Hello NateB, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows you're drawing your marks with a great deal of confidence which helps solidify the feeling of fluidity that arrows posses as they move through all the three dimensions of the world they exist in. You're keeping foreshorting in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, but do remember that your hatching lines must still follow the principles of ghosting and mark-making, they must have clear end and start points, be carefully planned and execute and not end at arbitrary points.

Generally you're doing a good job with this exercise, I'd like to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone more often the next time you tackle this exercise in order to keep pushing yourself. Try arrows with different kinds of twists and turns and different rates of foreshortening, keep in mind that arrows are very flexible objects and can move freely across the world in all sorts of manners, so you should push yourself and explore the different possibilities.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

Since you're already doing really well at constructing simple leaf structures it would have been nice to see you attempt more complex leaf structures as well.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, which allows you to create some solid but still organic looking structures, but when working on a page of branches make sure to stick to the basic characteristics of branches and maintain their size consistent.

There are some visible tails present in your branch structures, but this is a very common mistake and your accuracy will naturally improve the more you practice this exercise. You may find that by limiting the amount of ellipses in your branches and spacing them further apart you'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses and find it easier to ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark overall. It's good to see that you're aware of the ellipse degree shift and making use of it in your constructions, which helps these structures feel more solid and believably tridimensional.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are comimg along really well made. You're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures, you're demonstrating a strong, developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

There is not much to say about your work as it's looking really good, so here are simply some small pointers you should keep in mind when tackling them again.

• Be careful with zigzagging your marks in your new pages as this is a mistake that goes against the third principle of mark making from Lesson 1 and causes you to lose control over your marks more easily.

Ease up on your lineweight, it's thick, with several passes going over the same marks and jump from one form's silhouette to another, which smooths everything out too much. Almost as if you pulled a sock over a vase, it softens the distinctions between the forms and flattens the structures out somewhat.

Instead lineweight must be subtle, used only to clarify the overlaps between the forms that are being built up, as explained here.

In this construction the cast shadows you have added cling to the silhouettes of the forms, and the lightsource doesn't align.

In the potato plant demo which has similar areas of black, those parts that are filled in are basically so densely packed that the shadows fill the dirt you can see between the gaps, but in your reference the angle is different and there aren't as many areas of dense shadows. So note that cast shadows don't cling to the form that casts them and always be aware of the light source present in your reference.

I strongly recommend not drawing earlier phases of construction with a fainter line and later ones with a thicker stroke, as this is going to encourage you to approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step. Instead, we're simply building upon the existing structure, modifying what's already there at each stage. There are things that simply won't need alteration, and therefore the marks that defined them from the start should be able to stand for themselves when you're done, without being redrawn or traced over needlessly.

Final Thoughts

Overall your work is looking really well made, you're following the instructions for the exercises and your work is coming along quite tridimensional as a result, I have no doubt that you've understood the purpose of this lesson and as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.