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12:04 AM, Thursday October 6th 2022

Starting with your arrows, great work. Your linework is confident, and through that you convey a strong sense of the fluidity with which each one moves through the world. This carries over nicely into the base structures of your leaves as well, where you're capturing not only how they sit statically in 3D space, but also how they move through the space they occupy.

When it comes to adding edge detail however, unfortunately there are some notes you may have missed. Right now you're adding the edge detail more loosely, resulting in more zigzagging back and forth (which as noted here should be avoided). This results in a weaker relationship between the phases of construction.

Remember - what we're doing here is not putting down a rough sketch to use as a guide. We are effectively introducing a structure to the world, as though it were a simple leaf shape cut out of a piece of paper, and as we add edge detail to it or build up its structure, we are actively making physical changes to that existing form. If we want to add spikes to its edge, we're physically adding more pieces of paper to it. If we want to create a wobbly edge, we are physically drooping and lifting sections of its perimeter in 3D space. And if we want to cut into its silhouette, then the lines we're drawing represent the paths a pair of scissors would follow to cut it out, as shown here.

Continuing onto your branches, there may have been some similarly missed points here. As noted here in the instructions, the manner in which the edge segments ought to be drawn is quite specific, as it's a particular focus of this exercise. Each segment starts from one ellipse, continues past the second and stops halfway to the third, with the next segment starting at the second ellipse and repeating the pattern from there. This leads to a healthy overlap between them of about half the distance between ellipses, which helps to achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from segment to segment.

In your work, you appear to follow this rather inconsistently - sometimes not extending fully halfway to the next ellipse, other times not starting back at the previous ellipse. Regardless, there's a lot of minimizing of those important overlaps. Additionally, you should be more mindful of drawing through each and every ellipse two full times before lifting your pen.

Continuing onto your plant constructions, overall you're doing fine, with the big concern here really being that a lot of the smaller leaves you end up drawing have some rather hesitant linework that sometimes wobbles or otherwise undermines some of the structures' solidity. My concern here however isn't actually that your linework is hesitant in these circumstances - that's pretty normal at this stage. Rather, it's about the situations you put yourself in, which result in this (though that is also not something I'm blaming you for).

There are two things that we must give each of our drawings throughout this course in order to get the most out of them. Those two things are space and time. In drawing smaller and artificially limiting how much space you give a given drawing, you're limiting your brain's capacity for spatial reasoning, while also making it harder to engage your whole arm while drawing.

Normally I bring this up in the context of students cramming a lot of drawings into a single page, causing each one to be smaller and more cramped. In this case, 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. 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.

In your case however, it's an issue that's even easier to accidentally fall into. Right now you appear to be drawing as much of your chosen reference image as you can. Many of these are quite large with a lot of different elements at play (many of them repeating throughout the structure), and so each individual leaf ends up quite tiny on the page. Similarly to those students trying to pack lots of different drawings into their pages, this comes from a desire to push your limits, so it's certainly laudable - but a bit misguided.

Instead, it's perfectly okay to curate what it is you pick out of a reference image, for the sake of ensuring that what you do study from it is given ample room. So, in cases where you've got a lot of different elements, you can certainly choose to focus in on a particular branch, or a couple connected sections. Ultimately you decide what you want to study, not the reference, so feel free to zero in on smaller areas and blow them up big.

Now, we are going to need to revisit those leaves and branches exercises, and I would like to see how that impacts your plant constructions - so I've got some revisions assigned for you below.

Next Steps:

Please submit the following:

  • 1 page of leaves

  • 1 page of branches

  • 2 pages of plant constructions

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
1:51 PM, Saturday October 8th 2022

Thanks Comfy,

This all makes sense for the most part. One question I do have is around your comment pertaining to space and time. I'm not surprised by you mentioning space as that makes up so much of what this course is about via construction and perspective, but what do you mean when you bring up time? How does effectively conveying time manifest itself in these exercises?

6:07 PM, Monday October 10th 2022

I think you may have misunderstood me. I'm not talking about conveying space, or conveying time - I'm talking about using the space available to you on the page as effectively as possible (giving your constructions as much of that physical space as they require), and giving yourself as much time as you require to see the task through to the best of your current ability.

8:38 PM, Wednesday October 12th 2022

That makes infinitely more sense. Thanks for the clarification.

3:36 PM, Saturday October 15th 2022

Hey Comfy,

Here are the revisions you requested. I definitely understand what you mean about "space" now. I was struggling to decide how much space I needed for each plant.

I especially struggled with construction for the dragon fruit as the "branches" are almost more like big leaves? But in my reference the "branch" is cropped due to its length. Due to the flowy nature of the leaf-branch I went for a leaf shape, but it doesn't quite match. How would you approach this one? Reference included.

https://imgur.com/a/1oxnMDt

7:11 PM, Monday October 17th 2022

Leaves

This is definitely better, in terms of reducing the tendency to zigzag back and forth across the edges, and having your edge detail marks establish a stronger relationship with the previous phase of construction than before - this can still be improved, but it's headed in the right direction. That said, I am noticing two issues of note:

  • There are places where you're still capturing several bits of edge detail with a single stroke (far less than before, but I do see it on occasion. Every individual bit of edge detail must be its own separate mark. You generally still lean pretty heavily on having each phase of construction completely replace/redraw the one before it. That is incorrect, and tends to encourage more zigzagging.

  • Rather than having your edge detail marks flow smoothly and seamlessly back into the existing edge, you frequently have them continue on a little, overshoot past, or just stop short.

You can see both of these issues illustrated here with your strokes marked out in different colours - specifically in how your strokes do not end flowing into the existing edge, and the tendency to have a single stroke covering more than it should. Take more care in executing each individual stroke, and being more mindful of where they start and end.

Branches

You are still not following the instructions for this one. Go back over my past feedback and the instructions I linked you to for this and compare it to your approach. If anything is unclear, you can certainly ask.

The rest

Aside from the points I raised above, your plant constructions are fine - though I would encourage you to prioritize drawing bigger and giving each one as much room as it requires on the page, over packing them all in.

I raised this issue in my past feedback, not because you were cramming a bunch of drawings into a page (you were handling that part fine), but because of other related concerns. It seems you've 180'd in this regard and gone in opposite direction instead. I think you're definitely going to want to reflect upon how exactly you're approaching processing the feedback you receive. Both the lessons and the feedback in this course can be quite dense, requiring multiple readthroughs, and some students benefit from taking notes. Whatever it is you need to process the information being shared with you - it is your responsibility to identify those strategies that work for you, and put them into action.

As to your dragon fruit, you made the right call in approaching those structures as leaves. Ultimately this course arms us with a series of tools, but it's still up to us to decide which ones should be used in which situation. Sometimes you might find a very nail-like screw - in that case, reaching for a hammer may be more fitting than a screwdriver, despite what the object in question might be called on paper.

I'm going to leave you to continue working on your leaves as well as the scale of your drawings yourself, but I will need another page of branches before I can mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Please submit one more page of branches.

When finished, reply to this critique with your revisions.
9:59 PM, Wednesday October 19th 2022
edited at 10:02 PM, Oct 19th 2022

Thanks Comfy - The feedback is always appreciated,

I get the impression you feel as if I really missed the mark on my branches, which is somewhat of a surprise to me. While I'm aware my branches have obvious issues, your response does create some confusion on my end.

I definitely have some outstanding questions which pertain to both your feedback and approaching the course as a whole, I was wondering if you could provide some clarity/guidelines in this regard, and my latest branches attempt is a good example.

I definitely read through both your feedback and reread the exercise instructions for this latest attempt. Here was my approach from my perspective:

1) Read through your feedback and focus of the points raised. In this case, specifically the nature of my lines

2) Reread the exercise instructions to see if theres anything I overlooked

3) Attempt the exercise again (to the best of my current ability) while focusing on the following points

- be sure to draw through my ellipses twice

- be mindful of their degree as it relates to how they sit in 3d space

- take more time when creating my lines to focus on flowing them into one another as described in the lesson

4) Be disappointed in my results but submit anyway.

This last point is where the heart of my question is, should I have redone the exercise until I got a page I felt was worth submitting? Or should I submit anyway because it is "to the best of my current ability"

You mention this often, how students will do an assignment over and over until they get it perfect, how this is a waste of time, and how they should simply do the assignment to the best of their ability so they can move on. So what would have been the appropriate action for me in this case?

It is obvious to me that my branches (more than my other exercises) lack depth and sturdiness, something I usually do relatively well. However I can't seem to get them to feel solid.

Is there an issue with the degree of my ellipses? That wasn't in your feedback so I would think thats not the main issue

Do I just need to practice flowing lines into one another so I don't have any chicken scratchiness? I'm not sure given that you say that this issue is almost unavoidable and bound to happen to an extent.

I genuinely want to succeed in this course and want to follow its methodologies, but I sometimes struggle to know the right next step. I hope that is clear if nothing else. Any thoughts or guidance in regard to both my approach as a whole or the branches exercise specifically would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the time you've invested, I'll be sending over more branches.

edited at 10:02 PM, Oct 19th 2022
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3:14 PM, Sunday October 23rd 2022

Here's my latest branches focused specifically on doubling up on my ellipses and the line instructions you provided.

https://imgur.com/a/QGecc6i

5:54 PM, Monday October 24th 2022

Much better overall. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.

Next Steps:

Move onto Lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
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