Hello Lu_Draws_Something, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.
Arrows
Your arrows are looking confident and fluid, you're making good use of the depth of the page and it's good to see that you make use of shading at the overlaps which alongside the extra lineweight on top helps reinforce the depth of your arrows, although you do have one instance where your hatching was added to the incorrect side of the arrow's overlap which contradicts the particular illusion of depth we attempt to achieve in this exercise.
Your work here is good and besides the points mentioned above I recommend that in order to keep developing your skills that you go outside of your comfort zone more often, as even though your arrows look tridimensional and fluid, they're still all pretty similar, but keep in mind that these objects are very flexible, they can bend and move in all sorts of ways, exploring the different types of arrows that are possible will help you as you're forced to face different challenges.
Leaves
The fluidity present in your arrows translates nicely into these new structures, you don't only capture how they'd sit statically on the page, as if pressed against it, but you truly draw them as if we were looking through a window and seeing how these objects exist freely in space and how they move across it from moment to moment.
Considering that your basic constructions are pretty solid, it would have been nice to see you attempt some complex leaf structures to truly push your knowledge and ability.
Your application of edge detail is coming along really well, it's good that you're adding it in with roughly the same line thickness as the rest of your construction and that you take the time to capture each single piece of detail individually, this way you can maintain a higher amount of control over your marks and create a more solid, specific construction.
Your application of texture can use some work, you're not taking the time to properly capture each individual shadow shape and design them in a way that communicates the texture in the most effective manner possible. I recommend that you take a look over these notes on how to think when approaching leaf texture as they're very informative and concise.
Branches
Now let's talk about your branches. You're making an attempt at following the instructions to the exercise which is great and it allows you to create much more solid and specific constructions, but you're not always following it to the letter.
By revisiting the instructions for this exercise we can see that we lay out our edges in a way that allows us to make several marks that run seamlessly into one another, the way we achieve this is by drawing our edges in segments and making sure each line comes up to the halfway point between ellipses and that the new one is superimposed on top of the previous mark.
Currently while you're extending your edges, you're not always extending it completely up to the halfway point between ellipses, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we wish to achieve in this lesson, so don't forget to always ghost your marks and extend them fully to the desired point.
Onto your ellipses while you're drawing through them you're not drawing through them two full times, don't forget to always ghost through your ellipses as many times as necessary until you feel confident in your ability to execute it, once you do so make sure to only lift your pen after you drew through your ellipse two full times. You're aware of the ellipse degree shift and adding it to your work which is good as it helps you sell the illusion of solidity for these cylindrical forms.
Plant Construction Section
Moving on to your plant constructions your work here is solid, in general you're making use of the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson and through that you're able to create solid, and believably tridimensional structures. It's very clear that you're doing a good job here and demonstrating a strong developing sense of spatial reasoning.
Of course, there are always some things to improve, so I hope that my feedback here aids you in your journey and points out some important information that'll help you develop your skills further.
Let's talk about what is in my opinion the most important point to address, because we're drawing on a flat piece of paper, we have a lot of freedom to make whatever marks we choose - but freedom is an illusion as it just so happens that the majority of those marks will contradict the illusion we're trying to create and remind the viewer that they're just looking at a series of lines on a flat piece of paper. As such we must ensure that everything we draw itself exists as a fully enclosed form, being added to the existing structure, and being designed itself in such a way that it respects and even reinforces the illusion that what it's attaching to is also 3D.
In order to stick only to the marks that reinforce the illusion we're creating, we can force ourselves to adhere to certain rules as we build up our constructions. Rules that respect the solidity of our construction. For example - once you've put a form down on the page you must not attempt to alter its silhouette. Its silhouette is just a shape on the page which represents the form we're drawing, but its connection to that form is entirely based on its current shape. If you change that shape, you won't alter the form it represents - you'll just break the connection, leaving yourself with a flat shape. We can see this most easily in this example of what happens when we cut back into the silhouette of a form.
This is something that you do generally respect, but we can see some spots on these mushrooms where you actually did extend off existing forms' silhouettes, as we see here and in here you cut back into the form of your leaf structure.
Make sure that all of the phases of construction in your pages are clearly defined, as such don't leave arbitrary gaps in between your flow line and outer edges, they must connect.
Sometimes you're falling into the trap of zigzagging your edge detail during your construction which is a mistake as it goes against the third principle of mark making found in lesson 1. Considering that this issue is not present in your page of leaves I believe that this is partially caused by you becoming careless and attempting to rush your edge detail. Keep in mind that you must put the same amount of care and effort behind every line that you make, edge detail is another step of construction and it must be respected.
When drawing cylindrical structures such as plant pots, make sure to draw them around a minor axis as that'll help you keep your several ellipses aligned to each other more easily.
You're approaching texture in these pages in a very explicit manner, and you don't seem to be giving yourself as much time as necessary in order to truly take your work to the next level. Keep in mind that texture in the context of this course is an extension of the concepts of construction. In a lot of ways they're the same concept, with construction being focused on the big and primitive forms that make up different objects, with texture simply being focused on conveying to the viewer the small forms that run along the surface an object, if it's thick and rugged, or if it's smooth and sharp, essentially texture is a way of visually communicating to the viewer what it would feel like to run their hands across that object's surface.
Everything that we draw here is based on what's physically present in our construction. As introduced back in Lesson 2 in what are essentially the "principles" of texture in Drawabox and how it is used in the course, we can notice that we should focus on each individual form and how it casts a shadow on neighboring surfaces, understanding how each individual form sits on a 3D space, and closely analyzing all of this information present in our reference to be able to translate it to our study.
The shape of this shadow is what defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, only after careful observation can we understand how to best design a dynamic shadow shape that conveys the texture of an object, as well as how that shadow should be affected by the surface it's being cast on, as a shadow cast on a rounded surface will be round, wrapping around the underlying surface, while a shadow on a plain smooth surface will suffer less distortion to it's original shape.
This is, of course much more difficult than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive, but these techniques of texture are the ones that best reinforce the ideas of spatial reasoning taught in Drawabox. As you keep applying them to your work, you'll find yourself asking how to convey the texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing more on the implicit mark-making techniques introduced in Lesson 2. Going forward here are a couple of final reminders of how texture in Drawabox is approached.
Final Thoughts
In general a solid submission that can be strengthened by you putting some more time into each construction in order to ensure you're always following the instructions closely and not rushing any step of the way. I believe that you are ready for the challenges present in the next lesson and as such I'll be marking this submission as complete. Good luck in Lesson 4.
Next Steps:
Don't forget to add these exercises to your list of warm ups.
Move on to Lesson 4.
Let's be real here for a second: fineliners can get pricey. It varies from brand to brand, store to store, and country to country, but good fineliners like the Staedtler Pigment Liner (my personal brand favourite) can cost an arm and a leg. I remember finding them being sold individually at a Michael's for $4-$5 each. That's highway robbery right there.
Now, we're not a big company ourselves or anything, but we have been in a position to periodically import large batches of pens that we've sourced ourselves - using the wholesale route to keep costs down, and then to split the savings between getting pens to you for cheaper, and setting some aside to one day produce our own.
These pens are each hand-tested (on a little card we include in the package) to avoid sending out any duds (another problem with pens sold in stores). We also checked out a handful of different options before settling on this supplier - mainly looking for pens that were as close to the Staedtler Pigment Liner. If I'm being honest, I think these might even perform a little better, at least for our use case in this course.
We've also tested their longevity. We've found that if we're reasonably gentle with them, we can get through all of Lesson 1, and halfway through the box challenge. We actually had ScyllaStew test them while recording realtime videos of her working through the lesson work, which you can check out here, along with a variety of reviews of other brands.
Now, I will say this - we're only really in a position to make this an attractive offer for those in the continental United States (where we can offer shipping for free). We do ship internationally, but between the shipping prices and shipping times, it's probably not the best offer you can find - though this may depend. We also straight up can't ship to the UK, thanks to some fairly new restrictions they've put into place relating to their Brexit transition. I know that's a bummer - I'm Canadian myself - but hopefully one day we can expand things more meaningfully to the rest of the world.
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