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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows they're looking quite smooth due to the confidence which they're drawn, this helps push the feeling of fluidity arrows have as they move through the world. You're also making good use of the depth of the page with your use of foreshortening.

What you can look towards improving in this exercise is your application of hatching, sometimes it's placed at the incorrect side of the bends, this disrupts the illusion of depth you wish to create.

• Due to how perspective works, objects which are closer to the viewer will appear bigger, and appear smaller as they're further away. Following this logic, an object of consistent size that is moving away or towards the viewer must gradually change according to the perspective of the scene. As such, the bigger part of the arrow is always going to be the one closest to the viewer, therefore the smaller part of the segment should be the one getting the hatching instead.

Keep in mind that lineweight should only be used on top of arrow overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves they're looking a bit mixed, some of your leaves have a good flow to their original construction, but the addition of hesitant edge detail, as well as redoing lines in some of your leaves is taking away their original energy.

Another thing which is holding you back in this exercise is how little of your leaves are actually folding, remember that leaves are free flowing objects and when they're actually found in real plants they'll be affected by gravity, have all sorts of orientations and folds, drawing them from a single head on orientation flattens them and makes them feel like they're being pressed against the page, instead of existing freely in a tridimensional world.

Make sure that when you're adding edge detail, that you're following the instructions closely and giving it all the time and attention it requires. Currently you seem to be rushing the individual marks for your edge detail as they don't properly rise off the existing edge and then return to the existing stroke before the next mark is made.

One reason for this might be the very small size of your leaves which is making it difficult for you to engage your full arm for these smaller strokes.

Regardless, no mark is unimportant, if you decide that it was worth adding, give it as much attention as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.

Another important point that you should keep in mind is to not skip construction steps, as this will leave your construction less tight and specific, which will flatten it. You can find here the complex leaf construction method, which will help you in building up complexity in your leaves, while keeping the relationships between each step of construction specific and solid.

It seems that you're often adding texture to your leaves in a very explicit manner. You can find here some extra notes on leaf texture can be approached.

Branches

Moving on to your branches, they're coming out decently as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise, here are a couple of things you should look for in your next attempts.

Good job on extending lines, but I've noticed that you're not completely consistent in the addition of this step of the exercise, sometimes you start your new segment around the halfway point mark between ellipses where the previous segments ends, instead of starting back at the ellipse point.

Remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse, extending it past the second ellipse and extending it fully to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat the pattern until your branch is complete.

You've got a lot of tails present in your compound strokes, this is in part caused by the fact that your ellipses don't have enough distance between them in order to allow for a good lenght of runway. Make sure to place your ellipses a bit farther away from each other, as well as keep practicing your accuracy.

Onto your ellipses they're looking a little bit wobbly, remember that all of your ellipses should be drawn from the shoulder and with confidence, drawing them faster and ghosting them for longer.

Plant Construction Section

Let's talk about your plant constructions. You seem to be starting to understand the concepts this lesson seeks to teach, however, I'm afraid that you're not giving these exercises enough time and that you're paying as much attention to the lesson material as necessary. This is allowing you to lose focus in your homework pages and become less mindful as a result, which hurts the quality of your assignment.

I'm going go be going through some of the things you should keep an eye out for in your next attempts at these exercises so that you can continue to get the most out of these lessons.

I'd like to start by talking about the inconsistency in your usage of the methods and techniques introduced in this lesson. Let's use this page as an example, for this construction you make use of the branch construction method, but you don't apply it to the other plants in the page which are similarly structured.

The fact that you use it when constructing some plant constructions but skip it for similar structures suggests that you're in part aware of why the branch construction method should be used, and by not always applying it you suggests you're in part rushing your pages, and not giving each individual construction it requires in order to be made to the best of your current ability.

Another example of inconsistency that suggests you're rushing can be seen here, where you build up the complexity in your leaf structure with the use of edge detail, but in several other places, such as in here you're trying to capture the complex bumps and shapes right away, which hurts the solidity of your forms.

Remember the instructions for the leaf construction method and that you should always start with the overall footprint of your leaf and only afterwards, build up the complexity of your leaf structure.

Still on the topic of your leaves, make sure not to leave any arbitrary gaps between your leaf's flow line and the outer edges.

Another thing you should keep an eye on is the fact that you're not drawing through your forms, which keeps the relationships between different phases of construction vague and undefined, which undermines the solidity of the overall structure.

• It's incredibly important for you to draw through all of your forms, as small or as unecessary as you might believe them to be, forms don't stop existing when they become obscured by other forms, therefore you should make sure you're always drawing forms in their entirety, as this will help you develop your sense of spatial reasoning and make all of the relationships between phases of construction in your drawing clear and defined.

Another thing you should keep in mind is not to leave any of your forms open ended as this reminds the viewer that they're looking at lines on a page, instead of tridimensional objects in a real world. Make sure that whenever you draw a branch of any other form, that you enclose it entirely, in the case of branches, cap them off with an ellipse.

Onto your branches, remember that you should always make use of a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned.

Another thing that heavily impacts the quality of your work is the fact that you're planning how many constructions you wish to fit on a given page before you actually commit to drawing any of them, it's admirable as it's clear you wish to get more practice out of each page, but this only harms your progress by artificially limiting the space of your page and doesn't allow you enough room to work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when tackling these exercises. Not only that, but drawing bigger will allow you to fully engage your whole arm when drawing.

So draw bigger, as big as it's necessary for you to be able to properly engage your brain and arm when drawing, and make sure to put as much time as it's necessary into that construction, only after you're done with your first construction should you gauge whether there is enough space left for one more drawing, if yes, great, you can proceed until you finish and afterwards ask yourself if there is enough space for another drawing again. If not, it's completely okay to have only a single construction per page.

Final Thoughts

I'm afraid that you're often rushing your constructions and not applying the methods as thoroughly as they ought to be used, as well as believing you're not allowing yourself enough space to fully work through these exercises. It's also incredibly important that you read the instructions carefully and give your exercise pages more time, as much time as they need in order to be finished to the best of your current ability.

I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson, these concepts will be highly important in the following lessons and you need to show that you truly understand them before moving forward. Make sure to revisit any relevant material mentioned here, and I heavily recommend that you take a look at demos for this lesson, then please reply with your revisions.