This lesson was extremely humbling. It is worth noting midway between the plant drawings I took a month break for Inktober. I was unsure if I should restart lesson 3 so I figured I would focus on warmups and finish the lesson. If I needed to do anything over that would come up as revisions.
Hello Tmmillea I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.
Arrows
Starting with your arrows, your linework is looking confident for the most part but it can still be improved as you've got some small signs of hesitation here and there, make sure to always ghost as many times as you need as well as executing your marks confidently and swiftly. Your arrows have a good sense of fluidity as they move through the page.
The point that you should look out for in this exercise is how your arrows are looking pretty flat as they have almost no perspective applied to them.
You need to challenge yourself more and vary the size difference between the various segments of your arrows.
You should also remember to add extra lineweight on top of the overlaps to help reinforce them.
Leaves
Your arrows are looking a little bit mixed, some of them are looking quite well but some of them are looking a bit stiff and bend unnaturally such as this leaf.
Other problems you face are how often you're applying edge detail subtractively when you should work additively whenever possible, when we cut back into our original construction this makes us see these forms as flat shapes on a page. With leaves working subtractively is not a big problem due to how leaves are already flat objects, but even though they are flat they're still tridimensional so it's still something you'll generally want to avoid regardless.
Branches
You're doing a good job by following the instructions but even though you're extending your lines, you don't always start you next segment back at the previous ellipse, this as demonstrated here in the instructions it allows for a healthy overlap between the segments, which in turn helps us achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from one to the next.
I can also see visible tails in your compound strokes, but that's not a big problem, it's more important to extend your lines correctly as with time your accuracy will naturally improve, you might also like to attempt to superimpose your new lines on top of the previous ones.
Plant Construction Section
Onto your plant constructions you're on the right track and I can see you applying the concepts taught in the lesson. But you've got a couple of problems which are often hurting the solidity of your constructions.
Starting with your mushroom demo, you're doing a good job with this attempt by drawing your ellipses around a minor axis, but your ellipses, especially the bigger ones, are looking a little bit wonky. Make sure to ghost them as much as you need and to execute them with confidence.
You should also remember that all objects with a cylindrical like body should be approached by being drawn around a minor axis, this includes your corpse flower. Your minor axis should also be big enough to emcompass the entirety of your ellipses, in your acorn your top ellipses weren't drawn around the minor axis.
I can see that you're struggling to apply the concepts of how leaves sit in space to your constructions, this is very noticeable in your hibiscus demo and your birds of paradise construction, this is also something I've noticed in your page of leaves. Here is a quick demonstration from another student's work of how the concepts introduced in the arrow's exercise relate to constructing leaves and petals.
You're also not making very good use of the leaf construction method in your corpse flower construction as you don't use it correctly, instead you jump into complexity too soon by attempting to capture the shape of the leaf in the initial steps of construction when you should be starting with simplicity.
I can also see in your hibiscus demo another attempt at constructing the style of the flower. Remember that not only must we commit to our lines but we must also commit to our mistakes. If your initial attempt at approaching a certain part of your subject of study isn't satisfactory then so be it.
I can also notice here and in other pages that you're not drawing through your ellipses twice. This often happens to your smaller ellipses, but it's also present in some of your bigger ones such as the ones in your banana bunch construction.
For your cactus you're skipping construction steps by not making use of the forking branches method for the extra arms.
You're on the right track for your birds of paradise construction, you need to focus on getting your contour lines to be a bit more convinced as currently they are looking a bit flat as they don't convincingly wrap around the form.
Final Thoughts
You're starting to grasp the concepts this lesson seeks to teach, but you're still struggling to understand how these exercises and instructions work and how they should be followed, you need to pay a little bit more of attention to the instructions and make sure to carefully apply them to your work, it's not important that you get them perfectly or even right, just that you show that you understand the instructions and that they should be used when drawing your plants.
I'm not going to be marking your lesson as complete. Your sense of construction and spatial reasoning is not very solid yet and you may be rushing through some steps. Remember that if you're unsure of how something is approached you should always revisit the lesson material before proceeding.
I also believe that by revisiting the material that's been mentioned here and applying these points to your work you'll be able to develop your skills further.
Next Steps:
Please reply with:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
3 plant construction pages.
Hello thanks for the review! I felt like I really struggled with this lesson and fully anticipated revisions. As part of my plant construction pages, am I allowed to redo any of the ones I did in the initial submission or are they supposed to be new subjects. I would be re-doing the ones I felt like I struggled the most with/missed direction on the most: the saguaro and the corpse flower.
Hello Tmmilea, It's completely fine to tackle the same plants again in your revisions, although considering how you're often struggling with applying the basic concepts to your homework it may be more beneficial for you to attempt some simpler constructions, as they still allow you to practice the core principles without overcomplicating things.
So I just did the leaf exercise half page, and I understand the do not grind policy, but I am wondering if I should redo them.
I know part of it was me getting in my own head. You can literally see the negative self-talk interfering with my ability as I go through the exercise.
I can continue on if that is still the best course of action. Don't mean to bother you just frustrated that I feel like I am getting worse not better.
Hello Tmmilea.
Thank you for replying to me with your revisions, don't worry about whether or not you should redo any exercises, in the case that it is necessary, think of it as an addition to your previous work rather than a redo, you're not cleaning the slate and starting over, you're doing more work in order to address mistakes or any issues present in order to develop your skills further.
You also don't need to worry and try to judge the quality of your own work, I and the other TAs will let you know when it is needed or not as you work through this course.
Try to keep in mind too that improvement is not always linear, oftentimes it can feel like a one step forward, two steps back kind of deal.
So! All of this said, I will only be checking your work until the full set of revisions has been provided. Please reply to me with your full revision pages.
Next Steps:
Please reply with the remaining revisions requested.
Ok thanks for the reply. Was in not great headspace while doing the exercise and that came out in the work and how I felt about it. Will soldier on the rest of the revisions after some 50% time
Here are my revisions. Sorry about how messy the construction is on the cactus, first time attempting forked branches
Hello Tmmillea, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions.
Starting with your pages of leaves and branches, your leaves are looking better, although you still have some which are bending unnaturally. I've noticed that several of your leaves have more lines than they should for their basic construction, which suggests you redid them.
Don't redo any lines, once you've decided you're going to make a mark you must commit to it, regardless of how it turns out. Redoing any lines won't fix your mistakes, in fact it will only call more attention to them and undermine the solidity of your construction more than if you stuck to your original mark.
Another thing you should focus on in your lines is your addition of edge detail, when adding edge detail make sure that you're giving it all the attention it requires, making sure that your marks properly rise off and return to the existing stroke underneath, since your marks barely lift off the initial construction they don't convey much information on the complex edge detail. No mark is unimportant, if you decide it was worth adding, give it as much attention as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.
Moving on to your branches, it's good to see that you're generally applying the instructions more thoroughly, but remember that your next segment should start at the previous ellipse point, as demonstrated here, afterwards you can attempt to superimpose your new line on top of the preexisting one, but starting it on top of the previous line can end up cutting through your ellipse and undermining the boundary it establishes, and with it, the solidity of your forms.
Speaking of undermining boundaries you do the same on your cactus and mushroom by treating the inner line on your ellipses as the one that establishes the form, when in actuality the outermost perimeter of your ellipse is the one that establishes the form and it's relationships to other forms, make sure to always build your constructions with that in mind.
As mentioned in my original critique, remember that all objects with a cylindrical body should be approached by being drawn around a minor axis, you apply this well in your original submission by drawing your mushrooms around a minor axis but not in these extra pages, although that might be simply due to the fact that the mushroom demo doesn't make use of a minor axis, but do keep this in mind as some of the demos in this course are a bit outdated due to the nature of the ever so updating material.
For your flower construction, you're zigzagging your edge detail and the relationships between your forms are left vague and undefined because you don't draw through your forms. The purpose of these exercises is to develop your sense of spatial reasoning, as such you need to be aware of all forms in your construction as they don't stop existing once they become obscured by other phases of construction.
Think of how and where a stem connects to your flower, and draw it in it's entirety.
Overall you're still struggling with some of the concepts mentioned here and applying it to your constructions, but I don't believe you'll benefit as much from more revisions, so I will be marking this submission as complete.
Make sure to pay extra attention to the feedback you've recieved here in order to apply it to your future homework assignments.
Next Steps:
Don't forget to keep practicing these exercises during your warm-ups.
Move on to Lesson 4.
Thanks for the feedback, especially the piece about the using the outer edge of the ellipse as the foundation. That was always unclear to me.
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.
