7:19 PM, Monday August 15th 2022
The advice Tofu provided is right - although more accurately, it's about making good use of the space available to you on the page, and allowing yourself to give each construction as much room as it individually requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another. If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it.
So! Jumping right in with your arrows, you're doing a great job of drawing these with a great deal of confidence, which really helps to sell the sense of force with which they move through the world. You're generally doing well to add line weight only at the areas with overlaps, although I do see some spots where you add line weight more liberally, across longer sections of line. Always stick to those overlaps, so you can reduce just how much line weight you have to add.
Continuing onto your leaves, you've done a great job of carrying the confidence forward from the previous exercise, which has in turn helped you to achieve a sense of not only how these leaves sit statically in 3D space, but also how they move through the space they occupy. I'm pleased to see that you've tackled both various kinds of edge detail, as well as some more complex leaf structures. You handled the latter quite well, although with the former, I want to warn you against attempting to draw many different protrusions/features/additions in a single stroke. Each one should be drawn individually, such that it rises off and returns to the existing edge in as seamless a manner you can achieve. Don't try to redraw the entire thing or replace one step of construction with the next, and avoid zigzagging back and forth as explained here.
Moving onto your branches, it appears that you may not have followed the instructions for this one too carefully. As explained here, the edges need to be drawn in a very specific manner. Each one starts from one ellipse, continues past the second and stops halfway to the third. The next then starts at the second ellipse, repeating the pattern. This allows for a healthy overlap between them, which in turn helps us achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from one to the next.
Onto your plant constructions, there's a lot you're doing well here, although there are definitely some points I want to offer that'll help you continue to make the most out of these constructional drawing exercises going forward:
-
One really important aspect of construction as a process is that it requires us to maintain a tight, specific relationship from one constructional step to the next. This is what allows the solidity from the simpler stages to transfer forwards as we build up more complexity. There are definitely places that stand out where you're ending up with much more vague or loose relationships, where the linework is either a little too loose on its own, or where there are gaps left. We can see a fair bit of this here. Since you're using the ellipses (similarly to in the hibiscus demo) to establish how far out each petal should reach, you should be sure to have every flow line then end at the perimeter of its given ellipse. Then each leaf stops at the furthest extent of the flow line, and no farther. Keep those relationships much tighter than you have been.
-
When constructing cylindrical flower pots, be sure to do so around a central minor axis line to help in aligning the various ellipses.
-
Furthermore, be sure to included as many ellipses as are required to flesh out the entirety of the structure - at minimum that's going to include another ellipse inset within the opening to establish the thickness of the rim, rather than leaving it paper thin. Another to establish the level of the soil and provide the stem something to intersect with in order to make it feel more grounded would also generally be beneficial.
-
Also, remember that as explained in the Lesson 1 ellipses video, the farther we slide along a structure, the wider its cross-sectional slices will be. On this one you have the top ellipse as the wider one, and the base as the narrower. This should be reversed.
-
Last point about flower pots - if such a form gets cut off along the edge of a page, be sure not to leave it open ended. Cap it off - if it's cylindrical, do so with an ellipse, but generally it's about ensuring that it's a closed off 3D form. Leaving it open will cause the viewer to interpret it as a flat shape.
Now, before I mark this lesson as complete, I am going to need you to do one more page of branches, as that exercise was not done correctly.
Next Steps:
Please submit 1 page of branches.