Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

9:01 AM, Monday February 3rd 2020

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This is for the Lesson 3 Redo

I have drawn everything requested. I'm still having trouble with my line work in spite of both ghosting lines and warming up with lesson 1's contents.

It's fairly difficult to get things right the first time. I'm still have trouble with construction. I can see I'm suppose to be working with 3 dimesional objects but drawing them is proving to be incredibly difficult. as much as I can think In cylinders and boxes, drawing them together into something coherent is proving to be quiet the task.

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12:21 AM, Wednesday February 5th 2020

You definitely start off this batch a lot weaker than you finish, in that with some of the early leaf drawings you're not at all following the instructions. This does show that you're improving, and that you are learning, but that you might have a predisposition to barreling ahead rather than thinking about what exactly is being asked of you ahead of time.

Starting with your arrows, just a minor point - keep exaggerating how the spacing between the zigzagging sections compress in space as we look farther back. While the amount of zigzagging here doesn't necessarily allow me to judge whether or not you understand how perspective applies to it, there are signs that you're generally hesitant to let that space get tighter, or ever allow those zigzagging sections to overlap one another. In the upper right there, it actually widens as it gets farther away, which is not in line with reality. When drawing these, focus on how perspective applies to both positive and negative space.

The leaf on the top of this page, as well as the maple leaf there, categorically go against the exercise. The leaf on the far left-middle of the page is closer in that you're actually following the steps of construction, though your additional edge detail there treats the simpler shape of the leaf laid down in the previous stage as a loose suggestion, instead of as solid scaffolding. Observe carefully how in this demonstration the one with the checkmark touches that earlier shape directly, coming off of it and then returning to it. It respects this as a structure onto which it is being built, not a sketch on a page meant to be ignored or adjusted as needed.

Your branches exercise is moving in the right direction, although I can see that you're definitely rushing through it. The marks don't show a whole lot of preparation preceding the actual execution of the mark, but even moreso the hatching you've placed along the ends is visibly sloppy. This is present in a lot of your constructional drawings, where you're putting the lines down quickly and somewhat thoughtlessly, and treating it more like a loose sketch.

This drawing however, is visibly better. Are there issues? Yes - for example, you're not drawing through each form in its entirety, instead allowing the lines to stop where a given form is overlapped by another (drawing through forms is important to better understand how they exist in relation to one another). You're also still drawing lines reflexively - I can see several places where you've drawn an additional mark automatically, instead of purposefully executing just a single mark. And there certainly is rushing, but when we compare it to what you did for this same plant in your last attempt, you're demonstrating a LOT more patience and care.

At the end of the day though, while you're showing some moves forward, you're still looking at drawing as though it's just sketching. Like you should be able to produce good work by instinct and intuition, rather than through explicit planning and thought. If you compare what I do in the daisy demo to what you're doing, the processes - not just the quality of the resulting lines - are fundamentally different. It's assumed that you'll have difficulty drawing your lines with as much precision, but it seems to me that because you don't feel confident in your ability to draw in this manner, you try and change the process itself to something you may be more comfortable with. You're replacing the problem, instead of allowing yourself to do it badly.

Next Steps:

Instead of having you redo the entire lesson again, I'm going to ask for the following:

  • 4 pages of leaves. I don't want to see sketchy, haphazard construction. Look at the specificity with which I approach every single mark I put down even in more complex, potentially overwhelming ones. I don't get lost in the totality of what I'm drawing. A line is just a line, and so I treat it as such.

  • 4 pages of plant drawings. Take your time. It doesn't look like these drawings took you more than 10 minutes each.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
11:38 PM, Tuesday February 25th 2020

It's not good that It looks like some of my drawings look like I only took 10 minutes; I know I took longer than that. I'm not attempting to change the process consciously - maybe I'm doing it without thinking.

I've been trying to ghost my lines more carefully but, I get nervously when I actually put the pen to paper. it seems like I end up making the marks the wrong way or worse yet they look like I have done no planning in spite of trying to ghost them several times.

https://imgur.com/a/ML20Qhj

This time I included the source images for the plants. Hopefully that will make it easier to tell where my weaknesses are. I can't stress how much I want to learn how to construct things properly. I feel like if I can get that down I can really start to improve.

The Palm tree has chaotic looking leaves, and I've planned out the limitations of the branch/leaf areas.

The Rose was mostly an exercise in ghosting the lines i needed multiple times.

The other two plants were a bit more complex.

2:11 AM, Wednesday February 26th 2020

Here are some notes about your leaves. On there, I also pointed out that you're zigzagging your lines around the underlying structure when adding wavier edges, which is something I specifically address here.

A key problem with your leaves is that you're leaving a lot of gaps, not actually allowing them to be fully enclosed forms, and instead reminding the viewer that they are merely a collection of lines. Notice the difference between how I draw in my little demonstrations on top of your page - my leaves are fully closed, and my lines are drawn to be specific. Yours still appear more to be somewhat instinctual, as though you are sketching and trying to rely on your gut. Don't forget about the use of the ghosting method for every single mark you put down - if we look at leaves like those on this page, it'd be hard to argue that the ghosting method was used for any of the outlines of the leaves.

For this drawing, when drawing the fern, you zigzag your lines back and forth throughout in many cases, which breaks this principle of markmaking. You need to be drawing each segment individually, so you can actually design how they move through space. By zigzagging, you end up focusing again on how the lines exist in the two dimensions of the page, not how they move through 3D space.

Overall, the problems are at their core the same as before. You're not following the instructions as they're written, and you're allowing yourself to be loose and approximate, instead of building directly upon the marks you put down. This comparison of two leaves in one of your plant drawings captures the issue fairly succinctly. There's no reason that the leaf circled on the left was approached differently than the leaf circled on the right.

Now it is entirely normal to get nervous when putting a mark down, especially in ink - but that is part of the exercise, to still your mind and step back when you feel frazzled. I think instead of having you immediately do more plant drawings, we're going to take a bit of a step back to some earlier exercises.

Next Steps:

I'd like to see the following:

  • 4 pages of ellipses in planes. Do not rush these. Invest as much time as you need into every single mark you put down. Apply the ghosting method, draw from your shoulder, and so on.

  • 2 pages of organic arrows.

  • 2 pages of freely rotated boxes (like the box challenge, including line extensions)

Since you ought to have been doing plenty of these past exercises in your warmups (as explained back in lesson 0), this should not be anything new. Regardless, make sure you read the instructions for each of these exercises before doing the assigned pages so they're fresh in your memory.

Once you've done that, do the following:

  • 1 page of leaves

  • Just 1 plant drawing. Show me that you can apply the concepts covered in the earlier lessons, that you can build directly on top of your various phases of construction and respect the fact that everything you draw is being created in three dimensions, not just as lines on a page. And pick something simple. There's no need to draw something complex and challenging.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:09 PM, Thursday February 27th 2020

I see.

My lack of improvement is really troubling. I have had lots of trouble attempting to use the techniques that the course teaches outside the course.

What exercises should I attempt again?

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