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10:18 PM, Friday January 27th 2023

Hello Shogun69, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows they're looking quite fluid due to the confidence which they're drawn. You're making good use of the depth of the page with your use of perspective.

When adding shading to your arrows keep in mind the mark making principles introduced in lesson 1, your marks should be confidently made and have a clear end and start point, as such they should have as much effort put into them as your previous lines and run along your arrow's width, parallel to each other, from one end of the arrow's edge to the other, as shown here.

As a finishing touch for your arrows, don't forget to always add lineweight on top of arrow's overlaps in order to reinforce their depth, added with a single, confident mark, superimposed on top of the previous one.

Leaves

Your leaves are looking alright, the fluidity present in your arrows is carrying over nicely into these structures which gives them a good sense of energy and flow as you not only capture how they exist statically on the page, but also how they move across this space from moment to moment.

You haven't made a lot of use of edge detail here, nor in your plant constructions. If we revisit the instructions for this exercise, we can see that even though edge detail is called detail, it's actually part of the construction process and therefore, not optional, only the last step for drawing leaves - Step 4, texture - can be left out.

Branches

Moving onto your branches they're coming out quite decently as you're generally following the instructions for this exercise.

There are a couple of cases in your branches where you didn't fully extend your lines up to the halfway point between ellipses, and cases where it seems you were too focused on accuracy, which causes some hesitancy in your lines and that ever so slightly hurts the solidity of your forms. So remember that over above all else, we're striving for confidence in our lines.c

Another thing that is hurting the solidity of your forms is that your branch's width is varying quite a bit, keep in mind the characteristics for branches, simple cylinders of consistent width and no foreshortening, and do your best to stick to them.

It's good to see that you're making an attempt to draw through your ellipses, but some of them weren't draw through two full times, so make sure to always make a conscious effort to draw through your ellipses. It's also good to see that you're varying the ellipse degrees in your branches, this helps a great deal with communicating your forms as tridimensional and truly cylindrical.

Plant Construction Section

Onto your plant constructions they are generally coming out really well made. You're applying the methods and making use of the techniques introduced in this lesson very effectively, this all helps give your plants a great sense of tridimensionality, good job.

Of course there are always a couple of things which can be improved, I'll be pointing them out here so you can continue to get the most out of these exercises.

When drawing cylindrical objects such as mushrooms, make sure to construct them around a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned, while you do this for your mushroom's bodies, you don't draw the mushroom caps around a minor axis, despite them also being elliptical in nature.

You can see here two examples of you skipping construction steps, as you didn't draw filaments in the stamens of the flowers with the branch construction method. Drawing them as single lines, or as two lines doesn't convey any sense of form, it also causes the relationships between your forms to be left unclear and vague, as well as making it harder to keep the size of the stem consistent.

Make sure to construct all of your forms fully, always.

Your textures are moving in the right direction, although there are some small cases where you're leaning towards the more explicit side of texture, as well as cases where it seems like you didn't commit all the way through with your use of texture, such as in here, where there are several petals with texture applied, but petals in the same flower that have no texture applied to them, once you decide to add a certain piece to your construction you cannot take it away, and texture in this course is still an extension of the principles of construction, as such if you decide you're going to add texture to your art you must add it completely.

Texture in the context of this course is an extension of the concepts of construction, with construction being focused on the big and primitive forms that make up different structures and texture focusing on communicating the small forms that run along the surface of an object, essentially texture is a way of visually communicating to the viewer what it would feel like to run their hands across that surface.

None of this has to do with decorating any of our drawings, what we draw here is based on what's physically present in our construction. As introduced here, we can notice that we should focus on each individual form and how it casts a shadow on neighboring surfaces, understanding how each individual form sits on a 3D space, and analyzing all of this information present in our reference to be able to translate it to our study. The shape of this shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, as such you should design your shadow shape in a way that feels dynamic, as shown here.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive, but in the long run this method of texture is the one who enforces the ideas of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideas, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing more on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.

Alongside texture it would have been great to see you making more use of additional lineweight in order to clarify overlaps.

Final Thoughts

You've done very well in this lesson, you're applying the methods introduced in this lesson very effectively, you're clearly demonstrating a strong sense of spatial reasoning through your execution of these exercises and I have no doubt that you're ready for the next lesson, don't forget to add these exercises to your warm up list and good luck in Lesson 4.

Next Steps:

Add these exercises to your warm-up list so you can keep refining your skills.

Move on to Lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
11:01 PM, Friday January 27th 2023

Wow I really appreciate the detailed write-up here. Basically all of the questions I was asking myself were answered through this, thank you! I'll tackle these in my warm-ups for sure.

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