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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows, they're coming along quite nicely with lines which are confidently drawn and smooth, the overlaps in your arrows are quite good as their proportions remain consistent and these things help your arrows carry a good sense of fluidity as they move across the depth of the page, which you're utilizing very well.

Your application of hatching is neat and tidy and applied to the correct side of the arrow bends which helps sell the illusion that these are real tridimensional objects moving through space, but don't forget to make use of additional lineweight added on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.

Overall, you've done incredibly well in this exercise, the only thing to mention that will help you keep improving is a recommendation to go out of your comfort zone more often, your arrows are already quite good but they are very similar, remember that arrows are very fluid and flexible objects and they have an entire world available to them, it's important to not only explore that world, but also the different ways in which arrows can twist, bend and turn in this space.

Leaves

For your leaves they're coming out pretty decently as generally you're sticking to the instructions for the exercise.

Don't cross out your work when it doesn't turn out well like in here, mistakes are inevitable and part of the reason we draw in pen is so when they happen, we'll be confronted with them and be forced to move on regardless, making sure to be more careful when executing our next line, giving up on a construction that didn't turn out well also means giving up on a learning opportunity.

Your application of edge detail is looking quite decent as you don't seem to attempt to capture more than one bump or piece of edge detail at a time. But in here your marks are very small, and in certain parts they don't communicate the forms at the edges of the leaf very well, which causes you to spend less time with each individual mark, when adding edge detail you want to make sure that your lines are noticeable enough so that they properly rise off from the outer edge line, come up, establishing the form of the edge detail, and then comes back down to the outer line, integrating seamlessly into it.

Onto your addition of texture to your leaves, you're generally moving in the right direction, although some times you're adding too much black which can't reasonably be caused by a form in the leaf structure, and often leaving many blank spaces in the leaf which makes it feel unfinished. Here are some useful reminders on texture and here are some good notes on how to think when approaching leaf textures.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they're coming along pretty decently and it's great to see that you're generally following the instructions for the exercise.

Something you should look into addressing is the fact that your branches are often pretty short, while this isn't necessarily a mistake it does lead into the problem that you're keeping your ellipses too close to one another when they should be at enough of a length of runway in order to ensure that your lines can be executed from the shoulder and that the halfway point is far away enough in order to allow for a seamless transition between segments once you draw your next segment.

Moving on to your ellipses it's great to see that you're always making an attempt to always draw through them twice. It's also great to see that you're aware of the ellipse degree shift and how it works as this will help you create much more solid kooking tridimensional forms, however, some of those ellipse's degrees are changing a bit harshly, when they should be more gradual for the orientation of your branch.

Plant Construction Section

Onto your plant constructions these are generally coming out very well. I can see that you're thinking in 3D and starting your plants from simple forms first, which helps give them depth and a good sense of tridimensionality.

But there are always things that can be improved.

Firstly make sure to always draw your constructions big enough in order to be able to fully engage your arm and fully think through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when working on these exercises.

Always draw cylindrical structures such as flower pots around a minor axis in order to keep their several ellipses aligned. It's good to see that you're going further than the basic form of the pot and drawing it's rim, be sure to also include another inner ellipse in order to indicate the thickness of said rim.

This mushroom cap wasn't fully constructed like the one beside it, the top of the cap isn't drawn with an ellipse that's then connected to the one below it in order to construct the cylindrical form of the cap which leaves the construction less tight and specific than it could be. In the king oyster demo we can see that the mushroom cap is fully constructed as a cylindrical like structure, in your mushrooms the angle at which we view them is lower, which means the top of the cap isn't visible to the viewer, but it should still be constructed.

It's great to see that you're applying the leaf construction method to your work and that you're drawing through your forms, this is helping you develop your sense of spatial reasoning greatly.

I've noticed that in here you attempted to add some really thick lineweight to your work at some points, keep in mind that line weight itself should be added towards the

end of a construction and focus specifically on capturing how the different forms overlap one another, as explained here, it should also be added with a single, confident stroke superimposed on top of the previous line, areas of filled in black should be reserved for cast shadows only.

In this plant construction the stems for these flowers should have been constructed with the branch construction method, this is alo true for the smaller branches in this construction, there are some smaller examples of this spread throughout your work as well. Whenever you're approaching a construction it's important to remember that the methods and techniques introduced here are not guidelines, they're tools that were created with the explicit purpose of helping you deconstruct tridimensional structures in order to reconstruct them in your page and not only have it look solid and believable, but so that you can start to understand how that object exists in a real tridimensional space.

I've noticed that edge detail is present in your attempt at the leaves homework exercise, but it's mostly missing in your actual homework pages, by taking a look back at the instructions for the leaves exercise we can see that despite it's name, edge detail is actually another phase of construction that should be added to our work, only the fourth step of drawing leaves, texture, is optional.

Final Thoughts

You have some really good work here and you're showing a great grasp of 3D forms and how to use them to capture a tridimensional object on your page. What's holding you back from your full potential are the issues mentioned above and not always applying the methods - mainly the branch construction method - when you should. So make sure to pay close attention to the instructions in the course, as well as always follow them closely.

I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete, I believe you've understood the purpose of these exercises and were able to apply them well for the most part, just remember to be more attentive going forward as well as add these exercises to your warm up list.

Good luck in Lesson 4.