Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

1:15 AM, Thursday July 13th 2023

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Feedback and critique are greatly appreciated! Tips on how to add texture to leaves would also be super helpful, as I struggle to do so.

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6:29 PM, Wednesday July 19th 2023

Hello ABEANBERRY , I'll do my best to critique your work!

ORGANIC ARROWS

Starting off with the organic arrows exercise, you've done a very good job.

The lines are confident and you're not afraid of letting the edges overlap on top of each other,

the only critique i have here is about the use of line weight: while you did great job in adding it specifically on overlapping edges, i can see you hesitated while going over the line to add it, and as such it ended up looking fairly wobbly.

Be sure to always ghost the lines before freehanding them , especially line weight,

it does not matter if it goes all the way off , that will improve with practice.

But as i said , that aside you handled this exercise very smoothly.

LEAVES

As far as the leaves go, you're doing good as far as making your leaves flowy and natural , although don't be afraid to make them fold,as you did with 2 of them , you handled those very well.

You've also did every leaf constructionally step by step which is great to see, and will really serve you well in this course.

As far as critiques go , the most important thing that catches to eye is that leaf texture , which ties into your question.

You've mostly seen the leaf as a series of lines , but as lessons 2 shows , it is best to focus on the shadows those "lines" cast instead,

while i don't have the specific reference you might've used , i tried my best to explain it Here.

If it helps , the lines can be thought as very small cylinders/branches with their own volume.

That being said , you've done a good job to prevent zigzaggin your edges here as well , along with your lines being smooth as always, great job!

Now moving on to

BRANCHES

I honestly don't have much to critique here , you've adhered to the instructions, most of your ellipses are pretty smooth, and i see you you drew the lines halfway to the next ellipse confidently, with the only complaint being some of the segments not overlapping as well as they could (a nitpick, since you're not expected to even in the lesson notes themselves).

I think you nailed these marvelously, keep it going!.

PLANTS

Moving onto the main part of the lesson, the plants

As far as your line confidence goes , it mostly went very well , but i can see you reverted back to a more chicken scratchy type in drawing N°2, Nothing major mind you, but be sure to keep it in mind

There's also n°4 where you handled the plant itself really well, but decided to crosshatch its' container, now this wouldn't be a problem usually , it even makes your plant pop out more i'd say,

but keep in mind that in the context of drawabox, it Specifically asks you not to use hatching, this is because these are exercises specifically to train 3d reasoning, and by using crosshatching it flattened it out and it can easily work against you.

On that same note, in order to do the ellipses it's better to start off by drawing a minor axis first, and then drawing the ellipse.

Moving on to the other plants , they mostly went smoothly , there's only a point i'll mention in regards to the textures again:

as with the leaves , you mostly focus on outlines here, imagine the little spheres on this plant as actual complete forms (without actually drawing i), and each of those spheres would cast a shadow on the ones below them, which would also cast shadows on those ever further below and so on.

I've tried to illustrate what i mean here on your [plant] (https://imgur.com/a/kKoWg3s) although if this is confusing feel free to ask questions.

Either way this is mostly a concept seen here in [lesson 2] (https://drawabox.com/lesson/2/6/drawingforms) which probably explains it far better.

There's also some cases where you left your leaf shapes open (plant 5) or drew in a more loose manner (plant 7's bottom "spheres", which you mostly drew as scribbles that aren't attached to the main branch , and so end up looking like they're floating marks that do not belong).

Now all of that out of the way, these are really nitpicks , as you're not even supposed to worry about textures that much in this lesson,they're optional for a reason.

You've handled the main part of the lesson , the constructional drawing, really well i think, so i have no qualms about marking this lesson as complete! Good job and Good luck!

Next Steps:

Lesson 4

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1:24 AM, Thursday July 20th 2023

Thank you so much for your critique! The links and explanations you provided were really helpful and easy to understand.

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