Hi! Here is my submission for Lesson 3. I've added some comments on areas I felt like I was having a hard time understanding or having difficulties with.
I feel a lot more comfortable with ribbons and leaves than I did just one lesson ago!
Thanks again for your time, and critique
Hello ARenderman, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.
Arrows
Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're keeping foreshortening in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.
Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, as a finishing touch to your arrows don't forget to make use of added line weight on top of the overlaps to reinforce their depth.
Still speaking of hatching, there are a couple of times where you've placed it incorrectly, making it seem like your arrow is getting bigger the further away it is, and getting smaller as it gets closer, which goes against the rules of perspective.
— Perspective works in the following manner: things that are further away from the viewer will look smaller, and as they get closer to the viewer they'll look bigger. The way this affects an object of consistent size and width that stretches across space is that certain segments of this object will look bigger and others smaller, either gradually or dramatically depending on the perspective of the scene, as such the bigger part of the arrow will always be the one that's closest to the viewer so the segment that's behind it should be the one receiving the hatching.
In general you're doing well in this exercise, your arrows are looking fluid and tridimensional and there's a good variety in the rates of foreshortening and the way they twist and bend through space, so don't forget to keep tackling this exercise during your warm ups in order take your understanding of arrows and 3D space even further.
Leaves
The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.
When it comes to your addition of edge detail you need to spend more time with the execution of each mark— because there are so many and they seem individually unimportant, you're putting less time into each one and so they do not properly rise off and return to the existing stroke— there are often gaps, overshoots, and zigzagging marks which is a mistake that could be avoided by putting more time into the work. No mark you draw is unimportant— if you decided it was worth adding, it's worth giving as much time as it needs to be done to the best of your current ability.
Branches
Moving on to your branches you're not sticking to the instructions for this exercise as closely as you should. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments you're not starting your new segment back at the previous ellipse point and superimposing it on top of the preexisting mark, you're starting your new segments close to where your previous mark ended, which completely removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures.
So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.
For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for smoother marks overall. Something to keep in mind is that in order to create the illusion of a tridimension cylinder/tube shaled object, it is fundamental to remember that the ellipse degree shifts based on the orientation of the elliptical cross-section in the cylindrical structure. In other words, since you're not varying the degree of the ellipses in your branches even slightly you are unintentionally flattening these structures.
Plant Construction Section
And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, where unfortunately you haven't followed the specifications for what your pages should consist of and as such you didn't get as much out of this lesson as you could have otherwise.
First things first, please keep in mind that it is important to always have a focus when you are approaching your homework. Placing down notes, more than a single construction, loose sketches, different exercises such as ellipses and arrows, all distract from the focus of the construction.
As such, please only focus on your construction when tackling these exercises, once you have finished your homework and submitted it, you can reutilize the pages as you see fit.
The linework for your constructions needs some more work, at times it is looking a bit patchy and has clear signs of hesitation, which goes against principles of mark-making from lesson 1. Remember to keep your linework smooth and confident in order to communicate the fluidity and sense of energy of your constructions.
On top of this it's also strongly recommended that you do not draw earlier phases of construction with fainter lines and later ones with thicker strokes, as this is going to encourage you to approach construction as though you're redrawing everything at every step.
When drawing something with construction what we're doing is adding building blocks at each different step, using our first forms as a foundation in order to simplify our structures. In this way there's no need to alter that foundation, it should be able to stand for itself when you're done, without being redrawn, traced over, or having it's silhouette modified with 2d shapes on to of it.
When making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth, but don't forget that it must be added subtly to your work, only once, on top of the overlaps, and the ends of the lines must taper seamlessly into the lines underneath, as shown [here]().
I've noticed that you tackled several palm tree constructions, where you haven't always constructed each individual leaf structure with the leaf construction method - however this is not really a mistake, due to the nature of this course and how it teaches certain skills it's fundamental that we're always making use of the construction techniques and methods we learn to our constructions.
But certain structures are just way too complicated and it's not feasible to draw them with the methods introduced, it is simply impossible to fully draw each individual leaf structure or branch structure in a plant such as this one while still following the instructions for this exercise, as such avoid picking trees and similar structures as a subject to study in this lesson.
Because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion you're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. In order to avoid this and stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions.
While this is something that you do generally respect, you did extend off of preexisting forms in your mushroom constructions.
In this case, since the cap of the mushroom you drew has an umbonate form (which means, a rounded knob or protuberance) the ideal would be to use at least 3 ellipses to construct this form without having to cut back into the preexisting structure, start by laying down the 3 ellipses as shown here and then connect them as shown in here.
You can find here more information that talks about how to make use of organic forms to construct plants that aren't simple branches with leaf structures attached to them, and you can see here how you can construct on top of your preexisting structures with new organic forms.
Final Thoughts
You're starting to move in the right direction, but you're struggling to apply the construction methods and techniques to your work correctly in a consistent manner.
I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson yet, these concepts will be highly important in the following lessons, make sure to revisit any relevant material mentioned here, once you're finished please reply with:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
2 plant construction pages.
Next Steps:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
2 plant construction pages.
Hi! Thanks so much for your feedback, I kept these ones without notes or anything like that. I was hoping to journal down some of my difficulties, but i'll do that here instead while my mind is active on them.
Constructing branches and basic leaves makes sense for me now, and I feel like I'm able to rotate a petal 15 degrees each direction and draw it, intersecting lines or not. It's the complex shapes and plants that i'm unfamiliar with where I feel like my brain resorts to drawing a piece of it in 2D, and stops "buying in" to the illusion on paper.
I chose a couple of plants that were somewhat challenging, but contributed more to the lessons fundamentals while exposing me to unfamiliar shapes. I'm not sure how to capture some of the forms I was seeing in 3D, and I'd appreciate any feedback on how to construct them. I've watched all of the demos, and while it's definitely helped, some of these are still a puzzle I am having difficulties working out how to construct in 3D. The shape of the mouths of the venus fly traps, and the areas coming out/the teeth were difficult, as well as the pedal for the Corpse Flower, which is less of a pedal and almost seems to connect together to be a single shape, with lots of divots and bumps.
Hello ARenderman, thank you for getting back to me with your revisions.
Don't worry about getting things right 100? of the time, especially for more complex structures. Everybody has to go through these phases where it will seem like everything is too complex or complicated to understand right away, but it's through constant practice that you will develop your skills. Just don't forget to always make use of the construction methods and techniques as thoroughly as possible, as they are the tools which will allow you to develop those skills.
Your plant constructions are looking really good since you're following the plant construction methods thoroughly. But there are still some important points to keep in mind.
While your additon of edge detail is looking better, you are generally approaching it subtractively which is something that should be avoided. Edge detail should be drawn additively as much as possible, that is, on top of your structure, avoid cutting back into the forms you've already drawn as that will cause you to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes, rather than the 3d edges they represent.
Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks and helps you create solid but still organic looking structures.
You're taking a great first step towards starting to think of how to break down different structures in this construction but it does end up accidentally stiffening the flower structure a bit if you don't approach the petals with the leaf construction method which naturally adds a sense of flow and energy to your work.
One way in which we can approach this structure that ensures the petal structures are still flowing nicely and that all of the relationships between the different forms are tight and specific is by a cylinder in order to construct the main body of the plant and use a boundary line to denote where the future leaf structure will extend to, then afterwards make use of the leaf construction method, build it on top of the cylinder in order to capture the flow of the different sections of the leaf structure, and lastly connect them together, making use of edge detail in order to finish the complex structure. I actually put together a quick demonstration of how this would look like un the context of a Daffodil for a different student once, and I believe you will find it helpful.
When approaching cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to start with a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily. Going further don't forget to construct the outer rim that's present in most types of plant pots, and make sure to add a soil plane to your structures, this line is necessary when constructing plant pots because otherwise your structure will look like it's floating in mid air, which breaks the illusion of the construction.
Please let me know if you can't access any links in this response.
In general your work is looking really good, you're starting to understand the purpose of these techniques and exercises and making use of them in your work effectively, as such you demonstrate that your sense of spatial reasoning is developing really nicely.
I'm going to be marking this lesson as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.
Next Steps:
Don't forget to add these exercises to your list of warm ups.
Move on to Lesson 4.
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.
On the flipside, they tend to be on the cheaper side of things, so if you're just getting started (beginners tend to have poor pressure control), you're probably going to destroy a few pens - going cheaper in that case is not a bad idea.
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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