To answer your question before we get started, this is an understandable concern, and you are not alone in that. It's something I definitely want to address with the newer demonstrations that will come when my video content overhaul reaches Lesson 4, but for the time being, I have one recommendation that has worked for some, although as phobias manifest in different ways, may not work for everyone: crustaceans.

Crustaceans hit all the same points that allow Lesson 4 to serve its purpose within the whole curriculum, so you are entirely okay to do all of Lesson 4 with various lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, crabs, etc. You'll also find demonstrations for a shrimp and a lobster on the informal demos page. While these do not include more detailed writeups (just basic notes) or videos, they are actually the best demos we have for the lesson, simply because they're the most recent (with the course material constantly evolving as I learn better ways to express the concepts through doing all of these critiques). So, give that a shot, and see how it works.

Anyway! Jumping right into your critique, as a whole you've done a great job. Your arrows are off to a great start, being drawn with a great deal of confidence, which helps immeasurably in conveying the fluid manner in which they move through the world. This carries over very nicely into your leaves, where you're capturing how they not only sit statically in 3D space, but also how they actually move through the space they occupy.

You're generally having a fair bit of success in tackling the edge detail as well - I'm glad to see that you're doing so with individual marks that rise off and return to the existing edge, although try to take a bit more care to have them do so as seamlessly as ytou can. I am seeing a tendency to overshoot that edge a little, as seen here. This breaks the illusion that we're modifying the structure, and instead reminds us that we're looking at a series of lines on a flat page.

Continuing onto the branches, it appears you are generally following the instructions quite well! I have just one suggestion to help you keep making the most out of this exercise. When drawing the next segment, try and use the last chunk of the previous one as a runway, overlapping it directly, before shooting off to the next direction. You can see an example of what I mean here in the instructions.

Moving onto your plant constructions, we're mainly sticking to the trend. I do have a couple things to call out, but as a whole you're holding well to the core principles of construction.

• First off, for your sunflower, you started out with a larger ellipse to help establish the boundary to which the petals would reach (similarly to the hibiscus demo). When using this kind of tool, be sure to have all the petals extend to the perimeter of the ellipse, rather than just some. Of course, you don't have to use an ellipse in this fashion if you want the petals to be less consistent, or you can even use several ellipses to establish different "layers" of petals, but if you've got one, then try and view it as a decision being made about the construction - and so every subsequent stage must respect that decision, and avoid contradicting it. It's similar to ensuring that a given petal ends right where its flow line does (which you've done a great job of adhering to).

• This plant's petals are heart shaped - so they've got a little bit of extra complexity at their tips. That complexity should be built up to in stages, rather than all at once as you've done here. So you'd draw a simpler shape with a rounded end, then you'd cut back into it to create that "heart" shape.

• And lastly, in terms of how you use the space available to you on the page... there's definitely room for improvement. You definitely want to avoid situations that artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, as it limits your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing. The best approach to use here is to ensure that the first drawing on a given page is given as much room as it requires. Only when that drawing is done should we assess whether there is enough room for another (I noticed you stuck to just one even when there was loads of empty space). If there is, we should certainly add it, and reassess once again. If there isn't, it's perfectly okay to have just one drawing on a given page as long as it is making full use of the space available to it. It's also worth mentioning that in some situations, you'll have repetitions of the same elements - there's nothing requiring you to draw the whole plant that is visible in your reference image. Sometimes focusing on an particular section, as though you took a clipping of the plant, can allow you to explore its forms at a larger size.

And with that, I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.