Starting with your arrows, you're doing a good job of drawing these such that they flow fluidly and smoothly through space. I am noticing however that when you add line weight, it tends to be a little clumsier, because you're drawing those marks more slowly, focusing entirely on tracing over the existing lines. Line weight should be drawn in the same way as the original linework - confidently, using the ghosting method. This may hurt your accuracy, but that's okay - it'll improve with practice. What it will do however is help keep those lines smooth and consistent, while also helping them taper more naturally so they can blend back into the existing linework as shown here.

As a side note, make sure that you're compressing the gaps between the zigzagging sections of your arrows as we look farther back, as shown here.

Continuing onto your leaves, you're definitely capturing these with the same kind of confidence and fluidity, pinning down not only how they sit in space, but also how they move through the space they occupy. That said, I do have a pretty significant concern about how you're approaching building upon those structures to add edge detail.

From what I can see, you're treating each individual phase of construction as an opportunity to redraw each leaf in its entirety, generally with a darker stroke. While I am pleased to see that you're generally using the previous phase of construction as a scaffolding, construction is not about creating full replacements for the structure at every step. Instead, construction is about simply building up the parts that change from one phase to another. In the end, every stage of construction contributes to the end result.

As shown here, in the 3rd step there, I'm not redrawing the entire outer edge of the leaf - I'm merely cutting back into it in order to add the additional structure that the current one can now support.

This is an issue that is present throughout your plants - you lay down structure, but redraw it in its entirety, with darker lines, at each phase of construction, effectively treating previous stages of construction like under drawings that would be erased, were it possible. Sometimes students confuse this with the use of line weight - but as addressed earlier, line weight isn't traced back over the existing linework. It exists only to clarify particular overlaps between forms in specific, localized areas - never to redraw or replace the entire image.

Moving on, your branches have a couple issues:

• First and foremost, you aren't consistently extending your segments fully halfway to the next ellipse. As explained here, this and the overlap between segments it produces helps us transition more smoothly and seamlessly from one line to the next.

• It's best to treat the last chunk of the previous segment as a runway, overlapping it directly, rather than drawing your segments where the last one ought to have been. This will make the exercise more difficult, but by forcing you to deal with the little mistakes along the way, you'll learn from them more quickly.

Continuing onto your plant constructions, the point I already addressed - where you're redrawing things far too much, is definitely the main problem. I've addressed this already, but I'm going to touch on it a little more just to be completely clear.

In the case of this form, you initially drew a lighter, more confident ellipse. That is the mark that defines the form you're adding to your construction, and you should not have attempted to trace back over it with a darker stroke. Instead, aim to make the original mark tight and smooth, using the ghosting method to balance confidence and control.

One other point I wanted to share with you actually isn't a mistake - or rather, it's not something I want students to worry about while they go through this lesson, but moving forwards it will become more relevant. When we add more complex edge detail to a leaf, we basically just go in and alter its silhouette by adding little bumps, tears, etc. as needed. Attempting to employ this same approach to add complexity to a form that actually has its own volume, however, doesn't work so well. This cactus is a good example. The cactus itself has a thickness to it, but altering its silhouette will actually cause it to flatten out. With leaves, it's not an issue - they're already flat. But as shown here, in order to build up complexity on a more solid, voluminous form, we need to actually wrap new forms around it.

And finally, one last thing - looking at your homework, it seems to me that the paper you're working with might not be the best choice for the work we're doing in this course. I can't be sure, but from the little hairs I can see in the photos, it seems like you're using paper that is probably better suited to working with dry media (graphite, charcoal, etc). That kind of paper is not intended to be used with pens. It'll drain your ink more quickly, and will result in less consistent marks.

As explained back in Lesson 0, it really is best that you stick to smooth printer paper for this course, as it will be much kinder to your pens.

Anyway, I'm going to assign some revisions below, for you to address the issues I've pointed out here.