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

Arrows

Starting with your arrows your linework is looking confident and well executed, with only some small signs of hesitation present, smooth linework is very important for arrows as it helps communicate the sense of fluidity these objects have as they move across the page.

While your arrows certainly look tridimensional, there's no to minimal variation in size between each arrow segment, as explained here this causes your arrow to feel limited to the 2D space of your page, and doesn't allow you to explore the full range of depth in the 3D world that the page represents.

Keep in mind that due to the way perspective works objects that are farther away from the viewer look smaller and those that are closer will seem bigger. As such, for objects of consistent size that stretch across space certain segments of the object will look bigger and others smaller, make sure to vary the size of each arrow segment noticeably, in order to plan out the size difference between different segments make sure to make use of the ghosting method, building your your arrow's curves in smaller chunks and curves in order to maintain higher accuracy over your lines, but do keep in mind that eventually you should aim to draw these longer strokes in one single motion.

Your application of hatching is looking pretty good as you execute it with parallel and confident lines, but the placement of this hatching can be improved as sometimes you hatch the incorrect side of the arrow bend, the size that is closest to us, the viewer, instead of the side that's farther away, which contradicts the illusion of depth you wish to achieve in this exercise. Following the logic denoted earlier, since the bigger part of the arrow is always going to be the one closest to us, the smaller part of the segment should be the one getting the hatching in order to communicate that that side is behind the one closest to the viewer.

After finishing your arrows, never forget to make use of extra lineweight, added on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.

Leaves

The fluidity present in your arrows carries over quite nicely onto your leaves, you're capturing a good sense of energy present in your leaves, but there's a couple of issues to call out here which hold your work back.

Firstly, something that stands out right away is how little of your leaves are bending and overlapping in some way, 3 out of 13 to be precise. In actual plant structures you'll find that it's very rare for leaf structures to be assorted in this manner, instead they'll be found in all sorts of rotations and can be influenced by all sorts of external forces such as the wind or their own weight pulling them down, so you should focus on drawing leaf structures that bend, twist and fold, making use of the entire tridimensional space available to you, and focusing on not only capturing how they sit statically within space, but also how they move across that space from moment to moment, otherwise your leaf structures end up feeling like flat stickers on a page, instead of real tridimensional objects that exist in a real space.

Secondly, look out for unnatural folds. Remember the concepts introduced in the arrows exercise of how to make a flat object feel tridimensional, leaves are very flexible along their lenght, but not so much along their width, this is because of the spine of the leaf, so consider that when drawing your outer edges, keep in mind the size consistency of the leaf and whether a real leaf could bend this way, or if it would break due to it's fragility.

Your addition of edge detail is looking good as you don't attempt to capture more than one piece of edge detail at a time, this allows you to maintain higher control over your marks and create a tighter, more specific construction.

I've noticed that you added texture to your leaves. You can find here some extra notes on how to think when approaching leaf textures.

Branches

Moving on to your branches you're generally moving in the right direction, but there's a couple of things that should be addressed so you can get the most out of this exercise.

It's great to see that you're making an attempt to extend your lines, but you're not extending them fully up to the halfway point between ellipses, which makes it harder for you to maintain the smooth transition between segments that we wish to achieve in this exercise.

So remember the instructions for the exercise, each edge starts at an ellipse point, continues past the second, being extended fully up to halfway point to the third ellipse before you end your mark. Furthermore, always treat your ellipse's outermost perimeter as the defining edge of a form, in order to not cut into your ellipse's accidentally and undermine your initial construction.

Another way you can tackle the previous problem is by drawing fewer ellipses and keeping them further apart, in order to ensure that they're at enough of a length of runway between each other so you can fully engage your shoulder when drawing and create a smooth transition between lines.

Onto your ellipses it's good to see that you're drawing through them twice, but some of your ellipses are still looking a bit wobbly, don't forget to always execute them swiftly and from the shoulder, keeping in mind that your main priority should be confidence above accuracy. When it comes to the ellipse degree shift in your work your degrees barely change when they should as shown here. Remember that as a cylindrical form shifts towards or away from the viewer, the degree of the ellipses within that structure will also shift.

Plant Construction Section

Now let's move on to your plant constructions.

Something that jumps out right away to me in is how much white space there is on your pages and how small most of your plant constructions are. There are two very important things that are required in order to get the most out of this course, they are time and space. As of now you're not allowing yourself as much space as you need while tackling these constructions due to the size of your drawings, this size limits your ability to fully work through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when going through these exercises and hinders your ability to draw from the shoulder.

For example in this construction the small size stops you from making use of the branch and leaf construction methods, not only does this flatten your work but it's not helpful to you. Remember that the purpose of this course is not to teach you how to draw any one thing in a particularly appealing manner, instead the purpose of these exercises is to introduce you different tools that will help you develop your understanding of 3D space, for this to be possible you need to construct your structures with the methods introduced in order to force yourself to think and understand how each form exists in 3D space not only by itself, but also how it exists in relation to other forms.

So draw bigger, draw your construction as big as it needs to be in order to ensure you can engage your shoulder and make use of the methods introduced in the lesson.

Other examples of you not making use of the construction methods introduced in the lesson can be found here and here, both cacti have inconsistency problems in their thickness which disrupts the illusion that they're solid forms, the arbitrary line in the middle of them also suggests that you skipped construction steps, as you were initially aware that you should construct this kind of structure around a minor axis, with the branch construction method, but at the last minute decided to take a different approach, unfortunately this only harms the solidity of these constructions. I recommend looking over the page for the drawing branches exercise again, but also taking a look at the forking branches construction method as you don't make use of it in your constructions, even when it would be applicable.

To finish off the section on the cacti, another thing you should keep in mind is "edge detail" when it comes to non-flat forms, for this cactus you add this extra detail as several, one off lines along the silhouette of the form, but this, coupled with the other issues present in the construction only serves to flatten it further, keep in mind that these spikes are small forms in their own right, and that they're present throughout the entirety of the cactus structure, wrapping around it, not only present at the edges. You can find here some important notes on building upon forms which aren't already flat.

When constructing cylindrical structures, such as mushrooms and flower pots, drawing them around a minor axis will greatly help you keep their several ellipses aligned to each other.

When constructing anything make sure to keep the relationships between your phases of construction tight and specific, as such don't leave any arbitrary gaps between a leaf's flow line and it's outer edges, they should connect. Furthermore, remember that as shown here in the instructions of the exercise only the last step of construction, detail, is optional - so you should make sure to push your constructions further by adding edge detail to your leaf structures, which you don't always add to your work.

You should also avoid filling in large areas of black in your exercise such as in here, not only does it obscures the underlying construction, making it harder to properly evaluate your homework assignment, it also goes against the principles of texture in lesson 2.

If we revisit how texture in Drawabox should be approached, we can refresh our memory and see that texture through the lens of Drawabox is not used to make our work aesthetic or pretty, instead every textural form we draw is based on what's physically present in our reference. Our focus should be on understanding how each individual form sits in 3D space and how that form then creates a shadow that is cast onto that same surface, after analyzing all of the information present in our reference we'll be able to translate it to our study. This is why the shape of our shadow is important as it's the shape that defines the relationships between the form casting it and the surface it's being cast on, this is why we should consider carefully how to design a shadow shape that feels dynamic as shown here.

This approach is of course much harder than basing our understanding of texture on other methods that may seem more intuitive or basing it on the idea that texture = making our work look good, but in the long run this method of applying texture is the one that enforces the ideals of spatial reasoning taught in this course. By following these ideals, you'll find yourself asking how to convey texture in the most efficient way possible, with less lines and ink, focusing 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

You're starting to understand the concepts from this lesson, but I believe that you're rushing your homework to a point by not using the construction methods as thoroughly as you should. This coupled with your tendency to draw too small is hurting your ability to properly work through the spatial reasoning problems that you encounter in your study session.

Based on this I'm going to assign you some revisions. Please revisit the relevant lesson material, I also strongly suggest to check out the demos for this lesson in your own time, then please reply with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.

2 plant construction pages.