Hello BanditOfTheEast, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking pretty confident here, they're pretty smooth which helps communicate a good sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're also making good use of the depth of the page with your application of perspective and foreshortening.

It's good that you're making use of hatching as that helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and 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, and not end in arbitrary places. It's also good that you're making use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps as a finishing touch to your arrows, but don't forget that when adding it in it must be added subtly with only a single mark.

In general your work here is looking good, keep pushing yourself make outside of your comfort zone and keep experimenting with different kinds of twists and turns and different rates of foreshortening for your arrows in order to challenge yourself and develop your skills further, 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 to explore all of the different possibilities.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves the fluidity present in your arrows is translating nicely into these structures. You're not only capturing how they sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment as well.

You're not always making use of edge detail in your structures, 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.

Other than that in the times where you do add edge detail it is looking quite well made, you're not attempting to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you're generally adding it in with the same line thickness as your initial construction. Do keep in mind that edge detail should be constructed additively as much as possible, avoid cutting back into the marks you've already drawn, as that can cause us to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes on a page, rather than focusing on how they represent three dimensional edges in space.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really well made as you're following the instructions for the exercise which allows you to create some solid but still organic looking structures.

There are a lot of visible tails present in your 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. 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, where it's important to point out that you did not follow the requirements for the homework assignment. As stated in the homework page if you wish to submit your own attempts at following the demos, they should make up no more than less than half of your homework pages, which in this case would be 3 demo pages maximum, while you've submitted 6 pages.

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.

Here are some of the points you should keep in mind when tackling these exercises again, so that you can get the most out of these exercises.

In this bunny cactus construction when you put contour lines on your forms, they don't really do anything, and the forms that you add for the glochids of the cactus ( the small spherical forms which contain the prickles of the cacti ) don't always follow the form that's being implied by the contour lines, and in fact can even contradict the form you're trying to communicate, such as in here.

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. In truth, they're useful for introducing the concept of a contour line, but in practice their usefulness is somewhat limited. When adding these types of contour lines it's necessary to think about how they're meant to improve or contribute to your construction in specific terms, as well as gauge diminishing returns, as every new contour line you add can be easily contradicted by the next.

As such it's best to avoid these types of contour lines, and instead focus on the ones that define intersections between forms.

Make sure to always keep the relationships between your phases of construction tight and specific, don't leave gaps in between forms or ellipses.

Ease up on your line weight, in this pitcher plant you did go over some of your marks several times in order to create thicker lines, but this is not necessary. Just like with all other techniques we use in this course, line weight is also a tool that has specific uses, it shouldn't jump from one form's silhouette to another, as this tends to smooth everything out too much. Kind of like pulling a sock over a vase, it softens the distinctions between forms and flattens the structure out somewhat.

Instead, lineweight should only be used to help clarify the distinction between overlaps, as demonstrated here.

Final Thoughts

In general there is not much to critique here because your work is based mostly on the demos, however because there are no major issues, and your work is looking very solid and tridimensional, it seems clear to me that you've understood the purpose of this lesson and won't benefit heavily from revisions. As such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete, but don't forget to pay close attention to any specifications going forward.

Good luck in Lesson 4.