Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

9:42 PM, Friday October 30th 2020

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I really struggled drawing branches, in particular with drawing cruved lines from the shoulder connected two circles. Any advice on this front would be appreciated.

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11:37 PM, Monday November 2nd 2020

Starting with your branches, they're definitely drawn such that they move through space with confidence and fluidity, although I did notice that when adding line weight, you tended to undermine that sense of flow. As explained here, it's important that you draw line weight as confidently as you would draw the initial mark (even if this makes you more prone to making mistakes). A confident stroke will blend more seamlessly into the underlying mark by tapering on either end, but it will also avoid the common mistake of "tracing" the underlying stroke and ending up with a more hesitant, rigid mark.

Moving onto your leaves, you're definitely capturing a good sense of motion here (similarly to the arrows) but this is also where we first see an issue that is present throughout your full set. Constructional drawing is about tightly bound relationships, about building things up in stages, treating every phase as though it lays down the supporting scaffolding for the next. It's not approximate - it's specific. What you're doing here is much more loose - you're using the previous phase of construction as a suggestion, but you're redrawing the object at every stage. As shown here, and here on another student's work, we only draw the part that changes from one stage to the next. We build them directly onto the previous phase, and as a result any question answered or problem solved has its answer/solution adhered to and carried through the entire construction.

That principle is fundamental to this whole course - so it's important that you buy into it whole-heartedly. One of the issues that is caused by the general looseness is that in many of your leaves (both in this exercise and in your constructions) see you zigzagging your wavy edge detail back and forth across the previous edge.

Other than that, the process is correct - you're building things up step by step, applying the principles of the leaf construction method, and so on. It just needs to be more tightly bound.

Moving onto your branches, the key thing you're missing is that in the instructions you're told to extend your segments fully halfway to the next ellipse. This provides a good bit of overlap between the segments, which as shown here gives us a smooth, seamless transition from one segment to the next. Keeping those extensions shorter as you've done here makes the transitions more jarring, and also doesn't give us much practice in actually getting those segments to follow the same path.

Moving onto your plant constructions, ignoring the points I raised above about ensuring a tight binding between your phases of construction, you are applying the principles well, for the most part. You're building things up in stages, and applying fairly good observational skills. There is some general sloppiness however, with marks that are clearly drawn haphazardly rather than with the intent of capturing a specific bit of information from your reference.

Looking at the flower on the bottom right of this page, the contour lines drawn along the petals are pretty bad. They're very rough, without consideration for how they run along the surface of the petals, they don't extend from edge to edge, etc. The marks around the plant as well, implying debris and other such stuff is also quite sloppy. In this course, if you draw anything, you need to do so with planning and forethought, considering how it contributes to the drawing and how it can do so best. Circling back to the contour lines, quantity is not better than quality here. It's not uncommon for students to pile on their contour lines because they feel they're supposed to, but without an actual goal or purpose to them. This makes them more susceptible to just drawing them half-heartedly.

When you draw any mark, apply the ghosting method, and during the planning phase identify what task it is meant to accomplish for you, whether another mark does so already, and how it can do so most effectively. With contour lines, they suffer from diminishing returns - the first may be more impactful (when drawn properly), but the second will have considerably less impact, and the third even less than that. So it's also not just a matter of drawing them all properly and mindfully - it's also a matter of judging whether you really need the second or third.

Now I think there is definitely a lot for you to sort out here, so I'm going to assign some revisions below. I know you're capable of doing this just fine, but we have to ensure that you don't allow these looser drawing habits to continue to be an issue throughout the rest of the course.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 1 page of leaves

  • 1 page of branches

  • 2 pages of plant constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
2:22 PM, Thursday November 5th 2020

Thank you for the very thorough critique. I tried to implement your suggestions in my revision here:

https://imgur.com/a/ar5u82K

I admit I'm still struggling with adding line weight to curved lines. Same problem with drawing branches, I'm not sure how to draw a curved line from my shoulder. It feels natural to go left-to-right, sweeping my arm out, but curves require me to go forward and back, which my shoulder can't really do. It feels more comfortable incorporating my elbow into the motion, but I think that goes against what the first lessons suggest.

7:18 PM, Thursday November 5th 2020

These are definitely moving in the right direction.

About your point regarding drawing with your shoulder, while it may not feel entirely comfortable or normal, your shoulder can move forward and back. Or rather, we can achieve that by moving from our clavicle. Always remember that just because a motion feels more comfortable doesn't mean that it is correct - and just because a motion feels uncomfortable doesn't mean that it's wrong. It's just necessary to be more mindful of whether what you're feeling is awkwardness or actual pain. If it hurts, don't push it, of course.

A couple additional suggestions regarding your work:

  • As always, every mark should be executed with confidence. Many of your marks, especially the line weight, are drawn more slowly and carefully resulting in stiffness. This is obviously related to the point you made, but regardless it is important to reiterate. Accuracy does not trump the smooth fluidity of a confident stroke.

  • In your branches, one way to help improve on your tendency to have your line segments diverge as they're doing now, is to purposely use the last chunk of the previous segment as a runway for the next one, overlapping it directly instead of drawing the next stroke where the previous one ought to have been. This will make the branch you're drawing currently come out worse, but you'll learn more from it, and it'll help you improve more quickly.

  • Our textural details are all, as discussed in lesson 2, shadow shapes cast by actual textural forms. You have a tendency to just draw them as individual lines and marks, not actually considering the forms that are casting them. Don't just attempt to draw the things you see without considering what they are, and how you can understand them as shadow shapes. One thing that can help with this is to purposely make every textural mark using this two step process, and purposely avoiding making them as singular strokes.

I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. You still have plenty of room for growth, but you're heading in the right direction.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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