Lesson 3 homework.
3 demos / 5 own plant drawings. I would like to know if I'm on the right direction.
Asking for revisions is fine since I've got a plenty of time in summer and I'll greatly appreciate constructive feedback.
P.S. I've actually completed L2 and got the badge for it visible in the profile. If you see "the relentless" under my avatar, it's just something with the site.
Hello Kabachuha, congrats on completing lesson 3, I'll critique your homework.
Arrows
Starting with your arrows , you've generally handled these pretty well, they're drawn with confidence and you're not afraid to let them ovelap.
Leaves
The confidence is still shown here, you let most of the leaves move and wrap around believably , you're also drawing every single piece of edge detail as its own separate stroke and a single trajectory, aside from a couple of cases in the taro leaf where the edge detail end up a little more jagged and wobbly.
You've skipped a stage when drawing the storax leaf (always start by making the most basic leaf shape you could possibly do), but you've rectified that with the fern leaf and stuck fairly well to the premise of drawing the leaf in separate stages, being careful to define their relationship, good job!
As far as texture is concerned, be careful not to Copy your reference, specifically when drawing the veins of the leaves; try instead to imply its presence by drawing the shadows they cast on the leaf itself , it helps to outline the shape of those shadows first and then fill them in ,no matter how thin they are.
Branches
Moving onto branches, aside from the first one,I see you're applying the segments as highlighted in the lesson notes, good work.
I noticed that your lines sway a little at at times, but what i'm most worried about is your ellipses, which often end up wobbly.
Be careful about the principles of markmaking of lesson 1, and remember to keep up with warmups, it will improve with time
Plant constructions
Starting off with the first plant ,the mushroom:I can't be sure unless I could see the reference, but I'll remind you of this lesson 1 paragraph.
In this case the relationship of the ellipses seems inversed, I say seems because if (in the reference)the cap were pointed away from the viewer or simply bent in a specific way, your approach would be entirely correct , but if it were facing towards the viewer it would look off; you can look at the mushroom demo from drawabox if you wish to expand on this topic , as its shown quite well there , notice as the ellipses get wider and wider as they approach the bottom of this mushroom in said demo.
Moving on,what I noticed is that the leaves had a prominent drop in quality, which is understandable due to the drawings being a good 2-3 weeks away from the exercise itself, but do be careful about this.
The hibiscus,lavander, potato plant and lilac are fine as far as the main leaf shape is concerned, they have a sense of flow and movement to them, the other plants' usually feel far more static, sometimes even flat.
What I see in all of them however, is that you're not adding any edge detail, at all.
While textures are optional, edge detail is not, as it's a key component in showing how the leaf sits in 3D space.
This isn't much of a problem , you've shown that you are capable of drawing the leaves well, and I'm sure you just need to give the drawings and the instructions a little more time in order to make full use of your abilities.
Keep in mind that you don't need to finish a page the same day you started it and you're encouraged to give as many sittings/days to a drawing as it needs; I'm aware it's difficult at first , and frankly I'm struggling with giving drawings more time myself, but it's good to keep in mind and take back control of our focus when it inevitably slips away from us.
I've also noticed you are not drawing the branches as instructed in some plants, the Spruce being the most obvious case where you draw the entire length of the branch in just a couple of strokes, I'd also reccomend using this method in order to draw forking branches, instead of just making an ellipse and extending another branch from the original one; if you struggle with this, try to draw a few more ellipses to delimitate your branch, if you use too few of them and too far apart from each other , it makes drawing the segments a lot more difficult.
However , you do a good job of observing your plants, you've drawn the rose using a pentagram as a guide , which shows a good deal of experimentation, and you're still adhering to drawing in steps , you've also drawn ellipses for all leaves to use as guides and drawing them in their entirety, which is great.
The last thing i want to mention is in regards to cast shadows, specifically the potato plant and lilac; it's easy to get the wrong idea when watching the demos , but you're not meant to fill the darkest and deepest areas of the plant in black , you should aim to use said shadows to define the relationship between the leaves and/or branches, which I can see a hint of you doing in your hibiscus demo.
Now, this is my second critique ever, my apologies if it sounded harsh at times, but I truly believe that you can knock this lesson out of the park with a few revisions, as most of the mistakes in your work are either because of a lack of time ,a misinterpretation of the instructions, or simple forgetfulness.
As such , I'll be assigning some revisions below.
Feel free to take as much time as you need on these, and if you have any questions feel free to ask them.
Next Steps:
1 Page of branches
1 Page of leaves
4 Pages of plant constructions, be sure to add edge detail to all of them, while drawing in steps.
Texture, including cast shadows, is optional, I'd recommended to just focus on construction.
Try not to work on more then one construction in one day, you're encouraged to spread a construction over multiple sittings/days as needed.
Hello, AzureTestament!
Thank you greatly for your thorough review! It has definitely pointed out my weak moments.
I made the revisions and tried my best to fix those mistakes in this new work, especially, the degrees and smoothness of ellipses and the lack of edge details (although, some ellipses ended up wonky anyway despite all the warmups I made). Spreading the work on multiple days was also of a great help for the more challenging plants.
The resubmission is here, with the references:
Hello kabachuha, its me again! I'll take a look at your revisions.
Branches
As far as the ellipses are concerned I see some improvement, and i can see even more of it on your plant constructions later on; of course, some of them are still wonky , but they're not meant to be perfect , that's to be expected at this stage of the course and will improve with time.
The lines, in the branch exersice itself are not very confident : sometimes they're just a little wobbly , other times they end up very much so; this is not so much an issue of skill, its more likely due to focusing too much on those lines being accurate and hitting their mark, rather then being confident even if they overshoot.
This isn't an issue on most of your plant constructions later on, so it shows you had a great deal of improvement in that regard, but do keep it in mind.
Leaves
You've handled the leaves pretty well, although there's a couple of things i'd like to call out on a few of these.
Cretan maple leaf: the only issue i could see here is in your edge detail ; the way you've drawn it makes the leaf appear as if there's "three separate leaves" instead of one; try to observe your reference after every stroke , as its easy to miss these kinds of details,but aside from that this looks pretty good i'd say.
Fatsia: You've handled this one very well, there's only one thing i'd like to say , and that's try to work additively, as cutting into your forms can flatten your drawings (this is not a much of an issue for lesson 3, but it's VERY IMPORTANT for lessons 4 and 5).
Nettles: I admit that i emphasized the use of shadow shapes in texturing in my critique, however these were not used for texturing , they were used for defining the relationship between the leaves (which i can see as clearly being in the reference),which was a point in my older critique that you've adressed; The problem here is that the leaf that is casting said shadow isn't actually present in the drawing so it makes said relationship unclear, that being said you've handled the leaf itself fairly well along with its edge detail.
Lime: the only real issue here is that you skipped a constructional stage, more specifically , you drew the "spike" at the end of the leaf and the main leaf shape at the same time; Be sure to just draw a simple shape for the leaf first , then add smaller parts of the drawing ,like said spike, and finally move onto edge detail.
Plant constructions
Moving onto the plants , this is where the greatest deal of improvements seem to have been made.
Your lines and ellipses , as said , have shown the biggest improvement over time, as long as you keep this up and warm up you'll go a long way.
Your leaves on the dragonfruit and lily have a very good sense of flow, you're not afraid of letting the lines overlap with each other and with other leaves , very good job.
You've spent a great deal of time observing and drawing the Engleria,along with the same improvements as the previous plant, which is great to see.
As far as the Cloudberry goes , be careful about little instances where you slip and forget to draw the center line of leaves, like the 2 side leaves on the bottoms; while they're part of the same leaf, those lines are a fundamental part of construction , so try not to forget them.
On the same note , always observe your reference; this is as, if not more important then the ability to draw itself , i notice your edge detail frequently ends up looking very uniform , and completely different from your reference.
This mostly comes from our tendencies to auto-pilot , which emerges because we are aware that we'll need to draw a LOT of edge detail, which overwhelms us and causes us to make marks that look very similar to each other; every time you notice this happen, try to take back control, and while in most cases you'll continue to auto-pilot(which is normal), eventually this will increase your ability to stop it and be more careful with observation.
Obviously, there's things you could improve on, but overall i see you've improved over the course of your revisions, so as long as you keep these points in mind and keep practicing , you're good to go.
If you have any questions , feel free to ask them, whether here or on the discord channels dedicated to them.
I'll mark the lesson as complete; keep it up , and good luck on your journey!
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 4
Thank you again for your time and your careful observation of my work. I think all of your remarks are to the point and I'll continue to work on them.
Good luck on your journey too!
Stan Prokopenko's had been teaching figure drawing as far back as I can remember, even when I was just a regular student myself. It's safe to say that when it comes to figure drawing, his tutelage is among the best.
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