Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

6:45 PM, Sunday May 1st 2022

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Hey!

Here is my submission for lesson 3.

Also I want to ask about how much studies should I draw per page? As you can see in some I did one big study per one page and in some 2-3 or more smaller studies per one page.

And also a question about drawing detail and texture. When I draw small and tiny strokes for texture drawing from the shoulder seems almost impossible and very redundant. Should I draw that detail from the wrist?

Thank you,

Saulius

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2:52 AM, Tuesday May 3rd 2022

To answer your questions first, it comes down to giving each drawing as much room it individually requires. Sometimes a drawing needs the whole page, and sometimes it only needs half or less. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it 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.

As to the other question, that is actually mentioned in the Lesson 1 material, here. Texture is one of those areas where we do benefit more from the tighter, stiffer accuracy our wrist can provide.

Alrighty! Jumping right in with your arrows, these are coming along well, definitely drawn with a great deal of confidence, which helps to capture the fluidity with which they move through the world. That said, I am seeing a lot of doubling lines - remember that adding line weight is still something we should be doing with the ghosting method. Mistakes will happen, but be sure to invest plenty of time in the planning and preparation phases to mitigate this inevitability.

That confidence carries over nvery nicely into your leaves, where you're capturing not only how they sit statically in 3D space, but also how they move through the space they occupy. That said, I am seeing a tendency towards trying to redraw more of the leaves than is necessary when adding edge detail, which frequently runs you into the mistake of zigzagging back and forth across the existing edge, resulting in a weaker relationship between the phases of construction. Be sure to build up your edge detail with separate, individual marks, one at a time, rising off the existing edge and returning to it.

Moving onto your branches, your work here is coming along quite well, though I've got two suggestions:

  • Firstly, when drawing your next segment, try to overlap that last length of the previous one more directly, using it as a runway. This will be a little harder, since sometimes that last chunk goes off in a slightly awkward direction, but it will help you learn more directly from it.

  • Secondly, keep in mind that the general rule of thumb is that your ellipses should get wider as we slide along the length of a cylindrical structure, moving away from the viewer. This of course changes with how the tube itself is turning in space, but it's a good point to start from. If you're unsure of why that is, you can review the Lesson 1 ellipses video.

Continuing onto your plant constructions, overall you are doing a very, very good job. I really have only a few points to call out, but overall I'm very pleased with your progress here.

  • Firstly, while you are already generally doing this, I wanted to call it out due to the general looseness of your hibiscus constructions from this page. Be sure to always maintain tight, specific relationships between the stages of your construction. Each step is an answer to a question, or a solution to a problem. So here, it's about ensuring that each flow line ends at the perimeter of the ellipse that defines the bounds for all of its petals, and then each petal stops where its flow line does. Leaving slight gaps between these weakens that relationship, and changes the "answer" from step to step, which can introduce contradictions and undermine the believability of the structure.

  • If you have a structure that gets cut off the side of a page, as happens with the flower pots here, be sure to actually cap them off rather than leaving them open ended. In this case it'd be capped off with ellipses, which would then reinforce the fact that we're looking at a solid, cylindrical structure, rather than just lines on a flat page.

  • In general, when building up any sort of a cylindrical structure, like a flower pot, be sure to do so around a central minor axis line. This will help you align the various ellipses that would be needed for the structure.

  • I am noticing a tendency to sketch your construction more lightly, then come back in with a heavier stroke to commit to your lines. While this is an approach many artists use, it should be avoided in this course. Rather, every mark should be drawn confidently, with a rich, dark stroke. We can of course come in with additional line weight towards the end, but this is best served on clarifying the overlaps between different forms, as shown here.

Aside from that, you're doing quite well. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
6:09 AM, Tuesday May 3rd 2022

Thank you! I just want to say that I feel so much improvement overall, this course is a godsend haha.

I will try to make adjustments based on your feedback in the lesson 4!

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