HI there, I'll be looking at your work today

Organic Arrows

The arrows appear to be foreshortening with distance and mostly feel confident and smooth. They don't feel like they are lacking in thought in their construction. However, there are a few points that need to be addressed. The line weight and shading are generally used to emphasize which line is on top of the other. In several arrows, these additions do not help with visually clarifying overlaps. Consider the bottom right arrow; the two larger bends have shading on opposite sides. Next, the width of the arrow is sometimes inconsistent. This is usually an issue with rushing, so make sure you slow down and ghost both the initial and matching curves. Finally, some of the arrow heads seem to have repeated lines. This is not a big problem, but make sure to minimize the number of corrections done.

Leaves

Most of the leaves are flowing and have an element of realness to their forms. For the most part, constructional steps are followed faithfully, with the arms of branched leaves individually planned out and re-joined with the main body. The critique here is that the edges appear to be done without thought on "auto-pilot". Consider how each of the individual bumps have their own place on the leaf as opposed to being just a pattern on the edge. For the leaf textures, look carefully at your reference and understand what on the leaf causes it to have its distinct appearance. For example, note the how the stem leads into the leaf, how it forks, and how light applies to it. This is a similar process to Lesson 2's textures, but with emphasis on what and how along with the study.

Branches

The primary issue of the branches is that the degrees of the ellipses are not shifting. This does not have to be completely realistic as this exercise is not the cylinder challenge, but most of the branches look like this was not considered. Additionally, the ellipses appear to have execution issues and are rather wobbly. This is usually a ghosting/shoulder problem, and is discussed in Lesson 1. That being said, the width of the branches and the issue of visible tails are dealt with pretty well, and those are generally the hardest parts of this exercise, so good work there.

Plants

Most of the demo plants are done well and have a sense of realism in their structure. The elements of construction are usually identified and built upon, leading to a complete member of the plant or fungal kingdom. There are a few areas of this that can be improved. First, small twigs are usually inappropriately represented with a line. These have volume as space as well, so consider a very thing branch or even just a tube of two lines unless the twig really is that thin. Second, not all the forms are drawn through. Each petal/leaf/thin piece of the plant needs to have its entire form constructively added to be a part of the whole. Not doing so is skipping crucial steps that help you reason about the subject you are drawing. An example of this is the lotus and several of the plants on the last page. And lastly, most of the contour lines on the fruits/spherical objects do not appear to wrap around the form. They look a little flat and unconvincing. Consider using a whole ellipse to define the volume as opposed to just the one curve. Remember that constructional drawing is the main technique in which this course teaches its content.

The plants that are textured sometimes have too much line weight. In some cases, it can make the plant look messier or bolder than it needs to be. The same thing that was said about organic arrows applies here about clarifying overlap.

Finally, there were a large number of repeated plants. That is fine, but please leave those as warm-ups for yourself as opposed to work to be handed in. This is so that grinding, which is discussed here, is avoided. In the spirit of this, I ask for another page of plant(s), different than the ones in this submission.

Overall, there are done well and areas to improve. Consider working on ellipses and understanding the why and how of constructional drawing.