11:38 PM, Wednesday June 2nd 2021
Hot damn, that is some lovely work. While I do get plenty of nice submissions, it's been a while since I've seen something quite as clean as this, while still adhering to the principles of the lesson.
Starting with your arrows, you've done a great job of capturing these with a strong sense of confidence and fluidity, nailing down how they move through all three dimensions of space. This carries over nicely to the leaves exercise, where you've similarly captured not only how they sit statically in the 3D world, but also how they move through the space they occupy.
Admittedly I'm not seeing a whole lot of complex edge detail being captured, but from what I can see, you're building it up bit by bit, rather than trying to entirely redraw whole edges of your leaves. You're also handling the more complex leaf structures nicely, and your addition of texture is coming along well.
For all intents and purposes, your branches do appear to be well done, but I'm somewhat concerned that you may not have really incorporated the main part of the exercise - that is, achieving smooth and seamless transitions from one segment to the next. Technically you could have applied it really well, but the likelihood of that is very slim. I can actually see maybe one instance of segments overlapping, resulting in a very subtle thickening of the edge, but beyond that it does feel that most of these were drawn in one go. That suggests really strong control of your linework, but also defeats the purpose of the technique to which you're being introduced. At the end of the day, you will inevitably encounter situations where you can't draw the entire edge in one go, and have to break it up - so being comfortable with it is important. Now, since I did pick up on at least one point where you seem to have employed it, you are probably well equipped to use the technique - just make sure that you follow the instructions for these exercises as they're written - the approach itself is what is most important, not the result.
I mean, you may have done it exactly as written, in which case... congratulations!
Anyway, moving onto your plant constructions, you've clearly approached each of these with an inordinate amount of patience, care and time. You very clearly held to the principles of investing as much time as is required into every single mark, which is great to see. Every leaf and petal has been established with as much confidence and fluidity as every other, and that doesn't leave me with a whole lot of negatives to point out. I do, however, have just one suggestion, and it's... incredibly minor.
When constructing your flower pots, you're already taking care to draw as many ellipses as is needed to capture every complexity of the structure, including capturing the thickness of the rim, which many students tend to forget. When working with so many ellipses - or really, with any kind of cylindrical structure - building them around a central minor axis line is a great way to ensure that they all remain aligned to one another in a consistent manner.
And that's pretty much it. You've done a fantastic job, so I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 4.