Hello Asticky_, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking confident and smooth which helps sell the feeling of fluidity that arrows have as they move across the world. You're also making good use of the depth of the page with your use of foreshortening, and your well applied and correct placement of the hatching helps solidify the illusion of depth you wish to achieve in this exercise.

One thing you can keep in mind when finishing up your arrows is that when making use of added lineweight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth always apply it with a single, confident stroke superimposed on top of the preexisting mark, you often go over your lines several times which causes your arrows to look a bit messy, make sure to keep them neat and clean.

You've done a good job here, I'd like to encourage you to keep experimenting with the different kinds of twists and turns and different rates of foreshortening that are possible for arrows, remember that these are very flexible objects that can move freely across the world in all sorts of ways, so you should push yourself and explore the different possibilities in order to keep honing your skills.

Leaves

And now let's take a look at your leaves, where the fluidity present in your arrows is translating nicely into these new structures, you're not only trying to capture how these forms exist statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

It's good to see that you're experimenting with some more complex types of leaves, but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures. In this structure you're skipping construction steps because you're not constructing each arm of the structure with the leaf construction method and then connecting them to ensure a solid but still energetic form, you try to capture the shape of the leaf right away, which causes you to zigzag your marks and undermines the initial construction you've laid down.

This structure is also looser than it could be, due to the flow lines for the individual "arms" of the complex structure going past the boundary laid out by the previous phase of construction (the one where you established the simple overall footprint for the structure). The bigger shape establishes a decision being made - this is how far out the general structure will extend - and so the flow lines for the later leaf structures should abide by that.

You don't really make use of edge detail in this page, and the same can be said for your plant constructions, where at points constructions will have edge detail added to some of their leaf structures, but not to others. Keep in mind that edge detail is another step of the construction process, it helps you futher communicate how your structures exist and move through a 3 dimensional space and as such it must be considered whenever possible. Only the last step of construction - texture - is optional.

In the moments where you did make use of edge detail you often avoid trying to capture more than one piece of detail at a time, but remember that edge detail must be built up additively whenever possible, and that it must be added with the same general line thickness as the rest of your construction, so as not to encourage yourself to redraw more than you strictly need to.

Your addition of texture is moving in the right direction as you're following the basic principles of texture in these structures, however you can definitely push your application of it further, as you've got several small and thin marks, and several big spaces of white which would communicate that the surface of your structure is smooth - which is the opposite of what leaf texture is like.

There's a lot more that we can do in order to more convincingly communicate leaf texture as there's much more going on than just a few stray marks implying veins on the surface of a leaf, take a look at this informal demo on how to approach leaf texture, and make sure to give these reminders on how texture works in Drawabox a read.

Branches

For your branches they're generally coming along decently as you attempt to follow the instructions for this exercise, but there are a couple of deviations which stop you from getting the most out of this exercise, such as the fact that while it's good to see that you're generally extending your line segments, you're not overlapping them - you don't start you new segment back at the previous ellipse point, you start it close to the place where your last line ended, which effectively removes the healthy overlaps between lines that we seek to achieve.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your first segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.

Your branches also have a lot of visible tails present in them, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For your ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark. It's also good to see that you seem generally aware of the ellipse degree shift, but be careful, as there are times where your ellipses are getting wider when they should be thinner, and thinner when they should be wider, if the rate of change in your degrees is not in line with the rules of perspective you will end up flattening your structures by accident.

Plant Construction Section

And now let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are generally coming along pretty well made, you're making use of the construction techniques introduced in the lesson and to quite great effect, which helps you create some very tridimensional looking structures. You're certainly demonstrating a strong sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.

Of course there are always a couple of things that we can improve, as such here are some of the points you should keep in mind whenever you tackle these exercises again.

I've noticed that for these pages you had a tendency to choose more complex plant structures with lots of elements to them, while this is not necessarily a mistake it can end up limiting your ability to hone your skills and fully become acquaintanced with the construction techniques and methods, choosing some less leafy and more simple structures would have allowed you to focus more on applying the construction techniques and methods to your structures, rather than trying to juggle several elements at once.

For your Venus fly trap there are a couple of changes that you could have made which would have allowed you to create a tighter and more specific structure. Currently you approached the "body" or the "stem" of the venus fly trap as a sort of leaf shape, while this is a valid way to approach this structure it leans too heavily on the side of oversimplification for this part of the plant structure and makes the structure feel fragile and flimsy.

This part of the Venus Fly Trap is something that's called a petiole, it's cylindrical in nature, but it's hidden underneath the more leafy part of the stem, it's helpful to understand this because you can then simplify the forms by capturing this part of the structure as a branch ( and it makes it more clear how the "trap" of the venus flytrap connects to the rest of the structure ) and afterwards build the rest of the structure with the leaf construction method, which will allow for a structure that feels less flimsy and much more solid.

When working on your constructions, make sure that you're keeping your constructions contained within the space of your paper, to ensure that you can fully construct your structure without letting forms run off from the page.

Now let's talk about your usage of texture which can certainly use some more work, as it's not adhering to the principles of texture as it's taught in Drawabox as closely as it should. For example, you should not fill in big areas of complete black, as they go against the idea of drawing implicitly and can obscure your underlying construction, making it harder to evaluate your homework.

Let's revisit how texture in Drawabox is approached, by looking back at this page we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface, after analyzing all of the information present in our reference we'll be able to translate it to our study. This means that the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, which is why we need to consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.

Final Thoughts

Overall your work is looking good and tridimensional, you clearly understand the methods and techniques introduced in this lesson, as such I'm going to be marking this submission as complete as it's clear that you are ready for the challenges that you'll face in the following lesson. Good luck in Lesson 4.