Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

11:18 PM, Wednesday September 8th 2021

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10:32 PM, Thursday September 9th 2021

Starting with your arrows, you're doing a great job of drawing these with a good deal of confidence, pushing the sense of how they move fluidly through the world. Do however remember that as we look farther back in space, the gaps between the zigzagging sections of your arrow's ribbon should be getting narrower and more compressed, as shown here.

That same fluidity carries over fairly well into your leaves, where you've done a good job of capturing how they not only sit statically in space, but also how they move through the space they occupy. In terms of how you've built up your additional edge detail however, this is a bit mixed. There are some cases where you've done quite well, building up the edges as individual bumps that rise off the previous phase of construction, then return to it as a seamless extension of its silhouette. There are however others where you appear to be zigzagging back and forth across that edge, as shown here. There are some cases where you are doing this as a single continuous line, and others where you may actually be drawing those bumps individually, but having them alternate whether they'd stick out or cut into the simpler leaf's silhouette.

In these notes I explain the issue with zigzagging in this manner. This can occur whether you draw with a single continuous line, or if you build them up separately. The correct approach is to build them up individually, but in this case I'd also push to use the previous phase of construction's edge as one of the extremes, rather than the middle. Meaning, you should have those bumps only rise up along one side of that simpler edge, rather than alternating sides.

Continuing onto your branches, you've done a pretty good job of sticking to tubes of consistent width here, which has helped you maintain a stronger sense of solidity to the branch structures. There are however a couple things I want to draw to your attention:

  • Firstly, you appear to only be overlapping your edge segments in a very limited fashion, starting the next segment just a little back from where the previous one ended. As shown here in the instructions, each edge must start at the previous ellipse, while ending halfway to the next one. This will allow for a healthier overlap, which helps achieve a smoother, more seamless transition from one to the next.

  • Right now your ellipse all seem to be roughly the same degree. Remember that as discussed in Lesson 1's ellipses video, as we slide along the length of a cylindrical structure moving away from the viewer, its cross-sectional ellipses will appear to get wider.

Moving onto your plant constructions, I feel that as a whole you've quite well. Your awareness of how those earlier flow lines help define the manner in which a given leaf or petal moves through space has continued to develop, manifesting with excellent fluidity and liveliness in your aloe vera plant. In the pilea peperomiddes however, I do feel those flow lines didn't receive quite as much of your focus, resulting in slightly stiffer petals, and gaps between the end of those petals and the flow line itself (remember to maintain tight, specific relationships between your phases of construction, avoiding arbitrary gaps).

I also noticed that in that same drawing you were neglecting to draw through your ellipses. Remember that every ellipse you freehand in this course should be drawn through two full times before lifting your pen, as discussed back in Lesson 1. Lastly, when constructing these flower pots, be sure to construct them around a central minor axis to help keep the ellipses aligned, and be sure to include as many ellipses as are needed to define the structure in its entirety. In this case, it seems you're missing an ellipse inset within the opening to define the thickness of the rim.

Aside from that, your work is coming along very well, and I'm quite pleased with the confidence and precision of your linework. Keep up the good work, and consider this lesson complete.

Next Steps:

Feel free to move onto lesson 4.

This critique marks this lesson as complete.
8:10 PM, Monday September 13th 2021

Hello Uncomfortable,

Thank you for the very thoughtful and detailed feedback. I agree with all your points and will keep them in mind for future constructions.

Best,

Maria

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