ThatOneMushroomGuy

Hello Cruzuki, 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 the depth of the overlaps.

You've done a good job on this exercise, what I'd like to tell you so that can keep getting the most out of this exercise is actually to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone more often the next time you tackle this exercise, 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.

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, starting with the flow line and only then connecting them together. Even though leaves are single entities they can still made be made up of several parts.

You're not making use of edge detail in your pages, by not adding it they're left very simple and you miss out on a great tool to help you further communicate the way your structures exist and move through space. Make use of edge detail whenever possible, and remember that only the last step of leaf construction - texture - is optional.

Branches

Moving on to your branches you're not sticking to the instructions for this exercise as closely as you should. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting mark, you're starting 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.

It's good to see that you're drawing through your ellipses, but remember to always draw through them two full times, drawing less than that will cause them to be too loose and unconfident. 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. In general you're following 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 some things which 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.

First things first, an issue that hurts your work without you even realizing is the fact that you're trying to fit too many constructions on a given page before you've even committed to any of them. Because of this your pages have big empty spaces that could have been better used not by adding more drawings to your page, but instead by limiting them, which 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.

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.

Your mushrooms could use a clearer and more defined construction for the cap of the structure. Currently you use only a single ellipse shape 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 sort of dome shape. Regardless, you should construct it fully as shown in the kind 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.

• 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, there are some moments where you do cut back into the silhouette of your forms, such as in these forms and for this strawberry, which flattens the forms.

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.

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.

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.

Heo zayss, thank you for replying with your revisions.

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.

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, that way you don't end up with too many ellipses that communicate the same information to the viewer.

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.

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.

In general your work is looking really good, you're starting to understand the purpose 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 Trashadhe, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows, your linework is looking confident for the most part, but it can definitely still be improved as there are still visible signs of hesitation present in your marks. 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, but do remember that your hatching lines must still follow the principles of ghosting and mark-making, they must have clear end and start points, be carefully planned and executed and not end at arbitrary points.

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 needs some more work, at times it is looking a bit patchy and has clear signs of hesitation, 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.

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 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.

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 lot 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, 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, that way you don't end up with too many ellipses that communicate the same information to the viewer.

For ellipses don't forget to always draw through them twice, drawing through them only once will cause them to be too loose and unconfident. When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands 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.

However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. 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.

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.

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 drawing your branches with the correct branch construction method or keeping your leaf structures simple. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

On top of this it's also 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.

When drawing something with construction what 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 top of it.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are looking very explicit with big areas of black and shadows that could have been designed in a more dynamic way and implicit way.

So 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 loanaGheorge, 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 that arrows have as they move across the world. You're also making good use of the depth of the page with your use of foreshortening, and your well applied and correct placement of the hatching helps solidify the illusion of depth you wish to achieve in this exercise.

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.

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.

But something to note is that the majority of your leaf structures don't 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, 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 but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

These structures are looser than they 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 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. You're not drawing your edges in segments, which completely removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in this exercise.

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 a smoother mark 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.

However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. 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.

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. Because of this your pages have big empty spaces that could have been better used not by adding more drawings to your page, but instead by limiting them, which 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.

As it stands your constructions are too small and you have also chosen some very complex structures which has limited your ability to make use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in your work.

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 keeping your leaf structures simple. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

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 ground plane to your structures, this line is necessary when constructing plant pots because otherwise your structure will look like it's floating in mind air, which breaks the illusion of the construction.

Make sure to keep all stages of your construction tight and specific, don't leave gaps in between stages of construction, such as a leaf's flow of line and it's outer edges, they must connect.

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.

• 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 do cut inside the silhouette of your structures in this mushroom construction.

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.

Final Thoughts

You're starting to move in the right direction but you're still bumping into a lot of obstacles that prevent you from getting the most out of these exercises.

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 Vyper, 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 that arrows have as they move across the world. You're also making good use of the depth of the page with your use of foreshortening, and your well applied and correct placement of the hatching helps solidify the illusion of depth you wish to achieve in this exercise.

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, but do remember that your hatching lines must still follow the principles of ghosting and mark-making, they must have clear end and start points, be carefully planned and executed and not end at arbitrary points, be careful of gaps in your hatching marks. 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.

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.

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.

Another thing to keep in mind 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.

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 lot 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 a smoother mark 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 finally, let's take a look at your plant constructions. Where you're 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 very solid looking structures. Good job, there are only a couple of things I can point out that you should look out for when attempting these exercises in the future.

When constructing any structure make sure that each and every form is constructed to it's full extent, in order to keep the relationships between different stages of construction tight and specific. This construction is stiffer than it could be because you did not fully construct the leaf structures and how they connected to the structure underneath, as such the structure looks flatter and stiffer because the fluidity of the leaf structures can't be fully capture unless the forms are constructed thoroughly.

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.

You're not usually making use of edge detail in your pages, edge detail would have greatly helped you further communicate the form of your structures and how they move through space, but by not adding it they're left very simple, so make sure to add edge detail whenever possible, and remember that only the last step of leaf construction - texture - is optional.

Final Thoughts

Overall your work is looking really well made, you're following the instructions for the exercises and your work is coming along quite tridimensional as a result, I have no doubt that you've understood the purpose of this lesson and as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello FalseQuill, 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, but do remember that your hatching lines must still follow the principles of ghosting and mark-making, they must have clear end and start points, be carefully planned and executed and not end at arbitrary points. 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.

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 edge detail is looking quite well made, you're not attempting to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you're often approaching it additively - that is, constructing it on top of your preexisting structure, as well as putting it down with the same general line thickness as the rest of your construction, all of these are good things that help you construct solid and tight structures that still feel 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 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

Moving on to your branches, you’re deviating from the exercise instructions, specifically in how the edges of the branch are meant to be constructed. It’s good that you’re drawing the edges in separate segments, but you’re not extending each segment all the way to the halfway point between ellipses. This prevents the overlaps we intentionally aim for, which are essential for building smooth, seamless transitions along the branch’s length.

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.

Additionally, be mindful of foreshortening when drawing your branches. In this exercise, the goal isn’t to explore dramatic perspective or depth, but to practice maintaining consistent widths and smooth, controlled edge transitions. If your ellipses get smaller too quickly or if the branch’s length compresses visually, the structure begins to appear foreshortened, which works against that goal. To avoid this, keep your ellipses consistently sized (unless you’re intentionally tapering) and spaced evenly, maintaining a clear, steady rhythm as the branch moves through space.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark overall, but your ellipse degrees also require attention. The degree of an ellipse should change gradually and logically based on the branch’s orientation in 3D space. As a cylindrical form rotates toward or away from the viewer, its ellipse degree opens or closes accordingly. In your work, some degrees shift abruptly or contradict the branch’s implied direction, which breaks the illusion of solidity. Focus on ensuring that each ellipse’s degree flows smoothly from one to the next, reflecting a natural, incremental rotation rather than sudden jumps. This will help maintain the sense that your branches exist as solid forms moving coherently through 3D space.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are coming along quite nicely. You're generally making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in this Lesson which helps you create the illusion of tridimensionality in your work.

You're demonstrating in these pages that you're developing a strong sense of spatial reasoning, there are only a couple of things that should be kept in mind going forward, so you can get even more out of these exercises.

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. Because of this your pages have big empty spaces that could have been better used not by adding more drawings to your page, but instead by limiting them, which 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.

As it stands your constructions are too small and you have also chosen some very complex structures which has limited your ability to make use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in your work.

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 constructing your leaves with the correct leaf construction method. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

Technically another example of you skipping construction steps can be seen in this tree construction, where you haven't constructed each individual leaf structure with the leaf construction method - however this is not really a mistake, due to the nature of this course and how it teaches certain skills it's fundamental that we're always making use of the construction techniques and methods we learn to our constructions.

But certain structures are just way too complicated and it's not feasible to draw them with the methods introduced, it is simply impossible to fully draw each individual leaf structure or branch structure in a plant such as this one while still following the instructions for this exercise, as such avoid picking trees and similar structures as a subject to study in this lesson.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are looking very explicit as you're covering the majority of your constructions with too many big areas of black, which goes against Drawabox's ideals of drawing texture implicitly and creating dynamic shadow shapes.

So 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

You're moving in the right direction but because you've covered a big part of your constructions in black, it's difficult to truly gauge how much you have absorbed from the lesson material and whether you truly applied the construction techniques to most of your constructions.

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 porpo, 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, 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.

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.

It's good to see that you're also experimenting with some more complex types of leaf structures, and doing so by following the instructions, which allows you to create a much tighter and more solid looking structure that still feels flexible and energetic.

Your edge detail is looking quite well made, you're not attempting to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you're often approaching it additively - that is, constructing it on top of your preexisting structure, as well as putting it down with the same general line thickness as the rest of your construction, all of these are good things that help you construct solid and tight structures that still feel 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 lot 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 a smoother mark 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 coming along quite nicely. You're generally making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in this Lesson which helps you create the illusion of tridimensionality in your work.

You're demonstrating in these pages that you're developing a strong sense of spatial reasoning, there are only a couple of things that should be kept in mind going forward, so you can get even more out of these exercises.

It's good to see that you're drawing cylindrical structures such as plant pots around a minor axis as this helps 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 in order to fit everything together make sure to add a ground 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.

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 drawing your petals/leaves with the correct construction method, such as in here. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

So speaking of this construction, when you construct these types of structures by attempting to capture their silhouette first you stiffen the flower structure.

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.

• 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 do cut inside the silhouette of your structures in this construction.

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.

Final Thoughts

Overall your work is looking really well made, you're following the instructions for the exercises and your work is coming along quite tridimensional as a result, I have no doubt that you've understood the purpose of this lesson and as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.

Hello TotallyImpartial, 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, but do remember that your hatching lines must still follow the principles of ghosting and mark-making, they must have clear end and start points, be carefully planned and executed and not end at arbitrary points. 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.

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.

But something to note is that the majority of your leaf structures don't 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, 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 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.

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.

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 a smoother mark 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.

However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. 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.

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.

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.

There are two things we must allow ourselves when tackling these exercises in order to get the most out of these exercises. They are time and space, in this case, you're not allowing yourself enough space when approaching these exercises because you're preplanning how many drawings you wish to fit on a given page, this is artificially limiting your ability to apply the proper construction methods introduced in the lesson. So draw bigger, make sure that your first construction is as big as it needs to be, only afterwards should you gauge whether there is enough space on the page to add another construction, if not, it's completely okay to have a single construction in your page. Drawing bigger will 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 when drawing.

When approaching cylindrical structures such as mushrooms starting with a minor axis will help you keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily.

Final Thoughts

In general your work is moving 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 zayss, 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, but something to note is that the majority of your leaf structures don't 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, 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 but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

These structures are looser than they 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.

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.

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.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark 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 move on to your plant constructions. You're moving in the right direction and starting to grasp the concepts this lesson seeks to teach, as such you're starting to develop a grasp for tridimensional space and how to create solid forms in your page, but there are a couple of things which are holding you back, I'll run you through these issues and the things that you're doing well, so that you can focus on your strengths and weaknesses when tackling these exercises again.

First things first, you're mostly drawing demos. Demos are like training wheels, they help you learn and understand how these construction methods can be used together in a variety of ways in order to construct certain tridimensional structures, but just like with learning how to ride a bike, you won't know how much you know until you take the training wheels out - and then fall on your face. But it's okay, because the next time you try it it'll be easier because you already have an idea of what you should do.

However if you never take the training wheels out, you won't develop yourself to your full potential. Remember that if you wish to, you can include your attempts at following the demos in your homework, but they should constitute less than half of your plant drawings.

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.

• When approaching cylindrical structures such as mushrooms starting with a minor axis will help you keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily.

Final Thoughts

You're starting to move in the right direction but because you've mostly tackled the demos, it's difficult to truly gauge how much you have absorbed from the lesson material and whether you truly understand how to combine the simple exercises in order to construct a tridimensional plant structure.

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 Dasha1995, 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, it's also 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.

You've done a good job on this exercise, what I'd like to tell you so that can keep getting the most out of this exercise is actually to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone more often the next time you tackle this exercise, 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.

There are several lines throughout your leaf structures which I assume are your attempts at leaf texture. And it can definitely be pushed further, as you've got several small and timid marks, and several big spaces of white which would communicate that the surface of your structure is smooth.

There's much more going on than just a few stray marks implying veins and we can do much more to accurately communicate this type of texture, take a look at this informal demo on how to approach leaf texture, and make sure to give these reminders on how texture works in Drawabox a read.

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.

There are a lot 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.

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.

However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. 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.

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 the correct branch construction method or keeping your leaf structures simple. Remember that they're not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

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.

And lastly, let's take a look at your textures, where your textures are looking very explicit as you're drawing several marks over your structures rather than designing dynamic shadow shapes.

So 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.