View Full Submission View Parent Comment
0 users agree
10:37 PM, Friday August 19th 2022

Starting with your arrows, with the initial linework you've done a good job of executing these with a good deal of confidence, which helps to push the sense of fluidity with which they move through the space they occupy. That said, I do want to give you a quick reminder that when it comes to line weight, you should avoid tracing back over long sections of line to arbitrarily reinforce their thickness. Try to reserve its use towards a more specific purpose - clarifying how different forms or parts of forms overlap one another, and limiting its use to the specific areas where those overlaps occur as shown here.

Now that confidence carries over nicely into your leaves - albeit some better than others - helping in those cases to establish not only how the leaves sit statically in 3D space, but also how they move through the space they occupy. The ones where this carried over less effectively are more where the flow line was drawn as more of a straight line. In such cases it's easy to forget that the flow line itself has a specific purpose to it - not to merely function as the beginnings of a more complex structure, but to establish the way in which that structure actually moves through the world. Adding a little arrowhead at the tip of the flow line can help create a connection in our minds between the preceding arrows exercise, and that sense of fluidity here.

When it comes to building up edge detail, I did notice that you do appear to succumb to the temptation to zigzag your edge detail, as we can see here. Remember - each phase of construction does not replace the last, but rather builds upon it. As explained here, we should be avoiding this kind of continuous zigzagging, and instead build up each individual feature one at a time, each with their own separate marks.

Continuing onto your branches, I noticed here that you appear not to have followed the instructions, as laid out here in the lesson notes. The specific way in which each segment is arranged - where it starts and where it begins, as shown in this diagram is a very important aspect to this exercise - one that you've overlooked, so we will need to take another swing at that.

I also noticed that you didn't draw through all of your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen, as is required for all the ellipses we freehand throughout this course. You'll also want to review the Lesson 1 ellipses video, which explains that the ellipses ought to get wider as we slide further away from the viewer, rather than maintaining the same degree.

Lastly, moving onto your plant constructions, there's a lot you're doing well here, but also some things I want to call your attention to:

  • Always maintain tight, specific relationships between your phases of construction. This is similar to the point about avoiding zigzagging your edge detail, but also is relevant in situations like how one ought to draw the basic leaf silhouette (step 2 of the leaf construction process), ensuring that it ends at the tip of the flow line, rather than leaving an arbitrary gap between them (as we see here). Every step of construction is a decision being made, and so as we move forwards through the process, we want to avoid contradicting those past decisions, but rather reinforce them whenever we can. So, the length of the petal or leaf's already been established through the flow line, and the next step must merely abide by that decision. Similarly to this point, when you use an ellipse as shown in the hibiscus demo to establish how far out each leaf/petal will go from the center, be sure to have your flow lines stop right at its perimeter.

  • I can see throughout your constructions that you appear to engage with the flower pots as though they're not really part of the construction. Going forward, anything that ends up on the page, should be afforded the same regard. Everything is a form being introduced to the scene, and so we want to avoid cases like this where the flower pot is only partially drawn (as a collection of lines rather than a solid form). Also, be sure to construct any of those cylindrical pots around a central minor axis line to help in aligning your ellipses, and be sure to use as many ellipses as you require to flesh out the entirety of the structure - including one inset within the opening to establish the thickness of the rim, another to establish the level of the soil, and also one to cap off the bottom of the flower pot even if the form is meant to extend much further. We want to avoid giving the viewer the impression that they're just looking at a collection of lines on a flat page, and capping off something that's been cut off in this manner helps reinforce the fact that we're still dealing in solid forms.

  • I know I talked a bit about line weight earlier - I just wanted to assert that this is also a concern in your plant constructions, especially in cases where you get really heavy in its use. Line weight should always be kept very subtle. Also, avoid confusing it with cast shadows - cast shadows can conversely be really deep and heavy, but they cannot simply cling to the silhouette of a form and must be cast upon an existing surface. And of course, cast shadows are also subject to a single, consistent light source.

  • In some cases where you have many overlapping structures, like your echeveria, you may feel tempted to only the part of the forms that is visible. It is however important for the purposes of these exercises that you draw each form in its entirety, even where it's hidden/overlapped, so as to fully understand how each one sits in space, and how they relate to one another. After all - a form does not cease to exist where it is overlapped by another.

  • Lastly, there are two things that we must give each of our drawings throughout this course in order to get the most out of them. Those two things are space and time. Right now it appears that you are thinking ahead to how many drawings you'd like to fit on a given page. It certainly is admirable, as you clearly want to get more practice in, but in artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, you're limiting your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it. Also, consider that you do not strictly have to draw the entirety of the structure pictured in your reference - you are allowed to focus on a specific section of it, as this will help you scale that particular area up and explore its forms more fully. Cases where there are many repeated elements throughout the plant are good opportunities for this, as trying to fit everything else in as well will restrict just how much room we have to explore each individual piece.

Now, looking through the set as a whole I can see plenty of things that speak to spatial reasoning skills that are developing nicely, as well as confident linework and effective constructions - but my concern falls to the instructions you ended up missing. I'll be assigning some revisions below to give you an opportunity to address them.

Next Steps:

Please submit:

  • 1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

  • 3 pages of plant constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:56 PM, Saturday October 8th 2022

Resubmissions link: https://imgur.com/a/MI32F48

7:15 PM, Monday October 10th 2022

For your leaves, it's rather unfortunate that you decided to only draw the first two steps of each leaf (as far as the instructions are concerned) and only pushed past that to add edge detail in one case, given that the issue I'd raised with your leaves was specifically relating to how you were adding edge detail. While the one case where you did add it does appear to have been done correctly, it's entirely common for students to use a technique correctly in many cases, but then make a mistake in a given circumstance, which is why we ask for greater quantities. In this case, I'm going to assume that you understand my previous feedback, and how to apply it correctly in all such cases.

For your branches, I'm still noticing spots like this (where the subsequent segment starts further along than the previous ellipse, minimizing the overlap). This suggests to me that you're still having difficulty understanding what is portrayed in the instructions. To be clear, they show that each segment must be drawn in a specific manner, in terms of where they start and where they end. The first segment starts at one ellipse, continues past the second, and stops halfway to the third. The next segment then starts at the second ellipse, repeating the same pattern.

Lastly, your plant constructions are coming along well.

Rather than assigning further revisions, I'm going to leave you to address the branches issue in your own practice - though if the instructions are for whatever reason unclear, do be sure to ask for clarification on anything you may not understand, so you don't continue applying the technique incorrectly going forward.

Next Steps:

Move onto Lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

The Science of Deciding What You Should Draw

Right from when students hit the 50% rule early on in Lesson 0, they ask the same question - "What am I supposed to draw?"

It's not magic. We're made to think that when someone just whips off interesting things to draw, that they're gifted in a way that we are not. The problem isn't that we don't have ideas - it's that the ideas we have are so vague, they feel like nothing at all. In this course, we're going to look at how we can explore, pursue, and develop those fuzzy notions into something more concrete.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.