Hello NeonFuture, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your lines are looking fairly confident and smooth, which helps communicate a nice sense of fluidity in your arrows as they move through the world. You're keeping foreshorting in mind while constructing your arrows which allows you to make really good use of perspective and the depth of your page, this gives a nice extra layer of tridimensionality to your arrows.

Your usage of hatching helps you establish how your arrows twist and turn in space and further your own understanding of the tridimensional space these objects occupy, it's also good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.

You've done a good job on this exercise, what I'd like to tell you so you can keep getting the most out of this exercise is actually to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone more often the next time you tackle this exercise, try arrows with different kinds of twists and turns and different rates of foreshortening, keep in mind that arrows are very flexible objects and can move freely across the world in all sorts of manners, so you should push yourself and explore the different possibilities.

Leaves

The linework for your leaves is looking smooth which helps communicate their fluidity and sense of energy, it's good that you're not only trying to capture how these structures sit statically within space, but also how they move across it from moment to moment.

It's good to see that you're also experimenting with some more complex types of leaf structures, but remember not to skip construction steps when approaching these more intricate structures.

This structure is not as tightly constructed as it could be, because you skipped construction steps and tried to capture the smaller leaves right away, instead of constructing each individual arm with the leaf construction method. Even though leaves are single entities they can still made be made up of several parts and they should be constructed thoroughly.

Your addition of edge detail is generally looking good, as you don't usually attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, and you generally construct your edge detail additively. You're also keeping the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, all of which is very good and helps you create a tighter, more solid construction that still feels fluid and energetic.

Branches

Moving on to your branches they are coming along really decently made as you're following the instructions for the exercise, you're drawing your edges in segments which allows you to maintain higher control over your marks which allows you to create some solid but still organic looking structures.

There are a lot of visible tails present in these branch structures, while this is a very common mistake we can attempt to mitigate it by limiting the amount of ellipses in our branches, by spacing them further apart we'll allow for a bigger length of runway between ellipses, and ensure a smoother, more seamless transition between marks.

For ellipses it's good to see that you're making an attempt to always draw through them twice, as that allows for a smoother mark overall. It's good to see that you also seem aware of the ellipse degree shift but it can be improved, as it stands some of your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which flattens your structures. Remember that as a form shifts in relation to the viewer, so will the degree of the ellipses within that structure also shift.

Plant Construction Section

And lastly let's take a look at your plant constructions, which are coming along really well made. You're generally making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in this Lesson which helps you create the illusion of tridimensionality in your work, you're not only trying to capture what these structures look like, but you're also focusing on how they work, how they exist fully in tridimensional space.

This is all very good and it's helping you develop a strong sense of spatial reasoning, there are only a couple of small things that if kept in mind will help you take your work to the next level.

First things first, an issue that hurts your work without you even realizing is the fact that you're pre-planning the amount of constructions you want to fit on a given page before you've even committed to any of them. As it stands you have chosen some very complex structures which has limited your ability to make full use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in your work at points.

In this course there are two things we must allow ourselves as we go through these exercises, they are time and space. By limiting the amount of constructions you try to fit on a given page you'll allow yourself not only more room to work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when tackling these exercises, but also give you enough space to fully engage your whole arm.

This issue also leads into the next problem, which is that at points you deviate from the instructions for the exercise. Always keep in mind that the construction methods and techniques introduced in this course must always be applied to your work, as they're tools which will help you construct much tighter and solid looking structures, examples where you deviate from the construction methods can be found here where you skip construction steps by not constructing the petals with the leaf construction method, and not constructing the flower stems with the proper branch construction method.

The same thing about branches can be said for your attempt at the potato plant demo and this construction. Remember that these techniques and methods are not guidelines or suggestions - they are rules.

It's good to see that you're making use of boundaries and to great effect, but there are a couple of times where you're not following it as strictly such as in here and here, keep in mind that when making use of a boundary, follow it specifically, otherwise it may was well not exist.

Final Thoughts

In general you are doing really well with these exercises, you're demonstrating a strong sense of spatial reasoning in these pages. I believe these issues can be addressed during your warm ups and that you are ready for the next lesson. I'm going to be marking this submission as complete, good luck in Lesson 4.