Starting with your arrows, these are fairly well done. You're focusing on the use of confident linework to capture how these structures flow fluidly through the world. One suggestion I have in regards to your hatching however is that right now it's a little haphazard without clear boundaries or criteria, which when paired with fineliners' desire to be very rich and dark, doesn't work out super well. This kind of use would be more effective with ballpoint pens, where the strokes can be executed more faintly based on pressure control, rather than only varying line thickness. Instead, when using hatching in this course (which of course will be quite limited, since as discussed back in Lesson 2 we don't make much use of form shading here), try to ensure that your hatching falls snugly between defined edges, stretching all the way across the ribbon in this case. I have some additional notes on hatching here from Lesson 2's form intersections exercise page that you may find useful.

Continuing onto your leaves exercise, I feel this is a bit of a mixed bag, where that fluidity from the arrows gets a little lost or muddled as you focus more on the idea of capturing a tangible, specific object sitting statically in the world. Construction itself as an approach is all about breaking a complex object down into a series of steps where individual aspects of it can be given more focus and attention. For example, the first mark we put down - the flow line - serves to establish primarily how that structure is actually going to move through the world in a fluid manner. It takes the core focus of the arrows exercise, and carries it over to be built upon here.

It is however common for students to finally be able to draw something real and tangible for the first time in this course, and to ultimately focus so much on it that they stiffen up, resulting in flow lines that appear more still and rigid rather than properly representing the manner in which that leaf moves, under the influence of wind and air currents. One thing I find helps to rebuild that connection between exercises is to add a little arrow ahead at the tip of your flow lines - it can help to reinforce the idea that you're meant to be capturing a sense of movement in 3D space.

When it comes to building up edge detail, there are a couple issues I'm seeing here:

• This one is for the most part very well done. I can see that you're building up each new bump in that silhouette with its own separate stroke, rising off the existing edge and returning to it. One thing I want you to avoid however is the tendency to have your construction get thicker as you progress through the steps. This can encourage you to try to replace more of the existing structure than is needed, rather than simply building up that which needs to change. Instead, stick to roughly the same line thickness/applied pressure.

• With this one, you appear to have jumped from the flow line to establishing a silhouette that already includes considerable complexity to it, featuring those cuts in its silhouette. The second step, as shown here, is to build up a simple silhouette first. Once in place, you can then define the cuts that would be made into that silhouette's shape.

• While I'm not too concerned with detail/texture here, I did want to mention that in this one you appear to have tried to represent the veins along the leaf's surface as a series of individual branching lines. As discussed back in Lesson 2's texture section, all texture is made up of physical, three dimensional forms that rest along the surface of a given object. We capture the impression of texture by implying the presence of those 3D forms using the shadows they would cast on their surroundings. What you've done here is more to explicitly represent those veins as the lines themselves. If you take a look at the leaf exercise instructions' last step, you'll see an example of how the veins are to be implied without being drawn directly. By simply drawing the shadows they cast, focusing specifically on those that occur where the forms branch out, we can capture the veins as 3D tubes (rather than just lines), but not commit ourselves to drawing each and every section of vein in its entirety.

Moving onto your branches, there are a number of suggestions I feel I can offer here to help you adhere more closely to the instructions of the exercise:

• Firstly, remember that as discussed back in Lesson 1, every ellipse you freehand in this course needs to be drawn through two full times before lifting your pen.

• Try to maintain a consistent width throughout the full length of the branch structure, avoiding arbitrary pinching or swelling, as seen here. A more consistent width leads to a simpler structure, which in turn can more easily maintain the illusion of solidity. When the shapes we draw on the page get too complex, it makes it more difficult for them to maintain their solidity. That's why we build complexity up in stages - start simple, and then build upon that simplicity to maintain a solid impression while increasing overall complexity.

• Right now, you appear to not be extending your edge segments fully halfway to the next ellipse. As explained here in the instructions, the resulting overlap from that extension allows for a smoother, more seamless transition from segment to segment. I noticed that as a result, throughout your plant constructions your stems and branch structures had a tendency to feel kind of staggered, where near each ellipse there would be a slight break in its flow.

Continuing onto your plant constructions, I feel that overall you're doing well, in that if we look past the issues I've already called out, you are clearly thinking about the way in which your constructions can be built up in a step by step manner, focusing on the addition of simple structures one at a time to achieve a more complex, more solid result. There issues I called out above do get in the way somewhat however, and in addition to them I have a few key suggestions to offer:

• Most of all, while you're clearly enthusiastic about drawing a ton and getting as much as you can out of the assigned work, you are ending up in a situation where many of your drawings are given fairly little space on the page, which in turn limits our brains' capacity to think through spatial problems, and also makes it significantly harder to engage our whole arm while drawing. Making good use of the page is critical, and the first way to achieve that is to prioritize how much room we give that initial drawing on a given page. Give it as much room as it requires, and refrain from artificially limiting yourself based on the intent to add a certain number of drawings afterwards. Once the drawing is done, you can assess whether another drawing will fit in the space that remains - if it will, then you should certainly add it. If another will not fit, then it is perfectly okay to have a page consisting only of a single drawing, if that drawing is indeed making good use of the space available to it.

• Another issue that no doubt comes from your tendency to pack a lot into each page, and to limit the space for each individual drawing is simply the fact that I think it causes you to rush in certain cases. It's entirely normal for drawings that are given less space on the page, to also be given less time. As a result, we may not take as much care in applying the ghosting method to every single mark we execute, as we can see here. Both space and time suffer from the same kind of issue - if we artificially set out how much space, or how much time, we have to complete a given drawing, or a given number of drawings, then we will inevitably change the way we approach them to fit that criteria. While we can't give a drawing infinite space on a page, we can give it full reign over all the space available to it, then give the left overs to the next one. Similarly, while we can't necessarily give a drawing infinite time, we can give a drawing enough time such that we execute each individual mark with the same level of care, regardless of whether the drawing demands a thousand lines, or just five. What determines the space and time given is what is asked - not what is available to you.

• A few minor points about constructing cylindrical flower pots: be sure to draw through your ellipses as discussed before, keep in mind that the degree of the end farther from the viewer (usually the base of the pot) will be wider than the end closer to them (as discussed in Lesson 1's ellipses video, and lastly keep in mind that those flower pots are generally much more complex than the basic cylinders you've constructed here. I'm thrilled to see that you're building them around a central minor axis line, so you can keep those ellipses aligned to one another, but take advantage of that and add as many ellipses as are needed to build out the structure in its entirety. At the very least, there should be another ellipse inset within the opening to define the thickness of its rim, but often there are other features that require more ellipses to establish.

All in all, I fully believe you are capable of knocking this lesson out of the park, but I do feel that some decisions have limited you from demonstrating the best of which you are capable. As such, I'm going to assign some additional revisions below.