Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

7:02 PM, Sunday February 27th 2022

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after doing the whole lesson i realize how bad ive done the branches exercise, although i see them as 3d. the circle/oval rotations doesnt show the flow of the branch.

seeing that i struggle with plants with many leaves/ petals i minimized them so i can see it more clearly. it was fun doing them but at the same time hard brcause it often didnt flow as i actually planned. still having hard time drawing the leaves.

its been easy breaking down to simple 3d shapes so i finished it way faster than lesson 2 (took 3 months) XD

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10:58 PM, Monday February 28th 2022

Starting with your arrows, these are coming along quite well. You've drawn them with a great deal of confidence, which helps to establish how they flow through all three dimensions of space. This carries over into your leaves fairly well, where you're not only capturing how they sit statically in 3D space, but also how they move through the space they occupy.

When it comes to adding edge detail, there are a few issues I want to call out:

  • Here you're doing reasonably well, although instead of having those edge segments stop suddenly when they hit the existing silhouette of the leaf, try and extend them a bit so they actually flow smoothly into that silhouette's edge.

  • Also, refrain from making your later constructional marks darker than the earlier ones. This creates a distinction between the phases of construction and can encourage us to redraw more than we need to. Try to keep them all roughly the same overall line thickness.

  • In cases like this and throughout this entire leaf, you do end up redrawing more of that existing edge than is strictly required, and you also fall into some zigzagging, which as explained here is to be avoided.

Continuing onto your branches, it appears that you may not have followed the instructions for this one correctly. While you did note that you had issues with the branches, what I'm calling out is to do with how the edges themselves are drawn, not the alignment of the ellipses. As explained here, each edge segment should start from one ellipse, continue past the second, and stop halfway to the third. The next segment then starts at the second ellipse and repeats the pattern from there, resulting in a healthy overlap between the two segments (of about half the distance between the ellipses). That overlap allows for a smoother, more seamless transition from one edge segment to the next.

Always be sure to go through the material available as closely as you can - especially when it comes to reviewing the specific instructions for a given exercise prior to taking a swing at it. Paying attention to the instructions is often the first thing we forget when we're more inclined to work faster - and so, giving ourselves as much time as require for everything, from following those instructions to observing our reference continuously throughout the process, and finally applying the ghosting method to execute each structural mark, is a pretty demanding task.

Moving into your plant constructions, by and large you're doing decently, although there are a few overarching concerns that I have.

  • Firstly, as I mentioned above, watch out for zigzagging your edge detail. You're doing this a ton in your hibiscus drawing.

  • When doing a study, focus only on drawing the object. Do not put little corrections along the side, or cross things out (as you did here). You can certainly come back in later and identify where things could have been better (although I still wouldn't put those marks on the page proper, at least not until after it's been submitted for critique), but doing this mixed in with the actual drawing process you're splitting your mental resources between both doing the drawing, and analyzing your results. As such, you're never giving yourself the full focus you need to do the constructional drawing exercise to the best of your current ability. Furthermore, knowing that you can always draw in a correction on the side, or cross something out, will influence how you actually approach each mark. Knowing that you have one shot on the other hand will push you to commit all of yourself to that one task, giving us a clearer view of what you do at your best, and thus something more concrete to work with.

  • I think as a whole your line quality is somewhat mixed. You definitely demonstrate a clear capacity to make your marks thoughtfully and with appropriate preplanning, but the more complex and more detailed a drawing gets, the more organic your approach becomes - that is to say, the less you rely on thinking through your actions. What we're doing here is effectively all intentional, purposeful, conscious action. In putting the time in now to think through all of our actions, we're training our instincts and underlying muscle memory to be able to work in a looser, less structured fashion more effectively later on. But this is not that time - right now, you have to commit everything to each individual mark.

As a whole, you really aren't far off, and I can plainly see that you understand things correctly. I am however still going to assign some revisions below, as the matter of patience, and how you focus in on completing a given study without distraction, giving everything its due time, will be more important as you progress through the rest of the course. It's best that we address it fully now, rather than letting it linger.

I should also mention that there may be situations where you'll feel inclined to rush more - for example, cases where you don't have a lot of time to offer the drawing that day. Ultimately your single responsibility for this course still hands - to complete each drawing, to construction each form, to draw each mark to the best of your current ability. If you don't have a lot of time in one sitting, that's fine - there's nothing saying you can't spread a drawing across multiple sittings or days. And if that's what you need to complete it the best of your current ability, then it's not only allowed - it's required.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 1 page of branches

  • 3 pages of plant constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:58 PM, Friday March 11th 2022

https://imgur.com/a/p6qvOgl

i followed what you said

no zigzaging, be thoughtful of lines, and the branches lines..

at the branches i tried to stick to what is written but there were a few times that i started from the middle. also, i didnt do rotated branches cuz i tried to make the line more accurate

i always try to make line thoughtfully but i often find myself doing on impulse. for example the base on 2nd page left plant .

in the submission there are some lines that look weak (like here https://imgur.com/jkezk8z) its because of my pen getting dried really fast if i dont use it.

in general i try to strive for the best line i can but my impulsiveness and not so great accuracy make them seem ugly.

i dont feel rushed, im in general too impulsive so this is actually me focusing all my mental strenght on making good lines and not rushed ones

on plants page 1 i redid the pitcher because of its upper body, watching the video i didnt feel the shape so i tried to make my own version

8:50 PM, Friday March 11th 2022

As a whole this is definitely moving in the right direction. You're doing a much better job of wrangling that impulsive behaviour - although there are some places where you end up putting down marks with a bit more scratching, like here on the leaf at the top left of this page, as well as in some less noticeable areas on other leaves. Ultimately there's still room to grow, especially when it comes to always applying the ghosting method and executing even small marks in one pre-planned movement - but all in all you're moving in the right direction.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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