You have returned! Good to see that you're back.

So, starting with your arrows, these are looking great. They flow fluidly and confidently through space, and you, at least in some of these, are doing a great job of conveying the depth of the scene in how perspective is applied to both the positive space (the width of the ribbon) and negative space (the distances between the zigzagging sections) of the arrow. To this point, remember that that as we look farther away, the zigzagging sections will indeed compress, resulting in eventual overlapping. You did a good job of this with the arrow in the center of the page, but towards the top it wasn't quite as well presented, which resulted in more of a sense that the arrow was in fact moving closer to the surface of the page (despite the ribbon's width suggesting otherwise).

Moving onto your leaves, I am noticing that your linework is stiffening up a little bit, but overall you're conveying a similar sense of flow and fluidity here as you did with your arrows, which is good to see. Just always remember that every single mark you put down should be drawn confidently, without any hesitation, no matter how concerned you may be with making an accurate mark. All the accuracy in the world isn't worth anything if the stroke comes out rigid for it. Of course, I didn't see too much of this in your work - just the bottom left leaf.

Moving onto your branches, these are definitely moving in the right direction, but the stiffness of your strokes is more of a concern here than in the previous exercise. The ghosting method - when applied correctly - should effectively make it impossible to draw stiffly (just inaccurately), being that each stage of the process focuses on a different priority. First we identify exactly what task a line needs to accomplish for us, whether the mark we're looking to make is indeed the best choice for that job, etc. Then we go through the motions of the stroke to get accustomed to the movement required of us, in the interest of improving our accuracy (our ability to get the mark we decided we needed in the previous phase). Finally, once we execute and our pen touches the page, accuracy is no longer our concern. All we can do is push through without any hesitation, as any opportunity to avoid a mistake has now passed. It's like we're a different person now taking on the job - if we mess up our accuracy, then it was the last guy's fault.

Aside from that, these are honestly pretty well done in terms of the focus being on creating a long stroke from a series of individual segments that flow seamlessly into one another. There are definitely little tails that stick out along the way, and you'll continue to work on that, but you're headed in the right direction. One thing that can help is to use the last chunk of the previous stroke as a runway for the next one, overlapping it directly before shooting off towards your next target.

In regards to the question you asked, I wouldn't go on to implement another ellipse if you overshoot. The individual drawings we do are irrelevant, but if we're allowing ourselves to correct those mistakes after the fact to somehow salvage a piece that is going wrong, it keeps us from appreciating the fact that we made a mistake in the first place, and that we have something to continue to improve upon.

Moving onto your plant constructions, for the most part you're headed in the right direction, and are applying the principles in the lesson fairly well. There are a few issues I'll point out, and some constructions certainly came out better than others, but your struggles were primarily with the more complicated ones, which makes perfect sense.

The first thing I wanted to call out is in your mushroom drawing, you've got it labelled as "mushroom demo" but it looks like you were drawing along with an entirely different reference. That aside, what stood out to me was the degree of the ellipses you'd drawn. The degree certainly changes as we move up from the base, but it does not appear to be in a manner that is actually consistent. At the bottom the ellipse is quite circular, and then the degree narrows as we shift to the next one (which is correct). Going up to the following one, the degree widens again, which is incorrect - as we move closer to the viewer, unless the stem of the mushroom is no longer circular, that degree is going to continue to narrow. This is something you need to think about when putting these ellipses down - don't draw them with arbitrary ellipses, as it influences what is being conveyed to the viewer.

Looking at your potato plant, I'm pleased t osee that you drew through each and every leaf in its entirety, though there are a couple things that I noticed:

• You appear to be correcting mistakes here and there. Don't. If a line does not come out as intended, leave it be and continue with the drawing. If you attempt to fix things, you'll only pile more ink onto the problematic areas, drawing more attention to it and losing control over where you decide your focal areas ought to be.

• Cast shadows are an excellent way to help separate out our forms, but here you appear to be filling in the gaps between the leaves with black, instead of actually thinking in terms of shadows being cast by the forms themselves.

With your 'samantha' drawing, I can definitely see that this one was a tricky problem to solve, but you definitely went in the right direction with it, in a number of places. That is, capturing the impression that the leaves themselves are thick, but not rounded, through the use of contour lines and how those contour lines hook around towards the edges. Some of them did end up appearing more rounded (like the far left), but overall you're moving in the right direction.

Just remember that when you're employing contour lines, more is not always inherently better. Every contour line you add will have diminishing returns, so think about exactly what the mark you're about to draw is supposed to contribute to the drawing, before you draw it. Don't find yourself in a situation where you're just piling contour lines onto the drawing because you feel it's the right move. You should understand why they're needed, and what the additional one adds. As you can see here, a single contour line can be plenty effective.

This overuse of contour lines definitely becomes more significant in your next few drawings, so make sure this is something you think about as you draw. It's pretty common for students to draw a lot of contour lines on their leaves, because they get split between the intention of drawing contour lines and also somehow representing the 'veins' that sit along the surface of a leaf. This is why understanding exactly what we're trying to achieve with a mark is so important - if we were trying to represent the veins, then we would draw them in an entirely different manner (drawing the shadows cast by those veins along the surface of the leaf). Therefore if we're simply drawing contour lines, we need to first and foremost draw them in a way that allows them to complete their task as effectively as possible (for example, those on this page aren't all drawn to give us additional information, many are somewhat half-hearted). When the purpose of a line is split (are we drawing contour lines, or conveying veins), it becomes very easy to not do a great job of either.

The last point I wanted to make is that drawing large is very helpful - and you certainly have been giving your plants plenty of space on the page, but often times you've attempted to capture a very large chunk of a given plant. As a result, if we look at things like the snapdragon, we'll see that you've constructed many similar sections, but each one was really only given a few square inches of space on the page. As such, it may be better in the future to focus in on a particular chunk and really explore the full depths of it.

All in all, you're definitely moving in the right direction. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete, but keep in mind what I've said here as you continue to move along.

As to your apparent question at the end of you gallery, I'm not really sure what you're asking about. To be honest, it sounds like you're fretting about something that isn't that important, but if you really do need clarification, draw examples of what you mean so I can tell you which is the correct approach. Additionally, in the future, it's best that you not include your own analysis/summary, as it makes it easier to miss any important questions you may have. Just focus on the questions, and allow me to conduct my own analysis of your work in isolation.