6:12 PM, Monday October 3rd 2022
Looking at the table of ellipses, you've demonstrated that you can generally execute your ellipses such that they come out fairly evenly and smoothly. Not perfect, but definitely within a fairly normal range which'll continue to improve with practice. Despite this however, I am noticing that when you draw ellipses as parts of other exercises - like the ellipses on the tips of these organic forms with contour curves as well as those on these branches they tend to be considerably more uneven and stiff, and you also appear to be less conscious of whether or not you're drawing through them two full times as required.
To put it simply, for some reason your approach between these applications of the same skill differ. When doing the tables of ellipses, you approach them in one fashion, and when doing them elsewhere, the way you go about it is different. I can't speak to what is different or why - that's something you're going to have to identify yourself.
I should also mention that in the branches exercise, I'm not seeing the usual signs of use of the ghosting method. While that doesn't necessarily mean that you're not employing it, your linework here does tend to be somewhat inconsistent, and also suffers from issues with accuracy that come up when one isn't using the ghosting method as they should.
As far as the actual process of the branches exercise, you're generally handling it better - having each edge segment extend fully halfway to the next ellipse (or many of them anyway) - although I would recommend trying to use the last chunk of the previous edge segment as a runway, overlapping it directly before shooting off to the next target rather than drawing the next segment where the previous one ought to have been. You can see what I mean in this diagram, where the subsequent strokes start out overlapping the previous one's path.
Looking at your leaves, you're handling the addition of edge detail better for sure, although I am noticing fairly arbitrary use of filled areas of solid black. It definitely looks like you're trying to apply form shading here (which as I addressed previously is not to play a role in our drawings for this course). I'm not entirely sure if that's the intent here, but looking at this last drawing does suggest that you may not have gone through the notes I linked you to in relation to texture/detail, as you don't appear to be limiting yourself to only capturing cast shadows, but rather are filling in other areas as well.
As a whole, you're making progress, but I still do have some notable concerns about whether you're applying the techniques you know - how to draw ellipses properly (as you've shown yourself able to do in the tables of ellipses), the use of the ghosting method, etc.
As such, I'm going to assign some further revisions below.
Next Steps:
Please submit an additional 3 pages of plant constructions. For these, I really want you to push yourself in terms of holding to your responsibilities of giving yourself as much time as you require to construct each form, draw each shape, and execute each mark to the best of your current ability. That means engaging your whole arm from the shoulder, using the ghosting method, etc.
In addition to this, I want you to note down beside each drawing the date of each session you spent working on it, along with a rough estimate of how much time was spent during that session. I'm suspecting that you're simply vastly underestimating just how much time this work demands of you, and so you might be imposing other expectations on yourself (like the notion that a drawing should be completed in a given amount of time), which hinders you from upholding your end of that student's responsibility.
To that point, if this whole "responsibility" thing sounds new to you, review this video from Lesson 0.
