orrin_a

Thank you very much your very thorough feedback.

Here is my second attempt...

https://imgur.com/a/T4nx4a7

I tried the fern leaf again. After the fact I realized the frawn are not really the correct shape. Can I draw triangular projections off of the main spine as my boundary? Can I use a triangle for the boundary of the entire leaf? I didn't see anything like that in the videos.

I'm still confused about a few things. I do not understand how I skipped steps on the oak leaf. I drew a central line, then an outline around the whole leaf, then individual spines for the various lobes, then projections off the central spine for each lobe, then connect the lobes along the outside edge to smooth the contour. What did I miss?

I wasn't sure how to contruct the large cactus. It has large ridges projecting out in multiple directions. I tried to contruct it's cross-section at various levels and connect those with vertical lines. Not sure if that was correct.

Thank you very much for the extensive feedback! I will try again.

Thank you so much for giving me more to chew on. All the best to you. :)

Thank you very much. I am perplexed by the texture feedback. I thought there were a number of them that I was able to capture the cast shadow, although there were some in which this was difficult to portray. Oh well. I am not really grocking what is missing here.

Why not compromise and double your warmup time doing lesson 1 + box work for your warmups for a few weeks? But also move forward. I don't really get starting completely over. If I put down piano for 6 months then come back, I don't go back to the very first lesson book, and I wouldn't even if I were a relative beginner. The rust works its way out very quickly. Of course I am not an artist and I am a total noob, so maybe I am overstepping with this opinion.

Your 80% to the finish line. If you do even as little as 3 boxes per day (maybe 20 minutes tops?) you're done in less than 3 weeks. Therefore I suspect the actual work is not the problem but the mindset. I have also suffered from discouragement in various areas of life. Best advice I have received is just keep moving forward. Just because you are discouraged doesn't mean you have to let such feelings stop you from continuing to take action towards your goal. Just feel discouraged and keep going. Ignore it. Give it room to be there (in other words acknowledge and accept that's how you're feelign) but no need to let it run the show.

Re: skill stagnation. I doubt that. It may not be readily apparent, but the reps are the reps. Your brain will integrate past experience as you move forward. I have piano pieces that are extremely rusty (almost unplayable) from 30 years ago. But when I choose a piece to relearn and polish up, it takes a mere fraction of the time of a completely new piece.

From a fellow negativity addict, a lot of this is habitual thinking that needs to be examined and questioned. (I am not pointing specifically at you...I am speaking from experience.)

I am no pro at this but...

I looked at a bunch of homework submissions that had received official feedback. It's all about the shadows created by the forms. I filled in the center portion as best I could. Then moving towards the right I thought about how with more directly light there would be less shadow, then barely any shadow or marks at all when the light is most strong and direct. And then oppositely, to the left as there is more oblique light there will be more darkness, more shadow, and smaller pockets of lit area. I doubt any language issues are the problem. Your English seems absolutely fine. I think it's a thinking and visualizing and building-a-form-only-with-shadows problem, which is to be expected. I know it was hard for me. But it was also fun and rewarding to stretch my brain.

Thanks! I noticed that for me it's actually harder to draw a box with less (but not zero) convergence (i.e. a very distant VP). It's very hard to accurately get lines to be very subtlely non-parallel. But overall it was a good exercise. I appreciate the feedback.

Thank you very much, Rob!