Starting with your arrows, you've done a wonderful job of focusing on the confidence of your linework's execution, helping to put front and center the fluidity with which these structures push through the world. This carries over quite 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.

There are however a couple points I want to call out in regards to how you're approaching the addition of edge detail, and the complex leaf structures:

• Instead of building up each little bit of edge detail with a separate stroke rising off and returning to the existing structure's edge, you tend to zigzag a single stroke back and forth as we see here. This is specifically noted as something to avoid in these notes, and also breaks this principle of markmaking from Lesson 1.

• For this leaf, I noticed that as you were "merging" the various smaller leaf structures together, you tended to start an edge at the tip of a given smaller leaf, then immediately drew it off to wherever you wanted that edge to be placed. This unfortunately leads to a very minimal relationship between the different phases of construction - in effect, these new edges are only grounded against the existing structure at a single point for each smaller leaf, at its tip. This is similar to why zigzagging a single stroke back and forth (aside from breaking that principle of markmaking) is incorrect - it results in minimal contact with the previous phase of construction, instead of a nice, solid relationship. Instead, you want your new edges to run along the edge of the smaller leaf structure, as shown in the arrows I drew on top, to establish more of a relationship between them, then you can continue following that trajectory off the edge of the smaller leaves.

• Try to keep the line weight/thickness of each phase of construction roughly consistent - right now you're making your later steps darker/thicker, which is encouraging you to redraw more of the given leaves than you should. In regards to the use of line weight in this course, review these notes.

Remember - what we're doing here is not putting down a rough sketch to use as a guide. We are effectively introducing a structure to the world, as though it were a simple leaf shape cut out of a piece of paper, and as we add edge detail to it or build up its structure, we are actively making physical changes to that existing form. If we want to add spikes to its edge, we're physically adding more pieces of paper to it. If we want to create a wobbly edge, we are physically drooping and lifting sections of its perimeter in 3D space. And if we want to cut into its silhouette, then the lines we're drawing represent the paths a pair of scissors would follow to cut it out, as shown here.

Continuing onto your branches, there are a few notable issues here as well:

• You need to be drawing through all of your freehanded ellipses two full times before lifting your pen. Also, be sure to execute them confidently, using the ghosting method, and using your whole arm from the shoulder. I noticed that in the few cases where you did draw through your ellipses, it tended to be quite hesitant and shaky, suggesting that you were executing slowly and carefully rather than holding to the principles of the ghosting method.

• Additionally, be sure to extend each edge segment fully halfway to the next ellipse, to allow for a healthy overlap between them. This helps to achieve a smooth, seamless transition from one segment to the next, and is stressed here in the instructions.

Moving onto your plant constructions, there are some concerns I want to address, but as a whole - and especially early on in pages like this one I can see you implementing and applying the core principles of the lesson quite well. Your linework is confident and fluid, and your forms come out feeling solid as a result.

This is somewhat diminished however when you push your constructions farther, for the simple reason that you tend to treat those previous phases of constructions as more of a rough sketch, rather than a 3D structure upon which to build. We see this issue most prominently later on, where you lean into drawing your earlier steps more faintly, and then attempt to completely redraw and replace them with darker lines (an approach that is, in this course, disallowed as discussed here).

I think part of this may come from the desire to pursue drawings that are visually pleasing - where treating the previous stages as more of a rough sketch can feel more natural - but this not only impacts how you apply the principles of construction, but also causes you to deviate from the textural concepts introduced in Lesson 2. Decoration (which is a simple way of saying doing what you can to make your drawings look more pleasing and interesting) is itself something of an unclear goal. There's no specific point at which one has added enough, and the approach has no specific, standardized method. It's just a matter of drawing what we see, carrying over features directly from the reference image. You'll note that as discussed here, this skips the important step of understanding the textural forms that are present, so that we can design the shadows they cast based on that understanding.

What we're doing in this course can be broken into two distinct sections - construction and texture - and they both focus on the same concept. With construction we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand how they might manipulate this object with their hands, were it in front of them. With texture, we're communicating to the viewer what they need to know to understand what it'd feel like to run their fingers over the object's various surfaces. Both of these focus on communicating three dimensional information. Both sections have specific jobs to accomplish, and none of it has to do with making the drawing look nice.

Instead of focusing on decoration, what we draw here comes down to what is actually physically present in our construction, just on a smaller scale. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, we focus on each individual textural form, focusing on them one at a time and using the information present in the reference image to help identify and understand how every such textural form sits in 3D space, and how it relates within that space to its neighbours. Once we understand how the textural form sits in the world, we then design the appropriate shadow shape that it would cast on its surroundings. The shadow shape is important, because it's that specific shape which helps define the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it.

As a result of this approach, you'll find yourself thinking less about excuses to add more ink, and instead you'll be working in the opposite - trying to get the information across while putting as little ink down as is strictly needed, and using those implicit markmaking techniques from Lesson 2 to help you with that.

Now I am going to assign some revisions, but fortunately because of the underlying understanding you are demonstrated, they will be fairly limited. Still - remember what the focus of this course is on, and be sure to hold to all of the core principles of construction as closely as you can.