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8:34 PM, Saturday January 16th 2021

There are a few things I want to point out about these:

  • When drawing your petals, don't leave one side open. Even if it means drawing the leaf as interpenetrating whatever's at the center of the flower. Having our forms intersect is pretty normal in constructional drawing, and drawing forms in their entirety is important to help us understand how they exist as 3D forms in space, and how they relate to one another.

  • When drawing your rose, there are places where your petals extend beyond the end of your flow line. That flow line declares how long that leaf or petal is going to be, and how it moves through space. Once that is committed to, you need to stick to it.

  • Keep working on driving the idea that the flow line establishes how the whole thing moves through space. Draw it with confidence, and thinking about how it represents motion. One thing that helps me to do this is to add a little arrow-head on its end as a reminder.

  • For the sunflower's stem, and any other situation where a form gets cut off the page, you should not be leaving those forms open-ended. Cap them off (in this case with an ellipse) to close it so you're left with a solid 3D form, not a flat shape on the page.

  • Draw through all of your ellipses, going around the shape two full times before lifting your pen. This goes for every ellipse you draw throughout this entire course.

  • On the sunflower, you appear to have neglected the principles of texture from lesson 2. You opted to outline every little bud instead of focusing on the shadows cast by each form on its neighbours, and that made it impossible for you to transition from one level of textural density to another.

You're moving in the right direction but I think there are enough separate concerns that I'd like you to do three more pages of plant constructions. Really invest as much time as you need into each individual mark you draw. Don't approach these drawings with the expectation that you're going to get them done in a set period of time. Just focus on doing everything to the best of your ability, and following the instructions from the lessons and from my critiques to the letter.

Next Steps:

Please submit three additional pages of plant constructions.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
5:24 PM, Saturday January 30th 2021

Alright I think I had a breakthrough. I just sat and drew leaves over and over and finally understood how to apply the information in the lessons. I focused on how they move throughout space and are actually 3d shapes instead of lines on the page.

I stopped trying to draw a 'realistic leaf' and focused on constructing something that looked like it had volume. Not sure if that makes sense, but it does in my mind.

These may not be perfect, but I at least think it's a huge improvement..

Let me know what you think!

https://imgur.com/a/K00ndBo

7:46 PM, Monday February 1st 2021

This is definitely a big improvement over the last set of revisions. I'm also pleased to see that while the first drawing of this set was quite small (with plenty of room left over on the page), you did a better job of taking advantage of the space available to you on the page.

I have just two quick comments about the last drawing. Firstly, do not attempt to fill in negative space with black. Areas of solid black should be saved only for cast shadows, whether they're cast by larger constructed forms or by smaller textural forms.

Secondly, when it comes to the texture of the flower's center mass, your marks there definitely come off as a little more erratic and uncertain, and I suspect one potential cause of this is that you may have been working off a reference image that was not high resolution enough. Always try and grab images that are as high res as possible, and you can always rely on multiple images as necessary to fill in gaps. Focus on studying the forms that are present - not on the impression that they give you in the photograph. Actually identify the forms themselves, then determine the kinds of shadows they'd cast on their surroundings to imply their presence. The information gleaned from this process will in turn give you greater control over transitioning between different levels of density as needed, which will help avoid the patchy result you have now.

Anyway, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete. Your constructions are coming along much better, so keep up the good work.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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