Starting with your arrows, your initial linework appears to be drawn with a good deal of confidence, and achieves a good sense of fluidity - but as soon as you add a lot of that extra line weight, you end up stiffening up your lines. The upper-right arrow (the pink one) where you only added line weight around the overlapping sections is much more correct - you've focused on applying it in just a localized area. Additionally, being sure to execute it confidently, using the ghosting method (instead of tracing hesitantly) will help you achieve a more tapered end to the stroke, which will help it blend back into the original linework.
Continuing onto your leaves, your process is by and large once again solid, but it's the line weight phase where you undermine yourself. You're still maintaining the original fluidity, which helps you capture how each leaf moves through 3D space, but things do get more stiff when you trace back over them to increase the line weight. You also appear to be building up your complexity appropriately - adhering closely to the previous phase of construction rather than zigzagging across it or treating it like a loose suggestion.
What you shouldn't be doing is viewing later phases of construction as an opportunity to redraw the entirety of the leaf. Construction is about building things up bit by bit - you don't need to re-solve problems that have already been addressed. Once you've determined how the leaf moves through space, your only focus is on adding the slight deviations to the edges, drawing in the parts that change, and leaving the rest alone as shown here.
Continuing onto the branches, it seems to me that you're not quite following the instructions to the letter. This exercise focuses heavily on having the segments overlap, having one stop halfway to the next ellipse, and the next start at the previous ellipse, using that last chunk as a runway before shooting off towards its next target. As shown here, this helps immensely in maintaining a smooth, seamless transition. While your transitions generally look fine, it's important that you follow the instructions to the letter.
Continuing onto your plant constructions, while as a whole you're doing okay, there are key issues to point out:
In this flower, you are indeed falling into the mistake of zigzagging your edge details as a single continuous line, an issue that is specifically addressed here in the notes.
Just a minor point about this one - back in Lesson 2, we mentioned that we would not be employing any form shading in the drawings for this course.
On the banana plant, you're pretty inconsistent in the use of the techniques explained in the leaves exercise. In some cases, you don't employ a flow line at all. In others, you jump straight from flow line to the edge detail, without first building the simpler silhouette which is intended to take the movement through space and extend it into a basic footprint. The point of that is so you already have that problem solved, leaving you to just add the deviation of the edge detail, instead of having to solve several problems at the same time.
When drawing your cylindrical flower pots, be sure to construct them around a central minor axis line. Also, draw through your ellipses two full times before lifting your pen. You have flower pots that are okay in some pages, but there are others - like the rubber plant - where it seems you may have forgotten about the basic mechanics of how cylinders work. The end closer to the viewer should have a narrower degree, and the ellipse on the far end (forming the base) should be wider. If you're unsure why that is, take a look at the more recently updated ellipses video from lesson 1. It's mentioned in a number of places prior to lesson 3, but I think that new explanation is the most succinct.
Lastly, the line weight. I know I've beat this horse to death, but I wanted to bring it up one last time not only because it is a prevalent issue throughout the drawings, but also because your approach in some of these -specifically where you worked with an "underdrawing" (in pink) and then went back over it with blue basically makes it impossible not to make this mistake. Do not use underdrawings, do not use multiple colours for a single drawing, and do not trace back over your linework. As soon as a mark is on the page, it is committed - it only receives line weight if it needs it to clarify a specific, localized overlap.
I think you have it in you to do quite well at this lesson, but you've taken the wrong turn in a number of places, enough so that it you will need to complete some revisions. I'll assign them below.
Next Steps:
Please submit the following:
1 page of leaves
3 pages of plant constructions
If pink and blue are the only colours you have access to, use the blue. If you've specifically chosen to use those colours over something like black, and do have access to a black fineliner, use that instead.
Dear Uncomfortable,
Here is my revision.
I did only add line weight to “clarify a specific, localized overlap” (Uncomfortable 2021). I am very satisfied with the sunflower and the leaves (and the cactus to some extent). The orbifolia could definitely need some work. The plant on the right of the same page is so much more organic and careful with linework and it is the last one I drew. I thought I could redo the whole page (because of the orbifolia), but I also thought it would be better to show you how I can sometimes lose “touch” of my linework a bit.
I plan on improving my cylinders. They were much better before when I was drawing daily—which I can do again, fortunately.
Thank you for your time.
So there is improvement here, but there are a number of things I pointed out which are present here as well. Generally when a student comes back with their revisions within 24 hours, it tends to throw up a big red flag that suggests that they may not have taken as much time as they should have to properly reflect upon and absorb the critique that was provided to them. That appears to be the case here.
In my critique, I brought up the following issues:
The tendency to zigzag your edge detail back and forth with a single continuous line. While you generally do try to stay pretty close to your previous phase of construction's edge, you appear to basically redraw the entire silhouette of your leaves when you jump in to add further detail. Instead of building up separate bumps as explained here, you basically replace the linework for the whole leaf or petal. I also noticed this one where you zigzagged back and forth across that previous edge.
I mentioned that you should be constructing all of your cylinders around a central minor axis line, to help align your ellipses. You don't appear to have done so. If you're not sure what I'm talking about with this, you'll find an explanation in the lesson 1 ellipses video as well as along the right side of this step from lesson 2's form intersections.
You mention that you're only adding line weight to clarify a specific overlap, but that is not at all what I'm seeing in your work. Looking at the flower pot of this cactus, it's very clear that you went back over the entire silhouette of that form. There are no overlaps being clarified along the base ellipse. In case you misunderstood what I meant by "clarifying overlaps in localized areas", here's what I mean. I'm very specifically adding weight only where the edges themselves overlap to help establish which leaf is in front.
There are a couple other things to point out as well:
In your leaves, where you attempted the maple leaf, you pretty much abandoned the constructional process altogether - specifically in how you dived straight into the very complex edge detail of the leaf without first constructing a scaffolding to support it. There is actually an example for the same kind of complex leaf structure available here in the informal demos page.
When adding textural detail to your leaves, you should be employing the principles covered in Lesson 2 - specifically the use of implicit drawing techniques, using cast shadow shapes to imply the presence of those textural forms. One thing you can do to help you avoid giving into the temptation of just drawing individual lines is to purposely use this two step process for all your textural marks - basically outlining your shadow shapes first, then filling them in. You can also find examples of how I approach implying the presence of a leaf's veins in the leaf exercise instructions.
This last point isn't something discussed in the lesson - it comes up more in the next one, so it's not really something I consider to be a mistake, just some additional information I want to give you. When we add more complexity to a leaf's edges, we can do so by simply modifying that leaf's silhouette. When we attempt to do this to a form with actual volume to it (basically something that isn't flat like a leaf/petal), this approach actually ends up flattening it out. So instead, to build up those complex structures, we have to wrap new, complete, enclosed, 3D forms around those existing structures, as shown here.
All in all, I think you rushed in too enthusiastically, and did not take the time to really understand what I explained in my initial critique. I'd like you to try these revisions again, but this time you will not be allowed to submit them until 5 days have passed.
You will be allowed to submit them on Tuesday, May 18th, or later.
Next Steps:
Please submit 1 page of leaves and 3 pages of plant constructions. You will not be allowed to submit them prior to Tuesday May 18th.
Hello again,
Here is my second revision. I took my time now. And drawing bigger definitely helps.
When it comes to technical drawing, there's no one better than Scott Robertson. I regularly use this book as a reference when eyeballing my perspective just won't cut it anymore. Need to figure out exactly how to rotate an object in 3D space? How to project a shape in perspective? Look no further.
This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.
