There's one month's pause in between pages 5 and 6 of the Plants drawings, so I could get L1/250b/L2 through the official critique gauntlet (see dates), but I don't think my drawing method changed in between anyway. Photograph references are included at the end of the album.
Many thanks for the critique.
Starting with your arrows, for the most part you're approaching this well, conveying a sense of motion and fluidity in how your arrows move through space. There are two things to keep an eye on however:
While often your linework is smooth, there are definitely places where you stiffen up and end up with a wobblier stroke. This occurs especially when you add line weight, likely as you trace over the existing mark, you tend to slow down rather than executing your mark with the kind of confidence that comes with the use of the ghosting method. Remember that line weight is not meant to go over the entirety of a given stroke, and should instead be focused along key localized areas to clarify specific overlaps.
Don't forget that as we look farther back, the distances between our zigzagging sections ought to compress, as explained here.
Moving onto your leaves, you're off to a decent start, but I have a few things I want to call out:
Keep pushing the sense of confidence and movement as you draw your initial flow lines. It's coming along, but you can definitely do better to capture how that flow line represents the way in which your leaf is pushed through space by the wind. This is entirely like the arrow exercise, and adding a little arrow head at the end of the flow line often helps remind me that I'm capturing a representation of movement. From there, we can carry that movement through as we build up the rest of the leaf construction.
When building up edge detail along the side of your leaves, do not zigzag back and forth with a single stroke. As explained here, build up the edge detail in separate marks coming off the edge from the previous phase of construction. You're not to replace that edge - rather, you're building off of it to add the parts that change. I also demonstrate this here on another student's work.
Similarly, on this leaf, you shouldn't be drawing a single line zigzagging back and forth as you redefine the outline of the entire leaf in one go. Remember that back in Lesson 1, we talk about the third principle of markmaking - avoid zigzagging your lines, whenever your mark takes a significant turn, stop and start a new one. You can see how I handled a similar leaf here.
Moving onto the branches, while you're doing a pretty decent job with these, there's one key mistake - you need to be extending your segments fully halfway to the next ellipse. As explained here, this provides a healthy overlap between segments which helps allow for a smoother, more seamless transition from one to the next.
Continuing onto your plant constructions, honestly you've done a pretty solid job throughout these. Your constructions are well built, and while at times you might be just a little overzealous with your contour lines (it's easy to add more than are necessary, as they suffer from diminishing returns - always consider whether adding another is really needed), your constructions come out feeling quite solid and well constructed, and your leaves and petals flow fluidly through space, actually improving on what was present in your leaves exercise.
I have just two things to mention, and both are minor:
Remember that line weight, as mentioned previously, should be reserved only to clarify specific overlaps and should not be traced back over the entirety of existing lines. Furthermore, remember that construction isn't about using one phase of construction to replace what comes before it. Each one builds upon the last, and there will be circumstances where marks from your initial construction will continue to play an important role in the drawing's final state. I'm mentioning that just as a reminder - you actually hold to that fairly well throughout, but I get the impression that it was worth mentioning all the same.
When it comes to using large filled areas of solid black, be sure to reserve these only for cast shadows - whether those cast by larger constructed forms, or those cast by smaller textural forms. Avoid putting solid black floating arbitrarily in space. Furthermore, remember that all textural marks ought to be captured using shadow shapes rather than one-off lines. You've done a good job of this in some places, but less so in others. One way to remind ourselves to draw all textural marks with shadow shapes is to purposely employ this two step technique for all textural marks. That means first outlining the shapes we intend to draw, then filling them in.
All in all, your work is coming along very well and you've shown a good bit of growth over the set. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 4.
These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.
Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).
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