1:51 AM, Monday August 30th 2021
Starting with your arrows, you've done a great job of drawing these with a good deal of confidence to establish how they move through space in a fluid manner. Don't forget though, as per the rules of perspective, the gaps between the zigzagging sections should be getting narrower as we look farther back as shown here.
Moving onto your leaves, I do feel that to a point you could definitely stand to push through that same amount of confidence when drawing these leaves. Right now they're a little on the stiff side. This is commonly something I see when students focus very heavily on capturing how the leaves themselves sit statically in the world. One thing to consider, however, is how the flow line itself is a representation not only of the physical spine of the leaf, but rather of the forces of wind and air currents that push the leaf through space. When drawing the flow lines, really push the sense of movement and fluidity - one thing I find helps with this is to add a little arrow head at its tip to connect it in our minds to how we approach the arrows exercise.
You've generally approached building up edge detail well, building directly onto the structure of the previous phase of construction. I did however see a few cases where you probably should have approached them as more complex leaf constructions consisting of many different smaller leaf structures, one for each arm in cases like this one. An example where you did this correctly can be seen here.
Continuing onto the branches, these are looking good. You've done a great job of building up the simple tube structures, maintaining consistent widths to help them feel more solid. I can also see signs that you're pushing yourself more and more to ensure that your segments are extended fully halfway to the next ellipse (though towards the top of the page, you tended to be less consistent with this). Lastly, I'm glad to see that you tried to explore the forking branches only once you'd given yourself ample opportunities to try the more basic non-forking version of the exercise.
Moving onto the plant constructions, at its core your approach is coming along decently, but there are a few key issues I want to bring to your attention:
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First and foremost, while I appreciate the enthusiasm with which you're looking to include many different drawings to a page, it's actually not a great idea to artificially break up the page into spaces for multiple drawings right off the bat. Doing so restricts how much room you have to think through spatial problems, and also makes it harder to engage your whole arm when drawing. When putting that first drawing down on a page, be sure to give it as much room as it requires from you. When you're done, you can assess whether another drawing will fit - if it will, you should definitely add it. If it won't, it's okay to just leave one drawing to that page. What's most important is that you make good use of all the space available to you.
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I noticed in cases where you drew ellipses as something like the base of a flower pot, you'd frequently then draw back on top of it to reinforce its edge with additional line weight. Line weight should instead be focused only on specific areas where forms overlap one another, rather than a more arbitrary use in reinforcing specific parts of these forms' silhouettes. Keep that line weight subtle (in the pitcher plant it got pretty heavy, and always focus on it as being a tool that you're using for a specific purpose. Using line weight to clarify how forms overlap, as shown in this example of two overlapping leaves is generally the most effective, and this kind of more limited use will help you remember to use the ghosting method to execute it with confidence (rather than drawing it more hesitantly as you trace back over an existing line).
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In general, I do feel that similarly to what I mentioned with your leaves exercise, your plant constructions are somewhat more stiff, so be sure to focus on establishing flow lines for your leaves with confidence as explained before.
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When drawing texture - like those on petals - try to specifically make every textural mark its own cast shadow shape rather than one-off strokes. As shown here, it can help you make them feel more dynamic, and will also help you focus more on how each cast shadow shape should be the result of thinking about the specific forms that actually cast them (rather than painting on arbitrary marks).
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This isn't really something we worry about too much in this lesson, but I wanted to share these notes from the informal demos section of the lesson. While we're free to modify the silhouettes of things like petals and leaves (because they're already flat), it doesn't work out so well when dealing with more voluminous structures (like the head of your mushroom on this page), because modifying that silhouette ends up flattening out the structure. The notes I linked to explain a different approach, which will help out in Lesson 4.
Anyway, all in all you're moving in the right direction - just be sure to apply what I've explained above in your lesson 4 work, and as you explore those exercises further as part of your warmups.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 4.