Hello DECEPE, congrats on finishing your first construction lesson! I'll be going over your work.

Also I know that you're waiting for people to ask for critiques on the critique exchange channel but because that can take a while, I thought that I'd give you a critique right now to let you move on and you can write critiques as you're going through lesson 4. So, let's get started!

Starting with your arrows, your work here seems really well done. Your lines were both accurate and confident in every arrow you drew and you managed to create a solid illusion of depth by compressing the further end of your arrows.

Just like your regular lines, your line weight seems very confident and accurate as well. However, because you used thicker lines for your line weight and stopped drawing them rather abruptly, they stand out a bit too much. You should instead try making your line weight subtler by using thinner lines, using the method shown here.

Moving onto your leaves, just like your lines, they flow through the scene pretty smoothly and create a pretty good illusion of depth. You did a good job with building more complex structures as well. Regarding the way you added edge detail, although I'm glad to see that you were often using individual strokes to add each bump/cut, you occasionally strayed away from this and tried adding detail to the majority of the edge in a single line, therefore making your drawings look cluttered and rushed through. If you want to read more about this, make sure to revisit the markmaking section of lesson 1.

When adding textures or shading, even if what you're drawing represents what is on the reference picture, try to refrain from filling a whole segment of your forms with solid black unless it's absolutely necessary. When we fill in a large part of our constructions with a single color, we risk making our drawings look 2D because we're using up space that can instead be used to show how that surface/form sits and flows through the scene as a 3D object.

Your branches look pretty solid overall. Although you occasionally skipped doing this, you generally did a good job with extending your lines to create a smoother transition between segments. Your ellipses look pretty good as well. I'm also very glad to see that you were changing the degrees of your ellipses to create a better illusion of depth.

Onto your plant constructions, it seems that you were building them in stages and using the methods taught in the lesson material. You also managed to make all of your constructions look 3D which is great. I'll try to make as many pointers as I can without being too nitpicky to help you move forward though.

• I know I mentioned this before but I'd like to go over it again. When applying texture, filling certain areas with black can really help make that construction stand out more (this mushroom, for example). However, when we start filling in large parts of a form, that form looks almost completely flat (certain parts of this mushroom, for example). I don't think there is a single answer to how much of your drawings should be filled in though, it's just something that you have to observe carefully and decide for yourself. If you think that you've filled in a texture enough to fool the viewer that that part has a shadow being cast onto it, that's usually enough.

• Also, for this course, try to avoid filling in parts of the surface to show the local color of that part. Remember that we're not trying to create pretty pictures here. Every mark you put down on the page for your constructions should only be there to make your constructions look more convincing. When you try showing local color with the same pen you've been using before, you often risk making that construction less believable.

• I want to go over your use of shadows, especially on this page. Adding too many shadows can actually make your constructions less readable which is what happened here. You should instead try to apply only cast shadows and apply them sparingly, making sure that every area you're filling is being filled in for a purpose; which is mainly to show how the forms relate to each other. You can revisit this part of lesson 2 for a better explanation regarding shading.

• On the last page, although it's great that you're dedicated to accurately show the textures of each form, you should instead try to work implicitly when adding textures. If we add textures to our drawings to make it look as close to our reference picture as possible, our drawings often look a bit confusing to look at. You should instead choose a focus point, and simply imply the existence of texture everywhere else. Using this method helps make our constructions more readable because we give the eye a clear resting point (as explained here).

Anyways, I don't think I have anything else to add! Overall you did a great job with lesson and managed to create constructions that show a good understanding of 3D space, congrats! I'm sorry if my critique came off as harsh but I'm sure you won't have any issues fixing the mistakes I pointed out here. I'm going to mark this lesson as complete so if you have any questions or if there's anything wrong with this critique, please let me know either on here or on discord by tagging me.

Good luck with lesson 4!