Hi I'll be handling the critique for your lesson 3.
-Starting with your arrows they are off to a pretty good start, you clearly kept in mind the foreshortening of the positive space (the ribbon itself) and compression of the negative spaces between zigzaging sections as they mive further away. One thing to notice however is the use of lineweight, remember to use the ghosting method as explained here, your lines tend to be a little sketchy and haphazard stiffening the arrows so keep that in mind.
-Continuing on to your leaves, you captured the fluidity of these leaves and you followed the instructions when adding the edge detail, but the most important thing to point out is the use of texture, which itself wasn't a priority but I think you could have done better. It seems to me that you were only drawing arbitrary lines, remeber that every mark we make stands for very specific details, and texture isn't the exception, take alook at this image which helps to illustrate my point.
-Continuing onto your branches, you've followed the core instructions for this fairly well. The linework could stand to be a bit more confident though, achieving a confident stroke allows the line itself to taper, which helps blend segments together more seamlessly.
Lets move on to the plant constructions themselves.
-A general trend that shows up in a lot of your drawings is that your linework tends to be very stiff, something that even you wrote in your notes. This can come from not employing the ghosting method (which focuses on executing all your marks with confident, hesitation-free strokes), and/or from drawing with your wrist and elbow instead of your shoulder. It can also come from pressing too hard with your pen, rather than just letting the tip gently touch the page. For many students who struggle with their linework, it can be a mixture of all three.
-Throughout your homework I can see that there were a number of attempts that you weren't satisfied with, remember that one of the key points in Drawabox is to not grind, what I'm drawing from this is that you are not spending as much time as you should looking at your reference. Looking at your daisy demo , there is a lot of lines that overwhelm with visual information, this suggests again that you may not be spending as much time as you need to when planning your marks. Observing a reference image definitely has its challenges - with all the visual information, it's easy to get overwhelmed. But in this case, observing a demonstration where the main information is distilled from you is considerably easier. Still requires focus and attention, and time to be invested in the right places, but this is definitely where you're lacking.
So I'll have you do some revisions but take these things I'm going to mention you into account.
1.Draw one thing at a time, and focus on every single mark. Use the ghosting method to ensure that you're considering what each mark's purpose is, and how you're going to achieve it best. If you have a plant with many leaves, each individual leaf's flow line is no less important for being part of a larger group. There are no deadlines or expectations on how long this stuff should take - you don't have to complete a single drawing, or a single page, in one sitting, or even one day. You can take as long, as many days as you need to complete just one drawing. What matters is that you execute the work to the best of your current ability.
2.Give each individual drawing as much room on the page as it requires of you - rather than drawing everything small so you can pack in lots of drawings. If a single study takes up so much room that there isn't enough space for another, that's fine - as long as you've made good use of that space. So, when a drawing is done, assess whether there is enough room for another.
3.Draw each form in its entirety. There will be circumstances where, say, a flower has so many petals that they overlap one another. Instead of allowing the petals to cut each other off, draw each and every one in its entirety. These are all just exercises in spatial reasoning, and drawing each form in its entirety will help you better understand how those forms relate to one another in 3D space.
Next Steps:
Send 3-5 more plants construction please, good luck.
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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