ThatOneMushroomGuy

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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking smooth and confident which helps communicate the feeling of fluidity that arrows have as they move across the world. You're making good use of the depth of the page with your addition of foreshortening which helps give your arrows an extra feeling of tridimensionality, however your arrows sometimes bulge or narrow suddenly, especially close to their bends and overlaps, these unnatural bends slightly flatten your structure. When constructing your arrow, you can do so by slowly building your curves in segments with the ghosting method, and afterwards connecting them together, which will allow you to create the illusion of a single line, while still allowing you to maintain higher control of your marks.

You seem hesitant to make use of hatching in your arrows, so don't be afraid to add it in, it will help you further your knowledge of 3d space by helping you understand more clearly how your structures twist and turn as they move through the world. As a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

In general you're doing well, so keep experimenting in order 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

Moving on to your leaves the fluidity present in your arrows is translating nicely into these new structures, you're capturing a good sense of flow and energy as you don't only 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 coming along quite nicely, as you're adding it in with the same line thickness as the rest of your construction, you're also not trying to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, which helps you maintain higher control over your marks. You're also generally approaching it additively, constructing your new forms on top of your preexisting construction, instead of cutting back into it.

Branches

For your branches they're coming along really decently as you're generally following the instructions for this exercise, although there are some changes that can be made that will help you create even better, more tight and more specific branch structures.

It's good that you're extending your edges in segments, but there are some minor mistakes present in here, while it's good that you're extending your marks you're not always extending them fully up to the halfway point between ellipses, which partially removes the healthy overlaps between marks that we wish to achieve in this exercise.

So make sure to follow the instructions more closely for this exercise, take your time with each mark and each form in order to execute it to the best of your current ability, on top of this you also have many visible tails present in your branches, which can be addressed by placing your ellipses further apart, allowing for a bigger length of runway between segments and creating a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For your ellipses it's good to see that you're always drawing through your ellipses twice. Another thing you should address is how some of your ellipses degrees barely change when they should due to how the ellipse degree shift works, as shown here. Remember that as a cylindrical form shifts towards or away from the viewer, the degree of the ellipses within that structure will also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are coming along quite decently made, you're certainly moving in the right direction as you're following the instructions for these exercises and applying the methods and techniques introduced in the lesson, which are helping you develop your sense of spatial reasoning as you work through these pages.

Of course there are always things to improve, so here are some of the things you should keep in mind for the next time you attempt these exercises, so that you can take your work to the next level.

• Don't forget that when approaching any ellipses, always draw through them twice, in order to keep them confident and smooth.

You're not really making use of edge detail in your plant constructions. Despite it's misleading name, edge detail is actually another essential step of leaf construction which helps you further communicate the way your leaf structures move through space, as well as communicate to the viewer the unique characteristics of that leaf, so make sure to always add it in when applicable.

When approaching any construction, make sure to keep your structure confined to the inside of your page, don't let forms run off from the page or suddenly get cut off, make sure the entire construction fits neatly into the space of your page.

• 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.

• Don't forget to always make use of the construction methods introduced in the lesson material, in this construction you haven't made use of the method for approaching knots and forking branches, which leaves the relationships between your forms much more vague and undefined. This construction has a similar problem, where for the smaller branch structures you haven't constructed them with the branch construction method, opting instead for single lines which don't communicate any sense of volume or tridimensionality. Make sure to always construct forms fully, in order to truly understand how your structure exists in 3d space.

For this Datora construction you haven't constructed it by following the techniques introduced in the lesson, that is, while it's good that you establish a boundary for the petal structures, you do not construct the individual petal structures of the flower with the leaf construction method - instead you cut back into the boundary you drew, trying to manipulate the silhouette of your structure which leaves your construction feeling flat and stiff, not making use of the leaf construction method takes away the fluidity and energy from your forms.

Despite this flower's more odd shape, it is still very leaf-like in it's nature, and as such it's petals must be approached with the leaf construction method. There are two ways you can generally approach it - either by drawing different sections of this structure with the leaf construction method, and afterwards connecting the different leaves together in order to build the complex shape, which is a valid and less time consuming approach, but that leaves a lot of room for mistakes or for the different phases of your construction to be less tight and specific than they could be.

The other way you can approach these types of structures is by using a slightly tapered cylinder in order to construct the main body of the flower, then afterwards make use of a boundary which will establish how far out your petals structures will extent. Going forward, make use of the leaf construction method, constructing the petal structures 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 in the context of a Daffodil flower for a different student once, but I believe you will find it helpful.

And lastly let's take a look at your usage of texture in your work, you're certainly starting to understand how to make use of texture in order to take your structure further, however there are a couple of issues in your understanding of texture, as you're often confusing cast shadows for local texture, and making use of form shadows instead of cast shadows.

In general, you should avoid filling in huge areas of black in your work, since they don't follow the principles of texture introduced in lesson 2.

Let's revisit how texture in Drawabox is approached, by looking back at this page we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface, after analyzing all of the information present in our reference we'll be able to translate it to our study. This is why the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, this is why we should consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic, as mentioned previously.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.

Final Thoughts

Overall, you seem to understand the purpose behind each exercise and how it should be applied even if you have some shortcomings, don't forget to keep practicing these exercises during your warm ups in order to keep improving your skills. I'm going to mark this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking confident and smooth which helps sell the feeling of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're making really good use of the depth of the page with your addition of foreshortening which helps give your arrows a nice sense of tridimensionality.

It's good that you're making use of hatching to differentiate your arrow segments, as well as making use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps, all of this helps you reinforce the depth of your arrow structures.

The only thing you can do in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further is explore the different ways arrows can move through the world, while your arrows certainly look tridimensional, they're a bit too similar to one another, explore the different ways they can twist and bend and move across the world as well as experiment with the negative space between overlaps.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves the fluidity present in your arrows is translating really nicely into these new structures. They have a nice sense of energy to them as you're not only capturing how these structures sit statically within space but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your application of edge detail is coming along nicely, but it can be made better. You're often adding it in with a thicker, darker lineweight than the rest of your construction, if this was intentional, just be sure to keep the line thickness for each phase of construction roughly consistent, so as not to encourage yourself to redraw more than you strictly need to.

While you're generally not trying to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, there are a couple of spots in your work where you're zigzagging your edge detail which is a mistake as it goes against the third principle of mark-making from lesson 1. You're also often cutting back into the silhouette of your forms, avoid this as much as possible, as cutting back into what we've already drawn can cause us to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes on the page, instead of thinking of the 3d edges in space that those lines represent.

Your texturing work here is looking pretty well done, you're generally moving in the right direction when applying texture to your work, although there are some moments where you fill in large areas in black when they're not caused by cast shadows, you can find here some extra useful notes on how to think when adding texture to your leaf structures. You're also generally adding your shadows as very thin lines, which doesn't allow you to design your shadow shapes as dynamic, take a look at this demo for further information.

Branches

For your branches they're coming along really nicely made as you're following the instructions for this exercise and constructing some very organic and solid structures. There are only some small adjustments that can be made which will help you take your branches to the next level.

It's good that you're extending your edges in segments, but you're not always extending them fully to the halfway point between ellipses, either not extending them far enough, or extendong your lines past it. Another issue is that you don't always start your new segment line at the ellipse point, either starting it earlier, or later, which partially removes the healthy overlaps between marks that we wish to achieve in this exercise.

So make sure to follow the instructions more closely for this exercise, take your time with each mark and each form in order to execute it to the best of your current ability, on top of this you also have many visible tails present in your branches, but this isn't a big deal, as your accuracy will naturally improve with time.

Moving on to your ellipses, while it's good to see that you're putting in the effort to draw through them twice, you're not always doing so. Don't forget to always draw through your marks at least twice before lifting your pen. It's good to see that you're aware of the ellipse degree shift and making full use of it in your constructions, which helps these structures feel very solid and believable.

Plant Construction Section

Now let's take a look at your plant constructions which are generally coming along quite well made, you're often making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson and you're certainly demonstrating a very strong sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

Of course, there are a couple of issues present in your pages which could certainly be improved upon, so here are some of the things you should look out for the next time you attempt these exercises so that you can take your constructions to the next level.

One of the issues that's present in many of your plant constructions is the fact that you're drawing earlier phases of construction with lighter, fainter lines, and then going over them with a much thicker and bolder lineweight afterwards.

This is an issue because it can make one think of Drawabox exercises as sketching, where the initial lines are only guidelines - building blocks for the refinement that comes later on. But Drawabox exercises are not sketching, they're drills created with the explicit purpose of helping you develop your spatial reasoning skills, it's important that you commit to your marks and respect the decisions and boundaries that they establish as they all contribute equally to the solidity of your structure.

Lineweight itself is a different tool that we employ and that should only be added towards the end of a construction, focusing specifically on capturing how the different forms overlap one another, as explained here.

• Don't forget that the methods and techniques introduced in this course aren't suggestions or guidelines, they're rules, or more specifically, they're tools that will help you tackle the spatial reasoning challenges we face throughout these lessons in a way that allows you to understand how these structures exist in a 3d space.

As such, you must always make use of them - don't choose when to apply them and when not to, one example of this is this construction where you do not draw the smaller stem structures with the branch construction method, and even though the structures are flowers, you don't draw their petal structures with the leaf construction method. Because of these issues, this construction is left particularly flat.

Drawabox is a course which has one very important goal: to help you develop your sense of spatial reasoning, in order for this to be possible you must go through the process of construction, making use of the tools introduced in the lesson material as they'll help you engage your brain and not only make you think about what your subject looks like, but truly help you understand how your structure fully exists in a tridimensional space, how each piece connects to one another and how they work alongside each other to make out your structure.

There are some places in your constructions where you're not drawing through your forms, such as in this construction where you're only drawing the parts of your petal structures which would be visible to the viewer, this doesn't allow you to fully engage your sense of spatial reasoning and it doesn't help you understand how your object fully exists in 3d space, so don't forget to always draw through your forms.

And lastly let's take a look at your usage of texture which is looking well made and it's certainly moving in the right direction as you're starting to consider the idea of communicating tridimensional information in a more subtle manner, however there are many filled in areas of black in your work, such as in here, and you should avoid this as much as possible. This is because not only can these areas obscure the underlying construction, making it harder to evaluate your homework assignment, but they also don't follow the principles of texture introduced in lesson 2.

Let's revisit how texture in Drawabox is approached, by looking back at this page we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface, after analyzing all of the information present in our reference we'll be able to translate it to our study. This is why the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, this is why we should consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic, as mentioned previously.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.

Final Thoughts

I believe you've shown yourself to understand the concepts shown here and be capable of applying them to your work. Sometimes the quality of your work is brought down as you don't apply instructions as carefully. Make sure to pay close attention not only to the exercises but also be attentive to the amount of homework requested.

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

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

Arrows

Let's start by talking about your arrows, your linework is looking confident and smooth which helps sell the feeling of fluidity these objects posses as they move through space. Your arrows are certainly looking tridimensional due to the way they realistically bend and move through the page, but some of them are pretty contained to the depth of the page as there's not a huge difference between the sizes of your various segments.

So push yourself further out of your comfort zone, attempt arrows with more overlaps on top of one another and make the difference between your segments more clear and noticeable, experiment with the complete range of rates of foreshortening available to you in order to develop your spatial reasoning skills further.

It's good to see that you're making use of hatching in order to differentiate between the different segments, as that forces you to consider the way your arrows twists and turns in space, as a finishing touch to your arrows, don't forget to make use of extra lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves their initial linework is looking smooth and confident which helps give your leaves a nice sense of fluidity, however there are a couple of things which harm this sense of energy and should be addressed.

For example it's really good to see that you're experimenting with complex leaf structures in different places, but these structures can be made much tighter and more specific by following a couple of rules. Both of your structures are looser than they could be because the flow lines for the individual "arms" of the complex structure go past the boundary laid out by the previous phase of construction. 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.

For your application of edge detail it's good that you're generally trying to add it in with the same line thickness as your initial construction, but when adding it in you're sometimes zigzagging your lines which is a mistake as it goes against the third principle of mark-making from lesson 1. It also leaves your structures vague and unspecific, taking away some of their feeling of solidity. So make sure to capture each bump or piece of edge detail individually.

Branches

For your branches they're coming along really decently as you're generally following the instructions for this exercise, although there are some changes that can be made that will help you create even better, more tight and more specific branch structures.

It's good that you're extending your edges in segments, but there are some minor mistakes present in here, while it's good that you're extending your marks you're not always extending them fully to the halfway point between ellipses. Another issue is that you don't always start your new segment line at the ellipse point, either starting it earlier, or later, which partially removes the healthy overlaps between marks that we wish to achieve in this exercise.

So make sure to follow the instructions more closely for this exercise, take your time with each mark and each form in order to execute it to the best of your current ability, on top of this you also have many visible tails present in your branches, which can be addressed by placing your ellipses further apart, allowing for a bigger length of runway between segments and creating a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

Speaking of ellipses, it's good that you're making the effort to always draw through them twice. Something you should keep in mind when it comes to your ellipses is that some of your ellipses degrees barely change or don't change in accordance to how the ellipse degree shift works,. So remember that as a cylindrical form shifts towards or away from the viewer, the degree of the ellipses within that structure will also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally moving in the right direction, you're putting in the time and effort to work through your constructions with the methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which helps you achieve a certain level of tridimensionality in these structures. This is really good and demonstrates that you're starting to understand the purpose of these exercises and develop a strong sense of spatial reasoning, however there are a couple of issues present in your work which hurt how much you're getting out of these exercises.

The first thing I would like to mention, which is not necessarily a mistake, but an important thing to keep in mind regardless, is that for your own original plant constructions you usually choose very complex structures to construct. The reason this is a problem is because going for complexity right away won't allow you to get comfortable with the basic techniques and how to consistently apply them.

Think of it as learning the basics of underwater cave diving, you get the right equipment, you take a couple of lessons and do a few test dives, and then you immediately try to attempt Egypt's blue hole.

Drawing is thankfully not a very dangerous endeavor and is far more forgiving when we commit mistakes, but the same concept still applies - we cannot immediately jump into complex challenges. While attempting things out of our skill level is important in an educational environment so that we can improve, we must also allow ourselves the time and space to get acquaintanced with the basic techniques and methods so that gradually, over time, we can tackle more complex structures and techniques which will actually allow us to study and understand these forms, conquering these tridimensional challenges instead of just struggling through them.

Your structures suffer from a few problems that come from this issue, for example in this tiger orchid you've left many of your forms open ended, which undermines the solidity of your structure.

For your Adonis construction the issue you face is that you didn't fully construct the petal structures in this part of the structure with the correct leaf construction method - instead, you draw the complex outline for all the petal structures right away, this leaves the relationship between your phases of construction vague, making it unclear how this structure - as well as these forms inside of the flower structure - attaches to the rest of the structure, and how the structures around relate to it, it also harms the flow and energy of the petal forms because it's not drawn with the leaf construction method, making the forms awkward and stiff.

Despite it's more circular shape, Adonis are still flowers with individual flowy petals, as such they should be approached with the leaf construction method. You can make use of added lineweight at the end to clarify overlaps.

It's also possible to see some structures which were not completed, being left as lines and marks that float arbitrarily in space, and cause your construct to look messy and unclear. This is a consistent problem throughout your work that's also present in this queen of the alps construction.

I heavily recommend that you start drawing your constructions bigger, as there's a lot of empty spaces on your page which could have been more effectively used by drawing bigger, this would not would allow you 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 when making marks.

• 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 , we can see some spots in this Chanterelle mushroom where you actually did extend off existing forms' silhouettes, instead of trying to alter the silhouette of our constructions, which causes us to focus too much on the 2d shapes on the page, instead of the tridimensional edges they represent in space. Instead, we must make sure each new piece we add to our structure is a complete tridimensional form, as shown here.

Try not to fill in large areas of black in your exercise such as in your tiger orchid, not only does it obscures the underlying construction, making it harder to properly evaluate your homework assignment, it also goes against the principles of texture in lesson 2.

When we're approaching texture in this course we really must understand that texture and construction are actually the same concept, just at different levels. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbors. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink and lines, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. Make sure to go over these reminders in order to solidify your understanding of texture further.

Final Thoughts

Despite the issues present in your work you show a good understanding of the concepts introduced in this lesson and you're mostly able to apply these techniques properly, just be more careful and remember to always use the methods introduced in the lesson, don't rush nor skip construction steps and slow down, focus on applying these methods correctly to simple structures first and mastering them before trying more complex constructions.

I'm going to be marking your homework as complete as I believe you've grasped the principles and methods in this lesson, good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello MaxiBear812, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions.

For your leaves they're certainly flowing through your page much more nicely, and your usage of edge detail is also looking good, but you're still adding it in very sparsely, you don't even make use of it in your plant constructions, so don't forget that edge detail is a different step of the construction process, only the last step - texture, is optional.

Also, don't forget that leaves must also be closed, never leave any form or structure open ended, tubes must be capped off with ellipses and leaves must have their outer edges going from one end to the next.

Your branches are coming along decently, but don't forget to always draw through your ellipses twice, this is especially a problem for your bigger ellipses in your plant constructions, always draw through your ellipses at least two times before lifting your pen. When approaching branches as a basic exercise, it's also good to stick to the basic characteristics of branches - simple cylinders with no foreshortening.

It's good to see that you're drawing through your forms in your plant constructions.

In general your revisions are looking good and you have addressed some of the most important points in these pages, as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello Maxibear812, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Let's start this critique by taking a look at your arrows, your lines are confidently made and smooth, which helps sell the feeling of fluidity that arrows have as they move across the world. You're also doing well with the execution of your hatching, although it could be a little bit tidier, as a finishing touch don't forget to make use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

Still speaking of your hatching, you often add it to the incorrect side of the arrow's bend, which makes it seem like the bigger part of the arrow is moving away from us - the viewer - and that the smaller part is much closer, which constradicts the illusion of depth we wish to achieve in this exercise.

• Perspective works in the following manner: things that are further away from the viewer look smaller, and as they get closer to the viewer they seem much bigger. The way this affects an object of consistent size and width that stretches across space is that certain segments of that 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 that you apply the hatching to, in order to signify that it's behind the bigger segment and thus, further away.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves your linework looks confident and smooth, which helps give them a certain feeling of fluidity, but something to note is that none of your leaf structures fold or bend in any way, this is something to keep an eye on whenever you tackle this exercise again, as leaves are organic structures that are affected by all sorts of forces, from the wind to gravity to their own weight pulling them down, as such you'll find that in plant structures leaves will actually be oriented in a variety of different ways, and you'll improve much more by thinking about the way these objects look when they move through the world from moment to moment, instead of just trying to capture how they sit statically within it.

It's good to see that you've experimented with complex leaf structures such as in these leaves, but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures. This structure is flatter and stiffer than it could otherwise be because you've skipped ahead when it comes to the shape of the leaf, trying to capture it's form in one go, instead of breaking all of it into different parts. It's best to start with a boundary for the leaf structure and then build each arm of the structure with the leaf construction method in order to create a tighter and more specific construction.

Your usage of edge detail is coming along quite nicely made, you generally do not attempt to capture more than one piece or bump of detail at a time, and you're often putting it down with the same line thickness as the rest of your construction, the only thing you can improve is that you often apply edge detail subtractively, cutting back into the forms you've already drawn, which should be avoided, as cutting back into the silhouette of our forms can cause us to focus too much on the 2d shapes on the page, instead of the 3d edges they represent.

Branches

For your branches I've noticed that your page has a lot of empty spots and very little branches, which leads me to believe you didn't spend as much time with this exercise as you could have, and in turn didn't get to acquaintance yourself with the instructions for the exercise very deeply, as your branches are coming along decently, but the instructions could still be followed more closely. It's good that you're drawing your edges in segments, but you're not always extending your segments completely up to the halfway point between ellipses, and sometimes you extend it further than necessary, which causes you to lose control over your marks.

So make sure to revisit the instructions for the exercise, remember that you must start a segment at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully to the halfway point between the third and second ellipses, with a new segment repeating this pattern from the 2nd ellipse and so on until your branch is complete. This helps us maintain higher control over our lines and allows for a healthier, more seamless transition between marks.

When it comes to forked branches and knots, you're not sticking to the instructions for them which leads into a less tight, less tridimensionally sound structure which feels flat because it's unclear how the different parts of your structure relate to one another. So make sure not to deviate from the instructions.

For your ellipses it's good to see that you're putting in the effort to draw through them, but you're not always doing so, don't forget to always ghost your ellipses as many times as it's needed until you feel confident that you can execute your lines smoothly and swiftly not only once, but twice. Still on the topic of ellipses, don't forget to vary their degree shift across your ellipse's length, since currently your ellipses have very little to no variation between them, this causes them to look too consistent which flattens your forms.

Plant Construction Section

And finally, let's take a look at your plant constructions. Where you're generally moving in the right direction as you're putting in the effort to make use of the techniques introduced previously, and that helps you create more solid looking structures. However you do have some problems here and there which hurt the solidity of your forms as well as how much you're getting out of these exercises. So here are some points you should keep in mind for the next time you attempt these exercises.

The biggest point you should keep in mind is that you're not always drawing through your forms. Drawabox seeks to develop your skills through the use of exercises and drills, it gives you a certain set of tools, teaches you how to apply them to your work and then gives you the space to explore and train. As such it's important to follow all instructions as they are written, and draw through all of your forms in order to go through the correct process and engage your sense of spatial reasoning, no matter how much certain parts of your construction would be logically obscured by other parts of the structure, as this will allow your brain to work through these spatial reasoning challenges to it's full extent.

• When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to always start your construction around a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. Don't forget to also draw through your ellipses twice, to ensure a smooth and confident form, and going further don't forget to also construct the rim found at the border of most vases and plant pots and add an inner ellipse to indicate the inside of the pot, in order to further communication the form of the structure.

In these leaf structures you're falling into several traps, the first of them is that you're not following the basic footprint for leaf structures, which puts emphasis on the flow of the flow line and the triangular-ish shape which naturally allows for an energetic, organic and fluid structure, going further you're not following the instructions for adding edge detail to your leaf structures, which causes you to zigzag your edge detail which is a mistake that goes against the third principle of mark-making from Lesson 1. You're also putting your edge detail down subtractively, which should be avoided as much as possible as mentioned previously.

• There are several places where you leave the ends of your branch-like structures open ended, such as in here. Never leave your forms open ended, in the case of tubes, make sure to always cap them off with an ellipse.

You have a bit of a tendency to add too much lineweight to the silhouette of your forms, lineweight ends up jumping from one outline to the next and there are several lines added on top of your previous marks. These several lines make your construction look messy and the heavy linework softens the distinctions between the forms and flattens the structure out somewhat, almost as if pulling a sock over a vase. Keep in mind that lineweight should be added subtly, with only a single line, and with the purpose of helping clarify the distinctions between overlaps.

For this lilly of the valley construction you don't always fully construct the flowers in the structure, which flattens and stiffens your work. Keep in mind that because these exercises are basically puzzles that we must solve in order to further our knowledge of tridimensional space, it's not as important that our work reaches a certain quality or a certain look, but that the steps we take to get there are all correct and follow the principles introduced in the lesson, in the case of this plant the petals aren't always fully constructed and the tridimensional challenges aren't completely worked through, which flattens and stiffens the entire structure.

When faced with a challenge that is too broad, it's best to focus on specific parts of our structure so that we can work through them fully, rather than use a certain piece of reference which won't allow us to use our constructional tools to their full extent.

Final Thoughts

You're starting to understand the concepts introduced in this lesson, but it seems you're stumbling into a couple of roadblocks and not always following the lesson material as closely as it should have been, which lowers the quality of your work, as well as how much you're getting out of it. It's important that you show you understand the most important concepts this lesson seeks to teach by applying them to your work, as such I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson yet. Please revisit any relevant lesson material mentioned here and then reply with your revisions.

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.

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

These pages are looking much cleaner than your initial constructions, you're sticking to the construction methods more closely and as such your constructions are looking much more structurally sound and tridimensional, however some of the mistakes present in your original pages are still present in here. Most notably the fact that you are still not making use of lineweight correctly, applying it to entire sections and outlines of silhouettes, instead of only adding it on top of the overlaps.

Besides this you're also not drawing through your petal structures in this rose construction, which is a mistake as it fundamentally goes against the purpose of this course. Drawabox is a course that focuses on developing your sense of spatial reasoning, your ability to make marks onto your page in a way that they look like believable 3D forms, instead of just lines on a piece of paper.

For this to be possible we go through a certain process - the process of construction, where we make use of tools which inherently force us to think in 3 dimensions and fully construct the structure that we're drawing. We must think and try to understand how each piece of the structure we're drawing exists in 3d space, where the start of a stem attaches, where it ends even if we cannot see it, the way different petals twist and turn in space, even if there are several other petals in front of it. This process forces us to consider how our structure exists not as lines on a page, but as a real, tridimensional object. Almost as if we were creating a blueprint for the structure we're drawing.

You're not always drawing through your forms, which means you're not always going through this process and thus you're not always getting the most out of these exercises. This is not something that will come easily - it will be difficult and frustrating, but you must always force yourself to do this, as at this point it's a matter of applying the information and the concepts you've been given in order to further your skills.

I don't believe you'll benefit from further revisions, as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete, but please make sure to revisit the lesson material, and to keep these points in mind in the future. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello MsPurr, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions. I'm incredibly pleased to see that you have taken the feedback you've recieved in stride and took your time to reacquaintance yourself with the Lesson material, these new pages are a great step forward and stick to the principles of construction and the techniques Drawabox seeks to teach much more closely.

Your work here is much more tridimensional, your leaves are much more fluid and energetic, and in general your constructions are much more structurally sound than your original attempts at these exercises. There are still some things that could have been approached differently, and places where you can still improve, but in general you've done a really good job.

It is really good to see that you're making use of boundary lines in order to approach certain constructions, such as this wood aspen and this structure as it helps you maintain the size between the different parts of your structure more consistent and thus, keep the relationships between your different phases of construction tighter and more specific.

But you can respect some of your boundary lines a bit more closely, as sometimes your constructions are looser than they could be due to the flow lines for the individual petals of the complex structure going past the boundary laid out by the previous phase of construction, or not abiding by it at all, such as in this periwinkle where the boundary doesn't actually establish anything because the petals of the structure go past it.

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, otherwise it may as well not exist.

In this parsley construction you're defaulting to skipping construction steps for some of the leaf structures, as well as zigzagging your edge detail which is a mistake that goes against the third principle of mark-making from lesson 1, remember that your edge detail must be built on top of a preexisting structure, and that you must capture each piece of detail individually, to maintain higher control over your marks.

Now, while your work is much better than your initial attempts, you did forget the 1 page of branches that I requested in your original revisions. Because branches are one of the points where you struggled the most originally, I really wanted to make sure that you would go over them again in order to strengthen your understanding of that exercise, as such I'm not going to be marking this submission as complete just yet, please reply with the missing 1 page of branches.

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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking smooth and confident which helps give your arrows a nice feeling of fluidity as they move through the world. While your arrows look clearly tridimensional they're generally a bit too contained to the depth of the page, so make sure to push the size difference between your segments much further and explore the different rates of foreshortening possible.

It's good to see that you're making use of hatching as that helps you clarify how your arrows twist and turn in space and reinforce your spatial reasoning skills, and it's also good that you're making use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

What you can do you can do in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further is to start exploring the different ways arrows can move across the world, while your arrows certainly look tridimensional, they're a bit too similar to one another, and don't fully stretch through the 3d space available to them. Explore the different ways they can twist and bend and move across the world as well as experiment with the negative space between overlaps in order to challenge yourself.

Leaves

Onto your leaves the fluidity present in your arrows translates nicely into these new objects, they have a nice sense of energy as you don't only try to capture how these objects sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

For your usage of edge detail you're adding it in quite nicely, you generally do not attempt to capture more than one piece or bump of detail at a time, and you're often putting it down additively - that is, constructing new forms on top of what you've already drawn, instead of cutting back into the structures you've already established - the only thing you can improve is that sometimes you add it in with a slightly thicker lineweight than your original marks, so make sure to draw all of your phases of construction with the same general line thickness.

Your addition of texture, while sparse, leans towards the more explicit side, as you focus on outlines to try communicate the texture present in the surface of your forms, but this doesn't follow the principles of texture in Drawabox and actually stiffens many of your leaf structures. Take a look at this demonstration of how we can create more dynamic shadow shapes when tackling texture, as well as this informal demo on how to think when approaching leaf texture, notice how there's a lot more going on than just a couple lines implying veins in the surface of the leaf - there's a lot you can explore to more convincingly communicate this type of tridimensional information.

Branches

For your branches they're coming along decently made as you're generally following the instructions for this exercise, although it's still possible to strengthen a couple of points and stick to the instructions for how to draw branches more closely. It's good that you're drawing your edges in segments, but sometimes you're starting your new edge segment close to where your previous mark ended, instead of starting it at the previous ellipse point, or not extending your segment completely up to the halfway point between ellipses.

So make sure to revisit the instructions for the exercise, remember that you must start a segment at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully to the halfway point between the third and second ellipses, with a new segment repeating this pattern from the 2nd ellipse and so on until your branch is complete. This helps us maintain higher control over our lines and allows for a healthier, more seamless transition between marks.

For your ellipses it's good that you're putting in the effort to draw through them twice, but sometimes you're going a bit too far which makes your ellipses a bit too loose and messy, try to stick with drawing through your ellipses 2-3 times at most, 2 is the ideal, but 3 is also acceptable. Something you should keep in mind is that many of your ellipses degrees barely change when they should due to how the ellipse degree shift works, as shown here. Remember that as a cylindrical form shifts towards or away from the viewer, the degree of the ellipses within that structure will also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's finish this critique by taking a look at your plant constructions. Overall you've done quite well in these exercises, you're applying the methods and techniques introduced in the lesson to quite great effect, and this greatly helps your work look more solid and believably tridimensional as a result. There are some things which can be approached differently in your work, which will help you get even more out of these exercises.

You're not usually making use of edge detail in your plant constructions, but despite it's misleading name, edge detail is another essential step of leaf construction which helps you further communicate the way your arrows move through space, as well as communicate to the viewer the unique characteristics of that leaf structure, so make sure to always apply it when applicable.

Throughout your work, such as in your page of branches as well as your plant constructions there are several moments where you don't respect your initial constructions as closely as you should by cutting back into your ellipses, but this can be handled pretty easily though by simply treating your ellipse's outermost perimeter as the edge of the form's silhouette, as this keeps any stray marks contained within the form itself.

Make sure that you're always drawing through your forms and constructing them fully, in this construction and this structure there are structures floating and they are disconnected from the other structures in the construction.

Keep in mind that the exercises we're approaching here are more like tridimensional puzzles that we're solving in order to further understand how these structures exist in tridimensional space. Not drawing through your forms means you're not going through the process of solving these puzzles and trying to understand how the object you're drawing fully works, and this limits how much you're getting out of the exercise as you rely on your observation skills, rather than your spatial reasoning skills.

Final Thoughts

And lastly let's take a look at your question.

i tried to learn some anatomy outside of drawabox but i stalled out on gesture. there are so many different resorces that say one thing or another, im not sure how to move forward learning. any tips?

As we go through our art journey it's completely normal to feel pulled in many different directions, especially when we're not following a traditional school curriculum, which would naturally lay down each new step of the way for us, telling us what to do and what to study and for how long. When the responsability falls on us to choose our own path it can feel incredibly overwhelming with the amount of resources available, as well as the fact that we don't know enough to distinguish what the best path would be.

As such we shouldn't be worried about the best or worst path, they're just difterent paths to the same goal, and the only way to figure out if they will be helpful to you is to simply commit to a given choice, so that you're not second guessing yourself every step of the way and trust the instructor you've chosen to learn from.

You may find this comic helpful, as it also deals with this issue that so many students face.

Of course even though there are several different resources, not all of them are made equal, but we can simply avoid the resources that will be less useful by listening to those who are further along in their art journey, as well as putting our trust in instructors who have already proven themselves to be quite helpful and knowledgeable. Two instructors that are usually recommend by members of the community are Proko and Brent Eviston, with Proko even having a free version of his figure and anatomy drawing course up on YouTube.

Uncomfortable does recommend Steve Huston's figure drawing lessons available on NMA, but full disclosure that NMA sponsors Drawabox.

So make sure that you just make a choice, stick with it, and if you must, set a period of time (a month or two) before you allow yourself to ask whether the course has actually helped or not, and make sure to not work in a vacuum, so your judgment is not tainted by your own biases.

I believe you've shown yourself to understand the concepts shown here and be capable of applying them to your work, a lot of it is pretty solid and turning out very well, although you're encountering a couple bumps and hiccups along the way. So make sure to take as much time as you need in order to ensure you're always applying the instructions to their full extent, so that you can get the most out of these exercises. I'm going to be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello jlosier99, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Let's start this critique by talking about your arrows, your linework is generally looking confident, but there are a couple signs of hesitation present throughout your work, so make sure that you're always employing the ghosting method to plan out your lines and executing your strokes switfly in order to ensure a confident and smooth mark.

You're making good use of the depth of the page and your arrows are looking pretty tridimensional. It's good to see that you're making use of hatching to your work as that helps you clarify how your arrows twist and turn in space, however with the way you've placed your hatching sometimes, such as in here that makes it seem like your arrow is getting bigger the further away it is, and getting smaller as it comes closer to the viewer, 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 that you apply your hatching to.

When making use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps don't forget to do so subtly, make use of only a single line superimposed on top of the overlap to reinforce it's depth.

Leaves

For your leaves you're doing a decent job of capturing the same fluidity present in your page of arrows, however you're not always fully considering how the center line is more than just a 2D mark as most of your leaf structures were drawn completely straight on, instead of exploring the different ways leaves can twist and move through space.

In actual plant structures you'll find that it's very rare for leaf structures to be assorted in this manner, instead they'll be found in all sorts of rotations and can be influenced by all sorts of external forces such as the wind or their own weight pulling them down, as such you should focus on drawing leaf structures that bend, twist and fold, making use of all of the tridimensional space available to them, making sure to not only capture how they sit statically within space, but also how they move across that space from moment to moment, otherwise your leaf structures end up feeling like flat stickers glued to a page, instead of the real tridimensional objects that we want them to be.

For your usage of edge detail you're adding it in quite nicely, you generally do not attempt to capture more than one piece or bump of detail at a time, and you're often putting it down additively - that is, constructing new forms on top of what you've already drawn, instead of cutting back into the structures you've already established - the only thing you can improve is that sometimes you add it in with a slightly thicker lineweight than your original marks, so make sure to draw all of your phases of construction with the same general thickness.

Your addition of texture leans towards the more explicit side, as you focus on outlines to try communicate the texture present in the surface of your forms, but this doesn't follow the principles of texture in Drawabox and actually stiffens many of your leaf structures. Take a look at this demonstration of how we can create more dynamic shadow shapes when tackling texture, as well as this informal demo on how to think when approaching leaf texture, notice how there's a lot more going on than just a couple lines implying veins in the surface of the leaf - there's a lot you can explore to more convincingly communicate this type of tridimensional information.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they're coming along decently made as you're generally following the instructions for this exercise, although it's still possible to strengthen a couple of points and stick to the instructions for how to draw branches more closely. It's good that you're drawing your edges in segments, but sometimes you're starting your new edge segment close to where your previous mark ended, instead of starting it at the previous ellipse point, or not extending your segment completely up to the halfway point between ellipses.

So make sure to revisit the instructions for the exercise, remember that you must start a segment at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully to the halfway point between the third and second ellipses, with a new segment repeating this pattern from the 2nd ellipse and so on until your branch is complete. This helps us maintain higher control over our lines and allows for a healthier, more seamless transition between marks.

For your ellipses it's good that you're putting in the effort to draw through them twice, but that is not always the case, so never forget to always draw through your ellipses at least two full times before lifting your pen. You seem generally aware of the ellipse degree shift which is good, as it helps you solidify the tridimensionality of your branches, but it can be better, as sometimes your degrees don't change as much as they should, or get wider at the middle and thinner at the ends, when it should be the opposite way around due to the orientation of your branches and how the ellipse degree shift works.

Plant Construction Section

In order to finish this critique let's talk about your plant constructions. Overall you're doing quite well in these exercises, you're applying the methods and techniques introduced in the lesson to quite great effect, and this greatly helps your work look more solid and believably tridimensional as a result.

There are, a couple of things which hold your work back from being the best that it can be, so here are some things you should look out for, and some things you should keep in mind for the next time you attempt these exercises.

Some of your pages have a considerable amount of empty space, most noticeable in here. While this is not necessarily a mistake, keep in mind that the bigger you draw, the more space you allow yourself to work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise as we tackle these exercises, so if you notice yourself drawing on the smaller side, try to draw a little bit bigger to ensure you're giving yourself as much space as you need.

For this plant structure you haven't constructed it by following the techniques introduced in the lesson, that is, you do not construct the petal structures of this flower with the leaf construction method, this takes away the flow and organic feeling this approach naturally allows for when constructing flat but flexible objects, and instead leaves this construction feeling flat and stiff.

Despite this flower's more conical shape, it is still very leaf-like in it's nature, and as such it's petals must be approached with the leaf construction method. There are two ways you can generally approach it - either by drawing different sections of this structure with the leaf construction method, and afterwards connecting the different leaves together in order to build the complex shape, which is a valid and less time consuming approach, but that leaves a lot of room for mistakes or for the different phases of your construction to be less tight and specific than they could be.

The other way you can approach these types of structures is by using a slightly tapered cylinder in order to construct the main body of the leaf shape, then afterwards make use of a boundary which will establish how far out your petals structures will extent. Going forward, make use of the leaf construction method, constructing the petal structures 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 in the context of a Daffodil flower for a different student once, but I believe you will find it helpful.

On top of this, keep in mind that 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, we can see some spots on this construction where you actually did extend off existing forms' silhouettes, as we see here. Instead of altering the silhouette of your structure, construct all new forms on top fully, either as organic forms or with the leaf construction method.

You're not usually making use of edge detail in your plant constructions, but despite it's misleading name, edge detail is another essential step of leaf construction which helps you further communicate the way your arrows move through space, as well as communicate to the viewer the unique characteristics of that leaf structure, so make sure to always apply it when applicable.

When it comes to your use of texture you're starting to move in the right direction, you're starting to think about the cast shadows present in your work, but you're also still outlining many of your textures and thinking about them in terms of lines, and not shadow shadows.

When we're approaching texture in this course we really must understand that texture and construction are actually the same concept, just at different levels. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbors. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink and lines, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that. Make sure to go over these reminders in order to solidify your understanding of texture further.

Final Thoughts

I believe you've shown yourself to understand the concepts shown here and be capable of applying them to your work, a lot of it is pretty solid and turning out very well, although you're encountering a couple bumps and hiccups along the way. So make sure to take as much time as you need in order to ensure you're always applying the instructions to their full extent, so that you can get the most out of these exercises.

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

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

Arrows

Moving on to your arrows your linework is generally looking confident, but it does have many visible signs of hesitation present throughout your work, remember that wobbling happens when we draw too slowly, allowing our brains the time to try to make tiny corrections along the way, but this creates stiff, awkward lines. Instead we must always execute our lines from the shoulder and with confidence. Make use of the ghosting method to plan out your lines and then execute them switfly to ensure a confident and smooth mark.

Your arrows are certainly looking tridimensional due to your usage of the depth of the page, as well as the fact that you're letting your arrow's edges overlap. It's good to see that you're making use of some well added hatching to your work as that helps you clarify how your arrows twist and turn in space and reinforces your spatial reasoning skills. As a finishing touch, don't forget to always make use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.

Besides working on your line confidence to ensure your arrows flow smoothly through the space that they exist in, the only thing you can do in order to take your understanding of arrows and 3D space further is by exploring the different ways arrows can move across the world, while your arrows certainly look tridimensional, they're a bit too similar to one another. Explore the different ways they can twist and bend and move across the world as well as experiment with the negative space between overlaps in order to challenge yourself.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves the fludity present in your arrows translates well into these new structures, they're looking energetic as you're not only trying to draw how these objects look when they sit statically within 3d space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

There are some unnatural folds found in your structures which flatten them slightly, keep in mind that leaves are very much like arrows as they move through space, they're flexible objects, but they're not stretchy, when they move through space their size must be kept consistent - like a piece of paper, if you try to stretch it on it's sides to force it to move in a way it can't, it will simply rip apart.

Your addition of edge detail is looking quite well made, you're not trying to capture more than one piece or bump of detail at a time, and you're also adding it in with the same line thickness as your initial construction, as well as putting it down additively for the most part - all of this is good and helps you create a tighter construction that still maintains a nice sense of fluidity, although you are not always making use of edge detail, so remember that despite it's misleading name edge detail is actually another part of the construction process, it just simply focuses on the smaller forms found at the edges of your leaf structures, it's important to make use of it and as clarified in the instructions for this exercise, only the last step of construction, texture, is optional.

Branches

This picture is really blurry, and makes it difficult to properly gauge your work, as it's difficult to tell if you're extending your lines in accordance to the instructions for the exercise, or if you're facing some troubles, it's also difficult to tell if you're drawing through your ellipses twice.

When taking photos of your work, do so as close to as much daylight as possible, close to a 90° angle and make sure the picture is of a high quality, to ensure your critiquer will be able to critique it properly.

Although one thing I was able to notice, not only in this page but in your plant construction pages as well is the fact that you're not always following the instructions for how the degree shift works which causes you to draw ellipses whose degrees barely change and to, in other moments, draw ellipses that get wider the closer they are to the viewer, and get thinner the further away they are, such as in here, where the form is not bending or moving in a way which would justify the degrees of the ellipses in that structure.

Plant Construction Section

And finally let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally moving in the right direction, you're making use of the techniques introduced previously which greatly helps you develop your sense of spatial reasoning in these constructions, however you do have some problems here and there which hurt the solidity of some of your forms, so here are some points you must keep in mind for the next time you attempt these exercises, so that you can start to get the most out of these lessons.

For your attempt at the hibiscus demo you are overall doing well and creating a solid looking structure, but it's not as tight as it could be, as you're not respecting the initial boundary you've laid out due to the flow lines for the individual "arms" of the complex structure going past this previous phase of construction. The boundary ellipse, 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, otherwise it might as well not exist.

In this sunflower construction as well as this construction you're not approaching the petal structures with the correct leaf construction method. Not only are you approaching these structures in a very 2d manner, drawing them with no consideration for how the flow line establishes how the structure exists in 3d space, which leaves them feeling like flat stickers on a page, but you're also drawing all of your flow lines very straight, which stiffens the overall structure, and when drawing your outer edges, you're leaving the ends where they connect to the middle of the flower structure or your vase open ended, that is, instead of your outer edge marks starting at one point of your flow line, and ending at the other, completely enclosing the flow line and creating a structure of it's own, one of the ends are left open ended which harms the solidity and flow of the structure, as it becomes unclear how your structure fully exists in space, and how it clearly connects and interacts with the other structures in that space.

A similar problem in present in your angel trumpets construction as you jump into complexity too soon by trying to capture the complex shape of the petals right away, instead of building your structures from simpler forms and gradually adding complexity to them. Despite the angel trumpet's odd, conical shape, it is still very leaf-like in it's nature, and as such it's petald must be approached with the leaf construction method.

There are two ways you can generally approach it - either by drawing different sections of this structure with the leaf construction method, and afterwards connecting the different leaves together in order to build the complex shape, which is a valid but less time consuming approach, which leaves a lot of room for mistakes or for the different phases of your construction to be less tight and specific than they could be.

The other way you can approach these types of structures is by using a slightly tapered cylinder in order to construct the main body of the leaf shape, then afterwards make use of a boundary which will establish how far out your petals structures will extent. Going forward, make use of the leaf construction method, constructing the petal structures 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 in the context of a Daffodil flower for a different student once, but I believe you will find it helpful.

For this Monstera construction it's important to mention that at times, it seems you've become impatient when constructing the complex structure of the leaf, that's because in here the cuts respect the initial boundary introduced by your construction, whereas in here the cuts go into your structure and go past it with no regard for the initial form you constructed. Make sure to check this informal demo for more information on how to approach leaf structures with this type of form.

Final Thoughts

Overall you are moving in the right direction as I can see you're putting in the effort to make use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in this lesson, however there are a couple of roadblocks you encounter as you go through this lesson as you don't stick to the instructions to the exercises to the letter and don't always create clear and specific relationships between your phases of construction, which leaves your structures looking a bit flat and unclear.

It's necessary to understand the importance of sticking to the construction methods to the letter, as well as keeping your phases of construction tight and specific because the following lessons will build upon the concepts introduced in here while introducing newer, even more complex construction techniques. If you don't grasp the basics you will severely struggle in the following lessons. As such I'm going to be asking you for some revisions so yoy can revisit these concepts before tackling more complex exercises, please reply once you've finished reading over the relevant lesson material with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.