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Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

11:35 PM, Friday September 30th 2022

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Hi there! First off, while this is for Lesson 3, I haven't yet received a critique for my Lesson 2 submission. Would you recommend waiting for a response, or should I move forward? Thanks in advance!

Okay, so here's Lesson 3, and honestly, after taking a look at some other student's submissions I kind of want to redo mine (but I will refrain unless it is required).

I realized that a lot of students are drawing one plant per page, and this allows them to fit a lot more detail than I did. I was under the impression that we were supposed to fill each page with multiple plant drawings, but this didn't leave much room for texture. (An example of this is the Hoya plant near the end.) Size aside, I hope these are acceptable.

I noticed after following the demos that we weren't supposed to add texture to the first four pages. I hope there are still enough untextured drawings to meet the requirements.

Feedback is greatly appreciated!

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3 users agree
4:15 AM, Friday October 7th 2022
edited at 4:20 AM, Oct 7th 2022

G'day! I am Doctormein and I'll be the person who critique your submission for today.

Before we move on to critique your submission, let's answer those questions you have in mind first.

"Should I wait for a response on my lesson 2 before moving forward?"

Yes. Yes, you should. Drawabox is built in a way that the next lesson content is built on top of the foundation of the previous lesson. To ensure that you're understanding the lesson content properly before moving on to the next lesson, it would be ideal if you could wait for feedbacks on your previous lesson before moving forward.

"Should I be drawing 1 plant per page?"

Though you didn't ask me this question, I believe it would probably be for the best If I answer it. It's recommended that students only draws 1 plant per page. Because this'll leave more room for each plant, therefore, you could focus on the construction or the details of each one separately without worrying over not having enough room on a page. (Plus! This'll give you more room to operate, as a result, indirectly recommending you to use shoulder which is at the core of Drawabox.)

Can you draw multiples plants on a page? Yes, You can. But It'll simply make things harder for yourself and the person who's giving critique to you. It's a lot harder to see through the construction of smaller plants, especially with all the detail, than with a larger one.

Now, let's move on toward your actual critique section.

Organic arrows

  • First thing that jumps out to me is that in some of your arrows you're repeating your lines. Always remember not to repeat your lines, regardless of how misplaced they may be. A confident stroke that's misplaced will be far better at communicating your intention than multiples chicken scratch marks that's placed properly.

  • When you're adding lineweight to arrows, always remember not to overdo it. Just a single of stroke of lineweight will do.

(Additional notes) I am not sure if you're simply just not used to giving lineweight to curves (I am at first too!), but in most of your curves seem quite hesitant and chicken scratchy. Bear in mind the same principle of being confident before being accurate will always applied to every line you'll be drawing for this course.

Other than these, I believe you're compressing and giving the illusion of 3dness just fine. It might be wise to make it clearer by making foreshortening a little more dramatic, but it's still being perceived as having depth nicely.

Branches

  • I've saw you draw a flower on a branch for this exercise. **Doodles and drawing for fun are inherently good by themselves, but you should be drawing them in your own time instead of drawing them in the exercise. (50% rules)

By drawing those doodles, you might be distracting yourself from the main goal of the exercise by spending your attention elsewhere.**

  • There are certain branches that aren't being drawn with the instruction provided properly. In some branches, you stopped the moment you've reached the ellipse instead of drawing past it. Pay attention to step 2 in this image.

  • Most of your branches appeared misshapen and chicken scratchy. As always, remember to be confident with your lines. For the cause of misshapen branches, I believe it stems from not drawing large enough on a page. Because for those bigger branches you've drawn, you seem to be following the flow quite well and, as a result, those branches looks great. While practicing smaller branches will certainly come in handy one day, I believe you'll need to understand the core of the exercise first before attempting that. These 2 link may prove to be useful to you. Mistake page 1 Mistake page 2

(Additional notes) Don't forget to add center line to one of your branch too. And bear in mind, all ellipses in the context of this course should be drawn through 2-3 times. No more. No less.

Leaves

For this exercise, I believe you've done well in capturing the flow of the leaves and draw shape accordingly. However, there's still some points I would like to shed lights on.

  • In most of your leaves right now, you seemed afraid to let them fold naturally. Don't be afraid to let them fold or bend just like your arrows. Because that's often what leaves does in its nature. Fold naturally

  • If you were to draw detail for those leaves, always remember that the principles from lesson 2 still applied here. Draw shadow shapes instead of lines Right now you're drawing them as line instead.

(Additional notes) You might want to refer to more updated informal-demos (From lesson 3-7, most of the content in the main section will be outdated, therefore you should refer to informal-demos more often.) https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/8/texture https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/8/complexleafstructures

Plants construction

If we look past your texture and try to identify the main bulk of this exercise, construction, you seem to be doing quite well on those area. Though, There are points I want to mention.

  • In most of your branches, you seem to be using a lot of chicken scratchy lines. Remember not to repeat those lines, regardless of how misplaced they are. Though, this might be the result of drawing too small, hence giving you less room to operate.

  • All ellipses should be drawn through 2-3 times only. No more. No less. In your mushroom and Asplenium, I can clearly see that you've drawn through them way too many time. This rule should always apply to every exercise you'll be doing for this course.

  • In some of your branches and leaves, you are leaving out the center line completely. Center line or flow line is the most important part of this lesson. So please always include them

  • In your Calceolaria you're not drawing through your form properly. Keep in mind that if those connection between form are left undefined, your brain won't interpret those as 3d and will think of them as flat 2d shapes. So, don't forget to define those out by drawing through your form

  • Finally, the biggest point of them all. Always remember to put construction before detail. Think of it like a tower. A tower with a solid foundation but without all the decoration is far safer to live in than an elaborate, beautiful tower without a solid scaffolding.

Next Steps:

I would be requesting these revision down below. using what I've critiqued above to help you out with your drawing process

  • 1 page of branches.

  • 3 pages of plant construction WITHOUT DETAILS.

If possible, please only draw 1 plant per page. Since that would make it easier for you to focus on the main construction and easier for me to critique.

It might be wise to also check out the demo again and try to apply them to your own drawing too.

I wish you good luck on your resubmission.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
edited at 4:20 AM, Oct 7th 2022
4:21 AM, Friday October 7th 2022

If I didn't made myself clear in certain points, feel free to contact me here. I would try my best to answer when possible.

7:22 AM, Sunday October 9th 2022

Hi Doctormein!

Thank you so much for the critique, it was very helpful and I have already gotten started on the resubmissions. While I can guarantee now that they're not going to be perfect, I'm really trying to put the advice you gave me into practice.

I'll finish and submit the drawings as soon as I can (while without rushing, of course).

Cheers!

1:14 AM, Wednesday October 12th 2022

Hi Doctormein!

Here's my lesson 3 resubmission. I ended up doing an extra page of the branches exercise, as I figured overlapping curved lines is an important skill that is probably best to develop early on. I still made some pretty big mistakes, (wobbly lines, going off course, etc.) but I made an effort to overlap my lines in a less chicken-scratchy sort of way.

As for the full plant drawings, I gave a little bit of detail to the outline because I understood from the demos that this is different from texture, but my main focus was on construction. I hope these meet requirements.

Looking at the drawings now I see that I could have looked for more opportunities to make the leaves' lines twist or crossover. If anything needs to be redone again please let me know. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

And lastly I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into your critiques. Your advice has been super helpful. Thanks!

https://imgur.com/a/8rAEduA

3:30 AM, Friday October 14th 2022

Pleased to meet you again, Flippy! I'll be getting right into your submission now.

Branches

I can clearly see your sign of improvement from this resubmission. You're drawing past your ellipses 2-3 times as requested, and you attempted to follow the flow lines of the curve nicely. On top of that, you're doing a decent job at hiding visible trail on compound stroke too. There's certain point I would like you to pay more attention on, though.

Firstly, don't forget how those ellipses turn in space. Ellipses will get bigger or narrow depending on where you want the viewesr eyes to be.

Another Demo about the same principle I've done for student (Not official demo, but you might want to pay attention to them regardless.)

Secondly, you should try practicing those ellipses more to make sure they're roughly the same sizes. So that your branches lines will properly touch them without leaving some floating ellipses inside. This'll probably help most of the floating ellipses you have now.

Side notes : I believe accuracy is also another point I wanted to mentioned, However this'll come with times so there's probably no need for me to mentioned it. You should be giving it some attention too, though. (accuracy of your branches lines and how well they match flow lines)

Plants

One thing I can say for certain is that those plants are well constructed. Those forms are confidently drawn and certainly helps to illustrate how objects are 3d instead of lines on a page.

Now there's some points I've certainly want to mention and I'll be mentioning them down here.

"I gave a little bit of detail to the outline because I understood from the demos that this is different from texture."

If you wouldn't mind, could you please link the demos below? I've not heard of any demo that advocate for giving details on the outlines. (excepts leaves.) In fact, it's actually one of something Drawabox discouraged their students to do because It'll take away from the smoothness and the confident of the form. Regarding Clean-up

Line weight are mainly use to emphasize which form advances or recedes toward the viewer. In the context of this course, at least. Overlapping leaves with line weight

Secondly, for your Fortunella Crassifolia, you could probably use contour lines instead of ellipses here. They're certainly believable, but contour will probably be a better option here. Common pitfalls

Thirdly, even if the form aren't in view of the viewers, draw them regardless. I saw this mistake in your some of your branches where you didn't draw their other ends. Without properly defining those connecting, It'll be much easier for us to assume that what we're drwaing is simply a flat line on a page instead of actual 3d form.

Suggestion : Lastly, for your leaves it might be better for you to work additively instead of subtractively. Right now in some of your leaves you're cutting into your form, and, as a result, makes some of the construction felts a little flat. It isn't wrong to use them, but you probably want to limit it as much as possible. https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/8/complexleafstructures

Next Steps:

Despite some mistake here and there, I believe you're ready for lesson 4.

However! I've taken a look at your profile and noticed that you haven't received your Lesson 2 critique yet. You should get that lesson 2 critiqued first before moving forward to lesson 4. Just to make sure you aren't missing any important steps before moving forward.

You might want to check out pinned message in #critique-exchanges program in Drawabox official discord https://discord.gg/tHNrTs4REQ (I am a part of the program too) So that you could receive your lesson 2 critique.

To summarize, You're free to move onto lesson 4, but it would be a better option if you get your lesson 2 critiqued first.

Godspeed.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 3 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
10:38 AM, Friday October 14th 2022

Hello again, Doctormein!

I'll be taking into account your advice, and be working on the the areas you discussed.

In regards to my statement about outline detail being different from surface texture, I thought I had gotten that idea from the video on drawing leaves, here https://youtu.be/hrjD6l-P1IM at around 3:35,

as well as the written section about the leaves exercise, here https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/exerciseleaves on points 3 and 4; I thought that since the information on edge detail given in point 3 was separated from the information on texture given in point 4, edge detail was considered one of the steps of construction, while texture was considered the detail — (I hope that was clear)

However, after reading what you had to say on the subject and reviewing the course material myself, I see that I had misunderstood the instructions...

Which leaves me this question: If we are drawing a plant with leaves that are very wavy or irregular, should we include the edge detail as part of the construction, or would this be considered texture? Thanks in advance.

Regarding cleanup Thanks for including that, I had forgotten that this rule applied to the course as a whole, but it makes sense, as we are building upon each skill as we progress.

As far as contour lines vs. the ellipses goes, I just figured that I was supposed to be drawing through to show construction and 3D form, but you're probably right, contour lines might have worked better.

Line weight. You're right, this should have been more varied and used to emphasize overlaps, rather than using it as more of a "cleanup pass," as discussed in a link you included.

Hmm. Sorry, I this went on kind of long. Don't feel obligated to respond again, as you've already done more than enough.

Thanks again for all your help, and also for the tip about Drawabox's Discord! I'll try to avoid those previous mistakes moving forward, as well as get my Lesson 2 submission critiqued. Farewell, and good luck on your own art journey. God bless!

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