Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

11:44 AM, Saturday August 6th 2022

Lesson 3 - Album on Imgur

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Post with 17 views. Lesson 3

Sorry for the crumpled pages... things got chaotic when moving things in my room.

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12:29 AM, Tuesday August 9th 2022

Starting with your arrows, very nice work - you're drawing them with a ton of confidence, which really helps to push the sense of fluidity with which they move through all three dimensions of the world. This carries over well into your leaves, capturing both how they sit statically in 3D space as well as how they move through the space they occupy. That said, I did notice that you're a bit loose when adding edge detail, with a tendency to zigzag lines back and forth across the existing edge, which as explained here should be avoided, due to its tendency to produce weaker relationships between the phases of construction.

In addition to this, I'd strongly recommend not drawing earlier phases of construction with a fainter line and later ones with a thicker stroke, as this is going to encourage you to approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step. Instead, we're simply building upon the existing structure, modifying what's already there at each stage. There are things that simply won't need alteration, and therefore the marks that defined them from the start should be able to stand for themselves when you're done, without being redrawn or traced over needlessly.

Continuing onto the branches exercise, it appears you may have forgotten to include it here, so you will need to provide that before I can mark the lesson as complete.

That said, your plant constructions are by and large looking quite well done. I have just a few quick points to call out:

  • For your potato plant demo, it seems that you didn't follow the demonstration in its entirety, when it comes to the filled areas of solid black. The demo filled a particular area of the negative space between the thicker area of foliage because it was thick enough to cover all of the dirt beneath it with shadow. In yours however, you lack the other cast shadows for the other leaves that give us the context to understand what that filled black represents, and you also push the idea that we're filling them in as more of an artistic choice. Always try and reserve your filled areas of solid black for cast shadows only, to avoid this kind of confusion.

  • For your aloe vera, just be sure not to cut off the bottom of any form (the flower pot in this case) and leave it open-ended with an edge on either side that just stops. Instead, cap it off with an ellipse - even if this cuts the pot shorter - as this will reinforce the solidity of the form.

Aside from that, very well done! I do need to see that page of branches (and make sure that you've followed the instructions here to the letter - if not, you may want to save some time by doing another page and submitting that).

Next Steps:

Please submit the 1 missing page of branches.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:42 AM, Tuesday August 9th 2022

Hi Uncomfortable,

Thank you for the feedback, I have uploaded the missing branch exercise :)

I'll make sure to keep this feedback and previou feedback in mind for future lessons.

5:15 PM, Wednesday August 10th 2022

Side from a couple spots where you didn't quite extend your edge segments fully halfway to the next ellipse (as shown here - note how it results in a more sudden, less seamless transition from one to the next), your branches are looking good.

One thing you may want to do going forward is to try to use the last chunk of the previous segment as a runway, overlapping it directly rather than drawing your next segment where the last one ought to have been. This will make things a bit more challenging, since you're forced to account for any mistakes from the previous stroke, but doing so will help you learn more efficiently from the process.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
5:47 PM, Wednesday August 10th 2022

Thanks! Will make sure to reflect on your valuable feedback :)

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