lemons_and_roses

It's looking good, I'll go ahead and mark the lesson as complete.

Starting with your arrows, you've done well in terms of depth and solidity. The fluidity is also quite nice, however if you'd work on making your strokes more confident, I think that would push forward the fluidity of your arrows. Moving on to the leaves, I think they'd improve if you'd use the same fluidity you use in your arrows here and then again, confidently. Make sure you don't try to fix a line once it's made. Ghost a stroke, and once you execute it, no matter how it is, leave it be. When you draw your flow line in a leaf, make sure you add the arrowhead, so you're reminded of the direction it flows. When you add your edge detail, make sure it's done slowly, and only once you end one unit start the other. Also keep in mind where the edge detail will appear with regards to how the leaf turns. You've done this quite well in the leaf above the leaf in the left bottom corner. However it sacrificed the solidity of the other two twisted leaves when you disregarded the positioning of the edge detail. Otherwise, it's quite good. Moving on to your branches, you've variated the degree of the ellipses with regard to their placement, but you'd do much better if you'd just push the variation further. Make the thin ellipses thinner and the wide ellipses wider. A general rule of thumb is to make the ellipses that are far wider. I like that you've added arrowheads to your branches, as this reinforces solidity. I'd like to include a little reminder to draw from your shoulder, this might be limiting your range of line confidence. Now, in your plant constructions, you've made the width of the small ellipses thinner and big ellipses wider, keep in mind that the degree of the ellipses depends on the position of the ellipses, not the width of the form. When you followed the demos, you've added contour ellipses instead of full ellipses and while this is not wrong, at this stage it would be better for your understanding of the forms to add full ellipses while dissecting a form. Make sure you're applying the concepts from the leaf and branch exercises when you construct plants, try to imbue that same fluidity. When you're adding textural detail, don't outline the forms, just fill in the shadow shapes the same way you did in the texture exercises. It would be good if you'd try to construct a plant without any detail or texture, that would help you construct your forms with more of an awareness for spatial reasoning and not as flat shapes upon which you add texture. As a whole you've done quite well this lesson, I'd like to request revisions for just one plant construction without detail.

Hey! I see that you've stopped slowing down while executing your lines. You've improved, just keep at your warm ups and have fun with the next lesson!

Starting off with the arrows section, I notice a tad bit of hesitation in the way you put down your strokes. There are tiny wobbles and your arrows bulge and narrow suddenly. Keep the increase in width consistent. Also note that the negative space between curves has to increase as the arrowhead reaches the viewer. This will improve as you go on, but this is how the line weight must be added: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb.

Your leaves have very nice fluidity to them. Remember not to add extra strokes that add no value to your drawings. I can see that you have gone over the strokes more than twice but that is unnecessary. When adding edge detail, you are working both additively and subtractively on the same side even when the curvature is minimal. I would recommend going over this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/exerciseleaves again. Also leaf texture is very complicated so if you're adding it, add it like this: https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/8/texture. All of this improves in the second page, but please keep it in mind. Every stroke you put down must be of value, so don't go over strokes multiple times.

Your branches are very smooth. There is no variation in your ellipses, think about how ellipses sit in 3D space and vary them accordingly. Also, try more curvy branches for your warm up when you're comfortable with your understanding of how ellipses vary.

In most of your plant constructions' leaves and petals you tend to use both additive and subtractive edge detail, stick to either additive or subtractive based on the basic curvature and flow of the leaf. When you're dealing with uneven branches, form a simple branch first and then cut it down. You can refer to the thumbnail of this https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/1/video for that. Most of your plant constructions look very good with the detail you've added, but it seems like you're avoiding the construction part of it. Your ellipses are way too wide on the fruits based on the angle of view, you used contour ellipses instead of drawing them through on the cactus. I would recommend you go through the first two lessons again and then do a few of these constructions.

In conclusion: the flow in your construction is good but its no use without your basic forms. Do the arrows, branches and leaves for your warm up. Include exercises from lesson 1 and 2. Put your strokes down with purpose and understanding of 3D space. Don't chicken-scratch. Use shadow shapes in texture, not lines https://imgur.com/M9JJfr4. Don't try to make your drawings pretty, just focus on line confidence and define your shapes.

Thanks for the responses!

Hi! I'll be critiquing your work, I feel that the previous critique was not thorough enough.

Starting off with the arrows, your first strokes are very smooth, but the line weight is hesitant and wobbly. Be more confident with your strokes. A confident wrong stroke is always better than an accurate wobbly stroke. Don't worry too much, just ghost, and put down your stroke and let it taper as mentioned in this image: https://imgur.com/OHvr7Mb Also when you put down hatched lines, always make sure it touches both ends of the form, don't leave it hanging in the middle. There are spots where your arrows bulge/narrow suddenly, this is an issue because it gives the impression that your arrows are stretching which hurts their solidity. Keep the foreshortening steady throughout the form, not sudden. Experiment more with foreshortening in your future attempts, by utilizing it in both the arrows themselves as well as the negative space between their curves we can create a stronger illusion of an object moving through 3D space as demonstrated here.

Moving on to organic forms, I see that your lines have sudden sharpness and there are bulges in your form suddenly. You want the form to be of consistent width, always remember that. Keep the lines smoother next time and keep in mind that you have to draw with your shoulder. When your line strokes stop suddenly, it could be possible that that is because your range is limited due to using your elbow or wrist. Note how the degree of the ellipses change here: https://imgur.com/vg0vy0v The round ellipse you add is supposed to be on the side facing the viewer, and the side facing the viewer is that which has the wider degree. Believe in the lies you want to convince your audience with. Also hook it slightly less.

Moving on to the texture exercises, while the organic forms look very pretty, these are not cast shadows. It is a mistake everyone makes, but don't outline your forms. You want to focus on shapes not lines: https://i.imgur.com/M9JJfr4.png You did however understand in the texture analysis to use cast shadows (except the crumpled paper where you used lines and not shapes), so apply it on dissections. I'm sure you understand but let me just throw the link down here: https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/notransition In the leaves texture there wasn't a transition from heavy to moderate density, make sure to really zoom into your references and get all the tiny details to apply to the left.

Next we have the form intersections where you haven't localized the line weight, make sure to reference the image I linked in the arrows section of this critique. Your forms are all solid and consistent, good work there. Your intersections are off in a lot of places, but thats okay since this is your first introduction to this very tough concept. Make sure to try them out later and also keep in mind the contour lines of both the forms that intersect when you create these lines.

The final exercise, organic intersections! As I mentioned before, keep your forms consistent. Your forms don't have a consistent source of light, since this also troubled me, I would say to remind yourself that the shadows will fall exactly opposite to the source of light is helpful. Keep it at the top left or top right to avoid confusion.The shadows have to follow the form of object they're being casted on, not the form of the object that casts it. Mainly just visualize them as water balloons and believe in their solidity. Also a lot of your forms float in space instead of piling on top of each other. Keeping some forms considerably smaller doesn't help so lengthen those. Here's an image I think will help: https://i.imgur.com/KJQhpn8.png Think of these forms as a whole solid.

Overall I can see that you're grasping the concepts. Just go over Lesson 1 and 2, critique a few people's homework and please fill in your shadows completely. Add these exercises to your warm up and good luck on lesson 3!

Thank you so much!

Hi! I'll be critiquing your work today.

Starting off with the superimposed lines, looking solid. Although I do notice a little fraying at the starting point, keep it in mind to start at the exact point each of the 9 times with this exercise. I get from your line work that you were more confident and free with the longer lines. This might also be due to the fact that we tend to switch to our elbows when the lines are shorter. Remember to trust your whole arm, not just your elbow and wrist. It does arc quite a bit, but all of this is natural since it was only the first exercise. Your accuracy did however improve in the second page, line work looking more confident.

Another thing to keep in mind during this course is that you should take your time with these exercises, don't rush them as this will trouble your output. Moving on to the ghosted lines, your lines look a tad bit wobbly. I'll go ahead and assume you're struggling with line confidence, since you seem to be using your shoulders on the ellipses. You seem to be overshooting and undershooting. Don't focus on getting the points to align as much as you need to focus on putting in a confident stroke. Just ghost, trust in your muscle memory and put down each stroke. After they stop getting wobbly, you can focus on getting the points aligned. After that you can focus on your overshooting/ undershooting. I recommend you read this section: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/levels Then following the steps stated above, move on to this instruction: https://drawabox.com/lesson/1/9/lifthand Your line work on the ellipses makes me envious, good job! I see major improvement with it.

Your ellipse tables look very good, you're using your shoulder and your mark making is confident. However, compared to the tinier ellipses I feel that you put more effort into the larger ellipses since the larger ellipses look smoother. I think this is because you tried using your shoulder on the tinier ellipses. You needn't use your shoulder on the tinier marks you make. Moving on to the ellipse planes, you need to remember that one of the major instructions was to fit the ellipses snugly and touch all FOUR sides. Don't complicate the exercise for yourself, please fit it to all four sides the next time you draw ellipse planes. Besides that you have excellent ellipses in this exercise. With the funnels although, you seem to be prioritizing fitting them in snugly. This is okay when your ellipses are confident, but otherwise please prioritize confidence. Your ellipses are not as smooth in this exercise so you'll need to focus on smoothness and that shines with your confidence.

You shouldn't be adding the line work freehand on the plotted perspective, just keep that in mind. I don't see any visible distortion. The next exercise, rough perspective, was pretty tough and its very common for the line work to turn out less smooth and confident. Just remember to keep the horizontal lines parallel to the horizon line, and the vertical parallel to the vertical lines of the frame. Since the rotated boxes exercise is supposed to throw you to the deep end of the pool, make sure to keep it nice and big as this helps with spatial reasoning. I've been told that you should be better at this exercise once you finish a few more lessons so its nice to come back to it. It looks pretty solid already. The organic perspective got us thinking about convergences, which you'll face in the 250 boxes challenge!

Yes, there are three vanishing points per box. Your convergences are correct, and it should work every time, yes.

Thank you!