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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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