Hello Lorem_Ipsum, Congratulations on finishing lesson 3. I'll be giving you feedback, pointing out mistakes you've made as well as thing you did good.
Organic arrows
You make the arrows smaller towards the back to show foreshortening. In addition to this I advise to also place the bends closer to each other to convey this even better.
I don't see you use line thickness on overlapping lines to show which line sits in front. This would help greatly in making the drawing better readable.
The lines themselves look nice and smooth and the arrowheads are very even as well.
Leaves
Your leaves are generally looking good. There is some variation in how they bend and you started trying some detailing.
Most of your leaves have the same base shape. When doing this exercise in the future try experimenting with more complex shaped leaves.
Branches
Moving on to your branches they are coming along nicely as you're following the instructions for the exercise. There are only few visible tails in these branches.
The ellipses are also looking smooth. Although you've only drawn through them once when it's recommended to do so twice.
My advise for future branch exercises is to draw longer branches as that tests your skill a bit more.
Plant construction
The plant construction is coming along very well. You use the method as described which results in believable 3d shapes. Leaf construction is also going well in these plants.
You've drawn mostly single branches which is fine as it fulfills the requirement of the lesson but it's good to push yourself to drawing more different types of plants. For example when drawing a whole plant (like the potato plant demo) you face different problems to solve. Like having to space out the different branches so they all fit together.
Also it would be good practice to draw plants in a pot or in the ground like the cactus and mushroom demo's as that would allow you to give context to the plant rather than them floating in space.
Lastly I would ask you to add the reference images to your submissions as that makes it easier to give feedback.
In short, technically your drawings are very good. You seem to have a good understanding of how you draw your lines and how construction works. As a point of improvement I suggest to pick more challenging subjects to draw. It's a good test of your skill and gives you more opportunities to learn.
Next Steps:
Thanks for the detailed feedback! I really appreciate your insights and suggestions, especially about adding line thickness for clarity, experimenting with more complex leaf shapes, and tackling more challenging plant compositions. I’ll definitely keep these in mind for future exercises and include reference images next time. Thanks again
I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.
Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.
Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.
Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.
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