Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

7:31 AM, Friday February 28th 2025

DrawABox Lesson 3 - Album on Imgur

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Hi :) Reporting done with Lesson 3! I didn't do much detail, except for the demos, and I added all the demos in there, so there are 5 pages of plant constructions and 6 pages of demos. Let me know if I need to include the reference photos as well. Thank you so much for critiquing!

2 users agree
11:46 AM, Saturday March 1st 2025

Hello Liia, Congratulations on finishing lesson 3. I'll be giving you feedback, pointing out mistakes you've made as well as thing you did good.

Arrows

  • You make good use of foreshortening. The arrows get narrower and the bends are closer to each other towards the back giving a good sense of depth.

  • You also applied shadows and line thickness correctly to clearly establish how your arrows twist and turn in space. The hatched lines of your shadows are slightly bent however. Try to make them straight by using the ghosting method.

Leaves

  • The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their shape and movement in space.

  • Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you construct your edge detail additively.

  • It's good to see you experimenting with more complex leave shapes of different types of plant.

Branches

  • Moving on to your branches they are coming along decently as you're following the instructions for the exercise. There are a couple of visible[ tails ]https://drawabox.com/lesson/3/2/tails)in these branches. This mostly comes down to practice but you can also attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in the branches. By spacing them further apart you'll allow for a bigger runway between ellipses and ensure a smoother transition between marks.

  • For ellipses it's good to see that you're always drawing through them twice. However the degree of the ellipses is very similar. They do get wider/narrower along the branches but you can push this a lot further to create more dynamic structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant construction

  • The plant construction is coming along nicely. You use the method as described which results in believable 3d shapes.

  • While it's not a requirement I would suggest to spend some time on texture. Most importantly lineweight (which you did on some occasions but not on all) and cast shadows as those really help with the readability of your drawings. And especially in later lessons where there are a lot of construction lines it helps differentiate which lines are important and which are not.

  • I also see you've drawn mostly branches which again is fine as it fulfills the requirement of the lesson it's good to push yourself to drawing more different types of plants. For example when drawing a whole plant (like the potato plant demo) you face a different problems to solve. Namely to space out the different branches so they all fit together.

In short, technically your drawings are very good. You seem to have a good understanding of how you draw your lines and how construction works. As a point of improvement I suggest to pick more varied subjects to draw.

Next Steps:

  • Continue to lesson 4
This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 2 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
5:20 PM, Saturday March 1st 2025

Thank you so much for critiqueing my work Fable!! Your critique was very thorough and your suggestments for improvement are very helpful! I look forward to implementing them :D Thank you again!

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