Hello boxybox09, I'm ThatOneMushroomGuy and I'll be the TA handling your critique today.

Arrows

Let's start by talking about your arrows, your linework is looking smooth and confident which helps communicate a feeling of fluidity in these objects.

You're exploring the depth of your page, but make sure that you're not afraid of letting your edges overlap when they should as that flattens your work.

It's good to see that you're making use of added hatching at the overlaps in order to reinforce their depth, don't forget to also make use of added lineweight on top of overlaps as a finishing touch to further this feeling of tridimensionality.

Leaves

Moving on to your leaves you haven't made a lot of effective use of the space on your page, as you could have added many more leaves and types of leaves in this page, this way you would have been able to grow your understanding of these structures further, but currently you're sticking too much to your comfort zone.

Your leaves feel stiff and flat, because you're not thinking of the flow line as part of a tridimensional structure, which causes you to draw leaves which are very contained to the space of the page and don't bend, fold or overlap in any way, thus they end up feeling like flat stickers glued to your paper, rather than actual structures that exist freely in their world.

It's good that you're experimenting with different types of leaves and tackling complex leaf structures in here. But you're skipping construction steps in this structure because the individial arms of the leaf aren't fully constructed by themselves, which leaves behind a less solid, less specific and much flatter structure. Even though complex leaf structures act as a single object, they're still made up of several parts that make up this whole, in order to capture each of them to their truest form, we must construct things individually, starting with simple forms and gradually connecting them in order to create a more complex structure.

Onto your usage of edge detail it's looking good, in general you're adding it in with roughly the same line thickness as the initial construction and you don't seem to try to capture more than one piece or bump of detail at a time which allows you to create a much tighter, much more specific structure.

Branches

Your branches can definitely be improved, an important issue present in your work is that you're not always following the instructions for how the edges are to be laid out, it seems that at some points you've started your new segment close to the end of the previous mark, instead of starting your next segment back at the ellipse point.

So let's revisit the instructions for the exercise in order to remember the manner in which branches should be approached. In this exercise we're striving for confidence in our lines as well as learning how to create compound strokes, in order to strive for that we must start our first segment at the first ellipse point, extend it past the second ellipse fully up to the halfway point to the third ellipse, then we'll start a new segment, making sure to place our pen at the second ellipse and repeat the pattern until our branch is complete. This way we can achieve a healthy and seamless transition between our lines.

For your ellipses you're not always drawing through them twice, which is a mistake. Don't forget to ghost through your ellipses enough times until you feel properly confident and execute your marks switfly, at least twice. You seem aware of the ellipse degree shift which helps you create much more believable cylindrical structures, just be mindful of the alignment of your ellipses to the minor axis.

Plant Construction Section

For your plant constructions you're starting to understand the methods and techniques introduced in the lesson, and because you're making use of them you're starting to develop your sense of spatial reasoning, but there are a couple of things that should be addressed so that you can get even more out of these exercises.

First things first, the most noticeable and important problem is your pages have a lot of open, empty white space even in your individual plant construction pages.

This is an issue because it artificially limits how much space you're allowing yourself when drawing, remember that these exercises are created specifically so that you can break down your references into 3d forms so that you can understand how different forms fit together in a page in order to create a solid and complex structure and through that, develop your sense of spatial reasoning.

When you draw too small you don't only make it harder to think through the spatial reasoning challenges that arise when we tackle these challenges, but you also make it more difficult to fully engage your shoulder and to apply the methods and techniques introduced in this lesson, for example, for this plant construction and this one you haven't made use of the branch construction method, which leaves your structure feeling less solid, less tridimensional and unclear as to how each form fits in with the others.

So make sure that you start drawing bigger.

Looking through your work some of your constructions seem eerily similar, such as this and this, the same is true for your other pages, such as your mushrooms and your flowers, if this is intentional, make sure that you're not tackling the same reference over and over again, as that's grinding. If this isn't intentional make sure to search for more distinct and different plant structures in order to tackle for your constructions, as a wider variety will introduce you to different constructional challenges and thus help you improve your abilities further.

• When constructing cylindrical structures such as plant pots make sure to draw through your ellipses twice and to draw them around a minor axis in order to keep your several ellipses aligned to each other. You can also push this even further and construct the rim around the border of plant pots with an extra cylinder.

Your pitcher plant constructions feel unfinished.

Final Thoughts

In general you're in the right direction by making use of the methods most of the time, but some things are getting in the way of you getting the most out of these lessons. I heavily recommend that you go through all of the demonstrations available for this lesson on your own time.

I'm not going to be passing you onto the next lesson as I don't believe you're quite ready for the more complex construction methods introduced in the next lesson, as such I'm going to be asking you for some revisions. Once you've revisited the relevant lesson material mentioned here please reply with:

1 page, half of leaves, half of arrows.

3 plant construction pages.