Sorry for the quality of the photos, but my scanner just broke.
I find it hard to believe that almost a year has passed since I last sent the exercises. I am really lost, but I tried to get back on track and I intend to get to the end of the course, and I hope that my "hiccup" has not thwarted the whole trip. In any case, I will do everything to commit myself to the end!
Starting with your arrows, you've drawn these with a sense of confidence and fluidity in 3D space. Just be sure that your hatching lines are nice and tight. This carries nicely onto your leaves as well. Good job on that! However, the edge detail on this leaf in particular defined for each stroke was too complex and should have been broken into separate stages as shown here. Same with this one. Remember to always break it down into their simplest components first when building complexity.
Additionally, remember the markmaking principles on lesson 2s texture section. I see you're making attemlts to draw the veins as forms on either side rather than drawing the veins themselves as lines. This is definitely more correct-even then, try not to just put lines down. Force yourself to always draw cast shadow shapes using this two-step process to help improve your mark making.
Continuing onto the branches exercise, they are looking good overall. I am seeing a bit of visible tails on the overlap especially when the branch was bent more drastically. In these cases, it might be good to add some ellipses in between to make the distances more manageable.
Moving to the plant constructions, overall you're doing pretty well. You're employing the techniques covered in this lesson to build up to your plants in stages. There are a few things you should keep in mind moving forwards, however:
First and foremost, as much as I appreciate your enthusiasm for filling up your pages with lots of drawings, the most important thing is to make sure that you're giving ample room as a drawing requires. Drawing smaller has its downsides. It can limit our brain's ability to solve spatial problems and with engaging our whole arm while drawing. Both of these make the drawing process clumsier and impede what we get out of it.
Construct your cylinders around the central minor axis line-this includes your pots-to help keep the ellipses alligned. To that point, I'm glad to see you're drawing more than the two basic ellipses for them. Just make sure you're adding an additional inset within the base to establish the thickness of that pot.
You're making some good progress overall, so I'm marking this as complete.
Next Steps:
Lesson 4
Hi Wifu. Sorry if I answer you so late but I haven't opened the drawabox account for some time (but the exercises continue!).
My english is bad so i hope the translator does a good job.
I wanted to thank you very much for your criticism of my work, it has been very long and comprehensive.
I still have the habit of "getting straight to the point" when drawing rather than breaking it down into simpler components. It's something I should take off, but let's say I'm working on it since it's certainly among the most useful things I can do to get there.
Thanks for the advice for the shadows, it is one of those I commit more often today. I tend to make continuous strokes instead of "projected shadow areas". This is something I have to work on, especially when it affects the textures. I'll try to fix it right away and avoid the "wild traits".
I thought putting quite a few flowers on the same page was a good idea. In fact I should think more about the quality of a single construction (possibly drawn from the shoulder) rather than many drawings made with the wrist (but not all). However, I am sure that even grinding a little on the same page can have its value to inculcate the function of the construction in the head so ... bad but not terrible, right?
Thanks again for writing to me, it was the most complete comment I have received. You have raised useful criticisms (shadows brought to zones, more attention to proceeding from simple to more complex things ...) and I will try to be more careful in the future. I'm still sorry to have seen just now that you answered me, but better late than never.
This is another one of those things that aren't sold through Amazon, so I don't get a commission on it - but it's just too good to leave out. PureRef is a fantastic piece of software that is both Windows and Mac compatible. It's used for collecting reference and compiling them into a moodboard. You can move them around freely, have them automatically arranged, zoom in/out and even scale/flip/rotate images as you please. If needed, you can also add little text notes.
When starting on a project, I'll often open it up and start dragging reference images off the internet onto the board. When I'm done, I'll save out a '.pur' file, which embeds all the images. They can get pretty big, but are way more convenient than hauling around folders full of separate images.
Did I mention you can get it for free? The developer allows you to pay whatever amount you want for it. They recommend $5, but they'll allow you to take it for nothing. Really though, with software this versatile and polished, you really should throw them a few bucks if you pick it up. It's more than worth it.
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