Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants
4:27 PM, Sunday June 19th 2022
Finished Lesson 3! Feedback appreciated :)
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11:35 PM, Sunday June 19th 2022
Jumping right in with your arrows, you're executing these with a ton of confidence. That's exactly what I want to see here, as it really pushes the sense that your arrows are flowing through the world. This carries over very nicely into your leaves, where you're capturing not only how they sit statically in 3D space, but also how they move through the space they themselves occupy.
Overall you're handling the edge detail pretty nicely as well, although I have one main recommendation - avoid going back over the entire leaf with edge detail, at least as much as possible - this will make you more likely to zigzag your edge detail back and forth across the previous edge, which as explained here should be avoided, as it results in a weaker relationship between the different stages of construction. We can actually see this happening a fair bit on this leaf for example.
Continuing onto your branches, there is some inconsistency in how closely you're following the instructions here. Frequently you end up neglecting to extend each segment fully halfway to the next ellipse, and sometimes you don't start the next segment back at the previous ellipse, both of which really minimize the overlap between them. That overlap is important - it allows for a smoother, more seamless transition from one segment to the next. Be sure to always follow the instruction to the letter.
Moving onto your plant constructions, overall these are doing quite well, with just a couple points I want to raise. Your constructions are generally pretty solid, but keep the following in mind:
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As I mentioned before, we want all the phases of construction to be tight and specific - so if you start a flower with an ellipse to establish how far out your petals are going to reach (as you did here while following along with the hibsicus demo), your flow lines should reach to the perimeter of that ellipse specifically, not going farther or falling short. Then, each petal would similarly end where the flow line does, allowing each step to effectively make a decision, and having every subsequent step abide by that decision rather than contradicting it.
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I also noticed on that same hibiscus demo drawing that the lower leaf has two sets of lines - remember that what we're doing in this course is not sketching. It's a specific approach where every single mark, every shape, every form introduces something in 3D space. What you've drawn there effectively superimposes two leaves in the same space, which is itself another contradiction, and can undermine the solidity of the overall result.
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Another thing to keep in mind is that you should generally not trace back over your existing linework to arbitrarily reinforce it. I suspect you're trying to use line weight here, but line weight itself should be applied in a more limited, targeted fashion, being used to clarify how different forms overlap one another, and being limited to the localized areas where those overlaps occur as explained here.
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On this drawing your use of filled black areas seems to focus primarily on form shading, which as explained here in Lesson 2 should not be included in our drawings for this course. Try to reserve your filled areas of solid black for cast shadows only - which are always going to be first designed with consideration to the relationship between the form casting it, and the surface receiving it, before being filled in with a thicker pen or a brush pen.
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When you're drawing your cylindrical flower pots, be sure to build them around a central minor axis line to help you in aligning your ellipses. I'm pleased to see that you're including additional ellipses to establish the thickness of the pot's rim, although another to establish the level of the soil can be helpful, as it provides us with something for the plant's stem to intersect with.
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Also, remember in those cylindrical structures, the degree of your ellipses will shift wider as we move farther from the viewer - so your ellipses in this one are reversed. The base should be wider, not the top.
All in all, these are things you can continue to address on your own, and overall I'm still pleased with your results. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Move onto lesson 4.
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Like the Staedtlers, these also come in a set of multiple weights - the ones we use are F. One useful thing in these sets however (if you can't find the pens individually) is that some of the sets come with a brush pen (the B size). These can be helpful in filling out big black areas.
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