Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

11:40 AM, Sunday November 29th 2020

Lesson 3 - Album on Imgur

Imgur: https://imgur.com/gallery/IOltUYj

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered enterta...

Thanks for reviewing!

It felt better and better the further into the lesson I got.

0 users agree
3:19 AM, Tuesday December 1st 2020

Starting with your arrows, you've definitely done quite a good job of capturing how these forms flow fluidly through space, with a strong sense of confidence. One thing I do want to remind you of however is that the spacing between your zigzagging sections ought to compress quite rapidly as it gets farther away from the viewer, as shown here.

Continuing onto the leaves, you've definitely carried that sense of fluidity over, and captured not only how the leaves sit in space but also how they move through the space they occupy. There is one issue I want to point out however - you're zigzagging your more complex edge details back and forth across the edge from the previous phase of construction. This yields a much looser relationship between them, and so that previous phase of construction functions less as solid scaffolding upholding the greater complexity in the next one, and becomes more of a loose suggestion. Instead, it's important that you build right off that previous phase, introducing each bump of the wavy edge as a separate mark, coming off and returning to that old scaffolding. Furthermore, avoid treating each phase of construction as an opportunity to redraw the entirety of the object - only draw the parts that change, as shown here.

You did do this a little more correctly in this leaf, as well as in this one, so these are good signs. Moving forward, something you'll want to experiment with as well is more complex leaf structures.

Moving forward, your branches have a few issues. First off, you kinda shot yourself in the foot a little bit by drawing them all so narrow. While the constructions in this lesson will involve thin stems, it's best to first get accustomed to these kinds of forms by drawing wider ones. This helps us engage our whole arm while drawing, and also helps make use of our brain's spatial reasoning skills without the limitations that come from working in an artificially cramped space.

The second issue is that you are not fully extending each segment halfway to the next ellipse, as explained in the instructions. As a result, you're not getting the full overlap between them, which is intended to help transition from one to the next more smoothly and seamlessly.

Moving forward, your plant constructions are by and large coming out quite well. There's definitely a lot of blank space on the pages, which is certainly important - rather than adding more drawings, you should be taking greater advantage of the space available to you to draw larger, and avoid the pitfalls that come with drawing smaller (limiting your brain's spatial reasoning skills, not engaging your whole arm while drawing, etc). There's definitely enough room to crank much more out of these drawings. That s aid, despite that the fluidity of your marks still remains, and you're quite conscientious about drawing through your forms.

When it comes to the ridges along some of your flower petals, don't forget that as explained back in lesson 2, texture should be captured not as lines, but as shadow shapes. So, make a point of drawing all of your textural marks using this two-step process. As shown here, it'll help you capture greater dynamism in your textures. This will also help you with areas such as the texture along the mushroom stalk on this page, and will also make you more conscious of the marks you're drawing along the cap as shadows cast by the little lumps and growths there.

Aside from that, your work is coming along well. So, all I want to see before I mark this lesson as complete is one page of branches. Keep them thick, and mind your segment overlaps.

Next Steps:

Please submit 1 page of branches.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:35 PM, Wednesday December 2nd 2020

Thank you so much for great feedback. Il'l be sure to keep it in mind moving forward. Here are my revised branches.

https://imgur.com/gallery/HZo8tBk

12:11 AM, Thursday December 3rd 2020

Much better! I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

The Art of Blizzard Entertainment

While I have a massive library of non-instructional art books I've collected over the years, there's only a handful that are actually important to me. This is one of them - so much so that I jammed my copy into my overstuffed backpack when flying back from my parents' house just so I could have it at my apartment. My back's been sore for a week.

The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.