by not skipping construction steps you can ensure that your constructions are much more solid and specific.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, but they can still be improved. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not always starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting mark, you often start your new segments close to where your previous mark ended, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

So here are the points you should keep in mind for the next time that you attempt these exercises in order to get the most out of this course.

First things first, I noticed that you have a strong tendency to draw over previous marks and "thicken" the lineweight in your constructions, especially around the outline of the structure, such as in here and here. Remember that it''s strongly recommended that you do not draw earlier phases of construction with fainter lines and later ones with thicker strokes, as this is going to encourage you to approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step. So don't forget that added lineweight must be added subtly to your work, only once, on top of the overlaps, and the ends of the lines must taper seamlessly into the lines underneath, as shown here.

When drawing something with construction that we're doing is adding building blocks at each different step, using our first forms as a foundation in order to simplify our structures. In this way there's no need to alter that foundation, it should be able to stand for itself when you're done, without being redrawn, traced over, or having it's silhouette modified with 2d shapes on to of it.

When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. Going further don't forget to construct the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots, and make sure to add a soil plane to your structures, this line is necessary when constructing plant pots because otherwise your structure will look like it's floating in mid air, which breaks the illusion of the construction.

For your Venus fly trap there are a couple of changes that you could have made which would have allowed you to create a tighter and more specific structure. Currently you approached the "body" or the "stem" of the venus fly trap as a sort of leaf shape, while this is a valid way to approach this structure it leans too heavily on the side of oversimplification for this part of the plant structure and makes the structure feel fragile, flimsy and flat.

This part of the Venus Fly Trap is actually cylindrical in nature, but it's hidden underneath the more leafy part of the stem, it's helpful to understand this because you can then simplify the forms by capturing this part of the structure as a branch ( which makes it much clearer how the "trap" of the venus flytrap connects to the rest of the structure ) and afterwards build the rest of the structure with the leaf construction method, which will allow for a structure that feels less flimsy and much more solid.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are looking very explicit because you attempt to make use of big areas of black, outlining textures, and don't make use of [detail density]() to properly communicate textures in your homework.

Remember that in Drawabox, texture isn’t about making your work look pretty or aesthetic. Instead, it’s about accurately representing what’s physically present in your reference. The goal is to understand how each form exists in 3D space and how it casts shadows on surfaces. By analyzing the reference closely, you'll be able to translate it into your construction.

The shape of the shadow is important because it shows the relationship between the form and the surface it’s on. We need to think carefully about how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic and communicates 3D space effectively. It’s harder than just focusing on making your work look nice, but this method will help you strengthen your spatial reasoning skills. This also means that by considering the tridimensionality of the form we must consider the transitions from light to dark that your texture would have as the form shifts away in space and if affected differently by the light.

As shown in this diagram, depending on how far the form is from the light source, the angle of the light rays will hit the object at shallower angles the farther away they are, resulting in the shadow itself being projected farther. This gives us the logical grounds to say that despite two forms being identical, they don't have to cast identical shadows - and therefore we can control where we want shadows to be longer or shorter, without changing the nature of the texture being conveyed.

By following this approach, you’ll focus on conveying texture more efficiently, using fewer lines and less ink, while sticking to the mark-making techniques from Lesson 2. Take some time to review the reminders to solidify your understanding of texture.

Final Thoughts

In general your work is starting to move in the right direction, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and developing your sense of spatial reasoning.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello Bludgeon4U, I'm glad to hear you've found my feedback helpful.

Starting with your leaves the same issues mentioned in your original critique still persist, such as the majority of your leaves not bending and when they do, it is in an unnatural manner that flattens your structures.

Your branches are looking good, but there are a couple of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks, but this is something that will get better overtime as you keep practicing this during your warm ups, it's just something that is good to be aware of.

Your plant constructions are looking much better since you're following the plant construction methods more thoroughly and applying the feedback you've received.

This structure is looser than it could be, due to the flow lines for the individual "arms" of the complex structure not reaching the boundary laid out by the previous phase of construction (the one where you established the simple overall footprint for the structure). The bigger shape establishes a decision being made - this is how far out the general structure will extend - and so the flow lines for the later leaf structures should abide by that, if you are not going to respect the boundary laid out, then it's not necessary to add it in.

In general your work is looking better, you're starting to understand the purposs of these techniques and exercises and making use of them in your work effectively, as such you demonstrate that your sense of spatial reasoning is developing really nicely.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello hufuu, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions.

There are still some unnatural bends in your leaves, but this is something that can be worked on by practicing it during your warm ups and making use of reference

One last thing about your leaves— it's not uncommon for students to confuse what they're trying to achieve when adding marks to the surface of their leaves, as you've done here. It's important that you consider whether you're trying to add artificial contour lines to just help convey how that surface flows through space, or whether you're trying to capture the actual vein texture present along that surface. If you're drawing artificial contour lines, you shouldn't be trying to mimic a branching vein pattern. If you're drawing the veins proper, then you shouldn't be doing so with lines, and should instead be using cast shadows to imply the presence of those textural forms as discussed back in lesson 2.

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks and helps you create solid but still organic looking structures, however there are visible signs of hesitation in your marks, this is because you are drawing them too slowly, which causes you to attempt to course correct your marks as you draw them. Keep in mind you must always ghost your marks and once you decide to commit to them, draw them quickly, it shouldn't take you more than 3-4 seconds at most to draw a confident line for now.

Your plant constructions are looking much better since you're following the plant construction methods more thoroughly and applying the feedback you've received.

In general your work is looking better, you're starting to understand the purposs of these techniques and exercises and making use of them in your work effectively, as such you demonstrate that your sense of spatial reasoning is developing really nicely.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello hufuu, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions.

Starting with your leaves the same issues mentioned in your original critique still persist, while you are drawing the individual leaves in your complex leaf structures which is good, remember that you must also draw a boundary line that encompasses the entirety of all future leaves. You must also remember to draw your edge detail primarily additively, not subtractively.

Moving on to your branches you are still deviating from the instructions for this exercise because you're not following the instructions for how to draw the edges as shown in the exercise instructions, for example, in the sections outlined here it is possible to see that you have neglected to extend your branch's segments as instructed and start the next segment at the previous ellipse point. Remember that these instructions are not guidelines, they are rules, not following them removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures, and prevents you from utilizing compound strokes— one of the main points for this exercise.

Onto your constructions, they are looking better, but you are still commiting the same mistakes mentioned previously in your constructions, such as:

Generic hatching.

Skipping construction steps and not drawing structures with the correct construction method, which flattens them, such as these petal structures which were not drawn with the leaf construction method.

You seem aware of the construction methods and techniques and what they're meant to achieve, even if you don't always apply them to your work. So this is a matter of always revisiting these exercises and always putting in the effort to always follow them to the letter so that you can get even more out of these exercises.

Because you are still committing the same mistakes, I will need to request further revisions before passing you onto the next lesson.

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.

Hello Yeldir, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're keeping foreshorting in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a good extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

In general you're doing well, so keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further, experiment with the different ways arrows can twist and bend and move across space, try different rates of foreshortening and experiment with the negative space between overlaps, all of these will help you challenge yourself and develop your skills further.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

It would have been nice to see you tackle more complex leaf structures types or other kinds of leaves.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, but they can still be improved. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not always extending said segment completely up to the halfway point between ellipses, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.

Something else you should consider is limiting the amount of ellipses present in your branches, as it stands, at points you have too many ellipses in close proximity to one another which doesn't allow you enough of a length of runway to extend your marks, it also makes it harder for you to fully engage your arm when drawing. As a general rule of thumb, treat ellipses as indicators for when the form shifts noticeably, due to the way the ellipse degree shift works that way you don't end up with too many ellipses that communicate the exact same information to the viewer, and it'll be easier to draw the compound strokes.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands, while you are aware of the ellipse degree shift you don't always make use of it and your degrees are sometimes too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

So here are the points you should keep in mind for the next time that you attempt these exercises in order to get the most out of this course.

Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions.

• For example - once you've put a form down on the page, do not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.

While this is something that you do generally respect, you did cut back into the silhouette of the mushroom cap as well as extended off of pre-existing forms for some minor pieces.

In order to avoid this, your mushrooms could also use a clearer and more defined construction for the cap of the structure. Currently you use only a single ellipse shape with a curve at the top to define the structure, but ellipses are two dimensional shapes, by themselves they will flatten a structure.

Keep in mind that mushrooms are cylindrical structures, this doesn't apply only to the body of the plant but also the "cap", some have a flatter cap, while others have a more cone-like shape. Regardless, you should construct it fully as shown in the king oyster demo, using at least two ellipses to define the tridimensionality of the structure - the base that will attach to the body of the mushroom, and the top part which defines the edge of the structure.

In this case, since the cap of the mushroom you drew has an umbonate form (which means, a rounded knob or protuberance) the ideal would be to use at least 3 ellipses to construct this form without having to cut back into the preexisting structure, start by laying down the 3 ellipses as shown here and then connect them as shown in here.

You can find here more information that talks about how to make use of organic forms to construct plants that aren't simple branches with leaf structures attached to them, and you can see here how you can construct on top of your preexisting structures with new organic forms.

Make sure that you're always drawing through your forms and constructing them fully, I've noticed that in some of your constructions you don't draw through some of your forms, such as leaves or branch like structures, this limits your ability to work through these tridimensional puzzles and limits how much you're getting out of the exercise. Not drawing through your forms means relying on your observation skills, instead of engaging your sense of spatial reasoning and truly trying to understand how the object you're drawing works, where it comes from, what it attaches to.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are looking very explicit because you attempt to make use of big areas of black, outlining textures, and and generic hatching to attempt to capture texture, rather than focusing on cast shadows and dynamic shadows to communicate texture.

Remember that in Drawabox, texture isn’t about making your work look pretty or aesthetic. Instead, it’s about accurately representing what’s physically present in your reference. The goal is to understand how each form exists in 3D space and how it casts shadows on surfaces. By analyzing the reference closely, you'll be able to translate it into your construction.

The shape of the shadow is important because it shows the relationship between the form and the surface it’s on. We need to think carefully about how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic and communicates 3D space effectively. It’s harder than just focusing on making your work look nice, but this method will help you strengthen your spatial reasoning skills. This also means that by considering the tridimensionality of the form we must consider the transitions from light to dark that your texture would have as the form shifts away in space and if affected differently by the light.

As shown in this diagram, depending on how far the form is from the light source, the angle of the light rays will hit the object at shallower angles the farther away they are, resulting in the shadow itself being projected farther. This gives us the logical grounds to say that despite two forms being identical, they don't have to cast identical shadows - and therefore we can control where we want shadows to be longer or shorter, without changing the nature of the texture being conveyed.

By following this approach, you’ll focus on conveying texture more efficiently, using fewer lines and less ink, while sticking to the mark-making techniques from Lesson 2. Take some time to review the reminders to solidify your understanding of texture.

Final Thoughts

In general your work is starting to move in the right direction, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and developing your sense of spatial reasoning.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.