Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

1:51 PM, Wednesday March 31st 2021

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Kinda skipped most details cause its not a must and i really struggle with the constructions.

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4:41 PM, Tuesday April 6th 2021

Your arrows are drawn with a sense of confidence and fluidity but you should focus on exaggerating the width of your arrows more as they approach the viewer as shown here to reinforce the illusion that these arrows are three-dimensional. There also appears to have been enough room to lay down a few more on the page. Other than that though, nice job!

This doesn't carry over on your leaves unfortunately, except for maybe this one. You're still focusing on how they sit relatively flat on the page, rather than how they move through all three dimensions of space. The key to this is flow line. Once you laid down that initial stroke, you should focus on how it moves through space and how the leaf itself gets pushed along by the wind and air currents. Remember that the flow line determines your choices. You can't turn the leaf in space if the flow line is too stiff. So treat it the same way you treat the arrows exercise and don't be afraid to let the edges fold in on itself. On the bright side, you are drawing your leaf edges with separate strokes and I'm glad to see you approach the leaves in phases, building over the previous stage. Just two minor things: 1) there's gaps on your leaf edges and 2) be sure you're not leaving gaps when building complex structures as shown here. When applying texture, be sure to think of the veins as small tubes casting shadows rather than a series of lines. There's an example on the leaf exercise instructions

Moving onto the branches, these are headed in the right direction. Though in a number of cases, I'm not seeing the segments extending fully halfway as explained here.The overlap we get allows the edges to flow seamlessly from one ellipse to the next and so on.

Lastly, the plant constructions. Aside from the issues above:

  • Your potato plant is a bit small. Make sure you're giving your shoulder enough room to draw the leaves.

  • Place a central axis line on all your cylinders-this includes the mushroom demo- to keep your ellipses alligned.

  • On this specific crop of the viscum album, leaves are not flexible enough to bend this way as explained here. Remember to fold the edges in on the leaf.

  • When drawing flowers, be sure that the stems aren't taking up the entire page since the plant head is the main focus of the exercise (unless you're plant this nothing but leaves). I can see that on this page, this resulted in some wobbling is in your petals.

There is some room for improvement but solid job overall. I'll just need to assign another page of leaves to better grasp the concepts covered in the lesson. I'll mark this as complete once you're done.

Next Steps:

1 page of leaves

When working on this, be sure to focus on how the flow line turns in space.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:41 PM, Wednesday April 7th 2021

Thank your for your detailed critique. I tried to keep it more in mind but sometimes it still hard to grasp and the lines dont come out that confident. There is still a lot to improve on. I don't mind doing another page with details. Cause i will prob add it to more warmup anyway.

https://imgur.com/GcI9y1e

5:55 PM, Wednesday April 7th 2021

Alright, your leaves are going on the right path. I just needed you to understand the concept behind the flow line, how it sits in all three dimensions of space, and enclosing it with the two basic leaf edges since that's the most important step. Just make sure when drawing leaves, try to avoid gaps between the flow line and leaf edges since that breaks the illusion as shown here. Drawing confidently is largely a matter of practice and applying the ghosting method as covered in lesson 1, so don't worry too much if you're not getting immediate results.

That's everything. I'm marking this as complete so you can move on to lesson 4.

Next Steps:

Lesson 4

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