View Full Submission View Parent Comment
0 users agree
9:34 PM, Wednesday August 17th 2022

Starting with your arrows, your linework is a touch hesitant here, but there's still a fair bit of confidence that helps to push the sense of how each structure pushes through the space it occupies. This carries over decently into your leaves, although continuing to push the confidence with which you draw the flow line - keeping in mind that the flow line's job is to establish how your leaf moves through the world - will help you capture a greater sense of fluidity there as well.

When it comes to building up edge detail though, I'm noticing that you're prone to sometimes treating each successive stage of construction as an opportunity to redraw the entirety of the leaf structure. This unfortunately results in loose relationships between the phases of construction, and hinders the solidity from carrying forward from the simpler stages as we build up more complexity. Remember - we are not sketching, and our earlier steps are not guides or rough drafts. They each establish a physical structure, like a piece of paper cut out into a specific shape, which we then go onto further manipulate - lifting or drooping its edges to create a wave, adding more paper to create physical protrusions coming off that existing silhouette's edge, or cutting into it as if with scissors.

While you do hold to these principles in areas, there are others where you're prone to zigzagging back and forth across the existing structure, or otherwise breaking away from the earlier stage of construction - so be sure to give these notes on zigzagging another read, and always remember that every step of construction establishes a physical entity in 3D space. One that can be altered and built upon, but not replaced or ignored. Also, avoid any temptation to redraw more than you strictly need to. There are a lot of cases where you're more mindful of allowing the existing structure to stand for itself, but it varies between different attempts.

Continuing onto your branches, it appears that you may not have followed the instructions quite as closely as you could have. The instructions here demonstrate how we want each edge to extend from one segment, past the second, and stop halfway to the third, with the following segment starting at the second ellipse and repeating the same pattern. You appear not to be extending fully halfway to the next segment, instead stopping just a little past the previous one.

Additionally, keep in mind that you need to be shifting the degree of your ellipses wider as we slide further away from the viewer along the length of a given branch structure, as demonstrated in the Lesson 1 ellipses video.

Onto your plant constructions, while the points I raised above do continue to be present (especially a lot of zigzagging of edge detail), you are overall doing reasonably well. There are however still a number of points I want you to keep in mind:

  • Always draw each and every form in its entirety, even when it gets overlapped by a neighbouring form. Here for example, you've drawn some of the petals completely, but others more partially. Drawing everything in its entirety puts us in a better position to understand how each form sits in 3D space and how it relates to the forms around it, rather than focusing on only what exists from a single point of view. After all - forms continue to exist where we cannot see them.

  • Generally you're pretty good with this one, but I noticed a couple areas where you deviated, so I figured I'd mention it. Always maintain very tight specific relationships between your phases of construction - so when going from a flow line to the basic silhouette of the leaf structure, be sure to have that leaf shape end right at the tip of the flow line. Don't leave any gaps between them.

  • You do seem to be running into some trouble with your cylindrical flower pots. I'm glad to see that you're building them up around a central minor axis line, so as to help you in building up the various ellipses. That said, be sure to include all the ellipses you need to build up the entirety of the flower pot's structure - including at minimum one inset within the opening to establish the thickness of the rim, and another to establish the level of the soil so we have something for the stems of your plants to intersect with. I also did notice that you weren't entirely consistent in drawing through your ellipses two full times, and that you also made the mistake of making the closer ellipses wider - the farther ones should be the wider ones, so generally the base rather than the opening.

All things considered, your approach to texture isn't bad. Just remember above all else that the goal here is not to decorate the drawing or make it visually pleasing - it's just an extension of what we're doing through construction, where we're thinking about the forms that are present (in this case, the textural forms that sit along the surface of our larger constructed forms) and considering the shadows those structures would cast on their surroundings. You can review the reminders here in Lesson 2's texture section to refresh your memory on those concepts.

Now, there are a number of things I want you to address, so I'm going to assign some revisions below.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 1 page, half of leaves, half of branches

  • 2 pages of plant constructions, at least one of which includes a flower pot.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
12:59 PM, Friday August 19th 2022

Hi Uncomfortable,

first I want you to thank for the honest rewiev and this website in general =)

I did the assign revisons and hope i could catch up a little on the things i missed.

https://imgur.com/a/2wMCJyD

Looking forward for more feedback.

Thanks in advance

Nisakii

7:39 PM, Friday August 19th 2022

Looks like your leaves and plant constructions are both coming along much better, although when tackling your branches, you're still running into some issues when it comes to where you're starting your next segment. As shown here, you're starting your segments at an arbitrary position a little ways before the previous segment's end. You need to be starting back at the previous ellipse.

Next Steps:

Try one more page of branches - and be sure to review these instructions more carefully.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
8:32 AM, Monday August 22nd 2022

Hi,

I hope this ones are a little better, as I somehow struggled with the bigger ones, I drew a few more on the back.

https://imgur.com/a/A8Z5Qpp

View more comments in this thread
The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something I've used myself. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Staedtler Pigment Liners

Staedtler Pigment Liners

These are what I use when doing these exercises. They usually run somewhere in the middle of the price/quality range, and are often sold in sets of different line weights - remember that for the Drawabox lessons, we only really use the 0.5s, so try and find sets that sell only one size.

Alternatively, if at all possible, going to an art supply store and buying the pens in person is often better because they'll generally sell them individually and allow you to test them out before you buy (to weed out any duds).

This website uses cookies. You can read more about what we do with them, read our privacy policy.