No worries on the double submission - people forget to click the official critique button every now and then. I've gone ahead and removed the erroneous post.

Starting with your arrows, these are quite well done. The linework is confident and fluid, capturing a strong sense of motion for each individual arrow. This carries over somewhat into your leaves, although I do suspect that at least to a small degree, you've gotten a little too focused on the fact that you're drawing something real and tangible, and in doing so you focused more on capturing how each leaf sits statically in space - and perhaps less so how they flow through the world. It's not that they're totally stiff - they're actually pretty decent. They can however be better, and we can achieve that by drawing that initial flow line thinking about how it is meant to represent a vector of motion, an actual force going through the world. Think of it like it's representative of the wind itself, which pushes the leaf through space.

Every step of construction serves its own specific job, with the flow line establishing how the leaf moves. From there, the simple silhouette takes that vector of motion and expands it into an actual flat form, following that trajectory. From there we can of course use our reference images to help inform the edge detail and surface texture of the leaf. Speaking of which, the edge detail is well done - you've constructed it off the existing, simpler structure from the previous phase of construction, so I'm pleased to see that you're not trying to redraw the entire leaf but rather are building things up with proper respect for the constructional process.

For the vein texture however, you're moving in the right direction as far as working with cast shadow shapes on either end of a given vein goes, but you're way too heavy with it, and are still treating those shadows in a similar fashion to outlines. You need to be willing to allow those cast shadows to disappear, to only come up in key areas where they can do the most good. You can see an example of this in the leaves exercise diagram, where in the 4th step I focus cast shadow shapes right where the veins tend to branch out. Notice how they don't run along the whole length of a given vein. They disappear and reappear instead, creating what are sometimes referred to as "lost and found edges".

Continuing onto your branches, your results are coming along well, save for one issue - you're not extending each segment fully halfway to the next ellipse, instead stopping them just barely past the previous one. As shown here, each segment should be drawn from one ellipse, past the second and halfway to the third, with the next one starting at the second ellipse and repeating the pattern. This allows for a healthy overlap between segments, which in turn lets us transition more smoothly and seamlessly from one to the next. Be sure to hold to that when doing this exercise in the future.

Moving onto your plant constructions, for the most part you're doing okay, but there are a number of things I want to point out to keep you on the right track.

• First and foremost, ease up on your line weight, and perhaps more importantly, do not apply your line weight as you go. Most of your construction should really be at the same general thickness to avoid committing yourself to particular decisions too soon. Then when you're reaching the end of a construction, you can conisder where additional line weight can be added - in specific, localized areas rather than along the whole silhouette of a structure to help clarify specific overlaps (as you can see it being used here). Don't go wild covering up the entire silhouette of a given form with line weight.

• On this flame tree drawing, there are two main things I want to draw your attention to (aside from the line weight which I already addressed). Firstly, you opted to start out with an ellipse, which isn't itself a bad choice - but it is a mistake to put a mark down, then proceed to ignore it moving forwards. We use a similar approach in the hibiscus drawing, where we put down an ellipse to define the bounds to which its petals will extend - but in doing so, we need to always acknowledge that we're creating a structure in the drawing that then needs to be adhered to. That ellipse defines how far out the petals extend, so their flow lines must then extend to the ellipse's perimeter. Similarly here, when drawing such a structure, you need to think about how big it needs to be in order to serve its purpose - and then once drawn, you need to stick to it, even if you ended up drawing it way too small. We are not sketching in this course - we are constructing, and that means step by step, making decision after decision. If we contradict a choice by re-answering a given question, then we introduce contradictions into our drawing that the viewer will pick up on.

• The second point about the flame tree drawing is that you should be drawing each and every form in its entirety - including all of the petals. This is so we can fully understand how each form sits in 3D space, and in turn how they relate to one another within that space. When we draw them only partially, cutting them off where other petals block our view, we approach the drawing as just that - a drawing on a flat piece of paper. Each and every drawing throughout this course is an exercise in spatial reasoning, so ensuring that we focus towards that end is important. I also noted that you didn't really apply the leaf construction technique here, opting not to start with a flow line, and instead solving both how a given petal exists in space, and how it moves through that space simultaneously, rather than breaking the complex problem into smaller ones solved one at a time.

• This drawing is a good example of one where things definitely got away from you, likely because you were trying to do a lot of things all at once. While I can see you attempting to apply the leaf construction approach, you're clearly thinking about a bunch of different things all at once, trying to think several steps ahead rather than just focusing on the specific task upon which you're working now. A drawing may consist of just a handful of strokes, or it may consist of hundreds - regardless, you should be focusing on what you're doing in the moment, and execute each and every mark to the absolute best of your current ability. That means using the ghosting method, regardless of how complex the overall drawing is. None of these drawings need to be finished in one sitting, or in one day. They can take as long as you need. And of course, mistakes, once made, cannot be ignored. They are a part of the construction. That isn't a bad thing - mistakes happen, they're a normal part of learning. But once made, don't attempt to fix them, or you'll just draw more attention. Just keep moving forward.

• The jagged/wavy edges of the petals on this plant are definitely an example of you attempting to tackle far more complexity way too soon. The principles we're exploring throughout this lesson, and this course, is to work from simple to complex - laying down simple structures, just as with step 2 of the leaf construction process (where we lay down the basic silhouette with no unnecessary edge detail), then build that edge detail on top. In this case, the standard leaf construction process would have worked, though drawing an ellipse to define the whole top of the flower and then cutting back into it to create the irregular edges would have also worked. As a whole, again I think you're straying from the principles covered in the lesson. This can happen when we get overwhelmed with the complexity of a construction - we panic, we stop thinking, and we just flail a little. Instead, take a step back and reflect on what you've learned so far. Look at the tools in your belt, and find out where and how they can help you solve the problem at hand.

• I noticed that you definitely did try a lot of particularly complex plants - especially ones with a lot of separate elements, like the jade vine, bleeding heart, blue bells, etc. Now it's definitely admirable that you've bitten off so much, but I do want to offer one piece of advice: you don't have to draw everything featured in a given reference image, and sometimes doing so can actually make things a lot harder than they need to be. Space itself - that is, space on the page - is useful. Drawing things small can get in the way, impeding our brain's ability to think through spatial problems, and also making it harder to engage our whole arm while drawing. If you have the choice between drawing 8 flowers on a branch at a smaller scale, or focusing on a section of 2 or 3 flowers at a much larger scale, opt for fewer flowers drawn bigger. It'll be more beneficial as an exercise, by far.

Now there is a lot here for you to go through, but despite them you are in many ways going in the right direction. I do however want to see you take your time in the application of each individual mark you make. You're definitely pouring a lot of time into each drawing, but in general you appear to be picking challenges that are far more involved, with far more complexity - things that have way more marks to make, and therefore even if you spend hours on a given drawing, you're putting yourself in a situation where individual marks still come out somewhat rushed, and where you're probably not able to apply the ghosting method consistently across the board.

So, I'm going to ask for just a couple additional pages. I recommend you take it easy on yourself - pick simple plants that don't have too much going on. Go through the process of construction one step at a time, invest as much time as is required for each mark, and don't worry about line weight until you're at the end of a construction. You'll find the revisions assigned below.