1:58 PM, Monday February 27th 2023
Hello, Alek! Here’s my critique for you:
Organic arrows
Although you said it was a struggle for you, I can see some tapering on your arrows :)
All the lines are confident too and you used the shading well. I am not sure what exactly is the main difficulty, but it might be useful to know that the lines can’t be perfectly aligned if they are proportionally getting smaller (they’ll be at an angle).
Leaves
Well done with the leaves! I like that you worked additively on the compound leaves and made an envelope for the maple (or maple-looking) leaf. All the leaves are flowing and look pretty good.
Branches
The ellipses of the branches are not aligned to their minor axes (it should cut them perfectly in half) and you mostly didn’t go through them twice. I can see many compound stroke edges. Looks like you rushed this one.
Plants
Red plant and mushroom – good job using the leaves exercise on the petals and the branches on stems. I must point out that the anthers (the bud-like forms on the flower) are random, they don’t represent volumes in 3D space. These simple strokes can definitely work in some art styles, but here, we wanted to represent them as 3D forms – ellipses.
Red and purple flowers – these are pretty complex subjects and harder to draw because of that. It is good that you are thinking about the underlying structure, drawing through forms. In this case, the drawings should’ve been bigger because of the amount of detail, and the leaves exercise had to be applied for most petals. I see some attempts for the purple flower. Be careful with ultra-complex subjects like these. Drawing these takes a lot of time.
Cactus and white flower – nice job showing the forms and constructing. I think it might’ve been better to use a sphere for the heads of the cacti and then add tapering cylindrical forms to that. The white flower’s petals seem a bit rushed, but it’s nice to see you are trying to apply the leaves exercise here again.
Rose and purple group of flowers – These are pretty good considering the petals of the purple flower and stems. I would recommend drawing a center line and some additional contours (sorry about the random line on the right, I couldn't delete it in my image editing software) to help you align the features and show where they are emerging from.
Overall, you did a pretty good job! I hope this helps.
Next Steps:
Since you had a lot of issues with the branches exercise both by itself and in the plant drawings, I recommend doing half a page really thinking about the minor axis and ellipses. Don't rush this time, and let the minor axis help you place the ellipses. Go through them 2 times. Don't forget to change the degrees.
