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12:23 AM, Wednesday August 25th 2021

Starting with your arrows, these are generally well done. You're drawing their linework with a good deal of confidence, which is helping you to convey a strong sense of fluidity. Do however take a little more care with your hatching lines - I feel they're applied here somewhat sloppily. Take a little more time to ensure that each segment stretches all the way across the ribbon from edge to edge, and avoid having marks that just float there arbitrarily. Some were definitely much better than others - for example, the arrow at the bottom right has much cleaner hatching, whereas you've got one towards the upper left that has a few tiny marks that appear to be a complete afterthought. Every mark you draw in this course is worthy of your attention and time.

Continuing onto your leaves, I definitely feel that you've done a similarly good job of capturing how these leaves not only sit statically in space, but also how they move through the space they occupy in a fluid, confident manner. Confidence is certainly our primary priority in this course, and you're handling it well - but do remember that the ghosting method itself, which should be applied to all of the marks you draw here, has two other steps where our time should still be invested: the planning and preparation of our strokes. I feel this is an area where you're lacking, in regards to these leaves.

By investing time into the planning and preparation of our marks, we can execute our marks confidently upon a foundation of control - allowing us to achieve smooth strokes, but without sacrificing accuracy. This allows us to ensure that our forms are fully enclosed and solid - your leaves have a tendency to have gaps in their silhouettes. This sort of thing undermines their solidity, and reminds the viewer that they're looking at drawings on a flat page, rather than real three dimensional objects.

In addition to this, make sure that when you add edge detail to your leaves, that those new strokes flow out of the existing edges, and return to them, creating a complete addition to that silhouette rather than just putting more loosely related marks on the page. What we're doing here is not sketching - we're constructing solid things.

Moving onto your branches, for the most part these are well done, save for one issue - it seems you aren't following the instructions in regards to how the edge segments should be overlapping. You'll find those instructions here - note how each edge segment should start at an ellipse, then continue past the next ellipse, and stop halfway to the third. The resulting overlap helps us achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from edge to edge.

Continuing onto your plant constructions, it's clear to me that you know what you're doing. Your drawings look good - but the problem is that the drawings we do in this course are themselves exercises of a specific nature. Our goal here is not to end up with pretty end results, but rather to push our brains to solve three dimensional spatial puzzles, so that when we draw in this loose manner on our own, outside the course, it will still maintain a stronger overall illusion of form and structure despite our looseness.

We achieve that by ensuring that by being more intentional here. Constructional drawing is the exercise, and it focuses on maintaining specific, tight relationships between each step. One example of this which is missing in your work is the use of the ellipse towards the beginning of the hibiscus demo. I can see you using this kind of approach in a number of places, but not in the same manner. In the hibiscus demonstration, that ellipse defines the specific extent to which all of the flower's petals will reach, and so when we draw the flow lines for each given petal, they all end at the perimeter of that ellipse. Then, when we draw each petal's simple edges to define the form's silhouette, they too end where their given flow line ends. Each stage follows the decisions made by the previous ones, while providing new answers to questions without contradicting those preceding it. In your case, you're still just treating it more like a loose sketch - every mark is a suggestion, and you leave it to your discretion whether you wish to hold to them as you move forwards. This leaves you more prone to contradictions in your drawings, and things that don't line up in a solid, specific manner.

I can also see cases, such as the leaves in the top left of this page, where you opt to deviate from the leaf construction process explored earlier in the lesson. The use of a flow line, which you're skipping here, is important - it asserts how that leaf is going to move through space. Don't skip over it. Similarly, in the bottom left plant on this page, you skip over many constructional steps altogether, diving into a greater level of complexity without the appropriate and necessary structure to support it in place.

Fortunately I think all of these issues are quite easily fixed - it's not that you're not capable of drawing in the manner the course directed, you just got distracted and deviated. It's normal to see that when students really get into their work. So, I'm going to assign some revisions below, to give you the opportunity to go back and complete your drawings with a greater focus on the approaches espoused in the lesson.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 1 page, half of leaves and half of branches

  • 4 pages of plant constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:59 PM, Saturday September 4th 2021

Thank you so much for the critique! I hope my work showed some progress!(https://imgur.com/gallery/1RnnlPV)

12:26 AM, Sunday September 5th 2021

Great work! These pages show considerably more specificity in your construction, and greater overall thinking about how you're working through what are effectively three dimensional spatial puzzles.

Just one thing to keep an eye on - you need to keep pushing yourself to extend the edge segments on your branches fully half way to the next ellipse, as shown in the instructions I linked in my original critique.

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.
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Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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