Hello IronSkeleton09, 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 foreshortening 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 good that you're making use of added line weight on top of the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth.
Good job overall. To push yourself further, experiment with more complex twists and bends, varied amounts of foreshortening, and explore the different ways arrows can move across the page. Arrows are flexible objects, so embrace the full range of 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.
However there are also some unnatural bends present in your leaf structures. Keep in mind that even though leaves are very flexible structures, that mostly applies to their length and not their width. They're like a piece of paper, not a piece of rubber, they can fold and bend in a lot of ways, but they can't stretch or compress, and if we try to force them to they'll simply rip apart.
You're not making use of edge detail in your pages, by not adding it they're left very simple and you miss out on a great tool to help you further communicate the way your structures exist and move through space. Make use of edge detail whenever possible, and remember that only the last step of leaf construction - texture - is optional.
Branches
Moving on to your branches you're not sticking to the instructions for this exercise as closely as you should. While it's good to see that you're drawing your edges in segments, you're going over your marks too many times, which partially removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve in these structures and also goes against the first principle of mark-making, marks should be continuous and unbroken.
So remember how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.
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, but make sure to limit your marks to 2-3 draw-throughs, more than that and your ellipses start to become too loose and messy.
When it comes to your application of the ellipse degree shift to your branches it can be improved, as it stands your degrees are too consistent and hardly change which is a mistake that 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 generally coming along well made, as you're following the construction methods and techniques introduced in the lesson which allows you to construct really solid looking and believably tridimensional structures. I can see a good developing sense of spatial reasoning in these pages.
However there are some issues present in these pages which are holding you back from your full potential. So here are the points you should keep in mind whenever you tackle these exercises again so that you can continue to develop your skills.
Firstly, you've submitted mostly demos in your homework, as clarified in the homework section of the lesson material if you choose to, you can include your attempts at following the demos in your homework, but they should constitute less than half of your plant drawings.
Demos are like training wheels, they help you learn and understand how these construction methods can be used together in a variety of ways in order to construct certain tridimensional structures, but just like with learning how to ride a bike, you won't know how much you know until you take the training wheels out - and then fall on your face. But it's okay, because the next time you try it it'll be easier because you already have an idea of what you should do.
However if you never take the training wheels out, you won't develop yourself to your full potential.
Don't forget to always follow the principles of mark-making in your constructions, in this page and in this mushroom construction you are going over most of your lines more than once, which goes against the first principle of mark-making. Your linework must be smooth and confident, otherwise your constructions won't look a solid as they could.
You're taking a great first step towards starting to think of how to break down different structures in this construction, but it does end up accidentally stiffening the flower structure a bit if you don't approach it with the leaf construction method which naturally adds a sense of flow and energy to your work.
One way in which we can approach these types of structures that ensures the petal structures are still flowing nicely and that all of the relationships between the different forms are tight and specific is by using a slightly tapered cylinder in order to construct the main body of the leaf shape, then afterwards make use of the leaf construction method, build it on top of the cylinder in order to capture the flow of the different sections of the flower, and lastly connect them together, making use of edge detail in order to finish the complex structure. I actually put together a quick demonstration of how this would look like in the context of a Daffodil for a different student once, and I believe you will find it helpful.
Final Thoughts
In general you're still struggling with the construction techniques and methods introduced in this Lesson, and since you've submitted mostly demos, it's difficult to accurately judge your work.
As such I believe you will benefit from tackling these exercises again before moving on to the next lesson, please revisit the lesson material mentioned and then reply with:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
3 plant construction pages.
Next Steps:
1 page, half of leaves, half of branches.
3 plant construction pages.
Here they are. Thanks for the quick review, hope I had done better with these.
Hello IronSkeleton09, thank you for sending me your revisions.
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.
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 keep the line thickness between your phases of construction roughly consistent, but don't forget to construct your edge detail additively as much as possible, that is, on top of your structure, avoid cutting back into the forms you've already drawn as that will cause us to focus too much on manipulating 2d shapes, rather than the 3d edges they represent.
For your branches you're still going over your marks too many times, which removes the healthy overlaps we seek to achieve and goes against the first principle of mark-making, marks should be continuous and unbroken.
So don't forget how branches should be approached, by having your segment start at the first ellipse point, extending it past the second ellipse and fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, afterwards you'll start a new segment, making sure to place your pen at the second ellipse and repeat this pattern until your entire branch is complete.
Moving on to your plant constructions you are generally following the correct methods and techniques, but you're still not always drawing through your forms and constructing them fully, such as in this flower's petals and the stem, where you only drew what was visible to viewer, this mushroom, where you only constructed the part of the mushroom thar would be visible, rather than the entire structure, and for this leaf structures in this construction.
Remember that not drawing through your forms means you're relying only on your observation skills, you're not engaging your sense of spatial reasoning and truly trying to understand how the object you're drawing works unless you construct it in it's entirety.
You're still running into some of the same issues that were pointed out in your original pages. This is normal as the lesson material is very dense and you're not expected to perfect them or even be good at them right away, but when it comes to certain points - like not drawing through you forms, it's just a matter of applying the feedback you've given.
In general I believe that you're rushing things to a certain extent, you're not taking the time to slow down and revisit the lesson material as much as you need, nor are you taking the time as you work on each individual page to make sure every drawing, every form, every mark is made to the best of your current ability.
I don't believe you will benefit from further revisions, and I believe you do generally understand the methods and techniques from this lesson and you're ready to move on to the next one, but make sure to slow down and apply the feedback you receive thoroughly.
I'm going to 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.
I understand and thank you for the quick response.
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The reason I hold this book in such high esteem is because of how it puts the relatively new field of game art into perspective, showing how concept art really just started off as crude sketches intended to communicate ideas to storytellers, designers and 3D modelers. How all of this focus on beautiful illustrations is really secondary to the core of a concept artist's job. A real eye-opener.
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