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11:48 PM, Wednesday March 25th 2020

Nice work! You've largely done a pretty good job, with a few things that I'd like to point out to keep you on the right track.

Starting with your arrows, they flow fairly well, but one key issue especially with the top two is that the gaps between the zigzagging sections don't compress in a manner consistent with how the arrow is moving back into space. It's fair to say that this arrow is moving somewhat erratically, but all the same, don't be afraid to let those sections overlap one another, and for that spacing to compress very quickly. It will help demonstrate the depth of the scene as a whole.

Moving onto your leaves, I think you've done a pretty great job of carrying over the sense of flow from your arrows to these concrete objects. Most students get caught up in the fact that they're drawing something real for once and it causes them to stiffen up. Instead of focusing on establishing how these leaves each sit statically in space, you've gone one step further and captured how they move through the space they occupy. Well done.

Just one tiny point - the one you labelled "fig?" has you only drawing each leaf where it would be visible (ie: not overlapped by its neighbours). Make sure you draw each one in its entirety, as though you have x-ray vision. That applies in general.

For your branches, you're largely doing a good job, and in many cases you're managing to get the segments to flow smoothly into one another. This isn't entirely consistent, but honestly I don't really expect students to be able to manage this just yet. One thing that can help reduce the visible "tails" however is to make a point of using them as a runway for your next segment. By this I mean overlapping them directly before shooting off towards your next target.

Moving onto your plant constructions, these are mostly very well done. You're pretty thorough when it comes to your use of construction, and you don't tend to stiffen up at all. As a result, your forms flow nicely, and when appropriate they appear solid. There are just a few things I'd like to mention:

  • For your flower pots, don't forget that each one will have thickness, or a "lip" at its opening. You're often just drawing the mouth of the pots with a single ellipse, which makes them appear paper thin like this one. Placing another ellipse inset within that one (which admittedly is not easy) will help create the slightest impression of thickness, making it seem more like a real 3D object.

  • For this one, don't let the lines just stop if the form is cut off. Actually cut it off - that is, as though you'd cut the form with a blade, cap off its bottom, in this case with another ellipse as though the pot were much shorter. This will ensure that the form feels three dimensional, whereas it would flatten out if left open like that. As a side point, nice work focusing on the cast shadows of the little bits at the base of the plant. One thing that can continue to help with this (as well as the use of cast shadows on the plant construction itself) is to try and remember where your light source is going to be, and keeping your shadows consistent with that (always having the shadows fall on one side, for example).

  • For the leaves on this page, you ended up breaking away from adhering closely to the earlier phases of construction, and instead treated them too loosely. This sort of zigzagging around the basic structure is an issue I address in these notes. Similar problem here, where you're basically skipping steps, trying to put information down that the existing structure on the page cannot yet support.

  • The little flower-bulbs in this drawing really do seem like the stars of the drawing, but they end up being given fairly little space, causing them to come out rather cramped. As a result, you didn't have much room for your brain to think through their spatial problems. In this case, I'd recommend zeroing in on just a few of them (or even just one) and allowing them/it to take up more of the overall page.

All in all, definitely a lot of good work, with a handful of things to keep an eye on. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:00 AM, Thursday March 26th 2020

Thank you for the review!

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