Hello Fruichi, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking smooth and confident which helps sell the feeling of fluidity that arrows should possess as they move across the world. It's good to see that you're making use of hatching and added lineweight in order to reinforce the feeling of depth in your arrows, but speaking of depth, while your arrows certainly look tridimensional they're too contained to the space of the page and don't make full use of the depth of the page.

Push your use of foreshortening and the size between each arrow segment in order to fully explore how arrows can move across a tridimensional space.

Leaves

Moving onto your leaves, first things first, it's important to mention how you've submitted two pages for this exercise, when only 1 was requested. This is not the only time you submit more work than was requested, so remember not to grind, complete only the amount of work assigned, as it was assigned.

Something I've noticed right away is that most of your leaves aren't folding or bending in any way. As explained in the intro to this exercise leaves are objects that are easily influenced by outside forces such as the wind or gravity. When you construct leaves think of the forces that affect them, think about how they must flow through space from moment to moment, not only how they sit statically within that space. This is important because when tackling actual plant structures you'll find that it's very rare that all the leaf structures in your reference will be completely rotated towards the viewer with no folds or overlaps all the time, so it's very useful to start tackling these kinds of leaf orientations as early as you can.

Your application of edge detail is pretty good, you don't seem to try to capture more than one piece of detail at a time and you generally add your new marks with a similar line thickness to your original construction - which is exactly what we want. The only thing you must keep in mind is that this step of the process should be added additively, that is, you shoud add your new smaller forms on top of your construction, and avoid cutting back into what you've already drawn, as that can make us focus too much on manipulating shapes on the page, instead of the forms they represent.

Your use of texture seems to be headed in the right direction, I believe you'll find these extra notes on how to think when approaching leaf textures very useful, as well as this demo on creating more interesting and dynamic shadow shapes.

Branches

Your branches are coming along pretty decently as you're generally following the instructions for the exercise. It's good to see that you're extending your line segments but you must remember to always extend your lines fully up to the halfway point between ellipses.

So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, once that's done you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse point and repeat the pattern until your branch is complete. This helps us maintain control of our marks and allows for a healthy overlap between lines, which helps us achieve a more seamless transition between segments.

It's good to see that you're drawing through your ellipses twice - save for a couple of places - which allows you to create much smoother and confident marks. It's also great that you're aware of the ellipse degree shift and applying it to your work as that helps solidify your cylindrical forms.

Plant Construction Section

Now let's move on to your plant constructions, in general you've done an incredible job with these pages, all of your work is looking tridimensional, your attempts at the demos are solid and your own constructions also demonstrate a strong understanding of 3d space. You're not only capturing these objects as they seem, you're breaking them down into their primitive forms and thus growing a deeper understanding of how these structures exist in a real space.

Of course while your work is great, there are always a couple of things we can improve, as such I'll be mentioning some of the points you should look out for when you tackle these exercises again, some of them are a bit nitpicky, but I believe it's worth mentioning them regardless.

First off, something that you must keep in mind is to always pay attention to the amount of homework specified in the Homework Section of the Lesson material. As mentioned back in Lesson 0, in order to get the most out of Drawabox make sure to only complete the amount of work requested, as it was requested, if you wish to include your attempts at the demos alongside your homework they should make up less than half of your homework pages.

• You often accidentally cut back into the ellipses that you draw, this minor issue can slightly undermine the solidity of your previous construction. In order to avoid this, always treat your ellipse's outer perimeter as the defining edge of the form.

• It's great to see that you're going the extra mile and fully constructing the plant pots present in your reference pictures, they'll look even better if you add a couple of extra details - make sure to also fully construct the rim of the plant pot, adding an inner ellipse to indicate the inside of the pot, and possibly add some forms or texture in order to indicate the dirt or soil in the pot and how your plant structures connect to it.

• You add this nicely in this Peace Lily although an extra contour that denotes where the soil starts and ends would have helped push this relationship between the forms further, an example where this relationship wasn't communicated is in this construction where it's unclear to the viewer how the plant structures relate to the soil that should be in the pot and it's relationship to the pot itself.

• These leaf structures feel stiff, this is because your initial flow line is too straight and has visible signs of hesitation, your outer edge lines are the same as you're too preoccupied with capturing the specific look of the leaf, which causes you to be hesitant and your lines to not flow as well as they could. Remember that these exercises are not about drawing objects as they are, they're about giving you the tools to distill certain objects to their primitive forms so that through these tridimensional puzzles you'll develop your sense of spatial reasoning. So don't forget to always put confidence above accuracy.

Another issue in this construction is that you don't make use of the forking branches construction method when it would be applicable. Remember to always make use of the construction techniques and methods introduced in the lessons.

Final Thoughts

That's mostly it! As I've mentioned, your work is phenomenal, and I've got no doubt you'll do great in the next lesson, as such, I'll be marking this lesson as complete, don't forget to keep these points in mind so that you can take your work to the next level. Good luck in Lesson 4.