Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

2:26 PM, Saturday February 1st 2020

Lesson 3 - Album on Imgur

Direct Link: https://i.imgur.com/GE303F0.jpg

Post with 156 views. Lesson 3

Refs.:

3 users agree
3:59 PM, Tuesday February 11th 2020

Gonna try and hit you with some quick points:

  • Your leaves flow quite nicely, and you're building up the edge detail quite nicely, sticking closely to the simple structure of the leaf that you'd drawn in the earlier construction step

  • Your branches are alright, though I'm seeing in a lot of places that you don't extend your segments halfway to the next ellipse. This isn't always the case but it seems that on a handful of occasions you forget. Getting those segments to flow right into each other, overlapping them directly with the next line and so on are important elements to this exercise.

  • Your plant constructions are generally looking pretty good but I did notice that on the left side flower here you've got your edges zigzagging. They're sticking to the simpler structure nicely but don't forget how in lesson 1 the rule about maintaining a consistent trajectory is introduced. Drawing each bump as a separate stroke keeps us from falling into autopilot mode, and helps us design each one specifically.

  • On your cactus, don't forget the importance of drawing shadows for your texture elements, not outlines. Same for the pitcher plant - you drew a lot of lines, and you should be focusing on drawing shadows cast by the little raised bits along the surface of the plant. If what you see there is just patterns then don't draw it.

  • Trees (specifically tree tops) like at the end of your set are definitely difficult. When you've got a lot of different leaves clustering together, it becomes better to treat them as large masses with a texture of leaves, rather than a bunch of individually constructed leaves. That means focusing more on the silhouette of these masses, and also focusing on little shadow shapes internally.

You're doing a pretty good job, so I think it's fair to mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto lesson 4.

This community member feels the lesson should be marked as complete, and 3 others agree. The student has earned their completion badge for this lesson and should feel confident in moving onto the next lesson.
12:45 PM, Wednesday February 12th 2020

Thank you~

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.
Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Faber Castell PITT Artist Pens

Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.

Still, I'd recommend buying these in person if you can, at a proper art supply store. They'll generally let you buy them individually, and also test them out beforehand to weed out any duds.

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