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9:23 PM, Thursday March 26th 2020

Starting with your arrows, what stands out to me most is that your linework is quite shaky. This suggests to me that you're drawing your marks quite slowly and carefully - not with the kind of confidence you demonstrated back in parts of Lesson 1. This is actually something I raised as a concern in Lesson 2:

The only thing I did notice however was that your linework is definitely still a little stiff and hesitant, so keep working on drawing with more confidence, not allowing the fear of making a mistake hold you back. This will ensure your marks come out more smoothly. Even if it also results in less control, that will improve with practice.

Executing your marks with confidence and avoiding any hesitation whatsoever is critical. That is ultimately what the ghosting method focuses on above all else, by splitting the process of mark making into several distinct phases. We're able to take our time with the planning and preparation phases, doing what we can to give ourselves the best chance of hitting our targets, but ultimately the moment our pen touches the page to execute a mark we must push through without second-guessing ourselves, relying entirely on muscle memory and not steering our marks with our eyes as you're doing here.

This carries over into your leaves, where the construction itself is adequate but the lines themselves being jittery with hesitation undermines the perceived solidity of these forms. Every little bit of complexity in our shapes serves to remind us that what we're looking at are just marks on a page, and not real, solid, 3D forms. Keeping our lines smooth and consistent is a first important step to keeping those shapes simple, and being able to establish the illusion that what the viewer is looking at is a real form in 3D space.

Moving onto your branches, the same issue is present but I'm also seeing a tendency not to extend your line segments very far past a given ellipse. In the instructions, I mention that you should be extending each segment fully halfway towards the next ellipse. This gives us plenty of runway to overlap with our next segment, ensuring that they flow smoothly together before shooting off towards the next target. Because your linework is already somewhat stiff, you have been able to keep them consistent throughout, so the sides of your branches do often appear to be made up of a single continuous stroke. That does kind of defeat the purpose of the exercise however - it's all about learning how to make the strokes flow seamlessly into one another while maintaining a smooth, confident line. So once you're able to draw with greater confidence, this issue would become more significant.

Also worth mentioning, you appear to not be drawing through your ellipses. This should be done for each and every ellipse you draw throughout all of these lessons.

For the most part, your plant constructions are essentially fine, once we get past the shaky linework. You're building up your forms properly in many cases, although there are a few areas where you're skipping important steps. Drawings like the magnolia are well done - despite the jittery lines, you've still captured a pretty decent sense of flow with the petals (though make sure you treat the end of your flow line as the end of the petal - try not to leave that gap between your flow line's arrow head and the actual tip of the petal/leaf.

When drawing anything cylindrical - like a flower pot - do so around a central minor axis line. Also, draw the ellipse on both ends of the cylinder. In your cactus drawing, you drew only the top ellipse and ended up leaving the bottom with a very shallow curve. Drawing both ellipses is known as "drawing through your forms" and helps to establish better how that for sits in space and how it relates to those around it.

Now, as I've probably implied already, your linework is the main problem here and needs to be addressed. I'm going to reassign a number of pages of the exercises from this lesson, and your focus should entirely be on drawing your lines with confidence, as you've demonstrated in the past. We can continue building upon a line that misses the mark a little, but a line that wobbles serves as an unsteady foundation.

Next Steps:

I'd like to see:

  • 1 page of arrows

  • 1 page of leaves

  • 1 page of branches

  • Two pages of plant constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:25 PM, Friday March 27th 2020
edited at 12:29 PM, Mar 27th 2020

What recommendations do you have for those of us who's hands shake? I use the ghosting method as much as possible, but my hands shake due to physical issues. I've tried placing my hand on the paper to support it, but this leaves me with no flow and working from the wrist, to work from my shoulder I have to slightly hover my hand over the paper and the the shaking returns.

As you've pointed out this has been an issue for me and will continue to be an issue, so are there any suggestions you could give me?

edited at 12:29 PM, Mar 27th 2020
5:36 PM, Friday March 27th 2020

Generally speaking, drawing with your hand resting gently against the page is entirely fine, as long as you're making a conscious effort to glide it along the page instead of anchoring it firmly and pivoting from there. As far as that goes, I'm far more concerned with students who tend to anchor their elbows down, because it's much easier to end up drawing from your elbow. Letting yourself rest gently on your hand will give you added stability and likely help with that shaking, it just means you'll have to pay more attention and correct yourself when you end up slipping back to drawing from your wrist.

This is actually a common concern for students, and I address it in the FAQ here.

11:11 AM, Tuesday March 31st 2020

My additional pages are at the below link. I did find that holding my pen at more of a 90 degree angle helped with my shaking, but I've now got to relearn some things!

https://adventuresinsketching.com/class-sketches/drawabox-lesson-3-additional-pages/

3:41 PM, Tuesday March 31st 2020

This is definitely a step in the right direction. Be sure to continue focusing on the points I'd raised, especially in regards to your linework, as you continue to move forwards, as there's still plenty of room for growth. That said, I think you should be ready to move onto the next lesson, so I'll go ahead and mark this one as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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Sakura Pigma Microns

Sakura Pigma Microns

A lot of my students use these. The last time I used them was when I was in high school, and at the time I felt that they dried out pretty quickly, though I may have simply been mishandling them. As with all pens, make sure you're capping them when they're not in use, and try not to apply too much pressure. You really only need to be touching the page, not mashing your pen into it.

In terms of line weight, the sizes are pretty weird. 08 corresponds to 0.5mm, which is what I recommend for the drawabox lessons, whereas 05 corresponds to 0.45mm, which is pretty close and can also be used.

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